Smile Makes Me Smile

Smile by Raina Telgemeier is one of my all time favorite graphic novels.  It was also the 2012 Dorothy Canfield Fisher Award winner.  It is based on the experiences of the author and illustrator.  Click here to hear how she says her name...I mispronounced it for a year after reading Smile...whoops!

It all starts when Raina and her friends are racing home one night after Girl Scouts. Raina trips and falls onto her face.  She loses one of her front teeth and the other front tooth is pushed up into her gums.  Now, these are her adult teeth, so much work has to be done in order for her to heal.  She not only has to go to the dentist often, but also an endodontist (works on dental pulp [#3 on diagram]) and a periodonist (works on cementum and gums [#4 and #5 on diagram]).

This book doesn't just focus on Raina's dental issues, we get to watch as she goes through the 6th through 9th grades.  She deals with her family (little siblings), her friends, headgear, and cute boys.  

I highly recommend this graphic novel.  I've read it three times and I can't wait to read Telgemeier's new book, Drama.   In our Library, Smile is in the stacks @ 617.6 Tel and Drama is @ 741.5 Tel.  Enjoy!

Here is a book trailer that I made for Smile. 

Click here to get to the DCF website.

 

One for the Murphys by Lynda Mullaly Hunt

Last night, I sat down and read one of the 2013-2014 DCF books.  It was recommended to me by Mr. Dobson's daughter (she's an avid reader), and I'm so glad she told me to read it! 


Carley Connors is entered into foster care when her mother is put into the hospital by Carley's stepfather.  Carley adjusts to living with a family who is not her own, but that  is an actual family...something she hasn't experienced before.  She is good at closing herself to the love that the Murphys are offering.  She even helps one of the three Murphy boys with his basketball game.  Will she open up to the love and friendship that are freely offered or will she turn it away until she can go home to her mother?


I highly recommend this book.  It not only deals with the hard situation of being put into the foster care system, but also with experiencing a new school, a new family, and new friends.
Toni is my favorite character, I must say.  She is obsessed with Broadway shows, but particularly with Wicked, my all time favorite show!  You are going to want to listen to the soundtrack when you are done reading.   I hope you'll pick this book up off of the DCF bookshelf at the beginning of the new school year (or at your local library this summer)!  Happy reading!

Click here to see the whole 2013-2014 DCF list!

Perfect Scoundrels by Ally Carter

Nothing can make this librarian smile more than seeing a box in the front office labeled LIBRARY in big, red pen.  I'm not going to lie, I grabbed it, raced to the Library, ripped it open...because I knew what was within.  Not only did we receive some great looking books that have been rumored to be the best books of the year, we received the...*drum roll please*...long-awaited...*long pause*...third book in the fantastic Heist Society series by Ally Carter, Perfect Scoundrels!  I pulled it out of the box, did a little dance, looked around to make sure that no one was watching me, and then danced some more.  I have been waiting for this book to come since it was released on February 5.  The first two books in the series are great (Heist Society and Uncommon Criminals), and Ms. Carter did not disappoint with the third.  

While I am not going to tell you why the book was so wonderful (you have to read it), I will tell you that I picked it up during my lunch break and then dreaded having to start work again.  But when I started reading it after school, I wouldn't...no, couldn't put it down.  

Without giving you too much information...Kat, Hale, and the team are back and better than ever.  After a heist in Heist Society (bk 1) inspires Kat and her crew to work at returning Holocaust art to the original owners, book 3 starts with us seeing Kat do her thing.  An honest sort of dishonesty, they are the only art thieves I'll root for.  All I'll say is that the story takes an unexpected turn when Hale, the wonderfully charming inside man that he is, is thrust back into his world and out of Kat's when he inherits his grandmother's billion-dollar company.  We are reminded that Hale is in fact W.W. Hale the fifth, a name that comes with some major strings attached.  

I couldn't stop reading, I may have shed a tear or two (because of a shocking something-or-other), and I may have tweeted Ally Carter right after finishing because I had loved it so much.  Overall, I enjoyed it and highly recommend Perfect Scoundrels (as well as the rest of the series).  And if you haven't read the Gallagher Girls series by Ally Carter as well, get on it!  

