I received a promotional packet from Ripley’s Entertainment Inc which included book covers, the first book in the RBI series, and information about the books in the series. I was quite impressed by it. The packet informed me: “We have heard from many librarians and educators that Ripley’s should publish a series for younger children especially aimed to boys and reluctant readers. From this suggestion we are happy to present the RBI series.”

I really like the idea behind this series. Books for children and young adults that tells a story while at the same time incorporating some non-fiction into the mix as a group of teens from the RBI work to solve a mystery. Peppered throughout the pages are facts about aspects of the story in sidebar and plenty of illustrations to help kids imagine the action. I think this series is well-designed and thought out. It interests kids who like non-fiction and fiction, it appeals to young kids with the illustrations and older kids with the modern feel of technology and gadgets the teens in the RBI use which are pictured throughout the book. There are trading cards included in the book not just for characters, but for some of the facts (or fiction) found in the story. The characters are multicultural and a good mix of character types. And while the focus may have been boys and reluctant readers, I think this series will appeal to any kid in its age demographic.

The covers are slick and colorful — certainly eye-catching. The books aren’t too long so as to turn off reluctant readers by its size. And they’re affordable at $5.00 each. And I believe that books are some of the best gifts you can give. Especially when they’re interactive and fun like these.

When I was a kid, I loved The Baby-Sitters Club. The first weekend of very month, my parents would give me a few dollars (man, back in the day when you could get a book for a few dollars — I feel so old) and I’d run out and buy the latest book in the series. I adored the idea of a club for baby-sitters that was run like a business with positions like secretary and treasurer. I loved the idea that they met once a week and took calls from parents who wanted to pay them to watch their kids. Maybe it was because I’ve never babysat for kids myself, and I thought the idea was so glamorous.

As were the characters. Tomboy Kristy, artsy Claudia, wallflower Mary Anne (who totally took a step up the cool ladder when she got her boyfriend, Logan), sophisticated Stacey, hippie Dawn, bookworm Mallory, dancer Jessie. There were so many of them! And so many kids to babysit too.

Anyway… I loved the books. I read them from elementary through junior high. And then I stopped because I outgrew the characters. The series itself ended in 2000. But then I discovered a little while ago that Martin wrote a prequel this year to the series called The Summer Before, all about the summer before Kristy’s Big Idea (book one in the series). And I had to read it. It just reminded me so much of my youth that I couldn’t pass it up.

So I got it from the library and reading it again brought back so many memories of the series and when I was a little girl. The story itself wasn’t anything special. Sort of an introduction to the 4 original members of the club. Thinking on it now, I wonder if this book is Martin’s attempt to capture those girls who so loved The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (the BSC of the current generation). Perhaps they’re hoping to renew interest to the series and bring new stories out soon.

I have to say that I like that idea. I think the BSC is good for young girls today. Certainly tamer than Gossip Girl and the other “Mean Girl” type series that are out there now. You’re not going to find Kristy worrying about teen pregnancy the way you might expect Serena Van Der Woodsen to have a new bedfellow every week. And, as a mom, I think I’d prefer my pre-teen to be reading the BSC.

Anyway, I wouldn’t say this book was great reading, but it was great for a trip down memory lane to those of us who grew up on the BSC series. Finally… a plug for a blog called BSC Headquarters (www.claudiasroom.blogspot.com — genius domain!) I discovered a while back that is all about the BSC — the author, Tiff, is rereading the BSC books as an adult and offering her thoughts on the series now that she’s older. I find it to be a lot of fun.

My son will be 2 years old in a few months, but I think he’s starting to embrace the terrible 2′s with gusto already. Don’t get me wrong, he’s actually a great kid. He plays well with others, he hardly ever gets upset. He treats things well and listens most of the time. Most people tell me he’s so well-behaved and happy. And he is.

But he has this habit of smacking me. Or pulling my hair. Or pinching me. Usually this happens when he’s frustrated and can’t communicate himself well, and it almost always happens now when we’re in public places because I don’t allow him to go running off and I make him hold my hand if he won’t sit in his stroller or the shopping cart.

We introduced the idea of a naughty corner a while ago to mixed success. When he’s put in the corner, he stays there and he waits until the time is up. He’ll even take himself there when you tell him he has to go to the naughty corner. The part that doesn’t seem to be working is that he seems happy enough when he’s there; like he’s thinking, “That’s cool. I was gonna stand here anyway.” When his time is up, he dutifully gives a sorry hug and then he’s on his way. The problem is that he’s too young to understand that he’s supposed to be thinking about why he’s there and that it’s meant to be disciplining him and deterring him from repeating his naughty behavior. He just does it again and again. And we keep putting him in the corner again and again. Consistency and all that jazz.

