Six a.m. came too early again, but at least Sophie didn't wake me up at 5 a.m. to put her out. She was out last night when we went to bed and we both came flying out of bed when we heard her screaming. We have a new cat in the neighborhood and clearly it is a male. She came in sprayed - he was marking his territory I guess. I cleaned her up the best I could but she was absolutely indignant about the whole situation. So her days or ruling the roost around here are over. She hasn't even asked to go back out. Poor baby - she was queen of the iguanas for almost a whole year!

I wonder if Innovative will finally get our phone fixed today. It has not been working for almost 2 weeks. The fax machine rings, but not the phones. The repair guy showed up at 7:30 Saturday morning. What a bite! After being woken up the day before by the power outage and then rudely waken from a deep sleep by the light and Steve telling me you have to get up I was not a happy camper. I was sitting in the livingroom with a scowl on my face when the repair guy came in. After all that he never did go into the bedroom and we still don't have a working phone. This is the same company we have our DSL through - our bill would be minimal if we paid them for the days both worked!

The cover on Mariah Fredericks' Crunch Time is wonderfully 3D. I had the book on the floor next to my rocking chair and kept thinking it was a real pencil on top of the book. The chewed up #2 pencil has the words - A novel by the author of The True Meaning of Cleavage, which is my favorite of her books. All girls going into HS should read this book so they know the potential of what can happen if they get a crush on a less than honest upper classman. I also liked Head Games, but really disliked the cover on the hardback. It has a female face with open lips - very suggestive due to the title. In reality it is a great book about two younger teens who meet in real life and continue the dangerous game they play online. The cover on the paperback edition is much better. Anyway, back to Crunch Time. I do remember taking my SAT and bombing the math section, but I don't remember stressing about it. But that certainly isn't the case with the four juniors in this book. Daisy is worried because she needs a high score to be eligible for financial aid. Jane basically doesn't care, but as the daughter of a movie star she is expected to. Max is trying to get a higher score so that, for once, his father will not tell him he can do better. And Leo - he is the one who wants to be perfect, not that his father cares though. These four unlikely "friends" gather at Jane's swanky NYC apartment to study for the SAT. But, Max is thinking about Daisy and how to get her to think of him as other than a friend. Daisy is attracted to bad boys and Leo is going to be her next bad decision. Jane, she just wants someone to notice her (other than her stepdad) and like her for herself, not because she is her mother's daughter. This is no page turner, but it does give the reader insight into the stress teens are under to play the college prep game. The counselor at this school is a little Hitler and manipulates the kids so that his favorites get their applications in to the good schools first. All heck breaks loose when the smart goody-two-shoes steps forward and admits she took the test for one of the other students, but won't say who. Now the rumors fly. Who is the cheater? One of the four?

Off to Montessori for the day.

A sunny Easter Monday for the tourists. I was surprised at how few people were out on the beach at Bolongo Beach Resort when we went to Iggies for lunch on Saturday. I enjoyed watching a dad with his two little boys - one in matching swim trunks and the other with a hat that matched - in orange. The dark orange sure did contrast with their fish belly white bodies.  Iggies has good hamburgers (not like Shipwreck)and it isn't so loud you can't hear yourself think. We could actually have a conversation without shouting to each other and repeating "What?" many times, like in Shipwreck. It was a breezy day so we decided that eating outside would be a better idea. Iggies is right on the beach and one of my favorite places to eat and people watch. The service varies greatly but we were one of 5 or 6 tables of people in the place so we had good service. We were contemplating how to sneak out of there with the cool hammock that is right out front, tied between two palm trees!

We had a relaxing Easter Sunday. Steve brought me dark chocolate filled crescent rolls for breakfast in bed. YUM!! It was a lazy day of working on the cross stitch blanket for the grandbaby due in October and playing mah jong on the computer. We watched GARDEN STATE and DERAILED. Garden State was one of those movies that grows on you as you watch it. Initially I thought it was one stupid movie, but the longer I watched it the more I got into it and related to the character and how he had been numb for years (from medication) so that he couldn’t deal with the accident that put his mom in a wheelchair and then her death. I loved the quirky girlfriend! Derailed was the exact opposite – at first I was enjoying the movie and then it just got stupid. The more the plot twisted the less I liked the guy you were supposed to feel sorry for. I picked it up because Jennifer Anniston is in it and I have liked most of the movies she has done. Not that she is a great actress, I just like her – ever since watching Friends. But, the one movie I absolutely loved we just happen to catch on TV Friday night – I laughed, I cried, and I sighed – was THE MIGHTY. The book, Freak, the Mighty by Rodman Philbrick came out in 1993 and I had a copy at one point but I didn’t get it read before lending it to someone and never getting it back. After watching the movie about the LD big guy and the brilliant little guy with his stunted body, merging to become a “knight” – I really want to read it. There is a sequel to it called Max, the Mighty. You might recognize Philbrick as he is a great YA author – also wrote Last Book in the Universe, The Young Man and the Sea, and Rem World.

I actually brought Easter Monday in at the wee hours of the night as I picked up Ellen Hopkins’ Burned when I headed to bed last night, thinking I would read for a ½ hour or so before going to sleep. I read until I finished it. I enjoyed her first poetry formatted novel Crank, about a girl who slides into addiction, but Burned is even better. Pattyn is a Mormon teen who is questioning her faith and the subservient role women play in her religion. She is the oldest of 6 girls and spends her time at home taking care of the girls and at school as a loner. Her father is trying to numb his memories of a previous family with Johnny Walker Black. But it is when he drunk that his anger erupts and he takes it out on his wife and eventually on his oldest girls. Pattyn’s escape it to hike into the desert and target practice. That is where she meets Derek for the first time and where she finds out about lust, not love. Love she finds in Nevada, where she is sent to live with her reclusive paternal aunt. She falls in love with Ethan, who lives on the neighboring ranch. But all good things must come to the end and in the Fall she returns to the hell of her family home and her abusive father. I couldn’t put this book down until I knew Pattyn’s fate and what I did discover was heartbreaking.

Sorry - the bold face and italics isn't working this a.m. Who knows why.

A rainy gloomy day in St. Thomas - yahoo!! Maybe I can take a shower and get all the conditioner out of my hair for a change. Right now we are doing "boat showers" and taking in the laundry to be done due to the cistern going dry and having water trucked in. So when it poured down rain this a.m. I lay in bed relishing the sound of it. Especially after the power went out, but the wonderful sound of rain was disturbed by "BEEP!! BEEP!! - the surge protector box. I rolled over, "knowing" Steve would shut down the computer and turn off the beeping. BEEP!! BEEP!! BEEP, BEEP, BEEP!!! and then @$^%*&^^^^###!!!! from me as I came out of the bedroom to find Steve sitting out on the porch with a diet coke and the cat in his lap, saying he hadn't heard the beeping. Innocently he asked me if the power went out. ARGHH!! I went back to bed - no point in staying up, too dark and gloomy to read. But, when I got up later Steve was gone so I curled up and read. When he got home later he quietly came in and said he brought me a "peace offering" to improve my morning mood - a sticky bun from Frank's bakery. Oh my! It was huge and I haven't eaten one of these since my kids were little. I had to have it with a cup of tea. I savored every sugary gooey bite even though I knew my fat cells were expanding with every bite. Oh well - I'm too old for a bikini anyway. :-)

My a.m. reading was Magic in the Wind by Christine Feehan. I am hooked on her paranormal romances about the seven Drake sisters. This slim volume is about Sarah, the eldest sister, and the beginning of the prophecy as the gate open to Damon, the death pursued government/defense system think tank scientist who has retreated to her small coastal town to get away from people. Neither one of them expected to fall in love, but the Drake magic didn't give them much option. Unbeknownst to him, Sarah has returned home to protect Damon from mercenaries out to kidnap him again and further torture him for the information they want. What a great beach read, but be very careful about giving this one to teens. The sex scenes are very erotic - no vulgar terms, but Feehan can set the pages on fire!

On the YA front I loved Sharon M Draper's latest, Copper Sun. I have liked, if not loved, all of her books and was very glad to see the Hazelwood High trilogy back in print. My copy of Tears of a Tiger has seen better days. The cover art for Copper Sun is stunning with the shades of orange (setting sun) background with the silhouette of Amari, the 15-year-old African who is stolen from her village and finds herself a slave on a plantation in the Carolinas. She is a gift to a sadistic spoiled 16 year old plantation owner's son. I found myself gasping at the viciousness of the slave traders and the plantation owner and his son. Clay, the son, uses the cook's 4 year old as gator bait - tying Tidbit with a rope and throwing him into the river to lure the gators so he and his buddies can shoot them. Draper slowly builds a solid friendship between the indentured teen, Polly, and Amari as they work for Teenie, the cook. This is essential as they must keep each other alive when they escape, headed South to freedom, instead of North. The extent of Draper's research, and her own personal interest in the slave trade as the granddaughter of a slave herself, are evident in the depth of historical information that is deftly woven in this heart breaking story. Historical fiction is a hard sell with many teens, but booktalking this one will keep it on the reserve list in your library for many months. Amari and Polly are teenage girls, best friends in the worst of circumstances, who today's teens will want to read about.

Enough for today. I need to go break down the boxes I am collecting for the move to North Carolina so I can get the second bedroom ready for Annika and Nicke. My foreign exchange daughter from close to 20 years ago is coming from Finland to be married down here. I wonder if she will recognize me at the airport?

I have not been able to get to the blog for days. GRRR!! Either the Internet isn't working, the power is out, or I am just too busy or grumpy to do so! We ran out of cistern water this weekend so now we are paying for every drop the truck delivered on Saturday. Steve is watching me wash dishes to make sure I am not using too much water while I rinse them and I didn't get all of the conditioner out of my hair last night. We had to bring our laundry in to to be done for us. I am praying for rain! I will be so glad to be back on the Mainland where running water is a "given" - not a luxury!

