Review: Flora & Ulysses

Flora & Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures
By Kate DiCamillo, illustrated by K.G. Campbell
Published 2013 by Candlewick Press
Winner of the 2014 Newbery Medal

Like most super stories, it begins with an accident - a squirrel is sucked up by a vacuum cleaner and when he emerges, he is not the same squirrel he once was. Flora steps in the rescue the squirrel and their adventures begin.

I am not sure how I feel about Kate DiCamillo. I know many youth literature people (librarians, authors, enthusiasts, etc.) simply adore her and view her as one of the best people writing for youth today. I have more mixed feelings about her. I absolutely adore The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane - I mean, seriously, it's got to be one of my favorite books of all time. But I am much less enthusiastic about The Tale of Despereaux. I like Bink & Gollie well enough, and that's all I've read from DiCamillo. When I heard about her newest book, I thought it sounded like fun. I picked it up because I knew it would get awards buzz. What I didn't know when I read it back in November was that it would actually take home the big prize, the Newbery Medal.

Once again, I wish I had posted this review before the award announcements. Unfortunately, I'm not as gung-ho about this book as the Newbery committee was. I liked that it was silly - it's just the sort of thing that will appeal to kids, particularly with its combination of narrative and graphic storytelling. And I like Flora and Ulysses - great characters that were very endearing. William Spiver, as well, though both Flora and William seem a bit too precocious. One of my coworkers who read the book in early February said that Flora reminded her of me - I'm not sure if this is a compliment or not. And I really love that DiCamillo never writes down to her audience - this book is full of beautiful vocabulary words, words I would have loved to discover as a ten-year-old.

What I can't get over, however, is Flora's mother. She is just downright awful. I get that, a lot of the time, we are seeing her through Flora's eyes and perhaps Flora doesn't understand everything that has happened between her parents or in their lives. But to me, that doesn't justify how terrible Flora's mother seems as a person. I don't know; I just don't like it.

So, this was a mixed bag for me and not my favorite Newbery winner.

Program: Mad Science Monday

For October's installment of Mad Science Monday, I wanted to do a Halloween edition. However, I decided this and promoted it before I had really come up with good experiments. So, I wasn't entirely thrilled with what we ended up doing. However, the kids loved the experiments so, really, everything worked out. Here's what we did.

Screaming balloons - an experiment I found from Steve Spangler, this is probably the ones that the kids were the least enthusiastic about. It's a very simple experiment, but the title is misleading, which is why I think the kids didn't love this one as much. You simply drop a hex nut in an deflated balloon and then carefully inflate and tie off the balloon (carefully because you don't want to inhale the nut!). Then you hold the balloon by the bottom and move it in a circular motion. Once you get the nut spinning properly, it sounds like the balloon is screaming. Well, not really. It sounds more like a high-pitched buzzing noise. I had the kids explain to me what was happening and they were spot-on with the science, so that was a very nice part of the program.

Fake blood - this was probably what I was least enthusiastic about because we have made fake blood many, many times in many kinds of programs. However, do kids ever really get sick of making fake blood? It is pretty cool, after all. They all made a baggie full to take home.

Ghost bubbles - yet another Steve Spangler experiment, this was definitely the highlight of the program. It almost didn't happen, though, as the grocery store I intended to purchase dry ice from was out of stock, leading to me frantically finding another place to buy it from. I did manage to acquire the dry ice, so the experiment was a go. This is another really simple experiment, but it's a little less exciting because the kids didn't get to try it hands-on. As dry ice is dangerous, they watched me perform the experiment. It involves putting a chunk of dry ice in a bowl half full of warm water. The dry ice begins to evaporate. Then, you take a long piece of rag (I used the hem of an old t-shirt) soaked in dish soap and stretch it across the width of the bowl. Drag the rag slowly across the rim of the bowl. This will create a soap film. The soap film traps the smoke from the evaporating dry ice, stretching and creating a giant smoke filled bubble on top of the bowl. The kids had a great time with this, counting how long before the bubble burst and seeing if they could predict when it would pop. I also let them all take turns popping a bubble, which they enjoyed.

And that was Mad Science Halloween! Any suggestions for next year?

Review: The Spindlers

The Spindlers
By Lauren Oliver, read by Simon Vance
Published 2012 by HarperCollins

One morning, Liza wakes up and her brother is not her brother anymore. He's not the same brother he was the day before, anyway, and Liza realizes that she might be the only person who knows what's happened. The Spindlers have come and changed him and it's up to her to save him.

I really wanted to like this one because I quite enjoyed Liesl & Po. Unfortunately, I just didn't love it. I listened to the audio of this back in the fall and honestly, I'm having a bit of difficulty recalling many of the details. And that's one of the reasons why I didn't love this book - it didn't grab me the way Liesl & Po did. I never felt emotionally connected to Liza and her quest to save her brother. On a surface level, I knew I should be invested in it, but I never really was. It seemed like Oliver was trying for a more sinister atmosphere in this book and I'm not sure it was really successful - I didn't feel particularly afraid or bothered by the Spindlers. There's no doubt in my mind that Oliver can write a beautiful and affecting book, but this just wasn't a particularly fine example of that. I hope that she writes more middle grade in the future but I hope it reads more like Liesl & Po than this title. A bit of a let-down.

Review: Cinder

Cinder (Lunar Chronicles, book one)
By Marissa Meyer, read by Rebecca Soler
Published 2012 by Macmillan Young Listeners

Cinder is, perhaps, New Beijing's most gifted mechanic. She is also a cyborg - hated by her stepmother and hiding her true identity from everyone else. But when a deadly plague comes to Cinder's household, her fate becomes closely linked with Prince Kai and she must set out on the path to discover the secrets of her past.

