It's October 3rd

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I Know You, I Walked With You

Once Upon a Dream!

I've come across a few books in the past few months that have reminded me of actual events or of people or other books, and I wanted to post them up really quickly.

Enter Title Here
Rahul Kanakia
2016
Young Adult

"I'm your protagonist-Reshma Kapoor-and if you have the free time to read this book, then you're probably nothing like me.

Reshma is a college counselor's dream. She's the top-ranked senior at her ultra-competitive Silicon Valley high school, with a spotless academic record and a long roster of extracurriculars. But there are plenty of perfect students in the country, and if Reshma wants to get into Stanford, and into med school after that, she needs the hook to beat them all.

What's a habitual over-achiever to do? Land herself a literary agent, of course. Which is exactly what Reshma does after agent Linda Montrose spots an article she wrote for Huffington Post. Linda wants to represent Reshma, and, with her new agent's help scoring a book deal, Reshma knows she'll finally have the key to Stanford.

But she's convinced no one would want to read a novel about a study machine like her. To make herself a more relatable protagonist, she must start doing all the regular American girl stuff she normally ignores. For starters, she has to make a friend, then get a boyfriend. And she's already planned the perfect ending: after struggling for three hundred pages with her own perfectionism, Reshma will learn that meaningful relationships can be more important than success-a character arc librarians and critics alike will enjoy.

Of course, even with a mastermind like Reshma in charge, things can't always go as planned. And when the valedictorian spot begins to slip from her grasp, she'll have to decide just how far she'll go for that satisfying ending. (Note: It's pretty far.)

In this wholly unique, wickedly funny debut novel, Rahul Kanakia consciously uses the rules of storytelling-and then breaks them to pieces."

This book reminds me so much of the book How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life by Kaavya Viswanathan, along with the course of events that led to the author having her novel published. Goodreads users once again have put it best:

Sing
Vivi Greene
2016
Young Adult
After getting her heart shattered for the thousandth time, multiplatinum pop icon Lily Ross is escaping her high-profile, crazy life and heading to an island in middle-of-nowhere Maine with her best friends. She has three months to focus on herself, her music, her new album—anything but guys. This summer is going to be different.


This book's cover reminded me a lot of Taylor Swift, and the story focuses on a pop icon.

With Malice
Eileen Cook
2016
Young Adult
Eighteen-year-old Jill Charron wakes up in a hospital, unable to remember the past six weeks, including the accident that killed her best friend, if it was, in fact, an accident.

The basic premise of this book reminds me a little bit of the case of the murder of Meredith Kercher, who was murdered in 2007 while studying in Italy as an exchange student from Italy.

The Couple Next Door
Shari Lapeña
2016
Fiction
"A dinner invitation from the couple next door changes the lives of Anne and Marco Conti. Neighbor Cynthia Stillwell asks the Contis not to bring their sometimes fussy six-month-old daughter, Cora, so when the babysitter cancels at the last minute, Marco comes up with an alternate plan. Since the Stillwell and Conti homes adjoin at a common wall, Marco suggests taking their baby monitor to dinner and checking on Cora in her crib every half hour, which works fine until after midnight. But when the Contis return home, tipsy from wine, their front door is open and Cora is gone. The couple is devastated..." Booklist Review

This book start reminds me so much of the case of Madeleine McCann, who disappeared in 2007. Her parents left Madeleine and her siblings asleep while they ate at a restaurant nearby, but on one occasion when they checked on them, Madeleine was gone.

 

Angry Birds

Angry Birds have been really big for some time now. There are Early Readers with Angry Birds/Star Wars crossovers, and we have been getting a lot of National Geographic/Angry Birds nonfiction science books for children that I really love. I think kids see Angry Birds on the cover and check them out, and I'm really glad because I hope this helps them become interested in animals, dinosaurs, and other topics.

I'd collected a bunch of Angry Birds stuff (posters, postcards, stickers, etc) for some time and I thought they would make great giveaways at an Angry Birds program. I found a treasure trove of printables at this awesome website and printed out some of the boxes with handles. I cut off the handles while making them so they could just be cube boxes. The TNT boxes came from this website and a good tutorial for the popsicle stick catapult can be found at this cool site. 

I found the little bouncy Angry Birds balls shown on the catapult site, but they were really expensive. Oriental Trading has some Crazy Bird Molded Bouncing Balls that were cheap and fit perfect in the bottle cap of the catapult.

Here are some images of the final products, and you can see some really awesome kid lined up his Crazy Bird balls to take a turn on the catapult.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Many have, by now, undoubtedly heard of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. Now the author of the former has penned Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. I've always been a fan of vampires; when I was a little girl in elementary school I dressed up as a vampire for Halloween, complete with cape and fangs. I loved the 2004 movie, Van Helsing, and the character of Mina Harker in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. And there is much to admire in Abraham Lincoln.

So the two together should form the following equation: Lincoln + Vampire Hunter = Awesome. I have yet to read the book and I will probably have to purchase it from the store, but there is a review of the book that states that the book has a lot of fact about Lincoln's life embedded into it, mixed with, of course, fiction. It will be interesting to see what parts of Lincoln's life were included faithfully in the book. There is even talk of a movie about this book which Tim Burton is interested in directing. I wonder what Lincoln would have said if he knew that, more than one hundred years after he lived, he would be possibly heading to the movie theatre screen as a vampire hunter?