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A great, absorbing, fun read, with many surprising twists and solid, intriguing characters. It's the first in a trilogy but stands satisfyingly alone with a complete plot arc (except that you want to find out what happens next). I loved that she riffed off Slavic folklore and landscape for her fantasy world, rather than the more typical faux-British Isles approach. One of the best fantasy novels I've read in a long while. A likely contender for the Morris Award. 4.5 stars. My only quibble, really, is the title, which (although apt) sounds like every other YA fantasy title and is therefore hard to remember. And I want to remember it!

This fascinating novel of domestic slavery is based on the true story of Virginia Farinango, an indigenous girl born in an Andean village in Ecuador. When she was seven Virginia's destitute parents gave her to a mestizo family, in whose home she toiled for years as an unpaid servant/slave. (Among other things this moving and engrossing personal story provides an edifying indictment of the country's race/class caste system.) How this brave child grew into a confident young woman and found her own way in the world - a way true to her bewildering dual identity as an urban indigena - makes a riveting, inspiring read.

This fascinating novel of domestic slavery is based on the true story of Virginia Farinango, an indigenous girl born in an Andean village in Ecuador. When she was seven Virginia's destitute parents gave her to a mestizo family, in whose home she toiled for years as an unpaid servant/slave. (Among other things this moving and engrossing personal story provides an edifying indictment of the country's race/class caste system.) How this brave child grew into a confident young woman and found her own way in the world makes a riveting, inspiring read.

Each member of the preschool class pesters the next. "My my my," mutters Miss Mabel. In the end, Adelaide (who started it all by annoying Bailey) apologizes, creating a new chain reaction that leads to a quiet afternoon - mostly. Lots of good verb vocabulary here: Flora fumed; Vera vocalized!; Ursula is upended... I'd enjoy it if the pictures (maybe the book itself) were a trifle larger, but it's a good size for kids' hands, and they will love the expressive, cartoonish pics of kids poking and pestering each other within the familiar details of a preschool environment.

Get a handle on what 100 *looks* like in this engaging picture book. Lots of quirky details make these scenes of 100 cartoony critters (100 moles, 100 elephants, 100 sheep...) amusing and interactive. Each critter has individual characteristics, a few make tiny remarks to one another, and each two-page spread includes a clue or question to keep kids hunting for surprises (eg. "There are 100 moles. How many are snuggled up with a frog?") A few more surprises to find are listed in the back. At the end there is also a chance to see what 100 looks like in groups of 10. The book Great Estimations would make a nice companion to this one.

It's senior year and Logan is trying to get over being dumped by his girlfriend of 3 years when his attention is diverted by a fascinating new girl to his small Missouri town: Sage. Sage is tall and lovely and funny and off-beat, and Logan's growing attraction to her is given a sharp set-back when Sage -- who has been backing away from his advances -- finally kisses him and then confesses that she was born a boy. Logan is a product of his tiny mid-America town and not particularly open-minded; his first reaction is (almost) to punch her in the face. But Sage has gotten under his skin, and Logan spends the rest of the book wrestling with his own homophobia and fear, his continued attraction to Sage, their friendship/flirtation, his confusion about her gender identity, his pity for her isolation, and his growing empathy for another human creature. Not a tidy book, but then, the emotions and questions it explores are far from neat. No pat characters here. and no easy answers, but a messy, interesting read.

Funny, shamelessly juvenile, irreverent short cartoon stories about a space pirate, Uncle Yellow Shoulder, and his irascible orphan niece, Sardine, who regularly kick the butt of their stupid nemeses, Supermuscleman and Doc Krok, in outer space adventures rife with wacky, icky space beings and silly space structures.

A grandma in the garden introduces her grandson to the wondrous ways of the worm. Cool worm facts with elucidating illustrations! Close-ups of worm guts plus cut-aways of their garden home! Icky and awesome wormitude! Helpful worm vocabulary! Is it true you can cut a worm in half and both ends survive? How many hearts does a worm have? How does a worm sense danger? Find out here and prepare to impress all your friends.