So I was starting to think I needed some new tricks. Enter Supernanny. My husband and I don’t regularly watch her show, but we have caught it a few times when we’ve been channel surfing and it’s been on. We find that we like Supernanny’s methods because they’re quite similar to what we believe parenting should be like (discipline fairly, praise freely, maintain a routine, be consistent, etc.). So I thought I’d place a hold on her book and see if there’s anything I haven’t thought of yet.

There wasn’t. We pretty much do everything she discusses. We have the naughty corner. We use the involvement technique (as a way to deter naughty behavior). We put our son to sleep at night with similar methods. But just because I didn’t learn anything new from her book isn’t to say that it isn’t a good resource. I’d say it’s a fabulous resource for parents who are looking for structure and routine as a way of shaping and directing children towards good behavior.

I came away after reading this book to understand that I just have to keep up what I’m doing — be consistent until my son is old enough to understand a little better what the naughty corner means. He’s just too young to figure out yet that just because Mommy or Daddy said no to hitting them that one time doesn’t mean he can hit any other time either. I figure he’ll grow out of the phase once he can better communicate his frustrations and understand boundaries a little more. And until then, I’ll just leave him at home with Daddy when I need to go out in public ;)

And since this is a book review, I’ll end here by saying I think this is a great book. My only criticism is that I think I would have liked more “troubleshooting tips” for specific examples/scenarios (ie. what do you do with a nearly 2 year old son who is being naughty, but doesn’t understand what naughty means?), but that’s content for a whole other book. I wouldn’t buy it for anyone other than yourselves though, since I don’t think most parents would take kindly to someone gifting them a book on parenting, if you know what I mean ;)

Ambrose Zephyr has been told by his doctor that he has one month left to live. Ambrose has always loved letters and the alphabet, and so he makes a list, from A to Z, of places to go or things to see or do in the month he has left. He and his wife, Zappora “Zipper” Ashkenazi, then leave everything behind and travel from destination to destination to complete Ambrose’s list.

This was a well-written book, but it’s fairly depressing. Ambrose and Zipper have no one but each other (no kids, no relatives) which makes Ambrose’s imminent death all the more tragic as his wife will be left alone. I think that’s what got to me the most about this book. The sad realization for Zipper that the love of her life for so many years is dying and she will be alone to grieve him. It’s even more tragic that the death isn’t sudden, so they can prepare themselves for it, but it also won’t be far away, so there’s just not enough time left. I was just wiped out by the end, and this was a short novel, so I was surprised by how much of an emotional wallop it packed.

The story of Lennie and George, two laborers traveling through California on their way to yet another job at yet another ranch where they’ll spend long hours working for little money and not much else to show for it. Lennie is a big, childlike man with a clear mental disability — all he cares about is petting soft things and is dream of taking care of the rabbits on the land he thinks he and George will buy one day if they can make enough money. George is Lennie’s protector, taking care of him and finding them work wherever he can because they can never stay in one place long enough before Lennie does something in his naive way that gets them fired or run out of town.

When Lennie and George find work at a ranch in Salinas Valley, they meet up with a man named Candy. Having lost his hand in an accident on the ranch years ago, Candy is getting old and the work is getting harder. He knows there’s just a matter of time before he’ll be let go from the ranch, and  he has no idea what will become of him. When he overhears George and Lennie talking about their plans to buy their own land, Candy offers up the money he’s been saving for years. With Candy’s money and another couple months’ worth of work, they may just have enough to make the dream a reality and be their own bosses — until Lennie does something that causes everything to turn upside down.

This was a quick read, and a great story about two decent men who can’t seem to outrun tragedies. It can be a bit of a downer read, but the relationship between these men, and the great characters represented within its short pages, makes it one of those great “thinking” stories that I love. As I read it, I could see how it would belong on the stage, because it has those strong, dramatic themes that would make for memorable theatre, the settings are minimal, and the dialogue is something that would be better heard than read. I’m going to have to rent the movie now.

I first read this play in high school, and I hardly remembered a thing when I thought about it. The second time around was much more interesting :)

The play has four characters: Tom, who is the narrator, his mother Amanda, his sister Laura, and a “gentleman caller” named Jim who works with Tom at a shoe warehouse. Amanda is an overbearing mother and a queen of the guilt trips. She reminds me a little of Mrs Bennet from Pride and Prejudice in that she is overly concerned with finding her daughter a husband to take care of her. Laura, however, is nothing like Elizabeth Bennet. She has none of the confidence and social graces, and instead becomes sick with fright when anyone looks at her for too long. Laura is content to sit at home with her mother and tend to her glass menagerie of animal figurines, though she knows her mother worries she will turn into an old maid.

