Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Giveaway Reminder!


Scholastic is sponsoring a huge holiday gift giveaway for one lucky winner.



Here's their required text:

Give the gift of reading to your child this holiday season! Scholastic books make the perfect stocking stuffer for any child on your list.

We have a HUGE prize pack filled with the most popular children’s books in the marketplace to offer one lucky reader! Titles include CAPTAIN SKY BLUE, IT’S CHRISTMAS DAVID, OOK and GLUK as well as TONY BALONEY, ODIOUS OGRE and I SPY CHRISTMAS A CHRISTMAS TREE!

Click here to enter.

It ends on December 6th, so enter now!

Monday, November 29, 2010

Nonfiction Monday: Hunt! Can You Survive the Stone Age?

Hunt!: Can You Survive the Stone Age? (Step Into History)Hunt!: Can You Survive the Stone Age? Julia Bruce illus. Peter Dennis

For today's Nonfiction Monday, I thought I'd tie it in with this morning's review of The Adventures of Ook and Gluk, Kung-Fu Cavemen from the Future.

This book offers a good, basic introduction to the Stone Age and was a Cybil's nominee last year.(Yes! I know how far behind I am in sharing my reviews!)

Page spreads concentrate on things such as cave painting, mammoth hunting, cooking, or tool making. After a general introduction to the topic, there are several illustration of various sizes with other small bits of information in the captions and side paragraphs.

Overall, it's a quick and interesting look at daily life during various seasons of the stone age. Something the book doesn't get into is where this clan of people live (besides "the tundra") and any cultural differences between various stone age peoples and if clans had interaction with each other. While this was a good introduction, I could have used a little... more.

There's a very good time line in the back and the further reading list includes books and websites that are also geared for kids.


Today's nonfiction roundup is over at Playing By the Book  be sure to check it out!

Book Provided by... the publisher, for Cybils 2009 consideration

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

Giveaway Update!

Just in case you already read it and won't see that I updated the post, I just wanted to let you know that my BIG GIVEAWAY, sponsored by the good people at Scholastic, ends next Monday, December 6th, so be sure to enter now!

BIG GIVEAWAY!

Did you all have a lovely holiday?

Mine was great and now I'm back from my blogging vacation with a BIG FANTASTIC GIVEAWAY! (as promised)

But first, a review...

The Adventures of Ook and Gluk, Kung-Fu Cavemen from the FutureThe Adventures of Ook and Gluk, Kung-Fu Cavemen from the Future Dav Pilkey

So, the conceit here is that, like The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby, this is another comic book written by George and Harold, the stars of Captain Underpants.

Ook and Gluk are two cave kids in 500,001 BC who like to annoy their evil chief. After defeating the chief, the big trouble begins because the chief finds that one of his descendants has built a time portal from 2222 AD and is using it to steal the prehistoric world of all the natural resources that no longer exist in the future.

Ook and Gluk and their baby dinosaur, Lily, go to the future to defeat them and end up learning the ways of kung-fu.

Lots of great lessons from martial arts here--

The mind is stronger than the flesh. It can defeat any opponent, no matter how strong.

The best fighters do not show their anger. The wisest warrior wins without a battle.

AND! Lots of flip-o-rama action-- 9 different flip-o-ramas.

Now, as this was "written" by George and Harold the spelling and grammar are awful (not helped by the fact that half the characters speak caveman). I don't mind this in concept. If we fight for realism in our books, I think we need to fight for it at all ages-- younger kids don't spell perfectly and don't speak perfectly. I have no problem with books aimed at younger kids mirroring this reality. Especially because I think most kids get it-- the know it's wrong, but at the same time it's reassuring that not everyone is a perfect speller.

But, as an adult reader, the spelling is a little annoying and sometimes I had to think about a word before realizing what it was supposed to be (reading out loud helps with this.)

You can see an inside peek here!


More than anything though, as fun as this book was, and as much as the kids I know like it, the kids have only one question, and it's a question I share-- WHEN DO WE GET NEW CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS?!

NOW THE BIG GIVEAWAY!

