Knights of the Lunch Table

If Knights of the Lunch Table were a cured meat, it would be a Honey Baked Ham lovingly made by Spanish bears wearing golden pantaloons. Why? Because it's hilarious that's why! The Knights of the Lunch Table is a graphic novel retelling of the King Arthur story, set in an American elementary school, Camelot Elementary to be precise. Our hero, Artie King, has just moved to town and he will have to start school midyear. His older sister Morgan (La Faye) his of course wicked and works to make his day as hard as possible by making him miss the bus. Fortunately the school science teacher Mr Merlyn (Merlin) bikes by and tells him about a short cut. On his way to school he meets Percy (Perceval) and they become fast friends. Of course school isn't easy either, the principal takes an immediate disliking to him and assigns him the locker no one is able to open (the sword in the stone), but luckily he's able to open it. The list of Camelot references just keeps going on and on and so do the laughs. The meat of the story focuses on Artie and his friend's conflict with the school bullies who are known as "the Horde" and culminates in a truly epic dodgeball battle royale!

This book couples solid artwork with a hilarious story and the result is well worth your time if you like King Arthur, dodgeball or laughing. Great for grades 4, 5, and 6.

Gods Of Manhattan

Have you ever thought that maybe everyone famous to have ever lived in your city might live on a as a god and protector of your city in on an invisible ethereal spirit realm? No? Well neither had I, but that's exactly what this book assumes. It turns out to make for an interesting story, because it allows for such disparate elements as Dutch colonials, civil war soldiers and baseball players to all be brought together in one rollicking story. Of course there has to an outsider protagonist to introduce us to the world of Mannahatta (the invisible overlay on Manhattan where the gods live) and thirteen-year-old Rory fulfills that role in this book. Rory is just your average teenager with one exception, he's extremely observant. He always notices all the little details and he's always been able to see thru any magic trick. So when a magician at his little sisters birthday party performs a magic trick that must be real, Rory's whole world is thrown into disarray and that's when he starts seeing the magical world of Mannahatta.

This book's pacing can be slow at times and non-New Yorkers may have a hard time keeping up w/ all the history, but the interesting concept more than makes up for that. Recommend this book to fans of adventure books and historical fiction. For grades 6+

Whispers in the Graveyard

I didn't like this book. Maybe I'm just giving it a hard time because I was feeling a little seasick while a read it, but I suspect that if I hadn't been trapped on a boat w/ nothing else to do I wouldn't have finished it at all. First off it was a ghost story, but it lacked any sort of tension, because instead of focusing on creepy supernatural occurrences the book focused on Solomon's (the main character) problems at home and at school. And Solomon has plenty of problems. He deals with a frequently unemployed alcoholic father, a mother who left them, severe dyslexia and an abusive teacher at school. It was a real downer of a book, but it would have been okay if it hadn't tried to throw in the horror story as well. Right up until the very end I doubted there would actually be a ghost involved in anyway, but then at the end there she was ready to disrupt previously established realism. The book also threw in annoying little snippets of song lyrics every so often, at least I think that's what they were. I could only identify the song they were from half the time and I doubt your typical 11 year old would do better than that.
In summary avoid this book, but if it's one of only six books on your shelf and all five others are rejected recommend this book to 5th, 6th and 7th graders or mediocre literature affectionados of all ages.

The Battle for Skandia

The most recent installment in the Ranger Apprentices Series (book 5 The Sorcerer of the North will be released this November) did not disappoint. I was totally hooked by this series, I read the first 3 in one week, took a little break and then came back for the fourth a month later. The Battle for Skandia resolves the story arc introduced in the third book. Early in the book Will and Halt are finally reunited in distant Skandia, but they are immediately faced w/ a new dilemma. An enemy from the East who threatens both Skandia and Araluen necessitating that Halt and Will form an unlikely alliance w/ the Skandians. As with all the Rangers apprentice books this one is full of arrow shooting, axe-swinging and sword fighting, as well as plenty of battle tactics to satisfy all the budding young strategists out there.

For grades 5-9.

Seattle

Howdy everyone,

I'm sitting in the Seattle Public Library right now updating my blog for y'all to enjoy. Before I talk about the what I've done so far I wanna talk about the Seattle Public Library for a bit. I like it quite a bit. The first time I came here, last year, I was pretty freakin' disappointed, but visiting it again with lowered expectations has really increased my appreciation of it. The library here is very different from our beloved SLCPL, but that doesn't make it worse, just -as I said- different. This is a very quite library, a reflective introverted place, really traditional in that sense. The architechure on the other hand is modern, postmodern in fact. This library is all angles a sharp contrast to SLCPL's curves and though it is made entirely of glass, it is very dim. I'm enjoying it quite a bit this time round, very restful. I am in a much more fitting mood for the building this time, I just finished touring the Seattle Art Museum (SAM) and the this library has a similar atmosphere. The SAM has a great impressionist exhibit in right now which serves as perfect companion to the UMFA Monet to Picasso exhibit I saw up at the U a couple weeks ago. The SAM exhibit focused on the the influence of Classical Paintings on the Impressionist, sometimes even showing side by the side the original painting and the the impressionist revision. Even Monet who often claimed he was wholely unifluenced by previous artistic movements is included and you can see striking similarities between his paintings and seventeenth century Dutch landscapes.
The SAM also has a wonderful Northwest First Peoples art gallery and an Aboringal art gallery. I've can't think of any other galleries I've visited which so Australian art, so I was very impressed with that. They also had a small Japanese section (made me think of you Liesl!) with a little Japanese tea ceremony hut, which was absolutely beautiful.
Yesterday was super awesome. After landing at the airport my budding Matt and I went to take care of some important details such as: Checking into our hotel, securing a ferry ticketup to victoria and a train ticket back from Vancouver (we were just going to take a train up to Vancouver too, but it was sold out. I didn't realize AMtrak trains every sold out, in fact I always assumed they were mostly empty, whho knew?) and eating lots and lots of sushi. We had four delicious rolls and I loved every bite. With those details out of the way we roamed the city for awhile, first visiting Pike place Market (they through a fish at someone it was awesome/ hillarious) the Olympic Sculpture Garden (the sculpture was so-so, but we ran into Matt's aunt 100% by chance and she's going to take us out to dinner tonight) and finally (the best for last) the Science Fiction Museum. The SF museum was awesome, the had Kirk's command chair from the TV series (do I even need to say anymore to make you envy this place) as well as TONS of other stuff from everything SF you can imagine Star Wars, Terminator, Red Dwarf, Blade Runner all kinds of pulp SF stuff from the 30s, 4os and 50s and a great collection of H.G. Wells stuff too. Awesome, awesome, awesome! By that time we ready for dinner so we found ourselves a grocery store and some hummus sprouts and pita bread for an awesome mediterreanean dinner. Then we headed out to check out the bars over in Belltown.

I feel like I should say more, but I gotta hurry and wrap this up so we can make it to happy hour. So long for now everyone.