Book Review: His Majesty's Hope (WW2, lady spy for the Brits in Berlin)(OT)

His Majesty's Hope, A Maggie Hope Mystery, by Susan MacNeal (Random House Books, 2013, $16 [PB], 354 pages) 

Almost too exciting to read at night, His Majesty's Hope, is the third in a series of 10 historical sort-of mysteries but more like spy stories. We read it faster and faster! On the other hand, some of the just-in-time escapes seem too quick and easy to be true, and glossed over.

Hope has everything - a modern multilingual woman, some history, some opera and literature, some math, some code breaking, Bletchley Park, a couple of love interests, and a lot of Nazis - even references to Alan Turing (in person), Schroedinger's cat, and the St. Louis, a ship of European refugees that was not permitted to land in the US (much to our shame).

Plus a small world where everyone seems to know everyone else or is related to another but doesn't know it but ends up meeting quite by chance.

Our heroine, just having finished her spy training, is parachuted into Nazi Germany and eventually Berlin with cyanide, a camera, and radio parts, with the task of planting a transmitter in a Nazi 'owned' mansion at a birthday party for a high-ranking opera-star spy. Our heroine, raised in the US but having been schooled in Switzerland and Germany and now living in London, has knowledge of several languages which also explains her unique accent in them.

Other titles in the series appear below. I would suggest starting with one whose title or cover illustration appeals to you the most. I can't believe any other title could be as breathlessly exciting as Hope - set behind the lines in Nazi Germany with twist after twist. The movie would keep you on tenterhooks with more emphasis on plot than characters!

10. The Hollywood Spy

9. The King's Justice

8. The Prisoner in the Castle

7. The Paris Spy

6. The Queen's Accomplice

5. Mrs. Roosevelt's Confidante

4. The Prime Minister's Secret Agent

3. His Majesty's Hope

2. Princess Elizabeth's Spy

1. Mr. Churchill's Secretary

Book Review: Hawksbill Hero and the Parrotfish Reef (OT) (turtle, ocean, saving the reef)

Hawksbill Hero and the Parrotfish Reef, by Louisa Sax (Independently Published, 2020, 37 pages, $11.99)

Who?

Strangely named creatures of the sea: hawksbills and parrotfish and snappers, groupers, sea stars, pufferfish, angelfish, triggerfish! Beautiful depictions of the plants and animals that live and lurk under the sea and on the ocean floor. And animals with true-to-life expressions on their face. Plus a mysterious plot!

What Happened?

Hero is a hawksbill turtle whose diet consists of sea sponges and angelfish but whose best friends are also angelfish. She travels the ocean and then returns home to find - not much! Not much in the way of colorful fish or corals. She asks the few remaining fish what happened and decides to go on a quest to save her home.

Author Louisa Sax weaves an exciting story into seamless education with fun colorful illustrations and many many undersea objects to name and learn. Your child will be a brilliant star with this knowledge and will want lobster stuffed animals and sharks and sting rays and . . . !

There is even an accompanying coloring book with activities to do!

DVD Review: Puppy Love

Puppy Love (Sonar Entertainment/Hallmark, NR [not rated], 2013, 86 minutes). See trailer here.

All the pieces of a lovely family film - a professional baseball player (a cool hunk of a guy - for the pre-teen girls) who has to go on the road for a week at a time, his big shaggy dog who can open doors and escape only to be picked up by Animal Control, the best friend dogsitter, plus a new professor at the U, blonde of course and very easy on the eyes, with her lonely daughter who wants a dog. So they find a big shaggy dog at the shelter and when our ball player comes looking for his lost dog, the shelter gives out the address of the young new professor. 

From Jake to Prince

And, of course, they all do everything wrong, from using a flexi-lead or two, to barking 'commands,' to pushing the dog into the car rather than enticing him, pushing him down into a Sit, clicking the clicker at every wrong time, and, of course, our two main leads get tangled up in the flexi-leads (but fortunately not hurt).

Good, Clean Family Film

Probably filmed in Phoenix or southern California with two gorgeous homes, a Mercedes, a swimming pool, and big shaggy dog antics, this is a film the kids will love and the parents can drift in and out of, maybe taking a phone call, without missing too much. Parents will laugh at a couple of incidents and kids will laugh out loud and giggle and guffaw all the way through when they are not ooh-ing and aah-ing.

Our two leads each have a best friend who totally plays and looks second fiddle but is always around.

Who Gets the Dog? And Can a Dog Bring Two Families Back Together Again?

When Jake ends up at the shelter our single-mom and daughter adopt him and end up 'sharing' Jake-Prince. The two humans have hilariously different dog training or non-training styles where our baseball player untrains what the English professor trains causing humorous havoc.

Light-Hearted Friday Night Family Fare!

Book Review: This Book is Alive! (unique children's book)(OT)

This Book is Alive! by Justine Avery (Suteki Creative, 2020, 40 pages, $14.95, ages 4-10)

The cover looks 3-dimensional and when you pick it up you never want to put it down again - who has ever held a softer, smoother book? (Suede?) Have you ever held a conversation with a book? I have, now. And so can you.

