48 Hour Review: How to Steal a Dog

It’s not easy being poor.  And it’s even harder when you’re a kid who has been evicted from her home and has to live in her car with her mother and brother.  Georgina Hayes washes up for school in the gas station bathrooms in the mornings before school as her mother works two jobs.  It’s hard to keep this all a secret in a small town in North Carolina especially from her best friend. 

Until one day Georgina comes up with a plan — steal a dog, get the reward for the missing dog, and move into a house.  She scouts around for the perfect dog to steal and finally founds lovable and smart Willy.

Stealing a dog is a bit more complicated than Georgina counts on even if she did create a step by step guide.  Author Barbara O’Connor tells a poignant story that has you rooting for Georgina even if she does something wrong to make things in her life right.   She doesn’t wrap up the story by making the family financial problems magically go away either.  Georgina grows up in the course of  this story and learns a good rule from an unexpected teacher:  Sometimes, the more you stir it, the worse it stinks.

48 Hours Review: Wayside School Get a Little Stranger

I’m not an expert or anything, but I am willing to bet that there is no other school on Earth like Wayside School.  At the beginning of the book, we learn that Wayside was closed for 242 days.  Why?  I have no idea.  I might need to read Sideways Stories from Wayside School or Wayside School is Falling Down to get the backstory.

After reading Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger, I know the following:

• the school has 30 floors
• there is no 19th floor
• there is only one classroom on each floor
• the principal Mr. Kidswatter is a little bit off
• the students love Mrs. Jewls and Louis, the playground teacher

Once Mrs. Jewls goes on maternity leave, the students get a series of weird substitute teachers who turn the classroom on the 30th floor upside down with funny voices, old grudges, and a teacher who can hear what others think and uses that against them. 

The author of Holes, Louis Sachar tells a fun story about a funny school.  We have Allison who has to write a poem about the color purple yet doesn’t know any words that rhyme with purple.  Her best friend Rondi knows tons of words that rhyme with blue but never quite gets that poem written.

Kids will enjoy the wackiness found within the classroom and the playground at Wayside School.

48 Hours Review: The Salem Witch Tryouts

I watched Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, and Sabrina the Teenage Witch.  I’ve read Sarah Mlynowski’s Bras and Broomsticks trilogy.  I’ve lived vicariously through these TV and book witches imagining my ability to zap myself places, fly on a broomstick, freeze time, make myself invisible and all of the other cool things that witches could do.

But reading Kelly McClymer’s The Salem Witch Tryouts, I found myself sympathizing with Prudence as she is uprooted from the life she knows and loves in Beverly Hills to Salem, Massachusetts where she is now free to live her life as a witch.  For her entire life, she has walked a fine line of being half-witch, half-mortal, but now her mother wants to fully immerse her in the life of a fully practicing witch. 

She’s at witch school where everyone is a witch or warlock.  The cheerleading team has ways of kicking up the stunts in cheers due to their magic.  Think Bring It On’s national cheerleading competition, but even better.

Pru has a lot to learn in Salem, at witch school, and about what it really means to be a witch.  There’s a whole other way of life for her to live.  Why cook when you can just zap up a fully cooked roast beef, potatoes, and peas?  There’s no need to brave the cold weather of Salem, Massachusetts when you can just pop from your house to your school in mere seconds.

I wish being a witch was possible because it would have made my high school years so much more fun.  Spill something on your clothes that you can’t wash out?  Zap up a new and better outfit.  Presto chango!

48 Hours Review ~ Secrets of My Hollywood Life: Family Affairs

After finishing Sunrise Over Fallujah by Walter Dean Myers, I had to follow it up with a frivolous, light read so I grabbed Jen Calonita’s Secrets of My Hollywood Life:  Family Affairs.  The third title in the Secret series, Calonita gives us an inside peek at Hollywood life from the eyes of a teenage actress.

I first discovered Calonita in 2006 and remember reading the first book on a Saturday afternoon rooting for Kaitlin Burke as she sought to have a normal teenage life in the midst of Hollywood with best friend Liz at her side and battling her antagonistic co-star Sky.

In this third title, Kaitlin’s back and so is Liz, Sky, boyfriend Austin, younger brother Matty, and the rest of Team Burke.  But trouble is brewing on the set of Family Affairs, the television show that Kaitlin has been a member of the cast since she was four years old.  New cast member Alexis is making trouble with her back stabbing ways and is so evil she makes Sky look like a saint.  Kind of.

Kaitlin is trying hard to be Zen thanks to a book she read, but it’s hard when she keeps hearing rumors about the future of Family Affairs which impacts her future as an actress.  Plus she’s feeling that she’s missing out on some of the typical teen milestones — driver’s ed, SATs, looking forward to college — but she’s not sure if she wants to go to college at the risk of jeopardizing her career.

Things come to a head on the set and sparks fly.  I won’t spoil it for you, but trust me when I say that Secrets of My Hollywood Life keeps the reader hooked throughout the 300+ page story.

48 Hours Review ~ Sunrise Over Fallujah

Emotionally, this was a difficult read for me.  Walter Dean Myers put the initial days and months of Operation Iraqi Freedom into words through they eyes of Robin “Birdy” Perry.

I’ve never been in the military so I am very removed from war and what it is like.  My father served in the Navy and I have a cousin and her husband who have been a part of Operation Iraqi Freedom.  She’s told me stories and shared with me brief details of what it’s like over there.  She’s shared with me what it’s like once you leave and have to readjust to this life in America.

We’ve seen reports on the news, read articles about the war and those who lose their lives, but today for several hours I read a detailed account of it.  As I read it, I hoped that this character and that character, those who were connected with the protagonist, would survive and get to come back home to live out their dreams, raise their kids, and just simply live their lives with their friends and family.

282 pages is more than enough to share what can happen in a war, but at the same time, it isn’t enough.  Reading about the different places that the soldiers went to and the maneuvers they did as well as the need to be on alert as they moved throughout Iraq was well captured by Myers.   I can only imagine the number of soldiers that he interviewed as well as articles and news clips that he watched in order to write this story.  The details and imagery are very vivid and it encaptured me to the point where I felt that I was riding in the Humvee with Birdie, Ahmed, Marla, Captain Coles, and Jonesy.  I could hear Jonesy sing his beloved blues songs while Birdie tried to figure out Marla. 

Sunrise Over Fallujah is a wonderfully told story by an author who has told so many stories in the course of my lifetime.  It’s a mature YA read that gives a very detailed account of war through the eyes of American soldiers who don’t understand the real purpose of the war nor what exactly is the prize that will go to the victor.

It’s a coming of age story that shows even after you are officially grown, high school diploma in hand, there is still more growing up to be done.