November Reads, children's and YA

Three Times Lucky by Sheila Turnage showed up on early Newbery prediction lists. I was drawn to it immediately because I love a good Southern novel and it sports a fantastic wrap-around cover by Gilbert Ford.

While I adored the characters of Mo, Dale, and the Colonel, I could not embrace the whole story. My particular thorn was when the relationship between Miss Lana and the Colonel was revealed. That whole resolution was anything but for me. Poor Mo, desperate to hear about her real parents, and yet knows nothing. This is supposed to be a contemporary novel and I just could not suspend my disbelief that no one knew who her mother is or where she came from. (Also, the book is too long and the story dragged.)

Oh Code Name Verity, you make reading such a rewarding experience. That nice artistic empty space on your cover will have a lovely medal on it for sure. Likely more than one so get used to it. It was worth the nearly 6 month wait for my local library to stock you.

To nit pick, (which is not a metaphor in the book. ugh.) I am not a fan of using a narrator's journal writing for an entire novel. You wrote that by hand, in the dark, injured, freezing, with a broken pencil, on music pages, in 15 minutes? Sure you did. But here, it works because it is so masterfully done. And with our unreliable narrator and twisted story, maybe it did and maybe it didn't.