Overcast and cloudy again today. Yesterday was a stormy one. I watched lightening streak across the sky and strke the ocean while I worked out on my elliptical. Having it on the porch is nice as I get the ocean breezes and get to watch the boats go by, or the light show from a thunderstorm, like yesterday. I felt sorry for the people on the ferries coming from St. John and Tortolla as the boats bounced on the waves. Much calmer today. Steve came home and got me at lunch time so I could run errands this afternoon. We had tacos at Charlotte Tamalie - a cute local place by Havensight.

Although movies are sporadic with our online/mail Blockbuster membership it is fun to see what comes in. We watched Johnny Depp in Neverland last night. Wonderful movie. I cried at the end and told Steve how sad - he saw it differently. Perhaps he is right - I just need to believe. :-)

Read an adult book for a change. MJ was looking through the paperbacks with me on the book exchange rack in Bottom's Up the other evening and handed me a Dean Koontz book. At 23 months old he couldn't have known Koontz is an author I used to read, back when my kids were in their teens. So, I took it home and began to read, quickly remembering why I like his books. The Taking is about a couple who help save children when an alien entity takes over the earth and "takes" people. Basically the earth is purged of all but a handful of adults, picked for their skill sets, and the children. Some of the adults smile when they are "taken", others scream. Are they going to the same place? Is Hell really down there? As always, Koontz leaves the reader with as many questions as answers.

Back to working on syllabi for the Fall - it will be the end of August before I know it.

Another nasty windy day here in the VI. I have the energy of a slug when the weather is like this. Feels like I should just curl up and read with the cat in my lap. We went into Red Hook last night to have pizza at Sop Choppys and about got blown off the deck. Ended up changing tables after we were cascaded with rain. Steve loves the stormy weather. He came home and sat out on the porch - not me! I am ready for some sunshine. Lost sight of a small sailboat in a bank of rain earlier this a.m. I sure wouldn't want to be out there right now.

Read the third in the trilogy of Harry Mazer's Pacific WWII novels, Heroes Don't Run. It is a solid addition to a YA collection, but at 108 pages it lacks depth. Adam enlists, under age, against his mother's wishes, in the Marines. The intensity of Marine boot camp isn't here, nor the terror of war as they fight on Okinawa. The first in the trilogy, A Boy At War, would be a good companion novel to Graham Salisbury's Under the Blood Red Sun, which is a fantastic novel about a Japanese boy in Hawaii during WWII. Although not as strong as other WWII novels for teens, Mazer's trilogy is appropriate for MS/JR high readers. Not all books have to knock your socks off when you read them, some are just solid additions that should be in a collection.

White caps out on the water today. Was glad we decided to stay home and watch fireworks on TV last night rather than going over to St. John. The weather was not good. Just can't seem to get myself to settle into anything today - have done a bit of this and that, but need to settle in and get some work done. Maybe it is the weather making me so restless.

Read a wonderful Orca ARC (available in Sept.) during the weekend - Red Sea by Diane Tullson. The author sailed the Red Sea so she knows the area well and the very real threat of pirates. Fourteen-year-old Libby is not a happy sailor - she doesn't want to be on this trip with her mom and stepdad and makes sure they know how irritated she is - including getting back to the boat late so that they miss sailing out with the rest of the group of boats. Alone on the sea, pirates attack while Mom is on watch. She panics and fires a flare gun on them, which causes them to open fire with an AK-47. Libby's sailing skills will determine if this is a survival story or not. I couldn't put it down.

Okay - at least I should get some laundry done!

Yahoo! My first day of summer vacation. I had "quality time" with Sophie this a.m. - she curled up on me to get her neck scratched while I read for a bit. A wonderful quiet house, but I have major cleaning to do before we have friends over for BBQ chicken on Sunday. A toddler can do a real number on your bookcases, etc. He loves books, but taking them out of the book shelves is the most fascinating part. :-)

Just finished Karen Blumenthal's Let Me Play: The Story of Title IX, the Law that Changed the Future of Girls in America. Blumenthal also wrote the 2003 Sibert Award winner - Six Days in October: The Stock Market Crash of 1929. She has a way of writing about a "dry" subject and giving it life. The inclusion of cartoons related to Title IX and girls in sports are a visual treat to break up the text, along with the scorecard of girls vs. boys involvement in sports through the years, beginning with 1971-72. Also included are player profiles and other boxes with supplemental information that give this book appeal, even for the reader who only explores the boxed information and the statistics. This is a dream book for librarians as it has all the extras we want - time line, then and now quotes, extensive source notes, print and online list of age appropriate further resources, a selected bibliography, and the necessary index. The only complaint I have about this book is that it tends to support the false impression that Title IX is only about sports in schools. One of the major impacts of Title IX is the increase of female doctors, lawyers, etc. I wish more of the profiles were on women and their role in once all male careers - engineering, law, etc. - along with the athletes. Nevertheless, this is a gotta have for any upper elementary or MS collection.

Now to take on the challenge of cleaning up this mess!

Back to normal - or as normal as it gets - around here. Mary and MJ left yesterday a.m. It was a busy week - mostly running after him. I tried to toddler proof this place but I didn't do a very good job. Worst part was him finding a fire ant hill at Bluebeard's. Poor little guy. I think I got as many bites stripping his clothes off. I am enjoying the peace and quiet this a.m.

Been carrying around the paperback edition of Sharon M. Draper's The Battle of Jericho in my purse for weeks and finally finished it. It is very clear why this is a Coretta Scott King award book. Jericho and his cousin Josh want to become members of the Warriors of Distinction, a club that Josh's Dad had been in years before and one that was highly thought of by the community. Jericho has finally gotten the attention of Arielle, the girl of his dreams, and she is attending pledge functions with his, such as the afternoon of sorting and wrapping gifts for the kids. But the deeper into the club Jericho gets the more he questions their credibility. The demand to do anything asked of them includes stealing Christmas ornaments. The pledge activities extend beyond humiliation to down right dangerous. They all think Dana, the only female pledge, is the one in danger but it turns out to be Josh who pays the price of the Warriors' pledge activities. Superb book that exposes hazing and the consequences.

Off to my last full day at Montessori for the year.

Steve was sweet and let me sleep in this a.m. instead of getting up and taking him to work. He will be here in a bit to pick me up so I can get to the airport by 3:30 to pick up Mary and MJ. I hope she didn't have too bad of a time in Miami. She was changing airlines and that airport is huge. I've walked 20 minutes between gates. A toddler in a stroller and a rolling carry on couldn't be easy to deal with.

Not having to get up at 6 a.m. was heavenly. I didn't even hear Steve leave. Been cleaning and moving things up higher and further back on the dressers and desks. MJ is very tall for not quite two and has the reach of an octopus! He is going to have a field day in this apt. since it certainly is far from toddler proof, even after a morning of closing up and moving things. Bought a car seat, a booster highchair you can strap to a regular chair, a toddler size deck chair, a truck for the beach and a bag of beach toys (pail, bucket, etc.) and diapers. It has been awhile since I've had these things around my house. Can't believe Mary will be 26 next month. But, I do love being a gramma. :-)

There are some writers who just have a style of writing that flows as smoothly as silk. One of them is Janet Taylor Lisle. Afternoon of the Elves was my favorite Lisle book until I finished The Crying Rocks this week. I have heard the Native American legends of how you can hear crying where the mothers leave their handicapped children at birth - it is in the wind that whips up from no where and swirls about you. The Inuit had a similar story in Alaska. The Crying Rocks is the location where the Narragansett women threw their handicapped newborns into the swamp below to die. Their grieving cries causes the hair on your neck to stand on end and your feet to begin running before you brain knows it! When Carlos tells the story to Joelle and tells her she looks like the girls in the Narragansett mural in the library she becomes obsessed with the mural and with finding out more about the tribe and herself. Against his better judgment Carlos takes Joelle to the Crying Rocks and what they see and hear scares them silly. They know that this is more than a story - what Joelle finds in the mud confirms that. When an unexpected death occurs Joelle learns who she is and why she feels as if someone is walking behind her, in her tracks. She discovers who her birth family is and how she came to live with Aunt Mary Louise, who tells her stories of how she arrived on a freight train when she was but 5 years old.

Not surprising - this is a Richard Jackson book from Simon & Schuster. Hardback came out in 2003, but I read it in paperback. The cover illustration of a young girl looking down is very visually appealing. I picked it up for that reason and read it because it is a Lisle book. A must have for all MS collections.