We watched most of the Master's Tournament this weekend, except for when the power went our yesterday, during the last round - of course. I was hoping Freddy Couples would win but I was okay with Mickelson too. I can't believe I am watching golf! I have never swung a club in my life, but Steve loves to watch it and he is in control of the remote.

A trip to Kmart and to get the mail on Saturday was interesting. We actually got mail! The guy who owns the private mail box place got it all sorted finally. It was like Christmas to get all the catalogs and magazines at once - window shopping overload!! Speaking of Christmas - I also received the Christmas present my foreign exchange daughter sent from Finland! The stop to get gas was interesting when the cop in front of us drove away with the nozzle still in his SUV. Luckily the hose pulled free and gas didn't spew everywhere. No one seemed too upset - other than me envisioning someone lighting a match. He just moved to another gas pump so why was he driving away to begin with? The highlight of the excursion was KMart. The photo machine was working for the first time in months so I was able to drop off a film. And, they even had the Oreo thins I love. It is amazing what can delight a woman who lives on an island! :-) I was literally bouncing on the way out to the car!

While the power was out yesterday I did finish Todd Strasser's Battle Drift, part of the Drift X trilogy. I hadn't read the first one, Slide or Die, but I was fine with the references to what probably happened to the main character, Kennin, in the first one. He is one interesting half Asian teen who loves to drift - speeding until the car slides between traction and no traction. Not something I want to do, but I love cars so I did enjoy this gearhead type book with a Hispanic girl being the one who built the car to drift. This is not high quality literature, but it certainly will get those car guys to read a novel - most likely all three. I was a bit irritated with the abrupt ending, as the reader doesn't get to find out what happens in the race until the third book, Sidewayz Glory. Strasser is a car guy himself so I am sure he had fun writing this series with a gearhead audience in mind.

I am brain dead after a day of writing a final exam and grading. I got up early and made sure I was dressed and out in the livingroom, waiting for the phone guy to get here. No such luck. The fax machine in the printer rings, but the phones don't work. Doesn't help any that the cell phones don't work here at the apartment. Oh the joys of island life. Doesn't work well when you are trying to live the hectic life of a Mainlander with the problems of island service. What did we do before the days of email, faxes, cell phones, pagers, etc.? Well, probably enjoyed a more relaxing life! Cell phones are a way of life down here. Even our elementary kids carry them around. The ear buds are on 1/2 the people you see on the street and even the checkers in the store. You never know who they are talking to. Okay - enough for now. I am going to veg and work on the new grandbaby's cross stitched quilt.

I feel like I dropped of the face of the earth electronically! Since last Thursday the Internet and phone connections on island have been acting wonky, or not working at all. The teachers and administrators were coming in the library at Montessori to ask me why the library Internet connection was working and the others weren’t. I had no idea, but I was glad it was so I could download MARC records from Follett’s Alliance Plus. Such a slick and easy way to get records into Destiny. But, when I got home the Internet was not working. Nor was it all day on Friday. It came up long enough for me to check email on Saturday morning and then went down again. Sunday it was down all day so we decided to try and get me online via a dial-up and our land line wasn’t working either! Yesterday it was up and down all day, but I did get some grading done when it was up. Today I am home in bed with an intestinal bug, but at least I am online – well, some of the time – it keeps dropping out on me. Finished the August Reader’s Advisory column for Library Media Connection and got that emailed in. I should be working on my Annual Review for ECU but I am afraid to switch computers for fear the Internet will go down on me and the printer isn’t configured on my laptop yet. Life was so much easier before all this technology came about!

Looked through the list of the cool YA authors who will be at the Assembly on Literature for Adolescents (ALAN) Conference, which is part of the larger National Council on Teacher of English (NCTE) Conference in Nashville this November. I am introducing Janet McDonald so I excited about going. Although I have been a member of ALAN for many years I have never gone to their conference. I guess it is at or near Opryland. J

I wallowed in an early chapter novel this a.m. as I lay in bed feeling sorry for myself and my upset tummy. Colleen O’Shaughnessy McKenna’s Third Grade Wedding Bells? is an absolutely delightful book. It would be a great read aloud in a 2nd or 3rd grade classroom as well as for kids to read on their own. Poor Gordie – he can’t get a break from the verbal taunting of Lucy Diaz, the most talkative and intelligent (in her opinion) student in class. She hasn’t given Gordie a break since he forgot his lines in the last play and ran off the stage. But, they join forces when they think their teacher might be getting married and moving. I had forgotten how much fun these early books are. I’d buy the whole Third Grade Series for a primary school library and suggest all four titles for read aloud in the classroom.

My latest YA novel read was Beth Goobie’s The Dream Where the Losers Go. Goobie is one of my favorite YA authors from Canada and she didn’t let me down with this book. Wow! This was one heck of creepy read, but one that would not let me go. I loved every minute of finding my way along with Skey as she maneuvered through her dark dream tunnels. She could feel carvings on the wall while she felt her way along the outside walls, figuring out how many tunnels there were – it varied from dream to dream. Then a boy joins her in the dream tunnels. She can’t see him but she hears him. From his breathing she can tell he is scared and when she calls to him he runs away. He is afraid of someone getting him. She picks up the rock he kicks into the center of the cavern to make sure there isn’t a pit. The rock is still in her hand when she wakes up the next morning. It becomes a talisman for her – she keeps it in her pocket. Skey’s waking hours are not much better than her scary dreams. She is in a treatment center for self destructive behavior – she cut up her arms with a razor blade. Skey is the girlfriend of the head of the Dragons, a gang of vicious rich kids. Jigger has complete and total control of Skey and threatens her if she even looks at another guy. Matter of fact, he and his gang beat Lick, her school protect partner, to the point of hospitalization because he spent time at the treatment center with her working on their project. There is a connection between Skey and Lick – could it have anything to do with the dream tunnels? What Skey and Lick discover about the tunnels may be their way out of the dreams.

Now let’s see if I can copy and paste this into my blog before the Internet goes down again!

A very overcast and gloomy day today. Could barely see the cruise ship coming in through the fog. Steve says they are working on the road between the cruise ship dock and downtown so they have traffic diverted, changing some of the roads to one way. This could be interesting going to get the mail today. We have a private mail box on the other side of town (was convenient when I worked at UVI but sure isn't anymore) and the guy who owns it decided he didn't like the location so he moved, kinda across the street. If I hadn't gone to get the mail on Thursday and he hadn't told me about the move we would have been shocked on Saturday. We went to the new place and no one was there so we went to the old place and the store was empty. No signs saying where the new Mail Boxes location is. So hopefully when I check the new place today they will actually be open. Everything down here is on island time. I got a credit card statement last week dated September 05. Good thing I pay those online!

I read a delight of a book called The Boy Who Ate Stars by Kochka (yes, just one name). She is Lebanese but lives in France. And she is one heck of a writer and this is her first book. I can't wait to read more of her novels. Lucy, a precocious tween, decides she is going to meet eveyone in her new apartment building, but when she meets Matthew she decides he and his mom and nanny are quite enough. Her first encounter with Matthew was quite interesting. "Matthew bolted out of nowhere like a mad dog and jumped on top of me, nearly knocking me over, before ending up on tiptoes with both hands in my hair. He skillfully ran his fingers all over my head, squealing and making occasional fsstt! noises. Matthew was on cloud nine, sending my hair flying in every direction and choking with laughter." Lucy has met an autistic young boy who she grows to love as she spends time with him and his eccentric mother and Russian nanny who basically doesn't speak, but shadows Matthew everywhere, even sleeping outside his bedroom door. The beauty of the writing and the poignancy of the relationship that grows between Lucy and Matthew had a lump in my throat as I read this book. There are wonderful touches of humor too as Lucy teaches the prissy little pampered pup of her mother's friend to be come a DOG - sniffing butts and rolling in the grass. This is one I will keep on my bookcase near me and will read again and again. Kochka - give us more!!

Almost time to head to Montessori for the day. Hopefully I don't have a group of grumpy high schoolers in there burned out from standardized testing like last week.

It has been a Monday all morning! Hope the afternoon is better. Maybe it is the crummy overcast weather outside. Not a hint of blue in the sky yet. That could change quickly though. The weather changes here as fast as it did in Texas. Did you ever wonder why you are always the one that reaches for the last couple of ice cubes when the Diet Coke in the fridge is warm? I fill the ice cube trays (4 of them) every day. And you can't just stick the trays under the tap - this has to be bottled water. Oh how I miss the fridge with the ice maker in the door! The ice cubes must know I am grumpy today as they are clumping together and whapping me in the teeth and getting ice tea on my face. Okay - enough whining. See what happens when the DSL connection is acting wonky and my passwords don't work to get into websites! And, I think I learned that all those sweepstakes entries I have been doing at Uproar.com don't count because I am in the VI! No where does it say that the VI doesn't count as a US resident. GRRR!! We'll see what answer I get back from the Uproar people. I may be in an uproar.

