Hoot, by Carl Hiaasen

Hoot is about a kid named Roy who has just moved to Florida from Montana. In his new school, he is picked on by Dana Matherson, but Roy is the only kid in the history of Trace Middle School who fights back. One day, when Dana is squishing Roy's face against the bus window, Roy sees a strange kid. The kid was running fast with no shoes, as if he was going to the bus stop, except he had no backpack and no books. Roy decides to investigate and soon finds himself, together with the strange boy and his even stranger sister, fighting to save some cute little burrowing owls from the wrath of bulldozers. Their adventure includes killer dogs, pancakes, the police, alligators, cottonmouths, a kind of highly poisonous snake, and two new good friends.

May Bird Among the Stars, by Jodi Lynn Anderson

This is the second part of May Bird and the Ever After and it continues May's quest to get back home. It's about three things mostly: getting to the North, getting out of the North, and surviving the South. There are old characters like Pumpkin the ghost and Somber Kitty the hairless cat; there are new characters like the lady of the North Farm, Zero the ghost of a surfer dude, and commander Berserko, a devil cat.

This book is just as spooky and funny as the first one and I am looking forward to the third book, May Bird, Warrior Princess.

May Bird and the Ever After, by Jodi Lynn Anderson

May Bird is a girl. She is different from other kids. She prefers walking in the woods than going to parties; she thinks quartz rocks are as valuable as diamonds; her cat does not have hair. One day May takes a walk in the woods. This time she does something different than the other times: she walks into the Endless Briers, which is a large field of briers that guards a secret entryway to the Ever After. The book is about May's adventures trying to get back home. The trip back includes perilous places, evil enemies, faithful friends, malicious menaces, fearsome fiends, a nifty knapsack, and a ghost named Pumpkin.

This book is funny at some times. For example, May attends Agatha's Boarding School for Girls with High Socks. Some parts of it are scary. For example, pretty much everything. Some parts of it are just plain weird. For example, if you touch a drop of water from the sea, you are sent into eternal torture.

If you like spookiness, cliffhangers, and spooky cliffhangers, you'll like this book.

Jigsaw Jones Mysteries, by James Preller

Jigsaw Jones is a detective. He solves mysteries. The Jigsaw Jones series (buy volumes, they are cheaper) is all about Jigsaw Jones' many mysteries. I especially like cracking the codes in the stories. Try cracking this one:

Blue the breeze can yellow kids stormy you chicken duck red snowy crack boy hats hurricane this dog blanket sunny code.

It looks like gibberish, doesn't it? Let me tell you what is the trick of the code: Look at all the words. Do you notice something? Are there a lot of words of the same kind? The message is in the words after those similar words.

I also like these books because they actually use real books. For example, they are reading Stone Fox at reading hour at school; and Jigsaw is reading Bunnicula at night with his dad. Both real books. I've read both of them; I like both of them.

The stories are short enough that you can read them in a car ride.

If you like mysteries, cracking codes, and good ideas for books to read (except for the creep show books, because they are the only books that aren't real) read this series.

The Spiderwick Tie-In Books: A FieldStore Guide

Arthur's Spiderwick's Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You, by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black
This book is the actual field guide that they talk about in the Spiderwick Chronicles series. I think it is weird that the Grace kids went into so much trouble to hide the book and now it is being mass-produced! This book is about all the weird fantastical creatures that Arthur Spiderwick studied. It has labeled illustrations and lots of pull-out pages. In The Spiderwick Chronicles, the Grace kids saw many of these creatures, but they didn't see most of them. That is why this book adds a lot to the original series. This book is worth reading and keeping.

Care and Feeding of Sprites, by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi
This is a book about how to care for sprites, which is really funny because... um.. you know... they don't exist. The pretty much only good thing about it is the poster. There is a fold-out poster on the dust cover. It is also really fun to have specifics of different kinds of sprites, not just the 10 words, "There are many different kinds of sprites in the world," which is about all Arthur's Spiderwicks Field Guide says. It is also fun to read how the author doesn't give a hint that sprites don't exist. This book is worth reading, but is only worth keeping if you: 1) want information on specific types of sprites, 2) want the poster, 3) believe in sprites, or 4) all of the above.

The Chronicles of Spiderwick, A grand tour of the enchanted world navigated by Thimbletack, by Holly Black
This book is Thimbletack's scrapbook of things he collected as the years went by at the Spiderwick estate. It is a sort of guide to the Spiderwick books including a map of the house, a family tree, and lots of interesting stuff about the people who have been there. This includes things that are not in the original series, like graded homework essays by the Grace kids, newspaper clippings from around the world, letters, pages ripped out of books, diary entries, and family pictures. It is fun to see how all these extra bits fit in with the original series, and it answers some questions you may have had when reading the series. For example, how did Aunt Lucinda convinced the sprites to come? This book has the answer. The Grant Tour book is worth reading, and worth keeping if you are a big Spiderwick fan (e.g., me!).

