I'm not sure if it's because I read the Truman list before these, but I'm feeling that some of these are so low reading level. I realize that Mark Twain list is for grades 4-6, but wow. This was a good story idea, but so low reading level. I mean, I look at the winner's from the past couple years, The Lightning Thief, Sea of Monsters, which are really so much better and at a higher reading level than half of the books I've read on this list so far. I even feel the most of the books I read last year for Mark Twain were better than this.
Anyway, normally I would really like this book, it is on a time period that I always am intrigued to read about, World War 2. The main character is a 13 year old boy named Tommy. His mom is having health issues, shaking hands, having vision problems, etc. He's a big fan of baseball, and wished people would stop talking about a war that was in Europe. This book is taking place in 1940, leads up to Pearl Harbor at the end. He has a friend named Beth that he walks to school with every day, and he kind of likes her. She lost her mom to cancer. There is also a friend of theirs named Sarah, who is a Jewish girl who escaped from Germany, but her uncle disappeared and hasn't been heard from since. His friend Charles has an older brother who is graduating from high school and decided to join the Navy. As I suspected from the symptoms, it turns out Tommy's mom finds out she has Multiple Sclerosis after she finally agrees to go see a doctor and gets a not so good evaluation.
It's an okay story as I said, just really, really, low level reading in my opinion.
Tonight I started the next book, Love Me Tender by Audrey Couloumbis, it is okay so far as well, but has a quite humorous tone to it that is keeping me hooked.