Fiction to Film

As most of our Lamoille campus probably knows now, the Library is focusing on books that have been or will be made into movies!

I love books (obviously) and when new films are made out of my favorite books, I tend to cringe!  Well, first I cheer, then I cringe.  

What if they cut out my favorite scene? 

What if the actor cast doesn't look like the one I had imagined?  

What if they ruin it?  

This past year has been a big year for fiction to film...The Hobbit and Les Miserables were released in December, Life of Pi and Breaking Dawn, pt. 2 in November, Perks of Being a Wallflower in September, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days in August, The Lorax and The Hunger Games in March,  One for the Money in January.  

2013 promises to be a great year of releases as well!  (Let's just hope they are done well!)

• Beautiful Creatures...February
• The Host...March
• Iron Man 3...May (based on Iron Man comics)
• The Great Gatsby...May
• Man of Steel...June (based on Superman comics)
• The Wolverine...July (based on X-Men comics)
• Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters...August
• Mortal Instruments: City of Bones...August
• The Seventh Son...October (based on Revenge of the Witch by Joseph Delaney)
• Ender's Game...November
• Thor: The Dark World...November (based on Thor comics)
• Catching Fire...November 
• The Hobbit...December

So come on down, grab a book, and read it before you see the movie!

And don't forget to enter a short film or movie trailer based on a book in our contest! Prizes will be awarded!

Just a quick list...

We have some awesome books that have been streaming in from our orders over the past few months.  As they cross my desk, I have to flip through the first few pages of many of them, because I am just so ready to dig in!  Below is a list of some of the books that I cannot wait to read...(just so I don't forget).

Non-Fiction:

• The Town that food saved by Ben Hewitt (about Hardwick, VT)

• Start something that matters by Blake Mycoskie

• Through the Lens by National Geographic...amazing pictures

• Using Poetry across the Curriculum by Barbara Chatton

• Fierce and True by the Children's Theatre Company

• The Brave Escape of Edith Wharton by Connie Wooldridge

• Get real by Mara Rockliff

• Roman Cookery by Mark Grant

• Encyclopedia of Needlecraft by Firefly

• Ideas that changed the world

Fiction:

• Code name Verity by Elizabeth Wein
• The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater (author of the Scorpio Races, she is fantastic!)

• The Peculiars by Maureen McQuerry (character: a librarian named Jimson Quiggley...could anything be better?)

• Every Day by David Levithan

• The Brides of Rollrock Island by Margo Lanagan

• Foiled (graphic novel...started it, put it down, need to pick it back up)

• Endlessly by Kiersten White (started it, didn't want the series to end so I put it down, need to face the music and pick it back up).

• The Twin's Daughter by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

• Raised by Wolves by Jennifer Barnes

• Black Heart by Holly Black

• The Betrayal of Maggie Blair by Elizabeth Laird

• Blood Red Road by Moira Young

• Dead Beautiful by Yvonne Woon

• Dust City by Robert Paul Weston

• Father of Lies by Ann Warren Turner

• Buddha in the attic by Julie Otsuka

• The Eternal Ones by Kirsten Miller

• The talk-funny girl by Ron Merullo

• Meridian by Amber Kizer

• Darkness Becomes her by Kelly Keaton

• Fallen Grace by Mary Hooper

• Friends with Boys by Faith Erin Hicks

• Clarity by Kim Harrington

• Unearthly by Cynthia Hand

• Abandon by Meg Cabot

Books I have read lately that I will soon post about:

• A Bride's Story by Kaoru Mori
• Grave Mercy by Robin Lafevers
• Scarlet by A.C. Gaughen (AH!)
• Dreamless by Josephine Angelini
• Olivia and the Fairy princesses by Ian Falconer
• Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich by Adam Rex
• Avengers Academy by Christos Gage
• Thor by Roger Langridge
• The Demon trapper's daughter by Jana Oliver
• All of George O'Connell's mythology graphic novels
• Hourglass by Myra McEntire
• Keeping the castle by Patrice Kindl
• Brain camp by Susan Kim
• The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
• Bossypants by Tina Fey
• Amazing Agent Jennifer
• Finnikin of the Rock (I'm in love)