Tag Archives: Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

Happy New Year!

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I made it to 75 books read in 2017, in the nick of time. Thank goodness I was chaperoning a teen sleepover for New Year’s Eve or I wouldn’t have finished those final chapters.

Is it just me, or do middle grade novels encompass more wisdom than all other books put together? I read some wonderful ones last year, including Diary from the Edge of the World by Jodi Lynn Anderson and The War I Finally Won by Kimberly Brubraker Bradley. My friend Rachelle Delaney published The Bonaventure Adventures, which made me want to run away to the circus immediately. Another favourite in this category was The Thing About Jellyfish by Ali Benjamin, which squeezed my heart and tickled my science brain at the same time.

In the young adult realm, both Wildman by J.C. Geiger and Nina Berkhout’s The Mosaic had characters that hung around in my head long after I finished reading. (Plus those books have the best covers ever.) One of my last books of the year was one of my most fun reads: Moxie, by Jennifer Mathieu, which also earned my daughter’s adoration.

I read so many fantastic nonfiction books in 2017 it’s excruciating to choose. None of them are new… just new to me. The funniest, and least appropriate, was What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding by Kristin Newman. I also loved the memoirs Beyond the Pale by Emily Urquhart and This is Not My Life by Diane Schoemperien.

Now it’s onwards to 2018! I’ve already started Genuine Fraud by E. Lockhart, which has me holding my breath all the way through.

Happy reading everyone! Let me know what your favourites were last year, so I can put them on my new list…

Like Netflix, but better

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I love having my own personal pre-reader. My daughter gets stacks of books from the library and basically screens them for me.

Sometimes she tells me they’re not worth my time. Sometimes after the first few chapters, she says I should read it once she’s finished. Then by the end, she’s less enthused.

Occasionally, she plops a book onto my lap and says, “I’m taking this back to the library tomorrow but you have to read it. Tonight.”

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Her latest recommendation: The War That Saved My Life, by Kimberly Brusker Bradley. It’s the story of an abused girl in World War II London who’s evacuated to the countryside, and there finds the strength to reshape her own life. Plus ponies.

What else could one need?

(My son is also reading, but his recommendations are slightly different. Most recently, he said: “Do you know the fastest person to eat three eclairs took 18.02 seconds? We should try to beat that.”)