The Reading Without Walls Challenge

Image courtesy of Macmillian/First Second Books

As described by Macmillian, Reading Without Walls is a month-long, nation-wide program to promote diversity in reading, inspired by National Ambassador for Young People's Literature Gene Luen Yang and his ambassadorial platform. Thousands of schools, libraries, bookstores, and comics stores are joining in - and so can you! It's easy to take the Reading Without Walls challenge - simply find something new and different to read, and let books open up the world around you.

1) Read a book with a character who doesn't look like you or live like you
2) Read a book about a topic you don’t know much about
3) Read a book in a format you don’t normally read for fun – an audio book, a graphic novel, a book in verse, an audio book

What are you waiting for? Go find a book that fits each category, or whichever challenge you like the best - or find one nifty book that fits all three!

The Evil Wizard Smallbone by Delia Sherman

Magic, young apprentice...evil wizard...seems pretty straightforward right?  Well not so much. Set in a coastal Maine town, Sherman's novel mixes realistic fiction with fantasy in just the right amount to enthrall both lovers of fantasy as well as realistic fiction in equal measure.

Nick is a tough cookie. he has to be, he lives with a bully older cousin and an uncle who doesn't know how to spare the rod. Could Nick help his case by not getting into trouble at school so much? Sure. Nick doesn't learn his lesson though so he seizes his chance one bitterly cold night and runs away and ends up in a strange house with an even stranger old dude who just so happens to be a wizard-an evil wizard if you believe the denizens of Smallbone Cove.

Before long Nick is learning a thing or three about magic and beginning to tolerate life with Smallbone, his quick temper and his menagerie of animals. Journeys to Smallbone Cove are exciting too and You can't escape your past though and Nick finds he has big choices to make when his former life catches up to him.

This is a slightly irreverent read as you may expect. Insults and barbs fly back and forth regularly so I would recommend it for ages 9+ simply because I think most kids at that age have enough sense to know not to go around repeating the stuff they read in books. Some read alikes are Rick Riordan's Magnus Chase series, Kelly Barnhill's The Girl Who Drank the Moon and Holly Webb's Rose.

Knights of the Borrowed Dark by Dave Rudden

Denizen Hardwick's having a tough week.

First, he's stuck in Crosscaper orphanage. That's not a huge deal because he's been there his whole life. He has no memory of his father. His only memory of his mother is that she smelled like strawberries and used to sing to her.

Then, on his thirteenth birthday, everything changes. Denizen gets a visitor, a mysterious man that tells him he's going to take him to see his long lost aunt.

On the way to see his aunt, something weird happens. The air becomes electric and his stomach feels queasy. The driver pulls the car over and steps out.

Woods Runner

I review Gary Paulsen books here quite a bit. That's because he always delivers. I've never read a book of his I did not like. Woods Runner is historical fiction.

It takes place at the start of the American Revolution - the War for Independence. Thirteen-year-old Samuel is out hunting when he notices a lot of smoke rising. He runs home to find it burned to the ground, with no sign of his parents. But he notices tracks indicating the British soldiers have taken his folks with them, so he sets out to track them down. I don't want to tell you the whole story, but Paulsen does something different in this book: Scattered throughout the novel are short explanations of sides that fought during the war, the weapons, the terrible state of medical knowledge at the time, "Frontier Life," and the difference between the Continental (regular) Army, the volunteer militia, and the Rangers (small groups of guerrilla fighters), plus other interesting facts from that period.

The firearm issued to the British army was called the Brown Bess musket. It was a smoothbore and fired a round ball of .75 caliber, approximately three-quarters of an inch in diameter, with a black-powder charge, ignited by flint, that pushed the ball at seven or eight hundred feet per second. when it left the muzzle (modern rifles send the bullet out at just over three thousand feet per second).

Because a round ball fired from a smoothbore is so pitifully inaccurate - the ball bounces off the side of the bore as it progresses down the barrel - the Brown Bess was really only good out to about fifty yards. The ball would vary in flight so widely that it was common for a soldier to aim at one man coming at him and hit another man four feet to the left or right...

The militia volunteers were usually used to supplement the Continental (soldiers), but were quite often not as dependable or steady as they could have been had they been trained better, and they often evaporated after receiving the first volley and before the bayonets came. Most of them were also issued smoothbore muskets and some had bayonets for them, but others had rifles, which were very effective at long range but could not mount bayonets.

Special Ranger groups, such as Morgan's Rangers, had an effect far past their numbers because of the rifles they carried. A rifle, by definition, has a series of spiral grooves down the inside of the barrel - with the low pressure of black powder, the rifling then was with a slow twist, grooved with a turn of about one rotation for thirty-five or forty inches. A patched ball was gripped tightly in the bore and the grooved rifling, and the long bore (up to forty inches) enabled a larger powder charge, which allowed the ball to achieve a much higher velocity, more than twice that of the smoothbores. And the high rate of rotation, or spin, stabilized the ball flight, resulting in greater accuracy.

