![]() ![]() ![]() Then it got passed around to a bunch more of their friends. The sweet bracelet that the got after reading it didn’t hurt, either. NICE! So I bought a couple copies of the book for the new school year, put on a book swag sticker I made, and put them on my HotReads shelf.Ī couple girls in my B class saw it and were interested right away. She contacted me and sent me some cool book swag-bracelets, bookmarks, magnets, and temp tattoos. I wrote the post (linked above) and found Ms Kinard on Twitter to tell her about it. One of the books she listed was The Boy Project by Kami Kinard. Over the summer my student Maddie (now a seventh grader… I miss her) returned her Summer Vacation is for Reading postcard. Did you see what I saw?Ī bunch of boys holding a very feminine-looking purpley-pink book. Pay special attention to the first 5 readers and their books (moving clockwise). You want a chuckle? Click the following picture and watch the SpinCam. I’m looking forward to discussing writing and reading and books and ideas with my students and Mrs. Kami even included it in her blog-and those are cupcakes that SHE sent to my students. Since the post below, Kami has released Did you get to see the sweet video it inspired my students to create? In honor of today’s Skype with author Kami Kinard, I wanted to do a blog version of #TBT (ThrowBack Thursday)-a THROWBACK blog post. ![]()
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![]() ![]() Los Angeles Times More engaging than any new fiction in years. Review Quotes Knockemstiff is a powerful, remarkable, exceptional book. Donald Ray Pollock presents his characters and the sordid goings-on with a stern intelligence, a bracing absence of value judgments, and a refreshingly dark sense of bottom-dog humor. A psychotic rural recluse comes upon two siblings committing incest and feels compelled to take action. A father pumps his son full of steroids so he can vicariously relive his days as a perpetual runner-up body builder. Spanning a period from the mid-sixties to the late nineties, the linked stories that comprise Knockemstiff feature a cast of recurring characters who are irresistibly, undeniably real. Knockemstiff is a genuine entry into the literature of place. Chuck Palahniuk An unforgettable work of fiction that peers into the soul of a tough Midwestern American town to reveal the sad, stunted but resilient lives of its residents. ![]() Book Synopsis More engaging than any new fiction in years. Pollock grabs by the throat and doesnt let go-Kirkus. About the Book A debut collection of terrifying, darkly funny stories concerning the drug-addled, beaten-down inhabitants of a southern Ohio holler called Knockemstiff. ![]() ![]() Besides, had any stranger been prowling round the house, he would have been seen by the servants or the keepers. Success was given to the strong, failure thrust upon the weak. ![]() In the common world of fact the wicked were not punished, nor the good rewarded. ![]() It was the imagination that made each crime bear its misshapen brood. It was the imagination that set remorse to dog the feet of sin. Actual life was chaos, but there was something terribly logical in the imagination. When he closed his eyes, he saw again the sailor’s face peering through the mist-stained glass, and horror seemed once more to lay its hand upon his heart.īut perhaps it had been only his fancy that had called vengeance out of the night and set the hideous shapes of punishment before him. The dead leaves that were blown against the leaded panes seemed to him like his own wasted resolutions and wild regrets. If the tapestry did but tremble in the wind, he shook. The consciousness of being hunted, snared, tracked down, had begun to dominate him. ![]() The next day he did not leave the house, and, indeed, spent most of the time in his own room, sick with a wild terror of dying, and yet indifferent to life itself. You should visit Browse Happy and update your internet browser today! The embedded audio player requires a modern internet browser. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() By the time Jaouad flew home to New York, she had lost her job, her apartment, and her independence. ![]() Just like that, the life she had imagined for herself had gone up in flames. Then a trip to the doctor and, a few weeks shy of her twenty-third birthday, a diagnosis: leukemia, with a 35 percent chance of survival. Next came the exhaustion, and the six-hour naps that only deepened her fatigue. It started with an itch-first on her feet, then up her legs, like a thousand invisible mosquito bites. The real world she found, however, would take her into a very different kind of conflict zone. In the summer after graduating from college, Suleika Jaouad was preparing, as they say in commencement speeches, to enter "the real world." She had fallen in love and moved to Paris to pursue her dream of becoming a war correspondent. Jaouad's insights about the self, connectedness, uncertainty and time speak to all of us."- The Washington Post Her writing restores the moon, lights the way as we learn to endure the unknown."