Happy Father's Day! We decided to celebrate Gramma's and Grampa's Days since we now have little grandkids. One of them will be here on Weds. and the other in August. We decided we are really are getting old because Dave Mason looks like an old guy on the DVD I gave Steve. :-)

A box of Simon & Schuster books came in yesterday and it felt like Christmas. The first one I grabbed to read is Sandpiper by Ellen Wittlinger. She is one of my favorite YA authors as Ellen writes it like it is - she doesn't pull any punches about what teens are like. My favorites are Hard Love and Leo and Bree. She certainly doesn't pull any punches in Sandpiper. She addresses an issue that we are all concerned about with today's teens - their views of oral sex as not really being sex at all. Girls "hook up" as they call it with guys they aren't even that crazy about just for the attention. This is the case with Sandpiper. She and her girlfriends learned this was a way to get guys when they were in 8th grade. The other two girls have moved on to "real" relationships with guys but Sandpiper is still hooking up, over 10 guys by her sophomore year, and is considered a slut by most teens in their small town. Knowing she needs to stop this self destructive behavior Sandpiper has sworn off guys, much to Derek's frustration. Derek's anger turns to stalking and threats toward Sandpiper's 13-year-old sister Daisy. Knowing she can't talk to her about to be remarried mother or her womanizer father about what is going on, she turns to the loner who the town has taken to called the Walker since no one knows who he is. The two teens are together when Derek decides it is time to give Sandpiper what she deserves. Every teenager girl ages 12 and up should read this book but due to the subject matter I am sure there will be libraries that will choose not to include it in their collections. What a lose if that is the case. Wittlinger has cut to the chase and told the story of a teenager girl who has gotten herself in over her head.

Tile floors are very hard on the feet when you are on them all day. I spent yesterday shifting books from a bookcase on one side of the livingroom to the other side. Then unpacked about 10 more boxes of books. It isn't that I "use" all of them - they are my comfort level of home. No separate office here so the bookcases are in the livingroom. MJ will have more children's books to crawl up into my lap with then he knows what to do with. I have a shelf set aside for him. This gramma is getting excited - they will be here next Weds. Still haven't gotten the extra bedroom squared away for them but I still have a few days.

The Booklist review is dead on the money with the comment of "capturing teen angst with wit and poignancy" about Dyan Sheldon's My Perfect Life, the sequel to Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen. I hope I didn't talk about My Perfect Life already - I looked back a bit in my entries and didn't see it. If so, I apologize. Ella is the quiet one of the pair and drama queen Lola has coerced her into running for school president, with the school bad boy as vice president. Carla Santini, the most popular and rich girl in school, is Ella's main competition and Carla wants Ella as her Vice President candidate to eliminate her as competition. Carla's attempt to "buy" votes with a party at her huge house turns against her when her drunk father comes on to Lola, who he thinks is Ella's mom in costume. You can't help but laugh out loud while reading about Carla and Lola trying to out do each other with over the top antics. The election results remind me of past U.S. presidential elections when people didn't vote for someone, but against someone. A fun read and it was nice to see quiet Ella come into her own.

Off to work and an Appreciation Luncheon for the Montessori staff members who have been at the school 30+ years.

Finally - a bit of sunshine. There are still clouds, but the sun is peeking out. I opened the bedroom blinds this a.m. to see 7 white sails headed out from Charlotte Amalie - what a beautiful sight. Smiled at the thought of all the tourists having a great day on the charter catamaran that was in the lead. I like this being one bay over from town. We can see Water Island off to the right - lots of homes on the island and they have to take a boat back and forth to St. Thomas to work. We were going to look into an apt. on Water Island that included a boat, but I was still working at UVI at the time and not too keen on being in a small boat every day in my work clothes. I envisioned getting drenched by the wake of a larger boat going by. Besides I am not a morning person and having to get up even earlier was not my cup of tea.

I have an avid football fan at Montessori who has read all of the football books we have so when I got my package of books from Orca I had to first read Juice by Eric Walters. The cover art is superb - a group of football player's hands in a pyramid. It is an Orca Soundings title so I knew it would be a quick read. Excellent book about Michael, AKA Moose, a football player who has been named MVP at the end of the season. The new coach comes in and he is a slick one - more like a used car salesman is Michael's mom's impression of him. Before you know it the team has a new weight room and Tony, a trainer who makes special shakes for the guys. They are bulking up faster than they should, but they are under the coach's spell. Then the coach pulls Moose in for a chat about how he is the lead on the team and he needs more than his natural ability to bulk up. Agreeing that he will do anything to ensure a winning team Moose agrees to take steroids even though he knows that not only are they are dangerous health wise, this is unethical. But, it is just for 12 weeks, with maybe another round of them if they make the play offs. This book should be in every HS boys' locker room and in every high school library. The guys, football players or not, will relate to Moose's desire to be the best and do what the coach wants, no matter the cost to himself. A 101 page cautionary tale! :-)

Now to design a floor plan of what I want the Montessori Library to look like after we add a few book cases, a new circulation desk and move tables around. :-)

No sign of the sun yet today. With this cloud cover you can see the outline of St. Croix clearly in the distance beyond Buck Island, which is just outside the bay. Hopefully we won't get more rain. We are mopping up water in one corner of the living room because one of the cisterns is right behind our kitchen and when it is too full it leaks. Guess we need to take more showers and wash more clothes! Not a typical situation in the islands - usually is it worries about using too much water. I'll have to run home at lunch today to mop again as my bookcases are in that corner.

I read Pat Lowery Collins' The Fattening Hut last night. It is a quick read due to the large amount of white space on the pages and the free verse style, bit it is not a story you will forget. Helen is the middle daughter and it is time for her to join her older sister, who is nursing her first child, in the fattening hut. Her sister's stomach now rests of her thighs when she sits cross legged - she is voluptuously beautiful. Helen, on the other hand, is scrawny from chasing around the island with her best friend Ashani. Her time of being a little girl is over - she has been promised to a much older man in their tropical village and she is to be fattened up and "prepared" for marriage. Scared of what will come Helen is not able to keep down the food that is brought to her in huge amounts. Helen's fear escalates when she realizes what will be done to her after reading a passage her Aunt Margaret has written and insists her older sister tell her about how she will be cut and then sewn closed. Helen escapes the fattening hut and runs away, suffering hunger and thirst as she searches for the plane Ashani has once shown her. Helen is not found by the search parties from her village but the Fattening Hut awaits the other young women of Helen's village as it does for many in Nigeria and other countries in the world. Although the setting of this story is fictitious, the practice of female circumcision is not. The details of the brutal "surgery" are not detailed, but it is clear what happens to the girls. Collins has written a sparse but beautiful novel that needs to be in YA collections. The appealing cover illustration will catch the teen's attention and Collins' writing will hold them to the last page.

Off to another day of weeding and sweating.

Gee - I had daydreams of paying off bills and my daughter's car with my lotto winnings! Don't you just love those online come ons that make you think you won something? Watch out for one with a kitty.com email address. Supposedly I won a million dollars!

I have been working on a "wish list" for the library at Montessori - such fun to spend someone else's money. I know some of it will be purchased - like the new fans to help with the heat, but much of it will have to wait. Will finish that up this afternoon. Can't wait for the IT person to get the Destiny software loaded so I can starting setting up the patron accounts, etc. for next year.

Stunning is the first word to come to mind when describing Tim Bowler's Firmament. It was published in England in 2002 and in the U.S. by Simon & Schuster in 2004. It had been on my "to read" shelf and I kept moving past it because of the strong music/piano element. I am not a big classical music fan and I knew from reading the blurb that the main character, Luke, is a music genius. I am so glad I finally opened it up and began reading. I feel in love with Luke and with Bowler's writing. He had me from the the first few lines: "He didn't see her; but he heard her voice. It came whispering on the dusk like a dark dreamy echo: a young girls voice, so light it was like hearing the voice of a spirit in the trees of Buckland Forest behind him..."

What Luke is hearing is a blind little girl crying for her mother and her father. Her grief is as deep as his own in relation to his father's death. Luke is still at the anger stage of grieving and has gotten himself hooked up with the wrong gang and doesn't know how to break away without having every bone in his body broken in the process. The gang leader, Skin, is not someone to cross - when he says he'll kill you he isn't joking. Luke breaks into the old woman's house as Skin insists. What he finds there is not money or jewels, but is just as unforgettable - an old bitter ugly woman and a beautiful little girl - blind and mentally handicapped - terrified and lost in stream or tears. Luke begins to play the piano to sooth the little girl and becomes her "funny ears" - a boy she can touch but cannot see; who she trusts because of what his fingers can do on the keyboard. Through all of this Luke can hear the elements of nature singing to him - the trees, the grass, the music. Notes have colors of their own and Luke is overwhelmed with what he hears and sees inside of his head. Answers will be found in Buckland Forest, but not before Luke's career as a pianist is almost taken away from him.

This is a gotta read in my opinion and now I want to read his Carnegie winning River Boy, as well as Storm Catchers and Midget. I shame-facedly admit I am late to discovering Bowler, but he's got a new fan! Where is that charge card to buy them on B&N? :-)

Last day of school day for the kids - only a 1/2 day. Yesterday was our Upper Elementary and MS graduation. It was a very neat ceremony with graduates from years before attending as well as Miss Virgin Islands, who is an alum. Montessori has been on the island since 1964 and has a wonderful committed group of parents and teachers. The 8th graders looked so grown up in their hats.

I finally did get my VI drivers license yesterday. Got a 90% on the test - about 1/2 of the group of 15 who took it with me didn't pass it. It is quite an unusual test so I knew to study the book and look for trick questions - which there were a lot of. The guy giving the test was not having a good day and let loose some profanity when one of the people waiting to take the test made a comment about the process. One of the other women and I looked at each other and almost got the giggles. I was worried he would swear at me and kick me out or fail me on the test if I made a sound so I stifled it and was more than polite to him. We were put in a small room with 15 chairs of various types crammed in next to each other and were given zerox copies of the test, pencils, and pads of paper to use as "desks" in our laps. When we came out there were 15 more people standing in line to take the test.

