Summer...Here I come!

      I am so excited to be wrapping up this school year.  I have found solace in my reading throughout this year and I cannot wait to start my #bookaday challenge later this week.  Having finished my report cards last week, and having little to do for planning because of all the 8th grade graduation details, I found myself with more time to read than I thought I would have.  There are quite a few titles to review this week.

    The first book I finished was Eona by Alison Goodman.  This book is a sequel to the book Eon in which the reader is introduced to a world in which there are 12 dragons of power and each year an apprentice is chosen for the ascendant dragon.  In the first book it comes out that Eon was actually a girl posing as a boy and she has been chosen by the female mirror dragon to be a dragoneye (dragon warrior).  Since this dragon had been missing for a long time there was not a dragoneye in place already so Eona did not become an apprentice, but was given the status of dragoneye right away.  At the end of the first book there has been great devastation and Eona has escaped.
     I was excited to read this sequel but unsure what to expect since a colleague told me she liked the first book better.  I have to say that I disagree about this.  I really enjoyed this book and felt that there was much more internal conflict to this plot. The second book picks up the story right where the first one left off.  Eona is traveling with members of the resistance and they are hoping to rendezvous with other resistance fighters and find the prince who is rumored to be alive.   Along the way, Eona is trying to find out more about her ancestors and the book that connects her to her dragon in some mysterious way.  Since she is the only dragoneye warrior that they have, the resistance is relying on her powers, but she is having a hard time because she has not been trained to use the power.  Enter a love triangle and we have a book that is intriguing and surprising right up until the very last page.  I could not figure out how the numerous conflicts in this book would be resolved and I had doubts that the author would be able to tie up the story in such a way that it would not be outrageous.  I was wrong to doubt her.  I loved the way this book ended.  I would definitely recommend this book as a great example of a strong female character.

     Since I have been more active on Twitter, I have been quite entertained by Sarah Dessen's tweets that seem to narrate her daily life.  I had read one of her books a while ago and was not that impressed and frankly didn't see what people liked about her books.  However, not one to judge to harshly by one example, I decided to pick up This Lullaby from my to read shelf and give her another shot to impress me.  It worked!  I really enjoyed this story and whipped through it.  Remy is such a believable 18 year old.  Remy has just graduated high school and is starting the summer before college.  She has recently reformed her bad girl ways and is looking to have a fun summer before moving across the country in the fall.  Her mother is getting married for the fourth time and Remy has become a cynic when it comes to love.  This book follows Remy and her friends through their summer full of romance and big news.  I understand now why so many people enjoy Sarah Dessen's books and am looking forward to reading more from her.  On a side note, it was fun to read about Remy's mother who is a writer and the weird writing habits that she has.  I wonder if Dessen has any of those same habits.  I would recommend this book to anybody who enjoys a good love story.  

    

     I have made it a point to read more graphic novels and to acquire more for my class library.  This is one that I got because one of my 8th graders wanted to do his author study about this author.  He had enjoyed Ghostopolis so much that he begged to be able to do the author study about Doug TenNapel so I went out and found this other graphic novel by him.  Bad Island is a fun story about a family vacation that becomes disastrous when the family boat crashes on a mysterious island.  There are weird plants and creatures on the island and the family has to work together to solve the mystery so that they can find their way off the island.  I really enjoyed this story and would definitely recommend it to my students.  I will look forward to finding more books by this author in the future.  

     More to come over the summer about the fabulous books I am reading.  I have decided to join the Newbery challenge so I will be sneaking some of those books into my to read pile throughout the summer.  Happy reading!