Sarah Noble accompanies her father to the wilderness of Connecticut to build a new cabin before they are joined by the rest of the family. A Native American tribe lives nearby on the banks of the river, and Sarah befriends the native children. Through every step of their journey and as the family settles into their new home, Sarah's courage is tested, but she curtails her fears, and remains steadfast and resilient through it all.

I loved this book when I was a little girl! It truly inspired me with courage. I wanted to be just like Sarah, steadfast in the midst of new and anxious circumstances. And like Sarah, I was a child living in the middle of a culture different to my own, making friends with children who did not speak my language. Even as an adult, I am inspired by this beautiful story of friendship and courage!

I love the simple writing style. Every sentence is full of meaning and hidden depths, but the basic story is simple and straightforward. Sarah is a very insightful person, and she notices details around her that bring a lot of significance and worth to the story.

Each chapter is another little step on Sarah's journey, both in settling into a new land, and also her internal journey of finding out just how brave she can be. Her character development is delightful to see!

I love the way deep themes about family and culture are explored in this book, but in a plain and quiet way so that even a child can understand. Sarah compares her family's loving behavior to the way that other families behave and live. It's a powerful message of trust and kindness!

I just love everything about this book!

Truthfully, I'm not super impressed with Byron's poetry. He has several really good ones here and there, and the rest of it is just... eh. I mean, for my personal taste, it's just not what I am looking for in poetry. I can recognize his genius in a general way, but most of the poetry in this collection was not my cup of tea.

Still, there were several poems that I really loved! Byron definitely has a way with words, and there is a powerful emotional pull to almost everything he writes.

Carla has just come of age, and is told of the true dark past of her family. Her mother was convicted of poisoning her father and died in prison when Carla was only five years old. But before she died, Carla's mother wrote a letter to her daughter, to be opened on her 21st birthday, explaining that she was innocent and had not poisoned her husband. Now Carla is interviewing all the people who were present when her father was poisoned, trying to find out the truth. Who really poisoned her father, and why did her mother seem content to take the blame?

I loved this murder mystery, especially the cold case aspect of it! There are various clues which may or may not be accurate, because it all hinges on testimony from witnesses' memories of 16 years ago. The plot really kept my attention and had me guessing right up until the end. I had a pretty good guess about one part of the mystery which turned out to be partly true, but the rest of the reveal was a surprise to me.

One thing I enjoyed about this play was that Carla really had to follow the clues to find out what happened. The puzzle aspect of the plot was what I enjoyed the most. Instead of the true murderer just randomly confessing like happens in some of Christie's plays, the murderer was exposed by someone else.

The characters have really interesting personalities. They are all so different, and it was fascinating to see how they interacted. Carla herself is a powerful main character. It was amazing seeing how everyone around her reacted to her presence. She is a complex person with a fierce determination to know the truth.

The dialogue is excellent and really pulls you into every conversation. There is an emotional appeal in every sentence that makes you care what happens to the characters.

I liked the setting and the atmosphere in every scene. It creates a lot of tension in the story. It would be fascinating to watch in a theater!

Fiona's family left their ancient home on the Ron Mor Island, and Fiona's little brother, Jamie, was lost. Now Fiona is staying with her grandparents on the Western Islands of Scotland. Fiona is certain that she can find her lost brother, and she befriends a tribe of seals who seem to guide her in her search. The family legends speak of a selkie woman who married into their family many generations ago, and Fiona will have to return to Ron Mor to unravel the past and bring her family together again.

I loved watching the movie "The Secret of Roan Inish" when I was a girl, and I was delighted to find that the book has the same charm and mystery as the movie. The plot is a little simpler in this book, and a few of the characters and a couple of the old legends that were in the movie are not in the book. But the bones of the story are there, and all the beauty of the islands and the history of this rich culture of fishermen are wonderfully described.

I loved the writing style! Each scene has a charm that delighted me. The descriptions of the sea and the seals and the seagulls pulled me into the story, and all the mystery of nature and ancient legends enchanted me. The mystery of Jamie is fascinating!

Fiona is an adorable character. She is such a sweet little girl, and very determined to bring her family together again. She has a fierce personality in a quiet and gentle way. She is small and feminine, but also courageous and hearty. Her grandparents have such strong personalities, and I loved all their dialogue with their Celtic accents.

What an absolute delight! I can't believe I waited this long to read this wonderful classic children's book. A new favorite!

