The Time Thief, Linda Buckley-Archer

Title: The Time Thief (Book 2 in the Gideon Trilogy)
Author: Linda Buckley-Archer
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Publishing Date: 2007
Length: 488 Pages
Summary: (From book) Peter Schock has been left behind in 1763. Kate Dyer is beginning to suffer some disturbing side effects from time traveling. And the Tar Man, who was terrifying even in the eighteenth century, is loose and wreaking havoc in twenty-first century London with twenty-first century technology at his disposal! Can Kate find a way to bring Peter back and stop the Tar Man for good?






My Thoughts: This series is so creative! And certainly thought provoking. I'm feeling really sick right now, so I don't have much of a review, but the sequel definitely gets a thumbs up.

Things To Be Cautious Of:Minor Violence, character death, mild swearing.

What I Learned: Time travel might not be such a good idea.

The Time Travelers, Linda Buckley-Archer

Title: The Time Travelers, (Book one in the Gideon Trilogy)
Author: Linda Buckley-Archer
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Publishing Date: 2006
Length: 400 pages
Summary: (From Book)  1763, Gideon Seymour, thief and gentleman, hides from the villainous Tar Man. Suddenly the sky peels away like fabric and from the gaping hole fall two curious looking children.
Peter Schock and Kate Dyer have fallen straight from the twenty-first century, thanks to an experiment with an antigravity machine.
Before Gideon and the children have a chance to gather their wits, the Tar Man takes off with the machine-and Peter and Kate's only chance of getting home.
Soon Gideon, Peter and Kate are swept up into a journey through eighteenth-century London and form a bond that, they hope, will stand strong in the face of unfathomable treachery.

My Thoughts: What a cute book! I've already picked up the sequel to read as well. I thought the ending was creative and I can't wait to see how it plays out.
I am very much in love with Gideon, but I do feel a lot of sympathy towards Tom and Sidney as well. I'm hoping Tom gets a bigger part in the series. And the Tar Man! Talk about tragic back stories. I thought I was harsh in my writing, but his story is positively heart wrenching. I'm very curious to see how his character develops.
Book challenge almost completed!

Things To Be Cautious Of: The word dang used infrequently, and I found, quite humorously ('Dang your eyes!') Throughout. The Lord's name taken in vain.

What I Learned: Friends are important. People can change.

Fever 1793, Laurie Halse Anderson

Title: Fever 1793
Author: Laurie Halse Anderson
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Publishing Date: 2000
Length: 243 Pages
Summary: (from book)  During the summer of 1793, Mattie Cook lives above the family coffee shop with her widowed mother and grandfather. Mattie spends her days avoiding chores and making plans to turn the family business into the finest Philadelphia has ever seen. But then the fever breaks out. 
Disease sweeps the streets, destroying everything in its path and turning Mattie's world upside down. At her feverish mother's insistence, Mattie flees the city with her grandfather,. But she soon discovers that the sickness is everywhere, and Mattie must learn quickly how to survive in a city turned frantic with disease.


My Thoughts:  I feel dumb for not even knowing there was a huge outbreak of Yellow Fever in late Colonial America. This book was great for telling me otherwise. I've seen this book around for a few years, but never picked it up because the cover kind of freaks me out. But I was at the library and spotted it as a quick read to help me get to my book quota for the year. I'm glad I read it.
Mattie was a likable female protagonist and her story very believable. I admired her love for her grandfather and her persistence on survival and independence.

What I learned: It taught me a lot about the innate sense we all have for survival and made me wonder what I would do in a situation like hers.

Things To Be Cautious Of:  The Lord's name taken in vain I think...twice. And the nastiness of disease and how they treated it and the sick patients.

Icefall, Matthew J. Kirby

Title: Icefall
Author: Matthew J. Kirby
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Publishing Date: 2011
Length: 321 pages
Summary: (From book)  Trapped in a hidden fortress tucked between towering mountains and a frozen sea, Solveig, along with her brother the crown prince, their older sister, and an army of restless warriors, anxiously awaits news of her father's victory at battle. But as winter stretches on, and the unending ice refuses to break, terrible acts of treachery soon make it clear that a traitor lurks in the midst. A malevolent air beings to seep through the fortress walls, and a smothering claustrophobia slowly turns these prisoners of winter against one another.
Those charged with protecting the king's children are all suspect, and the siblings bust choose their allies wisely. But who can be trusted so far from their father's watchful eye? Can Solveig and her siblings survived the long winter months and expose the traitor before he succeeds in destroying a kingdom?


