There are all sorts of reading challenges out there aimed at motivating you to stand down from the TV/computer and read a little bit more. Check out this Pinterest page, which lists LOTS to consider. I aim to read 60 books this year. I didn’t meet my goal of 65 last year and the number really doesn’t matter all that much…so long as I am reading. What are your goals for the 2015 reading year?
Off the Shelf – CBC’s Information Morning
This morning I talked about the benefits of belonging to a book club. If you can’t find one, you can start one of your own. If you are looking for some advice, check out what I had to say about book clubs here.
If you are looking for some reading suggestions, I have a list of the books my book club has read here. Many are linked to my reviews.
The books I specifically mentioned this morning were:
Our Daily Bread – Lauren B. Davis
Eat, Pray, Love – Elizabeth Gilbert
Mister Pip – Lloyd Jones
Small Island – Andrea Levy (predates this blog)
The Book Thief – Marcus Zusak
Fingersmith – Sarah Waters 
If you have questions, by all means, I am happy to help out! Ask away.
Rob Thomas shares his name with the lead singer of Matchbox 20, and although they are both writers, this Rob Thomas is better known for his television show Veronica Mars than his hit songs.
Rats Saw God is a Catcher in the Rye-esque coming of age novel about Steve York, a high school senior who ends up in his guidance counselor’s office trying to explain why he’s flunking out when his SAT scores are through the roof. The fact that he’s regularly stoned might also be a contributing factor, but in any case, Steve finds himself sitting with Mr. DeMouy being offered a cup of tea. DeMouy tells him that at the end of the semester he’ll be one English credit short. DeMouy makes him an offer: write 100 typed pages – about anything. If he does that, DeMouy will make sure Steve graduates.
When Mom and the astronaut called Sarah and me into our Cocoa Beach, Florida (see I Dream of Jeanie) dining room to tell us they were getting a divorce, I admit I was shocked. I suppose I should have seen it coming, but the warning signs had been such a part of the status quo.
Thus begins Steve’s paper. It’s the story of his junior year. After the divorce, he moves with his dad, “that barely animate statue,” to Houston and his sister, Sarah, twelve at the time, moves to San Diego with her mom. In the summer, they swapped. Steve and his father have an estranged relationship:
He would leave for work before I woke but would provide a list of chores by the sink, paper clipped to a ten-dollar bill, which was to provide me both lunch and dinner.
At school, Steve befriends Doug, a skateboarder, and that friendship leads him to Dub, and the people who eventually become GOD, the Grace Order of Dadaists. Dadaists, Steve explains ” were painters, writers, sculptors in the twenties who believed in art without coherent meaning. Nothing they did had to be justified. The more abstract, the weirder something was, the better.”
Rats Saw God is funny and smart and it is a delight to watch Steve try to figure out the world, even when he has to face the truth that sometimes people will disappoint you. Of course, sometimes they’ll surprise you, too.
There are winks and nudges galore in Gabrielle Zevin’s novel The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry. This was my book club’s first read in 2015 and we gathered last night to discuss its merits. Okay, mostly everyone discussed its merits; I acted like Mr. Fikry himself before the magical arrival of Maya: grouchy. I didn’t like the book. It was easy to read and I wanted to like it and I should have liked it, given the subject matter – bookstores and the importance of reading…but, nope, just fell flat for me.
A. J. owns a bookstore on the fictional island of Alice which is located somewhere off the coast of Hyannis. He’s a cranky guy, but I guess it’s understandable because his wife, Nic, was killed in a car accident just under two years ago and A.J. hasn’t recovered. The book store was a joint venture, dreamed up when he and Nic were in grad school. They took her trust fund money and opened Island Books, but A.J. is sort of the antithesis of everything you’d expect in a book store owner.
In fact, we meet first meet him when Amelia Loman arrives at his store to discuss Knightley Press’s winter catalogue. A.J. tells her:
I do not like postmodernism, postapocalyptic settings, postmortem narrators, or magical realism. I rarely respond to supposedly clever formal devices, multiple fonts, pictures where there shouldn’t be – basically, gimmicks of any kind. I find literary fiction about the Holocaust or any other major world tragedy to be distasteful – non-fiction only please. I do not like genre mash-ups a la the literary detective novel or the literary fantasy. Literary should be literary and genre should be genre, and crossbreeding rarely results in anything satisfying. I do not like children’s books, especially ones with orphans, and I prefer not to clutter my shelves with young adult. I do not like anything over four hundred pages or under one hundred fifty pages. I am repulsed by ghostwritten novels by reality television stars, celebrity picture books, sports memoirs, movie tie-in editions, novelty items, and – I imagine this goes without saying – vampires. I rarely stock debuts, chick lit, poetry or translations.
