With a very wide open Saturday, I am sorry that I didn't get in more reading hours. I spent many of them in a weird "funk." I was able to spend the following hours:
1.5 hours- Read/finished The Books of Elsewhere: Vol. 1: The Shadows by Jacqueline West: I loved the premise to the whole novel which was that Olive Dunwoody, after moving in to an old victorian with her geeky Mathematician parents, finds a pair of spectacles which allow her to go into the pictures hung about the house. She discovers early on that the pictures cannot, by any force, be moved off the walls. In the paintings, she discovers the "bad man" artist who painted all of the unmovable art in the house. The plot turns sinister when Olive's parents leave her alone overnight and she needs the help of the 3 talking cats to help her destroy the evil lurking around her. If you've read Teri Lesesne's book Reading Ladders, possibilities for ladders here are: The Graveyard Book, Beautiful Creatures and The Prophecy of the Sisters by Michelle Zink. I'm surprised I haven't yet read any reviews of this book as I found it fresh and creepy all at the same time. I will definitely recommend it to my students next year.
30 minutes: finished All The Lovely Bad Ones by Mary Downing Hahn. Another ghost story! This one has brother and sister Travis and Corey staying in grandma's B & B for a while and "waking" the haunting children who once lived and died on the property. There are many of these children/families buried in the back due to cruelty on the owners' part. The ghost children just want to be put to rest and Travis and Corey enlist the help of their grandmother to do that. Then, I fell asleep--napping--shouldn't read in my own bed. Too enticing.
12:30 a.m.-3:00 a.m.: Yes, I'm sure Mother Reader didn't have these kinds of hours in mind when she started the 48 Reading Challenge, but we had torrential downpours, thunder & lightning and flooding of the front yard (think old carpet rolls being flung onto the front lawn because husband's "friend" hasn't come to dispose of them like he promised) and garage (floating tennis shoes and old double strollers. Thank goodness the freezer is on a pallet). Needless to say, I couldn't get back to sleep so I read another Mary Downing Hahn novel: Deep, Dark and Dangerous. Ali is spending the summer with her aunt, Dulcie, and Dulcie's daughter Emma. There is a secret about why Dulcie and Ali's mom (sisters) won't talk about this old cabin that Dulcie has had refurbished after 30 years. A girl drowned while in a canoe with Dulcie and Claire 30 years ago and her body was never found. So, what connection is there between this drowned girl, Emma's new bratty friend who doesn't seem to have a home, and the destruction of Dulcie's artist's studio and all of her paintings? Another fascinating ghost story for kids!
Total Hours for Saturday- A disappointing 3.5 hours. More than a regular Saturday, though!
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