My Thoughts:  Wow. I just finished this one. And cried through the ending as usual.....
Matthew J. Kirby is an up and coming author and I absolutely loved his debut novel, The Clockwork Three.  With his second novel, I am starting to have a great appreciation for his work and will now look forward eagerly to see what else he comes up with.
As with all children's literature, there is a deeper meaning than just a clever storyline and I felt this one go straight through me. The different mentalities of all the characters and what they represented was so poignant and tastefully done. This felt more like an insight into the psychology of human behavior than a piece of fiction.

Things To Be Cautious Of:  Violence. Nothing too graphic or intense.

What I learned:  I am not just me. I have power within me and don't need to hold myself back. It is important to stay true to who you are and pick a side.

Keeper of The Lost Cities, Shannon Messenger

Title:  Keeper of The Lost Cities
Author: Shannon Messenger
Publisher: Simon & Schuster (Aladdin)
Publishing Date: 2012
Length: 488 Pages
Summary: (From book)  Twelve-year-old Sophie Foster has a secret. She's a Telepath-someone who hears the thoughts of everyone around her. It's a talent she's never known how to explain.
Everything changes the day she meets Fitz, a boy who appears out of nowhere and also reads minds.  She discovers there's somewhere she does belong; and that staying with her family will put her in grave danger. In the blink of an eye, Sophie is forced to leave behind everything and start a new life in a place that is vastly different than anything she has ever known.
Sophie has new rules to learn and new skills to master, and not everyone is thrilled that she has come "home."  There are secrets buried deep in Sophie's memory-secrets about who she really is and why she was hidden among humans-that other people desperately want. Would even kill for.

My Thoughts:  *squee*  This book was amazing!! I stumbled across the author's blog on Tuesday and picked up the book yesterday at Barnes & Noble after reading 100 pages of it there first. Here's the big secret though, the book apparently doesn't release until next week, so why the book store had it out already, I don't know, but I'm so glad they did because I seriously adored this book.  I read the whole thing this morning. Couldn't put it down.
Sophie is a wonderful, lovable little girl and her emotions and concerns were very real. I nearly cried in the store at one point.  I found her innocence and open curiosity about everything to be endearing and I loved learning everything along with her.
Fitz was a sweet boy, I adore him, but I can't pick favorites between the other boys of the group. The author created very real and very lovable people.
One thing I did notice, was that there seemed to be an unconscious swing towards making girls the somewhat clichéd  means girls typical to school life. I didn't feel it was necessary and would have liked to have seen a bit of a gender trade with the bullying.  But that is a very small complaint compared to the genius of this book.
I am really hoping/praying/wishing for a sequel.

Things To Be Cautious Of:  NOTHING! WOO.  Unless, a bit of a downplay on the human race and mentioning of secret society isn't your thing.

What I learned:  It's ok to be different.

A Tale of Time City, Diana Wynne Jones

Title: A Tale of Time City
Author: Diana Wynne Jones
Publisher: Fire bird Books
Publishing Date: 1987
Summary: (From Book)    London, 1939, Vivian Smith thinks she is being evacuated to the countryside because of the war. But she is being kidnapped-out of her own time. Her kidnappers are Jonathan and Sam, two boys her own age from a place called Time City. Built eons ago on a patch of space outside time, Time City was designed especially to oversee history. But now history is going critical, and Johnathan and Same are convinced that Time City's impending doom can only be averted by a Twenty Century girl named Vivian Smith. Too bad they have the wrong girl...


My Thoughts:  The cover on this book is so pretty. I love it. The plot was interesting, I've been a fan of accidental kidnapping plot lines ever since first encountering them, but after that...the book sort of lost me. There is so much to process and understand and the mythology and rules of Time City are complex and overwhelming. I can't say I really liked this book. It was an interesting read, but I found myself finishing it merely for the sake of completing it and the last twenty pages had me at a total loss as to what was going on.
I've never heard of the author, apparently she was a very popular fantasy writer, but as for me, it's just not my cup of tea.
Things To Be Cautious Of:  Three very mild swear words.
What I learned:  I don't want to write like this...

Review: The King of Mulberry Street, Donna Jo Napoli

Title: The King of Mulberry Street
Author: Donna Jo Napoli
Publisher: Random House
Publishing Date: 2005
Summary: (From Amazon.com) In 1892, nine-year-old Dom’s mother puts him on a ship leaving Italy, bound for America. He is a stowaway, traveling alone and with nothing of value except for a new pair of shoes from his mother. In the turbulent world of homeless children in Manhattan’s Five Points, Dom learns street smarts, and not only survives, but thrives by starting his own business.


