There are so many things to like about this extraordinary book that I had somehow missed previously. I'm actually not sure if I had read it completely through before, probably because it is another novel that I consider over-assigned in schools.'The Egypt Game' also carries the burden of being d...
Raamo, at thirteen, had rarely doubted the wisdom of the Ol-zhaan, the unquestioned rulers of the Green-Sky planet. Yet, after he had been chosen to become an Ol-zhaan, he made surprising discoveries and was exposed to dangers different form any he had envisioned. The world of Green-Sky was not w...
Eight-year-old Teera finds herself above the powerful Root that keeps her Erdling community captive underground. The Erdlings are feared and despised by the Kindar people who live in the massive trees above. Raamo and Neric, two young Kindar discover Teera and for reasons of their own decide to k...
1951 Rattler Springs, Nevada, 13 year old Dani hates living in the desert. All she wants to do is go back to Sea Grove where she used to live even if she has to run away to do it. Together with her friend Stormy, Dani plans how they'll manage their escape. Their plans change when new girl Pixi...
Continuing my quest to read, not only the Newbery award winning books, but also other works by these authors, I discovered The Trespassers on a sale table at my local library. For .10 I couldn't go wrong!Zilpha Keatley Snyder has the distinct achievement of three Newbery honor and ALA notable boo...
Hallie Meredith is angry at God and feeling sorry for herself. Her beloved father died in a car accident, and her whole life has turned upside down. Her mother has had to find a job, and they’ve moved to a cramped apartment in an old mansion, away from Hallie’s old friends and her school. Looking...
Even though a cell phone is used (once? occasionally?) in this story, I wonder if it will have appeal to today’s youngsters. The cell phone could have been a much bigger part of the story, making it more contemporary. I find that students have a sense of stories set back 10-40 years ago (books th...
A lot of the Castle Court kids are working on secret projects for the annual science fair. They're all curious about Web's project, since he's a genius. Then two strange looking men in a black van start lurking around Castle Court.
Much of the power of Zilpha Keatley Snyder's A Fabulous Creature comes with the subtlety she weaves through the landscape of the Sierra Nevadas.James Fielding is less than thrilled his parents when his parents get the rare bout of “happy-boyhood theory”-itus and instigate a summer retreat in the ...
Dion James has been a fan of Alcott-Simpson's, the big department store in the city where he lives, since the time he first saw it, back when he was eight or nine and shining shoes on the sidewalks. The first time he went inside, it made an impression: After the ordinary winter world outside, dir...
Originally this was just one of those old books I had lying around that I wanted to check out before I gave it away. It's a companion book to Gib Rides Home (which I've never read) for young readers. This being said, it wasn't about love or politics or religion, but something much more child-conc...
Left with her two aunts at Oaks Farm to spend the entire summer, Pamela is greatly disappointed and wonders how she will survive. But one day, she sees a boy accompanied by a herd of beautiful ponies. Are they a dream, or is her summer about to become an adventure? The author is a three-time Newb...
When Carlos and his pals find buried treasure, they're interrupted and forced to rebury it. Later that night they go back to dig it up but only find an old bone. They just have to find out who has taken the treasure.
DANCING WITH CONDORS GIVES HER A ZEST FOR LIFE! Set in California's agricultural Ventura Valley in 1910, this story is difficult to classify. The young heroine reveals a wacky imagination, spunky attitude and distinctly tomboyish taste. These characteristics provide amusing moments for the reade...
Big disappointment on this one. Zilpha Keatley Snyder is one of the greatest juvielit writers of all time, but she's phoning it in this time. The protagonist is a cipher of a character apart from her magic skill, and the few attempts at suspense hint at an eventual payoff that is never delivere...
I have never met anyone else who has heard of this book, but it has been one of my favorites since childhood. I first read the library copy, and when I determined to get my own, I had to special-order it from the bookstore because none of the Barnes and Nobles in the area carried it. (Gosh, remem...
Summer's mother and sister, Oriole and Sparrow, are flighty and birdbrained, just like their names suggest. Unfortunately, those qualities are much more endearing in a seven-year-old than the mother. Summer is definitely the adult in the family, and when it seems Oriole's latest boyfriend might b...
This is a book about confronting fears and the past, and possibly the importance of friendship but that's iffy. Jokester Rudy is worried when his friend Barney takes up with the new kid Tyler ("Styler", because he's stylish. yeesh) from L.A. Tyler has somehow gotten his hands on a map to one of t...