Catherine and Heathcliff grow up together and learn to love each other, but Heathcliff is an orphan with no family name and no future. Catherine is the only daughter of a gentleman, and knows that she cannot marry so far below her station. The two are embroiled in a tempestuous romance that breaks more than one heart and spans over generations with far-reaching revenge and hatred.

Short Review- This isn't a romance; it's a revenge story. Everyone is miserable. I can recognize the genius of the writing, but the subject material is too violent and evil for me to enjoy reading it.

Extensive Review-
Plot:
I love this plot structure. It really keeps you guessing, and there is always something happening and some circumstance that is changing for the characters. The relationships between the characters drive the story, and every little detail in the dialogue points to some deep emotion under the surface.
There is also a lot of violence, some of which made me nauseated to read about. There is a lot of verbal abuse, emotional abuse, and physical abuse. There is murder and revenge and illness and lies and betrayal and hatred and spite and conceit and every kind of evil! It's exhausting.

Whenever one tiny little ray of sunshine penetrates the gloom of this plot, you know you can't trust it. You know that the evil will soon return and crush everything that is good or happy. Some people like and enjoy that kind of drama, but it makes me depressed.

Writing Style:
The writing really is powerful, and it sucks you into this vortex of darkness and chaos. Every scene is tense and emotional. Even in the few happy scenes where some poor character finds one small moment of tranquility, you are waiting... waiting for the other shoe to drop and for the wicked one to swoop in and wreak destruction. Tension. Fascination as you watch for the train wreck that you know is coming.

I think a big part of why there is so much tension is that Emily Bronte reveals the semi-ending to us right at the beginning when the tenant, Mr. Lockwood, first meets Heathcliff and his household. We see the end result of Heathcliff's life, his misery and despair. We already know that Catherine is dead. We already see a second generation suffering and miserable too. Then we hear their stories from the beginning (told by the housekeeper, Ellen (Nelly)), and we know the train wreck is coming. The fascination lies in how did the train wreck occur.

Setting:
The setting is so very isolated. Many times I wondered, how could these awful things happen?! Where is the magistrate? Where is the cleric? Where is the constable? Where are the kind neighbors to lend a hand? Well, Wuthering Heights is out on the desolate moors, miles away from the village. There is no one to help. No one to hear the screams and the tears. No one to see the bruises and cuts. You can really feel the loneliness in this remote setting.

Characters:
The characters are each so vivid in their own ways. They all have deeply complex personalities. Heathcliff is a violent brute, but you can understand why he does what he does. He's utterly evil through and through, and he spends the entire book taking out his horrible revenge, and I hate him with every fiber of my being, but I can understand his reasons. He really is nasty, but he is a well-written character.

Catherine is foolish and headstrong and selfish. I don't think she quite intends to be evil, she just ends up that way because she is spoiled and stupid. She's wonderfully fierce! You can feel her power and her influence radiating off the page. She's mesmerizing. I can't stand her. But I can't look away.

Isabella is silly. Hindley is ferocious and scary. Joseph is disgusting. Nelly is the only one with any common sense, but she is ineffectual at curbing anyone's foolishness. Edgar is a little weak in the beginning, but he finds his footing later on. But they are all complex, well-written, interesting, and vivid people. They feel quite real.

Most of the second generation of characters are very stupid and weak. I was frustrated with young Cathy, and Linton, and Hareton. (Why doesn't anybody in this book ever listen to the good advice Nelly gives them?) However, I did find it fascinating to see the "sins of the father" being inflicted on the next generation, as they play out the same roles as their parents did. I think this plot structure is absolute genius.

Duality:
There are so many mirror images and striking opposites in this book! There are two main houses, two families, and two generations. One household is refined and lives on an orderly estate. One household is as wild and untamed as the windy moors they live on. A person is abused, then he becomes the abuser. I could go on and on about all the intriguing symbolism and the contrasts in each character.

I think it's amazing to see how the characters begin to define themselves and their own personality, their own sphere of life, by comparing themselves to the house down the way, and saying "I'm not like THAT." Part of their confirmation of their own identity in their own mind is the comparison to what is their opposite. And this is not just for the reader's benefit; this is an integral part of the character's own personal growth and developing personality. And people of both houses do this, looking at the others and saying "I'm glad I'm not like THEM." It's brilliant. It's fascinating. I love it!