I did finish Adrienne Maria Vrettos Skin this a.m. before I got frustrated online. There are more than a few books about teenage anorexics, but this one intrigued me as it is told from the view point of Donnie, the nerdy 14-year-old brother of 16-year-old Karen, the anorexic in the family. But this book is so much more than about anorexia - it is about the family dynamics that result in Donnie being an outcast and Karen starving herself. Karen keeps a lunchbox under the front porch as this is where she has been taking Donnie since they were little kids - every time their parents start to scream at each other. The screaming lessens when their father moves out, but Donnie's stress levels haven't. During the summer his two friends have decided that he is no longer their friend, even though he feebly keeps trying to get back into the triangle friendship they had the year before. So not only is he invisible at home, he is invisible at school as well. At first Mom is just frustrated with Karen for getting upset when the gym teacher uses her as an example of a curvy girl who can go up one size in their gym uniforms. Karen starts dieting and then the dieting gets out of hand when Amanda, Karen's best friend, moves. Karen no longer has an escape from the fighting at home and no alibi that she has eaten when she hasn't. The only time Donnie expresses his anger and frustration is when he gets another one of his recurrent ear infections and he runs a fever. They he lets his mouth run and tells them all what he thinks of them. Too bad for Donnie this fever doesn't happen often enough to keep him from feeling like he could blow up. Maybe then somebody would notice him. It isn't just teens with sick siblings that will relate to this book. It is any young teen who feels like they are invisible due to a sibling or friend who is the center of the limelight for whatever reason. A gotta have book in every YA collection. The language makes it one that may not work in a MS collection, but certainly a HS one.

Speaking of messed up families - we watched The Squid and the Whale the other night. I detested watching that movie. It seems that whenever a movie gets a lot of attention, as this one did, even on NPR (that's why Steve picked it up at Blockbuster) it tends to be one I don't like. The parents in this movie were awful, as they were intended to be - to the point that I didn't even want to admit they were parents, especially ones with Ph.Ds! And the behavior of the youngest boy was more than I could handle at times. I told Steve that if the young actor had been my son I would have told him no way was any child of mine using that kind of language - even while acting in a movie. The reason I am talking about this is that I would have cringed a bit if reading the vulgar language and nasty scenes in a book, but when I read I can "tone" it down. You certainly can't when it is right there in front of your face on the screen. For this reason, and many more, I am always floored when a parent that will let their teenagers watch anything on TV and R rated movies, objects to to an edgy YA novel because of the theme or language.

Okay - that is it for me today. Time to find something for lunch and get on with grading.

I just won $2.00 playing free Bingo online! :-) I play at Uproar.com because I like to enter the sweepstakes and Bingo is a quick way to earn points. And every once in awhile you win a couple of bucks too. I think I inherited my Mom's "cheapstake" gambling gene. :-) I have won a whole $6.00 on that site, but I have won two B&N gift certificates and those were cool. I bought books with them - of course! I just ordered two Christine Feehan titles. I had picked up her Oceans Of Fire when Hemingway Bookstore went out of business in Red Hook. I bought it because of the cover - a woman diving next to the dolphin. It proved to be a supernatural romance, part of the Drake Sisters series. Abby has the power to cause people to tell the truth, even when they don't want to. People tend to avoid her because she isn't in control of this power. Just ask her long time enemy Silvia, who blurted out who she was having an affair with because of Abby's power. Abby is running from the Russian agent she fell in love with and who betrayed her. The bond between the sisters, and their high profile careers (model, pop singer, author etc.) makes this a book with teen appeal, but the steamy sex scenes make it one I would not recommend to teens. But it certainly is a great beach read for anyone who loves a combination of a little magic and romance.

Also use mypoints.com to order books through Barnes and Noble online because I earn points with them that I can get gift certificates with. Just ordered the DVD concerts of UB40 in Holland and Taj Mahal in St. Lucia. We had our usual 1/2 a burger and fries lunch at Shipwreck yesterday and we caught the end of the UB40 one and the beginning of the Taj Mahal DVD. I was in a grumpy mood and when I hear UB40's Red, Red Wine I had to sing along and felt better. Music is such a great mood enhancer. We have several concert DVDs that we like to watch. Steve and I have quite different taste in music and I want to find somewhere else to be when he watches Peter Gabriel ones, but since he loves his music I grin and bear it.

I know there is a movie out there with Vin Diesel as a male nanny, but I haven't seen it. I have read Christian Burch's The Manny Files. It is hilarious. The best humorous upper elementary/middle school level novel I have read in ages. The narrator is Keats Dalinger, the 8-9 year old younger brother of Lulu, who is the tween writing the Manny Files, which Keats fears will be the reason his parents fire the manny. The Dalinger family is more than a bit eccentric. Mirabelle, called Belly, is a preschooler who loves to be naked and get into everything she can. Indian is in between Keats and Lulu and seems to be the mediator in the family and has great fashion sense. Her choice of "costumes" are delightful, right down to the sari and turbans. All of the characters in this book are well rounded and delightful. I would have loved to have these parents growing up - much more interesting than the "normal" parents. Poor Lulu - what tween wouldn't be embarrassed by a male nanny who meets you at the bus stop dressed in a sombrerro? The manny is the delight of everyone in the family except Lulu who has quite a thick file on him, that Keats keeps trying to get rid of - even by knocking it out of the boat during their summer vacation, but no such luck. Lulu finally compiles what she thinks is enough evidence to get rid of the manny and calls a family meeting. Keats surprises himself by standing up for the Manny and the compromise makes everyone happy, including Uncle Max who is always with the manny these days. This one would make a great read aloud in class. The older students will pick up on the relationship growing between the manny and Uncle Max, but many, like Keats won't realize that they are gay as it is done so delicately.

Last comment for the day - we watched the sailboats in the Rolex regatta go by yesterday. They were beautiful! Only the captain of the winning team gets a Rolex though! :-( Teams come from all over the world to compete in this race.

Another 6 a.m. morning. I am trying to put in two days a week at Montessori so I can get this darn library online. Tuesday was a difficult day with lots of students in the library so it was hard to concentrate with interruptions so often. One of the classroom bathrooms wasn't working so I had bunches of 6-9 year olds coming in to use the library bathroom and then hanging around. They have a substitute teacher for the next two weeks so today could be as bad. Kids who know the check out process seem to forget on the days I am there so I have to stop what I am doing to help them. Oh the joys!

I finally found the top of my desk yesterday and found the pamphlet I picked up at St. Maarten Park - the island's small zoo. I felt like I was back at the Royale Turtle Inn with the 200 birds, most squawking at the same time. The peacock was incredible though - he was just wandering around the zoo and I steered clear of him. There is a restaurant in Houston that has peacocks in the parking lot and they are known to chase people! Wild boars, an ocelot, a caiman, several types of tropical region monkeys, a reptile house (Steve left the door open for a quick escape - he does not like snakes), a bat house (I wanted to leave the door open for a quick escape - I detest bats), and lots of different types of tropical birds. The parrots and macaws were of every color you could imagine and I have never seen an ibis the intense orangish pink that we saw. I was talking to all of the animals as we walked through, while Steve smiled at my enjoyment. Although a small zoo and in need of painting, etc. it was clean and clearly the animals were well cared for. Last stop was the restrooms and Steve calls over the partition that he has a cat sitting on the commode in his. I wondered what the heck he was talking about until I was washing my hands and saw that I too had an animal on the commode - mine was a baby elephant. The pictures behind the commodes certainly caused us to chuckle. The people in the gift shop were a delight and we had great fun talking to them about how it is so essential that you are able to speak Dutch, the national language, or you will be working as a maid in one of the hotels. We did hear Dutch spoken but overall it was English on the Dutch side of the island.

So many of the teen novels have partial face shots. The cover of Forbidden by Judy Waite has the right side of a teenage girl's face, with her looking down. In the book Elinor, the main character, has very light blonde hair but the photograph of the girl on the cover does not. Little things like that bug me. I know - I am anal! But, what a great book! I couldn't put it down - it creeped me out that all these people could follow Howard, the psychologically unbalanced leader of the True Cause cult. Elinor was initiated into the cult when she was a young child and both she and her mother were snatched from the street while they were selling the True Cause Word by the man and son who loved them, but they were found again and brought back to the cult. Elinor is still there several years later, destined to be one of Howard's Brides. When it is time for her to go through the ceremony to join the other Brides she finally opens her eyes a bit to what is going on around her. This is due to her meetings with Jamie, a young man who seems familiar to her. She realizes that Howard is a very old man and that lying with him is not what she wants, but she has no choice. Elinor's awakening from the mindlessness of this cult is heartbreaking. I wanted to hug her and tell her it was going to be okay. Nothing horrible was going to happen to her for asking questions or thinking for herself. The ending had me gasping.

Dang it - Steve just scared the pee-willies out of me! He startled me as I was typing and I shrieked like one of the birds on Sint Maarten! He told me it was a sign of senility to be talking to inanimate objects. I had just told his Roomba to back off while it was bumping against the legs of my chair. The cat hates that thing and I am not too far behind her. It gets stuck under the couch and I have to move it to get it out. It also tries to eat Sophie's food and she gets really bent out of shape about that! Off to Montessori.

A scattered clouds Tuesday a.m. in the islands. This is the first a.m. I have been out of bed at 6:00 in a couple of weeks - all I can say is YUCK!!!

