Received a copy of Anna's World from Chiron Press. Set in a Shaker colony in the 1840's, it is a good, detailed depiction of life at that time. Anna has been sent to live with the Shakers after a flood has sickened and destroyed much of her town. She...

It is a rare book that makes me want to read it aloud (I hate to); it is an even rarer book that makes me cry during the introduction. This did both. Maybe it just hit me at a good time, but Snyder's Any Which Wall was the sort of book I would have...

Leslie Margolis' Boys Are Dogs has been a HUGE hit in my school, so I was very excited to read the sequel, Girls Acting Catty. Annabelle is still struggling to find her place in middle school, and matters are complicated when her mother announces that...

Diane Siebert's Tour America: A Journey Through Poems and Art was an interesting collection of poems about places around the United States. This is a decently long book (26 poems of varying length), and will work well for the poetry unit that our 8th...

Wow. It took me five days to read this, because it was like eating fudge. Godiva fudge, if there is such a thing. So rich, and so amazing that I could only read a little at a time. I'm afraid I can't do the plot justice after only one reading, but The...