Book Review 15: Little Audrey by Ruth White

This was a tiny, tiny book for this age of kids to read. Only 146 pages, so no wonder I finished it in the same day as when I started. Don't get me wrong, it was a really interesting story, but I just wonder if the kids in grades 7-9 that the Truman list is for will respond well to such a young story. The main character is Audrey, and she is actually the real older sister of the author. So it is a semi-autobiographical account of the author's life as a child in coal mine town. Audrey is 11 years old, and it is May, the end of the school year. Their father works in the coal mine, and in the past was also in the army until they sent him home saying he had 4 kids that needed him to be home. It actually sounds like the family was kind of better off, financially mostly, when he was in the army. Her father drank a lot, her mother was left home with the kids mostly. There were 3 other girls besides Audrey, that she called the "little Piggies". And there had been another baby that had died before it was a year old from spinal meningitis.

The fact that it is a true story will probably intrigue some readers, but it is told from a younger age than the kids who read this award nominee list, and often that can put this age off from reading something.

I also have to say that I read a book by the same author, Ruth White, for the Mark Twain list last year. It was called Way Down Deep, and it actually was one of my least favorites, yet made it to the list anyway. I liked this book better, but we'll see what happens.

The next book I'll start is called Jack: Secret Histories, and is by F. Paul Wilson, an author I've actually considered reading his adult novels in the past, but have yet to do. So we'll see how this one goes.

Book Review 14: Compound by S.A. Bodeen

I liked the premise of this book, it actually reminded me of the movie with Brendan Fraser called Blast from the Past, only the book wasn't humorous. The Yanakakis family is a rich and famous one. The father, Rex, was a computer genius. He was worried about nuclear war, so he build the compound. The compound was set up with a full school-size gymnasium, a livestock area, a hydroponics area, huge storage warehouse, doctor's office, beauty salon, each person in the family had their own bedroom, a fancy kitchen, you name it, it was there. They even had running water and electricity. But unfortunately when the bombs get dropped, Eli's twin brother and their grandmother get separated and don't make it to the compound before they have to close and lock the door. So it's just Dad, Mom, Eli's adopted sister Lexie, Eli, and his younger sister Teresa. Soon something goes wrong with the livestock and they have to kill and burn them instead of being able to eat them. Mom notices something is wrong with the wheat. Soon their father must figure out a way for them to survive when the stores they have will run out. Because it will take 15 years for the surface to be safe for them. And the way he figures out, they're called supplements, another way to get protein, if you can think of them that way.

But Eli finds a laptop in his twin brother's unused room that still has an internet icon, and when Eli clicks it, he finds the internet is still there. And Eli begins to wonder, is what his father told him the truth? And why would his father go to such extremes to try to save them, when it is really very unbelievable that his father could have even made the mistakes in the first place that lead to those kind of extremes. This was a really good book, I liked it a lot. The boy, Eli, was kind of sullen, not the "good twin" but that probably made it more interesting.

Today I started Little Audrey by Ruth White.