Showing posts with label brothers and sisters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label brothers and sisters. Show all posts
Jan 24, 2019
Sep 1, 2018
May 21, 2018
Dec 1, 2017
Apr 1, 2015
Dory Fantasmagory - Abby Hanlon
Summary: Dory, the youngest in her family, is a girl with a very active imagination, and she spends the summer playing with her imaginary friend, pretending to be a dog, battling monsters, and generally driving her family nuts.
Booklist Reviews
A little sister causes all kinds of trouble in Hanlon's debut chapter book. Aimed at beginning readers, it is narrated by six-year-old Dory, whose chief goal in life is to be invited to play with her older brother and sister. Of course, they don't want to play with her because she acts "like such a baby," asks constant questions, and plays with imaginary creatures. Indeed Dory has such a vivid imagination that the black-and-white illustrations often picture what Dory believes is happening, not what the rest of the family is experiencing. Young readers may or may not identify with Dory, whose antics annoy even her mother (like when Dory persists in pretending to be a puppy at the doctor's office), but they will better understand another child's intense need for attention. In both words and pictures, Hanlon succeeds in getting inside Dory's head—and it's pretty lively in there. Copyright 2014 Booklist Reviews.
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Dec 1, 2014
This is Where I Leave You - Jonathan Tropper
This is Where I Leave You - Tropper, JonathanSummary: Judd Foxman is thrown together with his dysfunctional family when his father dies, while at the same time coping with his wife's infidelity and the end of his marriage.
Booklist Reviews
Judd Foxman is in his late thirties when he finds himself living in a damp, moldy basement apartment, without a job and separated from his wife, who is having an affair with his now ex-boss. To make matters worse, Judd finds out his wife is pregnant with his child and that his father has just died, leaving a dying wish to have all four of his children sit shivah for seven days. What transpires over the course of that week is a Foxman family reunion like no other; filled with fistfights, arguments, sex, and a parade of characters offering their sympathies and copious amounts of food. This is a story that could be told by your best guy friend: laugh-out-loud funny, intimate, honest, raunchy, and thoroughly enjoyable. Tropper is spot-on with his observations of family relationships as each member deals with new grief, old resentments, and life's funny twists of fate. Tropper's characters are real, flawed, and very likable, making for a great summer read.
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Sep 1, 2013
Al Capone does my homework - Gennifer Choldenko
Al Capone does my homework - Choldenko, Gennifer
Summary: "Moose Flanagan, who lives on Alcatraz along with his family and the families of the other prison guards, faces new challenges when his father is promoted to Associate Warden"-- Provided by publisher.
Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* In this final installment in Choldenko's Alcatraz series, Moose Flanagan has a mystery to solve. His father has been promoted to associate warden of the infamous island prison, drawing negative attention from cons and guards alike. When their family apartment is burned down, gossip points to Moose's older sister, Natalie, and it falls to Moose to discover the truth. With baseballs, bottle caps, and carrier-cockroaches, he and the other island kids take on gambling debts, missing knives, a murder plot, a counterfeit ring, even pixie secrets—any of which might or might not be related to the fire. Choldenko supports all of this with the strength of her generous narrative, weaving in resonant emotional elements like the complicated family dynamic circling Natalie's autism and Moose's budding romance with Piper. (Or is it Annie?) Especially noteworthy is the author's sensitive ability to humanize heroes and villains alike, grounding the tense action in palpable reality. With rich characterization, tender drama, and sleuthworthy clues, this poignant mystery makes for a thoroughly satisfying conclusion to the landmark historical trilogy. A detailed author's note highlights elements of truth uncovered in her research that made their way into the story. Copyright 2013 Booklist Reviews.
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May 1, 2013
From the mixed-up files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler - E.L. Konigsburg
Summary: Having run away with her younger brother to live in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, twelve-year-old Claudia strives to keep things in order in their new home and to become a changed person and a heroine to herself.
Kirkus
/* Starred Review */ Elaine Konigsburg's first sharp bite of suburban life, Jennifer, He- cate, Macbeth...(131, J-43) was a dilly; this one's a dandy--just as fast and fresh and funny, but less spoofing, more penetrating. From the files of Mrs. Frankweiler comes the chronicle of Claudia Kincaid, almost twelve, and her brother Jamie, who is nine. Tired of being her same old taken-for-granted self, Claudia decides to run away, and Jamie goes along because he is flattered at being asked. Claudia has planned every detail: escape on the empty school bus, change of clothing in a violin case, sanctuary in the Metropolitan Museum. For a week the children elude the guards and exploit the opportunities of the museum: they sleep in a royal bed, bathe in the cafeteria pool, and pass part of each day in study on the fringe of lecture tours. Midweek, a marble angel of dubious origin arrives; Claudia is convinced that it is a Michelangelo and determines to prove it: she will authenticate Angel and become a heroine before going home. But no--by arrangement of Mrs. Frankweiler, she goes home a heroine only to herself (and happy); and she knows something about secrets she hadn't known before--they have to come to an end... Like the title, Mrs. Frankweiler is a bit of a nuisance; and an offhand, rather bemused reference to dope addiction is unnecessary but not inappropriate. What matters is that beyond the intriguing central situation and its ingenious, very natural development, there's a deepening rapport between their parents; "we're well trained (and sure of ourselves)...just look how nicely we've managed. It's really they're fault if we're not homesick." There may be a run on the Metropolitan (a map is provided); there will surely be a run on the book. (Kirkus Reviews, September 1, 1967)
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Jan 1, 2013
Wildwood - Colin Meloy
Summary: When her baby brother is kidnapped by crows, seventh-grader Prue McKeel ventures into the forbidden Impassable Wilderness--a dangerous and magical forest at the edge of Portland, Oregon--and soon finds herself involved in a war among the various inhabitants.
Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* If you like stories in which spunky kids emerge from secret tunnels only to be greeted by smartly outfitted badgers operating rickshaws, this is your book. Meloy's debut is the kind of delicate, elaborate fantasy that is so well versed in classic Narnian tropes that it is destined to be enthusiastically embraced. After her baby brother is abducted by crows, 12-year-old Prue is compelled to enter the Impassable Wilderness—an ominous forest just outside of Portland, Oregon. Although Prue is initially joined by her classmate Curtis, the kids are soon split up as they become embroiled in a war between stuffy bureaucrats, bandit separatists, militant birds, and the evil Dowager Governess. The two leads are fairly boilerplate, and some readers may find the constant panoply of helpful, uniformed animals (most likely speaking in English accents) too precious. These elements, though, are more than balanced by flashes of darkness—blood sacrifices, death in battle, and more—that would make the Brothers Grimm proud. Meloy, best known as the literate lead singer of the Decemberists, clearly knows that weird vocabulary is part of the genre's fun and has no qualms dropping 10-dollar words like retinue and totemic. Frequent, droll illustrations further solidify Wildwood as a uniquely alive place—right down to the stubborn blackberries and vengeful ivy. Copyright 2011 Booklist Reviews.
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Jul 1, 2012
Home - Toni Morrison
Summary: "The story of a Korean war veteran on a quest to save his younger sister"-- Provided by publisher.
Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* The Korean conflict is over, and soldier Frank Money has returned to the States with a disturbed psyche that sends him beyond anger into actually acting out his rage. From the mental ward in which he has been incarcerated for an incident he can't even remember, he determines that he must escape. He needs to get to Atlanta to attend to his gravely ill sister and take her back to their Georgia hometown of Lotus, which, although Frank realizes a return there is necessary for his sister's sake, remains a detestable place in his mind. Morrison's taut, lacerating novel observes, through the struggles of Frank to move heaven and earth to reach and save his little sister, how a damaged man can gather the fortitude to clear his mind of war's horror and face his own part in that horror, leave the long-term anger he feels toward his hometown aside, and take responsibility for his own life as well as hers. With the economical presentation of a short story, the rhythms and cadence of a poem, and the total embrace and resonance of a novel, Morrison, one of our national literary treasures, continues to marshal her considerable talents to draw a deeply moving narrative and draw in a wide range of appreciative readers. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: A quarter-million print run is the surest indication that the publisher is confident that a new Morrison novel is bound to be a big hit. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.
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Nov 1, 2011
The year we left home - Jean Thompson
Summary: Chronicles the happiness pursuits of the Eriksons from their 1970s coming-of-age to the near-present day, in a story told from revolving viewpoints
Publishers Weekly Reviews
Bookended by two wars—Vietnam and Iraq—Thompson's third novel (after the collection Do Not Deny Me) sketches the travails of an Iowa family over three decades. Matriarch Audrey neatly sums up the episodic novel's grand theme: "she'd been born into one world, hopeful and normal, and now she lived in another, full of sadness and failure." The novel opens as oldest daughter Anita, the beauty of the family, celebrates her marriage. Over the years, however, Anita confronts dissatisfaction with herself and disillusionment with her pompous husband. Her younger brother, Ryan, a high school senior as the novel opens, longs to escape his rural roots, dating a hippie poet and majoring in political science before realizing that the farmers who came before him might hold more relevance than he'd imagined. Cousin Chip comes back from Vietnam troubled and aimless, his wanderings from Seattle to Reno, Nev., to Veracruz, Mexico, offering a parallel to the spiritual restlessness all the other characters feel. Told from the point of view of more than a half-dozen characters, the vignettes that make up the narrative are generally powerful in isolation, but as a whole fail to develop into anything more than a series of snapshots of a family touched by time and tragedy. (May)
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Jul 1, 2011
The whistling season - Ivan Doig
Summary: Hired as a housekeeper to work on the early 1900s Montana homestead of widower Oliver Milliron, the irreverent and perpetually whistling Rose and her font-of-knowledge brother, Morris, endeavor to educate the widower's reluctant sons while witnessing local efforts on a massive irrigation project. 60,000 first printing. - (Baker & Taylor)
Booklist Reviews
/*Starred Review*/ Doig's latest foray through Montana history begins in the late 1950s, with Superintendent of Public Instruction Paul Milliron on the verge of announcing the closure of the state's one-room schools, seen as hopelessly out of date in the age of Sputnik. But quickly the narrative takes us back to Paul's pivotal seventh-grade year, 1910, when he was a student in one of those one-room schools, and two landmark events took place: the Milliron family acquired a housekeeper, and Halley's comet came to Montana. Throughout his long career, Doig has been at his best when chronicling the passing of a season in the lives of a Montana family, usually farmers at around the turn of the century. It's no surprise, then, that this is his best novel since the marvelous English Creek (1985). As in all of his books, he digs the details of his historical moments from the dirt in which they thrived. We see Paul, his father, and his two younger brothers struggling to make a life on their dryland farm in the wake of their mother's death, and we feel their shock when they lay eyes on their new housekeeper, a recent widow who looks nothing like the "great-bosomed creature shrouded in gray" they had come to expect. The saga of how this stranger from Minneapolis and her brother (soon to become the new teacher) change lives in unexpected ways has all the charm of old-school storytelling, from Dickens to Laura Ingalls Wilder. Doig's antique narrative voice, which sometimes jars, feels right at home here, coming from the mouth of the young Paul, who is eagerly learning Latin as he tries to make sense of his ever-enlarging world. An entrancing new chapter in the literature of the West. ((Reviewed December 15, 2005)) Copyright 2005 Booklist Reviews.
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