This book was a huge deal when it came out and pretty much everyone I knew read it almost immediately. In typical me fashion, I wanted to read it, but never found the time. So, I downloaded the audio version and finally listened to it.

I'm sorry I waited so long. This book had me right from the beginning. I love the premise, which is the premise of the whole series - science fiction takes on classic fairy tales, this one being Cinderella with a cyborg. But, it's much more than that. Meyer has created a believable and complex world that I am completely fascinated by and about which I'm dying to know more. I love the setting of New Beijing and I love the complicated history that's teased at between the Eastern Commonwealth and the Lunar Empire.

I also really liked the character of Linh Cinder. She is smart and questioning. She cares deeply about her stepsister and Iko, her family's robot. She has a past that she knows little about. She's a really interesting character. I liked the other characters as well, particularly Iko and Prince Kai. I thought the development of the relationship between Cinder and Kai was well done and didn't feel as ridiculous as other YA romances I've seen.

That being said, the surprise was not that difficult to figure out, but I liked the way Meyer revealed it. Additionally, she left some questions open, sure to be explored in book two, which I am eager to read. I think this is a really strong start to an imaginative teen science fiction series.

Review: UnSouled

UnSouled (Unwind, book three)
By Neal Shusterman
Published 2013 by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

WARNING: There will likely be spoilers ahead. To read my reviews of the first two books, go here and here.

Connor and Lev are running, but they are also searching for someone - a woman who might have the answers they are looking for. Cam, the controversial "rewind," is growing dissatisfied with his existence. He longs to show Risa how much he cares for her. All four will continue on the unbelievable journey that started when they first met.

I was lucky to read Unwind shortly before UnWholly was released. But this meant that I had to wait like everyone else for UnSouled. No matter - I was just excited the brilliance of Unwind was going to be a series.

This book, hmmm, what do I say about this book? Well, I read it quickly, eager to see where Shusterman was going to take this dark story. But, as I read, I also didn't feel quite the same pull as I had in the first two. This book, more than book two, feels like the middle book in a trilogy (if there are four books in a series, is that common for book three?). While Shusterman continues to excel at darkly defining the terrible world these characters live in, much of the action in this book felt like a means to an end - that is, Shusterman was just moving the pieces around so that they'd all be where he needed them for the final book. The action didn't grab me as it had in the previous books. I think part of the reason I kept turning the pages so quickly was in fervent hope that I would rediscover the things I had loved about the first two books soon.

Once again, Shusterman carries on with the characters from previous volumes while also introducing new characters. For me, this is fine, but I can imagine other readers might get tired of trying to keep all the characters straight. In my opinion, as long as the author is doing something unique and interesting for each of these characters, I don't really care how many of them there are. I feel like Shusterman is still handling this well, so it doesn't bother me.

Mostly, this book just doesn't have quite the same drive as the previous books. I still have high hopes for the conclusion, though, so we'll see if Shusterman can successfully pull it all together in the end.

Program: Meet the Artist

As I mentioned a while ago, I started a new monthly program focusing on creating art inspired by famous artists. For October, we focused on Jackson Pollock.

Once again, I created a short PowerPoint presentation about Pollock and his art. I decided to gloss over some of the more unsavory aspects of Pollock's life, though interested kids could certainly find these things out for themselves. I think abstract art is really interesting to kids because it raises a lot of questions in them. They seemed to like Pollock's work and style, though they had lots of questions about it.

After our presentation, we headed outside to do some action painting of our own. I spread out tarps and taped watercolor paper down in various spots, creating workspaces for each kid. I kept all the paint on a cart and had the kids choose just a couple colors at a time to work with. I monitored the distribution of paint, as I've found in the past that the kids don't really understand the concept of "a little goes a long way." The kids had a great time doing their splatter painting - we wore trash bags to protect our clothes and some of them took their shoes off to avoid accidental painting of them. The main issue we ran into was one of space - I should have spaced them further apart as there was a tiny bit of accidental splatter overlapping with some kids.

Overall, though, they had a great time and were thrilled with their end results. This was a very easy and fun program, one that could easily be adapted to an even younger age group.

Review: The Chicken Squad

The Chicken Squad: Their First Misadventure
By Doreen Cronin, illustrated by Kevin Cornell
Expected publication April 8, 2014 by Atheneum Books for Young Readers

The Chicken Squad is a mystery-solving super-team and they are about to get a doozy. When Squirrel rushes into their headquarters, claiming something BIG and SCARY has landed in their yard, the Chicken Squad gets right down to business cracking the case.

I was incredibly excited when I spotted this e-galley on Edelweiss. I really loved the J.J. Tully mysteries that Cronin and Cornell put out a few years back and have been waiting for more to arrive. It seems that, instead of continuing with J.J. as the main character (though he makes an appearance), they've decided to put their eggs in the Chicken Squad basket (I'm sorry, I couldn't resist the terrible pun).

I'm predisposed to like this one less than the J.J. books because I'm afraid of birds. Now, I know that seems silly, but it's a real thing, though chickens are kind of an exception because they don't fly very well. However, I much preferred J.J. (who is a dog) as a main character than the Chicken Squad. I didn't find the chickens as endearing as J.J. and this book lacked the stronger narrative of the others. J.J. had a great narrative voice and I really missed that here. In general, I didn't find this as charming as the J.J. books, and I'm disappointed by that.

However, I really love what Cronin is trying to do here and chickens are popular with the storytime crowd, so these chickens might be good stepping stones for kids getting into chapter books. Mysteries are also great for beginning readers, and very popular, so I imagine this series will be a hit.

Thanks to the publisher for a digital advance reader's copy, provided via Edelweiss.