There are a few people I will take book recommendations from and they are mostly in my writing group. This particular recommendation, for The Turner House, came not only as a title scribbled on my writing notes, but as a book pressed into my hand by someone else who had just finished it. “It reminded…
This book really doesn’t need a review, does it? But it was on the Best Books list and I read it (not for the first time), and here it is. I will admit that this was never a favorite of mine. I just didn’t get all the hype. I was so used to the illustrations…
Yes, this book is part of a series, but since I only read the first one, I can speak only to that book. As of 2017, there are six books in the series: My Big Fat Zombie Goldfish The SeaQuel Fins of Fury Any Fin Is Possible Live and Let Swim Jurassic Carp Why didn’t…
I must have been writing this review in my head while reading this book, because I feel like I already wrote it. I looked on the blog, I looked in the blog drafts, and I even searched through my Word file. Nothing. Must have been in my head. Why? Because this book is so surprising.…
Is it a novel? Is it a book of short stories? Personally, I have it filed on my bookshelves in the short stories section, but you could really go either way with this Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Elizabeth Strout. I came across this book several years ago, when it won the Pulitzer and landed on…
I love this book and everything about it. When my daughter was an infant, it was cool in our circles to buy this Bible for your children, and a friend of the family bought a copy for our daughter. Over the years, there have been many children’s Bibles that I have seen that did not…
I devoured this book. But maybe this book isn’t for you. Most likely, it isn’t, unless you are embarking on your first year of home schooling, or even if you are in your first year and need to reach out for help, which would not be uncommon. This book is obviously written for homeschoolers or…
My son has been reading The Magic Tree House series by Mary Pope Osborne for some months, now. He is what is termed a reluctant reader, so we take his reading interest where we can find it, even with comic books or the Jack Stalwart series (see previous review). I’m not super fond of the…
This has been, for personal reasons, the summer of homeschool books. Those personal reasons include me starting to homeschool my fourth-grade son. This is not the first or last book that I will review for that reason, and in fact, I forsee many homeschool-related reviews in our future here at The Starving Artist. Many of…
If I said it once… okay, so I said it once. But here it is again: I am going to be spending the majority of my summer building a curriculum for my new homeschooler and reading about homeschooling. (Who am I kidding? I’m also still reading novels and even some short stories.) The first book…
The last four years have seen a lot of change in my life. Four years ago, my husband graduated from school and changed careers, and my last child at home went off to kindergarten. I started writing full-time and published a novel within nine months. Two years ago, we made the decision to take said-son…
I can hardly remember how this book got added to my TBR (it had something to do with Cold Comfort Farm), but I don’t think it would make most “best” lists out there. On the other hand, it is pretty solid for a—what?—YA romance? Classic YA? YA before YA existed? It transcends some of the…
In my daughter’s sixth grade class for the recent semester, the kids had to read one of four selections that their teacher presented. My daughter did the first read and turned in the assignment, then decided to read the other three before the semester was through. She has always said this teacher had a great…
There won’t be a lot to say here, as most of this has been said elsewhere. Plus, it’s pretty straight-forward. Eric Carle is a writer and illustrator of children’s books, made famous by his simple, repetitive words and his pioneering work in collage illustration. He takes all his books from concept to final form, himself.…
I have been trying to review some picture books before my kids (and nephews and niece) get past the age of reading them. So here we are at my son’s favorite (not counting the Peek-a-Who board book when he was a baby). This series remains among his favorite picture books to read, and I will…
I bumped the Miss Peregrine series up on my TBR for two very good reasons. First, Tim Burton was working on the movie. I lurve Tim Burton and I see all the movies he makes. Second, I have a friend who was high school buddies with Ransom Riggs and who recommended that I read the…
I’ve been pulling the sleek, simple, and colorful copies of the Hoot series by Carl Hiaasen off the shelves in the youth section of bookstores, for a long while. Something about them—including their presence everywhere–said “good book” to me. Perhaps it was the simple titles: Hoot, Chomp, Flush, Scat, and Skink. Perhaps it was those…
The reviews for Jacqueline Davies’ The Lemonade War are mostly good, but after being critical of Island of the Blue Dolphins, I find myself reluctant to call this one how I read it: I liked it. I didn’t know what to expect, really. My daughter had pulled it from the shelf in her classroom, telling…
When my daughter was assigned this book for fifth grade reading, I was happy to read it. I enjoy history and have a special interest in Native American history. I thought this would be an interesting story, even though it is a fictionalized account. Not so much. Besides the real story, itself, I found this…
Frindle, by Andrea Clements, was another one of those third grade reading lists books that I bought for the new school year. In the fall, we were attempting to read the books back and forth, one paragraph at a time, but we have since stopped that. Understandably, partnering with my “low-reading” son, we read through…
the starving artist 