This Book is Alive!

All books are alive - they come to life when opened and read, taking the reader to different times, different worlds, different places, different languages, different cultures, different adventures that never stop - until the book is closed. But it remains ready and willing to be continued the next time you open it up to read the rest.

With lovely sepia-toned pages, and mostly brown cursive writing though easily read, this book actually talks to your child. And what book title is a sentence? (other than this one, that is.)

Books communicate and this book asks questions of the reader and answers others - all books are unique. All people are unique and to be valued.

Ah, The Possibilities!

"A book can be anything it wants to be - just like you!"

"Lend this book freely! It's yours - you own it. So, pass it on, trade it in, exchange it with and recommend it to other readers. Books are the very best gifts."

(smile, giggle, laugh, guffaw)

Book Review: Maggie, The Self SMART Sister (Children's book on intelligence)(OT)

Maggie, The Self SMART Sister, by Mary Massey (Self-Published, 2019, 53 pages, $15), a book about Howard Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences

Intriguing Idea

Children are each uniquely wonderful with different gifts. But we tend to value only intelligence, the arts, and athletics. What a wonderful world it would be if every child knew his/her own special gifts (as Howard Gardner postulated): 

Art Smart (visual/spatial intelligence) like Ellie Rae, 

People Smart (interpersonal intelligence) like Emme,  

Body Smart (body/kinesthetic intelligence), like Landry, 

Number Smart (logical/mathematical intelligence) like Lee, 

Music Smart (musical/rhythmic intelligence) like Alex, 

Word Smart (verbal/linguistic intelligence) like Will, 

Self Smart (intrapersonal intelligence) like Maggie, and 

Nature Smart (naturalist intelligence) like Jimmy.

This series of children's magazine-sized books called the SMART Parts series fits the bill!

Maggie's story is particularly intriguing when we read that the author is also from a family of four girls, just like Maggie in the book is, and that this story is modeled after the author's own sister Maggie.

We see Maggie at home with her sisters, all of whom love each other very much. We also see Maggie playing baseball with her friends, also a close-knit group.

We are reminded of Little Women! And Miss Goody Two Shoes with their obvious lessons but the SMART books have wonderful illustrations full of lively detail.

After your child reads Maggie, he or she will also want to read the other books to help determine their special gift!

Jimmy the Nature SMART Ninja

Alex the Music SMART Maestro

Will the Word SMART Wizard

Book Review: Momma, May I Be Me? (children's book in Spanish and English!)(OT)

Momma, May I Be Me, by Tamecca Rogers and Keith Ross (Inspire Publishing,  2020, 40 pages)

Keith doesn't want to have short hair like his dad, but long hair; doesn't want to have black hair like his older brother's, but blue and red hair; doesn't want to have smooth hair like his other brother. Keith wants to be unique, to be different, to be someone all by himself so he settles on dreadlocks!

Mom doesn't really agree but decides to help  him really make up his mind so she tells him the history of dreadlocks and the long process to go through for dreadlocks. 

After all that, do you know what Keith does? Does he still want dreadlocks or will he understand he is unique in other ways? What would you do?

Unique Book

Authors Rogers and Ross self-published this book (which doesn't make it unique). What does make Momma, May I Be Me unique is that each page is written in English and in Spanish! A great way for adults to learn or resurrect their Spanish (or English) and for kids to improve theirs!

A bit heavy on education, history and vocabulary but an interesting book to be read to.

Book Review: A Shy Little Cat, by Evi Marami (children's book)(OT)

A Shy Little Cat, by Evi Marami (AKAKIA Publications, 2020, 13 Pounds British [$17.94], 52 pages)

After reading A Shy Little Cat only twice, we got it! It finally made creative sense. A long book at 52 pages (long enough to have an attached ribbon bookmark), and a clever book that just might be overdoing it - might, but maybe not.

Made for little hands, Shy is a sturdy little book with thick, shiny pages to last and last. Little ones will love the colored letters (not so much, the parents) and, if pointed out, will learn the patterns. Rhymes continue from page to page.

A webpage to go along with the book has instructions and playing cards to accompany the board gameboard in the back of the book plus you get stick puppets. And detailed illustrations that border on scary, so help your child through this, the first time.

And the Story is. . . . 

A shy little cat wants to meet a friend and does mange to meet a lot of strange characters - animals doing strange things like 'a stripy shark baking cakes with mustard!' Instead of a countdown, the book has a count-up of one little X, two little X, three little X up to 12 and then our shy little cat goes around the world from Europe to Australia to the US to Asia and more - again meeting many animals doing un-animal things. Our shy little cat grew up and came home with a plan to teach others how to make a friend. 

All in all, a long little book with a lovely story to tell and plenty of fun animals and rhyme-y words to remember.

"If only we could see the world through children's eyes, everything would make so much more sense. . ." (E. Marami)