Book Review 30: Love Me Tender by Audrey Couloumbis

The storyline of this book was just two girls and their mom, who go to visit their grandma after a cryptic call from their aunt and their father has just left to compete in an Elvis impersonator contest in Vegas. But really, it's just a good family story. But that isn't what I really enjoyed about the book. I loved how sarcastic the main character Elvira is. The relationship between her and her mother, who she calls Mel, reminds me a lot of my relationship with my own mother. Just the way they talked to each other made me giggle and think of years past as well as even how I joke with my mom today. The whole family is a group of characters, and I just really, really enjoyed reading about their story, even as kind of a minor, run of the mill story as it seemed to me.

While this isn't really about Elvis, just an Elvis impersonator, I wonder why there are two books I've read for these 2 lists that include Elvis. On Beale Street was the one from the Truman list.

Next book is Go Big or Go Home by Will Hobbs. I've never read any of his books, they mostly don't sound like my interests. The cover of this really doesn't make me want to pick it up either. But, the little blurb on the front says: "A meteorite blazes the way to extreme adventure" and the first few pages is where this happens as I started reading, so I'm hooked.

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.