Island Books sounds like an inviting place, eh? Luckily for A.J. it’s the only game in town and Alice Island is a popular summer destination, so he makes a decent living off the tourists. He’s not popular with the locals, but no wonder; he has the personality of a prickly pear.
Then, someone leaves a baby in the bookstore and A.J.’s paternal instincts kick in. In short order, much like the Grinch, A.J.’s heart grows in size and everything in his life changes. Of course it does.
The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry should have been right up my alley. Island Books inhabit a purple Victorian cottage. Be still my heart. A.J. has my dream job in my dream building. The novel is peppered with references to short stories and plays and novels, most of which I am intimately familiar (thus the nudging and winking). It celebrates the value and power of books.
Yet.
I just didn’t believe it. There was something hokey and almost to-good-to-be-true about the book, about the characters and their journeys. I won’t go so far as to say that it was a waste of time, but I have to admit to being disappointed when I finished.
For the last few years, readers have jumped on Jamie’s End of year Book Survey bandwagon (or perhaps I should say ‘bookwagon’) and I am nothing if not a lemming.
Number of Books You Read: 27 “adult” novels, 21 YA, 3 graphic, 2 memoirs, 1 non-fiction for a total of 55, well short of my goal of 65 books
See my shelf here
Number of Books You Re-Read: 0
Genre You Read The Most From: Contemporary
Best Book You Read In 2014?
(If you have to cheat — you can break it down by genre if you want or 2014 release vs. backlist)
Best YA: More Than This – Patrick Ness
Best Other: Life After Life – Kate Atkinson
Book You Were Excited About & Thought You Were Going To Love More But Didn’t?
Heading Out to Wonderful – Robert Goolrick
Most surprising (in a good way or bad way) book you read in 2014? I read a lot of duds this year, more than normal: Creep, Firefly Rain, The Birthing House , Kiss Crush Collide
Book You “Pushed” The Most People To Read (And They Did) In 2014?
More Than This – Patrick Ness
Best series you started in 2014? Best Sequel of 2014? Best Series Ender of 2014?
Not a series starter, generally, although I have started a couple that I really need to finish – none of them in 2014, though.
Favorite new author you discovered in 2014?
I discovered a few new authors this year that I will definitely be looking to read more from: Megan Abbott, Tammara Webber, Erin Kelly
Best book from a genre you don’t typically read/was out of your comfort zone?
Nada – I’m up for just about anything with the exception of sci fi/fantasy…and since I’m not really into it, I don’t read it.
Most action-packed/thrilling/unputdownable book of the year?
The Lantern – Deborah Lawrenson Certainly not action-packed, but this was a real page-turner and a lot of fun to read.
Book You Read In 2014 That You Are Most Likely To Re-Read Next Year?
I really wish I had more time for re-reading. I would like to re-read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn in 2015. It’s probably been 40 years since I read that book and I just remember loving it.
Favourite cover of a book you read in 2014?
My Ideal Bookshelf – Thessaly La Force and Jane Mount
I loved everything about this book.
Most memorable character of 2014?
Addy Hanlon from Megan Abbott’s Dare Me. Caustic and compelling.
Lucas from Tammara Webber’s Easy. Hot. Hot. Hot.
Most beautifully written book read in 2014?
Life After Life – Kate Atkinson
Most Thought-Provoking/ Life-Changing Book of 2014?
The Children Act – Ian McEwan. McEwan always gives you something to think about.
Book you can’t believe you waited UNTIL 2014 to finally read?
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children – Ransom Riggs
My own kids were always after me to read this book when it first came out, but it wasn’t until the teachers in my department suggested this book for a teachers’ book club that I got around to reading it. Loved it.
Favorite Passage/Quote From A Book You Read In 2014?
““What if we had the chance to do it again and again, until we finally did get it right? Wouldn’t that be wonderful.” Teddy from Life After Life I’m not in the habit of writing down passages that I like, but this quote – which is central to Atkinson’s novel – also resonates with me for other reasons.
