Next Month's Pick

Grace chose The One and Only Ivan for this month's read. She purchased it at her school's recent book fair and thought it would be a great choice for the group. 

Here is the Book's description from Amazon:

Ivan is an easygoing gorilla. Living at the Exit 8 Big Top Mall and Video Arcade, he has grown accustomed to humans watching him through the glass walls of his domain. He rarely misses his life in the jungle. In fact, he hardly ever thinks about it at all.

Instead, Ivan thinks about TV shows he’s seen and about his friends Stella, an elderly elephant, and Bob, a stray dog. But mostly Ivan thinks about art and how to capture the taste of a mango or the sound of leaves with color and a well-placed line.

Then he meets Ruby, a baby elephant taken from her family, and she makes Ivan see their home—and his own art—through new eyes. When Ruby arrives, change comes with her, and it’s up to Ivan to make it a change for the better.

Katherine Applegate blends humor and poignancy to create Ivan’s unforgettable first-person narration in a story of friendship, art, and hope.

Enjoy!

The Lemonade Crime Review

The Lemonade Crime is a continuation of the book The Lemonade War which our group read last month.  At the end of the first book in the series a crime takes place. Money was stolen from Evan who stole it from his sister who earned it selling lemonade. Evan's little sister Jessie is really mad because she worked really hard to get that money with her friend Meghan.

Jessie has a hunch of who took the money.  The suspect is Scott Spenser.  When the kids in school start talking about Scott's new X-Box 20/20 the siblings get mad. They are even more convinced it was him.  Jessie gets the idea to hold a trial to prove that Scott is the culprit. She organizes everything even the punishment. 

Ava really enjoyed the end of the book and how things were resolved. She was surprised at the verdict of the trial. The book didn't end how she thought and she liked that.
Grace really liked the part when the court was going on and everyone was all together on the playground and they were trying to figure out if Scott Spencer took the money or not.
Jordyn enjoyed the part when they were in line and Jessie accused Scott Spencer of taking Jessie's money. She was surprised the way Jessie spoke up to Scott because she was younger than him.
Copper's favorite part was when Jessie made Spenser sign the documents for the trial. It seemed funny for a little girl to be doing grown up things.

The ideas of kids running their own trial is unrealistic its likely that they would need adults to supervise.  but it was still neat to read about it.

Overall the girls preferred the first book in the series, The Lemonade War but would still recommend The Lemonade Crime to others,  and are even interested in reading the next book in the series The Bell Bandit as well as others in this series.

Both boys and girls will like this book because the main characters are a boy and girls. I think boys would like it because it has an X-Box in it and I know boys like X-Boxes. I also think girls would like it because a girl is one of the main character and the girl planned the trial.