Scholastic is sponsoring a huge holiday gift giveaway for one lucky winner.



Here's their required text:

Give the gift of reading to your child this holiday season! Scholastic books make the perfect stocking stuffer for any child on your list.

We have a HUGE prize pack filled with the most popular children’s books in the marketplace to offer one lucky reader! Titles include CAPTAIN SKY BLUE, IT’S CHRISTMAS DAVID, OOK and GLUK as well as TONY BALONEY, ODIOUS OGRE and I SPY CHRISTMAS A CHRISTMAS TREE!

Fill out the form below for your chance to win!

ETA: I forgot to say in my initial post that entries must be received by December 6th. That's a week from today!



Book Provided by... the publicist, for review consideration. The giveaway is organized by the publicist and sponsored by the publisher.

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Blog Break

Hi All!

This is just a quick post to say that I am horribly behind on my reading and reviewing, and have people coming into town, then I'm going out of town, then Thanksgiving...

So in order to make my life a little more sane, I'm going to be taking a short blog break until after Thanksgiving. I hope all my US-based friends have a good holiday and stuff themselves silly.

For all my non-US based friends... find some other excuse to have a good time and stuff yourself silly, ok?

And when I come back, I'm going to have a HUGE giveaway to start the holiday season off right!

See you then!

Monday, November 08, 2010

Alice in Charge

Alice in ChargeAlice in Charge Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

It's Alice's senior year and she seems to think that now she's almost an adult, and off to college next year, she can no longer ask for help with anything, because "doing it yourself" is part of being grownup. So, there were a lot fewer conversations where her dad and Lester only talk as a way to impart VALUABLE INFORMATION ABOUT LIFE STUFF to the reader. So that was nice, but Alice's attitude bothered me and just led to a lot of "I'm so stressed out and can't handle this" self-invented drama.

Along with this, Alice befriends a Sudanese refugee and teaches him our American ways, battles a hate group at school, battles a sketchy teacher, and is (rather condescendingly/patronizingly) nice to a student who seems to be on the autism spectrum, but it isn't specified.

The ending, as usual is a little pat, and Naylor's explanation as to why people join hate groups is over-simple to the point of being insipid* but Alice is so gosh-darn EARNEST and reminds me a lot of me at that age that I really like her, even though Naylor has no eye for little details.

For instance:

Pam wants to go to school in New York, it has to be New York, the implication being New York CITY. She lists all these schools she's thinking about, and they're all in the city, except then she mentions Cornell. Which is in New York STATE, not City. (And according to Google maps, is the same distance, time-wise, from the city as Silver Spring is.)

It seems really, really weird that Kay's parents would have had an arranged marriage. Arranged marriages aren't that common in modern China and are most likely to take place in rural areas among classes that would be unable or very unlikely to have the money and skills necessary to immigrate to the US. So, unless Kay's parents are 100 years old, this is just... no.

Molly has a boyfriend who's "Indian. Pakistani, anyway." Because they're TOTALLY THE SAME THING. And I bet he's totally ok with his girlfriend thinking they are.

Why are 2,714 people graduating with Les? And why are they all WALKING? Speaking as someone who has gotten a Master's degree from Maryland in the past few years, grad students are invited to the big ceremony, but no one walks and most don't go. Each school has its own graduation ceremony where they walk. And I highly doubt that 2,714 people are earning a Masters in Philosophy at a December graduation. Naylor does get points for pointing out the totally true ridiculousness that graduation is 2 days before Christmas. (I walked on the 22nd. FOR REALZ.)

What is with Alice enjoying cheesy school presentations by outside groups on various dangers facing teens? Does Naylor really think most kids think these are actually funny and cool?

So, yeah, I've often blogged about my love/hate relationship with this series. Why can I love a character, but hate the books so much? Alice deserves better than poorly-researched after-school specials she gets thrown into.


*SPOILER ALERT! It's because his father is emotionally abusive! And says he's too wussy to be a Marine. So that's why he's a Neo Nazi.

Book Provided by... my local library

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.