Tag Archive | funny

I Lost My Mobile at the Mall (fiction)

Nov11

Cellphone lost at the mall.
Home computers stolen.
How can Elly cope with losing constant contact with her friends?

Elly’s terrible luck doesn’t make high school life easy in her all-things-British Australian suburb, as she’s not sure where her surfer boyfriend is after school, she doesn’t know when friends are getting together for pizza, and she has to use the public computer to log on to her favorite social sites… finding out everything – good or bad – well after everyone else does.

Well-known for her humorous adult books, Australian Wendy Harmer is spot on with Elly’s dismay over being out of touch with the rest of Oldcastle High School in her first young adult novel on our Fun Friday. Hope to see more of Elly in future books!
**kmm

Book info: I Lost My Mobile at the Mall: Teen on the Edge of Technological Breakdown / Wendy Harmer. Kane Miller Children’s Books, 2011. [author’s website] [publisher site] [author video]

Recommendation: When she loses her cellphone at the mall (again), Elly can’t even report it missing until her Mum gets home from some fancy event she’s organizing – no landline at home, of course. When her parents refuse to buy Elly another cellphone, she finds herself completely out of the loop, unable to text her friends or send photos or talk to her cute surfer boyfriend. Time slows down to a crawl with every minute that she’s out of contact…

Not that life in Oldcastle is at all exciting. Everything in their Australian coastal town has a British name – the shops, the pubs, even Elly and her sister and her parents and her pets! With the Pickering family coat of arms hanging on the bathroom wall, who can take all this seriously? Now, not having a cellphone in ninth grade – that’s serious! She can’t even talk to her best friend about it – no mobile phone means no calls to far-off Queensland where Carmelita moved last year.

When the family’s home computers are stolen, Elly feels fully cut off from everyone as planning for the ninth grade dance goes into overdrive.

Why do her big sister’s new silver sandals fit Elly better than they fit Tilly? What is boyfriend Will doing in that photo on Bianca’s phone? Does her grandmother really want to learn how to use a computer? When will Carmelita’s advice letter arrive? And where’s the Post Office anyway?

Australian comedienne Wendy Harmer’s first book for young adults brings the effervescent Elly to life as a “teen on the edge of technological breakdown.” (One of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com) Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

You Just Can’t Help It! (nonfiction)

Oct14

From the “oohh!” to the “ewww!!!” on Fun Friday, we’re taking an off-beat (but very well-researched) look at curious and confusing aspects of human behavior.

If you’ve ever wondered whether birth order really makes a difference in how people behave as adults or how colors affect our moods, you’ll love perusing this lively book from Canadian author Szpirglas, whose previous titles include Gross Universe (more ewww) and They Did What?! (more oohh).

You’ll understand yourself, your friends, and your family better after learning that You Just Can’t Help It, plus some fun animal behavior facts and unusual scientific research studies, too.

**kmm

Book info: You Just Can’t Help It! Your Guide to the Wild and Wacky World of Human Behavior / Jeff Szpirglas; illustrated by Josh Holinaty. Maple Tree Press, 2011. [author’s info] [publisher’s site]

Recommendation: Ingredients of human tears? Ten million shades of color? Birth order and cattle egrets? Dive into the world of senses, emotions, communication, and human interaction.

Human behavior can be accurately predicted in some areas – body language of liars, organization of army ants, gesturing while talking – while it’s variable in others – most annoying sound or what makes someone laugh.

Find answers to puzzlers like “why can’t you tickle yourself?” and “why do stores play music?” while you learn about your senses. Learn how to detect fake happiness and true fear, as well as the one hand gesture that means the same thing in almost every culture (and it’s not the one you’d expect).

What facial muscle helps your nose avoid stinky stuff? Why do we use “um” and “uh” and “like” when we speak? Why do crowded elevators make us nervous? And what about that whole birth order thing, anyway?

Canadian author Szpirglas helps you understand more about why you, your friends, your pets, and other creatures act the way that they do with this funny and factual book of wacky information and cool experiments. (One of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com) Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

Insanewiches, by Adrian Fiorino (book review) – super sandwiches, creative cooking fun

Aug26

Fun Friday and ready to make your lunchbox the envy of everyone at the table with Insanewiches, an amazing album of edible art that you can make at home.

