Contests Books

Gloria Houston's Littlejim is a winner on many levels. Her writing characterizes early 20th century Appalachian natives with the dignity and respect they deserve. Her attention to historic detail allows elementary and middle school teachers to have full faith in her accurate descriptions of mountain life and cultural practices. Littlejim's exciting activities provide enough fodder to satisfy any little boy's ideas of adventure. But the most outstanding thing about the book is its tender portrayal of a son and father who experience a very difficult relationship. For many adolescents, this book is a lifesaver: reading about Littlejim's mature attitude and refusal to part with hope will bolster the self-confidence of any young person.
What is amazing is that this book's setting is so specific (and enjoyable in that respect) but its subject matter is universal: everyone has to deal with difficult relationships in life. Littlejim shows us how we can deal with them and still hold our head up.

Little Jim is an "artistic" boy living in the Appalachians with a "manly man" for a father. He struggles to please his father while being true to himself. Surely we've all known someone in this situation. The way Little Jim copes will be encouraging to many of these young people. The sense of place is true to the Appalachia of an earlier time. Young people may learn a lot about this rich culture while enjoying this wonderfully written story.

Poor Litlejim was how my fourth graders always referred to the main character in this book. Poor Littlejim tried and tried to please his father, but always ended up being hurt and disappointed. By the time we were two-thirds through the book, many of my students were beginning to doubt the validity of the characters. Bigjim, the father, was so one-dimensional, that we could predict his reaction to every situation. We did, however, enjoy this authentic look into mountain life, written by a person who knows the region firsthand. For an excellent book by this author, please read The Year of the Perfect Christmas Tree.

Lately Laura McCoy has been causing trouble for Colleen Cooper. The problem is for Colleen is she doesn't know why she is doing it. She has never in her live made trouble for Laura McCoy. There is a spelling bee at there school and the best two spellers get to go to Weisport. Will it be as Colleen planned and go to Weisport with her best friend Becky or will it turn out dredfully wrong for Colleen!

Some fans of the show may like it, but to me it was a let down. It's too sappy and well.....kind of boring. She did a good job in keeping in touch with the characters, though.

The setting is in Colorado Springs in a small town. It takes place after the civil war. In the town there's a doctor name Dr. Quinn. She adopted three Cooper kids name, Matthew, Colleen and Brain. And married an Indian name Sully. The book is about a new girl name Laura who is in Colleen and Brain's class. She tells lies about Colleen to her classmates. But there's a spelling bee in Weisport and only two students get to go. Read this book in order to find out the rest. I love this book. Because I love the t.v. show Dr. Quinn. You should also read Queen of May Dr. Quinn

Certainly not Robert Munschs best work. Hard for a four year old to follow and remain interested in.

It's always fun to see how Robert Munsch is going to explore with "his kids." A fun book and, as usual, Michael Martchenko's illustrations are first rate.

Another Robert Munsch book my kid's ask me to read again and again.

I couldn't put this book down after getting through the first two chapters. I laughed out loud, cried and being a true southern belle myself could really relate to Georgia, the main character. Where can I sign up for my own Tiara club?

Georgia Elliot has lived in her beloved small southern hometown, Ocean Sands, Mississippi all her life, as her momma and family before her. Though it's a bit like living in a fish tank, everybody knows each other's "people" and life's history, Georgia feels safe. Vivian, her mother, lives just across the street from her in the house where Georgia grew up.

Georgia has tried hard to live up to being the epitome of Southern genteel womanhood: she is a former beauty pageant winner, works in a fine gift shop and had a short marriage (well divorce is the norm nowadays) to the man who is now the mayor of Ocean Sands and who is going to marry Georgia's closest friend Callie. But Georgia has a deep dark secret - she's not just a beauty, she's an intelligent woman who has invented a cooking gadget that can save time and effort for harried mothers and housewife's the world over. It's called the Miracle Chef. But as her mother taught her, it's not proper for a woman to be too brainy to have done something so crass as to be an inventor, so in order to keep her mama happy, Georgia needs to keep her invention a secret.