I enjoyed Woods Runner. It's a good tale, and I learned a little bit about warfare in that time that was interesting. Give it a try!

MARCH, Book Two by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell

As you might imagine, MARCH: Book Two picks up where Book One left off, both on the day of Barack Obama's first presidential inauguration in 2009 and back in 1961.

Early in the book, John Lewis turns 21 - then the age of majority - and no longer requires parental permission to attend marches and protests and the like. He decides to head deeper in the south to Alabama, to ride buses as part of the Freedom Riders. On his application to join this particular movement, he wrote

I know that an education is important and I hope to get one, but human dignity is the most important thing in my life. This is the most important decision in my life--to decide to give up all if necessary for the freedom ride, that justice and freedom might come to the deep south.

Our Chemical Hearts by Krystal Sutherland

Henry Page has never had a girlfriend, but he thinks he knows what it is going to be like to find his soulmate. That series of events was so NOT what he experienced when he saw Grace Town walk into his classroom for the first time. Grace was wearing over-sized men's clothing, had unkempt hair, appeared as if she has not showered in a couple days, and walked with a cane, but there was something about her that stuck with Henry. There are so many things about her that Henry doesn't know and she won't talk about that he simply cannot stop thinking about her. 
Does he like her? Does she like him? First love, how exactly does one do that?
LIttle twists and turns in each character's story weave together to form an intricate web of love, loss, family, and friends.
Krystal Sutherland has written beautiful characters to be devoured. Fans of Rainbow Rowell and John Green will love this story.

readergirlz news

I've been with both readergirlz and Guys Lit Wire since they began, and since we have some crossover readership, I wanted to share the rgz news with the GLW community. As posted by Lorie Ann Grover:

Dearest readergirlz,

When we began this nonprofit organization ten years ago, readers in all demographics did not have access to authors. This access was our aim, our mission. The founders of readergirlz were driven to make those connections around the world. And we did.

Scythe by Neal Shusterman

 What if you could be the Grim Reaper?

That's the reality in this awesome new book by Neal Shusterman. It's the future, death is a thing of the past. Nano technology means that even getting hit by a Mack Truck isn't the end.

Sure, you'll spend a few days in a recovery centre while you're pieced back together, but hey, the recovery centres have the best hot fudge sundaes in town.  There's no ageing, there's no disease, there's no crime.

On top of this, there's no government. Instead, the online "Cloud", now known as the Thunderhead, is an all knowing, all seeing leader of the world.

To keep the human population from spiralling out of control, select people are chosen to be Scythes, those who live a monk like existence and whose job it is to dole out death.

Ghost by Jason Reynolds

I am part of a committee at my library system that plans social book talks- we find books that speak to pressing social issues and then we host an event inviting the public to come in and discuss the book and the issues.
I am part of a committee at my library system that plans social book talks- we find books that speak to pressing social issues and then we host an event inviting the public to come in and discuss the book and the issues. This month we partnered with a local book store and  we were able to bring in the authors of All American Boys last Saturday for an inspiring conversation. Brendan Kiely and Jason Reynolds are two great guys. Reynolds in particular is on a hot streak and  his latest book is Ghost.

Set in the city it deals with a young tween called Castle Crenshaw who describes himself as having "mad and sad feelings" which sometimes leads to altercations at school.. He has had a hard life and now he and his mom eke out a hardscrabble existence in a less than desirable neighborhood. His mother works long hours to provide for them both and she has high expectations for him.

He is a tough kid but not tough enough to escape frequent taunts at school from a bully. He stumbles into a track meet one day and although he isn't impressed by the coach's gruff manner and reptilian appearance (Castle thinks he has a "turtle face") he tries out. Lo and behold he discovers that he is a runner. Coach invites him to join the team and thus begins a new phase in Castle's life.

This book covers a lot of topics. I like it's hopeful tone however. Castle is a kid with many flaws but he is resilient, he knows right from wrong and works hard. With those qualities he will go far in life. This is the first in Reynolds' Track series so I will definitely keep my eyes open for future installments. I recommend this book for ages 9 and up. Some read alikes are Coe Booth' s Kinda Like Brothers and  Andrew Clements' The Jacket.

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Sometimes a book arrives with so much pre-publication hype that you cannot help but be disappointed when you actually read it. Not because the book is bad, necessarily, but because the hype created impossible expectations. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas is NOT that book. Impossible expectations have been met, and I cannot overstate the love I give to The Hate U Give as I join the chorus of voices praising this debut novel.