Shortest & Longest Book You Read In 2013?
Alia’s Mission: Saving the Books of Iraq, 32 pages
Life After Life – Kate Atkinson, 544 pages
Book That Shocked You The Most (Because of a plot twist, character death, left you hanging with your mouth wide open, etc.)
The Raft – S.A. Bodeen. Didn’t see that coming!
OTP OF THE YEAR (you will go down with this ship!)
Hands down: Jacqueline and Lucas from Tammara Webber’s Easy
(OTP = one true pairing if you aren’t familiar)
Favorite Non-Romantic Relationship of The Year
Seth, Regine and Thomasz of Patrick Ness’s More Than This
Favorite Book You Read in 2014 From an Author You’ve Read Previously
More Than This – Patrick Ness
Best Book You Read In 2014 That You Read Based SOLELY On A Recommendation From Somebody Else/Peer Pressure:
None – it’s not the way I generally choose books
Newest fictional crush from a book you read in 2014?
I have to admit that I fell in love with Joe Bunch, the 13-year-old protagonist of Totally Joe. He is a great character.
Best 2014 debut you read? 
Through the Woods – Emily Carrol
Best Worldbuilding/Most Vivid Setting You Read This Year?
Tie between The Coldest Girl in Cold Town – Holly Black
and
More Than This – Patrick Ness
Book That Put A Smile On Your Face/Was The Most FUN To Read?
My Ideal Bookshelf – Thessaly La Force and Jane Moun
Book That Made You Cry or Nearly Cry in 2014?
There were lots of lump in the throat moments in Life After Life
Hidden Gem Of The Year?
The Ice Cream Girls – Dorothy Koomson Maybe this book got a lot of love when it came out, but I’d never heard of it nor the author. It is well-written and a real page-turner, too
Book That Crushed Your Soul?
Living Dead Girl – Elizabeth Scott
It was so bleak
Most Unique Book You Read In 2014?
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children – Ransom Riggs
It maximized quirky photos and a unique story. I really enjoyed it
Book That Made You The Most Mad (doesn’t necessarily mean you didn’t like it)?
The Birthing House – Christopher Ransom
Utter Crap! And a frustrating waste of time. I can’t believe I actually read the whole thing.
New favorite book blog you discovered in 2014?
Electric Lit – although I guess it’s not strictly a book blog.
Favorite review that you wrote in 2014?
The Coldest Girl in Coldtown – Holly Black
Best discussion/non-review post you had on your blog?
I loved that I got to share how I used My Ideal Bookshelf in the classroom.
Best event that you participated in (author signings, festivals, virtual events, memes, etc.)?
I was very lucky to welcome best-selling Canadian novelist Kelly Armstrong into
my classroom in October. She was in town to participate in FogLit, a literary festival, and came to my school to speak with about 70 students and then work with about 20 in a small group setting. There were sooo many excited students at school that day!
Best moment of bookish/blogging life in 2014?
Another cool, bookish thing that happened in 2014 was that I started doing book columns on CBC Radio’s Information Morning in October 2014. I love talking about books and this is a really fun gig. You can listen to past columns by clicking on the links in the sidebar.
Most Popular Post This Year On Your Blog (whether it be by comments or views)?
This post got the most views all year I credit Ryan Gosling. 
Post You Wished Got A Little More Love?
I’d love to have a little more interaction overall on my blog, but I do it because I love to do it – not for site stats…so it’s all good. That said, I loved sharing this activity I did with some grade ten students and wish it had received a little more attention.
Best bookish discovery (book related sites, book stores, etc.)? I am looking forward to diving into this post from the Guardian: Top Ten Best Book Bloggers – all YA.
Did you complete any reading challenges or goals that you had set for yourself at the beginning of this year?
I intended to read 65 books this year – just up from the total of 62 I read last year, but I didn’t make it – for a variety of reasons.
One Book You Didn’t Get To In 2014 But Will Be Your Number 1 Priority in 2015? Oh, please.
Book
You Are Most Anticipating for 2015 (non-debut)?
My son gave me J.J. Abrams and Doug Dorst’s novel Ship of Theseus for Christmas. We’ve long been intrigued by this books, so I am looking forward to reading it.
