Book Review 29: Don't Talk to Me About the War by David A. Adler

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.

Book Review 28: Cicada Summer by Andrea Beaty

Not a big fan of this book. It was okay, but not the best in my opinion. The main character Lily, has no mother, and her brother died in a carbon monoxide accident as well. Since her brother died, Lily has quit talking, making herself invisible basically. Soon a new girl named Tinny moves into town, Tinny is also motherless, but does talk, and is actually a thief. Tinny has a bad man looking for her, and this leads to danger. The only thing about this that I was interested in was the talk about how cicadas have 17 year life cycles in between each infestation. I was curious about this as I've seen them the last few years, so I went and did some Internet research. And while they are on 17 year cycles, there are different genetic broods that come out, so one group came out last summer, and won't be back for 17 years, and another is out this year.

Now reading Don't Talk to Me About the War by David Adler.