Maddie's LIS 721 Book Blog

  Applegate, K. (1996). Animorphs: The invasion . Scholastic. Animorphs: The Invasion is the start of a fifty four book series that encompasses the adventures of a group of children who meet an alien on a shortcut home, and subsequently gain incredible abilities. The reader spends very little time in the status quo before the rising action begins. We have enough time to meet our cast of characters, who we only learn the first names for, and who live in a town that remains unnamed and undisclosed for the sake of the reader’s “safety”. While not particularly the focus of the story nor particularly inspired, this concept of the setting being just about anywhere (including your town) is sure to appeal to children who long for a sense of adventure. The plot as a whole is cohesive, though not necessarily well built, it’s sure to be entertaining.  The narrator of this story, Jake, introduces himself and goes on to explain that his friends had taken a shortcut home through a constru...

  Williams-Garcia, R. (2019). One crazy summer . Thorndike Press, a part of Gale, a Cengage Company.  One Crazy Summer, by Rita Williams-Garcia takes place in 1968. When three girls are sent to live with their mother for the summer, hoping to go to Disneyland and get to know the mother they barely know. Instead, they end up rebuffed by their mother and sent to a Black Panther  day camp, where they begin attending protests and learning about a movement for black liberation. Themes of One Crazy Summer include race, family bonds (especially those between sisters), and identity. In many ways, this novel is a bildungsroman, or coming of age novel for Delphine in particular, though all three of the girls go through major change throughout. The main occurrence in One Crazy Summer is the three sisters going to visit their mother, Cecile, who they knew only when they were quite young. Cecile abandoned Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern just days after Cecile’s birth, and while Delphine s...

  Sumner, J. (2020).   Roll with it . Atheneum Books for Young Readers.   Roll With It, by Jamie Sumner, centers on a young girl named Ellie, who has Cerebral Palsy and uses a wheelchair. After an incident of her grandfather’s Alzheimer's putting him in danger, Ellie moves from Tennessee with her mother to live with her grandmother and grandfather in Oklahoma. The themes of this book are friendship, disability, classism, differences, and family. Ellie’s story takes place in the modern day, as reflected by the fact that the characters have cell phones, watch the great british baking show, and live in a world in which Ellie and her mother reasonably expect a level of equity of access that isn’t always delivered by her new school. The plot and action, which involve Ellie’s effort to win a baking competition, fit in at school, and help her grandfather as his Alzheimer's progresses.  As a significant portion of this story involves moving a decent distance away from home...

  Butler, D. H., & Meyers, N. (2018). King & Kayla. king & kayla and the case of the lost tooth . Peachtree.  King and Kayla and the Case of the Lost Tooth , written by Dori Hillestad Butler and illustrated by Nancy Meyers is an adorable Level Three Easy Reader about a girl who loses her first tooth, and then loses it again! Using a typeface that appears to be approximately a size 18, this adventure in the stories of King and Kayla is playful and unique. The use of narration by King, Kayla’s dog, is an engaging way to tell the story. This story uses more complicated sentences than would be expected in a level one or two, and has about seven words per line on average. The majority of the sentences are broken up into brief ones, rather than being compound or complex.  There are no more than nine lines per page, with some pages that are filled with pictures instead of lines of text.  While the typical guidelines for a Level Three book states that there will ...

  Faruqi, S., & Aly, H. (2019). Yasmin in charge . Picture Window Books, a Capstone imprint.  Yasmin in Charge , Saadia Faruqi, illustrated by Hatem Aly, was much more complicated to place into a specific category. While I was torn between the book being Level Two, Level Three, or a Transitional Book, I ultimately decided it was a Level Three. It bears some of the hallmarks of being Level Two, such as the fact that, unlike a Level Three, the illustrations are integrated with the text. It also has some similarities to a Transitional Book, such as episodic, compelling chapters and direct sentences, and more complex words. However, it is clearly a Level Three upon thorough examination. Another thing that tripped me up when trying to categorize this book was the fact that the library I got it from places it among the chapter books, with a J Fiction Label, rather than in the easy reader section with a label reading JF Faruqi, which indicated to me it might be a Transitional Boo...

  Tabor, C. R. (2019). Fox the Tiger . Scholastic Inc.      Fox the Tiger, by Corey R. Tabor, is a simplistic book that fits neatly into Level One. The font appears to be 20 point, with a rough average of five words per line and a maximum of eight words per sentence. While some words that appear in the book, such as “Tiger”, “Turtle”, “Rabbit” and “Sneaky” fall outside the realm of sight words or one syllable words, no word that appears in the book is longer than eight letters, with the word “Squirrel” appearing on page 27. While some of these words may be challenging to early readers, they provide the opportunity for children to feel a sense of pride at having successfully read such a complicated book. Finally, the page with the fewest lines of text has one line, while the page with the most lines has three lines of text. Also, there are a handful of pages where the story truly relies on the pictures to move the story forward, such as when Fox and Rabbit wait for ...