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Ella Minnow Pea – Mark Dunn

I truly enjoyed “Ella Minnow Pea,” a first novel by playwright Mark Dunn. By the time the book drew to a close, I was astounded and impressed by the ingenuity, cleverness, and humor of this author. Off the coast of South Carolina is a fictional island called Nollop. It was founded by a man named Nevin Nollop who, you will be greatly interested to know, was the inventor of the sentence, “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs.” Because of Nollop’s love of language, everyone on the island is very literate, uses a variety of long words to … Continue reading →

Tristi’s Picks: Best Novels Read in 2007

It’s that time of year – the time to look back at my reading for the last year and decide which books were the most outstanding. As always, it’s a tough call, more so than usual, as I really found some great reads in 2007. I decided to allow for fifteen top favorites instead of my usual ten – ten is just too limiting. 1. “Wildwood Dancing” by Juliet Marillier was my favorite read over all. This delightful and enchanting fairy tale took the stories of “The Twelve Dancing Princesses” and “The Frog Prince” and blended them together in a … Continue reading →

The Wednesday Wars – Gary D. Schmidt

The unfortunately named boy Holling Hoodhood is starting seventh grade with a strike already against him – he’s the only Presbyterian in a class full of Jews and Catholics. While the other children are excused early on Wednesday afternoons to attend temple and mass, Holling is stuck at school, and he’s sure his teacher hates him. No doubt she was looking forward to Wednesday afternoons completely free, but with this one lone Presbyterian to look after, she’s trapped, and she takes it out on him by making him read Shakespeare’s plays. He doesn’t realize until later that she’s actually doing … Continue reading →