Glaser, Mehthild. The Book Jumper.

Glaser, Mehthild. The Book Jumper. Macmillan/Feiwel & Friends     2017  371p  $17.99      ISBN 978-1-250-08666-2  ms/hs  Fantasy  E-BN    

Amy Lennox loves reading. She discovers that she is part of a book-jumping family. However, all is not well in “Book Land”. Amy and a cohort must jump into the books to find out why parts of the stories are disappearing.      The Book Jumper is a very well written and all-encompassing story that will entrance young readers. The unique concept that readers can actually jump into a story and interact with characters on the margins is a mysterious yet potentially addicting situation.

The author takes readers through many of literature’s finest works when Anne and Will enter the Porte Litterae.

Teachers will appreciate that readers will meet characters from fairytales, Sherlock Holmes, the Little Prince, Macbeth, Alice In Wonderland, and others such as Werther (from The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe). Some readers will chuckle when the White Rabbit loses his watch and ability to talk. Others will chuckle when the following happens: “Sleeping Beauty wakes up halfway through the hundred years’ sleep and refuses to wait for the prince, Dorian Grey loses his picture, and the Elf King has vanished.”

This is a fast-paced, enjoyable read that has all of the basic ingredients of a good book (action, romance, and mystery), in stark contrast to the theft of core ingredients from the stories that are watched over by the book jumpers.
                 

Summary: Amy Lennox loves reading. She discovers that she is part of a book-jumping family. However, all is not well in “Book Land”. Amy and a cohort must jump into the books to find out why parts of the stories are disappearing.    

Reading-Fiction, Books-Fiction                                          --Linda McNeil

Browne, Anthony. Willy’s Stories.

Browne, Anthony.  Willy’s Stories.  Candlewick Press  2015  np  $16.99  ISBN 978-0-7636-7761-9  elem/ms     Misc.  E-BN

Although designed to appear as a children’s book, the content inside the covers of this delightful volume is not for young children.  Instead, older elementary-school-aged children who have had a bit of experience with such famous works as Treasure Island or The Wind in the Willows are the targeted readership.  Anthony Browne opens the world of books to his main character Willy, the famous monkey in Browne’s Voices in the Park.  In vintage Browne style, he depicts Willy opening a variety of doors, behind which lie brief summaries of scenes from ten famous children’s books.  He invites young readers to guess who made the footprint in Robinson Crusoe, he entices children to guess who Dorothy met after she woke up in The Wizard of Oz, and he appeals to children’s desire to participate in a book and really interact with the text.  Each illustration is done in signature Browne colors and it has an appeal that matches the content.  One can easily imagine a classroom teacher introducing a famous work to his/her students by first reading this book.  Willy ends by asking all children to go on some of their own adventures, inferring that these adventures can be found in books.  How creative is this?  The sky is the limit on the possibilities for use of this book.  Just open it, read one of the descriptions, and turn your children or students loose on a drawing assignment.  Or, better yet, have them write their own stories!     

Summary: Willy describes scenes from ten famous children’s books and then invites children to answer a question about each book.  The author’s purpose is to encourage young readers to read.

Classic literature, Reading-Fiction             --Martha Squaresky

Engle, Margarita. The Wild Book.

Engle, Margarita.  The Wild Book.   Houghton Mifflin/Harcourt Brace     130p  $16.99      978-0-547-58131-6       elm/ms            E-BN       

When Fefa is diagnosed with word blindness (dyslexia), her mother decides that she will take care of the situation and assures Fefa that she will learn to read and write but that it will take a lot of patience.  Her mother gives Fefa a book empty of words and tells her that slowly she will begin to fill the book with words, just as a garden grows with flowers.

Fefa endures the mockery she encounters in school while at home her mother shows her how to slowly learn to recognize words and write them down in her special book.  As time passes, Fefa writes words that intrigue her.  At first they are small words, and gradually she begins to continue adding words, words that have lots of letters and many syllables.  Slowly her book begins to fill up with the words she is learning to write and to read.  Then, one day, her meticulous way of learning her words saves the family from a possibly dangerous situation that she is able to figure out because of her careful observation of the written words of others.

This is a beautiful story told in poetry form.  The author brings to life a story told in her family in such a way that she creates a magical moment from a situation that must have been very trying, as her grandmother learned how to read after being diagnosed with what we know today as “dyslexia”.     

  -- Magna Diaz    

Reading – Fiction, Dyslexia – Fiction