I'm listening to John Marsden's While I Live, the latest book in the Tomorrow Series about 17-year-old Ellie and her group of Australian friends who fight against an invading force that takes over their town, beginning with Tomorrow, When the War Began. In the latest novel Ellie's parents have been murdered and she and young profoundly deaf Gavin are trying to keep the farm going while working with a secret group that makes raids across the border to rescue prisoners. I am thoroughly enjoying the listening experience and now want to go back and read the other novels in the set. I read Tomorrow... years ago and loved it. Marsden is a good author and I also enjoyed his Letters from the Inside about two teenage pen pals, one of them in a maximum security prison.

Off to work and hugs good bye from the kids. :-)

I am amazed how quiet it is here - all I am hearing is birds out in the bushes in front of the porch. Yesterday Steve and I left for work to the sounds of breaking glass. Someone is gutting an ocean front house right below us and they were throwing out old windows. On the days I work from home I often hear their music - they like 80s rock so I am not complaining. Most of the houses on this road, including the one we are in, were built back in the 70s and people are beginning to remodel them. Wish I owned one to remodel! But, I am happy just to be living in such a beautiful area. It has taken me a year to feel comfortable on the island - I wonder if it would have taken me so long if we had moved to a quiet neighborhood initially.

I just looked through the critical and reader reviews for Flavor of the Week by Tucker Shaw. The hardback came out in 2003 but I just read the Hyperion paperback edition. I have to say I enjoyed the book and was enchanted with Cyril, the chubby Cyrano de Bergerac type character in this recipe laden story of a teenage love triangle. Cyril loves hippy/vegetarian Rose, who in turn loves Cyril's best friend Nick. Cyril is a natural in the kitchen and hopes to be a chef one day and agrees to make a romantic dinner for Nick and Rose, with Rose thinking Nick is the cook. Of course, the truth comes out and Rose realizes where her affections truly belong. I think I gained weight just reading the ingredients in the rich and delicious sounding recipes. Although the narrator is a guy, this is a book girls will enjoy reading, evident by all but one of the reader reviews on B&N. A wide audience with teenager girls and a limited audience with teenage guys. Offer it to the girls who loved Cherry Wytock's hilarious novels about Angela Cookson Potts - My Cup Runneth Over and My Scrumptious Scottish Dumplings, which also include recipes.

Now to unpack some more boxes.

As I type this a barge is going by, headed to Crown Bay to unload. This is the low season so there won't be as many ships, cruise or otherwise. Because of insurance the luxury boats are headed south or north for the summer, out of the hurricane zone, so Crown Bay Marina is about empty. This is hurricane season and the locals say it is going to be a stormy one because it has been so hot.

Read Carl Deuker's Runner - a Houghton Mifflin novel I picked it up because of the cool cover. Black background with red lettering for the title and the silhouette of a runner. Set in the Seattle area, 17-year-old Chance lives on a small sailboat with his alcoholic father. Stressed over his dad losing job after job and the fear that they won't be able to pay the moorage fees and have to sell the boat Chance agrees to become the runner for a smuggler. It is easy money and soon Chance is paying all the bills and even has a few dollars in his pocket to spend on Melissa, a future reporter who begins asking Chance way too many questions. Things get out of control when the types of packages change and Chance wants out. The relatively short chapters and thriller style plot will keep even reluctant readers involved in this one. A gotta have for a YA collection, just like the other Deuker titles such as Painting the Black and Night Hoops.

Off to Montessori. This is our last week with students.

An overcast Monday morning - it is going to be a hot and still day I think. Had breakfast out on the porch while reading the local newspaper. The VIPD is going to crack down on the dark window tints so many of the island cars have. Our crime rate is pretty high so it is a safety issue for the officers pulling over cars. Also read about the evening pray memorial for the 17-year-old girl who drove her car off of the wharf and drowned. The passenger was able to escape but the driver couldn't get her seat belt off. She would have graduated from All Saints, a private Catholic School on the island.

Remember the Archie comics from years ago? Well, the characters seem to be popular again. It is funny how the clothes they wore are trendy again. We call now them capris, my mom called them pedal pushers. Wish I had kept my old platform sandals from the 70s! Anyway, Hyperion has a really cute paperback called Betty & Veronica Best Friends Forever by Jasmine Jones. It is a short and sweet guide on friendship and how to treat old and new friends. I am recommending it to the 4-6 grade teacher at Montessori. At $4.99 this classroom needs several copies! This group has lots of little cliques and I get to hear their spats as there is a little pond with a bench right between their classroom and the library. One of the suggestions for making new friends is to start a book club so how could a librarian not like this guide? :-)

Now to start unpacking boxes of books. Steve anchored and leveled my bookcases yesterday. We have uneven tile floors so he had to use shims to level them out, but now I can get my books sorted and decide on which ones I want to include in the 2nd ed. of HS Tantalizing Tidbits.

It is breezy and overcast but we still headed for the ice water when we got back from our walk down to Bluebeards to see if the little gift shop has the local newspaper. They weren't open but it was a wonderful walk. We stopped and wandered about a lot where clearly a hurricane had taken out the entire house. About all that was left was the pool filled with nasty water and some of the concrete posts. It would be a great building site - maybe someday.

I have been in and out from sitting on the porch reading due to the attack wasps - they are Jack Spaniel wasps - one of the most venomous from what the locals tell me. All I can say is when I got stung three times in a row, by the same dang wasp, my leg swelled up and each sting felt like a match was being held to it. They built a nest under the table and I made the mistake of sitting at it! Steve says he is buying a case of wasp spray to take care of the problem before the grandkids get here.

What I was reading is a book I found in my son's things. I had forgotten about giving it to him back in the mid 90s when he was working on his degree in Philosophy. At the time Amador by Fernando Savater was a bestseller in Spain. The subtitle: "in which a father addresses his son on questions of ethics - that is, the options and values of freedom - and attempts to show him how to have a good life..." Each chapter is an essay with quotes at the end from writers as varied as Fromm, Aristotle, Thomas More, and Seneca. This is no easy light read, but well worth the experience. If it is still in print I plan on giving a copy to my grandson when he a teenager. There are no pat answers here on how to live a good life - rather lots of examples and questions to help a teenager begin to develop a philosophy of life, and to enjoy life as a member of the world society.

Now we are off to town for a Shipwreck burger for lunch and to pick up the ingredients so I can make oatmeal coconut cookies. I have been promising Steve I would make them for weeks and now that I have a kitchen I enjoy being in I will do just that.

A cloudy morning but the birds are singing. I broke down and bought a pair of capri length jeans. Steve is teasing me as I swore I never would - but they make sense down here. I will be climbing and crawling around shelves weeding out old books today so I needed something comfortable.

I was still in such a good mood yesterday after my excellent errand running morning that I got the whole apt. set up for company this evening. Steve is making his secret recipe (Gates sauce from KC!) bbq chicken for friends tonight. Couldn't even see the table, let alone eat on it, so I got that taken care of and set up the living room area into two seating areas. One to watch TV and and other so you can sit and look out at the ocean through the patio doors. Looks good but we still have a lot of unpacking to do. The boxes of my books are piled in the corners. :-)

Another Hyperion title I couldn't wait to read was Patricia McCormick's My Brother's Keeper. I was expecting something as edgy as her first novel, Cut, but it isn't. However, it is a very poignant MS novel about a 13-year-old trying to keep his older brother's drug addition hidden from his over stressed single mom and his blanket and kitty loving little brother. The dad left for California over a year ago and they had to move into a smaller place and money is tight and home life is less than happy. Toby finds solace in collecting baseball cards and spending time with the elderly Mr. D who owns the baseball card shop. This reminded me a bit of Don't You Dare Read This, Mrs. Dunphrey by Haddix - the sibling trying to take care of the brother and hide from everyone what is going on. No matter how much you try to hide these situations, sooner or later the truth comes out. This is a must have in a MS library.

Off to work with an armload of boxes for the discards.

I have had a wonderful morning even though it started out with a trip to the DVI office to find out, yet again, that they are not giving the test. Next week instead. I will try again. But since I was out and about so early the lines at the bank, gas station, and KMart were easy to navigate. I was even second in line to get my oil changed at Western Auto and they were done with it before I got back from picking out Father's Day cards at KMart. People were friendly and in a good mood - not like when you run errands at the end of the day or on Saturday and the lines are long and people are tired. I was back home by 11:00 and had time to chat about cars, again, with Mary. She is going look at the midnight blue PT Cruiser again tonight. My favorite color at least - that's what color my beloved TransAm was - I miss that car! :-(

I finished up listening to The Life of Pi by Yann Martel while I drove around the island running errands. It has received high praise and I can see why, although it was not one of my favorite listening/reading experiences. I found it a bit drawn out and I got bored with the length of the narrative descriptions of his zoological knowledge. The parts about faith and religion were quite enjoyable and the scene where his mentors/leaders from three different religions converge on him at the same time was quite delightful. I initially had problems suspending my disbelief of a lifeboat being able to handle a Bengal tiger, a zebra (with a broken leg), a hyena, a rat, a cockroach, and a sixteen-year-old Indian boy, but I got over that as Martel pulled me into the story. The narrator was quite good too so I often found myself chuckling at Pi's dry sense of humor in the worst of circumstances. Over two hundred days at sea with a tiger he catches and feeds fish to so it won't eat him, as well as landing on an island of carnivorous algae, was easier to belief than the brief blind encounter with the Frenchman adrift in another lifeboat. I am glad I listened to it, rather than read it, as I am not sure I would have stayed with it and it was well worth the effort. I honestly don't see broad YA appeal for this adult novel, but because the character is a teenager searching for himself (as well as land) there are some older teens I would recommend this book to, but not the average teenage reader. I don't think they would stay with it.