Last night I was talking bout Klause's Freaks. I went to bed thinking about this book last night as I so wanted to love it as I did her vampire love story, The Silver Kiss, and the deliciously sensual female werewolf story, Blood and Chocolate. I think part of the reason I didn't connect with this book is that the main character is a male who is having sexual urges. Now with Zoe in The Silver Kiss her attraction to Simon was more on a emotional basis as she was dealing with her mother's impending death. In Blood and Chocolate a female werewolf falls in love with a human teen and shows him how she transforms into a wolf and is devastated when he is terrified of her rather than loving her more for who she is. In other words - these were "love stories" a female reader can relate to. Now Abel Dandy is a 17 year old horny guy who is not above kissing the dog faced girl for a thrill. But as a "normal human" with no physical abnormalities he doesn't fit in with the freak show he has lived with all of his life and runs away to a "regular" circus and discovers that his knife throwing skills aren't a big deal there either. When he starts having sexy dreams about an Egyptian woman he can't concentrate on much of anything else. Discovering that the scarab ring he was given as a gift can actually bring her mummy to life adds further spice, in a gross out way at times, to his physical desire for this woman. Abel is not a character I could connect to even though he is really a nice guy and goes out of his way to help everyone he comes in contact with, even the little dog boy who follows him to the circus. All I can say is that Klause has written another book that is unforgettable. I wasn't crazy about it, but I won't forget it and I certainly will booktalk it. A few excerpts or a first person booktalk will have the guys sitting up and paying attention. Having the hots for a mummy who comes to life under your hands will interest any teenage guy. I don't think they will be quite as grossed out by her as I was. :-) Klause has a way of making you sit up and pay attention to her books and she certainly did this again with Freaks.

All for today.

Gave up on grading for the day. It gets so darn dark here - I can see the pink of the sunset toward Puerto Rico. So pretty, but soon the sky will be pitch black. Another day in the islands has come to an end. It was an overcast one but there were still sailboats and cruise ships galore. Steve just came home from getting gas and groceries. He knows how much I hate getting gas on this island. And don't even talk about how much I dislike the grocery stores - especially the tellers. The rudeness just gets to me. I think he is afraid I am going to actually pull out a nose ring as I have threatened in the past! I think knowing my time on the island is coming to an end is making me less tolerant of the rudeness of the West Indians. We experienced the rudeness on the French side, St. Martin, but the people on the Dutch side, Sint Maarten, were a breath of fresh air after dealing with the poor service and attitude here. The waiters at Cheri's Cafe in the Maho area were my favorites. They were always friendly and had a smile on their face and brought me silk flowers in my drinks! :-) The food was also very good there. Best hamburger I had on the island. The dancers from the Royale Casino dance out front at 9 p.m. on Weds. We walked right past them into the casino since we went to the show at 9:30. It was fun, but certainly not Vegas.

Speaking of shows - I read Annette Curtis Klauses' long waited for Freaks. I am still deciding how I feel about this book. I didn't fall in love with it like I did The Silver Kiss or Bloood and Chocolate. Perhaps it is because the main character is a 17 year old boy who is the son of two entertainers in a freak show. I'll talk more about it tomorrow. Need to go deal with dinner since it is after 7 p.m.

What an interesting vacation week we had on Sint Maarten. We stayed at the Royal Turtle, a small 8 room inn that was next to a small marina and restaurant, the Turtle Pier. It would have been a perfect little inn if the location and lack of sound proofing weren't so poor. The room was cute, with a four poster bed, but the noise level was awful. You could hear the people in the next room burp! And the people upstairs sounded like elephants clog dancing when they walked across the room or their balcony. We should have known better when the website said the Inn was within walking distance from the airport. It sure was and the sound of planes landing and taking off was loud, but could not drown out the sound of the animal residents of the Inn. There were cages full of parrots and macaws that made sure they woke us up very early and went crazy whenever the nasty next door neighbor boys taunted the birds, and the two monkeys in yet another cage, into a frenzy! There were also lots of rabbits, baby bunnies, a guinea pig, and a turtle, of course. And at least 6 cats that made sure they caterwauled their loudest at dawn. Oh yeah, and the fish we fed toast to in the a.m. at the restaurant. One of the waiters said the big ones were piranhas, but looking at their mouth and eyes it was clear they weren't. But it was weird to have them swim underneath your table and then back out since the restaurant was on the water. The best part of the Inn was the restaurant. Breakfast came with the room and we ate eggs, toast, and bacon every a.m. The prices were very good for lunch and dinner too. We were surprised they didn't have more business then they did.

We wandered all over Sint Maarten (the Dutch side) and Saint Martin (the French side) of the island. I like the Dutch side much better. It has nothing to do with all the casinos with both penny and nickel machines. :-) Some might say they like the French side more as that is where Oriental Bay is, which has a long strip of clothing optional beach. It certainly was an eye opener! There were a number of topless women, but what surprised me was the number of older men walking around sans bathing suits! We sat next to two couples from Detroit and one of the guys said he would never be able to see an old gray haired guy in the same light again! Actually, I think all of the beaches are topless, both sides of the island. I never did put on my suit the whole time we were there - water is too cold for me this time of the year.

I did a little bit of reading while we were on vacation. Since the Liat plane was more than a little late flying out of St. Thomas I had time to read. The agent collects all of our boarding passes, sends us back to sit down, counts the boarding passes, and then realizes that she has 27 passes and 28 of us in the boarding area. She then threatens that if the person who didn't turn their's in doesn't do so immediately the plane wouldn't be going anywhere. Well, no one stepped forward and it was too much trouble for her to call us each forward by boarding pass name so we sat in the boarding area for over an hour before they decided we had been "punished" enough and we boarded. The boarding area was not well air conditioned and it got more than a bit stuffy and odoriferous! And a group of local guys were calling 900 sex lines on their cell phones and putting them on speaker phone so they could all laugh themselves silly. No one said a word, even the agents in the area. So it was not only hot and stinky in their, it was obscenely loud.

Nevertheless, I did get a start on Mary Higgins Clark's Nighttime Is My Time. It is a fun read - a murder mystery set during a class reunion. The group of popular girls who taunted and teased the ugly geek in high school were being killed off one by one over the last 20 years. The main character is one of the last two women "the Owl" is after. The reader knows the Owl has to be one of the guys at the reunion, but there are at least 4 of them he could be. The best part of the book was the delightful addition of a teenage reporter/sleuth, Jake, who hangs out at the hotel the reunion was at and overhears much more than he should. He takes it upon himself to figure out who the serial killer is, much to the chagrin of the local authorities. As do all Higgins Clark book, it ends happily ever after. Older teens who like mysteries might enjoy this one because of Jake's involvement in solving the murders.

I hear the dryer buzzing. Been washing clothes all day. We woke up this a.m. to the power going off again and figured it would be off all day, but it was a short outage for a change.

Okay - this island living is getting really old about right now! We woke up without water again. Not that washing my face in bottled water is a big deal, but we were out of power all but an hour or so between 10:00 a.m. and 7 p.m. yesterday and during that one hour we didn't have water! No wonder the owner here says the only time he ever ran out of cistern water is during one of the major hurricanes when he had to drain them - the darn pumps for the cisterns don't work half the time! I have towels molding in the washer and dishes in the sink and am just getting down right grumpy about this. On the positive side - I did get pizza for dinner last night since the apartment was hot and sticky when Steve came home from his frigid court offices - they have a large backup generator so when the power on the island goes out the court is still up and running, air conditioning and all!

Since I couldn't work on the computer I did get through 5 bookcases of YA books and got them in order for the next two booktalking books and a bookcase full of the new ones I want to read. Speaking of new 2006 titles - I have found my first contender for the 2007 Printz Award - The Queen's Soprano by Carol Dines. This is upper level YA historical fiction at its best. I was so wrapped up in the story of 17-year-old Angelica Voglia's turbulent life as a gifted soprano in Rome during the the 1600s that I could smell the incense and her fear of being sent away to a convent by Pope Innocent XI, who had banned women from singing in public. He felt that their singing inflamed men to actions that were not in their control! So Queen Christina, once the Queen of Sweden who left her country to move to Rome to convert to Catholicism, defies him by having her own group of singers. When her biological father and benefactor, Father Zachary dies, Angelica's mother is about to sell her daughter to the highest bidder when Angelica runs away and joins Christina's group of singers. The tale is rich with intrigue and a wonderful love story that does not end happily due to Angelica's near rape by a Cardinal, which tears at the heart strings. Angelica is a strong female character who is forced to fight against the mores of the times and locale so that she can be true to her gift - her singing. It is the only time she feels alive. I was spellbound by Dines' deftly woven tale based on research about the real Angelica Voglia. Dine's has a way with descriptive narrative that causes you to stop and re-read passages and sigh. I would love to see a truly well crafted historical novel with an older "teen" protagonist be recognized for its literary merit.

Okay, Steve gave up on the idea of a shower this a.m. so we are off and running for the day.

Here it is Tuesday already. Yesterday was Steve's birthday so he had the day off. Today is my normal day to be at Montessori, but it is their Spring Break. Next week is actually my Spring Break at ECU so we are going to fly on Liat airlines over to St. Marteen for a few days. That is if the pilots don't go on a "sick out" again like last week. Steve found a small 8 room Inn that we are staying at - quiet and quaint. Just what we both need right now.

Have been going through my books to decide what I want to keep down here and what I want to send up to Greenville and came across a copy of Where We Are What We See: Poems, Stories, Essays, and Art from the Best Young Writers and Artists of America. This paperback Push Anthology is a selection of the entries in the 2002, 2003, and 2004 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. The talent of these Middle through High School age teens is amazing. These are not pretty little stories and poems. Some are so raw your eyes hurt and some are just down right brilliant in their genre. The language is theirs and the pain is theirs - all right there on the page in black and white, sometimes so deftly done with a few words you forget these are teens. But then again, perhaps we should forget they are teens, and acknowledge them for what they are - talented writers and artists. A superb addition to upper level YA collections.

Sandra and Miles Pinkney have put together a visual treat to encourage reading - Read and Rise, that begins with a poem by Maja Angelou. I love the line:
"Reading is the river
To your liberty
For all your life to come"
This book is part of a campaign to encourage reading in our urban areas, by the National Urban League and Scholastic.

All for now.

