reading notes

by Oliver Jeffers
ISBN: 0399245030
My copy of The Great Paper Caper still hasn’t made it to what will be its spot on the shelf, because I keep rereading it. Which is probably why, when my partner went to get me a little present because I was sick, she brought home Lost and Found.
Well, that and the [...]

by Oliver Jeffers
ISBN: 0399250972
I was poking around the bookstore when I saw this, and I had to bring it home because it made me happy.
The cover features a bear wearing a jaunty red cap resting his arms on an axe handle. He’s surrounded by blue winter sky, you can see bare winter trees [...]

by Sherman Alexie
ISBN: 9780316013680
I read Alexie’s short story collection The Toughest Indian in the World a few years ago and really liked it. Then I read Flight, a novel that should not have worked, but was nevertheless brilliant. So when I heard Alexie had won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, I was [...]

by Tao Nyeu
ISBN: 9780803733282
This children’s book should not, like most so-called children’s books, be considered a valuable book only for children.
Who among us could not use some magic seeds, flying monkeys, and fantastic sea creatures? Who wouldn’t want to be tucked in by a wondrous friendly white bear? I suppose some wouldn’t. You boring folks [...]

by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
ISBN: 0156528207
I’ve been putting off writing this review for the longest time because, well — hasn’t everyone read this book by now? At least once? What else is there to say about it?
That it’s charming (really charming, without being at all smarmy)? That it will disarm cynical readers? Make you cry if [...]

by Shaun Tan
ISBN: 0439895294
The more Shaun Tan books I read, the harder it gets to write the reviews. I don’t want to repeat myself, but things I’ve said before could apply equally to this book:

One of Tan’s gifts is his ability to create an understanding of potentially difficult topics that are generally thought of as [...]

by J. K. Rowling
ISBN: 978-0545010221
Though I’ve written reviews for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (I read the first four before I started this blog) I wasn’t sure I was going to write one for this, the seventh book. I say this even though I loved [...]

by Jeanette Winterson
ISBN: 0747580642
Tanglewreck is Winterson’s first foray into the young adult market. (The King of Capri is an illustrated book aimed at younger kids, and everything else she’s written has been very much intended for adult audiences.) Curiously, I think it is also her longest novel to date. I’ll admit, I very much wanted [...]

by J. K. Rowling
ISBN: 0439784549
Just as we did with the last book, we read this one out loud. (Well, Lisa read it out loud. I listened.) I think we both enjoyed the story more this way, as we could stop along the way to discuss plot points, make conjectures, and generally savor the story.
Warning: [...]

His Dark Materials Book III
by Philip Pullman
ISBN: 9780375823352
Note: If you don’t want to know anything about what happens, don’t read this review until you’ve read the book. If you’ve read the earlier books but put this off out of fear of disappointment, then go ahead and read Book III.
This is the final book in Pullman’s [...]