Now to get some things done around this apt - I am surrounded by boxes!

Can you hear my whoops of delight all the way to the Mainland? Our DSL is up and working again! I really dislike using Steve's laptop and the phone line Internet connection. Not only is his laptop slower, it gets so darn hot, even on a lap table.

I am home today but haven't gotten anything accomplished yet other than to talk about cars with my daughter Mary. She loves them as much as I do and is looking to buy a new one. She is thinking about a PT Cruiser. I don't care for them but it makes sense with a baby and the boxes she moves around for work. Oh well, I have my little RAV4 for now and drool over the Porsche that is parked in the garage of one of the houses we go by on the way home.

Sophie came in from her wanderings this a.m. with dust bunnies and gold foil stars on her whiskers. Who knows where she found those. She is "speaking" to me again after the fiasco last night. We have a stray cat who the previous owner fed that upsets Sophie. She was letting it know this is her territory, through the patio doors, when Steve turned on the air conditioner near her. It frightened her so bad she left an "offering" on the floor. You can literally scare the crap out of a cat! Well, she thought I had done it as I was standing next to her when it happened and she wouldn't even look at me all night. Steve thought that was hilarious.

My Hyperion review books came in and it was like Christmas. Immediately sat down and read Ann Rinaldi's The Color of Fire last night. Loved it - she has again taken a piece of little known U.S. history and brought it to life. Through the voice of 14-year-old Phoebe, a slave working for a kindly master in NYC, the horrific burnings at the stake and hangings that took place in the 1740s are brought to life. Fear of a slave revolt brought on by fires being set in the city resulted in a Salem Witchcraft Trials mentality. There were thousands of African Americans in NY at the time, both slaves and indentured servants. Imprisoned slaves and indentured servants, both black and white, gave names of innocent people, trying to save themselves, but it did no good. Both groups were hung or burned at the stake if they were not fortunate enough of escape to the "long island" to live with the Native Americans. Would be a great book to use in a U.S. History class as it is a relatively quick read.

Time to find the top of this desk.

What a weekend it was. You know how things come in threes - both bad and good. Well, when I pulled the muscle moving I figured I was in for a couple of more "incidents." I wasn't wrong. Sunday we were in KMart and while Steve was looking at electronic "stuff" I was over looking at toys for when MJ and Ally get here. There were a group of boys chasing each other around in the toy section and I don't mean little ones - big ones. I came around the end of an aisle and got hit in the face with one of those hard rubber balls. It knocked me right on the floor. Thought I was "skinned" on the left side of my face but it was just red and I had a headache the rest of the day. So there was two. I was hoping the huge bruise on my lower leg from whapping myself with a chair while moving was the third. No such luck - last night we ate dinner on the porch and I got strung three times by a wasp. I thought they could only sting once, but not this one. Talk about hurt and swell up. So that had better be three - I am almost afraid to go to work today!

I actually read an adult book this weekend - a mystery no less. Okay, I will admit the title is what got me - Mistletoe Murder. Me and my Christmas addiction. Leslie Meier writes a whole series of mysteries with holiday titles. Felt like I was reading about Angela Lansbury in her 40s. Set in a small Maine town and the sleuth works in a L.L. Bean type place taking phone orders. The owner gets murdered and she figures out who the murderer is - of course. Not sure I will read any more of them, but who knows.

Off to work.

My computer is still in pieces on the floor so I am using Steve's laptop while he is working - at least I think that is where he is - he was gone when I got up. Sleeping here is a delight - it is so quiet! About all you hear is a few birds. I fell asleep with a pillow over my head though as the owner had a party for his summer institute students and they had a talent show with very loud music. We went up to say hello but didn't stay long. I pulled a muscle while carrying boxes and I am still not moving too quickly. I don't do anything to moderation, including trying to carry boxes that are too heavy! OUCH!!

So, I spent a couple of days taking it easy and read a MS mystery I absolutely loved. Couldn't put it down until I found out what the final riddle was. It is Christine Morton-Shaw's The Riddles of Epsilon - a HarperCollins title that came out in April. Like I said in an earlier posting, I am not a big mystery fan, but this is a fantasy mystery so I was intrigued as I love fantasy. Jess and her parents move to small island off of England where her mom inherited the old family home, much in need of work. Jess has the entire attic to herself and discovers a thirteen year old boy lived in the same room a hundred years before and he is trying to warn her of what is about to happen to her mother. Jess finds a small cottage that belongs to a ghost like presence - Epsilon. Epsilon gives her riddles to solve as her father is engrossed in his photography and her mother becomes obsessed with picking shells from the beach and drawing a woman's sad and haunting face. Jess is scared silly but she feels she has no choice but to save her mother.

All for now - need to get the next load of clothes in the washer and see what type of beautiful boat is either powering or sailing by.

Can you hear me muttering across the Internet? We just finished moving all of our stuff over from the Freydenhoj apt. and my desk top computer is in pieces. So I am using Steve's laptop with our phone line connection to the Internet and it has gone down three times while I was trying to log in to my blog. I was having Internet withdrawal big time - two days without checking email, etc. Before that I was working like a pack horse to get things moved. We moved as much as we could with trips in my RAV4 and the rest the movers picked up yesterday. Cell phones attached to their ears as they moved things - GRRRR!! I think I shamed them into putting the cell phones away for a bit as I was lugging arm loads of stuff past them to put in the car. They couldn't be out done by a woman. :-)

Our new apt. above Frenchman's Bay on the South side of the island, is fantastic! We have a view to die for and it is so quiet. I am in heaven - other than the fact that I have to put all this stuff away now! I woke up on my own this a.m. - no bleating goats, no roosters, no blaring horns, no fart mobiles. :-) And, we have a great wooden deck for MJ to run toy trucks on when he and Mary get here next month. We are about a 1/2 mile from the beach so if we want to tire him out we can walk down there. No fears of being attacked by a rooster, goat, or run over by a souped up Honda.

Haven't had much time to read but I finished Peter Abrahams' Echo Falls Mystery Down the Rabbit Hole. I grabbed the ARC (a HarperCollins title, due out June 12) after I saw that it is on the BBYA nominations list. I think it is a good middle school mystery for those who like Sherlock Holmes and the elements of a mystery. Ingrid is approaching the murder of Cracked Up Katie - an eccentric town resident and once a promising actress - using Holmes type techniques, even accepting one of her suspects as a red herring. My problem is I had a very difficult time suspending my disbelief that a girl as young as Ingrid would do the things she did - break into Katie's house, take her grandfather's caddie to visit Katie's grandmother (after he conveniently teaches her to drive his tractor), etc. But, I have to admit I am not a big mystery fan and don't care for Sherlock Holmes so my preconceived notions about this book is coloring my experience with it. I would certainly recommend it to middle school mystery readers and already have it on my to order list for Montessori.

On to days worth of emails.

What a morning so far! Woke up out of a sound sleep to yowling right outside our bedroom door at 5 a.m. That's where Sophie's food dish is and one of the bush cats came in through the window and was eating her food. Well, she didn't like that and they got into a fight. There was fur all over and a poor Sophie has a bare raw spot on her front leg. Add my running over her tail with my desk chair the other day and this poor cat should be hiding under the bed, but she is such a sweetie she is keeping Steve company as he gets ready for work.

My Montessori guys are going to love The Hoopster by Alan Lawrence Sitomer. It's a Hyperion title that came out last month. Andre is the Hoopster and the Writer in his group of friends. His best friend Shawn is the white guy in the group and his cousin Cedric is the mouthy comedian. The antics of these three guys are sometimes gross (farting, picking noses, etc.) and sometimes down right funny. Shawn's consumption of vast amounts of food reminds me of growing up with three older brothers! Andre's life looks pretty good - a girlfriend and an internship at a small magazine. To top that off his article on prejudice has great reader support. But, not everyone is happy with Andre's article and he is viciously beaten up in the parking garage. Will this change how Andre views the world or will he keep the positive outlook he has always had? It is obvious from his adept character development of these teenage friends that Sitomer has experience working with urban teens - he is an English teacher in an inner city school in LA. Great guy book. Would love to use this one with a reading group.

Off to work.

It is a beautiful sunny day after days of clouds and rain. At least the cisterns around the island should be full again. The first hurricane of the season, Adrian, is at 40 mph and headed for the Bahamas so we are safe from this one. I want to get moved in to the new apt. before we have major hurricane warnings and torrential rain. Last year I missed the worst storm as I was in Houston when it hit and came home to road with potholes big enough to swallow a small car.