But that becomes a big problem when a popular TV kitchen show receives a letter touting the Miracle Chef and sends its famous and fabulously good-looking host, Daniel Rogers, son of Hollywood legendary stars, to find out more about the product.

Sparks fly when Daniel meets Georgia. Afraid that her secret will be outed, breaking her momma's heart and will to live (though no one is certain why Vivian has such deeply ingrained feelings) Georgia cooks up a plan to keep Daniel out of her kitchen, by entertaining him in the bedroom.

Georgia and her circle of close friends all belong to the Tiara Club, a group made up of former Southern beauty pageant queens, and one Yankee woman who's new to town and in dire need of friends. At the same time, Georgia's oblivious to the fact there are others in town who also have secrets hidden from everyone - or so they think.

In turns wacky and slapstick, or sometimes poignant and heartfelt, and at moments heated with simmering passion, The Tiara club is the Southern literary equivalent to TV's Desperate Housewives!

Though the theme of the story is all about secrets not so well or necessarily kept, the heart of this book is the loving relationships between these ladies and their lifelong respect and affection for their town, their way of life and their families. The Tiara Club lets the outside world in to the southern belle's club, permitting the rest of us to get some understanding of the mindset of the women who would never dream of walking outside without their nails done properly, their bags matching their outfits and their inner lives very much secreted inside their always politely smiling faces.

If I could give this book 1 1/2 stars, I would - unfortunately the system's not set up to give half-stars. I found this southern chick lit style book to be the least-believeable of all the chick lit books I've read that are set in the south.

The intimate scenes were unnecessary as far as plot or character development goes, and the friendships on the whole were fairly two-dimensional.

The main scenario with the daughter being afraid to 'be smart' in front of her mother and share her inventions was highly unbelievable. And the reason for the mom being afraid of her daughter being a smart girl and woman was frankly stupid coming from a clever, manipulative woman that she was, especially after said daughter was now an ADULT and not a vulnerable child.

The twist at the end was beyond ludicrous, and that is putting it mildly.

The only thing that kept me going was my innate urge to finish what I start - not always a useful trait, in this situation.

One of my teachers read this to our class in 5th grade and we thought it was the funniest thing ever.

Re-reading it as a grad student, it's just as hilarious and is a great reminder of how clean humor can still work. Of course the plot is completely unrealistic, but it doesn't matter as this is a COMEDIC novel.

The book Banana Blitz was quite funny in places (especially the relationship between Jonah and Goober), but the plot set up was unrealistic. It's not believable that parents could send their son off to boarding school without knowing what actually went on there regarding junk food, television, etc. Without giving away the ending, I'll just say that it was also not very believable. However, this book is a children's story, so that can be forgiven. Overall, this book was well written and very funny.

Clifford the big red dog has become a big franchise. The repetitiveness of the series soon becomes boring to adults. Basic plot: Clifford gets in trouble, but he's such a good dog, it always works out in the end. BUT, the kids in my library like them. They check them out over and over and the lessons that are taught and the good fun makes them good, but not great books.

My little 5 year old sister love this book. She'll come up to me and ask me to read it. It also teaches them that being good isn't always the best.

Using the long-running Cherry Blossom Festival as a vehicle, Christine Yano assembled nothing less than a socioethnic treatise of a rather closed and close-knit segment of Hawaii, Japanese Americans. Reading more like a thesis than a book for general distribution, Crowning the Nice Girl compels the reader to examine through the contestants in the beauty pagaent the evolution of AJA societal mores (here I go sounding like the author -- and not that there is anything wrong with that), from the requirement of having a Japanese surname, to allowing a token mixed-race contestant, to allowing one to win as long as she had a Japanese surname and didn't look non Japanese, and finally to hapa Catherine Toth's wonderful breakthrough crowning in 2004.

Niceness is part of the stereotype of Japanese Americans in Hawaii. They are seen and see themselves as avoiding controversy, promoting social harmony, blending in, and working diligently without complaint. This is the stereotype of the docile plantation worker, the reliable bureaucrat, and efficient secretary. This stereotype ignores historical incidents of labor strikes led by Japanese workers. It ignores the very deliberate negotiations and maneuvering that resulted in the Democratic Revolution of 1954, which swept Japanese Americans into political office. More recently, it ignores the favoritism and cronyism of Japanese Americans in power who hand put lucrative jobs and contracts to insiders (Yano 241).

