Fifteen year-old Oscar attends a boarding school in Barcelona in 1980.  Intrigued by architecture and a sense of adventure, he likes to go explore the abandoned mansions that line the streets near his school.  Lured in by a ghostly opera melody, Oscar finds himself in a very much inhabited mansion and unwittingly steals a gold pocket watch.  When Oscar finds the courage to return the pocket watch, he finds that the inhabitants of the dilapidated mansion include a girl his age, Marina, and her father, German.  Fueled by a shared sense of adventure, Marina leads Oscar to an abandoned graveyard with an unmarked stone that a veiled lady in black visits at the same time once a week, leaving a single red rose.  

A gothic mystery with a touch of romance and plenty of adventure, Marina provided a good mix that made for a perfect read.  The abandoned and forgotten mansions, graveyards and theaters made for a perfect setting, where a mystery is just waiting to be solved.  Zafon's writing style adds to the overall mysterious but romantic feeling, a rich, descriptive prose that gave me just enough to get lost in the words and the world that Marina and Oscar had discovered.  The friendship and budding romance of Oscar and Marina, is done with a perfect touch, it is not overwhelming and the sense that there is something more to their relationship grown throughout the book to give way to an absolutely heartbreaking ending.  While written for teens and with teen characters, Marina reads much like an adult novel.  This book definitely makes me want to read my other Zafon books that are sitting on the shelf.  

This book was received for free in return for an honest review.  

By: Patience Mason and Robert Mason

A very unique ABC book aimed at children who are learning or working on their alphabet.  Patience Mason has created whimsical forest creatures using natural materials to bring together nature and alphabetical learning concepts. For example, Clarice the Caterpillar who "inched along singing a song."  Not only are the woodland litter critters super cute, but they would be easy to recreate as an extension activity. 

Thank you to Patience and Robert Mason for giving me this book in return for an honest review.  It will make a great addition to the nature center's library!

A unique book that shrinks down concepts that are hard to wrap your brain around to a familiar and smaller scale. 

This book was helpful to me, even as an adult and I know I would have loved this book as a child.  Besides putting large concepts on a smaller scale for comparison, seeing things on a smaller scale also helps us see the significance of everything we have.  For example, "If all the water on Earth were represented by 100 glasses...97 of the glasses would be filled with salt water...3 of the glasses would contain fresh water.  One of the glasses would represent all the fresh water available to us."  With colorful and imaginative pictures, these concepts can be seen in a new and easily relateable way.   If... explores concepts from the galaxy, to species diversity, to money distribution, energy usages and population dynamics.  At the end there is also extra information about activities to build more things to scale.  A great book for wondering minds. 

This book was received for free in return for an honest review.

The Casquette Girls is a Young Adult, paranormal novel set in the aftermath of the storm in the New Orleans French Quarter.  Adele and her father decide to return home to their storm ravaged city, thankfully their historical home has minimal damage.  Adele was not about to go back to the boarding school in Paris with her mother who barely saw her the entire time she was there.  Upon their return, Adele is not only attacked by a weird bird in their house, but notices several strange but beautiful guys showing up in the abandoned city all wanting to be around her.  A power within Adele grows and as she finds out secrets of her families past, the danger mounts. 

This story had an extremely slow build, but it was totally worth it.  The setting of the New Orleans French Quarter is spooky enough, but after the storm, the choice of the pretty much abandoned city made for an eerie setting.  With all of it's history and culture, voodoo, witches, vampires. werewolves and century-old curses fit right in. Adele is a very believable 16 year-old character and I got to know her very well in the first third of the story.  Her actions and behaviors were well thought out and I'm glad that she did not completely fall for the first hunky vampire that she saw (or the second, or the third...).  I really enjoyed reading about the Adele's ancestor and the voyage of the original Casquette Girls.  I do love dual time stories and a little bit of history.  I did have a question about the very end, but there was a lot going on then and it was a very exciting ending...it may just need a re-read.


This book was received for free in return for an honest review.