I just finished the coolest book! I love Sleator's creepy books anyway. The House of Stairs will always be my favorite, but I loved The Boy Who Couldn't Die because of the moral - immortality does have it's drawbacks! The arrogant teenage protagonist got what he was bargaining for and then some. But, Sleator's new one The Last Universe just blew me away with its creepiness. I am glad I was reading it during the day with the sun shining. Just the idea that I could wake up in an alternate universe where the people I love could have changed and so could have I. Susan's brother Gary is ill and in a wheelchair and loves to go out into the creepy family garden. Susan hates it because of the way it creeps her out - especially the opium poppies growing near the old outhouse and the lotuses growing in the pond. This can't happen in the world as we know it as they are tropical plants and this is Massachusetts. Their father tries to pass it off as seeds in the wind but their Cambodian gardener and his cat know better. On Gary's insistence the brother and sister start exploring more of the garden and discover that it is a quantum garden and entering and leaving alternate universes is possible. The ending had the hair raised on my arms! The Publisher's Weekly review refers to it as "an overall sophisticated horror story" but I think it is incredibly well written science fiction. There is no bad magic here - just the weirdness of quantum physics.

Hurricane/Storm Season has hit early. We usually don't get down pours like we had yesterday until starting in June. It was raining so hard when I left Montessori at the end of the school day that I had to walk in ankle deep running water to get to my car. I wasn't too upset about my clothes since I had already been nailed by a car going by at lunch time - with the contents of a mud puddle. Thank goodness for heaters in cars - I dried myself off on the way to Subway in Red Hook. After school I drove through the rain to get to UVI to pick up a box of books and watched the poor tourists making their way back to the cruise ships from downtown Charlotte Amalie. The drains couldn't handle the water and the side of the street they were on was so full of water it was lapping up onto the sidewalks. One poor lady lost her flip-flop in the water that was running across the street as she waded through ankle deep. While I was at UVI Mrs. Rymer, one of the women I worked with in the library and who has lived here all her adult life, said we are in for a bad hurricane season this year. I pray she is wrong, but signs do indicate that is true.

It is fitting that I read a book about oceans with the weather like it is. I didn't pick it up because of the title, No More Pranks, but for the cover. It shows the front of a kayak from a paddler's position, with another kayaker in the distance. I have always wanted to try kayaking so I thought - why not, it is an Orca Soundings title and they are a quick read - intended for reluctant readers. 100 pages later I was satiated with a credible, though a bit didactic, tale by Monique Polak about a teenager who is sent to spend the summer with his uncle after having pulled a nasty prank on the vice principal. He pretended to by the vp and called into one of those sex therapist phone lines and said he had a foot fetish (the vp measures the girl's platform shoes with a ruler!). The cool part of the book was the information about the whales and the kayak tours to see them in their natural habitat.

The Orca Soundings books are great additions to any YA collection that has a need for quick easy reads - isn't that every one of them? Orca is my favorite Canadian publisher and I have been enjoying their books for years. Alone at Ninety Foot by Katherine Holubitsky is my favorite of the Orca novels. I think her newest one is The Mountain That Walked, but didn't get a review copy of it so I haven't read it yet.

It has been overcast and relatively cool all weekend. It was wonderful! Yesterday was one of those days where you just wanted to curl up and read or watch old movies and I did just that. Read in the a.m. and watched old movies and worked on needlework in the p.m. Steve has been teasing me that we will need two Christmas trees for all of the ornaments that I have been making. We watched Saturday Night Live's Christmas Special yesterday - YUCK!! I don't like the nasty take on Christmas that they do at all. I love the sentimental "schmaltzy" type of Christmas specials.

Saturday night we went to see the Lily Cai Chinese dance group at the Reinholt Center on the University of the Virgin Islands campus. The theater is open air and we had a bit of rain but we were under the small covered area so it was just a refreshing cool breeze for us. The dancers were incredible. I loved the modern dance more than the three traditional dance numbers they did from the various dynasties. There were times the audience was completely silent and that is saying something for a mostly local West Indian audience - they are real talkers and there were lots of children in the audience. Lily Cai trained in the Shanghai Opera House but lives in California now so there was a mix of cultures in the dances she created. It was incredible. If you ever get to see this dance group don't pass it up.

I read When I Was a Soldier, a memoir by Valerie Zenatti this weekend. I shame-facedly admit I know little about the Israeli requirement for all young men and women to enlist in the army right after their bacs. Valerie goes from a typical teenage life of long phone calls with girlfriends, clubbing, hanging out with friends to becoming Soldier 3810159. Her intellect and training prepared her for the intelligence division so I am sure we actually find out very little of what happened to her after basic training, but you feel like she is sharing her inner most thoughts and fears with you. This is one articulate and well read young woman who moved from France to Israel when she was a teenager so she had mixed feelings about the army.

I have a favorite line from this book. She has a gay best friend Gali who lives in Tel Avi who she visits during her weekend leaves. He take her to meet his elderly friend Tzvi Kaminiski who own a bookstore. The bookstore is in no sense of order but he likes it that way - he would make a terrible librarian! Valerie says of Gali - "I like having a friend who, like me, thinks you can't run the risk of dying without having read certain books." What a great line! :-)

Now to weed through days and days of email that I didn't get to while dealing with deadlines.

What a hectic week it has been with Open House during the day at Montessori. This is for parents who are interested in sending their kids to the school so they can see a normal Montessori classroom environment in full swing. I have 4th-6th grade students in the library all week working on their state reports, learning how to use almanacs, atlases etc. so I was busy along with presenting basic overviews of the library for the parent groups coming through on tour.

Just got off the phone with my daughter Mary. She is so excited about coming down next month. She and my grandson MJ are visiting for a week at the end of the month - before he turns two in July so I only had to get one ticket instead of two. I am glad the Montessori Yard Sale is next weekend so I can pick up beach toys if they have any. We'll be in the new apt. so he will have a flat area of play so maybe a truck too. I haven't seen MJ since November so I am sure he has grown quite a bit. Downside to living down here is not seeing them enough. Her husband just started a new job so he couldn't come down too and is a bit jealous, but this will be our first mom/daughter time together since they became a couple.

I haven't had as much time to read but I did finish Rosie Rushton's The Dashwood Sisters' Secrets of Love. It is a Hyperion title that came out last month. What a great beach book - I laughed and cried as the three British teenage sisters deal with their father's death and going from being rich private school girls to living in a small rural cottage after the stepmother gets the family home. The oldest sister Ellie is the quiet one who falls for the stepmom's nephew. Abby is the middle sister who is theatrical about everything she does, especially when it comes to guys and dating. And Georgie is the thirteen year old tomboy who realizes that boys are for more that just sailing and hiking with. :-) Add the over protective mother who has never worked a day in her life and you have a fun read.

Since I finished up the final draft of the fiction genre article that will be the feature article in the October 2005 issue of Library Media Connection I am going to "celebrate" and catch up on my email! I've barely had time to touch it in days.

Good morning. Steve just called to ask if the house was still standing. I had no idea what he was talking about. Apparently a pretty strong earthquake hit this a.m. I felt the "rumble" but thought it was a big truck going by. Steve said he felt it for quite some time in the Federal Building downtown in Charlotte Amalie. In the 15 years I lived in Alaska we only had one really strong earthquake that knocked things off the kitchen cabinets etc. I was trying to hold the microwave on the shelf while the kitchen rocked and rolled. This was nothing like that.

After all the depressing reading I have been doing lately I went for a fun read. Girls Dinner Club by Jessie Elliot is just what I needed. Three Brooklyn best friends cook dinner together once a week at each other's homes while they deal with adolescent angst. Celia is the tall and elegant Black girl who can't see Mr. Right, right in front of her nose, but whose 15-years-single Dad seems to have found his Ms. Right in a ditzy British woman. Danielle is the Italian bombshell who won't give up on Mr. Wrong. And Junie is the level headed one who realizes, a little too late, that she isn't ready for a sexual relationship with her boyfriend. What a fun and delightful weekend read. It is a HarperCollins title and will be out the end of this month.

I relished my day to myself yesterday - listened to country music while I packed up things from the kitchen and wallowed in an old "dysfunctional family home for Thanksgiving" movie in the evening. Need to finish wrapping and packing glasses today since Steve will be back later this afternoon and they are drying all over the kitchen counters. He woke me up from a dead sleep this a.m. so we didn't talk much - just a Happy Mother's Day greeting and a go back to sleep from him. Wish I could have! Once the grogginess wore off I was wide awake.

Of course I read - I am in awe of Julius Lester's Day of Tears. Subtitle states "a novel in dialogue". For me it read like a first person novel in multiple voices - I wasn't really thinking about the fact that it was supposed to be dialogue - felt like storytelling. Beautiful, terse, poignant, bring tears to your eyes real life stories told by the people who lived them. All the raw emotion is there to be felt in the words. Lester tells the interwoven tale of the slaves and owners on two plantations in the South. The novel is based on the real record breaking auction of Pierce Butler's slaves to pay off his gambling debts. The lists of slaves and the prices they brought are from historical records. If this is to be Lester's last novel, he had done himself proud - 175 pages of pure emotion.

Off to the kitchen to pack.

