books and cleverness
I read books of all sorts, but mostly kids' lit and young adult literature and speculative fiction for all ages—usually from a feminist perspective.
I've adopted a personalized version of the CHOICE reviews approach to recommendations/star ratings:
***** = Essential, a.k.a. truly love, absolute must-read, buy it now
**** = Highly Recommended, a.k.a. this is a really good book; I would buy it as a gift
*** = Recommended, a.k.a. pretty good; worth reading
** = Optional, a.k.a. meh
* = Not Recommended; a.k.a. this is not a good book
House Held Up by Trees
Hm. Reading along, enjoying it quite a bit, finding it quite lovely, and then--it ended. Klassen's illustrations are beautiful, of course. I love the way the boy's, girl's, and father's faces are never quite shown.The book premise is lovely, and Kooser captures the loneliness of an abandoned house as well as that of the father whose children are grown and moved on. I just feel rather let down that the book ended with the "house held up by trees," rather than being about it.