During my time at NIU, I used this book in a unit that I planned..... I never read it, I just pretended. With the guilt hanging over my head even now, I decided to tackle this bad boy.It was a pretty good book. My major complaint is that it was verrrrry slow-moving, especially for such a short bo...
This is my least favorite book in the Stanley series, and yet I'm giving it 3 stars anyway, which is saying a lot about Zilpha Keatley Snyder as an author. She really knows how to create fun and interesting characters. I just wish she'd created a plot I could get more into here.Basically, this is...
Anyt book by Zilpha Keatley Snyder is prefect to read on Halloween. I read this book with a sick dread of disappointment. So often the things one loved in childhood have a way of being somehow less than you remember. (Lemonheads, anyone?) I loved "The Egypt Game" when I was about 10 and I still v...
Gib Whittaker has been an orphan since he was small, living at an orphanage where the boys are given a minimal education and lots of hard work. No wonder Gib thinks being adopted would be better, even after he learns that many boys are taken to be farm hands, not really adopted. And all he reall...
Eddy Wong and friends want to cut down a grove of trees to build a baseball diamond, but Kate and Aurora insist that the trees are the magical Unicorn's Grove. By the author of Fool's Gold.
Aurora and Kate think there's a ghost or two haunting the Andersons' old barn. On Halloween night they decide to go ghost hunting and find something inside a horse stall.
You'd think that someone with a name like Harry Houdini Marco would be deft and skillful, but Harry could only occasionally catch even an easy fly ball without making some dumb error. On top of that, most of his friends' families were moving to the suburbs. It would have been a long, dreary summe...
I was a little disapointed with this book. It was obviously written long after the first book so some of the language had changed (the same language that had make the first one a little outdated) but there were also some subtle modernization. The first book was obviously set in time it was writte...
Twelve-year-old Robin is always getting in trouble for "wandering off," but can you blame her for trying to escape reality? A few years earlier, Robin's family lost nearly everything thanks to the Depression and, since, have become traveling workers, moving from seasonal job to seasonal job and n...
When the banished Erdlings were brought from their imprisonment below ground and finally reunited with the Kindar it seemed the times of love and joy that the founders of the Green-Sky had promised would at last arrive. But unforeseen problems arose and the result was turmoil, mind pain, unjoyful...
she told them. (Ironic, a word she no longer used at school, had long been a favorite at home.) “I was so excited when I heard that he was coming—that Arnold Axminster was actually coming to Morrison Middle School in person. You know how many of his books I’ve read, and when I found out I was goi...
Not for a minute. Lying in bed that night, Dani told herself that the whole thing was just another of Linda’s hopelessly optimistic daydreams. There was absolutely no use waiting around indefinitely for rent money from the ranch house to provide an allowance. If she was going to escape it would h...
There, at the beginning of the trail to the ruined church, he paused long enough to look around one more time just to be sure no one was watching. Nobody was. The coast was clear. Now that the jeep was gone, there was not a single car in the parking lot. No one around. Not a living soul. Somethin...
AND THE GREAT ESCAPE CHAPTER 7 It took a few moments for William to manage what he hoped was a relaxed grin. “Running away?” He was trying for a surprised tone of voice—surprised, and hopefully, slightly amused. “What makes you think we’re—” But right then Trixie’s high-pitched little-kid voice c...
Somehow being almost certain she wouldn’t be, even though that included knowing she was with Angelo, seemed in some ways easier to handle. As if it had been the not knowing that had mattered, all those years. As if vague undefined uncertainties were harder to face than real dangers, as long as th...
He had not been there for more than a week, had not in fact given the valley and its magnificent occupant more than a few minutes thought. But now, as he made his way down the steep incline into the canyon, he suddenly identified his vague discomfort as being related to guilt. How could he have f...
Xandra wasn't sure what she had been expecting, but it did seem that a wizard or even a person who knew about such things as dangerous enchanted gifts ought to look at least a little bit weird. But the man who was standing on the steps of the large cabin was, at first glance, fairly ordinary-look...
Martha guessed that Kelly’s ambush was probably still waiting for them just outside the school gates, but Ivy seemed to think it had all been nothing more than an empty threat. “They probably weren’t even looking for us,” she said. “They probably only wanted to scare us.” Martha wasn’t so sure. “...
For a while they talked about clubs. Lately there had been a fad at school of making up secret clubs that no one except the club members were allowed to be in, or even know about. “We ought to have one,” Paige said. “We could call it the P and A Club, for Paige and Abby. And we’ll have more secre...