What books have you recently read??

Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge

Congratulations!  We've read 9,618 minutes!!!  Our champion reader is Ms. IslandVolcano with 2,395 minutes!!  I'm going to have to bring in something special for her, throughout the summer, she's been at the top of the class.

I've been busy attempting to get my computer fixed, to no avail and redoing my websites but I have had a wonderful time reading.  Here's the short list of books I've read in addition to the reading book lists and my "big person" books:

Sunrise Over Fallujah
Summer Ball
Million Dollar Throw
Closed for the Season
Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows (re-read)
Uprising (reread)

n 1927, at the urging of twenty-one-year-old Harriet, Mrs. Livingston reluctantly recalls her experiences at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory, including miserable working conditions that led to a strike and the fire that took the lives of her friends.

Uprising, as you might already know is one of my favorites.  I have this thing for historical fiction and I just absolutely loved the fact that the book was based on real events.  Margaret Peterson Haddix is by far one of my favorite young adult authors.

When you're the smallest kid playing a big man's game, the challenges never stop, especially when your name is Danny Walker.
Leading your travel team to the national championship may seem like a dream come true, but for Danny, being at the top just means the competition tries that much harder to knock him off. Now Danny's leaving Middletown for the summer and heading to Right Way basketball camp, where he's out of his element and maybe out of his league. The country's best ballers are in attendance, and Danny will need to raise his game if he wants to match up. But it won't be easy. Old rivals and new battles leave Danny wondering if he really has what it takes to stand tall.

 
This year, I decided to read some of Mike Lupica's work and I've read Million Dollar Throw and Summer Ball.  He writes realistic fiction and mostly about boys and sports.  The result, I don't think it was too bad, it took a while to get into both of them and the character development wasn't too bad. 

When thirteen-year-old Logan finds out that he and his family have moved into a house where the previous owner was murdered, he and his new neighbor Arthur go on a quest to solve the mystery surrounding the closure of an old amusement park and the murder in Logan's house.

Closed for the Season turned out to be a thriller, but not scary, which was nice because I do have nightmares when I watch scary movies or read scary books (I'm the ultimate wimp!)  There's a murder to be solved and to solve it, two boys have to go into the scariest environment possible and in the middle of the night!  EEEK!!!  Yeah but like I said, it wasn't too scary.

Lord Voldemort is preparing for battle and so must Harry. With Ron and Hermione at his side, he's trying to hunt down Voldemort's Horcruxes, escape danger at every turn, and find a way to defeat evil once and for all. How does it all end? Find out in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

In honor of the movie, Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows (which I haven't seen yet!!!  I know I can't believe it!)  I reread the book and of course, Pottermagic!  Need I say more?

Operation Iraqi Freedom, that's the code name. But Robin Perry, an ambivalent recruit from Harlem, and all his fellow soldiers in the Civil Affairs Battalion have a simpler name for it: WAR.
Perry and the rest of his unit soon find their definition of "winning" the war in Iraq ever more elusive and their good intentions being replaced by terms like "survival" and "despair."

Finally, Sunrise Over Fallujah has taken me a while to get into and I'm still not into it but I'm not big on war.  I'm more of a peace & love person and some of the scenes described, well...its war!  I don't know what I expected.  Blood, guts, crying, guilt, guns, and yes, its been a book that has been difficult for me to read and as a result its been in my bag for weeks and I still haven't finished it. 

So, lesson for you; you don't have to finish every single book.  What is important is that you become exposed to a wide variety of genres or types of books.  There is historical fiction, fantasy, realistic fiction, science fiction and oh so many different books out there!  Read!