The Book Thief

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak is by far one of my favorite books of all time. This book is narrated by Death and Death tells us the story of Liesel who lives in Nazi Germany. After Death "takes" her brother from her, she is placed in a foster home with two very loving people. For a while, her life seems to be okay, but then Hitler takes over and World War II begins. Suddenly Liesel's class is getting smaller and smaller and her neighbors are disappering. But Liesel and her foster parents are helpless, they cannot stand up to the German soldiers or they too will disapper.
Liesel and her new family continue on with life as normally as they can, but then food becomes hard to come by and the German's are burning Liesel's favotire thing in huge piles - books. She decides to steal the books that have not been burnt yet so that her father can continue to teach her how to read (hence the title The Book Thief).
As the story progresses we are able to see WWII from a totally new perspective, through the eyes of German citizens who are suffering and who hate Hitler. Death continues to take more and more people, but as Liesel's family shows resistence to the Nazi's even they are not safe in their own home anymore.
By the end of the book I found myself looking at WWII and the Holocast with a totally new view point. The book is written in a style that I cannot even begin to describe but it is very different and very refressing. I highly recommend this book to everyone whether you like to read or not, it is sure to suck you in. After all, as Death tells us, "It’s just a small story really, about among other things: a girl, some words, an accordionist, some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist-fighter, and quite a lot of thievery. . . ."

To learn more about this book and to read other's reviews of it please click here.

My Sister's Keeper

My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult is a very thought provoking and moving book.
This book follows a girl named Anna who is looking to become medically emancipated from her parents. Her whole life she has had to literally give pieces of herself to help save her older sister's life
(such as bone marrow and blood). She was even conceived by her parents for this particular purpose. Now Anna has been asked to donate one of her kidney's to her sister Kate.
Throughout the book we see the progression of the court case that will allow Anna to make all medical decisions for herself and we see how Anna's decision effects not only herself, but everyone around her, particularly her family and her lawyer, Campbell.
Havng an older and a younger sister myself this book was particularly heart wrenching as well as entralling. Not once was I bored with the plot. There are so many twists and turns that you can never really be sure what will happen in the end. I laughed and cried at many different points and I highly recomend it to anyone who would like to read something completley different than anything that they have read before.
This book is also being made into a movie that is due to be released sometime in 2009. As with most movies that are based off of a book, I know that the movie will not be able to "out-do" the book. Hopefully, the movie will bring this wonderful story and message to people who are not fans of reading.
You can learn more about the movie and who will be playing each character here.

Welcome!

Hello everyone and welcome to my first blog! I am an avid reader, so in each post I am going to critique books that I am reading or ones that I have already read. Hopefully this blog will help you build up your own library!


When I was in the sixth grade we had to bring any book of our choosing into my English class to read from for five minutes everyday. I brought in a book called Heartland: Coming Home by Lauren Brooke. This book, and the Heartland series that followed, is what sparked my love of reading so it seems fitting that I should start my blog with a review of the Heartland series.

The Heartland series is about a barn in Virginia that rehabilitates hurt and abused horses. As the book says, "Heartland is a horse farm nestled in the hills of Virginia, but it's much more than that. Heartland is like no other place- it's a place where the scars of the past can be healed, a place where frightened and abused horses learn to trust again."

The main character is Amy Flemming. Amy's mother dies after a tragic accident and she is left to run Heartland with her grandfather and to make amends with her estranged father and sister. The series follows Amy, her family, and other friends; we see relationships grow and others come to end and we see the healing of many horses along the way.

While this book is targeted towards younger adolescent girls, I think girls of all ages can benefit from reading this book. The plot line sucks you in from the very first pages and there is never a dull moment throughout the entire twenty book series.

The book series was made into a television series in Canada. While many plot points and characters have been changed to attract an older audience, the basic ideas and themes of the Heartland books are still there.

You can check out the books here and here.
And you can learn more about the television series here.