Promises, Promises

Yes indeed I swore updates more often and I've followed through with most of this deal. However, remember that I am a graduate student. Even though this is summer I am still pecking away at the whole 'master's degree' thing. The class I am taking is called 'Current Issues in Children's Literature'. Foolish me I thought the focus of the class would be issues as they pertained to children's literature; No Child Left Behind, Title 1 topics and the like. Turned out the class is about issues that exist within children's literature. Fascinating stuff really. Today's topic was child abuse and special needs. Anyhow I have been far too busy reading children's books to get to any of the books on The Bookshelf of Doom. But I did read several very good kid's books. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie and Olive’s Ocean by Kevin Henkes (yes the same guy who wrote Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse! sooo shocking the word prick twice! oh my) and currently I am in the midst of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon.

I do have a couple of young adult PA books to get to but I am saving them for a reward. First I have Gone by Michael Grant. I haven't started it yet. It sits at the top of my bookshelf and taunts me. If I get it correctly from the back cover it looks like all the adults disappear and leave the youths to look out for themselves. I realize this has been done before and in fact I did a post about this 'kids creating their own civilization' theme. This one is a bit different I guess. Magic is involved. Still it sort of looks like Lord of the Flies as if it were written by Stephen King and not William Golding. Should be fun. I just need to wade through some other YA books before I get to it.

The other book to tempt me is Watchers at the Shrine. The third book in the 'Plague Series' by Jean Ure. I read the first one Plague some time ago but didn't post about because I had been punishing my liver. It was good. When I finished it I was looking about on the interwebs and discovered that the book had a sequel called Come Lucky April (as published in the UK) or After the Plague (as published in the US). Under any name it didn't hold up to the first book all that well. Anyhow point being is I got hold of the final book a while ago. I didn't read it because I had been so put off by the sequel to Plague I didn't want to invest any further time just yet. I'll get to it soon and post a fitting entry about all three books.

The last PA book from The Bookshelf of Doom is a book I picked up on Paperbackswap.com. It's called The Vanished and it's by John Peel. It's book number seven in The Outer Limits series for younger readers. I don't expect much from it, but that's ok because I got the book for free on the website. May turn out to be ok even - it is Tor Kids. Tor is a pretty good publisher.

Anyhow there you have it. Previews of coming attractions and whatnot.