A dreary Saturday morning here on St. Thomas. I have both computers going at the moment. Finally figured out how to set up the software and load books to my laptop and then burn them to CDs. I could just load them to my Ipod, but I like having the CDs. I can move them between the car and my CD player, etc. I am downloading Wicked by Gregory Maguire at the moment. I bought a copy of the book when it came out, but I have no idea where it went, but I am sure I lent it to someone and didn't get it back, which is fine. I loved Maguire's Lost, about a writer who ends up in a house supposedly haunted by the spirit of the man who inspired Dickens' to write about Scrooge. There is also the question if the remains still in the house are those of a Jack the Ripper victim. One of those can't put it down books.

Just read an article in the paper about the beloved huge ficus tree in the front yard of a home on the way to Charlotte Amalie. The tree was at least 5 feet around and gave such a tropical feel to the home and I am sure, much shade. The front yard now has a huge stump in it and looks barren. Steve has had to listen to me fuss about it every time we drive by so he brought home the newspaper article about the tree. I am not the only person upset by its demise. The neighbors are upset and people on the island are wondering why it could have been cut down without a permit for tree removal. Under Virgin Islands law the VI Agriculture Dept. is supposed to issue tree removal permits but no one has ever been designated to issue the permits! Nor are there any established procedures for how to go about getting the permit. This is so typical for the VI and so very sad in relation to what people are able to do to deface this once very beautiful island. Steve has now added another nickname to the many I already have with him: tree-hugger. This one I am quite proud of! :-)

Sophie and I read another one of Scholastic's Graphix novels this a.m. Queen Bee by Chynna Clugston (creator the comic series Blue Monday, Scooter Girl, and Strangetown) This B/W graphic novel is perfect for those middle school age girls who are worried about how to fit in. Haley Madison, former geek, is determined to be the most popular girl in her new NYC school. She learns how to be cool from her Mom's magazine, Teenz. But what Haley can't control is her power of psychokinesis - she throws things without trying and breaks more mirrors that even a cat has lives to deal with. Haley is on the top of her game until the new girl shows up, who just happens to have the same powers as Haley. Let the queen wars begin and they are not pretty! Clugston has the Nasty Girls down pat, and I can't help but love the guy who befriends Haley and helps her focus on the value of being "normal". The MS girls at Montessori are going to eat this one up.

Now I need to address a book that I find quite frustrating - Peter Rabbit's Happy Easter by Grace Maccarone, with illustrations by David McPhail. Granted McPhail did attempt to make his illustrations look a bit like the classic muted pastel illustration in the original Peter Rabbit books by Beatrix Potter, but they just aren't the same. And, Maccarone uses the names of the characters from Potter's books, but no where on the verso page or anywhere else do I see any indication that this is "based on," or "an adaptation of" the works of Beatrix Potter. On the other hand, the Frederick Warne book, Peter Rabbit's Easter clearly states "based on works by Beatrix Potter." I know I am being "anal," but I really think credit should be given where it is due and Potter deserve the credit for creating such a wonderful set of characters, especially Peter Rabbit. The plot bothers me a bit also, as Peter Rabbit proceeds to steal an armful of eggs from the neighbors and stacks them against the wall where several pots of open paint just happen to fall on them. Tah-dah! Colored eggs! But Mother Rabbit insists her naughty son return the eggs. So, Peter Rabbit becomes the Easter Bunny when the neighbors find their returned colorful eggs in their gardens and yards. The logical part of me says - these were not boiled eggs so why didn't any of them break during all of this activity, especially in the illustration of Peter Rabbit throwing the eggs behind him as he walks along. Okay - like I tell my students: "Chill, it is a story!" Yes, it is, just not a good one in my humble opinion.

All for now - this is our trip to Shipwreck for a burger Saturday! And, we haven't picked up the mail all week so I am anxious to see what new catalogs and magazines (several months late) have come in. I am getting the evil eye from the hungry husband so off we go!

This dreary weather is making me sleepy and grouchy. Or, it may have something to do with the fact that I spent the last 3 hours writing a midterm exam. Yeah - I think that is where this brain dead feeling is coming from. Writing the right answer for multiple choice tests is easy, creating three "good" wrong answers isn't always quite as easy.

We celebrated Mardi Gras last night down at Tickles. We had no intention of doing so - Steve was just going to Cingular to cut off the phone service to my old phone, but I was having so much fun people watching while I was sitting in Tickles waiting for him that we stayed for dinner. The wait staff was all decked out in hats and beads. I came home with a cool set of beads with a surf board at the end, and they didn't cost me anything other than a headache from the wine I drank. That place was packed and I don't think there was a berth left in the marina. I just drool over the luxury yachts docked there. Heck - I couldn't afford to fill their fuel tank or pay for their dinghy! But looking doesn't cost anything and down here at this time of the year there is a cornucopia of yachts to drool over.

One of my favorite YA novels from the 1990s is Han Nolan's Dancing on the Edge. I can still close my eyes and see her bathrobe catch fire as she tries to get nearer to her father. She is dancing at the edge of the flames and gets too close. Nolan sets scenes so deftly you are left breathless. Nolan had my undivided attention again, with her upcoming title from Harcourt - A Summer of Kings. The cover itself is a visual feast - the side view of a young blonde blue eyed teenage girl, the face of a young black man with haunted eyes, and a sepia/reddish tone photograph of a group of marchers headed for Washington. Esther is the less than appreciated daughter of parents whose lives revolve around their other two talented children. Esther is told, flat to her face, that she has no talent and no one stops her younger sister or brother from calling her stupid. Since she got held back in 3rd grade Esther has lost every summer to some type of lessons so that she will catch up. But, Esther's talents will never lie in math and science. Her talent is in her innocent truthfulnes and her open acceptance of others that encourages them to tell her their story. And if they don't do so willingly, Esther will drag it out of them. That's what happens when 18-year-old King-Roy is sent to live with them. King-Roy has been accused of shooting a white man and if his mama, Esther's mother's best friend when they were little, says he is innocent, he is welcome to live with them. But King-Roy is angry and not content to live in the white devil's big mansion. He spends more and more time in Harlem, with the followers of Malcolm X. Esther is worried that King-Roy no longer cares about her and does he think of her as one of those white devils. Esther's family might think she is slow, but she is far from it. Her talks with King-Roy spark an interest in the civil rights movement and she becomes a regular at the library, reading everything she can about Martin Luther King Junior and Gandhi. She even convinces her family that they should join the March on Washington. This is a beautifully written book with characters so fleshed out, even the secondary characters, that I can close my eyes and see them - Aunt Pie with her hose rolled around her knees, Mother in her prim and proper dress and jacket, Father brushing his hair back in consternation, and Pip, the boy next door who has matured while Esther was busy convincing herself that she could be King-Roy's girlfriend. I had a whirlwind of emotions as I read this book - sadness, fear for the character's safety, laughter over Esther's delightful innocence, and the conviction that this is a book we must share with teens.

Now I am taking a break to play mah jong for a bit before my evening chat with my class and wonderful YA author Lara Zeises.

How cute - Sophie was patiently waiting in front of the sliding doors this a.m. Once the doors opened she wasn't so cute though - I think she was telling me all about her evening with the other cats in the neighborhood - at the top of her lungs. Not a great thing at 6 a.m., especially when you are not a morning person. Yesterday I spent part of the afternoon brushing burrs out of her fur. She was both indignant and thankful.

We watched Batman Begins last night. At first I was a bit bored with it - just seemed like another violent film and then I got interested in it when the good cop got involved. And, how can you not like Morgan Freeman as the guy who makes all the cool stuff Batman uses, including a "car" that looks nothing like the Batmobile as we know it. Michael Cain as the faithful Wayne butler was wonderful and added some comic relief to the darkness of this movie. Katie Holmes just seemed to "cutesy" and young to pull off the role as a lawyer in the DA's office.

I am looking at the cover of The Book of Everything by Guus Kuijer. Nothing fancy - a black cover with the title, with a green frog looking up at it. But, it caught my fancy. Then when I saw that it is an Arthur Levine Imprint from Scholastic I knew it was my next read. When I get a box of Scholastic books, these are the imprint I look at first. Levine has a tendency to go for the international titles that will knock your socks off. This one didn't do that - it just stunned me into silence. I read it a couple of days ago and had to let it sit on my desk so I could think about it. The first thought I had is the old saying about the best gifts coming in small packages. At 101 pages, this is indeed a small package, but oh what a gift. Set in the Netherlands in 1951, the Dutch are still dealing with the effects of WWII. Thomas is the son of an abusive father and a devoted mother. Due to the strict and abusive atmosphere in his Jewish home Thomas often flees to his own little world. He sees things that no one else can and writes it all down his The Book of Everything. Jesus appears to him on occasion, with comments such as "I'll never let myself be nailed to the Cross again, I just won't. I've had enough of it." He knows their next door neighbor Mrs. van Amersfoort is a witch - he has floated around the room with her when they listen to Beethoven. Thomas is sure that someday he will marry beautiful Eliza with her artificial leather leg that creaks when she walks. But Thomas' power climaxes after his mother receives a horrible beating for standing up for him against his father. Thomas unintentionally brings down the plagues of Egypt upon their home. John Nieuwenhuizen's translation has kept the beauty of the story - it is flowing, poignant, and unforgettable. There is so much in these 101 pages I cannot even begin to express, but the bottom line is - Thomas has learned that the first step to happiness (what he wants to be when he grows up) is to stop being afraid. I honestly don't know how this book will be received by older children and teens, but this adult loved it intensely.

That's it for today. Another long day at Montessori inputting MARC records. Cataloging the local Caribbean titles is not much fun.

The sailors have to love this breezy weather but I am not seeing too many boats out there. I noticed we have a severe weather watch - something to do with flooding - but we haven't gotten any rain. It is a bit hazy out there but the sun is shining through.

