One Thousand White Women by Jim Fergus

I'm finally back to reading for myself...it felt really good. This was a great book to get me back to reading!! It was the October entry for the KE book club, Booker Babes. The club is meeting tonight... as you can see I'm not a part of it. It's just really hard for me to follow their schedule...

Back to the story.
First of all - this is a work of fiction...but the way the Indians are handled is not a fiction.

May Dodd was the first wave of a group of white women to be given to the Cheyenne tribes to bear children who would be welcome in the white world. May had been sent to an insane asylum due to her love of a man below her means, her life in sin with him, and her families overwhelming disapproval.

When a government agent arrived at the asylum to invite her to join this experiment...she didn't even hesitate.

Thus began her next life. A life that she could not even imagine. Her train ride across the plains, her love encounter with an army officer, and her subsequent marriage to the chief of a Cheyenne tribe called Little Wolf.

The book is told in a series of journal entries tracing May's life across the west. You can easily fall in to the story Fergus weaves, questioning if it is real or if it is fake.

This was a great read...a 1:00 am read!

Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

WOW!!!

Katniss lives in a world of the future.
...a world where the United States is no more.
...a world where each region is forced to send two of their children to the capital to take part in the Hunger Games
...a world that watches the Hunger Games each year
...a world that thinks children fighting to the death is some type of entertainment
...a world I hope to NOT be a part of

Katniss is changing that world without even knowing it. When she accepted her younger sister's place in the Hunger Games nothing will ever be the same.

This is a story that keeps you on the edge of your seat. The brutality and the desperation are perfectly balanced with Katniss and her vow to live...at all costs.

Read it!!!

Fire by Cashore

Graceling by Cashore

Whew!
I've kept myself away from fantasy for the entire summer and this was an amazing one to wait on. I devoured this!!

Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork

Marcelo, a 17-yr-old, high school senior who is also on the Autistic spectrum. Marcelo is fixated on two things...religion and his IM (inner music) – his own brand of inner noise.

Marcelo is anticipating his final year at Paterson - a school for disabled kids – and his job in the stable. Dad has other ideas he wants him to work at his law firm to get a taste of the real world. Dad makes a deal with Marcelo – if he follows the rules for the summer he will allow Marcelo to decide where he attends his final year of high school. Marcelo becomes a mailroom worker with Jasmine. She is open and honest and doesn’t really want him there. But, a friendship develops. Each gives the other a listening ear without judgements attached.

The law firm is defending a windshield manufacturer for negligence. The windshield is supposed to splinter and break instead it breaks in big pieces and kills and maims people. Marcelo and Jasmine discover a photograph of a girl who lived through the horror. Now, Marcelo must decide what to do – get in touch with the lawyer for the girl and share that the company knew about the problem, or stand by his dad…

It's a story of a young man entering the bigger world and figuring out what it means to stand.

This is an excellent book for anyone who has worked with kids on the spectrum. It really provides an insight into what their world is like. How scary, how exciting and how different their view is from what we accept as our reality.

I loved this!

Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson

Laurie Halse Anderson is amazing! This is another book that has you on edge the entire time.

You enter the world of a Lia - a girl slowly starving herself to death. You hear her inner battle - the belief that hunger is strength. The desire to eat and the decision to stay strong. The understanding that driving requires some calories - but there is always a price to pay.

Lia is a senior who finds out that her ex-best friend, Cassie, has just died. Cassie was found alone in a motel room. Cassie had purged herself to death. She was bulemic and the wear and tear of her disease eventually killed her.

She died alone...
She called Lia over and over...
Lia ignored the calls...
Cassie is dead...

Anderson has a way of weaving a story in bits and pieces and before you know it you are embedded in the tale.

As I read this I kept debating if I really liked Lia. She had so many positives in her life, so many moments when others tried to reach out to her. But, she kept giving in to her own demons...until...

Lia's little step sister loves her, idolizes her and Lia becomes a different person with Emma. But, she crosses the line and Emma witnesses her downfall.

This is EXCELLENT!!

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

I want to speak after I read this - I want to tell everyone I can to read this story. To read this story and then to listen very closely for the silence of those teenagers in your life. That is sometimes the only way they can really communicate!

Mel begins freshman year as an outcast by choice. As the world moves forward Mel is stuck – the words are stuck in her throat, her forward motion is stuck, her life is stuck. But, you the reader, don't really know why she is stuck... there are clues. But it's late in the book that Mel actually tells what happened that night at the party before school started.

Mel is ostracized for calling the cops on a party – when she was actually reporting something very different that underage drinking. How do you fit in after that? How do you get to the point where you even want to fit in? That is what Mel explores through this yearlong journey.

I don't want to say too much...I don't want to give anything more away. But, this is a heartbreaking story of a girl who just doesn't know how to move on. And then a teacher, not a cardboard cut-out adult, but a flesh and blood teacher, starts to break through Mel's shell.

Read it!!