Themes:
Love-This book is an interesting exploration of the idea of love. I'm not sure that anyone in the entire book knows what it is or experiences actual love.
What Heathcliff and Catherine have, they call "love", but it isn't. It's a perverted obsession with each other.
Young Cathy was bullied into a pitying "love" that she never really felt. Isabella fell into an infatuation type of "love" that was based on wishes instead of reality.
What Nelly feels for the little children she cares for might be closer to real love, since she truly wishes them well and would do almost anything to help them grow healthy and good. However, her feelings, although affectionate and warm, seem to lack the intensity of a true love.

What Edgar feels for his wife and daughter I think is the closest thing to real love in this book. Therefore Edgar is my favorite character. The only part of the entire book that I really enjoyed was when

Spoiler

Edgar punched Heathcliff in the throat.

This is my favorite scene not so much because of the actual action in the scene, but because of Edgar's personality and courage in this moment. I think it was true love that spurred his actions.

Family and Social Structure- There are various families and generations that we get to see intimately in this book, each one different and with its own flaws and strengths. Their social position plays a large part in how the characters regulate their behavior.

Is family a place where we belong? Heathcliff is sort of adopted by Catherine's father, but he doesn't really belong to the family.
Is family a source of identity? Catherine decides who to marry based on her ideas of what is due to her family name. Her family identity hampers her freedom.
Is family the people you are loyal to? Catherine marries one person, but her loyalties lie with someone else.
Is family the people you acknowledge as your tribe? Young Cathy has completely different relationships with her two cousins, Linton and Hareton. She is happy to acknowledge one cousin as family, but is distressed to learn that the other is related to her.
Is family the people that you love? Heathcliff abuses his family mercilessly. He uses his only real family, his wife and son, as pawns in his revenge.
What exactly is family, and what does it mean? Apparently it means nothing to these people. Young Cathy and her father have the only really decent family relationship in the entire book.


Of course, there are many other themes about the role of women, the nature of friendship, pride, morality, courage, cowardice, compassion or the lack of it, and a dozen other things that are explored by different characters at different times. But (contrary to what you might think if you have read this far) this is not a doctoral essay, and I don't have time to write about them all.


Final Thoughts:
Overall, I just hate this book. I could go on and on about how I know it's brilliant and fascinating, but I still hate reading it. I hated reading it the first time as a teen, and I hated reading it this second time as an adult. Ugh. It's just way too dark and violent for me. It's genius. It's depressing. I hate it.

This is a very polarizing book. I have never met anyone who was "meh" about this book. You either love it passionately, or you hate it vehemently. There is no in-between. And that just shows how genius it really is. You may love or hate Emily Bronte's book, but you cannot ignore it.

Louisa May Alcott is best known as the author of the popular classic Little Women. However, her life before she became a famous authoress was full of difficulty. She grew up poor and needy in an unstable though loving home. Her sisters, whom she immortalized as the March sisters, were her closest friends and companions. But it was her parents, Abbey and Bronson Alcott, who had the deepest influence on her life.

Bronson Alcott was insane. He literally had insanity running in his family tree. He told people he was "the Messiah of education", and thought he would completely reform the American education system. However, all his attempts to start a school failed miserably once the parents found out what nonsense he was teaching their children. He was more interested in his daydreams than in providing for his family's everyday needs, so it fell to Abby and eventually to Louisa to work and scrape to put food on the table.

To make a few dollars here and there, Louisa took odd jobs, sometimes as companion to rich relations, and she wrote little sensation stories and sketches for magazines. She also worked as a hospital nurse during the Civil War, where she contracted pneumonia and was treated with a medicine that had mercury in it. Her health never fully recovered, and she suffered from the effects of mercury poisoning for the rest of her life.

In the midst of illness and poverty, she began to write in earnest, eventually writing Little Women, which became an instant best-seller and made her a rich woman. She used most of her money to help her family, to fund her nephews' and niece's education, and to help the poor.

This book is not exactly pleasant to read, because Louisa's life was not exactly pleasant. There is a lot of heartache and disappointment. Someone in the family is almost always ill, collapsing from overwork, stressed and frustrated. One by one, friends abandon them, schemes for employment fall through, and relations die suddenly, leaving behind a grieving Louisa.

