Smithville Elementary Library

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Book Talk Tuesday: Wild Times At the Bed & Biscuit

Wild Times At the Bed & Biscuit by Joan Carris

Grandpa Bender, the owner of the Bed & Biscuit usually takes care of pets, but since the local animal shelter is being renovated, he's recently taken in some injured wild animals. A Canada goose, who has an arrow through his neck, a pair of fox kits who have been abandoned by their mother, and a cranky muskrat with an infected foot all become guests at the Bed & Biscuit, and Grandpa must find a way to care for them with the help of his own pets, led by Ernest the pig.
Meanwhile, because Grandpa is busy with the wild creatures, Ernest must take over many new responsibilities, including the training of an eager young Scottie puppy, named Sir Walter. Ernest becomes especially concerned when the young pup shows interest in living "wild" like the young foxes!
Wild Times is, in many ways, a good ol' fashioned animal story, but beyond its comforting tale of friendly pets, it's also a story about the importance of caring for all types of animals, domestic and wild, and about caring for one another!

Monday, June 20, 2011

Book Talk Tuesday!

Kelly Butcher, over at The Lemme Library Blog, generously hosts a weekly forum for sharing children's book reviews every Tuesday. Last week, however, Kelly's husband took a spill and fractured his ankle, so Kelly's summer just got a whole lot more hectic! To help her out, I'll be hosting Book Talk Tuesday for her this week.

Here are Kelly's (and thereby my) rules:

All content must be appropriate for children in grades kindergarten through eighth grade.

Websites that you link to must be child friendly since lots of kids visit this site and if they click on your link, I want it to be appropriate for them.

Positive reviews only, please...we only spread love here at the Lemme (and Smithville Elementary) Library!

Books must be available in the US. (You are welcome to link to ARC reviews.)

I reserve the right to remove any reviews that don't meet criteria 1-4.

In the link title field, be sure to include the title of the book you are reviewing and your site name. In the URL field, please link to the specific post that contains the book review. (That way, people don't have to scour your blog looking for it.)

After you submit your link, please leave a comment for this post! Since I just returned from a trip to San Francisco last week and will be leaving for a beach trip with the family this weekend, I have vacations on the brain! In your comment, tell us either (a) what your favorite place to visit is, or (b) where you would go on your dream vacation!

Have a great week, and thanks for posting!

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Book Talk Tuesday: Al Capone Does My Shirts

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I usually like to review new titles for Book Talk Tuesday, but last weekend I took a mini-vacation to San Francisco, and while there, I toured Alcatraz island, a prison fortress which once housed a number of notorious criminals, and which is now a national park. It's been at least four years since I read Al Capone Does My Shirts, but as I toured the cell block and peered into the tiny cells, the details of this book came flooding back to me. So, instead of featuring a newly released book today, I'm featuring one of my all-time favorites!
Moose Flanagan didn't ask to leave his hometown and winning baseball team. He didn't ask his dad to take a job as a guard at the most famous prison in the country. He didn't ask for a sister like Natalie, who, even though she's older than Moose, can throw a tantrum worse than a two-year-old. And he didn't ask to live on the same tiny island as the notorious mob boss, Al Capone. But that's excatly what has happened to Moose when we meet him at the beginning of Al Capone Does My Shirts.

Moose's family has just moved to Alcatraz island, where prison guards and their families live side-by-side with the country's most dangerous convicts. But living a stone's throw from a prison house is only the beginning of Moose's problems. Moose's sister, Natalie, has a condition that makes her different from other kids her age, and the family has moved to Alcatraz so that Natalie can have a chance to attend a special school in nearby San Francisco. As a result, Moose's parents have to work constantly to provide money for Natalie's tuition, and Moose is often left in charge of Natalie while his parents are away. Add that to having to make new friends and start over at a new school, and Moose feels like he's a prisoner himself!

Things get interesting, though, when Moose meets Piper, the warden's daughter, and gets sucked into some of her deceitful schemes. As it turns out, life on "the rock" is much more exciting than Moose thought it would be.

Al Capone Does My Shirts is a great story about what it's like to support and be a part of a family, and about what it means to be a true friend, but it's also about a time in history when gangsters ruled the crime world and when Alcatraz was a name that struck fear in the hearts of prisoners and civilians alike. Al Capone is exciting, intriguing, funny, and touching. It's a great read if you want to know more about Alcatraz, or if you're looking for a funny, unpredictable story!