Books #3-6 of 2011

Six books down, only 94 to go on my quest to read 100 books this year! Right now I am stuck on Love in the Time of Cholera, but that's another story. Here's what I thought about the last 4 books I read.

The third book of the year was Sarah's Key by Tatiana De Rosnay. This was an incredible book. It starts with the story of Sarah, a 10 year old Jewish girl living in France in 1942, beginning with the night that Jews are rounded up in Paris and sent to holding camps outside the city. It switches point-of-view and time periods back and forth between Sarah and a woman named Julia, who, 60 years later, is finding her life intertwining with Sarah's story. I highly reccommend this book, especially to those, like me, with an interest in World War II history. 5 stars

I knew when I took this 100-book challenge, the only way I would be able to complete it would be to include children's books. But that's ok because there are lots of children's books I want to read. I took 2 children's literature classes in library school and now I love kid's books even more than I did before!

For book #4 I read Snow by Uri Shulevitz. It won the Charlotte Zolotow Award in 1999 and was a Caldecott Honor book that same year. I loved this book. It's a book of few words, but the pictures were gorgeous. The little boy in the book is very excited about the possibility of snow, but adults try to tell him it isn't going to snow or that it's going to melt as soon as it hits the ground... but they are wrong! It snows and snows and the little boy has lots of fun playing in it. 5 stars

Book #5 was City Dog, Country Frog by Mo Willems. Mo is one of my favorite new children's book authors, and I love his quirky, funny style. This book isn't his usual fare, and personally, I didn't like it as much. The watercolor illustrations are great, but the story just didn't do it for me. 3 stars


Book #6 was Pinkalicious by Victoria & Elizabeth Kann. I'd been hearing about the book for a while, but hadn't gotten around to reading it. It was a cute story about a little girl who eats too many cupcakes and turns pink! What a great problem to have... 4 stars