At the end of the Second World War, Japanese Americans sought to carve out a space of their own - the Cherry Blossom Festival (CBF) would be this space of "emplacement" (Yano 5, 37). In the early `50s the Honolulu Japanese Junior Chamber of Commerce (HJCC) created the CBF as a local Japanese Hawaiian event - focusing on an upwardly mobile urban elite situated squarely in Honolulu (Yano 3, 52-53). The CBF was to be the flagship event that would exemplify the qualities and self description of the local HJCC vis-à-vis the local Issei, Nisei, and Sansei in O'ahu in general but Honolulu in particular (Yano 240-242).

The book starts with the CBF beauty pageant in particular but also explores its place in the vast array of Asian American beauty pageants and deftly problematizes their place in the general practice of community formation. In the process, Yano uncovers other "issues" that entrenched in community histories, and moves to examine their transnational impact (Yano 43-44 and 128-129). Modeled on the Miss America contest, this process can be seen as a space of contestation as well as adherence. On the one hand, Yano observes the pageant becoming "Japanese" as the focus is placed on the contestants "niceness" as opposed to how well they can carry themselves in a swimsuit. On the other hand, the confusion surrounding the description of the CBF as "beauty pageant" against a "cultural pageant" still looms ominously over the same (Yano 20, 24, 238-239). Turning back to a more quotidian analysis - Yano examines the pageant throughout the decades from its inception all the way through to the 1990s. The analysis moves from describing the day to day events to the ever changing goals of the HJCC and the internal struggles of the contestants. If there is any shortcoming to be identified - it was the lack of `herstories" - extensive narratives drawn from interviews with CBF queens - that draw you into intimate conversation with the former winners and contestants. I like people - that is just me - so I just wanted to read more. The "herstories" strategy of including the stories "in her own words" is both a powerful yet intimate source of insight. Yano's intervention is unique in that it situates touchy issues such as race, ethnicity, and community and fuses these themes with the tricky notions niceness, spectacle and banality.

Yano walks a really fine line between objective academic outsider and feeling "Nice Girl" insider. The quote above almost compels her to self-censor her work in an effort to avoid offending - if at all - members of a community she is involved in. The quote above reminds us of the dangerous stereotype of the "Model Minority." My read, and this could very well be off-the-mark, is that this book placed a different texture to the whole debate of the model minority and the struggle for civil rights. It seems like one would be, like Yano herself, to not want to run roughshod over the "Nice Girls" that represent the "Nice Community." However, it is this very niceness that informed the discourse began by white civil society to coin terms like the "Model Minority" (or a close facsimile of it). The term "Problem Minority" was first used in print in the New York Times Magazine on January 9, 1966 in an article called: "Success Story: Japanese American Style" by sociologist William Peterson.

"Crowning the Nice Girl" is a sensitive analysis of the ironic need for spectacle in a realm that celebrates banality (Yano 5-7). The resilience of the pageant through its decades of development to the present within multiple frameworks of gender, class, and race/ethnicity is intimately explained (Yano 245). Yano writes, "Japanese Americans became privileged members of the mainstream, and the CBF"s very banality proved that they no longer needed to substantiate their power. Banality, then, may be considered the privilege of the already emplaced (Yano 245). An amazing archivist, Yano reaches into a broad range of primary sources to draw this picture of a community in transition. Yano utilizes the CBF annual reports, interviews with former CBF winners, contestants, and HJCC organizers. Using an ethnographic method - Yano situates herself as an insider as a volunteer in the CBF's Fiftieth Annual Festival. Using the pageant as a foil what Yano really paints is a multifaceted picture of community in flux - dynamic in its search for "emplacement." In the end, problematizing the pageant makes Yano anything but the "Nice Girl" described above but it is the Yano that I appreciate for having the courage and skill to create this work. Do not let the brevity of this review fool you into thinking I only "liked" the book - it is one of the most profound cultural examinations I have had the pleasure to read.