One day, Tom decides to invite a co-worker home to meet his sister. It’s not because he wants to, but because his mother wants him to and he can’t stand arguing with her about it anymore. The gentleman caller turns out to be a boy both Tom and Laura went to high school with. He’s charming, and able to draw Laura out of her shell for a while — a sign that it is possible for her to meet someone if she would only try. Of course, Jim and Laura falling in love and getting married would be a much too easy way to end the play, and instead Tom continues the pattern of abandonment and leaves his mother and Laura to fend for themselves and become old maids together. Not exactly your happy ending!

No, if ever there was a play about the ultimate dysfunctional family, this would be it. Tom is stuck taking care of his mother and sister because his father abandoned them, Amanda is stuck in the glory days of her youth, and Laura is stuck at home, hiding from the world because of her low confidence in herself. All of them want better, but none of them are able to go for it.

It might sound like a melancholic, depressing read, and it is, but it’s still entertaining. A good, quick read. I enjoyed it much more this second time around.

Thirteen-year-old Mary and her eight-year-old brother Peter are the only survivors of a plane crash in the middle of the Australian desert. They should stay near the plane and wait for someone to come find them, but it’s hot and there’s no food or water nearby and they do not know how long it will be until someone comes for them. Instead, they decide they will walk towards Adelaide and search for food and water as they go. Along the way, they meet with a young Aboriginal boy on a solo trek of his own across the desert. For the Aboriginal boy, the trek is a rite of passage — to survive is a testimony of his manhood to his tribe.

Peter recognizes that the Aboriginal boy is their only hope of survival, but Mary is wary of the naked, dark-skinned boy. She has been raised in a society where people wear clothes and treat each other differently, and she is not used to the way the Aboriginal boy looks so curiously at her. She is cautious around him, careful to keep her distance and watch out for her brother. The Aboriginal thinks the children are odd, with their strange clothes and pale skin and hair. They speak a different language and come from a world he can’t even begin to imagine, but he recognizes that they are the same as him in one critical way — they are all trying to escape death out in the harsh desert. These strange children need his help, so the Aboriginal boy decides he will help them cross the desert, at least to the valley of waters underneath the earth where there is no shortage of food or water to aid them the rest of their way.

A story of survival and death, this is a well-written novel that puts the reader in the middle of the Australian desert with its beautiful description of the land, the vegetation and the wildlife. I enjoyed it.

I decided to reread this classic Shakespearean play while listening to an unabridged audiobook of it at the same time. When I took a Shakespeare course in University, I found that watching the plays while I read along helped me to understand them better. I particularly liked the taped stage productions of the Royal Shakespeare Society, which I borrowed from my library. I’d watch and read along and seeing the actors’ expressions helped me figure out the language much better than those little footnotes at the bottom of the page do when reading. This time, however, I got a dramatized audiobook of the play from iTunes (with multiple actors and lots of sound effects, which really helps) and listened along as I read. I realized that there is really no way to just listen to a play and not read along — you’d get so lost in the characters and trying to figure out who was speaking and entering and exiting the scenes without all the stage directions to guide you. So I definitely wouldn’t recommend downloading Shakespeare onto your iPod unless you intend to read along with it as well — much better to watch the play performed exactly to the script if you don’t want to read it yourself.

Macbeth is a Scottish nobleman who has earned glowing recommendations from his fellow countrymen as a great soldier on the fields. On his way home from a battle, Macbeth and his fellow nobleman Banquo come upon three witches who make prophecies to the two men: Macbeth, already Thane (Lord) of Glamis will soon earn the title of Thane of Cawdor, and become King of Scotland shortly after. They also tell that that though Macbeth will become King, none of his own children will succeed him on the throne — that is destined for Banquo’s lineage.

Upon returning to the King’s castle, one of the witches’ prophecies immediately comes true: King Duncan, so impressed with all he has heard about Macbeth, names him Lord of Cawdor for his brave service to the country. Believing that the rest of the witches’ prophecies must also come true, Macbeth and his ruthless wife, Lady Macbeth, become impatient for the third prophecy to come true. They decide they will murder King Duncan when he comes to stay with them at their castle, and make it seem as if the King’s own sons had each schemed to murder their father so that they may take up his place on the throne. When Duncan is found murdered, the sons flee in fear for their own lives, not realizing they have only supported the story that they had brought about the murder of their own father by running away. With the murdered King’s sons fled, Macbeth is named King of Scotland.

With this new title crowned on him, Macbeth becomes jealous of the witches’ last prophecy — that no child of Macbeth’s shall rule Scotland, but one of Banquo’s will. Macbeth decides to hire killers to murder Banquo and his son so that the witches’ last prophecy can not come true. When the murderers kill Banquo, but fail to capture his son, Fleance, Macbeth returns to the witches to learn more about his fate. The witches tell him that a war will be brought to his doorstep, but no man borne of a woman can kill him, leaving Macbeth with a sense of security that he will live a long life, during which he can no doubt come up with some plan to prevent Fleance and any of his children from assuming the throne.