High season is upon us for sure. We had a hard time finding a place to sit in Shipwreck yesterday for our Saturday 1/2 burger. We watched an entire Stevie Ray Vaughn music video while we waited for our food, but it was worth it. The luxury yachts are lined up along the wharf and Crown Bay Marina is full. I have gotten to the point that I don't even like going out anymore as I hate the long wait. I like summers better - hardly any tourists.

I have a lunchmeat pizza in the oven for lunch. Mary thought that was the funniest thing when I told her. Poor Steve - he went to the grocery store on Friday to get the makings for pizza. No pepperoni, so he bought ham lunchmeat instead. Oh well, it isn't like pepperoni, but it works! No worse than the hotdog pizzas I used to make years ago in Alaska.

Read Julie Anne Peters' Between Mom and Jo last night. Nick is the fourteen year old son of two moms, Mom and Jo. Mom is Nick's biological mother, but Jo is the mom he turns to in times of need, and he is darn needy when his moms' relationship breaks up. Nick wants to live with Jo, but Mom is adamant about that not happening. Nick's spiral into depression is heartbreaking, right down to him unplugging his fish tank and letting the fish die. At first I was a bit put off by the almost stereotypical depiction of Jo as the butch type lesbian. Jo is certainly not the typical mother type. She is a beer swigging loud mouth with a wicked sense of humor who can't hold down a job. Mom is in law school and very dependable, with loving parents. Adding Mom's new love interest to the mix and this is one of those books you can't put down. I really wasn't happy with the ending, but it did fit the tone of this book.

All for now - the pizza is cooling in the kitchen. :-)

Friday is upon us and I am still trying to catch up on grading, but I am seeing light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe I will be caught up just in time for the next assignment to be due for grading. Thank goodness for light laptops so I don't feel chained to my desk and the desktop computer.

I finished Philippa Gregory's spectacular historical novel, The Queen's Fool this a.m.. Another NY Times bestseller that I picked up at the airport. Although the cover is very attractive, with the raised gold on the dress, it isn't very appropriate for this book as Hannah, the main character, spends most of her life in England in livery, dressed as an hermaphrodite holy fool for first King Edwards, then Queen Mary, and a friend/spy to Princess Elizabeth as the red headed vixen manipulates and flirts her way to the crown. Hannah is obsessed with Robert Dudley and her innocent infatuation with him is both her savior and her downfall as these are desperate times in England, especially for a Spanish Jew who has escaped to London with her printer father, only to find they are in as much danger here as in Spain, where her mother was burned at the stake. Hannah is called a holy fool as she has the Sight - she has "fainting" episodes in which she can see the future. She predicts King Edward's death, Mary's rise to the thrown and her doomed love for the Prince of Spain. It is a fascinating read, with a British history lesson deftly weaved into the tale so that one doesn't even realize how much you have learned. Although certainly not a quick read at 500 pages, it is a novel that should be in high school level fiction collections. The romantic twists and turns to Hannah's life in themselves will, in themselves, keep a female teenreader engrossed in the story.

Okay - time to switch computers, My legs are going numb from sitting cross legged with this laptop on my legs. On to grading!

It is a beautiful breezy cool day with small white caps on the ocean. I should be outside working on the laptop in the sun, but instead I am inside. Need to ask Steve to spray for the darn wasps again. The flowering bushes in front of the apt. are in full bloom, which brings them in. Even Sophie has decided to be inside today - she is fast asleep on one of the boxes under my desk.

Was reading through the email update from Publishers Weekly and saw: (cut and pasted directly from the site)
Harry Potter Sweepstakes
Scholastic has announced a six-week sweepstakes in conjunction with the paperback release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Starting on March 1, fans can log on to www.scholastic.com/harrypotter and take part in an online poll every Wednesday until April 5, collecting six different printable HP book covers to be pasted onto a downloadable entry form. Once all the covers have been collected, the entry form can be mailed in, and must be received by April 24. Three grand-prize winners will receive an iPod with the crest of Hogwarts School etched into it, as well as all six downloadable audiobooks and a copy of the deluxe U.S. edition of Half-Blood Prince with a bookplate signed by J.K.Rowling. Six first-prize winners will get two Harry Potter hardcover boxed sets apiece, and everyone who enters the contest will receive a Harry Potter bookmark.

I am not a big Harry Potter fan. I am not crazy about the books, but I do appreciate what they have done for fantasy reading in this country and world wide. If the popularity of Harry Potter books can entice older children and teens to explore excellent fantasy authors such as L'Engle (her new collection of poetry The Ordering of Love is a delight) and Le Guin (Tahanu is my favorite Le Guin book at the moment, taking me back to Earthsea, which I had visited years before). I am all for it. I am sure there are lots of readers out there would would love to have that Hogwarts School Ipod. I have to admit I do like the movies though. :-)

I just watched a webcast interview with Mo Willems, the author of two delightful picture books, Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! and Knuffle Bunny. Quite interesting. You can access this and the other interviews that School Library Journal will web cast at http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6304809.html
You have to register, but it doesn't cost anything to do so. I am going to send this on to my students. I love how technology is helping us book people get kids and their parents involved in books.

I can hear my email binging with messages coming in so I had better get to them before I call it a day. I have been on this computer all day.

I hit brain dead with grading. Between the trip to Greenville and Upper Michigan I feel like I will never catch up with anything around here. Just found the coffee table that I loaded with "stuff" that I brought back with me from North Carolina. Sorting through the paperwork wasn't an option yet, but at least it is in a pile. Nor is figuring out how to use my new cell phone.

I finally got the dishes washed. Every time I take a break to do them the water isn't working. We went out to eat last night because the water was off again. We ate at the outside tables at Duffy's Love Shack and were actually cold! Even a few of the tourists had sweaters on so I knew it wasn't just us. On the way home Steve turned the heat on for me in the car. You would have thought we would have no problem with island winter weather after being in single digit temps. in Upper Michigan.

I did find one of the other books I read during the Greenville trip. While at the airport, killing time in the gift shop "bookstore" I found a copy of Koren Zailckas' Smashed - a New York Times bestseller. Wow! The subtite is appropriately Story of a Drunken Girlhood. I wish every teenage girl tempted by alcohol as a form of self medication would read this book. Zailckas doesn't pull any punches - she just tells it like it was - the stomach pumping, the frat parties at college, her sorority sister drinking binges, etc. I thought about this book when we drove through the Michigan Technological University campus in Houghton, Michigan. The Winter Carnival had been the week before and ice sculptures lined the road. Lots of alcohol was consuming by the students while they were constructing them. What I find interesting about the book is that Zailckas does not consider herself an alcoholic, but rather an alcohol abuser. When she graduated from college and found a man she cared about, it was time to quit and he quit with her. I read the book with fascination, especially her use of alcohol as a young teenage girl to get the other girls to accept her. So very sad, but true. This is a great addition for any high school level YA collection as it focuses more about her college experiences with alcohol. The whole idea of rich college girls hanging out in bars buying high cost drinks with daddy's gold charge card blows my mind. Maybe if Zailckas didn't have friends like that she may have come out of the alcohol haze a bit earlier.

All for now. Steve should be home shortly with all the makings for pizza. It is always an experience to go to Pueblo with a meal in mind. Who knows what alternate ingredients he will have to choose for the ones I requested. I was in second heaven when I walked into a big Kroger in Greenville. Just the different varieties of pretzels had me hyperventilating in glee! We don't even want to go into my delight over the produce section. It took everything in me not to buy fruit I knew I couldn't eat before I left. Living down here reminds me so much of living in Alaska years ago, but here at least I don't have to call the grocery store in Anchorage to have the groceries shipped out via Alaska Airlines, that seemed to always freeze my canned goods and not the frozen foods. Here you have to check the containers. We bought Pringles for sailing and got on the boat, opened them up and there were about 3 chips left on the bottom. Even a bottle of whole cloves had been opened. We don't even want to go into the # of loaves of bread we have brought home that have been moldy. Maybe I am not hungry after all!

Another morning in the islands - no water! Steve has the patience that I don't. He just sat on the porch watching the cruise ships piloted in as he waited for the owner to get up and not get his shower either. The cistern system requires large pumps and the "new and improved" version the owner put in does not seem to work as well as the old one. And service on anything down here is spotty at best. They work on their own hours and then some. We had no water when we got home on Saturday afternoon either. Sophie is wandering around the apartment "talking" to whoever will listen - at the moment, no one. We are both grumpy and tired from the trip, 2 hour time change, and having to get up so early. We slept in the last couple of days.

We did get out to lunch at Jack's in Tutu yesterday. The most people we have ever seen sitting around the bar. Everyone was watching the bobsled racing on TV. The USVI actually has an older woman who qualified for the Olympics in the luge, but she broke her wrist before her race. They call her Granny Luge down here. I love to watch the couples skating. Lots of falls this year - we were watching during dinner when we got back to Chicago to fly home.

I had started reading Kevin Brooks' The Road of the Dead before I left for NC and finished it this weekend. I loved Lucas, liked Candy, and absolutely love The Road of the Dead. Ruben, at 14, is the youngest in his family. His father is a gypsy, often called Travelers, and is in prison for killing a guy during a fight. His older brother Cole has the same quiet "deadliness" that his father has. When something has to be done Cole can turn off his heart and do it. And now is the time Cole must do that as their older sister Rachel has been raped, beaten, and murdered in the in the moors as she is walking back to her friend's house in the rain. The only way the police will release her body is for the murderer to be found and in the small village where Rachel was visiting her friend, no one is talking. That is until Cole and Ruben arrive and start asking questions. Ruben has the sight and was there with Rachel on the moors when she died. He can still hear her talking to him, as he can the Dead Man - the man who killed her. This is not a pretty story, but it is a story of love - the deep and undying love of two brothers for their older sister and the need to put things right so her body can be released and taken home for burial. As with Lucas, Ruben is a character who is not going to let me go for a very long time. Brooks is one stunning author and has given us yet again a true gritty YA novel, filled with characters you love, hate, and sometimes even understand. I can close my eyes and see both Ruben and Cole.

