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Britain’s Royal Family is always a source of curiosity, and their Monarch is no exception. Queen Elizabeth II, who celebrated her Diamond Jubilee in 2012, has been featured in a number of films, documentaries, and books over the past several years. Here are a few to enjoy. The Queen , a 2006 feature...
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I just finished reading a most intriguing book called Your House is on Fire, Your Children All Gone by Stefan Kiesbye. This story of four young growing up in Hemmersmoor, a small town seemingly removed from the world, is a haunting tale of childhood gone wrong. Deep, dark secrets best left behind closed...
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What if you knew you were going to die? In Ways to Live Forever by Sally Nicholls we meet an eleven-year-old boy named Sam who is dying from leukemia. Amazingly brave, Sam writes a list of things he would like to do before he dies. This leads him to write a book with his thoughts on dying, questions...
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OK, now it's your turn to take a good look at the picture on the front of this book, and it's nice and big so you can really study it. The two unseen characters inside are in disagreement. One thinks it's a duck quacking, and the other thinks it's a rabbit sniffing. "It's a duck...
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The words I would use to describe The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins are all good. It is fast paced, easy to read, intriguing, action packed, imaginative, suspenseful, and futuristic. The story reminds the reader of "Survivor" on TV with alliances, challenges, and eliminations. However, the...
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Author Bill Harley calls this a "zipper" song. He defines a zipper song as one where each verse is the same except for one word being changed. He gives as an example Pete Seeger's If I Had a Hammer . In Sitting Down to Eat , the singer relates the story of being all set to eat when an animal...
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Folktales are a tried and true genre of children's books. They are invariably successful with children. Recently I shared The Enormous Carrot by Vladimor Vagin with several groups of school age children. There are numerous versions of this tale, most involving a turnip rather than a carrot. (When...
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Smoke by Mavis Jukes might be just what you need. Colton, age 12, has a huge Maine Coon cat named Smoke. Colton's mother has decided they need to leave Idaho to live on a ranch in California. Colton is not real excited about the move, but he doesn't complain, and of course Smoke goes along. Colton...
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Jim Arnosky, naturalist and artist, shows how familiar he is with the oceans, and particularly the Florida Keys, in this quick, suspenseful read for the 4th-6th grade crowd. The title is The Pirates of Crocodile Swamp. Jack and Sandy escape from a bad home enviroment and end up bayside off Key Largo...
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"Dr. Greg heard our voices. He felt the wind blow cold against his face, and he understood." In my mind, I picture Greg Mortenson, author of Listen to the Wind , standing outside the village of Korphe, Pakistan, surrounded by the majestic Karakorum mountains, with his eyes closed. Silent. Still...