Carrie's Book Reviews
June 18, 2019
---BOOK REVIEW---
Title: The Teacher's Funeral: A Comedy in Three Parts
Author: Richard Peck
Genre: Historical Fiction
Age Range: MG and up
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"If your teacher has to die, August isn't a bad time of year for it," begins Richard Peck's latest novel, a book full of his signature wit and sass.
Russell Culver is fifteen in 1904, and he's raring to leave his tiny Indiana farm town for the endless sky of the Dakotas. To h...
August 22, 2018
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Title: O Pioneers!
Author: Willa Cather
Genre: Classic Fiction
Age Range YA and up
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Set on the Nebraska prairie where Willa Cather (1873–1947) grew up, this powerful early novel tells the story of the young Alexandra Bergson, whose dying father leaves her in charge of the family and of the lands they have struggled to farm. In Alexandra's long flight to survive and succeed, O Pioneers! relates an im...
August 7, 2018
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Title: One Thousand Gifts
Author: Ann Voskamp
Genre: Inspirational/Spiritual
Age Range: Adult
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Drawing heartbreaking beauty out of the simplest of details, New York Times bestselling author Ann Voskamp invites you into her grace-bathed life of farming, parenting, and writing--and deeper still into your own life. Here you will discover a way of seeing that opens your eyes to ordinary amazing grace, a way...
July 24, 2018
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Title: These is My Words
Author: Nancy F. Turner
Genre: Historical Fiction
Age Range: Adult
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A moving, exciting, and heartfelt American saga inspired by the author's own family memoirs, these words belong to Sarah Prine, a woman of spirit and fire who forges a full and remarkable existence in a harsh, unfamiliar frontier. Scrupulously recording her steps down the path Providence has set her upon—from ch...
July 18, 2018
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Title: The Night Circus
Author: Erin Morgenstern
Genre: Metaphysical Fiction
Age Range: Adult
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The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night.
But behind the...
July 16, 2018
---BOOK REVIEW---
Title: The Red Tent
Author: Anita Diamant
Genre: Historical Fiction/Religious
Age Range: Adult
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Her name is Dinah. In the Bible, her life is only hinted at in a brief and violent detour within the more familiar chapters of the Book of Genesis that are about her father, Jacob, and his dozen sons.
Told in Dinah's voice, this novel reveals the traditions and turmoils of ancient womanhood-the world of the re...
July 11, 2018
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Title: Hatchet
Author: Gary Paulsen
Genre: Fiction
Age Range: Late middle grade/teen
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Thirteen-year-old Brian Robeson, haunted by his secret knowledge of his mother’s infidelity, is traveling by single-engine plane to visit his father for the first time since the divorce. When the plane crashes, killing the pilot, the sole survivor is Brian. He is alone in the Canadian wilderness with nothing but hi...
July 6, 2018
---BOOK REVIEW---
Title: The Blue Castle
Author: L.M. Montgomery
Genre: General Fiction/Romance
Age Range: Adult
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Valancy lives a drab life with her overbearing mother and prying aunt. Then a shocking diagnosis from Dr. Trent prompts her to make a fresh start. For the first time, she does and says exactly what she feels. As she expands her limited horizons, Valancy undergoes a transformation, discovering a new world...
July 6, 2018
---BOOK REVIEW---
Title: The Misadventures of Maude March
Author: Audrey Couloumbis
Genre: Middle Grade Fiction
Grade Level: 3-7
Age Range 8-12 years
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Eleven-year-old Sallie March is a whip-smart tomboy and voracious reader of Western adventure novels. When she and her sister Maude escape their self-serving guardians for the wilds of the frontier, they begin an adventure the likes of which Sallie has only read about....
July 3, 2018
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Title: The Care and Feeding of a Pet Black Hole
Author: Michele Cuevas
Genre: Middle Grade Fiction
Grade Level: 3-7
Age Range 8-12 years
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When eleven-year-old Stella Rodriguez shows up at NASA to request that her recording be included in Carl Sagan's Golden Record, something unexpected happens: A black hole follows her home, and sets out to live in her house as a pet. The black hole swallows everyth...