All for now. Need to find a pair of sandals for my feet. I had been in boots the whole time we were up north. Found a comfy Tommy Bahamas polo type dress at Ross in Greenville for $7 - now that is my kind of sale! :-) I made the mistake of wearing jeans and a short sleeved turtleneck to Montessori the last time I was there. I was fine in the morning but by afternoon I was miserably hot. My legs may be chilly now, but I will appreciate this dress later this afternoon.

Please excuse my lack of postings in the last week or so. Life does have a way of throwing us curve balls when we least expect it.

The trip to Greenville, NC was wonderful. I had a great time with the other LSIT faculty members. Even the faculty meetings were enjoyable. :-) Wandering around town was fun, even in the rain. A cold front hit just as I got there. I seem to bring bad weather with me. Driving on the right side of the road seemed natural, after the first day. The drive in the dark from the airport to the hotel the first night was a bit unnerving though.

The booktalking presentation at the MLS Conference was fun. I had a great audience of secondary teachers and librarians. I was told later that some of them headed directly to Barnes & Nobles to do some shopping with the bibliography of 2005 and 2006 YA titles I handed out. A couple of them said they might take my YA Literature course at ECU in the fall, for recertification credit. So I am feeling really good about having presented as mine was one of only a few secondary level sessions.

I would have come home bubbling over with professional excitement and enthusiasm for YA literature, but I learned, as I was leaving for the Greenville airport early Sunday a.m. that my Dad had died the night before. I did not have a good relationship with my father in later years, as I am not a typical Upper Michigan born and raised Finnish woman by any means of the word. I dreaded going to the funeral, but my gentle loving oldest brother Dan and my wonderful husband Steve convinced me that I needed to put closure on this. So off we flew the next day from St Thomas to Chicago. We rented a car, drove to Green Bay and picked up my daughter Mary and then make the snowy cold drive up to the Hancock/Houghton area in Upper Michigan. I grew up in Point Mills, what was once a small village, outside of Dollar Bay, a tiny town in the Copper Country. I was able to put closure on the rocky relationship with my Dad by remembering the wonderful Daddy he had been to me as a little girl. That is the man I spoke about at the funeral, a man that many of the people at the funeral never knew as I was the baby of the family and the only girl. My three older brothers remember a much different father than I do. I realized we basically grew up in different families when Mom died 8 years ago in February and heard them talk of different memories of her as well. Don't know if it is because I am the only girl, now the matriarch of the family, or because I am younger than them and did not grow up in the large extended family of cousins that they did. I will miss the Daddy I knew and loved and thought the world revolved around, and the wonderful Mom I got to know in later years - the kind and caring woman who was there for me. I still reach for the phone to call her when I need advise or just want to talk. Now I am filling that role for my own daughter, Mary. Life, and death, go on, whether we want them to or not.

I really haven't had much time to read in the last few days, but on the way to Greenville I read the second title in the Chronicles of Ancient Darkness prehistoric fantasy series by Michelle Paver, Spirit Walker, the second book about Torak, the prehistoric youth who kills the demon possessed bear that killed his father in Wolf Brother, the first book in the series. A deadly sickness has ravaged the tribes and Torak journeys to the coast, followed by tokoroths, hosts for demons, to find a cure for the sickness that Torah thinks the Soul Eaters have sent. Unfamiliar with the taboos of the coastal peoples, he desecrates the ocean with his hide clothes and is then kidnapped by two young men from the Seal clan and is taken to their island. It is here that Torak meets Tenris, the mage who created the demon bear that destroyed his father. Torak, with the help of Wolf and Renn, destroys Tenris and returns to Renn's Raven clan to seek answers about who he is and who his father was. The answers do not soothe his soul. The third book in the series, The Soul Eaters, will be published by HarperCollins in 2007.

That's it for now. My energy reserves are quite low these days.

Okay - so I'm anal! I want to say hurry up - but I am keeping my mouth shut! Steve is just now getting in the shower and my plane leaves at 9:30 and it is 7:00. I like to be at the airport early as one never knows what to expect here in St. Thomas. The last time I tried to leave on this AA flight through Miami I ended up going through San Juan instead.

Sophie has been attacking my suitcases and yowling - she is not happy about Mama leaving her again. She doesn't understand that Sunday isn't that far away. She and I finished reading Shannon Hale's Princess Academy last night. Had to have Mama/kitty time in the evening instead so she wouldn't feel quite so left out. What a beautifully written coming of age story, set in an isolated mountain village where the residents have been mining linder for so many generations it has become part of their being. So much so that they can mind communicate through it. This is a skill that comes in very handy when the village girls between 12 and 17 are escorted, under guard, to the Princess Academy to be trained as ladies so that the Prince can choose one of them for his wife. Miri is one of the tiniest girls at the Academy even though she is fourteen. Tiny in stature, but large in intellect and wit, which sometimes gets her in trouble and even sent to the the scary dark closet as punishment. When she is forgotten in the closet she sends a mind plea for help and is rescued just as a rat is about to nest in her hair. Miri befriends Britta, the lowlander who has moved to the mountains and Britta helps Miri learn as much as she can about how the lowlanders live and conduct business. This knowledge brings more wealth to the poor village as the traders have not been trading fairly for the sought after linder blocks. When the Prince arrives but does not choose a bride from the girls in attendance at the ball the girls are told they must stay and study more until spring. That is when the robbers/kidnappers arrive and insist the girls tell them who the intended bride is. Now it is time for Miri to use her ability to send mind messages. Will the villagers get there in time to save their daughters? A beautifully written novel with depth of character development, including thought provoking passages about prejudice between the lowlanders and highlanders. It rightfully deserves the Newbery Honor Award.

Time to get the suitcases into the car. Maybe that will prod him a bit!

I absolutely detest mornings! I really have no problem getting up relatively early in the morning, but this 6 a.m., when it is still pitch black outside is for the birds! Can't you tell I have been teaching afternoon and evening graduate level courses for many years? My internal clock has changed and though 7 a.m. is do-able, but 6 a.m. ARGH!!! And why can't they cut a precut bagel truly in half? Why do we have to get one side thin that toasts too much and the other too thick and doesn't toast enough? Okay - I will quit whining now. Just had to get that out of my system before I go to Montessori.

Picked up the information on the new Scholastic online ordering product for librarians while at Midwinter. URL: www.scholastic.com/librarypublishing. One of the reasons I was interested in this is because Scholastic has Grolier, Children's Press, and Franklin Watts - some of the major publishers of NF for schools. You can view covers as well as tables of content and indexes. Now that is a neat option when looking for specific subject areas within a larger subject. I have just spent a few minutes with this so far, but it looks like an online product that will be useful to librarians. You can order directly online - free shipping. Printing out a list of titles from here to check against Titlewave or B&T would be a good way to check to see if this is a viable ordering option. My one big reservation about this product is that librarians might order exclusively from here, limiting themselves tremendously by publisher. I had my students at UHCL evaluate the titles in a specific Dewey area and they found that many of the librarians had a strong preference for one NF publisher and their books dominated the collection. Schools that have Scholastic book fairs often have a collection very heavy in Scholastic books, due the free book options.

Sorry this wasn't a specific book discussion this a.m. - I am still trying to wake up.

Talk about brain dead, but I have been having a great time printing out driving directions so I can get around Greenville - to important places such as the Michael's store for my craft stuff. I was so excited when I realized it was right by the hotel I am staying in. Now if I can figure out how to convince myself that driving on the right hand side of the road feels normal again I will be fine. Been looking at apartments online too, but there is no flashing red light to let me know which ones the students are living in. Those are the ones I don't want! I have my itinerary all laid out of the meetings and errands I want to run as well as just wandering around the area by car on Saturday.

I already have my books packed for the booktalking session. Took up most of a small suitcase. I believe in having a book in your hand so the audience will focus on you and not a darn book cover shot up on a big screen. Power point slides - the new glorified version of overheads!

Was reading through the January 2006 copy of Kliatt that I picked up at Midwinter and saw that Lara Zeises has a short article on YA author blogging. I love to read Lara's blog - she has such a cool sense of humor. :-) I shame facedly admit I have not subscribed in Kliatt in some time. I am very partial to VOYA, not only because I review for it, but because of the wonderful articles and columns. I have enjoyed reading through the reviews for books, computer software and audiobooks in Kliatt, especially the audiobooks as reviews for these are as important as the book reviews. I have hated listening to wonderful books because of the narrator. When I read "The three narrators perfectly match the persons they portray" in the review for A Long Way Down by Nicky Hornby - an adult title with YA appeal, I was pleased. Perhaps I should be looking a bit closer at Kliatt and start subscribing again.

Speaking of adult books - I read a quite funny one that probably won't have YA appeal, but librarians will love it. Elizabeth Peters, author of my favorite Amelia Peabody mysteries set in Egypt, wrote Die for Love so I couldn't resist it, especially when I realized it was about an academic librarian attending a Romance Writer's Conference in NYC so she could write off her vacation! I laughed out loud at her observations of what women are like in many of the romances. I was reading excerpts aloud to my roommate at Midwinter. The obnoxious reporter trying to find out the truth behind who one of the romance writers really is and is poisoned and Jacqueline Kirby, amateur detective too, is on the case. Oh what fun!

