To “pay attention” to the world around you is rule #1 of a life well lived, as this winning middle-grade novel shows. *Pay Attention, Carter Jones by Gary Schmidt.  Clarion, 2019, 217 pages. Reading Level: Middle Grades, ages 10-12 Recommended for: ages 10-15 It’s no picnic having the man of the house away on deployment, even though it’s in Germany and supposedly out of danger.  Carter’s mom isn’t handling it well.  On an especially hectic day, the first day of 6th grade for Carter (and other grades for his three sisters), the jeep isn’t running and the household is in an uproar.  In the midst of the chaos, Carter answers…

Ladies, are you enjoying your chosen books for our Faith, Fiction, & Fellowship read-along? Faith, Fiction, & Fellowship Discussion, Week 2 If you’ve purchased the official reading guide, you’ll have plenty of questions to help you think about the themes and connections in the books. But to help get the conversation going, here are a couple of week two’s questions that work for any of the books. (Feel free to answer in the comment section! We’re also going to dive into these in the Facebook group for the read-along.) Question 1: The book of Ruth begins with grief and mourning. How do Ruth and Naomi grieve? What are the safety nets…

I’m old enough to remember a time when “comics” were frowned upon as a cheap, inferior form of literature that kids shouldn’t be wasting their time on. Most kids (including me) ignored those frowns, spending hours at the local drug store pawing through the comics rack for Little Lulu and Denis the Menace. These days, after a decades-long struggle for respectability, “graphic novels” are an accepted, even highly-regarded art form. Graphic novels for kids have long outgrown superheroes, Scrooge McDuck and Richie Rich; now they breathe new life into classic stories, explain science concepts, illustrate history, and serve as a gateway into literary fiction like The Giver and A Wrinkle…

Two recent graphic-novel adaptations of classic stories have their strengths, but overall demonstrate the adage, “the book is better.” A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle, adapted and illustrated by Hope Larson.  Farrar Strauss Giroux, 2012, 391 pages. The James Patterson blurb on the back cover praises the “colorful panels” but the first thing a reader notices is that the only actual color is blue.  It’s hard to understand this decision.  With so many pages to produce, color might have seemed too expensive, but any adaptation of a popular classic might be expected to sell itself.  Splashes of color would have been a welcome addition to certain parts of the…