2015 Debut You Are Most Anticipating
No idea.
Series Ending/A Sequel You Are Most Anticipating in 2015?
I would like to make it a priority to finish Ilsa J. Bick’s Ashes trilogy, Kelley Creagh’s Nevermore Trilogy and Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy. There. I said it. Of course, none of these are new series.
One Thing You Hope To Accomplish Or Do In Your Reading/Blogging Life In 2015
Setting goals for myself in this regard is just asking for trouble
A 2015 Release You’ve Already Read & Recommend to Everyone. Nope.
Interested in reading more End of Year surveys? Go here.
Some people make grocery lists, I make book lists. Students recommend things, other blogs and traditional reviews, good looking covers. If I don’t buy it immediately, I write it down. This is also the time of year when publishers start to promote new books and I am always on the lookout for the next great book.
Huffington Post recently published an article by young adult book blogger Lisa Parkin about the four next great young adult book trends. According to the article we’ll be seeing less dystopian and “sick lit” in the coming year and readers can be on the lookout for these trends.
You can read Parkin’s article and see her recommendations in each category here.
I could stay in my house and read non-stop for the next five years and still not finish all the physical books on my tbr pile, but that won’t stop me from adding these titles to the line-up.
All the Bright Places – Jennifer Niven
So, this book would fit into the “dealing with loss” category. It’s the story of Violet and Theodore who are both struggling with life when they meet on the edge of the bell tower at their school. And they end up saving each other. I’m really looking forward to this one.
A List of Things That Didn’t Kill Me – Jason Schmidt, memoir
This book sounds intense. It’s the true story of a boy who has, from the sounds of things, grown up in a world of chaos and has known, from a very young age that what happens in his house must stay a secret. How does a good kid overcome a bad childhood – that’s the question this book asks and answers.
Playlist for the Dead – Michelle Falkoff
So a couple years ago Jay Asher’s novel 13 Reasons Why was a big hit and early reviews are saying that this is even better. I wasn’t actually a huge fan of Asher’s novel, but most of the teens I know who read it loved it and so I suspect this will be a big hit, too. It’s the story of a teenage boy named Sam who tried to understand why his best friend killed himself by listening to the playlist of songs he left behind.
Mosquitoland – David Arnold
So, this book is getting some serious buzz and was chosen as one of the American Booksellers Association’s Indies New Voices novels. It’s a road-trip story and everyone knows road trips are fertile literary ground. This one is about a girl who takes a bus from Mississippi to Ohio and meets some quirky characters and learns a lot about herself on the way. Sounds great.
It’s so important that young adults are able to see themselves in the characters of the books they read. Not everyone is beautiful or athletic or brilliant – some of us are mortal and have human failings and frailties. If books can show teens that there is hope and happiness and humour to be found, let’s let them find it.
What books, YA or otherwise, are you looking forward to reading in 2015?
I was a big fan of Robert Goolrick’s novel, A Reliable Wife, but I turned the last page of his second novel, Heading Out to Wonderful, this morning with le sigh. And not a good sigh.
Brownsburg, Virginia, 1948 is the setting of Goolrick’s novel. It was
the kind of town that existed in the years right after the war, where the terrible American wanting hadn’t touched yet, where most people lived a simple life without yearning for things they couldn’t have
Into this town comes Charlie Beale. He arrived in “a beat-up old pickup truck. On the seat beside him were two suitcases. One was thin cardboard and had seen a lot of wear and in it were all of Charlie Beale’s clothes and a set of butcher knives as sharp as razors.” The other suitcase is full of money.
Turns out that Charlie is not as dicey as he sounds, though. He quickly gets a job at the town butcher shop and soon ingratiated himself with the people of Brownsburg.
He cut the meat and charmed the ladies, one by one, but, more than charm, he treated every one, black and white, from the richest to the shoeless poorest, from dollars and dimes, with the same deference and shy kindness, and he won their hearts…
He makes good friends with Will, the man who owns the butcher shop, and Will’s wife, Alma, a school teacher. He becomes especially close to Will and Alma’s five-year-old son, Sam.
Charlie tells Will that he is ready to settle down, that he has been looking for “something wonderful.” Brownsburg, apparently, is it.