Almost the end of my day "off" this week. Been very busy at Montessori so I have been in pretty much all of last and this week. Add final grading for two classes and getting ready to move and you pretty much have my day other than sleeping, which I want more of! A very dreary and drizzly day today but I love it since it is cool, in the low 80s, with a breeze.

Since I knew I was going to be stuck in front of this computer screen all day I had my first diet coke while finishing the last couple of chapters of Kevin Brooks' Candy. What a wonderful novel, but then again I am partial to Brooks - I loved both Lucas and Kissing the Rain. This one is about a young British teen who becomes obsessed with the young prostitute he meets on his way to a doctor's appt. in London. Even after her pimp scares him silly during their first meeting, while sitting in McDonald's, Joe can't get Candy out of his mind. He skips school and meets her at the zoo, where they spend the day together, with her running off to the bathroom to smoke heroine. At this point he is still ignoring what she does for a living and that she is an addict. She shows up at the Katies' concert - he is in a band - and dances to the song her wrote about her. But Iggy, her pimp, shows up and Joe's sister's boyfriend gets beaten up trying to stop them from dragging Candy out of the club. His obsession gets worse and he follows Iggy home to where Candy is. Joe is letting his obsession with her shake any sense of reasonable behavior out of his head and he and his sister almost die because of Candy.

Now I really need to read something that isn't about a teen prostitute, both of the last two books I have read have had a female teen prostitute on drugs. But, I am limited to what I can find on the top of my boxes of books to go to the new apt. Can't wait to get them all set up so I can get to them readily, especially my collection of Christmas books. I like to take them out and just browse through them. I'm in the Christmas mood again - we have Saturday Night Live's Christmas special on DVD- haven't watched it yet. Will this weekend.

Back to work for me - need to find the top of my desk - I am worried something important is in this pile!

Less than a month to go before we move into the new apt. and I can't wait to be out on the end of a quiet road. I have been up since 5:30 when a "crotch rocket" motorcycle when flying by on the road below us. These guys are crazy - they drive between the cars on the centerline and burn rubber at each light going through town. And talk about noisy - they make my teeth hurt.

Carnival was this past weekend and we avoided the crowds and watched a bit of the adult parade on TV. The teachers at Montessori said the Children's Parade on Friday wasn't too bad as it drizzled off and on, keeping them somewhat cool. Our kids made the front page of the paper so everyone was happy. We went out to a local's place to have the prime rib special Sunday night and a couple came in who had just gotten back from St. Martin. They had left for the weekend to avoid Carnival and got there to find out it was Carnival weekend on St. Martin too.

I am still shaking my head over Nirvana's Children by Ranulfo, an author who lives in Australia, but was born in the Philippines so the main character in the book is a teenage Filipino boy who runs away from home and ends up falling in love with a teenage prostitute who dies of an overdose. She may be the one on drugs, but the first person narrative is so strange I wondered if Napoleon was on drugs, or psychotic. He calls having sex "making disease" and uses some other quite strange phrases as well. He joins the birds in the park for a time, having lively conversations with them, and even tries to fly with wings made out of feathers, spit and dung. Lots of messages here about the government, ecology, racism, etc. This is certainly for older teens. But, the cover makes you think it is for middle grades as it has a carousel horse on it. If you look closer at the back cover there is "Mr. Bones" - death that is taunting Napoleon at every turn. All in all a very strange read, but I have to admit I couldn't put it down - had to find out what was going to happen to Napoleon and I'm still not sure!

Off to Montessori to make up some hours since I have to go in late on Friday. Steve is off to his daughter Monica's wedding. Just a short weekend trip, but I do have the apt. to myself for a couple of days. Sophie and I are going to do our mom/cat daughter thing and curl up and read late in bed. :-)

Good morning. My desk is piled with CDs that Steve is using for my audio books. I keep telling him for the money we pay for the blank CDs we could have easily bought an Ipod, but at least this way I can give the CDs to friends to listen to after I am through with them. I love the Amelia Peabody mysteries set in Egypt so I bought a couple extra of those beyond my regular subscription.

Yesterday was the Children's Parade but I am not one much for crowds so we didn't go down. I was glad as about 1/2 way through the parade time it poured down rain. I was thinking about the Montessori kids streaked with pain and glitter. We did go down to Blockbuster later in the day and pick up National Treasure with Nicholas Cage - it was really cute. I wonder if it will increase the interest in the Masons as well as cause more people to visit DC and Philadelphia with their children. My great uncle was a Mason and was all mysterious about it. We watched Nicole Kidman's Birth the other night - what a creepy movie. I didn't like it at all and it ended with basically nothing resolved - how did a 10 year old boy know all that stuff that only her dead husband would?

I read Henkes' Olive's Ocean in one sitting yesterday. What a beautifully written book. No wonder it has received all the acclaim it has. I just loved Godbee, her grandmother and the relationship she has with Martha. The family dynamics with a stay at home day needing to go back to work and a tyrant of a toddler add depth to the story. Martha's responses to the entry in Olive's diary are so touching and appropriate for a 12-year-old who has not dealt with a death close to her. Too bad the cover is so horrible. What is the deal with the goldfish? As a young teen I would not pick up this book because of the cover - yuck!

Having a hard time getting started today. Lots of noise last night, even with the air conditioner on, so falling asleep wasn't easy. Steve only works 1/2 day today and then govt. employees have the rest of the week off for Carnival. The Montessori kids are involved in the Children's Parade on Friday. They are doing a May Pole, carrying the ribbons and doing the actual weaving of the ribbons at two different viewing areas. They have been practicing at school. Carnival is a big deal on this island. The music was so loud when I went to pick Steve up my ears were ringing. The Carnival rides and booths are right next to the court buildings. The Food Fest is today - Steve said he was going pig out for luch. :-)

Scott Westerfield has a cool series out called the Midnighters. I just read the ARC for the second book, Touching Darkness, set in small town Bixby, Oklahoma. The first book in the series is called The Secret Hour. Of course, I found my copy after I read the second one, but I didn't feel like I was missing too much by having skipped the first, but I will go back and read it now as I really enjoy the characters. Jessica is the new Midnighter, having recently moved from Chicago, and she is adapting to her power to throw fire, from a flashlight! They name their weapons with thirteen letter words. This eclectic group of teens have an extra hour at midnight when their Midnighter powers are at their peak. They are fighting the Darklings who want one of the teens as a replacement for the human/Midnighter to mutate with a Darkling.

Steve was just in my office complaining that he won't be able to watch the sunrise from the new apt. as we won't be on the East End of the island anymore. Then he perked up when he realized he could watch the cruise ships come in instead. They come in early in the a.m. and leave at dusk. Gives the tourists a day on the island. Many hit jewelry row and shop as we are known for the hundreds of jewelry stores with supposedly good prices. Others get on a safari cab and tour the island, swimming at Magen's Bay, etc.

The cover art for The Sphere of Secrets, the second book in the Oracle Prophecies by Catherine Fisher, is gorgeous, even though quite simple in detail. It is a hand holding a silver sphere with some type of markings on it. I was anxious to read it as I loved the first book, The Oracle Betrayed, in which the reader meets Mirany, the new bearer. As the old Archon dies he presses a slip of paper into her hand that warns her of the treachery around her. She has been chosen as the bearer of the god because the inept and corrupt Speaker thinks she won't notice that the Speaker cannot hear the god and makes up what General Argelin thinks is good for him. Mirany wasn't too sure she even believed in the god until she started to hear him in her head and he was asking her to find the new Archon, a child in a remote village. With the help of a scribe and a drunken musician they do find the young boy, but trouble doesn't end there. In the second book the new Archon must find the Well of the Gods and give back the three stars that a previous Archon had stolen. The silver sphere is a map across the desert to the well. Fisher has a way with language - you can tell she also writes poetry - and draws you into the story immediately. I am already waiting for the third book. Delicious fantasy reading. The Sphere of Secrets is a HarperCollins book and should be in the stores now - came out in March.

Off to work.

It is 6:30 in the morning and it is already 87 degrees in the livingroom. It feels like a sauna after walking out of the air conditioned bedroom. Can't wait to get to the new apt! It is 81 outside so it is hotter inside than out. I am sure it is going to be hot at school too - it always is. Have to make up my Friday hours since I was home in bed.

My Thursday posting that disappeared into Blogspot cyberspace was about Barry Yourgrau's Nasty Book. It is most certainly nasty and will be loved by upper elementary and MS age kids, boys especially, as it is a compilation of down right dumb, nasty, gross, and sometimes disgusting very short short stories - 3 to 6 pages long. One is about a boy sent to the Dr. because he won't quit picking his nose. The doctor has a Kleenex up his nose and the boy tells the doc he knows he wants to pick it - that's why the Kleenex is stuffed up it. Sure enough when the doctor thinks about picking it a worms comes out of his nose and wraps around his neck. The nurse has one peeking out of her nostril as the boy leaves. Makes you think about picking your nose now doesn't it? YUCK!!! No bloody grossness, but heads do roll and ghosts abound. One boy's head get stuck in a tree and when his brother ties a rope around his legs and tries to pull him out his body comes out first and then the head rolls out, talking of course. This isn't my type of book, but I know the high appeal of gross out books. Check out HarperTeacher.com for a feature on it. It will be out in a couple of days. FYI - the book is upside down with 2 questions on the first page - "Hey, is book is upside-down? Or are you? Turn the page - "Strange...maybe it is you!" and then "Nonsense, it's the book! So turn it over and start!" You won't be able to keep this one on your shelves.

