My Side Of The Mountain by Jean Craighead George

My Side Of The Mountain is about Sam Gribley, a 12 year old boy who decides to run away from his cramped home in New York, and learns to survive in the wilderness around his great-grandfathers farm up in the Catskill mountains. I found it interesting, well written, thought provoking, light-hearted, and enjoyable. 

The Roar by Emma Clayton

The Roar by Emma Clayton

The blurb: Post apocalyptic distopia, "mutant" psychics, Etc. Etc.

What it starts to look like: Enders Game/Neon Genesis Evangelion meets Carrie,
then edited until it looks PG(read: no aliens), if still depressing.

Plot Holes: Yes.
To name but a few:

• No space colonies(despite the bad guy having a space station)
• No underwater colonies
• The twin in the beginning not leaving anything identifying during her escape and capture(she has telekinesis for crying out loud)
• None of the "mutant" kids pulling a Carrie(except one, and he gets stopped by a glance)
• Convincing via television hoax * nearly two thirds of the planet to evacuate to the remaining third.

Premise: Great, 4 stars, could make for some excellent fanfiction.
Execution: Terrible, 1.9 stars, not as bad as it could have been, but there are better uses of my time.

*Spoiler, highlight to show.

Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool

I was surprised at how much I liked this book.  I'm normally just frustrated with books which include magic which may not be magic at all - I like fantasy, I like historical fiction, I like to know what I'm getting into.  But somehow this was such a well-told story that it didn't bother me at all.  And as a coming of age, family reconciliation story it was beautiful.  Suitable for young advanced readers; there is some talk of ghosts and one death scene.  Set in the Great Depression with flashbacks to WWI, just before the great Spanish Influenza epidemic - there are some serious topics, but (I felt) very well dealt with.

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

I liked this book because even though at a couple of points I felt that it was somewhat unrealistic I thought that it did a good job showing how friendship can work, especially in a family setting. It was funny, interesting, and a light read---I think I would recommend it to just about anyone old enough to understand it.

Gardeners of Eden: Rediscovering our Importance to Nature by Dan Dagget

Many books about ecological responsibility leave you thinking there's no hope - that humans and a green, happy planet are antithetical to each other, or at least that technology and (planet) health are never going to work together.
This book did a remarkably convincing job of saying "it's not true." It's a slim volume, maybe half a dozen case studies, talking about how intelligent use of resources for humans can actually improve things for the other critters involved, too. Well!
I won't reiterate much of the argument here, only say that this has beautiful photos, lovely short stories, and made me feel that the idea of humans as caretakers - some would say stewards - for the earth is not such a bad one, after all.

Science Fair Season by Judy Dutton

Judy Dutton read a NYT article about a kid who was trying to train Madagascar Cockroaches in hopes of proving that they could be used as drug-sniffing-roaches instead of drug-sniffing dogs, and she was so surprised when he didn't place in the national science fair that she set out to find out why. This book-- with one chapter per project-- contains the answer to her question, which is basically that there were better projects out there. It also contains some of the most interesting science writing I've read in a very long time. My favorites are the story about the girl who taught her autistic cousin how to talk; the one aobut another girl who figured out a new and really cheap way to tell if(/that) DuPont was polluting the water in her town; and the Navajo boy who built a solar water heater for his house out of a radiator (didn't win, did get a scholarship to a much better school than the one he was at).

Faith and Treason: The Story of the Gunpowder Plot by Antonia Fraser

I did not always love the writing in this book (or, to be more precise, the editing) but goodness if it doesn't lay down a compellingly readable story. I mean, really: a formerly-dominant-world-religion, finding itself persecuted in a land where it is now a minority, has adherents who decide that terrorism-- specifically, destroying a major government building in an eye-catching ball of fire-- is the way to let the rest of the populace know that they are really serious about their demands. Of course, if you grew up celebrating Guy Fawkes' Day, none of that may be new to you; what is new about this book is that Ms. Fraser does a creditable job of describing both the situation in general and the personalities of the persons involved in such a way that you kind of know why they did what they did. The leader of the terrorists (who was not Guy Fawkes) was both charismatic and crazy; the one priest who was executed in connection to the affair had argued the entire time against terrorism; he did so when one of the plotters confessed what they were planning to do (and thought, at the time, that he had convinced the fellow not to go through with it) and he did so again, from the scaffold, just before he was hanged. You wouldn't think this would make for cheerful reading, but it kind of does.