Notebook for Fantastical Observations, by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi
This book is full of fun stories and activities organized by magical creature, including dragons, brownies, and lots of other creatures. For example, under dragons, there is a page for "Sketches for two locations where dragons may be found, in the real world and in the fairy world." Some of these activities are easy to complete, others may leave you stumped, such as (under Brownies), "I imagine this creature helping me with chores around my house." This book is definitely worth reading, but only worth keeping if you are willing to do the activities, like me. It is a good way to keep the fantasy going until the next series comes out (and, I assure you, it eventually will).

The Spiderwick Chronicles, by Holly Black

The Spiderwick Chronicles is a 5-book series about the Grace children -- Mallory Grace, Jared Grace, and Simon Grace -- and their adventures in a world full of fairies who live right along with us humans, but that only they can see. The books are The Field Guide, The Seeing Stone, Lucinda's Secret, The Ironwood Tree, and The Wrath of Mulgarath. The books are full of bizarre creatures (good, bad, and dead), duels, a certain amount of blood-shed, falling, running, more falling, and more running.

These books are a quick and fun read. I read them in three days the first time. Since then, I have read them two more times, so I think they are worth getting and they are worth keeping. There are lots of other books related to Spiderwick, which you will find in my next blog entry, in which I will tell you which of these books are worth getting or keeping or both.

Eager, by Helen Fox

At the end of the 21st century, robots are everywhere: there are teacher robots, butler robots, driver robots, and cook robots. Among all these robots, Eager (Model EGR3) is unique. He is the only robot who is not pre-programmed, but rather designed to learn from experience, quite like me or you (if you're a kid). This makes him able to think for himself. For example, pretty much all robots were programmed to not lie, EGR3 has to learn why lying is wrong. Having to learn from experience also means learning from mistakes, like when Eager tried to "clean" a human baby by putting her into the washing machine (NOTE: No babies were harmed in this book). Eager quickly becomes a part of the Bell family, but when the fanciest robots around (the BCD4s) begin to behave a little too much like people, Eager and the two older children of the Bell family are involved in a perilous adventure.

This book is sort of hard to understand at the beginning because the author talks about the world nearly a 100 years from now as if we know exactly what she is talking about. For example, the book starts when Gavin Bell has a conversation with his house. At the beginning of the book you might think, "okay, I'm too young to understand anything this says," but keep on reading and trust me, things will unravel.

Now the typical end for most of my reviews: if you like adventure, mysteries, advanced technology, and thinking about the future, this is the right book for you.

The Strictest School in the World, by Howard Whitehouse

The Strictest School in the World is about a girl named Emmaline and a boy named Robert. Emmaline is a pioneer of aviation. In other words, she tries to make flying machines. Robert, a.k.a. Rubberbones, is pretty much indestructible. Did you know some bulletproof vests are actually made of rubber? Well, so is Rubberbones! Emmaline and Rubberbones work together to make flying machines; Rubberbones is the pilot, Emmaline is the engineer.

Unfortunately, Emmaline is sent to a... let's say... very strict school. In St. Grimelda's School for Young Ladies, missing one word in Latin class gets your knuckles rapped with a ruler. For a bigger mistake, you could find yourself cleaning the cage of some... er... birds. Believe me, that is worse than it sounds, but I won't spoil it for you.

The book covers Emmaline's struggle to escape St. Grimelda's School with the help of Rubberbones, a friend named Josie, the mad inventor Professor Bellbuckle, and her own brains.

If you like humor, wacky adventures, and a certain amount of bouncing and kidnapping, you will like this book.

Dino Poop, by Jane Hammerslough

Dino Poop is about prehistoric things that were preserved. The first chapter is about dinosaur poop. The next chapter is about things that are trapped in amber. The third chapter is about things that were trapped in ice, the most famous thing was a perfectly preserved woolly mamoth which even had eyes! The fourth chapter was about creatures trapped in bogs. One of the most famous was so preserved that the two boys who found it thought it was a recent murder and called the police. Then there is a whole chapter of activities to do, like Making Edible Amber.

To make edible amber, you need:

• a freezer safe bowl
  
• some peach or mango juice
  
• gummy frogs or lizards
  
• If you want, cocoa powder for dirt and licorice for sticks.
  

Instructions:

1. Put a gummy lizard in a bowl.
   
2. Pour mango or peach juice in the bowl.
   
3. You can add cocoa powder or licorice for dirt and sticks.
   
4. Put the bowl in the freezer.
   
5. Get ready to eat it!
   
6. Eat it.
   

If you like science, books that you can read in two evenings, and weird and wonderful facts read this book.