Wildly inventive sandwich artist Fiorino brings us clear instructions on how to design and construct A+ sandwiches from teeny Cutecumber ‘Wich to gigantic Quadruple Down. Grab your edible ink markers and amaze your lunch buddies with your own Insanewich.

Equipment and tools needed? Cataloged.
Best breadstuffs for intricate cut-out shapes? Listed.
Hunger-inducing color photos for each Insanewich? Absolutely!

If anyone can make a better sandwich than the Cordless Mousewich with USB Cheesestick or popular Rubik’s Cubewich, it’ll be Fiorino!
Be sure to check the Insanewiches blog for new recipes, contests, and other funny stuff.
**kmm

Book info: Insanewiches / Adrian Fiorino. St. Martins Griffin, 2011 [author’s website] [publisher website] [book trailer] [Review copy and cover image courtesy of publisher]

My Book Talk: If the sandwiches in your life are boring, square, or blah, you need Insanewiches! No ho-hum PBJs in this collection of yummy toteables created for breakfast, party time, dessert, and even lunchboxes.

Try breakfast on a stick with Pancake Popwiches or open wide, wide, wider for the amazingly tall morning stack-up entitled The Breakfast Club (sandwich artist Fiorino advises that you eat no more than these per day – it’s that big!).

Take a “Don’t Eat Like a Bird” sandwich featuring a two-tone bread birdhouse shape in your lunchbox or assemble a sad, sad Flatbread Fred with delectable vegetable eyes and nose for a quick lunch at home.

Get adventurous with an East Meets Westdog (sushi + hotdog!) or the Cold Cut Cage Match (complete with wrestling arena on top!). King Me with the ham and cheese checkerboard, try to lift the Sumo Sandwich, or go all out with a Crazy Canuck Sandwich – dinner will never be the same again… Satisfy your sweet tooth with a dessert-worthy Banana Splitwich, a clever Coffee ‘n’ Cakewich, or The Curious Carrot Cake Sandwich.

With 101 ideas for amazing, crazy Insanewiches to choose from, you’ll always have the tastiest plate in town, plus well-explained food-assembly techniques for making your own sandwich dreams a reality.

Red Blazer Girls: The Vanishing Violin (fiction)

Jul15

Another Fun Friday, and a second Red Blazer Girls mystery to puzzle over!

This time, the four friends are given clues that could lead to a beautiful violin which disappeared from a locked room fifty years ago, and their principal hires them to look into mysterious good deeds at St. Veronica’s.

Eating ice cream makes solving the puzzles and codes easier, right? And they’ll have time for their new band and just a little bit of flirting, too, yes?

Hoping that the third volume wanders my way soon – so much fun to solve the puzzles along with Sophie, Margaret, Becca, and Leigh Ann!
**kmm

Book info: The Red Blazer Girls: The Vanishing Violin / Michael D. Beil. Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2010 (*paperback 2011). [author’s website] [publisher site]

Recommendation:Disappearing world-class violin! Mysterious good deeds at school! The Red Blazer Girls are back on the case, as Sister Bernadette hires them to investigate strange things happening at St. Veronica School, like the library’s miraculous weekend renovation! The four friends look for hidden passages in the school’s creepy basement, stepping in red icky goo as they search. Who would clean the teacher’s lounge fridge – without being asked??

Margaret gets a puzzling note at the violin shop next door, urging her to decipher a code so she can get the next clue in a race to recover a violin that’s been missing for 50 years. If she finds it first, she can keep it! Time to get those clever minds racing, with two mysteries to solve at once, puzzles, riddles and all.

In the meantime, the girls form a band (The Blazers, of course), flirt a little (especially Sophie), work through puzzles and codes a lot, and close in on the culprits – but wait! A second violin disappears from the totally-locked violin shop whose new assistant hides his sketchy past. Three cases at once?

The Red Blazer Girls are determined to solve them all before their band’s first performance at the coffeehouse next door. Four fabulous friends, multiplying mysteries, and all the wonders and woes of middle school life make the Red Blazers Girls series a winner! (Be sure to read Ring of Rocamadour first to get the most of their stories) 336 pages (One of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com) Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

Red Blazer Girls: The Ring of Rocamadour (fiction)

Jul8

It’s Fun Friday, and if you’re in the mood for a mystery with several twists, you are in the right place!

A scavenger hunt interrupted years ago leads three friends through the venerable old buildings of their Catholic girls’ school, solving logic puzzles and brainteasers find the location of each clue in the chain.