Off to the library.

I was hoping my post from Thursday would have shown up in the blog after it disappeared into cyberspace when I tried to post it, but I guess not.

Haven't posted in the last two days as I lost a battle with sinusitis. You know the one - if you lean forward it feels like you eyes are going to pop out from the pressure. Isn't that a gross visual! I spent the last two days sleeping or wishing I were asleep! But, it is Sunday morning and I can actually open my eyes all the way and breathe a bit through my nose so I am happy.

Carnival is coming up next week and it will be nutso in Carlotte Amalie until next Monday. Some of the classes from Montessori go to the Food Fest on Weds. and the whole school goes to the Children's Parade on Friday since they have a float in the parade. I am not one for crowds so I try to stay away from town during Carnival activities. Steve said he has to get to work early as they use "THE parking lot" (the only one in Charlotte Amalie) for the Carnival booths so the govt. workers lose their parking lot and other parking is at a premium.

In between naps I did read a bit and revisited Hattie from Hill Hawk Hattie by Clara Gillow Clark. In the first book about Hattie her mother has just died and her father is not taking it well - taking it out on Hattie who can't cook if her life depended upon it. So her father brings home a set of boy's clothes for her and tells Hattie she is to pretend to be his son and join him in the woods logging. She becomes a pretty good second hand on the log raft down the river. In the second book, Hattie on Her Way, she is left with her maternal grandmother and one very suspicious and grumpy cook. Something bad has happened to Hattie's grandfather - the neighbors think her grandmother, with her mother's help, "offed him" and when Hattie pulls up what appears to be a finger bone stuck to a radish in the garden she isn't so sure they are wrong. What actually did happen tears at your heart strings and makes you want to take Hattie home with you, but she is one independent young woman and will do fine on her own. Throw in the neighbor who is into gossip and seances and the tutor with an unquenchable appetite and you have a few chuckles in what is a quite good historical novel.

All for now.

The intent was to sleep in - took Tylenol P.M. last night to knock me out. Fighting the cold that is going around school and I think I may be losing the battle. But, I woke up with a start when I remembered I hadn't given Steve my driver's license. He works for the Superior Court and we need to have a search done for any kind of tickets before we can renew our car insurance. The VI has a law that you cannot register a car without VI insurance - so no Allstate like we used to have, which was much cheaper. They had no problem with insuring us down here, but the registration office would not issue plates without proof of VI auto insurance. So Steve will pay another $10.00 fee for another piece of paper from the govt. I am going to take the driver's license test tomorrow a.m. Only given two mornings a week. Lots of trick questions to get the newcomers to fail so they have to retake it and pay the $35 fee again. I have already stood in line 3 times down there to get various pieces of paper that I had to pay for and then go get various other items they want, such as a physical and eye test, along with passport photos that do not end up on your license. I am not sure what they do with those!

I finished Maximum Ride and it surely is the first in a set of books. I enjoyed the story but a group of six bird kids loose in New York City who need to change their appearance fast just happen to come upon a free makeover session going on seems too good to be true. Six scrungy kids welcomed in for new haircuts, color, and clothes - a bit too much. And the writing is too "cutesy" at times, especially the second person excerpts directed at the reader. But, the characters are all very likeable and younger teens will love the adventure. Lots of chase and fight scenes with the Erasers, the mutant wolf/humans.

Max reminds me of Dicey in The Homecoming by Voigt. The older sister trying to protect her family - in Max's case, her flock. I enjoyed all of the Tillerman books - especially The Runner. I was delighted when Voigt received the Edwards award several years ago - it was time she was honored for her wonderful YA literature. I jumped up out of my chair with a whoop of delight when the award was announced. Wish I had an extra 24 hours a day just to reread the whole Tillerman series along with the other great YA I have read through the years.

Now to get some grading done. We are chatting with Gail Giles in my class tonight.

There are some benefits to being up at 6 a.m. - the sunrise. Looks like another hot one on the way but it is sunny and cool still at 6:30.

Although I am not thrilled to death with Patterson's writing style in Maximum Ride I can't help but like Max. She chose her own last name, Ride, after Sally Ride the astronaut. Lots of talk in the book about how bird DNA has altered their bone structure so it is light and hollow. Made me think of The Fast and Brutal Wing by Johnson. The other shape shifting YA novels that come to mind with predatory type bird shifts is Owl in Love by Kindl (one of my favorites from a few years ago - she falls in love with her teacher) and The Other Ones by Thesman. Thesman's main character is a teenage witch who isn't too keen on her powers until she realizes she can save a shapeshifter and a lonely boy with them. It is interesting that the shifts seem to be into predatory birds. Wonder why no one shapeshifts into a parrot or a sparrow? Probably because they could be food for a predator and there goes your main character!

Off to the library for the day.

A beautiful Monday morning. We have a couple of island parrots that flit around in the trees in front of the apartment. They are gorgeous. Intense green with yellow heads and blue on their tails. First ones I have seen up this close.

We went snorkeling yesterday afternoon after I spent hours boxing up books both for work and to move to the new apartment. Talk about sweaty work with no air conditioning. It is so difficult for me to part with books, even though I know I can access them any time I want in the library. Anyway, the snorkeling was great. We went to Secret Harbor and snorkeled with the tourists. It was a delight when they'd scare a school of fish toward us. It is so breathtaking to see large versions of the small tropical fish we had in our Houston aquarium in their natural habitat. But, it is a bit spooky when they nibble on you. I was hoping to see a sea turtle but no luck. I had "ring around the face" for hours afterward - need to loosen my face mask!

Just started reading James Patterson's Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment. It is a Little Brown publication that just came out this month. Went looking through my pile of ARCs for my copy after seeing the cover art when I was choosing my April audio book. Beautiful angel type creatures. Not very far into it but it appears they are genetically created winged human children who are being chased by Erasers - men who can take wolf form, also genetically altered humans. So many adult authors have begun to write YA novels - wonder why that is. But it does appear I am going to enjoy this one.

This morning I think I really could have slept in, but no, the breeze took the bedroom door and slammed it and I woke up thinking a bomb had been dropped in the bedroom. So much for my idea of a nice leisurely natural Sunday morning wake up - instead I was wide awake, with a frantically beating heart, at 7:15 a.m.

The guys were here yesterday and put the air conditioner up on the wall above our bed. They had to jack hammer through the wall since almost all buildings down here are made of concrete. But, it is sitting there silent as now we wait for the electrician to come in and wire it. I have a feeling we will have moved out before that air conditioner actually works.

Read Dyan Sheldon's Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen last night. Mary Elizabeth, AKA Lola (her choice of names), is a died in the wool city girl moved to the suburbs of New Jersey by her potter mother. Not only does Lola take on a new name, she takes on whatever life story works for her at the moment - like two dead husbands for her mom - so that her friend Ella's parents will feel sorry for her and not be so upset about Ella hanging around with an eccentric city girl who does not dress like the rest of the girls. The villain in the story is Carla Santini, the rich bitch, who has everyone in the school wrapped around her finger for fear she will give them the silent treatment. They all know the last girl who stood up to Carla ended up leaving - unable to stand the heat. Lola not only stays in the frying pan, she get the lead role in the school play, which has never gone to anyone but Carla. Oh the angst of a teenage drama queen. The sequel is My Perfect Life, focusing on Ella, I think.

My audio book of the moment is A Northern Light. Am only on the first CD but I am loving it. Haven't found out what is in those batch of letters Addy has but I hope to find out soon.

Got the blahs today. I should be in a great mood as they are putting in an air conditioner in our bedroom as I type. So we can sleep in comfort at least until we move. We have had two fans blowing on us at night. We had some rain yesterday and it seems to have brought the mosquitoes out. They don't attack you in swarms like they did in Alaska but these ones are biters. Steve has a zapper shaped like a tennis racket and he has great fun with that in the evenings.

Woke up early (why does that happen when you don't have to get up but you are exhausted when the alarm goes off at the same time on days you have to work?) and watched the weather change from cloudy to sunny. Glorious sunbeams streaming through the clouds and I closed my eyes and could envision mischievous angels sliding down them. Sat on the balcony and read an old Jude Deveraux paperback I picked up somewhere. Haven't read that kind of bubblegum romance in years. I loved her Knight in Shining Armor - it was even made in to a movie with Meg Ryan - but it has been years since I read romances with regularity.

Chic lit is certainly popular with females of all ages. More and more of has been published for teens since Angus, Thongs and Full-Fronting Snogging by Rennison got all the attention because of the Printz. Four books in that series now. Haven't read the third one of the Traveling Pants series, but I like those much better. Better character development.

Whytock's My Cup Runneth Over is a favorite of mine. Angel's sense of humor is delightful. I have the sequel My Scrumptious Scottish Dumpling next to me as I type but I haven't gotten around to reading it yet. Haven't even checked to see if there are any recipes in it like the first one.

Sorry - brain feels like porridge today - thick and goopy!

