Once I’d hit 25 on the 2013 Hub Reading Challenge, I decided to try to read one book a week and concentrate on off-list reading. I failed this week because I finished 3, bringing my total up to 32. I have always been a OCD reader.
First, I finished Tell the Wolves I’m Home by Carol Rifka Brunt.
Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Mostly because I saw myself in June and my twin sister in Greta. I was the quiet, shy twin & my sister was very out-going. We had our ups and downs and high school was hard because that’s when we really got our own separate sets of friends, just like June & Greta.
Then, my hold on October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepard by Leslea Newman arrived at the library.
Also awesome. Newman, who I knew from the elementary school chapter book Hachiko Waits, knocked my socks off. I wish I’d read this during National Poetry Month and I wish I taught older kids because I really wanted to share this with my students. It is beautifully written and made me feel real, anger, sadness and hope. Newman personifies inanimate objects and uses the actual words real people said in love and in anger, while she explores a variety of kinds of poetry. Very well done.
Finally, just yesterday, I finished listening to the audio versions of Monstrous Beauty by Elizabeth Fama.
I probably would not have picked this one up, but for the Challenge. And it was really good, too. At first I was skeptical of a mermaid story, but this is not Disney’s Little Mermaid. It is dark and horrific (without being scary or graphic enough to make me gag) in places but the reading was riveting. Because the chapters alternate between the present and 1872/3, I kept listening to find out what happened next. I’m glad I listened to this one!
booksandbassets 