They’re not the only ones on the hunt for a possible archaeological treasure, so The Red Blazer Girls need to watch their backs! Mystery, history, and fun with friends… what more could you want? (oh, there are some cute guys, too)

Be sure to solve each puzzle before reading the next chapter – it’s so much more fun that way! And, yes, there are more Red Blazer Girl cases ahead!
**kmm

Book info: The Red Blazer Girls: The Ring of Rocamadour / Michael D. Beil. Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2009 (*paperback 2010). [author’s website] [publisher site] [book trailer]

Recommendation: Sophie decides to investigate the white face she saw in the church tower window, which would make anyone scream during 7th grade English class, right? So she, Rebecca and Margaret cross the courtyard from St. Veronica School to St. Veronica Church, where they find mysterious passageways, a huge orange cat, and a new friend with an old family problem.

Mrs. Harriman hasn’t seen her daughter since her ex-husband took Caroline away on an archaeological dig 20 years ago, and they drifted apart. But yesterday, a birthday card addressed to Caroline from her beloved grandfather was found in Mrs. H’s study, giving the first clues for a birthday scavenger hunt. Grandfather Ev died the next day, so he never gave Caroline that card, and the retired archaeologist’s gift hasn’t been found yet. Perhaps it is the missing ruby Ring of Rocamadour, over 1,000 years old…

The card says that the next clue is in St. Veronica School’s library, so slightly eccentric Mrs. H asks Sophie and friends to please search for it. Perhaps if they can track down all the clues and find the gift, then Mrs. H can contact Caroline at last.

They find and work through clues and puzzles, they have to practice for the Dickens skit contest, and someone else is just half a step behind them as they scour their New York City neighborhood for the next clues. Who can they trust? Will the gift still be there after 20 years? What is that odd smell?

When they got their red blazers to start the year as upper school students at St. V’s, the girls never dreamed that they’d be solving mysteries between guitar lessons, art class, and violin studies!

Funny, suspenseful, and totally real, this first book in the Red Blazer Girls series will have you working through the puzzles right along with Sophie, Margaret, Rebecca, and Leigh Ann, just waiting with the St. V’s girls for the next adventure!(One of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com) Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

Luck of the Buttons, by Anne Ylvisaker (fiction) – small-town mystery, big excitement in 1920s

Jul3

Independence Day!
Pie-eating contests!
Patriotic essay competitions!
Three-legged races!

Is bad luck something you’re born with or something that you can rise above? Are bullies part of every school and neighborhood? Does the world look different when seen through your camera’s lens?

This is a great summer story as Tugs investigates a mystery that the grown-ups in town just can’t seem to see. Wishing you plenty of pie, family, and fireworks this holiday weekend!
**kmm

Book info: The Luck of the Buttons / Anne Ylvisaker. Candlewick, 2011 [author’s website] [publisher site]

Recommendation: Tugs is good at reading and good at running, which keeps her ahead of the Rowdies gang in their small Iowa town in 1929. Independence Day is next week, so she writes a patriotic essay, like every other 12 year old in town, and practices with Aggie for the 3-legged race. Thank goodness, she doesn’t have to run with her short, tubby cousin Ned this year. And she has some tickets for the raffle of a Brownie camera, too! Of course, no one in the Button family is lucky at all, so she’s not getting her hopes up about anything.

Uh-oh, it’s time to worry when Mama has a pie ready for lunch (Buttons always have pie when something bad happens). Granny is moving in, taking her bedroom! Well, at least Tugs can escape to the cool quiet of the library, browsing through the dictionary and reading old newspapers. This newcomer Harvey Moore is so busy collecting money to start a newspaper in Goodhue that he isn’t really starting it at all, so Tugs starts investigating.

On the fourth of July, it’s time for the 3-legged race, the raffle drawing, and the essay contest announcement. Will it be time for pie at the Button family table again? Can Tugs stay ahead of the Rowdies? Does the world look different through a camera lens? And how did Tugs get her first name anyway?

The summer of 1929, surrounded by cornfields and caring, is a great place to be with Tugs and her pie-baking family, as she wonders about luck and persistence in this easy-reading story. (One of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com) Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

Fish (fiction)

Jun17

Ahoy, and welcome aboard on Fun Friday! But ’twere no fun for Maurice Reidy to give up country life and become an errand boy for his uncle in Dublin. The only swimmer in his large and impoverished family, he’s known as “Fish” and would certainly rather swim than fight.

