We started reading The Potty Train when I was potty training my oldest who has since mastered it some time ago.  And sadly, I do have to say that no matter how many times we read The Potty Train much to the enjoyment of my three-year-old we have come to a standstill with the potty training.  I’m hoping that you will have better luck than me.

That said, we LOVE The Potty Train! I mean come on, any book that says “Chugga chugga pooo-poooooo!” not only on the cover but also in the story is going to be a huge hit.  My boys love trains so this is perfect for them.  The illustrations are ADORABLE! And we love how learning how to go potty is just like taking a train ride – sometimes you get off track, you might get wet, sometimes you have to wait at crossings but one day you’ll even be able to ride through the night.

Highly recommended for the potty training toddler in your life.  Sadly, I think mine just might enjoy the book more than actual potty training.  We’ve already read it twice today.  I do wish potty training books would come with a 100% guarantee to actually potty train your child. I can dream right?


Links of interest: David Hochman website, Derek Anderson website, more book blogger reviews.
Genre: Fiction picture book. Approx ages baby to preschool.
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing. January 8, 2008
Hardcover, 32 pages. ISBN 1416928332
Copy source: library.
The Potty Train is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

Copyright 2010. Maw Books Blog

Maw Books has an affiliate relationship with several bookstores, including Indiebound, Powell’s, and Amazon . When you buy a product (not just books – any product), via one of my links, Maw Books earns income from the sale and as always, it’s much appreciated as all affiliate income is used to support the blog. There is no cost to you.

What a cute book! And a perfect book for new parents.

What happens when you get a new boss?  He puts you on a round-the-clock schedule with no time off, sets up office smack dab in  the middle of the house, makes demands and when they aren’t met right away has a fit. He conducts many, many meetings and loves to have them in the middle of the night.  No matter that nobody understands him. The boss loves the perks: the lounge, the spa, the gym, and drinks 24/7.  But one day his employees are so tired that they don’t respond to his latest demands.  He’s not getting results!  What’s a boss baby to do?

I can so relate to the demands of the boss baby in this book as well as being the tired, overworked employee.  I think that this is one of those picture books which parents just might enjoy more than their own little bosses in their lives.

Illustrated in Marla Frazee’s traditional style, it’s as usual amazing.  Love it!

Links of interest: Marla Frazee website, also reviewed on Maw Books and illustrated by Marla Frazee: All the World, Santa Claus, the Number One Toy Expert, Walk On! A Guide for Babies of All Ages and The Clementine series.
Genre: Fiction picture book.  Approx ages 4-8.
Publisher: Beach Lane Books. August 31, 2010.
Hardcover, 40 pages. ISBN 1442401672
Source:  Review copy from BEA 2010.
The Boss Baby is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

Copyright 2010. Maw Books Blog

Maw Books has an affiliate relationship with several bookstores, including Indiebound, Powell’s, and Amazon . When you buy a product (not just books – any product), via one of my links, Maw Books earns income from the sale and as always, it’s much appreciated as all affiliate income is used to support the blog. There is no cost to you.

The hermit crab in this story didn’t set out to be a hero.  And he wasn’t particularly brave.  He was, actually, very shy.  Whenever all his neighbors would get together, the hermit crab was happy to linger just out of sight.  If anyone did happen to notice him, he would become terrible nervous and start to fidget.  And then, if they should happen to say something like “Hi” or “How’s it going?” he would disappear into his shell without saying a word.

Or at least how you think it will unfold.  I assumed that the hermit crab would be confronted with a situation in which he had to act very brave.  This act of bravery would bring him out of his shell (quite literally), he’d make wonderful new friends who loved that he was a hero.

But what really happens is that the very shy hermit crab was minding his own business when he happens upon a broken superhero figure buried in the sand.  He thinks this will  make a great new home, so he moves in.  Meanwhile, all the other fish and sea life are in a dire situation.  A trap had one of the fish – well – trapped and they were all too scared to help.  The hermit crab still minding his own business stumbles upon the scene and not knowing that anything fishy (ha – a pun!) was going on accidentally untrapped the fish.

When the other fish begin to celebrate he retreats further into his new home and then later abandons it when nobody is looking.  The attention is just too much.

The book ends

The next day, the hermit crab made his way back to town.  There, still perched on top of the highest rock, was the fancy new shell, empty as the day he’d found it.  But nobody in the crowd noticed.  They were happy to cheer their new hero, while the lobster made speech after speech.