-Chanel Miller, The New York Times Book Review "I was immersed for the whole ride and would follow Jaouad anywhere. NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - A searing, deeply moving memoir of illness and recovery that traces one young woman's journey from diagnosis to remission to re-entry into "normal" life-from the author of the Life, Interrupted column in The New York Times ![]() ![]() ![]() As an undefined event sweeps the planet, it drives all of those who behold it to madness and then death, and the only thing Malorie can do is board up her house from the inside, and try to keep her children safe. “Bird Box” returns Malerman to the very essence of horror – fear of the unknown. Sprinkle with a returning God who may not be all that She seems, and it is easy to see why this is one of the biggest selling horror books of the year. ![]() ![]() Set during Japan’s bloody civil war, there is love, betrayal, duty… and some of the greatest battle scenes we’ve read this year. “The Shackles of a Name” is our stand out horror story of the year, not because the villains (the demon Oni) are the greatest monsters, but because the greatest monsters are the human protagonists. Martin Adil-Smith – The Shackles of a Name ![]() Following on from “Memnoch…”, Lestat awakens to find his world in crisis as a disembodied Voice raises the elders from their slumber, only to immolate fledgling blood suckers across the world. Rice’s return with the eleventh installment in the million-selling “Vampire Chronicles” series did no disappoint. King’s latest offering received mixed reviews, however we adored the Lovecraftian homage as we join the nomadic Jamie and his one time minister, Charles Jacobs, as their experiments in electricity unlock and elder darkness from beyond the void that threatens to engulf our world. 2014 has been a great year for horror books. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Isaiah and Samuel's love, which was once so simple, is seen as sinful and a clear danger to the plantation's harmony. But when an older man - a fellow slave - seeks to gain favor by preaching the master's gospel on the plantation, the enslaved begin to turn on their own. In the barn they tended to the animals, but also to each other, transforming the hollowed-out shed into a place of human refuge, a source of intimacy and hope in a world ruled by vicious masters. That was the way it was since the beginning, and the way it was to be until the end. Isaiah was Samuel's and Samuel was Isaiah's. One of the New York Times ' Best Historical Fiction of the YearĪ singular and stunning debut novel about the forbidden union between two enslaved young men on a Deep South plantation, the refuge they find in each other, and a betrayal that threatens their existence. One of the New York Times ' Notable Books of the Year ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() So I was fascinated to see what she would do with a historical novel about the suffrage era. I can assure you that I, like everyone else who has ever met her, found Jacqueline Wilson to be an utter delight. I'd read a few Jacqueline Wilson books before ( Tracy Beaker, The Illustrated Mum) out of curiosity for this writer who is so loved by young readers, and who I once had the pleasure of interviewing in the dingy basement of a Nottingham branch of Waterstones about 20 years ago. As part of my ongoing, and slow progress, mission to read every single novel about the UK fight for women's suffrage, I recently found myself reading Jacqueline Wilson's 100th novel - Opal Plumstead, published in 2014. ![]() ![]() ![]() Flashing between the present, the early 1960s and the late 1880s, its narration occasionally long-winded, Somtov's ( Vampire Nation ) novel offers a complex horror experience, rich in atmosphere and history-not to mention animal sexuality and a great deal of gore. In her investigation of the showdown between shaman and werewolf, Carrie is joined by Preston Bluefeather Grumiaux, her old high school flame, who now works as a part-time tribal policeman and also at the Szymanowski Institute, which happens to be the present home of the Laramie Ripper. The secrets she discovers connect Austro-Hungarian werewolf immigration and 100 years of Native American wolf-worship, and will change her life forever. When young Carrie DuPre travels from Berkeley, Calif., to the South Dakota Badlands to search out the true story of the Laramie Ripper-a mass-murderer reputed to have killed his victims by evisceration-she gets a lot more than she (and perhaps the reader) bargains for. ![]() ![]() Pia and Stefan suspect that Katharina has been spirited away by the supernatural. But, this being real life, she doesn’t return. Then, like a character in a Grimm’s fairy tale, she disappears. Katharina was last seen on a float in a parade, dressed as Snow White. The only one who still wants to be her friend is StinkStefan, the most unpopular child in school.īut then something else captures the community’s attention: the vanishing of Katharina Linden. ![]() But tell that to the citizens of Pia’s little German hometown of Bad Münstereifel, or to the classmates who shun her. It isn’t ten-year-old Pia’s fault that her grandmother dies in a freak accident. ![]() The Vanishing of Katharina Linden is an unforgettable debut-at once chilling and endearing, haunting and richly insightful-the story of one girl’s big heart and even bigger imagination, and of a world full of mystery, good, and evil. Not since The Elegance of the Hedgehog has a book arrived in America from Europe on such wings of critical praise and popularity. ![]() ![]() Despite the scandal, Elizabeth and Robert manage to navigate the choppy political, economic, and religious waters around them. Universal shock is followed by accusations of murder. Their flagrant flirting, their unescorted outings, and the appointment of Lord Robert to Master of Horse inspire whispers through the court, and even rumors that Elizabeth has secretly given birth to Lord Robert’s child.Įvents take a dark turn when Robert’s wife is found dead. Though none of the suitors have yet worked their way to her throne, the dashing-though married-Lord Robert lays claim to Elizabeth’s heart. ![]() But her counselors continually press her to form an advantageous marriage and produce an heir. ![]() Only twenty-five and newly crowned, Elizabeth vows to rule the country as both queen and king. In this compelling novel of Tudor drama and suspense, acclaimed author Alison Weir brings to life one of England’s most scandalous royal love affairs: the romance between the “Virgin Queen” Elizabeth I and her courtier Lord Robert Dudley. ![]() |