Miguel Llora

Elizabeth gets really boring in this one.She is so set on winning Model Student that instead of the goodygoody but fun,down2earth girl we know,she starts acting like a 70 year old librarian and annoying the hell out of EVERYONE!

In this story, Elizabeth is nominated for "Model Student of the Year," the award given to the best student at Sweet Valley Middle School. However, Elizabeth lets this get to her head and she starts treating people in a very snobby manner. And at the end, she learns that just because you have an award doesn't mean you're better than everyone else. It's a great story and I recommend you check it out! The Sweet Valley Twins series is fun!

After reading 1453 I have been waiting more than a year for Crowley's next book but alas, I read it in just 2 days so my first complaint is that 300 pages is not enough - it deserves at least 500 pages, hence 4 stars. There were some typos which the publisher missed and the maps were insuficient.
An example of an area that could have received more explanation was the innovation of the galleasses which after further development made the galleys obsolete .

Empires of the Sea rates a solid 4 stars. In a bit under 300 pages (plus footnotes and index) it covers a 50-year history of the struggle for control of the Mediterranean from 1521 to 1571. That's actually quite a lot of ground in 300 pages, considering what went on. So if you want a good general overview, the book is good. There are a few maps up front, a section with photographs--mostly of old paintings, plus a lot of woodcuts depicting mostly battle scenes and people. The woodcuts are fine, but at times you acutely feel the lack of some good modern-style maps of the action. Goodness knows, there are plenty of current maps showing the fleets at Lepanto and also the sieges on Malta.

I must admit to prejudice here. I still have my copy of Ernle Bradford's magnificent history The Great Siege--paperback, from 1966, cost 5 shillings, and getting quite threadbare from rereading every few years. When one great book like this can spawn a 40-year interest in the subject, you know that you have an outstanding work indeed. Bradford's book is almost entirely limited to the siege of Malta, whereas Crowley's book covers this in under 100 pages. You get much more detail with Bradford, and a dramatic sense of the struggle, much more so than with Crowley. The focus is narrower--so for breadth, turn to Crowley, for depth to Bradford. Both books will give you a look at the personalities involved, and both convey the aspects of warfare at the time. So this is a good addition to your history shelf.

Nina is in fifth grade. Her friend Isobel has always been "the smart one" and Nina's always been "the artistic one." With the help--or interference--of magic, this gets turned on its head. Trying to use the magic to fix things just makes them worse. In the end, Nina has to drop the tricks and be herself in order to put her life on an even keel again. The people around her understand her better when she does, too.

Almost everybody has thought about how to use three wishes, or magic powder, or a million dollars. It's fun to watch one more attempt, and I really didn't mind that some of the scenes were predictable and others were a little unrealistic. Predictable: when Nina's best friend drops her, she meets a couple of other kids and finds out she can have other friends. Predictable: Nina hunts all over for the person she got the magic from and can't find her. At the end of the book, a door opens and there she is! Unrealistic: there's a whole competition among multiple classes about which kid knows the most about New Amsterdam, which is just one unit in their history class? Unrealistic: she takes parsnips to a pot-luck?

Most of the book is realistic and fun, however. The dialog is snappy: her mom's wake-up call is, "In five minutes there will be a hot piece of toast and a hot scrambled egg on the table. In six minutes there will be a cold piece of toast and a cold scrambled egg on the kitchen table. In seven minutes there will be NO TOAST AND NO EGG ON THE KITCHEN TABLE. So get up." The two of them make a nice family.

In a few months I will have forgotten that I read this book, probably. But it's enjoyable while it lasts, and I'm pretty hopeful that the author's next books will be even better.

This book is a breezy, fun read about friendship and growing up. The girl's adventures are magical in a way, but the story is grounded in a very real-world situation, a 5th grade girl trying to figure out who she is, who her real friends are, and what matters in life. What's great is that the message is not preachy and didactic, but heartfelt and very clear. I think it will help young girls think about identity-- while also making them laugh.