It’s Monday, What Are You Reading: A Little Dose of Everything

Days seem to go by so fast lately. Time for It’s Monday, What Are You Reading. This blog meme is hosted by Jen and Kellee from Teacher Mentor Texts (and brainchild of Sheila at Book Journey). Linda from Teacher Dance and Tara from A Teaching Life are sources of our inspiration in joining our fellow book enthusiasts. Today’s post is a little bit of everything. Well, almost. =)

A Dose of Laughter

Title: Lulu and the Brontosaurus
Written by: Judith Viorst
Illustrated by: Lane Smith
Published by: Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Paperback: 113 pages
I have finished reading this.

I finally got around to reading Viorst and Smith’s Lulu and the Brontosaurus. I bought it for only $6.99, and that’s cheap for a children’s book with that many pages. Viorst takes on the “narrator role” and makes funny side comments along the way.

Two weeks before Lulu’s birthday, she announced to her mom and dad that she wanted a brontosaurus for her b-day present. What did she say? What? A brontosaurus? Yes, she wanted a brontosaurus for a pet. At first Lulu’s mom and dad just thought she was making a little joke. And then they saw – oh, horrors! – that she was serious.

They patiently explained that a brontosaurus is a quite enormous dinosaur who lives in forests, not in people’s houses. (Is that where a brontosaurus would live? In a forest? I’m afraid that I’m not absolutely sure. But since I’m the person writing this story, I’m putting this brontosaurus in a forest, along with a lot of other wild beasts that I’m absolutely sure did not live on Earth when dinosaurs were there.) – pp. 7-8

Lulu and the Brontosaurus tells the irresistibly cute and hilarious story of a little girl named Lulu who’ll do everything to get what she wants – even if it takes screeching till the lightbulbs burst, throwing herself on the floor, kicking her heels, and waving her arms in the air. It’s a story of every child who likes to throws tantrums, and parents who have to deal with them everyday. Yet, it also teaches a thing or two about friendship, respect, good manners, and proper conduct. A must-have for every parent and child.

Title: Rude, Crude, and Tattooed (Zits Sketchbook 12)
Co-Authored by: Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman
Published by: Andrews McMeel Publishing
Paperback: 127 pages
I am currently reading this.

I’ve been reading Zits for years. This is my second Zits sketchbook and decided to read this before Sunday Brunch (The Best of Zits Sunday). Unlike other Zits sketchbooks I’ve seen, Rude, Crude, and Tattooed is smaller in size, therefore easier to carry around. Zits was described as a “comic strip about the funniest, most painfully emotionally charged, physically demanding, mentally challenging, and colorful times of our lives – adolescence.” Like Lulu and the Brontosaurus, this comic collection touches on parent-child relationship but in an older, more mature level. (Although I’d like to say that the level of immaturity is about the same. Ha!)

A Dose of Inspiration

Title: If Only I Had a Green Nose
Written by: Max Lucado
Illustrated by: Sergio Martinez
Published by: Crossway Books
Hardcover: 32 pages
I have finished reading this.

This is a sequel to You are Special, which I featured in my previous It’s Monday… post. Like the first book, If Only I Had a Green Nose follows the same theme of loving yourself for who you are. Little Punchinello wished he had a green nose, just like the other Wemmicks in Wemmicksville. If he had one, he’d surely fit in. Or would he?

Title: Best of All
Written by: Max Lucado
Illustrated by: Sergio Martinez
Published by: Crossway Books
Hardcover: 32 pages
I have finished reading this.

While this was also labeled as a sequel to You Are Special, Best of All is a stand-alone book just like If Only I Had a Green Nose. I read the latter first. A famous Wemmick named Bess Stovall (a wordplay on the title) visits Wemmicksville and everyone, including Punchinello and Lucia, were in awe. Bess Stovall was cut from the grandest forest, carved from the strongest tree. Full of sap – only the purest – she’s of the highest pedi-tree. Soon, Wemmicks become aware of their ancest-tree; they all start forming their own groups, leaving Punchinello by himself, for he was the only Wemmick made from the willow tree. Would Punchinello be alone forever?

Title: Dream Big (Starring Olivia)
Quotes by: Various people
Illustrated by: Ian Falconer
Published by: Andrews McMeel Publishing
Hardcover: 60 pages
I have finished reading this.

This is one of those pocket-sized books that contain inspirational quotes from famous people. I fell in love with this cutesy book for two reasons: it features Olivia the pig, and it talks about reaching for your dreams (and dreaming big!). I’m really a sucker for that type of book. Here are just a few of the quotes included in the book:

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you anywhere.
– Albert Einstein

Sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
– Lewis Carroll

Great spirits have always encountered opposition from mediocre minds.
– Albert Einstein

A Dose of Fantasy and Adventure

Title: Artemis Fowl: The Last Guardian
Written by: Eoin Colfer
Published by: Hyperion Books
Hardcover: 328 pages
I am currently reading this.

I started reading this a couple of weeks ago. It was on-and-off reading. I’m almost done with Chapter 6, and things are not looking good for Artemis Fowl II, his family, and the Lower Elements city where the faerie people live. I discovered Artemis Fowl in 2004, two years after the first book was released. I have loved it since. In fact, I may have loved it just a little more than Harry Potter. I bought copies of the book as soon as they were released in the market. In a span of eight years, I have seen the character transformation of Artemis Fowl, from the time he earned his reputation as criminal mastermind at age twelve until the present. (He’s probably eighteen or nineteen in the last book.) It breaks my heart every time I turn the page because it brings me closer and closer to the end of the series.

Title: The Book of Heroes
Written by: Miyuki Miyabe
Translated in English by: Alexander O. Smith
Published by: VIZ Media
Hardcover: 352 pages
I am currently reading this.

I am re-reading The Book of Heroes, although I never got past halfway through the book when I first read it. Miyuki Miyabe is the award-winning author of Brave Story (a copy of which I have yet to acquire). Reading is sweeter the second time around, and I’m hoping to finish it just in time to feature it for our bimonthly theme, Books About Books and the River of Words.

As a nameless devout, the youth had no word with which to refer to himself. He had no self. He was a part of this place, the nameless land – a fragment, made to express its will and nothing more.

He had no soul.

Yet still, perhaps because of this, in these eternal lands free from the yoke of time there was something that settled in those vessels, an essence that lodged in the hollow voids where their souls belonged. There were people, besides the devout, who had in this past visited this land from other worlds. The came from the stars or other countries, full of life and possessing both color and names. These visitors called this thing that filled the nameless one by many names. Some called it emotion. Others simply heart. Others called it the very stuff of humanity.

Regardless of what it was called, the youth knew it resided here, beneath where his palm touched his chest. – Prison Break (Prologue)

CHILLS. I can’t wait to finish this book.

How about you? What are you reading this week?

Lulu and the Brontosaurus. 2011 NCTE Notable Children’s Books in the Language Arts; CLA Notable Children’s Books in the English Language Arts 2011; Children ‘s Book Committee Bank Street College of Education Best Children ‘s Books of the Year 2011

AWB Reading Challenge Update: 103 (35)

Picture Book Challenge Update: 110-113 out of 120