Heather's January 2013 pick

This month I am choosing a children's book. And why not? It deserves my attention and and reader's notice that has a sense of humor. Mo Willems's Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs is hilarious. It gives the grownups reading to their little one (for the seventh time that day) a much needed giggle. I can't wait until my son is old enough to appreciate the comic genius behind Willems's work. Any child familiar with the Three Bears story will find plenty of visual jokes and cheeky bits of narration to get them laughing.  Papa Dinosaur, Mama Dinosaur and some other dinosaur visiting from Norway just happen to go somewhere else and leave out giant bowels of chocolate pudding. They "are NOT setting a trap for some succulent, unsupervised little girl."

Heather's April 2012 pick

Arcadia is a moving novel that is at once both sentimental and amazingly honest. This is a beautifully written novel with lines that read almost like poetry. 
The story follows the birth of Bit Stone as the first full member of the Arcadia Commune through his coming of age and his fall from Eden into his adult years. During the idealistic beginnings of the Commune, Bit's innocence falls away as he learns to see the darker side of human nature through his struggles to comprehend his mother's depression and his father's power battle with the guru in charge. Eventually due to the corruption of the girl he loves along with the destruction of the only place he has ever called home, we see Bit continue to find the duality of beauty and innocence coexisting with depravity and decay in the larger world.
It is an utterly poignant novel and relevant to the current state of the world. 

November 2011

This book is totally worth all the hype built up around it. This is the fifth in the Song of Ice and Fire series and even this far along George R.R. Martin is still proving he can come up with some great surprises. HBO picked up the series and is doing a really stellar job with the project. I suggest starting to read them now so you can compare the books to the screen version, always a fun pastime. The reason these books are so worth while? The characters. True to life, no one is pure evil or wholly good. I love that I've found myself cheering for the "bad guy" on more than one occasion. They are vivid and complex stories about family, honor and survival. And sometimes about surviving the politics of a family with or without honor.