The Red Blazer Girls: The Vanishing Violin by Michael Beil

The Red Blazer Girls: The Vanishing Violin by Michael D. Beil

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This is the second book in the Red Blazer Girl series. I listened to the first book and surprisingly enjoyed it (I normally don't like mysteries). I think a lot of it had to do with the reader of the book on cd being very good. So, when book two came out, I thought I'd give it a try.



There's nothing wrong with the story or anything like that; maybe my heart wasn't wholly into listening to another mystery or something...but I found my mind wandering during the story--not so much that I wasn't following the story, but enough where I felt that maybe I shouldn't listen to any more books in this series.



This story involves the same four girls as in the first one; this time they start out trying to find out who is mysteriously cleaning their school after hours, which then turns into a need to discover who stole a violin from the shop where Margaret goes...which is going on while Margaret receives a bow from an unnamed source that leads to the girls needing to solve a whole other set of clues provided by the sender (that would probably be impossible for most adults to solve, but that's beside the point!).



Maybe I got lost in the three big storylines, along with the bunch of new characters that are added to the ones from book one. It was kind of a lot to keep track of! Again, it's not impossible, but I suppose all of this added together soured me a bit on the story (and I want to know how these girls have so much energy--they go from meeting at the coffee shop before school, attending school all day, stopping at someone or other's house, practicing with their band, doing homework, etc., etc. EVERY day...it's simply exhausting to think about! Maybe I'm just jealous).



All in all, girls who enjoyed the first one will undoubtedly enjoy this one. Not only do the girls have mysteries to solve; there are also snotty classmates and boys to handle as well!



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Life-Size Zoo by Teruyuki Komiya

Life-Size Zoo: From Tiny Rodents to Gigantic Elephants, An Actual Size Animal Encyclopedia by Teruyuki Komiya

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This is the first of the _Life-Size_ books; I received the next one, titled _More Life-Size Zoo_, first...but they don't need to be read in order; after all, it's a nonfiction book!



This book is just as neat as the first one I read: the photographs are big and clear and have a handful of facts about the animal on each picture.



My favorite animals in this book include the red panda and the sloth: interesting animals include the aardvark and the anteater; and the animals that grossed me out were the armadillo and the rhinoceros.



I just found out that there is an aquarium version as well, so I put it on hold.



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More Life-Size Zoo by Teruyuki Komiya

More Life-Size Zoo: An All-New Actual-Size Animal Encyclopedia by Teruyuki Komiya

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I found out about this book from one of the journals the library subscribes to. I interlibrary loaned it because the library doesn't own it, and I discovered that I'd really like to add this to the collection!



It is a book of photos of animals one might see at the zoo, which is always cute, but what makes this book special is that all of the pictures are the actual size of the animals! Noteworthy photos include the polar bear and the lion...but my personal favorite is the lion cub and the baby gibbon. (I was kind of grossed out by the hippo and the bison).



Kids will love this book! It's taller than most books, so it'll be a pain to shelve...but hopefully it'll be checked out more than not.



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Gideon the Cutpurse by Linda Buckley-Archer

Gideon the Cutpurse: Being the First Part of the Gideon Trilogy by Linda Buckley-Archer

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


_Gideon the Cutpurse_ is the first book in this trilogy. I had wanted to read this story for a while, and I’m glad I finally got around to it! I enjoyed it and am looking forward to reading (or listening to) the second one.



The story begins normal enough—in present-day England—with a young teen named Peter. His parents are very focused on working, so his birthday gets pushed to the side. He ends up having to spend the day with his nanny (?) and accompanies her to her friend’s farm. There, he meets the Dyer family and gets to see the special area where Mr Dyer works on science experiments. During a tour, the family dog gets spooked so Peter and Kate (the oldest daughter and Peter’s age) chase it and suddenly find themselves in a totally different place.



After a while, Peter and Kate learn that they are no longer in the 21st Century; rather, it is 1763! They are at a total loss as to what to do until a kind man named Gideon helps them find “proper” clothing, somewhere to stay, and plan how to locate the man who took the machine they appeared in 1763 with before he sells it.



This is story has likable characters and is told at a good pace. It ends on a cliffhanger, and I’m very interested to see what will happen next! Suggest the Ulysses Moore series to those who enjoyed this.





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The Boy Who Drew Cats [adpated] by Arthur A Levine

The Boy Who Drew Cats: A Japanese Folktale by Arthur A. Levine

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Well, I have to say that I didn't enjoy this version of _The Boy Who Drew Cats_ as much as the first one I read by Margaret Hodges.



Because this is an old, old folktale, writers who retell this tale can add as much or as little as s/he likes, I suppose. Having read the Hodges version first, this version by Levine feels bogged down with extra details that the reader doesn't necessarily need. Also, the pictures in the Hodges version are much neater!



All in all, the reader gets the idea of the original folktale in each version; I happen to prefer the Hodges version instead.



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The Other Half of My Heart by Sundee Tucker Frazier

The Other Half of My Heart by Sundee T. Frazier

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


11-year old Minni and Keira are twins…but not only are they not identical, Minni is white (she has light skin and red hair) and Keira is black (she has dark skin and dark hair). This difference was able to occur because their mother is black and their father is white. The girls never really gave it that much thought, but Minni begins to notice how some strangers treat Keira differently from her (in school, in stores, etc.), and Minni suspects that it’s because of the color of Keira’s skin.

The girls feel this difference even more when they visit their grandmother and enter a beauty pageant for black girls; the other girls competing tell Minni that she’s not really black because of the color of her skin. On the surface of it all, Minni knows that’s not true, but deep down she becomes confused and wonders if she is white, or black, or…maybe, a mixture of both?

This is a great story about how a girl tries to find herself as she enters adolescence, which is made all the more difficult because her sister’s skin doesn’t match her own. For more books about sisters that readers might also enjoy, try The Sisters Club series (MacDonald).

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The Boy Who Drew Cats adapted by Margaret Hodges

The Boy Who Drew Cats by Margaret Hodges

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I learned about this Japanese folktale from the book Wild Things by Clay Carmichael. This is a story about a Japanese boy who is the youngest boy in his large family. Because he isn’t physically built for farm work like the rest of his family, his parents decide to have him apprentice to the town’s priest so that he might become a priest one day.

However, the boy has an odd desire to draw cats all of the time. When he’s at the temple, he draws cats everywhere—enough to make the priest tell him that he would be better off as an artist—so he gets sent away. Before the boy leaves, the priest tells him to remember to not sleep in big spaces—to only sleep in small spaces. The boy doesn’t understand, but doesn’t ask the priest to clarify.

Rather than go home and shame his family, the boy decides to go to the temple in the next town. When he arrives, it appears as though no one is there. While waiting for someone to arrive so that he could ask to be apprenticed to one of them, he finds some ink and draws cats all over. When it gets late and the boy grows tired, he remembers the priest’s words and decides to sleep in a small cabinet.

During the night, the boy wakes to the awful sounds of screaming and fighting. Terrified, he stays still in his cabinet and doesn’t even peek through the crack until daytime. When finally does, he sees the dead and mutilated body of some sort of huge goblin. The boy wonders who could have killed this evil being until he looks around and sees that all of the mouths of the cats he had drawn are red with blood.

He then understood the priest’s advice…and was able to grow up to be a famous artist!

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