Cryptid Hunters, by Roland Smith

Cryptid Hunters is about two kids named Grace and Marty who were twins and their parents disappear in a helicopter crash. After that, they were sent to their "uncle" Wolf. Wolf hunts cryptids and works and owns a company and an island. In case you don't know, cryptids are animals never proved to have existed or who are believed to be extinct. Grace and Marty have lots of adventures including falling out of a jet 18,000 ft. above ground, surviving the Congo, experiencing a real explosion, and collecting fresh eggs from a sauropod. If you like laughing yourself to death, "fantasy", and mystery, read this book.

The Deep Time Diaries, by Gary Raham

Deep time is the time deep in the past. The Deep Time Diaries is about two kids named John and Neesha Olifee and their parents. The Olifees one day found a pair of asteroids, Beta and Alpha. When they went into one of them, Neesha found a "room". One day when she was exploring the room she found what she thought was a bug on the wall. When she looked closely, she found out that the bug was a robot. Then the robot did something weird. He went into a keyboard of some kind and formed itself into one of the keys. Then, Neesha called her family. All four of them tried to pull the bug out but they couldn't do it. Then the accident happened. The room was a space ship. The bug made the ship work, and it zoomed to a wormhole made out of two black wholes in the middle of the asteroids. That was the beginning of the Time Travel Tour.

They measure the times that they have been by jumps. Jump 1 is terators and tar pits. In this jump, they discover a mini buggie in the ship and go out exploring finding lots of species from the ice age. With each jump they go farther back in time and understand more about the ship and the bugs it contains. They go all the way to Jump 8 where they discover a mysterious truth which I will not tell you because you will be looking forward to discovering it at the end of the book, but I will tell you that there is a truth. This book also has a few things for "21st century explorers" to do, like places to visit where you can dig fossils, research projects, and other books to read.

If you like science, prehistoric creatures, getting scared out of your wits (just kidding!), and laughing, read this book.

The Neverending Story by Michael Ende

Every time I read a book, I want to be in it. That is exactly what happened to Bastian Balthazar Bux. Bastian is a boy that always wanted to be in a book, but when he accidentally goes into a book called The Neverending Story, he finds out he wants the exact opposite. The Neverending Story that Bastian was reading is about when the Childlike Empress, Ruler of Fantastica, is sick and Atreyu, a young Green Skin, is sent on a quest to find a cure. Along the way, Atreyu meets Falkor, a luckdragon. Together, they find out that the only thing that can cure the Childlike Empress is a new name from a human from the outer world. By this time, I think I should explain you this: The book Bastian was reading we already went over, but the book I read is about Bastian reading the book and doing what happened next -- going to Fantastica.

This book is filled with monsters, heroes, extraordinary places and most of all, weird, weird people, or should I say inhabitants of Fantastica. If you like all those four things, plus adventure and excitement and a little bit of sadness, read this book.

Bloomability by Sharon Creech

Bloomability was fantastico!

Libero, libero, liberoooooo! This book was great and the review is going to be great too. This story is about a girl named Dinnie who went to Lugano, Switzerland, Europe, Earth, Milky Way, with Aunt Sandy and Uncle Max. Dinnie was so upset about leaving her family in the States and going to boarding school. When she gets to Lugano she meets Guthrie. Guthrie tells Dinnie a story to make her feel better, but it doesn't work because Dinnie doesn't understand the story yet. The story is about two prisoners looking out the same window. One said, "My oh my, what a lot of sky!" and the other one said, "My oh my, what a lot of dirt!" I thought the message meant we all live in the same planet even though we are different.

Soon after Dinnie met Guthrie, she met Lila at the church. Lila and Guthrie were very different from each other. Guthrie was always cheerful and happy; Lila, if she had a scratch she would say she was going to die. In the school were also Keisuke, Belén, and Mari who were in the same grade as Dinnie, Guthrie and Lila. Keisuke is Japanese, he talks great at English. Almost. Instead of "stupid", he says stew-pod and instead of "possible", he says bloomable. Belén is Spainese. She and Keisuke like each other. Mari is from Rome, Italy.

I figured out, even before my mom did, that Bloomability was about all the possibilities on the planet: all the chances that you get to see new things and go to new places; all the chances of life when someone is ill or injured; all the chances of making friends with people even when they are very different from you; all the chances of loving some place or some thing when you think you are going to hate it. That's what Guthrie's story was about, possibilities. If you like adventure, courage, and caring, read this book.

A note from the reviewer: Sometimes, when you are looking for the good things, it helps to look for the bad things. For example, a forest fire seems horrible, but it turns the grass into ash to fertilize the earth, so sometimes some bad things can actually turn into good things.