So the hermit crab settled in, just beyond the edge of the crowd, right where he was  most comfortable.

He smiled to himself, and he even cheered the fancy new shell.  But he cheered very softly.

And just a little bit.

He didn’t want to be noticed.

The type of book that makes me smile.  The accidental hero.  My boys love the inclusion of a superhero figure.  I loved the muted greens and blues.  The hermit crab was a very likable character.  The smile on his face when he moves into the superhero figure is priceless.

Links of interest:  More book blogger reviews.
Genre:  Fiction picture book.  Approx ages 4-8.
Publisher:   Simon & Schuster.  June 2, 2009
Hardcover, 40 pages. ISBN 1416938923
Source copy: Review copy sent from publisher fro 2009 Cybils nomination for which I was a panelist.
The Hermit Crab is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

Copyright 2010. Maw Books Blog

Maw Books has an affiliate relationship with several bookstores, including Indiebound, Powell’s, and Amazon . When you buy a product (not just books – any product), via one of my links, Maw Books earns income from the sale and as always, it’s much appreciated as all affiliate income is used to support the blog. There is no cost to you.

I love Deborah Ellis and the synopsis of Bifocal had me itching at the bit to read it:

Haroon is a serious student devoted to his family; Jay is a rising football star devoted to his team.  They may go to the same high school and walk the same hallways, but they are worlds apart. And that’s just the way it is.

One day the high school is put on lockdown, and the police arrest a Muslim student on suspicion of terrorist affiliations.  Is the boy really guilty, or has he been singled out because of his race?  Student loyalties quickly divide along racial lines, and Haroon and Jay will have to take sides with their own kins.

It’s not like they really have a choice.

A good look on what happens when we judge others unfairly and carry prejudices about others that we don’t understand nor feel as though we want to understand.  The story was engaging and Haroon and Jay are characters who grow and change throughout the course of the novel.  Not my favorite Deborah Ellis book (still reserving that for The Breadwinner series) but one well worth having on your radar.  Stories like these are always important.

Links of interest: More book blogger reviews.  Deborah Ellis books also reviewed by Maw Books: The Breadwinner, Mud City, Parvana’s Journey, Lunch with Lenin and Other Stories, The Heaven Shop.
Genre:  Young Adult Fiction
Publisher:  Fitzhenry and Whiteside.   October 15, 2007.
Hardcover,  240 pages. ISBN 155455036X
Source copy: Review copy at my request.
Bifocal is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

Copyright 2010. Maw Books Blog

Maw Books has an affiliate relationship with several bookstores, including Indiebound, Powell’s, and Amazon . When you buy a product (not just books – any product), via one of my links, Maw Books earns income from the sale and as always, it’s much appreciated as all affiliate income is used to support the blog. There is no cost to you.

Laura, a devoted wife, mother and nurse has always been trying to get her mother’s attention.  But Helen, her estranged mother, seems uninterested in anything to do with her daughter.  Instead, she spends all day reminiscing and reading old love letters that her deceased husband wrote while serving in the Korean War and later as a war correspondent during the Vietnam War.

Helen seems only interested in the past and not what’s right in front of her nor the future.  When Helen suffers a debilitating stroke, Laura believes that she can not only make her mother happy again but also close the gap that has grown between them through the years.  Laura has never been privy to her father’s letters but with her mother unable to speak, Laura dives deep into the letters hoping that she’ll finally understand her mother.  In doing so, she discovers buried family secrets and that her own buried secret is shocking similar to that of her own mother.

The story alternates between the present with Laura haggardly trying to maintain a sense of normalcy with her two young children while spending each day at the hospital taking care of with her ailing mother and in the past with Helen’s love story to Joseph, their marriage, and attempts at creating a family despite his constant overseas absences.  I do enjoy books with alternate storytelling and time lines – giving us bits and pieces, slowly revealing key plot points and character insight.

Laura’s husband, Christian is a landscape designer and I loved the references to his beautiful gardens.  Sea Escape, Helen’s home on the beach, felt very real to me.  The book has a very strong sense of place and I appreciate that.  Time as well.  Helen’s role as a mother and housewife in the fifties is strikingly different from that of Laura’s.  It’s easy to see why they so often misunderstood each other.

