A Lot of Books

Made it to the library by myself, and checked out a lot of good books, many of which really don't meet my needs. One that I will buy is Maya Snow's The Sisters of the Sword. It is a book that would be good for my many Alanna fans, and help them transistion to a little historical fiction. Kimi and Hana are the daughters of a wealthy lord, nut they are allowed to run and train with their brothers. This is a good thing when their father is killed by their uncle, and the girls run away and end up at the dojo where their cousin is training. Disguising themselves as boys, they work as servants and quickly show their worth to train to be samurai. Admittedly, this took some suspension of disbelief, but I did enjoy it tremendously, and there aren't a lot of samurai books around.

May buy LeZotte's T4, a slim novel in verse about a deaf girl during the Holocaust. The 8th grade does a unit on thie every year, and I never have enough books.

Jones' Out of Reach is set in New Zealand and has rock climbing in it, but too much of the novel was about the boy's family problems, and I don't see much call for it.

Nielsen's Word Nerd was fun, but none of my students are going to ask for a book about a geeky boy with a peanut allergy who plays Scrabble with an ex-con. Too bad.

Schumacher's Black Box was the most depressing account of mental illness I have read. If I need a really depressing book, I'll keep it in mind.

Two authors I usually like had books that I don't see circulating well-- Spinner's Damosel, about the Lady of the Lake, and Napoli's The Smile, although I especially enjoyed The Smile.