With each killing, Macbeth falls further and further into madness. He shows remorse in the beginning with Duncan’s murder, but with his cruel wife by his side, and power corrupting his mind, he commits more and more murders to keep himself on the throne. His ambition and overconfidence soon will lead him to his downfall as the rest of the noblemen begin to see what evils Macbeth has committed, and rise up against him to revenge their families and take back their country.

Ben is a young college student just a few semesters away from graduating and becoming a geologist. He agrees to work as a guide and take a businessman and hobby hunter named Madec out into the desert near his hometown to hunt the elusive bighorn sheep. Though Ben doesn’t agree with Madec’s desire to shoot the bighorns, which are slowly dwindling in numbers, he is a poor man with no family and he needs to earn money to continue his studies.

The two men set out on a week-long hunting trip, and when Madec sees a movement off in the distance through the barrel of his .358 Magnum rifle and shoots, he tells Ben he saw the antlers of the bighorn before he made the shot. They go towards the sheep to collect it and bring it home, only to discover that it was no sheep Madec shot: it was an old prospector, shot dead straight through the chest by Madec’s rifle.

Ben says he knows it was an accident and that the authorities will understand, but Madec doesn’t want to take any chances with the law and tries to work out a deal with Ben: he’ll pay for the rest of his schooling if they just bury the body and tell no one about the accident. But Ben refuses and insists on doing what is right. As he turns towards the Jeep to get a blanket to bundle the body in, Madec takes Ben’s Hornet rifle away from him. Then, with both guns in hand, Madec gives Ben two choices: he can shoot him dead now, or Ben can take all his clothes and his shoes off and try to make it out of the desert with no food or water. Either way, Madec knows Ben will die, but if Ben takes the second choice, Madec will get the sadistic pleasure of spending the next few days hunting Ben through the desert, making sure he has no chance of making it out alive.

Ben’s survival instincts set in and he takes choice number two. He flees from Madec with nothing but his undershorts to protect him from the scorching sun. Over the next few days, Madec follows Ben as he tries desperately to escape him and find water to survive the trek across the desert. But nothing seems to go Ben’s way — any time he gets too close to anything that could help him, Madec drives him away from it with a spray of bullets aimed near his feet. What follows is a thrilling survival tale as Ben desperately attempts to save himself while dehydration and the sun and rocky desert strip his body apart — all while Madec watches him dying a slow, painful death.

This book was absolutely riveting and suspenseful — there is not much dialog, but full of raw and often-cringing description of Ben’s painful fight to survive his mad hunter and the elements that seem to work against him every step of the way. An adventure about one boy’s sheer courage and determination to survive even against a sadistic and calculating man bent on destroying him to save his own reputation. A fantastic, quick read.

For all those lovers of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Jane Dawkins has written an excellent continuation of the story in the epistolary form. Comprised of a series of letters Elizabeth writes to her sister, Jane, the reader gains some insight into what life as the new mistress of Pemberley must be like for newlywed Elizabeth Darcy.

Elizabeth tells Jane of her integration into the society of Derbyshire, addressing such things as how she is received by those who think Mr Darcy married beneath him, and the new responsibilities of running the massive household and its numerous servants. (more…)

It seems to everyone that it’s unfortunate little Star Sullivan was born into the family she got. So friendly, easy-going and full of hope and optimism, she is nothing like the rest of her family: her gambling father, Shay, her overworked and oblivious mother, Molly, her sister Lilly with the eating disorder, her selfish brother Kevin, and her other brother Michael, who prefers to operate on the wrong side of the law.

With so many problems in the family, Star is full of worry and tries to be nothing but easy for everyone to get along with. She listens to her father talk about the next race he’ll lose all their money on, but won’t chastise him because he already knows he has a problem. She helps her mother, who works so many long hours to support the family, and doesn’t say anything when Molly can’t find it in her to muster up the energy to push her other children in the right directions. Star won’t tattle on her sister for refusing to eat because Lilly promised her she’s fine and doesn’t want to make a fuss when the family has enough problems. She won’t deflate her overly ambitious brother Kevin’s hopes and dreams because it’s better for him to have them than to not. And she’ll lie for her brother Michael when the police come looking for him because he’s too young to go to jail and she’s confident that he’ll set himself straight sooner or later.

So to everyone, Star is the sweet, trustworthy Sullivan girl. They all think there is little more in store for Star than to grow up and work in a meaningless job and be a good wife someday to someone that hopefully won’t take advantage of her simpleness and easy ways. But all these people are about to learn there’s more to Star Sullivan than they thought, and it starts the day Owen Hale and his son Laddy move in next door. (more…)