Ultimately, the novel didn’t live up to it’s potential.  I was bogged down with my disbelief of Helen’s and Laura’s relationship.  As this relationship is the entire basis of the book, everything else just fell for me.

Laura keeps telling herself over and over how much she loves her mother and she desperately wants to make her happy, but nothing is given to show me why she should love her mother.  While her father was alive, her mother only seemed to live for his infrequent coming homes and after he died, Helen pretty much ignores Laura for the rest of her childhood.  Although Laura is the child that Helen took years to conceive, I needed at least one moment of a good solid connection between the two to understand why it was that Laura could continue to give so much when she received so little in return.

As Laura reads her father’s letters she comes to know that both her mother and her father have kept family secrets hidden away from her.  We know that Laura has a secret of her own as well, that she wants to tell her mother before it’s too late.  Because Laura didn’t feel an immediacy to uncover these secrets, reveal her own secrets,  nor read all of her father’s letters, the book didn’t feel very tight.

Truths were revealed without the packing punch that I would expect to accompany them.  Everything was set up really well, and I imagine a second reading would show how carefully crafted Griffin’s story really is, but it lacked the emotional aspect that I would think a book like this would give.  I needed to be shown rather than told how characters felt.  I didn’t believe in the mother-daughter reconciliation (nor that of her brother’s as well) nor the emotions that they were feeling.

For example, one line from Laura: “After years of longing for her presence full and whole, I’d found her laugh, her touch, and her love.  They were hidden behind my lie.”  What laugh, what touch, what love?  I still felt as though this hadn’t quite happened yet.  Plus, I don’t think they were hidden behind Laura’s lie.  Helen emotionally abandoned Laura as a small child, years before Laura’s lie would present itself at age 17.  It wasn’t Laura’s fault, it was Helen’s fault.  Not believing how the characters felt, made it difficult to empathize with them.

I enjoyed the plot line, sense of time and place, the alternate storytelling, and the struggle to attend to an ailing family member but the characters fell flat for me.  Not a perfect read.  It was simply okay when I was hoping for fantastic. Readers who enjoy women’s fiction on the exploration of mothers and daughters may very well give this one a try. Perhaps you’ll feel differently than I.

Links of interest: Lynne Griffin website, Facebook and on Twitter. Visit TLC Book Tours for additional stops on the Sea Escape blog tour.
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Simon and Schuster. July 6, 2010
Hardcover, 304 pages. ISBN 1439180601
Sea Escape is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

Copyright 2010. Maw Books Blog

Maw Books has an affiliate relationship with several bookstores, including Indiebound, Powell’s, and Amazon . When you buy a product (not just books – any product), via one of my links, Maw Books earns income from the sale and as always, it’s much appreciated as all affiliate income is used to support the blog. There is no cost to you.

It took me weeks and weeks to listen to this very short memoir.  I did not like the narrator at all and found myself wincing when I turned the audio back on.  Annoyed.  Very annoyed.  That, of course, hampered my enjoyment.  I really wish I had read this book in print instead of having listened to it.  But even if I had read it, I suspect that I would have felt slightly annoyed with the book itself as well.  I never really connected to A.M. Home’s story which is sad because it’s a memoir.  I always hate when I don’t love a memoir because then it feels like I’m discounting the author’s story.  It’s their life experience.  And I don’t want to dismiss anybody’s life experience as being less than what it is.  But it is what it is, and I never connected with her or her story.

In this memoir, author A.M. Homes  recounts how she was given up for adoption before she was born.  Her adoptive parents won’t tell her anything about her birth, her adoption, or her background.  The Mistress’s Daughter is the story of how at the age of thirty, she reconnects with her birth parents and the road she travels in discovering how she is, who her family is and does that knowledge really change who she is?  In her case, yes, the family narrative she discovers has a direct correlation with her sense of self.

All her life, she knew that there was some secrecy behind her birth.  Her adoptive mother simply wouldn’t give her any answers.  It was these answers that she would have to discover for herself.  She becomes obsessed with genealogy work on both her biological and adoptive sides of the family.  And when her birth mother dies, she hopes to figuratively find her mother in the box of personal effects that she left behind.  And in doing so, she hopes to find herself as well.