On a recommendation from one of my YA Literature students at UHCL, I dug out my copy of Ellen Schreiber's Vampire Kisses. Apparently her teenage female students can't get enough of this book and want a sequel. I have to admit, I read it in one gulp. Goth girl Raven, daughter of former hippies who have bought into the corporate world, dresses in black and wishes she could be a vampire. That was, after all, her career goal in Kindergarten. At 16 she hasn't changed her mind and when the mysterious family who only go out at night move into the mansion on the hill, Raven just has to know if they really are vampires. She goes so far as to break into their home and that is when she meets Alexander Sterling, the home schooled teenage son who also dresses in Goth garb. They quickly become a couple and Raven brings him to the Prom, where Travis, her tormenter since they were children, goes after both of them. When Alexander finds out that Raven was initially interested in him only because he might be a vampire, he refuses to speak to her. It takes Raven's true friends to throw a dress in black party on the Sterling front lawn to get Raven and Alexander back together, but the house is empty the next day with no sign of Alexander, the boxes of dirt, or his parents. So was Alexander a vampire or not? A delightful quick read about a girl who far from conventional, but totally likeable anyway. Love her little brother Nerd Boy too. :-)

Now to go do some clothes packing as I will be at Montessori all day tomorrow and leave on Weds.

Another breezy beautiful day in the islands. Super Bowl weekend is upon us. Steve started watching the NFL station last night already! We were out of Diet Coke and I was running on fumes so we went back into town to get some from Pueblo. The traffic was awful to get there and when we did they were out of 12 packs. But, bottles will work in a pinch! We got in the Express lane, which was less than express and the young West Indian woman behind us was going to push her way in front of us. Steve just quietly put our stuff down on the moving belt so she didn't have the chance. We ignored her complaining about how long it was taking. Patience is a required commodity to live down here. I felt sorry for the young mom in front of us trying to get through the line in a timely fashion with her little one and two cases of water, etc.

Had to go find my copy of Out of Boneville, the first in a series of 9 Bone books by Jeff Smith. I was surprised he has been writing about Fone Bone and his cousins since 1991. Smith presented at the Graphic Novels YALSA Preconference I went to a few years ago, but at that point I still wasn't paying much attention to graphic novels. Honestly, they are not my favorite form of reading, but this morning I was laughing out loud rereading Out of Boneville. These little creatures have a wonderfully sarcastic sense of humor and are lovable as well. So now I want to see if I can find the comic book Bone I was given at the conference. Okay, so I am a little late in falling in love with this bulb nosed white creature that Steve thinks looks a bit like Casper the Ghost. And how can you not love a red dragon who smokes cigarettes! :-)

On the other hand, I have been a lover of Hilari Bell's books since I read the first one. Her latest is The Prophecy, a new MS appropriate fantasy novel about young Prince Perryndon, an intelligent bookworm, who does not please his battle worn father. The king is still grieving the death of the Queen and spends much of his time in the bottle or on the battlefield. Perryndon spends his time, glasses sliding down his nose, reading the scrolls in the library tower. This is where he finds the Prophecy of how they can save the kingdom from the dragon. Believing it to be true and knowing he is danger from the King's master of arms, Cedric. The mirror has shown him that Cedric is a spy for the Norsemen. Perryndon sneaks out of the castle, intent on finding a bard and a unicorn - both needed to save the Kingdom. The bard is the one who is supposed to battle the dragon - that is what the prophecy states - but that is not what will occur. If Perryndon knew the role he would play in saving the Kingdom he may have opted to ignore the prophecy and hide in the tower library, but he doesn't. A wonderful fantasy coming of age novel. I agree with Orson Scott Card's comment about Bell - "A remarkable writer." My favorite Bell novel is still A Matter of Profit, a SF novel that addresses prejudices and the role a son must play to please his father.

Now to find the top of my desk before we go to lunch at Shipwreck. I finished up my presentation notes yesterday - yahoo!! :-)

A cloudy breezy day. A dive boat is going by and the spray is coming up over the bow and almost hiding the whole boat in white as it hits the choppy waves. My stomach does the cha-cha just watching it - I get sea sick really easily. That is why we sail on catamarans - much smoother and less rocking/rolling ride than a mono hull sailboat.

The darn apartment still smells like a swamp! The owner didn't switch the cisterns and let one of them run dry. So now the water out of the other cistern smells like dinosaur pee - swampy! While taking a shower last night I made darn sure I kept my mouth closed. Just the thought of the stuff that slides off the roof into the cistern with the rain water is enough to made me shudder - lizard poop, dead critters, dead bugs, etc. Supposedly it settles to the bottom and we get the water that is above the debris but still! Steve calls me Nils for a reason! We may use cistern water for bathing and washing dishes and clothes but we buy at least 15 gallons of bottled water a week for drinking and cooking. Some of the travel guide books say the tap water in the USVI is safe to drink, but in reality it is only in the major hotels. Most everywhere else it is cistern water coming out of the taps.

I wonder if Cleopatra ever drank water? The mind takes funny detours doesn't it? Actually - the thought makes sense as I just finished reading The Hour of the Cobra by Maiya Williams, the sequel to her debut Intermediate/MS novel, The Golden Hour, which won the IRA 2005 Intermediate Fiction Award. I loved Williams' first novel as it includes a set of African American twins, Xanthe and Xavier, who become friends with an Anglo brother and sister, Nina and Rowan, while visiting elderly relatives in an isolated Maine village that has an old hotel that is the center for time travel. In the second book the 14-year-old twins and Rowan (the same age) with his younger sister Nina are given a chance to join the Twilight Tourist Frequent Flier Club, an elite time travel organization. Currie, Edison, Einstein, and H.G. Wells are on the Board! Determined to do something that doesn't include her pushy twin, Xanthe gets involved in Cleopatra's life after the young Cleopatra mistakes her for Isis when Xanthe steps out of the time travel alleviator in a temple to Isis in 58 B.C. Alexandria. Having meddled too much Xanthe changes the course of history and the foursome find themselves in an alternate universe and have to use their heads and every other skill they can muster (including Nina luring away a lion with music) to survive and change the course of history back to normal. An absolutely wonder time travel romp with lots of historical information included - a history lesson that few tween will complain about. My only complaint about this wonderful book is that Williams keeps calling the travelers children, even when it is just the teens. I find that a bit disconcerting as children to me are younger than 14 and I can't think of any 14 year old who would like to be call a child. That is just a picky point because I absolutely love this book and I can't wait for another. Williams clearly does a great deal of historical research and she seamlessly blends this into a rip roaring fun read.

I am just finishing up the 3rd installment of Jeff Smith's Bone: Eyes of the Storm - a wonderful kid friendly graphic novel series put out by Scholastic Graphix. It is wonderful - funny, poignant, and delightfully drawn with bulb nosed Phone Bone capturing your heart and imagination. He has a crush on the beautiful Thorne and is still writing her corny love poems - none of which he has actually given her. He blushes at the thought! Add nasty rat creatures after them and a mysterious dragon that Granma Ben is angry with and you have a wonderful visual reading experience. Bone should be in every intermediate and higher library. Children and teens will love this comic character and the valley people who have befriended him. A wonderful place to start if you are building a graphic novel collection and don't know what to buy first. You will need multiple copies of these sturdy hardbound editions - Out From Boneville, The Great Cow Race, and Eyes of the Storm.

All for today.

What a cloudy dreary day out there. Nevertheless there are 6 smaller sailboats headed for Buck Island, one large sleek navy blue one headed for Charlotte Amalie, 2 ferries, and a para-sailor all within easy visual. High season in the islands. I guess when you come from cold country this warm weather is wonderful even if it is cloudy. The worst sunburns I have gotten have been on cloudy days! Glad I don't have to go downtown today. We laugh about the traffic cops who stand in the intersections to direct traffic. It is always worse when one of them is out there! The traffic lights seem to do a better job of timing the traffic.

While at Midwinter in San Antonio I stopped at the Orca booth at the Exhibits to talk with Andrew Wooldridge. We were talking about Red Sea - a suspenseful book set on a sailboat in the Red Sea. He gave me a copy of Lisa Heggum's (Toronto Librarian) edited collection of short stories - All Sleek and Skimming. Wow! I was fussy because my Printz contender, A Room on Lorelei Street wasn't the Printz award winning book. I love the literature that is intended for the older teen readers. We have so much available for the MS/JH age but not near enough for the upper end of HS - 10-12. Well, Heggum's collection certainly fits that readership! Do not put this collection in your Middle or Junior High School! The protagonists in some of the stories may be that age, but the themes and content of the stories are not for the age group. Everything from James Heneghan's "The Legacy," about an Irish teen whose father has been murdered and who now reconsiders joining the Fianna, the I.R.A. youth auxiliary, to Ivan E. Coyote's "The Cat Came Back", about a tweenage girl babysitting - dressed up in her uncle's suit (right down to his underwear), hair slicked back, sock down the front of her pants, and dancing in front of the mirror when he returns to pick up the concert tickets he forgot. Let's just say these are not pretty little short stories. They are stories that hit you in the gut and leave you gasping from the pain, laughing from the irony, and crying from the grief.

On a sweeter note, I have a soft spot in my heart for the inspirational type picture books from Illumination Arts (www.ilumin.com). The illustrations are always stunning, as is the case with Your Father Forever by Travis Griffith, illustrated by Raquel Abreu. A father's vow to his young son and baby daughter that he will always be there for them - "I will be your daddy as long as you want me to. But I will be your father...forever." Give this one to the father expecting his second child. I adore the picture of the dad's and baby's feet as she takes her first steps between his big feet.

All for now - need to get some grading done and finish up my presentation notes for the booktalking session at the MLS Conference in Greenville next week.