Book Review: Eleanor and Park

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin
Release Date: February 26, 2013
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

Set over the course of one school year in 1986, this is the story of two star-crossed misfits—smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try. When Eleanor meets Park, you’ll remember your own first love—and just how hard it pulled you under.

I loved, loved, loved this book. Rainbow gets teenage love exactly right. There’s not too much angst or drama – Eleanor and Park are REAL. Both of them are misfits in their own way. Eleanor is chubby, doesn’t dress the “right” way and comes from a troubled family. Park is half-Asian is in a basically all-white part of town. They gradually connect with one another on the bus rides to and from school, over music and comic books.

I don’t think I have ever read a more authentic portrayal of high school. I felt like I was back in high school myself while I was reading it. I wish I could have been friends with Eleanor and Park back then.

You may have heard that some parents in Minnesota tried to ban this book from their kids’ school district. These people must be dead inside. Also, their main concern with the use of the “f-word” in the book. If your kid hasn’t heard that word by the time they hit high school, you should consider unchaining them from the chair in the locked room you keep them in.

I know this review is super gushy but this book deserves it. Love, love, love!

Buy this book at:
Rainy Day Books

For more reviews of books for children and teens, check out Booking Mama’s feature, Kid Konnection, posted on Saturdays. If you’d like to participate in Kid Konnection and share a post about anything related to children’s books (picture, middle grade, or young adult) from the past week, you can go to her site to leave a comment and your link .

Book Review: Kitchen Cures

Kitchen Cures: Revolutionize Your Health with Foods that Heal by Peggy Kotsopoulos
Publisher: Pintail
Release Date: August 21, 2013
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

In Kitchen Cures, television personality and holistic nutritionist Peggy Kotsopoulos shows you how to alleviate common health conditions with a diet that’s rich in flavor and nutrient-dense whole foods.  Whether you have low energy, excess belly fat that you just can’t lose or are suffering from conditions triggered by inflammation, or countless other health issues, Kitchen Cures is a unique resource that makes the simple connection between food and how you look and feel.

You don’t have to overhaul your entire lifestyle or follow a rigid diet regime for weeks. Instead, Kitchen Cures offers you simple and easy-to-implement solutions to relive a host of symptoms and conditions.  In each chapter, Peggy explains the health condition and what’s going on, key nutrients your body may be missing, and top nutrient-dense foods that will alleviate those symptoms.

This book is amazing! It is jammed packed with information and Peggy’s conversational bestie-to-bestie tone made it a lot of fun to read. I like that it’s not a book that expects you to overhaul your entire lifestyle and diet in one fail swoop but allows you to make gradual changes starting with whichever health issue you’d like to focus on. You can read this book cover to cover, like I did, or just pick and choose the chapters that apply to your life. If you read it cover-to-cover, you may find that some information is repeated since certain foods and supplements are good for many ailments. However, this way of organizing the book will make it super easy for me to refer back to time and again. Which I definitely will – I think I dog-eared and/or highlighted every other page!

This book was also really well researched – there are extensive resources, references and endnotes included. If you’ve been wanting to incorporate healthier foods into your diet for health and healing but have been overwhelmed with where to start, this is the book for you. I highly recommend it.

There are some recipes included in the book. I’ve included one that I made and enjoyed. These cookies are supposed to be energy boosting, mood boosting, stress busting, PMS and menopause busting. Pretty sweet!

Chocolate Chip Quinoa Cookies (makes 24 cookies)

4 large, very ripe bananas
1 tsp vanilla
1 heaping T almond butter (optional – I didn’t use)
1/2 cup coconut sugar
1 cup cooked quinoa
1 cup uncooked quinoa flakes or rolled oats (I used oats)
1 cup unsweetend, shredded coconut (I used sweetened because it was what I had on hand)
pinch sea salt
1/2 cup dark chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. In a large mixing bowl, mash banaas with a fork and add vanilla, almond butter (if using), and coconut sugar. Add quinoa, quinoa flakes or oats, coconut, and pinch of salt. Mix until well combined. Stir in chocolate chips.

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and drop spoonfuls of batter onto sheet. (I flattened down the spoonfuls because the cookies didn’t flatten on their own when baking.) Bake for 25 to 30 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool.

Buy this book at:
Rainy Day Books

(I received this book courtesy of the publisher.)

Book Review: Chew on This

Chew on This: Everything You Don’t Want to Know About Fast Food by Eric Schlosser
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Paperback Release Date: 2007
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

In the New York Times bestseller Chew on This, Eric Schlosser and Charles Wilson unwrap the fast-food industry to bring you a behind-the-scenes look at a business that both feeds and feeds off the young. Find out what really goes on at your favorite restaurants—and what lurks between those sesame seed buns.

Chew on This is written by the author of Fast Food Nation – it’s like the young adult version of Fast Food Nation. According to Amazon, it’s geared to children twelve years old/seventh grade and up. One word of warning – the secret behind Santa is revealed in this book. Probably not a problem for the target audience of this book but it was a problem for my nine-year old. He reads above grade level so he didn’t have trouble reading or understanding this book but he still has a 3rd grader’s ideas about Santa so I was disappointed that this book gave away the secret.