Or maybe the something wonderful is Sylvan. She’s the young wife of the town’s richest man, Boaty Glass. Sylvan is an uneducated girl who comes from the country (the reader will eventually find out how the repulsive Boaty landed such a beautiful wife) and dreams of being a movie star.
…she looked as though she had stepped into the shop from another part of the world…Her lips were a crimson slash, her hair pulled up in gleaming blonde waves on top of her head, held with tortoise-shell combs studded with rhinestones. Se wore dark sunglasses, a thing no other woman in town even thought to own, and espadrilles, tied with grosgrain ribbons around her ankles…
None of the other women speak to her, but Charlie can’t take her eyes off her and “she went off in his head and his heart like a firecracker.”
It is Charlie’s illicit relationship with Sylvan that makes up the bulk of the story. Sam, although only a child, plays a pivotal role.
Heading Out to Wonderful should work. I can’t quite figure out why it doesn’t. Perhaps it is because I never really felt like I understood either Charlie or Sylvan. The reader is never privy to Charlie’s past and so never clearly understands what motivates him. Where did all his money come from, for example? Why does he prefer to sleep outside on the ground?
Sylvan is, I think, something of a cold fish. Her only friend is Claudie, a black seamstress in town. Sure, I could chalk up her behavior to youth, but I just didn’t like her and so it was hard to root for the relationship between her and Charlie.
Goolrick is a great writer and for that reason, Heading Out to Wonderful was easy enough to read, but lots of things about this book irked me (Charlie’s younger brother turning up out of the blue, for example) and so I can’t wholeheartedly recommend it. Loads of other people/critics loved it, though.
Just once I’d like to see a girl go on a journey of self-discovery that isn’t instigated by the boy she meets. But essentially that’s what happens to Leah Johnson, youngest of a trio of golden girls in Christina Meredith’s YA novel Kiss Crush Collide. These are girls whose futures have all been mapped out by a cliché of a mother and a doting but passive father. Yorke, the eldest, is in college and planning a wedding to her boyfriend, Roger; Freddie is graduating from high school and heading off for a year in France; Leah is about to start her last high school summer before she, too, becomes (like her sisters before her) valedictorian and then on to bigger and better things.
But that all changes when Leah meets Porter at her family’s country club (yes, they’re that kind of family; they go to the country club on Friday night).
When he wrapped his fingers around mine, a warm current of electricity flowed through me. I felt suddenly solid, as if my world had been rolling past me and it had stopped right now, amazingly sharp and in focus as if I had just taken off my roller skates. I didn’t want to let go.
That’s the boy: green eyes, beautiful brown hair, penchant for stealing cars. He pushes/pulls Leah in ways that Shane (her perfect high school boyfriend) never has, so of course she wants him. She sneaks off with him on the very night she meets him and then can’t stop thinking about him.
I suspect that lots of girls in my class will like Kiss Crush Collide and that’s okay. There are lots of girl meets boy books out there, and this one sits pretty much in the middle of the pack. What has Leah learned from her seventeenth summer? How to drive her car (finally) and her life. Too bad it was a boy who taught her how to do both.
This morning on CBC’s Information Morning I talked about some of my favourite YA novels of 2014. You can listen to that interview here.
At the end of the year, some people reflect on whether or not they made good on their resolutions, I think about my reading year. Book junkies like me start considering the state of their bookshelves.
There are usually a few memes floating around that ask book bloggers to consider what they’ve read this year. It’s always fun to go back through my blog and think about the books I’ve read.
It’s also the time of year when all the major book players start posting best of…lists. That’s good and bad for people like me – because if there’s one thing I don’t need…it’s more books. However, if you’re looking for some new reading material, here are some great lists to get you started:
Kirkus: Best Teen, Best Fiction; Best Nonfiction
Book Riot’s Must Read Books from Indie Presses
and the Mother lode of book lists…
Today, I thought I’d talk about three stand-out YA reads for 2014, one of which is geared to 12-14 year olds, so middle school.
Totally Joe – James Howe
So, James Howe is super prolific (he’s written over 80 books) and is probably best known for his Bunnicula series. That’s a vampire rabbit that sucks the juice out of vegetables. Totally Joe is part of the Misfit series, the Misfits being this group of friends who are sort of picked on in school and band together. These books actually inspired ‘no name-calling’ weeks at North American schools.