I really wanted to love this book but found both her story and the narrator annoying enough that I couldn’t embrace it like I had hoped.   I never understood the motives that drove the story.  Sure, she explained the motives and I knew of them, but I just had a difficult time believing in them.  I never felt convinced of the genuineness and truth of the story.  And I HATE to say something like that particularly for a memoir because it is her truth.  As for me, I simply kept shaking my head and saying, “Really?  I just don’t get this.”

This one of those book reviews that I simply wonder if I would be singing a different tune had I not listened to the audio.  Perhaps I would have been more apt to receive the story had I not been annoyed by the narrator every time  I simply hit the play button.  So, moral of the story?  Skip the audio for this one and read the book.  But even then, I was a bit leary.  I’d be curious to hear what others think of it.  As for me, The Mistress’s Daughter just didn’t do it for me.

Links of interest: A.M Homes website.
Genre: Non-Fiction, Memoir
Publisher: Viking Adult. April 5, 2007
Hardcover, 240 pages. ISBN 0670038385
The Mistress’s Daughter is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

Copyright 2010. Maw Books Blog

Maw Books has an affiliate relationship with several bookstores, including Indiebound, Powell’s, and Amazon . When you buy a product (not just books – any product), via one of my links, Maw Books earns income from the sale and as always, it’s much appreciated as all affiliate income is used to support the blog. There is no cost to you.

Two examples of two different viewpoints of the same event:

johnny reeves
we took a pine
40 feet high and
lashed a cross arm
to it and set the
cross in the ground,
its arms stretching above the town, we soaked burlap bags
in kerosene and wrapped the bags around the wood.
at the foot of the cross i smashed
a railroad torch.
the fire took off so fast.  a divine
sight, neighbor,
the flames spread
from the base to the
top.  in a matter of
minutes the cross arm
pulsed with fire.  the
flames leaping,
seeking heaven
neighbor, the white
crucifix scoring
the night
blazed perfect.
perfect.

leanora sutter

i woke up saturday night
because the light coming through
my bedroom window changed.

on the hill across the valley
i saw
a flame
rising.
but it was
no wild fire. it
was a
cross,
burning.

silently,
silently,
i crept down the hall,
into the closet
where,
at the back,
mamma’s cotton dress
still dangled over her shoes,
and the walls smelled of hair oil and oranges.

in that dark and narrow place,
i opened a hole for myself
but no matter how i turned,
the light from the cross
curled its bright claws under the door.

I did find it interesting but also a bit distracting that there was no capitalization in the entire book.  I suspect that Hesse was stripping the text down to its most simple form.

I have yet to meet a free-verse novel that I didn’t like and this one was no exception.  Hesse has taken on a grim subject matter and thoughtfully portrayed those who were caught up in something larger than themselves.  Beautiful.

Links of interest: More book blogger reviews.
Genre: Historical Fiction, free-verse, ages 9-12.
Publisher: Scholastic. March 1, 2003. Originally published 2001.
Hardcover, 168 pages. ISBN 0439272009
Source copy: Own
Witness is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

Copyright 2010. Maw Books Blog

Maw Books has an affiliate relationship with several bookstores, including Indiebound, Powell’s, and Amazon . When you buy a product (not just books – any product), via one of my links, Maw Books earns income from the sale and as always, it’s much appreciated as all affiliate income is used to support the blog. There is no cost to you.

This is a story of a man who battles his body on a daily basis.  And it’s a battle that he seemingly can’t win.  Not only is his body succumbing to the ravages of the elements and the sheer stress of the actual walkings but his family is being tested to their limit.  Can a family survive a disease that they don’t understand?  One that doctors can’t diagnosis?  One that could possibly be all in his head?

The book is incredibly introspective and one shouldn’t go into it hoping for a fast paced plot.  The beauty of a novel such as this is the intricacies of character, their dynamics and relationships.  Unfortunately unlike other enthusiastic book bloggers, I won’t be filing it under one of the best books I’ve read this year.  It’s hard to pinpoint exactly why this is.   It is incredibly written and Joshua Ferris has pulled off that which could be potentially incredibly boring  – 320 pages about a man who walks around a lot.