Grace and her older sister Lily (who is mentally disabled) live in a slum in Victorian England and desperately try to eke out a survival by selling watercress on the streets. The book opens with a grimly arresting scene - Grace is on a funeral train, about to sneak the body of her stillborn infant into the coffin of an unknown woman so that the baby may have a decent burial. Here Grace, who has a lovely, mournful face, is offered employment by a family in the funeral business as a mute, a girl hired to look tragic during a burial. Various silly subplots come together to allow Grace & Lily's fortunes to change, with plenty of upsets along the way. To me the book reads like a study of interesting historical facts about the Victorian funeral trade dressed up with the outline of a story. Interesting, but not riveting.

A very interesting riff off the old fairy tale. In this version, set in an alternate India during the Mughal Empire, sister and step-sister are both blessed by the goddess Naghali-ji, whom they encounter at the community well: from Diribani's mouth come flowers and jewels when she speaks, and from Tana's lips spring the lucky frogs and useful, rat-eating snakes the villagers value so highly. Still, both blessings can be awkward, and the girls follow separate and often difficult paths in their quests to understand how the goddess means them to use their gifts. The sense of place in rural India is powerful and lush, and there is an interesting plot-line following a cultural clash between the followers of the One God, who have conquered the country (and with whom Diribani's life becomes intertwined), and the followers of the Twelve, among whom the sisters were raised by their jewel-merchant father.

Strange, engrossing, intimate fairy story of some of those background fairytale characters. Jain, pregnant, flees her nasty husband and takes refuge in the isolated Castle Waiting (Sleeping Beauty's abandoned home), where she makes friends with the quirky denizens, who are excited to welcome a baby (but - a baby what?) into their midst. Marvelous, endearing, surprising characters and lovingly, medievally-accurate (so far as my knowledge extends) gorgeous drawings. Also, a very surprising order of nuns.

Another witty, chaste and gloriously ridiculous Georgette Heyer Regency romance, this one featuring a jaded London lord; a sensible and outspoken young gentlewoman from the country bent on providing for her beautiful sister a marriage-making London season; three scapegrace younger brothers (one with an affection for the marvels of steam engines); and a large ruffian of a dog with bad manners and a big heart who must needs assume a false identity as a Baluchistan hound. Finally, it is to be hoped that you, too, "shouldn't dream of watching a balloon ascension from anything so stuffy as a barouche." p.s. There is also a lot of hilarious Regency slang. "Bustle about, Noddy, or we shan't be in time to snabble all the lobster patties!"

Tonight I read this gorgeous guessing book to two small sisters clad in pajamas. Each page gave a clue: I spy with my little eye... something gray. It has a long trunk... "Elephant!" shouted Zoe, three years old. Anya, only two, hedged until I turned the page to reveal Gibbs' wonderfully creased elephant. "Rhinoceros!" she yelled. We pondered large leathery beasts. The girls' baby curls glowed in the slanty evening sunshine. They hippety-hopped up and down, riveted by the dramatic tension. We turned another page. I spy... something red. It has a bushy tail... Both girls were stumped, so we flipped the page to discover a vivid scarlet fox splashed across the full acreage. "Fox!" screamed Zoe, while without hesitation her sister hollered, "Dolphin!" True story. Splendid book.

As a devoted fan of A Little Princess (formative) I was fairly scandalized at the hubris of anyone writing a sequel; but as a devoted fan of the works of Hilary McKay (fantastic characters; charming, hilarious and unsentimental stories), I was tentatively hopeful of the result. And you know what? It was good. Not fantastic, and not utterly convincing as a seamless sequel, but solid and interesting and true to the spirit of the original while having its own voice. And even redemptive, as McKay sketches in a bit of back story for characters such as Miss Minchin, Lavinia, Lottie and this story’s heroine, Ermengarde, and then leads them forward onto new paths both logical and surprising. The voice of Sara is seldom heard, but that is all for the best as it really is too uncomfortable to have a modern author speaking in Sara’s mannered voice of another age. Lottie is terrific, which isn’t surprising given that McKay is always at her best with scrappy and stalwart young kids. (And she manages not to make her into a copy of her kindred character Rose, which must have been hard.) And it was astute to tell the tale via Ermie, who must certainly have felt terribly abandoned when Sara was spirited away. I did feel McKay was slightly hamstrung by having to be true to the original setting and characters, and unable to let fly completely with her own ample fancy, but she gets believably into the heads and hearts of her young characters and tosses in a terrific new one, the strong-minded Alice, the maid who replaces Becky. And it was pleasant to come away with hope for all the denizens of Miss Minchin’s, including the grouchy old harridan herself.