Other than that, I loved this book. It really focuses on the fact that fast food is marketed primarily towards children, in ways that I hadn’t really thought of before. I knew my kids like McDonald’s because of the Happy Meal toys and the Play Places but I never realized how calculated all the marketing was to be geared toward children, who would then drag their parents and grandparents to the fast food restaurants with them. I’m so naive!

It also discussed the practices of factory farming of which most kids are probably not aware. I also appreciated the discussion of how they make fast food taste good – all the artificial ingredients and so forth.

I was hoping that this book would turn my son off of fast food but I didn’t get that lucky. However, I think the ideas in this book will continue to rattle around in his head and when he gets a little older his food choices will be affected by what he learned in this book. I was certainly turned off of fast food after reading this book! I highly recommend this book. It would be a great book for a family book club that could be the jumping off point for a family discussion about the family’s food choices – I enjoyed discussing this book with my son quite a bit.
Buy this book at:

An Incurable Insanity Giveaway

Yesterday I reviewed An Incurable Insanity by Simi K. Rao. Today, I’m pleased to be able to give away one copy of the book – a hardcover if you have a United States address or a Kindle copy if you are outside the US. Just fill out the form below before 11:59pm CST on October 31, 2013. Good luck!

Book Review: An Incurable Insanity

An Incurable Insanity by Simi K. Rao
Publisher: Tate Publishing
Release Date: October 8, 2013
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I think I would have enjoyed this book much more if it was about half as long and followed more of the traditional romance formula where the couple initially hate each other, then discover they actually love each other, then a conflict breaks them up, and then finally they get back together at the end and live happily ever after. In this book, Shaan and Ruhi are having a conflict and coming back together about every ten pages.It wore me out and got confusing at times. It was often hard for me to understand why Ruhi kept pushing Shaan away when he was telling her he cared for her and she also cared for him. They were already married after all, why not just give it a try?

I have a special place in my heart for India and Indian culture and I think that’s what kept this book from being a two-star book for me. I appreciated the glossary in the back of the book, some of the Hindu and all of the Bengali words were new to me. This was M. Roa’s first novel. She’s a practicing physician so she’s obviously an intelligent person. With a little more practice and better editing, I think she will grow to be a fine author.

Come back tomorrow – I’ll be giving away a copy of An Incurable Insanity to one lucky reader!

Thank you to TLC Book Tours for providing me with a copy of this book. Check out the other tour stops:

Monday, September 30th: BookNAround
Tuesday, October 1st: Broken Teepee
Wednesday, October 2nd: Fiction Addict
Thursday, October 10th: Must Read Faster
Monday, October 14th: Guiltless Reading
Tuesday, October 15th: Col Reads First Chapter, First Paragraph Intro
Wednesday, October 16th: Storeybook Reviews
Thursday, October 17th: The Best Books Ever
Friday, October 25: Peeking Between the Pages
Monday, October 28th: Book Dilettante

Columbus Day Book Review: Junie B., First Grader: Shipwrecked

Junie B., First Grader: Shipwrecked (Junie B. Jones, #23) by Barbara Park
Publisher: Random House
Release Date: 2004
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

Room One is putting on a play. And guess what? It’s about explorers looking for the New World! And there’s ships and sea captains and everything! Plus here’s the bestest news of all—Junie B. Jones thinks she might be the star of the whole entire production! Only, sailing the ocean blue is not as easy as it looks, apparently. ’Cause problems keep on happening. Like the actors keep catching the flu. And bossy May keeps trying to take over the show.

Can this play be saved? Will the ships ever get to land? Or is Room One in for a disaster at sea that they will never forget?

As a parent, I don’t especially like Junie B. Jones. She’s obnoxious, has poor grammar, and uses words like stupid – a bad word in our house. These are all the same reasons my first grader loves her! He’s a bit of a reluctant reader so if Junie B. gets him excited about reading, then I’m willing to tolerate her.

Shipwrecked sneaks in quite a few facts about Christopher Columbus and his voyage to America. Children won’t have any idea that they are actually learning because the story is entertaining and funny. Since this book is for first graders, it doesn’t go into the ethical issues associated with Columbus’s journey, like imperialism and genocide. It actually doesn’t say anything about what happened after Columbus landed – the focus is entirely on the voyage.

If your child is a Junie B. Jones fan, he or she will definitely enjoy this book.

Buy this book at:
Amazon Powell’s Book

Weekend Ramblings: Pumpkin Patch Edition

We went to our favorite pumpkin patch yesterday and had a blast. (I’m starting an informal campaign to get them to replace their disgusting port-a-potties with real bathrooms. I think they can afford it, they serve about 1000 people a day and it’s not a cheap experience. I left them a comment on their Facebook page and you can too if you want.)

We rode the train, watched the pig races – West was picked to be one of the noise makers that encourage the pigs to run – , fed the goats, rode the tricycles around the track, played on the playground equipment, practiced steer roping, and of course took a wagon ride out to the actual patch to pick our pumpkins. Neve picked the smallest pumpkin she could find. We made sure to buy a dozen of their delicious pumpkin doughnuts before we left.