How was Fish to know that he’d be kidnapped by pirates during his very first errand? And what a crew of pirates! A captain who’d rather search for treasure than capture other ships, a gunner who’s expert in cannons and cheese, and a girl cook!

Life on board a pirate ship challenges both Fish’s swimming skills and his conciliatory abilities, as he tries to stave off mutiny while the captain solves an intricate puzzle, then “The Scurvy Mistress” must outrace other would-be pirates to the treasure.

A rollicking read on the high seas, and a great addition to any pirate’s library of fantastic fiction – with nary an Arrrggh in sight!
**kmm

Book info: Fish / by Gregory Mone. Scholastic, 2010. [author’s website] [author’s blog] [publisher site] [book trailers one and two]

Recommendation: Living in bustling Dublin or a poor country farm? At age 11, Fish (nicknamed for his swimming skills) will soon find out which he prefers as he leaves his large family’s small farm to work for his uncle as a courier. But his first parcel is snatched just as he is delivering it to Mr. Swift on the city dock! Chasing the thieves, Fish watches them row toward a menacing ship across the harbour and decides to swim after them to recover the bag of coins.

The sailors aren’t going to give up their prize easily, and Fish finds himself kidnapped – aboard a pirate ship! A good captain (and his wife!), a skilled ship’s cook (a girl!), a silent giant, a first mate plotting mutiny, and Fish’s own determination to survive without fighting make life aboard ship complicated. The coins are part of a treasure map that must be unpuzzled…

Ahoy! “The Scurvy Mistress” is being pursued by Mr. Swift and his ship full of treasure hunters who shoot first and talk later! And they want those coins so they can complete the treasure map!

As they race to find the treasure predicted by the mysterious coins, Fish and crew must overcome treacherous waters, nefarious plots, and terrible smells. Who will discover it first – the honest pirates or the dishonest treasure hunters?

Travel the high seas with a young man who’s true to himself in this tale of adventure and danger (and really funny characters!). (One of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com)

Astronaut Academy: Zero Gravity, by Dave Roman (book review) – middle school in outer space!

Jun10

book cover of Astronaut Academy Zero Gravity by Dave Roman published by First Second BooksIt’s Fun Friday – Time for school in space! Yes, Dave Roman’s new graphic novel takes us straight to Astronaut Academy, with a curriculum you just won’t believe. Oh, some things in middle school are the same even in outer space (the principal, snarky former best friends), but Astronaut Academy’s variations on ball games and emergency drills are amazing.

Of course, Hakata Soy’s crime-fighting superhero past may catch up with him…

The former comics editor of Nickelodeon Magazine took advantage of its closing to concentrate on his own cartooning, so watch for more of his self-published minicomics to grow into full-fledged books.

Dave is married to Raina Telgemeier who wrote and drew Smile (5/13/11 featured book) – yes, he proposed to her via webcomic! Just imagine two cartoonists in the same apartment… I heard them at a Texas Library Association presentation in April, then met Dave again in May at International Reading Association. Just waiting for their next books!
**kmm

Book info: Astronaut Academy: Zero Gravity / written and illustrated by Dave Roman. First Second, 2011 [author interview] [publisher site] [book trailer] [selected pages]

My Book Talk: Everyone else is already at Astronaut Academy, but Hakata is late for school! A few weeks late, since he and his mecha-friends were busy saving the world of Hoppiton from the terrible Gotcha Birds.

Senor Panda teaches Spanish (and spying), Doug just wants to wear his spacesuit and stay out on spacewalk all day, and Marcos wonders why at least one of Hakata’s hearts is broken. If the Gotcha Birds decide to attack Astronaut Academy to get the bunny students from Hoppiton, it could disrupt the Fireball Tournament!!

Students, teachers, and non-students take turns telling/showing their stories in this wacky graphic novel – does your Astronaut Academy have classes in Advanced Heart Studies, Fire Throwing, Run-on Sentences, and Wearing Cute Hats? (you can’t win Dinosaur Driving Races if you don’t wear a Cute Hat… just ask Maribelle Mellonbelly)

Action! Adventure! Oxygen gum and flashbacks! The first semester at Astronaut Academy has it all…with an extra helping of funny! (One of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com)