Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown

Goodnight Moon

by Margaret Wise Brown

Pictures by Clement Hurd

Rating: **** (4 stars)

Book Length: 32 pages

Genre: Picture Book, Children

Goodnight Moon is a bedtime story for very young children. The wording is extremely simple and repetitive. It is meant to be read aloud, and when it is it is a calming rhythm. This is important when trying to get a child to quiet down and sleep. 

However, Goodnight Moon is also a great book to use to help children to learn objects. It continually repeats object names over and over and provides brilliantly colored illustrations of the objects. Even for object naming the audience is fairly inexperienced or young as there is only a limited number of objects that are said over and over again. 

The book is a nice calming read, with cute pictures, and any young child can relate to wanting to say goodnight to everything to avoid going to bed. While it is not my favorite children's picture book it is hard to write a good book to engage the very earliest of readers and this book does so extremely well. 

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

by Laura Hillenbrand

Rating: **** (4 stars)

Book Length: 473 pages

Genre: Non-Fiction, War, WWII, Biography

One of the reasons I really love reading through lists of books is to reach outside of my normal reading patterns and pick up a book that I would have completely overlooked. This year I have been fortunate to discover a lot of amazing books and read from a variety of perspectives. There is nothing about Unbroken that would have compelled me to read it. I am not a huge fan of war stories or even history stories. I would have completely passed by this book, but I am so glad that I didn't. 

Unbroken is a complete biography of Louis Zamperini starting at his youth, his brief Olympic career, his time in World War II, and his transition back from the War. While the majority of the book focuses on WWII the part that I enjoyed most about the book is that it was more than a war story. It was a story about people, mostly Louis Zamperini, but also his family, his war buddies, the Japanese soldiers and civilians, and his wife. Reading this book I felt like I was transported to a whole different world. Most of the time the world was extremely unpleasant,  yet despite that you persevered right along with Louis and the other prisoners of war. 

Louis Zamperini was the trouble maker kid, the town juvenile delinquent. With the help of his older brother, he tamed that spirit to become an Olympic runner. If his life had led down a different path he would probably be known as an Olympic gold medalist. Instead, he is known as the man who's Olympic story ended in war. Yet he used his spirit to survive what was unsurvivable to so many. Then, after the war when he could have been broken again, he started to thrive and to make a better world for all the other juvenile delinquent boys who have the capacity to accomplish so much. 

Laura Hillenbrand wrote in such a way that you were brought into the world. The story would continually branch off of Louis and the reader would learn about his brother, his war buddies, his captors, the friendly guard. If it was done with less skill this could have been a distraction while reading, yet the story continued to flow and the reader is left feeling more complete for having known about not just Louis, but the wide assortment of people that came into his time. 

Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak

Where the Wild Things Are

by Maurice Sendak

Rating: ***** (5 stars)

Book Length: 37 pages

Genre: Fantasy, Children, Picture Book

Where the Wild Things Are is a picture book about a boy who got a bit too worked up in the evening. When he threatened to eat up his mother he was sent to bed without supper. There he dreamed up a world full of Wild Things just like himself. He was the wildest of them all and was crowned King of all Wild Things. Until he missed his family and his stomach rumbled and he gave up being a Wild Thing to return home to his loving home.

This classic picture book has been around for over forty years and has won numerous awards because of the amazing writing, brilliant pictures, and classic tale. The book has two stories. The first is about a boy who travels to a amagical land to become Kind of the Wild Things. The second story is about a boy who gets in trouble for being too active, goes to his room upset, and uses his imagination to calm himself down.

The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

The Things They Carried

by Tim O'Brien

Rating: **** (4 stars)

Book Length: 236 pages

Genre: Non-Fiction, War, Vietnam, Short Story, Military

The Things They Carried is written as a collection of short stories that combine to make a mostly unified novel. It is a look on the Vietnam war from the perspective of a soldier and his unit. 

From a literary perspective, this book is amazing. The writing is well played out. The chapters could mostly read exclusively on their own, yet they combine together to create a picture of a unit in the Vietnam war. Yet it is a fuzzy picture purposely left to make the reader wonder how much of this novel is fiction and how much was based on "facts." It is impossible to understand a war unless you were there, yet O'Brien utilizes this writing style to help the reader to understand. Even then I know it only helps to a small degree. Even with his vivid writing, the various perspective of the members of the unit, and showing Vietnam from multiple perspectives I am left knowing that I will never understand what it was like to be in Vietnam. 

This novel is a work of art. I understand why it is taught in schools as both an amazing novel as well as a way to help students understand Vietnam. 

The Glass Magician by Charlie N Holmberg

The Glass Magician

by Charlie N Holberg

Rating: ***** (5 stars)

Page Length: 222 pages

Genre: steampunk, magic, fantasy

The Glass Magician is the second book in the Paper Magician Trilogy. The series combines steampunk and magic with magical disciplines based upon various "technologically" based elements such as paper, glass, and metal. Once you have bonded to one magic you can no longer practice another discipline. Or at least that is how it is supposed to work. 

The second book in the series does not disappoint. It is just as well written, faced paced, and engaging as the first novel. The story continues the apprenticeship of Ceony Twill as a paper magician and her attempts to attract her mentor Magician Emery Thane. Yet her penchant for getting into situations continues providing plenty of engaging plot twists. 

The world is unique and will be much loved by both avid steampunk fans as well as those who have never discovered the genre. I could easily see Charlie N Holberg becoming a favorite author of mine. I continue to look forward to what she will create next.