Operation Redwood by S. Terrell French.
Julian’s uncle decides to chop down all the redwoods around Big Tree, which is a large redwood next to the farm of Robin Elder. Julian and Robin try to save the trees.
I didn’t enjoy this book as much as others, to tell the truth. But it was still pretty interesting. I thought the characters were very funny. I think that this is a good book for really any age, as long as you can read.

Other blog reviews and interviews: Cynsations interview with author S. Terrell French, The Reading Zone, A Patchwork of Books, Into the Wardrobe interviews S. Terrell French.

Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli.
Maniac’s parents hate each other. Maniac hates his parents. So he runs away from home and meets up with a black family who take him in and let him live with them.
Definitely a great book! It was funny, creative, and kept you on the edge of your seat. I think that the ending could have been a little better, but all in all, this book is awesome.

(Maniac Magee won the Newbery Medal in 1991, and a movie version of the book was released in 2003.)

Jerry Spinelli’s homepage.

Mathematical Puzzles by Martin Gardner.
This book is full of math puzzles. Some were easy, some were hard, but they were all great. I challenged my parents to few of them. This book strains your brain, but is still lots of fun. Don’t be deceived by the fact that it has math, it has some puzzles that can be solved by pure logic. A fun book, and a good one too.
(I think KK read an older edition of the book pictured to the right. His book was a hardback, and it had a different cover. But the author is the same. Martin Gardner is “an American mathematics and science writer specializing in recreational mathematics, but with interests encompassing micromagic, stage magic, pseudoscience, literature (especially the writings of Lewis Carroll), philosophy, scientific skepticism, and religion. He wrote the Mathematical Games column in Scientific American from 1956 to 1981, and he has published over 70 books.” See Wikipedia for more information)

Al Capone Shines My Shoes by Gennifer Choldenko.
Moose lives on Alacatraz Island where the most dangerous criminals are kept. His father is a prison guard.
This book was just a little confusing, but still my favorite for the month. The characters were interesting, and the plot was great. This book has many twists and turns in the story. Betrayals, roses, flies, criminals, shoes, babies, you name it, this book has it. I was confused by the ending, though.

11 Birthdays by Wendy Mass. The book was about a girl and a boy. Since they were born on the same day, a lady thought that they should spend every birthday together, and they did–until their tenth birthday when the boy said something that made the girl mad, and they didn’t talk to each other for a whole year. Then, on their 11th birthday strange things started happening to them, but I won’t tell you what they were because you have to read the story.

The story reminded me of the movie Groundhog Day, and my mom says it also reminds her of the fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty. However, I don’t think it’s like Sleeping Beauty much.

The Watsons Go to Birmingham by Christopher Paul Curtis wasn’t my favorite, but it was interesting. We talked about the book in my online book club. We talked about how Byron was kind of a bad influence and didn’t exactly follow the rules. He liked playing with matches, and he almost started a fire. It was good book.

The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale was my favorite book of the month. It was about a goose girl named
Ani, and you always wondered what would happen next and if people were going to catch her. It was very adventurous, and Ani gets almost captured so many times, but she always escapes. Ani also knows how to hear animals and talk to them and to the wind. I wouldn’t like to be in her situation, but I would like to talk to animals and to the wind. And Ani was a princess, and that’s always awesomeness.

(Betsy-Bee actually listened to the audio version of this book and followed along sometimes in the book. I think she could read the book herself if she wanted, but I’m not sure she’s quite ready for the other books in the series.)

Moxy Maxwell Does Not Love Practicing Piano by Peggy Gifford. I’ve read other Moxy Maxwell books, and she is funny and very determined. In this book, she doesn’t like to practice the piano. Her mom wants her to just play the piece Heart and Soul all the way through with her little sister Pansy, but she won’t because she’s busy making fur-trimmed capes with cut-up towels and a black marker, and getting ready to get on stage, and be applauded. And while she’s doing that, her father is trying to figure out a word that rhymes with “spear” because he’s a poet. And her aunt is sleeping, after falling off of a ladder where she was feeding a giraffe. But her mom is frustrated that Moxy won’t play the piano. Moxy is just crazy.