The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamilo

This story is about a mouse named Despereaux (Desperou) who fell in love with a princess. Because he fell in love with a princess, the other mice sent him to the dungeon. At the same time that the mouse was born, a rat was born. A weird rat. He was so weird in fact that he liked light. His name was Chiaroscuro (Roskurou). And at the same time that was happening, a girl named Miggery Sow was coming in a carriage with pots and bowls and spoons. When Miggery Sow goes down to feed Gregory the Jailer, Roscuro goes into her pocket and hears her wish that someday she will be a princess. Then Roscuro climbs out of her pocket and tells her a plan. Now, earlier, Despereaux had climbed into Miggery's pocket, so he heard the rat tell Miggery about his evil plan. Will Despereaux be able to save the princess he loves?

More Perfect Than the Moon, by Patricia MacLachlan

More Perfect than the Moon was more perfect than the moon! It's about a girl named Sarah who has a journal and writes fantasy things from non-fiction things. Sarah has a grandpa, a mom and dad, two brothers, and one sister. In the middle of the story, Sarah's mother gets pregnant. Soon after that, Sarah gets a sheep from her grandma and names her Beatrice. Then her sister and one of her brothers fall in love with other people and Sarah makes up a story about her brother falling in love with a princess coming in a charriot, but actually it was a girl coming in a wagon. When the baby was born, Sarah wasn't so sure about it. Will Sarah finally admit that the baby is more perfect than the moon?

Everything on a Waffle, by Polly Horvath

This book was Fantabulous. It’s about a girl named Primrose, whose parents were lost at sea. Primrose was full of hope and belief that her parents were stranded in an island alive waiting to be rescued. While her parents were out in the storm she had been watched by Miss Perfidy. Then Primrose went to a Council Meeting where her uncle Jack, who sells houses, started to take care of her. Uncle Jack's house was next to the school, so that he could teach P.E.

You might be wondering about the title. The title is about a restaurant called The Girl on The Red Swing, where they served everything on a waffle. If you ordered fish, it came on a waffle. If you ordered soup, it came on a waffle. If you ordered a waffle, it came on a waffle. One day while they were eating at The Girl on The Red Swing, Jack's houses burned up in a fire! The fire was caused by a high voltage cable that was cut by something. What I really liked about this book is the end, which I am not going to tell you about. I also liked Primrose's belief in her parents.

Dinosaurs: The world's most terrifying creatures by Veronica Ross

This book was terrific. It tells you about more than just dinosaurs, it's a trip from the Cambrian Period to the 21st century. It'll also tell you about sea monsters and Pterosaurs and other lizards like Coelurosauravus and Diplocaulus and things from the Ice Age like Borhyaena and Colossochelys.

This book divided the Cretaceous into two parts.

The Littles Go to School by John Peterson

This book was good. It's about when 10-year-old Tom and 8-year-old Lucy get traped in a hamster's cage and go to school. Tom and Lucy aren't ordinary kids, they are Littles. Littles look like ordinary people except that they have tails and the biggest Little, Mr. Little, is only 6 inches tall. Will Tom and Lucy get back home before dark?

I like this book because it has excitement, unexpectedness, and especially fun.

Chasing Redbird, by Sharon Creech

This book was GREAT!!!!! This book is about Zinnia Taylor, a girl at the age of 13, who has three brothers and three sisters. She lives with her mom and dad and her Uncle Nate and Aunt Jessie. The story is about when Zinny(a) finds an old trail and starts to clear it. But when Uncle Nate's wife, Aunt Jessie, dies, he starts acting weird. Along the way clearing the trail, Zinny finds things like fossils, a bear, a bob cat, and lots of different kinds of birds, especially redbirds. She also finds Uncle Nate's secret. There is also a man named Jake Boone, who likes Zinny and gives her presents almost every day. He even steals things to please Zinny. At the end, Zinny was famous for clearing the whole trail.

I like this book because it's about adventure, determination, funniness --for example, chickory plants sprouting from chicken eggs-- and God.

James and the Giant Peach, by Roald Dahl

This book was AWESOME!!! It's about a boy who grows a peach as big as a house. Then he finds a hole in the peach and he goes in the hole. Then he opens a peach seed and inside there's a whole room! And there is a giant silk worm, a giant lighting bug, a giant grasshopper, a giant ladybug and a giant spider. The grasshopper nibbles off the stem of the peach and then they all go rolling and rolling and rolling and rolling and then the peach rolls into the sea. Then sharks come and the peach gets lift up by seagulls! Then they go from one adventure to another to another to another and at the end they are famous and they live in New York.

This book is about weird things, adventure, friendship, adventure, and more adventure.