An early Friday morning greetings from misty St. Thomas. I am sure the mist will evaporate as soon as the sun heats things up a bit but it is still early. As much as I try I am just not a morning person and 6 a.m. gets earlier and earlier. Can't wait for summer when I can work on my own internal clock.

I read the cutest book last night - Chig and the Second Spread by Gwyneth Swain. The "second spread" refers to a second item between the two slices of bread for lunch. When Chig realizes Willy only has one spread, ketchup, between his biscuits she knows things are getting tough in Kaplik. It is a first time novel set in the hollers of southern Indiana during the Depression. Chig is a petite girl who wants to grow but no matter how hard she tries she is always going to be "not much bigger than a chigger." Shortness runs in her family, with her paternal grandmother being less than 5 ft tall so Chig being not a whole lot over 4 ft. at 8-years-0ld is not a surprise. That's when she starts school and with the help of Ms. Barklis the teacher she catches up to the rest of the 3rd graders. Chig is a delightful character who lives in a loving family. Would make a great read aloud in an 3rd-5th grade classroom. It's been out for awhile - 2003 copyright date.

Good afternoon. I just finished writing the final exams for the two YA literature courses I teach. I think I dislike writing exams as much as I dislike taking them! I feel brain dead after that.

I started going through boxes of books, deciding what I am willing to part with for the Montessori School Library and which ones I just have to keep for myself. We won't have as much storage space in the new apartment so I need to pare down a bit. But, I really don't mind since what the new apartment may lack in storage space it makes up for with the large open living area and great kitchen. Not that I cook as much as Steve does, but I have to be in there to make brownies! :-) I can't wait to sit out on that porch, watch the hummingbirds, and listen to the quiet. No "fart mobiles" spinning their tires as they try to get around the sharp corner right below our living room windows. We will be living in an area called Frenchman's Bay - much closer to town so we won't have to get up as early. Lots of large homes above the bay, including the one we will be living in. We don't move until the beginning of June, but I am getting anxious.

My latest reading material has been at a bit lower level - upper elementary, lower middle school - Becoming Naomi Leon by Pam Munoz Ryan. Her Esperanza Rising was very popular in the middle schools in Texas. It won more awards that you can shake a fist at.

Reading Becoming Naomi Leon was a treat. Ryan has a way with language that is as rich as the hot chocolate that sits on the back of the stove in Naomi's Mexican relatives' home. Naomi and her physically handicapped younger brother live with their great grandmother in her airstream trailer. They don't have much, but they are happy and content with the love that surrounds them, until Naomi's mother returns and wants to take Naomi with her to Vegas. A trip to Mexico results in Naomi and Owen being reunited with their father and Naomi developing enough self confidence to stand up for herself. Oh what a satisfying read. :-)

It is going to be a hot one today. I'm already drinking diet Coke and sitting in front of the fan. Looks like we will be moving into a new apartment the end of next month. It is in a much quieter neighborhood and has air conditioning! And a washer and dryer. I don't trust any of my clothes to the laundry people so I end up doing most of them by hand. What a pain. Can't wait to move, but dread the idea of moving. Thank goodness that apartment does not include a set of steps to go down like this one does. Moving a king size bed out of here is going to be interesting.

Guess I am just in the island mode. I picked up The Education of Patience Goodspeed by Heather Vogel Frederick because of the cover art - cool old ship with sails up in the background. When I read the blurb and realized it was set in Hawaii I knew I had to read it. It was absolutely wonderful. I have been reading so much contemporary YA that this humorous historical fiction novel was just what I needed. Patience is not one of Patience's virtues so I really related to her in that sense. A young teen who has already saved her father's whaling ship from a mutiny and masterminded and executed the plan to rescue a landing party from the cannibals on the Dark Islands, poor Patience does not know how to act the part of the lady at the Lahaina girls seminary boarding school she and her little brother Tad are sent to. Fanny, the woman Patience fears is after her father, spews etiquette tips all day long, and the Reverend Wiggins keeps pace with her in relation to quoting Proverbs. What a delightful read. Now I need to find the first book - The Voyage of Patience Goodspeed to read more about the mutiny.

The MS Tantalizing Tidbits book manuscript went in yesterday so I can breath a sigh of relief and start working on writing a final for the YA literature courses. This semester is flying by.

It is actually cool enough today for me to have my fan off and to drink hot tea. Why is it the cool days are the ones I work at home and not at Montessori? For sure it will be sunny and hotter than Hades again tomorrow while I am in the library.

We went and looked at an apartment yesterday and are keeping our fingers crossed we get it as it is in a very quiet neighborhood and the road to it is quite good - not a goat trail like the one we are on now. No abandoned cars along side the road either. Great ocean view with hummingbirds everywhere. Sophie will go nuts watching them. We should find out in a couple of days.

Decided to take a break from YA and read a children's book by Carolyn Marsden - Moon Runner. I loved the cover art - an Asian girl in full stride. Very cute story about 5th grade best friends who are having problems because Min, the supposed "girlie girl" can run faster than the athletically inclined Ruth. Competition initially has a bad influence on their friendship until Ruth realizes that Min has reminded her how good it feels to run, even if you don't win. Not only did the cover attract me, so did the author. Marsden also wrote The Gold-Threaded Dress, which I absolutely loved and apparently so did many others as it was named a Booklist Top Ten Youth First Novel. The main character's family has recently moved from Thailand and she is trying to fit in with the predominantly Hispanic group of 4th grade students. Her ceremonial dress becomes her ticket into the in crowd but they do not appreciate how important it is to Oy and her family.

All for today - still working on the final manuscript editing.

Good morning all. I have a box of books all set to go to Montessori this morning, thanks to Flamingnet.com - a YA book review website that donates books to libraries. Check them out at www.flamingnet.com. I have Flamingnet bookmarked on my computer and check it out quite frequently. Since the HS just opened at Montessori last year we have a very small collection of books for them so the Cirque du Freak titles and the other books will be a real hit with the teens.

Read another ARC - The Queen of Second Place by Laura Peyton Roberts. As a teen I was not part of the in-crowd in school so I certainly related to Cassie's dislike and frustration with the Queen Bee, Sterling, who she called Fourteen Karat, or F.K. for short. The girl who had it all, flaunted it, and had a tongue as sharp as a finely honed sword. Cassie was the target for much of F.K.'s nasty comments due to her red hair and her love of vintage clothes. The competition between Cassie and F.K. heats up when new boy Kevin is partnered with Cassie for an English assignment. Cassie is sure Kevin will fall in love with her - after all she has immediately fallen head over heels in love with him! What she does to get and keep his attention puts her in detention, gets her grounded, and makes her realize who her true friends are. It was fun to read a YA novel where no one dies or does drugs. Just a group of teens with the typical teen issues, learning to deal with them. The Queen of Second Place is a Delacorte title and will be out in August. It is worth the wait. I am still smiling as I think of Cassie's antics.

Gotta go - time to take Steve in to the office.

Oh wow! It did get published - sorry about that! Just goes to show I should check the blog before I post.

Read an adult mystery during the weekend by Iris Johansen called Fatal Tide. I picked it up when I was in B&N in Green Bay during the Holidays and put it in my ever growing pile of adult books to read. I don't get to that pile often - too much fun YA to read. Anyway, I picked it up because the cover reminded me of Deep by Vance - a YA novel set in the Caribbean. A picture of a female's face as she lays face up in the water. Fatal Tide is also set in the Caribbean - mostly on a private island dolphin preserve near Tobago. The dolphins had been rescued from a net in the Canary Islands, where the site of the legendary Miranth (an Egyptian version of Atlantis) had been located. We have the feisty female character who had been abused a child so she isn't too keen on men and the rich and good looking adventurer who wants Miranth at any cost. Was a fun read. Now I want to visit Tobago! :-)

Good morning. BlogSpot was having "technical difficulties" there for a bit or I was busy working on the indexes for the MS booktalking manuscript. Here is the posting I tried to put in on Thursday but with no luck Hopefully it will go through today:

It is a territory holiday today - Transfer Day, when the Dutch transferred ownership of the islands to the U.S. Everyone jokes about all the holidays that the VI celebrates. A friend who works in the public schools says that there are often months where they never work a full week. Montessori doesn't have as many days off as the public schools.

Just finished grading my graduate level class discussion postings about adult books for teens. The subject came up about how we seem to have no problem with using classics, even those with "objectionable" subject matter, for class reading. Can you just imagine the uproar over a YA novel similar to The Scarlet Letter. I think a young woman getting pregnant by the local fundamentalist minister would have much of the community upset if it were used as a class reading title. Hmm, wait a minute, there is a teen novel somewhat similar to that by James Bennett called Faith Wish. It is about a teenage girl who is seduced by a traveling minister and becomes pregnant, but when she finds him, thinking they will have a life together, he puts her in seclusion at a cult like camp. The main character, Anne-Marie, is a bit on the naive side and has learning difficulties so her self esteem is quite low. She is an easy target for this long haired charismatic preacher. A very interesting read, but not one I would use for a class reading set. :-)

My favorite James Bennett YA novel is The Circle Squared. It is definitely for older teens as the main character is a freshman in college and the language and issues addressed are more appropriate for the older teens. Wish every young guy who goes off to college thinking he wants to join a fraternity reads this book. Recommend it to the guys who love college basketball.