read, write, design, create
Inquisitive and fun-loving Reader: if granted the opportunity to prowl a phantasmagorical underground palace, what would you do first? Would you play hide-and-seek in the armory? Frolic through the painting galleries? Plant your derriere on the throne and issue pretend decrees to invisible courtiers? Or, like Oliver Drybread, would you insist upon touring the castle kitchens?
The Dastardly Deed by Holly Grant
It is a maddening fact of life: while you may have a plan of the absolute top-most importance, a million silly chores pop up as hurdles to your great endeavor.
They used a compass and all kinds of fancy golden gadgets to make sure they were on course, but Baldwin’s favorite method, as Anastasia would learn over the next few nights, was the stars.
“That’s an important life lesson for you, children,” she said. “Never feed rice pudding to a lactose-intolerant ferret. Dairy,” she intoned, “is the enemy.”
Victory zinged through her veins, sweet and bubbly as sarsaparilla, as she gazed upon her first major find as an aspiring detective-veterinarian-artist.
Metal teeth, a locked bedroom door, the creepy basement, moaning in the halls, secrets, schemes, screams, and a monster in the woods…
Question of the Day: What creeps you out?
Anastasia McCrumpet is as average as they come. Not at all like the flashy heroine in her favorite mystery series. But when she’s taken away by unknown relatives to an retired insane asylum, Anastasia will need to rely on all her detecting wisdom to find out why she’s there in the first place, or go mad trying to get to the bottom of it.
Anastasia’s day began with a funeral, and it went downhill from there.
Continue reading “Book Review – The League of Beastly Dreadfuls”
Anastasia had read about orphans in storybooks. To an almost-eleven-year-old girl with two parents, orphans had been sort of a mythical figure, like unicorns and mermaids. A creature that lived in the pages of a book. And now she was one. An orphan, that is. Not a unicorn.
A trip to the library this week means my stack of finished books is a little less impressive, but the new titles I picked up are providing plenty of incentive to keep up with my goal of reading a book a day.
Freshly added to the stack this week:
14. The Power of Poppy Pendle by Natasha Lowe
15. The League of Beastly Dreadfuls by Holly Grant
16. Knights of the Kitchen Table by Jon Scieszka
17. Everything on a Waffle by Polly Horvath
18. Clementine, Friend of the Week by Sara Pennypacker
19. Dear America: So Far from Home by Barry Danenburg
Question of the Day: What genres do you read when you need a break from the usual?
Elza Kinde 