Issue link: https://h2.relevantize.com/i/468109
/ . / B O O K S ➻ + / , + % A G E S + , / - Holes by Louis Sachar ➸ Stanley Yelnats, a lonely, overweight kid whose family has been "cursed" for genera- tions (thanks to his "no-good- dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great- great-grandfather") is falsely accused of stealing sneakers and sentenced to a detention center called Camp Green Lake. Here he is forced to dig holes from morning til night. Though the sadistic warden insists the act "builds charac- ter," Stanley quickly figures out he and his fellow prisoners are just pawns in a self-serving, evil plot to dig up something mysterious and valuable. Even though the plot moves fast and was gripping enough to be turned into a movie, just to summarize it does the book a 83 mortal girls down on Earth. So one day, he married a lady named Alcmene. Together, they had a baby named Hercules. Do you like Hercules? Well, Hera has got a lot to do with him. Hercules's cousin sends him on twelve labors and Hera tells his cousin what sort of labors she wants Her- cules to do. She picks really hard, dangerous things. One is to defeat the hydra, a monster with a lot of heads. There are many others, and they're all in this book. In the end, Her- cules is lifted to Olym- pus and Hera grows to like him. –Phoebe 85 D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths by Ingri D'Aulaire ➸ I like Greek myths. This one has every single Greek myth tale in it (pretty much) and the illustrations are really cool, too. My favorite myths are Artemis and Apollo, because they're twins and they have these cool arrows. Apollo's arrows were made to cause painful death, like the rays of the sun. Artemis's arrows were made to be as soft as moonbeams, and brought painless death. That's how they write in the book. They make you think. – Phoebe I Was a Rat by Phillip Pullman ➸ I think that Phillip Pullman is an unbeliev- ably talented writer. This book is a very odd book. If you like odd books, pick this up from the shelf. If you don't, leave it there. It's about a boy who is a rat and we don't know how, but the boy somehow then turned back to a human. What kind of story is this? I would call it an "odd- ball" story. He has so many adventures. He gets treated horribly, then nicely. Then he's treated horribly again. Basically he is a con- fused child. But we are not confused readers. On a scale of 1 to 10, I would give it a 10. –Abby Parent Note: I wish I could translate this for you, but I am completely at a loss. All I know is that after reading this one, she has declared Phillip Pull- man a favorite writer. That's gotta be a good sign. 82 81 86 Olympians by George O'Connor ➸ People who like Greek myths should read these. They're very adventurous books. The pictures are great! Hmmm. If I look at the pic- tures before I go to bed, then I get good dreams. On a scale of 1 to 10? 10 –Phoebe Parent note: These are in- credibly beautiful books and O'Connor plans to unveil a series of 12, one on each Olym- pian God. Which means, at any given moment in our lives these days, there is one sitting on our Amazon pre-order list, even when it's months and months away. At this printing, there have been four: Zeus, Hera, Hades, and Phoebe's favorite: Hera, which she'd like to give a special call-out to. (See#84.) Magic Trixie and the Dragon by Jill Thompson ➸ This is about a little girl named Trixie, and she's a witch but a good witch. She acci- dentally turns her baby sister named Abby into a dragon. Then her sister flies to the circus and then Trixie flies after her and she and her pet cat try to find her sister and turn her back into a baby. First to second grade kids would like this. It's funny because she has to make the poop in her baby sister's diaper disappear. –Phoebe Hera by George O'Connor ➸ You just read about Zeus and Athena, so know about George O'Connor. Well, I waited and waited for this book for about a year. It took forever. Anyway, Hera is one of Zeus's wives and she has a temper, I'll tell you that. Hera is a very jealous wife. She want- ed Zeus to only have her as a wife, but Zeus would still try to marry disservice. What's special here is the dark, moody world that Sachar creates, leaving you to always wonder: Is this real or not? –Jenny 84 24