My Thoughts: Wow. What a way to look at immigration to America. The summary does not do it justice. The first person narrative of the main character, Dom, as he is come to be called, gives life to this story in a way that was believable and moving.  
I have long had a soft spot for the little orphans and street children in history and this book only further increased my compassion for their plight. The concept of a padrone   is just horrific. The fact that such things existed, that such men, if they could call themselves that, would take advantage of poor boys unable to speak English and just trying to support their families is staggering. It makes me sick to think that for a long time, this is what America was built on.
Dom's story is partly based on the life of the author's grandfather, and that makes the story all the more heart wrenching. These are the sort of things that people ought to be reading, to realize, to understand that this is where people came from, how many things started....
Dom is an imaginative boy who takes charge of his situation and quickly figures out how to thrive on the American Dream. I worry about what happened to him though: if he ever went back to Italy, contacted his family....or if he became successful in America and really prospered in the way so many coming to Ellis Island hoped for.
I'd have to say the message I learned from this book is the need for compassion. The way Dom and his friends lived was unimaginable. It was such a relief that he found a way to push through it all and find kind people who cared for him. Their is no end for the need for service and Christlike love we can show to people and I will try harder to give generously to others.

Review: Inside Out & Back Again, Thanhha Lai

Title: Inside Out & Back Again
Author: Thanhha Lai
Publisher: Harper Collins
Publishing Date: 2011
Summary: (From book)
"No one believes me,
But at times
I would choose
wartime in Saigon
over
peacetime in Alabama."
For all the ten years of her life, Ha' has only known Saigon: the thrills of its markets, the joy of its traditions, the warmth of her friends close by....and the beauty of her very own papaya tree.
But now the Vietnam War has reached her home. Ha' and her family are forced to flee as Saigon falls, and they board a ship headed towards hope. In America,  Ha' discovers the foreign world of Alabama: the coldness of its strangers, the dullness of its food, the strange shape of its landscape...the strength of her very own family.

My Thoughts: What a beautiful book.  I was first attracted to the cover, and then the style of the book. I have never read a book written entirely in prose. Hats off to the author, my lack at writing poetry really left me in awe of her style.
Part of what made this book so interesting is that this story is written from what she remembers happening to her as a child. It really makes the story all the more real. The characters may be fictional, but the circumstances and story are not.
It was a short read, about an hour to finish, but well worth it for the beauty of the words. Ha's story was touching and I found a soft spot for her older brothers that tried so hard to protect her. It was devastating to see how rude people can be just over different cultures and backgrounds.
The idea of Ha' and her family being baptized into Christianity with no concept of its principles or even giving their consent was shocking.
We are all God's children, and He loves us no matter what we believe or where we come from. Part of our journey here on earth is to use our agency to turn to Him.  This book is the halfway mark to my goal for the year, fifty two books, and I think I'd like to start doing some things different on this blog.  My motto for this has been: Gaining life perspective through a literary lens,  and I'd like to start posting what sort of lesson or overall message I get from what I read that will help me in my life.
The message I received from this book is a bit of a recap from what I said above. We are all God's children and He loves us no matter what our skin color, backgrounds or social status. The change I am going to make from having read this book is to be more Christlike to everyone.
Happy Half Way Point!

Review: A Wrinkle In Time, Madeleine L'Engle

Title: A Wrinkle In Time
Author: Madeleine L'Engle
Publisher: Square Fish
Publishing Date:  1962
Length: 203 pages
Summary: Fifty years ago, Madeleine L’Engle introduced the world to A Wrinkle in Time and the wonderful and unforgettable characters Meg and Charles Wallace Murry, and their friend Calvin O’Keefe. When the children learn that Mr. Murry has been captured by the Dark Thing, they time travel to Camazotz, where they must face the leader IT in the ultimate battle between good and evil—a journey that threatens their lives and our universe
My Thoughts: Thought provoking, and much deeper than it appears on the surface. I thought it reminiscent to C.S. Lewis's space trilogy and Narnian Chronicles. I wish this book was still as popular as it was when it was first published. I enjoyed reading about the author's life and now feel like we are fast friends. The symbolism was catching and made one pause and I can tell this is going to be one I'll have to read over again to fully understand. The Christian morals were refreshing and it reminded me that I am here on earth to fight a great and ongoing battle against the Adversary and that the light and love of Christ is truly the only way to overcome anything.

Review: The Kneebone Boy, By Ellen Potter

Title: The Kneebone Boy
Author: Ellen Potter
Publisher: Feiwel And Friends
Publishing Date: September 14, 2010
Length: 280 Pages
Summary: (From Book) The Hardscrabble children are weird.
Otto doesn't speak.
Lucia is shamelessly candid.
And Max likes to sit on the roof of their house.
Life in a small town can be pretty boring when everyone avoids you like the plague. But after their father unwittingly sends them to stay with an aunt who’s away on holiday, the Hardscrabble children take off on an adventure that begins in the seedy streets of London and ends in a peculiar sea village where legend has it a monstrous creature lives who is half boy and half animal. . . .
My Thoughts: Quirky, odd, unpredictable and very much enjoyable. Like all children's fiction, the story is a lot deeper than it appears on the surface.