Trillium by Jeff Lemire My rating: 5 of 5 stars Jeff Lemire ‘s graphic novel reminds me of this version of Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time: The Graphic Novel. As Nika and William come together through time and space and then are separated again, Lemire presents this as happening on two separate planes of […]
Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith My rating: 3 of 5 stars Andrew Smith ‘s book Grasshopper Jungle came highly recommended to me as a secondary school teacher-librarian as something that would connect with those elusive, hard-to-read teens. Scientifically it checks a number of those ‘should-I-buy-it’ boxes: involves issues of gender-identity, bullying, marginalized characters, and it’s […]
Cinder by Marissa Meyer My rating: 3 of 5 stars As much as I wanted to get into this book about a Cyborg with way more problems than Cinderella (who the book loosely resembles), I had trouble with the world-building and the flow of unfolding the politics of this fantastic setting. I had trouble understanding […]
The Bear by Claire Cameron My rating: 4 of 5 stars The UGDSB has just chosen this book as our board-wide novel for secondary students and author Ms. Cameron will be visiting schools in May 2015. After reading this terrifying novel, I am nervous about the problematic areas in Cameron’s choices. As a parent, I […]
My White Pine book club is growing stale. The same few students join every year (which is awesome) but I’m not reaching as far as I’d like to in my secondary school of 1200 students. So I’m trying an additional book club this year in a different format. The book I’ve chosen is “This Dark […]
Drama by Raina Telgemeier My rating: 5 of 5 stars I am so thrilled that there is a female protagonist who loves theatre and isn’t dying to be onstage. Callie is a great role model for pre-teens and teens alike as she is the master of her own learning of stagecraft in order to help […]
“>Friends with Boys by Faith Erin Hicks My rating: 4 of 5 stars I think my favourite thing about the main character, Maggie, is that her personality is so well-developed. Before the ghost is even introduced we find out that: she’s the only girl with 3 brothers, her Dad has a new job, and her […]
DC: The New Frontier, Vol. 1 by Darwyn Cooke My rating: 5 of 5 stars I selfishly chose to read DC: The New Frontier because I’m doing an assignment on DC and I wanted more meat. I’m a self-acclaimed noob when it comes to graphic novels and The New Frontier was my first foray into […]
A Wrinkle in Time: The Graphic Novel by Hope Larson My rating: 5 of 5 stars I am at a disadvantage in reading the graphic novel version of A Wrinkle in Time because I don’t remember the original story enough to compare it. The only thing I do remember is “It was a dark and […]
Owly, Vol. 1: The Way Home & The Bittersweet Summer by Andy Runton My rating: 3 of 5 stars I can’t say this with any certainty but Owly has the feeling of being written for school-aged children. The pictures are sweet and the text is minimal but the stories themselves seem to have a moral […]
The Arrival by Shaun Tan My rating: 5 of 5 stars The universal human experience of moving or migrating is beautifully illustrated in The Arrival. The fact that the story is told without words somehow brings more emphasis to the language of the new city where the main character travels to. Anyone who has travelled […]
The Taming by Teresa Toten My rating: 3 of 5 stars I expect high things from anything that Eric Walters puts his name on. After the Ontario Library Association nominated this as one of the best Canadian young adult fiction of the year, I expected even more. Until halfway through I thought I had found […]
A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to hear Penny Kittle speak about reading and how complex it is for intermediate/senior teachers to teach. Kittle estimates that in 1st year college/university that the average pages a student reads is 500. She proposed that the #1 reason that students drop out after first year […]
Eragon by Christopher Paolini My rating: 3 of 5 stars It’s a solid first novel …. lots of world-building and the dragons are introduced well. Paolini’s writing style is juvenile …. self-indulgent in terms of cryptic vocabulary use, and the plot is predictable. The best part about this book is …the dragon. View all my […]
Under My Skin by Charles de Lint My rating: 3 of 5 stars This Young Adult fantasy begins in Santa Feliz, California in present day. The story unfolds through two voices, Josh and Marina, who are best friends. In this school year, each character has become a Wildling, a shapeshifter from human to animal form. […]
threadbare beauty 