The Zookeeper's wife

Midway through 2016, I saw that this book was to be turned into a movie, as I like to read books before viewing the movie. I decided to download this onto my device. 

Under the title, is a subtitle saying 'a war story". I thought this would be a work of fiction. It is however, excerpts from a number of diaries of Polish people. Diane Ackerman has weaved them together in this book. At times it reads of a work of fiction, sharing romantic moments of life during the war time but then it is interspersed with facts about animal behaviour, and then the horror of the ghetto cleansing. I do not find the book cohesive at all and it took a while to get into it. Once I treated each chapter as a stand alone short story I began to make progress, having said this, at present I have not finished reading it. I find it interesting but think I will maybe watch the movie first for this story. 

After you

I read the first in this series back in April. I was overwhelmed with emotion reading that book. I laughed and cried a lot. So I finally felt I could read what came next for Louisa Clark. This book had me crying once again. I enjoyed reading her story and wondered at the end, is there another Louisa Clark story to tell. Sadly at this point in time, Jojo Moyes doesn't think so...

The view from Saturday

How has Mrs. Olinski chosen her sixth-grade Academic Bowl team? She had a number of answers. But were any of them true? How had she really chosen Noah and Nadia and Ethan and Julian? And why did they make such a good team? It was a surprise to a lot of people when Mrs. Olinski's team won the sixth-grade Academic Bowl contest at Epiphany Middle School. It was an even bigger surprise when they beat the seventh grade and the eighth grade, too. And when they went on to even greater victories, everyone began to ask: How did it happen?

This is a tale about a team, a class, a school, a series of contests and, set in the midst of this, four jewel-like short stories -- one for each of the team members -- that ask questions and demonstrate surprising answers. 

A thoroughly enjoyable read, that leaves you thinking way after you have closed the book. I read this as part of a Newberry medal reading challenge. It's the 1997 medal winner, it's  not the first Newberry medal book I have read. I read the 2002 winner   A Single Shard by Linda Sue Park (Clarion Books/Houghton Mifflin) , 2001 honour book Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo (Candlewick Press), 2000 honour book 26 Fairmount Avenue by Tomie dePaola (Putnam), 1994 medal winner The Giver by Lois Lowry (Houghton), 1992 medal winner: Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor (Atheneum), 1968 medal winner: From the mixed up files of Mrs Basil E. Franweiler also by E.L. Konigsburg. I also have read 1957 honor book:Old Yeller by Fred Gipson, 1948 honour book Li Lun, Lad of Courage by Carolyn Treffinger (Abingdon), 1945 honour book The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes (Harcourt), 1933 medal winner Young Fu of the Upper Yangtze by Elizabeth Lewis (Winston),

Pax

Just finished this novel, suitable for 11 year old children or older. It is about a boy, Peter, who is forced  to leave his pet fox at the side of the road after he goes to live with his grandfather. This book is told in alternative voices. The boy and the fox. Both the fox and Peter go searching for one another. This book is timeless. I can't work out whether it is told in the past or in a future apocalyptic world. Very descriptive and emotive story.