It was inspiring to read about how Louisa triumphed over her difficult circumstances, and I admire her courage and tenacity, and of course the brilliance of her writing. However, this book just made me sad. There is so much focus on the negative things in her life.

I think the illustrations make this look as if it should be a book for children or teens, but the subject material is quite dark at times. The art style is very cartoonish and fun, but the tone of the book is sad.

I was not particularly impressed with the writing style. It was fine, and I found it interesting to read, but there were little things that I felt could have been explained in a better way. Some of the information was repeated again in different chapters, and I felt it was redundant. I would have liked more of a focus on Louisa and her sisters, rather than so much of the book being taken up with weird Bronson and morose Abby.


Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a free and honest review. All the opinions stated here are my own true thoughts, and are not influenced by anyone.

The chicken who crossed the road gets hit by a truck and becomes a poultrygeist. The other animal ghosts insist that now that the chicken is dead, he has to haunt people and scare them. But chicken is nice. He doesn't want to scare anyone. Can he convince the other ghosts that he's not a scary chicken?

This book is so funny! Poor chicken has to deal with the afterlife and all those other ghosts bullying him to be scary like them. At one point, chicken breaks the fourth wall and asks the reader if they are okay and not too scared. It's hilarious!

I liked the illustrations and the creepy art style. The animal ghosts make mean faces to convince chicken to be mean too, but chicken himself is just sweet and cute. It's a little bit scary, but not too much. The illustrations have wonderful dark backgrounds, and the ghosts seem to shimmer and glow on the page. It's just perfect for this type of book!

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a free and honest review. All the opinions stated here are my own true thoughts, and are not influenced by anyone.

Two friends start a contest to see who is the ugliest monster. They try on weird wigs and funny hats to prove how ugly they are. They make silly faces and point out their crazy google eyes and big fur. When a third monster joins in, they will finally discover who the ugliest monster in the world really is.

This book is so funny and cute! I just loved the friendliness between all three of the monsters. They are just having a fun time being silly and joking around. I could imagine this exact dialogue between three children.

I love the colorful illustrations! The monsters are each so brightly colored and their character designs are really funny. Their facial expressions make the silliness of the book come alive. I love that the art style is a little under-stated or minimalistic. Each scene focuses on one key element on the page, and there isn't a lot in the background cluttering things up. Beautiful art!

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a free and honest review. All the opinions stated here are my own true thoughts, and are not influenced by anyone.

Dos amigos inician un concurso para ver quién es el monstruo más feo. Se prueban pelucas raras y sombreros divertidos para demostrar lo feos que son. Hacen muecas y locos ojos. Cuando un tercer monstruo se une, finalmente descubrirán quién es realmente el monstruo más feo del mundo.

¡Este libro es tan divertido y lindo! Me encantó la amabilidad entre los tres monstruos. Se están divirtiendo haciendo tonterías y bromeando. Podía imaginar este diálogo exacto entre tres niños.

¡Me encantan las ilustraciones coloridas! Los monstruos tienen colores brillantes y los diseños de sus personajes son realmente divertidos. Sus expresiones faciales hacen que la tontería del libro cobre vida. Me encanta que el estilo artístico sea un poco subestimado o minimalista. Cada escena se centra en un elemento clave de la página, y no hay mucho en el fondo que desordene las cosas. ¡Hermoso arte!

Descargo de responsabilidad: Recibí una copia de este libro del editor a cambio de una revisión gratuita y honesta. Todas las opiniones expresadas aquí son mis propios pensamientos verdaderos y no están influenciadas por nadie.

This Christmas classic is beautifully illustrated in a new edition with artwork by P.J. Lynch. The well-known poetry about St. Nick comes alive once more when accompanied with such lovely illustrations!

I just adore this sweet poem! It's never quite Christmas until someone says Santa has "a little round belly that shook when he laughed like a bowl full of jelly." This poem makes "visions of sugar plums danced in their heads" the rallying cry of all Christmas joy.

The illustrations are dusky and soft. There is an atmosphere of mystery and magic on every page. The setting is deliciously old-fashioned and traditional with a beautiful Christmas tree decorated with stars and ornaments and gingerbread. There is a massive fireplace and stockings and old-timey cooking utensils and pots nearby.

This would be the perfect book to read aloud while curling up with a cozy cup of hot chocolate under the twinkle lights of the Christmas tree!

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a free and honest review. All the opinions stated here are my own true thoughts, and are not influenced by anyone.