Every woman in the English speaking world should own a copy of this book. If it is published in other languages, those women should have it too. It is like a car owners’ manual, only more. It answers (nearly) every question I have ever had about the lower regions of my body.
I have already given it to one friend and loaned it to my sister. When my friend’s daughter gets her period for the first time, this will be my gift to her.

Because I lost it. Shhhh…don’t tell Caitlin. She will kill me!

Because it is not very good. I can’t get through Steve Martin’s overly flowery language. Too many metaphors and similies, too many unnecessary adjectives.

I just can’t do it.

My kiddos (second graders) and I love this book. I have read it with several different groups, but this year we had a lot of fun. Along with reading the book we did the following skill builders/activities:
note-taking, just like Jack, on vocab, setting, characters, facts
y => i + es words, mummy => mummies
following directions to make a pyramid and sarcophagus
phonemes and heiroglyphs for spelling and writing
cartouches of our names
crossword puzzle of vocab words
some read aloud from the Research/Teachers’ guide book

I only read this on the treadmill in the morning. So for 15 or 20 minutes each day I am grossed out by the activities of Gary Ridgeway, and then I go on with my day.

This was not quite as fabulous as “The Giver”, but wonderful none-the-less. Lowry is a gifted storyteller who truly understands the style of show not tell. She feeds you little bits of detail, and then when she gives you the last clue, you can’t believe you didn’t know it all the time.

Kira lives such an entirely different existance from Jonas (in “The Giver”). Her people have nothing. They live in “cotts”, scavange for food, and live in fear of the “beasts”. Kira has a crippled leg and when her mother dies, is nearly killed herself. Only her talent with stitching saves her. She is taken in by the guardians and begins to see the truth about her community.

I can hardly wait to read the final story in the trilogy, “The Messenger” which ties the two books together. All this, because “The Giver” is on the challenged booklist.

This may be the best (YA) novel I have ever read! It is such an amazing story with details and action you won’t believe. This book made me think about my family, my home, and the world around me in a way I could never imagine.

Jonah is a “Twelve” who is has just been assigned his life job. He has grown up watching his mother, a judicial worker, anda his father, a nurturer, go off to their jobs. He has done volunteer work since he was an “eight”, but nothing prepares him for his assignment.

Everytime you think you have learned everything about the community, you learn something else.

I am reading books from the ALA’s most challenged list. I checked off all the books I have already read (although I plan to go back and read some) and now I am working through the part of the list I am interested in reading. I went through the list in my school library and grabbed this one. I finished it this morning and sobbed through the last two chapters.

I cannot for the life of me figure out why this one would be challenged. All I can discover is it is challenged for “offensive language”. Cause you know, no 11 or 12 year old has ever heard damn, which is about the worst thing I could find.

Vernon Dibbs is one of 5 children being raised by their father after their mother’s death. The Dibbs family lives in a rundown neighborhood in Baltimore. In their neighborhood is a duplex in habited by a retired teacher and an alchoholic with a retarded son. As the story goes on Vernon is tutored by the retired teacher and to repay her helps out the mother and son.

This intense story shows great character development, and insight into types of people many kids may never know. I plan to recommend this book to several of my students.

The last time I consumed this is the last time anyone will ever consume it. Fox cancelled this show. The network that brought “When Animals Attack” and “Trading Spouses” killed another decent show. I do believe they were the ones that killed off the reality show that was a murder mystery. Before it ended of course. That was the show where the guy who won died in 9/11. That was probably more known that who did the murder (cuz I don’t know who dunnit).

And I will never know who killed Samantha and why.

This was not my favorite, but I couldn’t put it down toward the end. It was one of her back and forth in time novels. I sometimes had a hard time following it, and waiting to find out what would happen.

For her “time travel” novels, I prefered The Last Time They Met