Totally Joe is the second in the series, but I didn’t read the first book and it didn’t really matter. This is the story of Joe Bunch, a kid in 7th grade who is given this very cool class project…and alphabiography. He has to come up with something about his life for every letter. Joe is funny and smart and kind and has a great, supportive family. He also happens to be gay and so he takes a lot of grief from some of the meatheads at school. I loved how open and honest Joe was about his sexual orientation – he’s a really positive role model. I think it’s super important to see kids reflected in the books they read, and I think Totally Joe is age-appropriate and important.
The Raft – S. A. Bodeen
This book is fantastic. I’m not really one for survival stories, but this book is a real page-turner. It’s the story of fifteen-year-old Robie who lives with her scientist parents on Midway, an island about 1300 miles from Honolulu which is where Robie is when the book opens. She’s visiting her aunt. Midway’s teeny, about 2.4 square miles so every once and a while, Robie needs a little taste of civilization. Anyway, she’s on Honolulu and her aunt gets called away on business, which is no big deal, Robie’s used to being on her own…but then something happens on the street and it freaks her out and she decides to take the cargo plane back to Midway. Phone and Internet service is spotty, as you can imagine, and she can’t let her parents know what that she’s coming and then – of course – the plane crashes in the middle of the Pacific and of the three people on board, only she and Max, the co-pilot, survive. They’re on this raft with nothing. It’s a real OMG book with a feisty protagonist, lots of interesting things to say about the environment (none of it preachy) and a terrific, propulsive plot. Great book.
More Than This – Patrick Ness
So I’ve talked about Patrick Ness before, he’s the author of the Chaos Walking series. I actually chose this book for my book club this year. We don’t normally read Young Adult books, but this one seemed interesting and because I’m a fan I figured why not. There was mixed reactions in the group, but the students in my classes who’ve read the book have loved it…and that’s really the litmus test.
When the novel opens, a boy is drowning. Then he wakes up and he’s not dead. But he’s also alone and he actually remains alone for about 160 pages. At first he doesn’t have any memory, then he figures out that his name is Seth and he appears to be in the English town he grew up in before he moved to the States. This is a post-apocalyptic town though. There are houses and business, but they’re empty and it’s all just creepy. Then, about half-way in Seth meets Thomasz and Regine and “the driver” this faceless, seemingly indestructible guy whose mission in life seems to be to hunt the three teenagers down.
This is a smart book. It works on a bunch of levels: sort of a crazy hybrid between thriller and speculative fiction and a book that asks BIG questions about that journey between self-centered adolescence and manhood and what Seth discovers is that “whatever is forever certain is that there’s always more.”
Any of these books would make great Christmas gifts for the young readers in your family.
When thirteen-year-old Branwell’s baby sister ends up in a coma, Branwell stops talking and it’s up to his best friend, Connor, to figure out what really happened the day Nikki was hurt. That’s pretty much the plot of e.l. konigsburg’s YA novel, Silent to the Bone. Luckily, in konigsburg’s skillful hands, this story ends up being so much more than the sum of its parts.
I cannot explain why Branwell and I became friends. I don’t think there is a why for friendship, and if I try to come up with reasons why we should be friends, I can come up with as many reasons why we should not be. …Friendship depends on interlocking time, place and state of mind.
Connor is, in fact, a true-blue friend to Branwell. After Nikki is hurt, Branwell is sent to the Behavioral Center for observation. Connor visits him frequently and despite Branwell’s silence, Connor knows in his heart of hearts that Branwell did not hurt his baby sister.
Connor devises a genius way of communicating with Branwell based, in part, on Jean-Dominique Bauby’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. In that book, a paralyzed man dictates his life story by blinking his left eye. Connor creates a series of flash cards using words he thinks might trigger a reaction. Slowly the true story of what happened to Nikki is revealed.
Silent to the Bone ended up on just about everyone’s “best” list including the ALA, New York Times and School Library Journal. One of the reasons, I think, is that the book is layered. There’s the central mystery of what happened to Nikki; there’s the complicated blended family relationships, there’s the love and petty jealousies that mark any solid friendship.
Branwell and Connor are believable characters. Connor’s older sister (from his father’s first marriage) helps Connor disseminate all the information he gathers from his visits with Connor. Connor is only a kid, sure, but he’s tenacious and smart and he is determined to figure out what really happened.
This is a great book for thoughtful readers.
The Ludic Reader 