But I found myself putting the book down easily, picking it back up reluctantly.  I didn’t find that it consumed my thoughts when I wasn’t reading it.  I wanted to be more enthralled and engrossed and I just wasn’t feeling it.  In fact, I found myself thumbing ahead to see how many pages were left in a chapter so I could put the book down.  And well, that’s never a good sign.  I never considered abandoning it though.  I was fully invested in the story and it’s characters.  I had no idea how it would end and I really wanted to find out. But it felt so slow in getting there.  I could see the beauty of the story and the carefully selected writing yet I didn’t find myself lost inside the book.  I always felt aware that I was reading the book.  I don’t know if that makes sense or not.

As far as character studies go, I would recommend this one.  But ultimately, I don’t think you need to rush out and read it immediately.  It will still be there when, and if, you are ready for it.

Links of interest:  Joshua Ferris website, more book blogger reviews.
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Reagan Arthur Books.  January 18, 2010
Hardcover, 320 pages. ISBN 0316034010
Source:  Review copy from BEA
The Unnamed is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

Copyright 2010. Maw Books Blog

Maw Books has an affiliate relationship with several bookstores, including Indiebound, Powell’s, and Amazon . When you buy a product (not just books – any product), via one of my links, Maw Books earns income from the sale and as always, it’s much appreciated as all affiliate income is used to support the blog. There is no cost to you.

In a coma at the hospital, Mia is able to watch everything that goes on around her including the emotionally charged visits from her grandparents, best friend, and boyfriend.   Mia has a very important decision to make.  Knowing that her life and her family is changed forever from the accident does she fight her way back to reality and the sorrows (and ultimately joy) that will surely follow?  Or does she choose to pass on?  To leave it all behind?  It’s a fascinating premise that had me completely engrossed.

Gayle Forman is able to pack in a wallop of a storyline and character development in just a few short pages.  One thing that I loved about Mia as a character was that she LOVED her parents.  They actually liked to hang out together and TALK to each other.  It’s refreshing to find a family like this in a YA book.  I was impressed with how Forman was able to make me care and know so much about Mia and her family in just the few opening pages of the book.

If I Stay is a very beautiful novel that is well worth reading.  Gayle Forman’s writing was simply fantastic.  In the end, I really really liked it but didn’t LOVE  it, if that makes any sense. There is going to be a sequel and I will definitely read it.   A story well worth following.

Links of interest: Gayle Forman website, more book blogger reviews.
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
Publisher: Dutton Juvenile. April 2, 2009.
Hardcover, 208 pages. ISBN 0525421033
Copy Source: ARC given to me from Kings English Bookshop.
If I Stay is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

Copyright 2010. Maw Books Blog

Maw Books has an affiliate relationship with several bookstores, including Indiebound, Powell’s, and Amazon . When you buy a product (not just books – any product), via one of my links, Maw Books earns income from the sale and as always, it’s much appreciated as all affiliate income is used to support the blog. There is no cost to you.

While eating ants for breakfast (yuk! said my boys), Little Skink is attacked by a crow.  But she has a trick up her sleeve and that is to snap off her bright blue tail which keeps wiggling as she makes her escape. While Little Skink is very happy to be alive she desperately misses her blue tail.  As she meets various animals in the forest that day she imagines what she would look like if she had their tail.  But they are all too fluffy,too bushy, too stubby, too stinky, too prickly or too pointy.  Will she find the perfect tail or will she be in for an even bigger surprise?

My four-year-old LOVES footprints and he really enjoyed a map activity found at the end of book where he matched the footprints to the different animals Little Skink encountered in the forest.  There is also a matching game to identify the tails with the animals as well.  As soon as we finished both activities, he turned to the beginning of the book and narrated the entire thing back to me.  Of course, it was his own narration but he was pretty darn close!

Little Skink’s Tail is a welcome addition to our library and comes with our recommendation as it’s not often that my little guy will spend a good twenty minutes looking at a book on his own.

Links of interest: Janet Halfmann website, Laurie Allen Klein website, more book blogger reviews, posted in conjunction with Cari’s Purple Day Mini-Challenge.
Genre:  Picture Book, approx age 4-8.
Publisher:  Sylvan Dell.  August 10, 2007.
Hardcover, 32 pages.  ISBN  0976882388
Source copy: Review copy from author
Little Skink’s Tail is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

Copyright 2010. Maw Books Blog

Maw Books has an affiliate relationship with several bookstores, including Indiebound, Powell’s, and Amazon . When you buy a product (not just books – any product), via one of my links, Maw Books earns income from the sale and as always, it’s much appreciated as all affiliate income is used to support the blog. There is no cost to you.