Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Want To Read More Books like The Hermit Thrush Sings?

Post-Apocalyptic Fiction

  • The Hunger Games Collins
  • Catching Fire Collins
  • The House of the Scorpion Farmer
  • Gone Grant
  • Hunger Grant
  • Turnabout Haddix
  • Hole in the Sky Hautman
  • The cure Levitin
  • Tomorrow, When the War Began Marsden
  • The Host Meyer
  • Shade’s Children Nix
  • Z for Zachariah O'Brien
  • The Transall Saga Paulsen
  • Life as We Knew It Pfeffer
  • The Dead and the Gone Pfeffer
  • The Last Book in the Universe Philbrick
  • Nation Pratchett
  • How I Live Now Rosoff
  • Bones of Faerie Simner
  • Welcome to the Ark Tolan
  • The Uglies Trilogy Westerfeld

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

This month’s book: The Hermit Thrush Sings by Susan Butler

hermitthrush The Hermit Thrush Sings is a futuristic, post-apocalyptic science fiction novel that takes place in the state of Maine, which after a horrible disaster where a meteor crashes into the earth, is now a small country called Maynor. The meteor caused the release of radiation from nuclear power plants, and everything is thrust back in time. There’s no technology, people are ruled by an oppressive government, and there is no freedom. There are mutant species caused by the radiation exposure, and humans who have mutations are called “defectives,” and are sent to The Institute to live.  One mutant species is the birmba, a combination ape/bear that is thought to be very dangerous to humans.

Leora is an orphan who lives with her stepmother, who following the death of Leora’s father and sister, remarried the governor. She has a younger stepsister who torments her because Leora has webbed fingers on her left hand. She lives in constant fear of being sent to The Institute.  She keeps her hand hidden, except when she’s alone when uses it to draw amazing pictures which foretell the future.

When Leora overhears plans to send her to The Institute as punishment for setting free a baby birmba that was going to be sent to the government for experimentation, she decides to run away and try to find her long lost sister Reba. She’s heard rumors that Reba isn’t dead, and is in fact part of a band of rebels that is planning to overthrow the government.

This book is very suspenseful, and the reader feels carried along with Leora as she discovers her own bravery, and the special powers of her webbed hand.  Review by Stacy Church

Thursday, July 15, 2010

My Favorite Quotes from Shooting the Moon

"We were stationed at Fort Hood, Texas, a flat piece of real estate that threatened to burst into flames every afternoon from June through September." page 11

“The Colonel was born to run the show, and he had a drawer full of medals and ribbons to prove it.” page 11

“You wouldn’t think that some crazy thing Cindy Lorenzo said to you, something made up in her halfway working mind, could hurt your feelings, but Cindy’s words could pinch as hard as her fingers.” page  60

“But the Colonel seemed to want me to be happy, and he seemed genuinely pleased when I was happy, and that struck me as a pretty good definition of love when you got right down to it.” page 80

“…but usually having the Colonel in the house was like having an opera going on.  He was big, he was loud, he had a lot to talk about.” page 87

“He was a big talker, someone who liked words for words’ sake, the sound of them, the way you can pile them up in your mouth and make a poem if you spill them out the right way.” page 92