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Claudia Mills is the author of many chapter and middle-grade books, including 7 x 9=Trouble!; How Oliver Olson Changed the World; Kelsey Green, Reading Queen; and, most recently, Zero Tolerance. Mills shares a wonderful list of her family's favorite books that feature girl protagonists—she encourages you to share them with both boys and girls, alike.

I'm so behind blogging...so much to do, so much to say.


I have more pictures to post of my visit to Crestview and Indian Hills in Clive, Iowa, but I'll do that after finishing final grades....this is too time-consuming.

I do, however, want to mention that after Lois Lowry's live online booktalk through School Library Journal, I quickly ordered Gathering Blue (which I had started and never finished), Messenger, and her latest novel in the series, Son. 

Image lifted from Amazon, obviously:

I'm embarrassed to admit that I didn't know these four books were a series. Not having gotten far enough in Gathering Blue to see the connections (which were sort of magically aha-inspiring when I got there), I didn't know that an answer existed in the universe as to what happened to Jonas and Gabe at the end of The Giver, which I've read many times. I love that book so much, I even required it a few times when I taught Humanities Critical Thinking at SCC, in hopes that the idea of treasuring knowledge and learning might sink in.

So, in between grading and the frantic pace of December in a college, I did plow through the last three books. Lois Lowry is a master of character and what I would call magical realism. She creates a dystopian world but makes the characters so heroic and human, even with their gifts, that I couldn't put down any of the books.

Son was truly a crowning end to the series. It's an epic struggle of good-heartedness against controlling society and against evil (is there a difference?). In the Ceremony of "Twelves"--the ceremony where Jonas was named "Receiver" from the "Giver," Claire is named "Birthmother." Birthmothers' job is reminiscent of "Handmaid's Tale" by Maraget Atwood. When something goes terribly wrong with the birth, Claire is deemed unfit for her position in the community and cast out of the birthmothers' dwelling. In a new position, no one remembers to give her the daily pill that eradicates emotion and desire. Hence, she longs for the son she's never seen. The longing leads her on a quest that reaches the edge of the Community and beyond.  Gripping, chilling, delightful, tragic, and heart-warming. Worth every second of reading.

The novel is richer if you've read the whole series--or at least The Giver, but it's a stand-alone story if you haven't.

I wished for just a little more conflict toward the end of the book, even though the tension all the way through made me want to yell the truths at the characters (the only book in the series where dramatic irony pulls us along--we know much more than the characters in this story). So the wish for more conflict wasn't due to a lack of it in the book. It's just that the final "battle" seemed almost too easy...I wanted it to demand just a little more...but who am I to be in the least bit critical of a master storyteller like Lois Lowry????  The book was masterful, powerful, horrifying and wonderful.

Any fan of The Giver should read the entire series.

I think I admire her so much, and love her characters and stories so much that she may have moved up onto my pedestal with Harper Lee and Barbara Kingsolver Dennis LeHayne and Marguerite Henry and Lois Lenski and Carol Ryrie Brink and Mary Calhoun and Astrid Lindgren and Sarah Pennypacker: enduring, forever-favorite writers of stories I love.

Penderwicks-lovers: don't despair as you wait for book 3!  This lovely out-of-print gem will tide you over with its funny, charming and everyday slice-of-life stories. 

Family Grandstand centers on the Ridgeways, Susan, George and Irene (called "Dumpling" because of her "roundness in the middle").  It's football season in Midwest City and, seeing as their father is a professor at the university and they live in a house that overlooks the football field by means of a tower, the three are very involved in the excitement of it all.  From the first game of the season to homecoming, a lot else happens at the Ridgeway household including Susan learning how to deal with babysitting the Terrible Torrences, George adopting an immensely oversized dog and five very discontented turtles for his birthday, and Dumpling trying very, very hard to be very, very good after misunderstanding an overheard conversation.  All this is told with Carol Ryrie Brink's brand of dry humor and gentle literary slapstick.

I have been reading Ms. Brink's books since I was little, and this one, as well as the second in the series, Family Sabbatical, are among my favorites.  Her characters are completely three-dimensional and entirely identifiable.  I know there are plenty of children's book readers who don't like "old-timey" books and I imagine that they would probably categorize this book in that group.  But I guess I'd use the clichéd word "timeless" for this book; it's proven to be that for me!

This book, like the other Sharon Creech books I've read, left me with a feeling of delight.  Somehow, I always think that the books are going to be heavy and dramatic but she  has a gentle and lighthearted touch (at least in the books I've read of hers- The Wanderer and Bloomability) with an overall feeling of optimism.

Cause sometimes a link is too damn cool not to include. Kidlit relations or no.

Thanks, of course, to Strollerderby.