Books I Read...

I've been posting books there in the side of the page as a way to see how many books I read in a given year. I was surprised to see how many had accumulated at the end of the year, and that helped me get motivated to read even more. The reviews I write are not about the book (you can read that on Amazon, or barnesandnoble.com), but my reaction to it. A basic, couple of lines, response. It's extremely subjective (especially if you've read some of my politics books' reviews, you know what I mean), but oh well, it's my blog! And nobody reads it anyway, so what's the big deal, right? But I've decided that if it's not a 25 page book for first grade readers, I might include the reviews in the body of the blog, otherwise I'll update this once a year, and that's pretty pathetic.

So, here's my response to the last book I've read.




Kira Kira, by Cynthia Kadohata. YA (272 pp.).

A couple of years ago, a student kept telling me that we should read this book as a class. So I was glad to have found it at overdrive.com. It's a cute book, and the historic part of it doesn't seem forced, as in Esperanza Rising, but the sister part of the narrative, well, I saw that coming from the first chapter, so it felt that the author dragged it too much. The rest of the book is a built up to that, so it didn't work for me, but I see how it might have worked for a kid.