Wonderful Wednesday (on Thursday) Childhood Books

I missed Sam's first Wonderful Wednesday post, so I'm doing it now...as I couldn't find a new one for this week and I know I can't link it, but I'll put it in the comments on her blog.

From Tiny Library:

The meme is called Wonderful Wednesdays and it's all about spotlighting and recommending some of our most loved books, even if we haven't read them recently.  Each week will have a different theme or genre of book to focus on.

This week's theme: a book you loved as a child.
 We all have a book that we read over and over again as a child and still think of fondly as an adult.

          I don't know if I can pick just one...ummmm...there are three. Yes, three and I think about these books often, really. They are the foundation of my pre-teen years.

          The first is The Purple Pussy Cat, a book about a polka-dotted cat that comes to life at night and visits with all these nocturnal animals like an owl, raccoon, and a family of opossums...the pages are so pretty and full of cool colors and lots and lots of purple. This is a favorite book from my childhood because I taught my sisters how to read using this book. I remember all of us sitting on the bottom bunk as we went over the words...the word purple is hard when you are 5 years old.

           Popcorn is a book about a little bear whose parents go to the opera and while they are out he pops popcorn, literally a whole house full, he then invites his friends over for a Halloween party and ask them to help him eat all the popcorn. It's hilarious to read a book about bears dressed as ballerinas and ghosts et cetera having to eat tons of popcorn. I still have this book and can't wait for the tiny person to read it.

          And, a book that I can read again, again and again is The Phantom Tollbooth this book is all about words. He travels to Dictionopolis, where he eats his own words, rescues princesses Rhyme and Reason and goes through the Doldrums. There are so many play on words and puns that make this book delightful, especially if you have a love of vocabulary,  the English language and fantasy.

          Sigh, childhood.

Wonderful Wednesdays (on Thursdays) Class of '88 series

From Tiny Library:

Wonderful Wednesdays is a meme about spotlighting and recommending some of our most loved books, even if we haven't read them recently.  Each week will have a different theme or genre of book to focus on.

This week's theme is guilty pleasures.

          My guilty pleasures are YA novels. I love them!

          They are my guilty pleasure because I will forgo reading a more grown-up/classic book to pick up a YA novel. There is a series that I read for the first time in 6th grade, but have reread often over the years. It's the Class of '88 series by Linda A. Cooney. I bought the first book for $.99 in a Scholastics Reading book club flyer and then bought each subsequent book with every book order. I even bought the Class of '89 series, but it is the Class of '88 that I love best. I remember one Saturday my senior year (when I was feeling especially melancholy about the whole leaving high school ordeal) I read the whole series only coming out of my room to eat lunch and to visit with my mother when she came home from work.

          These books follow the story of  "Five friends. Nick the golden boy, Celia the beautiful, Sean the thinker, Allie the wild, Meg the brave" as they enter brand new Redwood High School. They go through some tough times such as dating college guys, transfering to Art school, first crushes and bullying the nerds, but through it all they do stay true friends. I also like that the book begins in Nick's tree house and ends, 4 years later at the same place.

          And, although these books are a bit contrived, I do think that they hold true to what high school is like, flirty, melodramatic, over the top, but tender and bittersweet and a heck of a good time.

Wonderful Wednesdays (on Thursdays) The Beach

From Tiny Library:

Wonderful Wednesdays is a meme about spotlighting and recommending some of our most loved books, even if we haven't read them recently.  Each week will have a different theme or genre of book to focus on.

This week's theme is novels set in another country.

          For this week I choose the novel The Beach by Alex Garland. This book is about a Gen Xer named Richard and his quest to find this elusive, mystical beach founded by this man named Daffy Duck and his friends. Supposedly this beach is untouched by tourist. He, along with this French couple, finally finds this island only it already has a whole group of people living there under the rule of Daffy's friends and their camp is surrounded by a ruthlessly guarded marjuania plantation. At first, this place seems like paradise living off the land and Richard gets to commune with nature and the others on the island who are of the same mind as him, but it soon turns into a Hell on Earth much like the island represented in The Lord of the Flies. Side note: This novel does have the honor of being called The Lord of the Flies for Generation X by the novelist Nick Hornby.

          As a Gen Xer, I enjoy all books about those who exemplify this generation, so I was hooked from the very beginning. This, however, is the first book about a place that I have never been that has made me want to go there. While I am not brave enough to buy a one way ticket to anywhere, I am enamored with the idea of buying a one way ticket to Thailand and hanging out there in the hot sun, bright hotel lobbies and stark rooms until I decided to leave...becoming a traveler, not just a tourist. I remember reading this book and thinking I want to be Richard and travel to a world I hardly know looking for a little adventure, eating native foods and staying so long I learn the language and customs.

Wonderful Wednesdays (on Thursdays) The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Hello All,

We've had like one zillion (I would never use hyperbole) snow days. These snow days have given me ample time to hang out with my kidlet and my husband, time to trash the house to the brink of absolute destruction, watch old school TV (which I will go into more in-depthly in a later post, maybe Saturday) and blog surf. Blog surfing has become a delightful new past-time and yesterday I found a book blog ning (yes, my friends a whole ning for book bloggers) and within it I have found some deLIGHTful book blogs.

The one I am going on about today is called Tiny Library and she has started a meme on Wednesday that I'm going to do on Thursdays seeing as Wednesdays are taken up with my Music Challenge. I'm so pumped!

From Tiny Library:

Wonderful Wednesdays is a meme about spotlighting and recommending some of our most loved books, even if we haven't read them recently.  Each week will have a different theme or genre of book to focus on.

This week's theme is biographies.

The biography I would like to talk about is The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloots.

I first heard of this book on The Colbert Report, now don't laugh I get a lot of my non-fiction books from recommendations from The Colbert Report.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot Featured on the Steven Colbert Report

I love that this book is about science and race relations in the early 20th Century and I found it sad that I had no idea that the HeLa cell was from an actual person who, in essence, didn't know that the cell was being used. Actually, I asked around while I was reading this book...no one I knew had any idea about the true story behind the HeLa cell.

I also used this book as my non-fiction focus for my students for their first semester Book Talk and I am proud to say that 3 students picked up and read the book. I love this book, it is at once informational, tragic, breath-taking in its scope and research and life-affirming. It is through Rebecca and Henrietta's youngest daughter, Debra, that we learn about this sensitive, beautiful black woman and how she changed and still changes the way we look at science, although most of her family lived in poverty and haven't received much recognition because of it.