I highly recommend Invincible Summer. This book is very well written. It keeps your attention to the point were you cannot put the book down. Robin was speechless when the doctor told her she had leukemia. Dr. Schwartz said, "All indications are that Robin has acute lymphocytic leukemia." I believe girls from the age eleven and older would enjoy this book the most because it is a love story. For example, the book tells about how two people met in a difficult time and despite everything they fell in love. "I will always love you, I wish I can marry you right now," Robin tells Rick. If you like to read love stories, then this is the perfect book for you.

I LOVE this book because it shows what people with Leukemia go through, feeling all alone and that it takes someone else with Leukemia to comfort them because they understand what they're going through. This story made me think about how I act to people with cancer.

This book tells the story of Robin and Rick, and their battles against cancer. In a beautifully simple way, it reveals the pain, the anger, and the fear all those who face a serious illness suffer, with their loved ones. Some of the scenes are absolutely hilarious (Litvark, anyone?) and some are so poignant, they brought me to tears. A sensitive, beautiful life-affirming look at the realities of illness and death. One of the best young adult books I have ever read.

The Summer of Riley by Eve Bunting is a coming of age story of an eleven year old boy named William. William must deal with the recent death of a grandfather along with the acceptance of his parents separation.
His mother drives him into to Portland, Oregon to secure the one thing that could help William get through this difficult time during his life. He picks out a Lab from the pound which the previous owners had named Riley.
Riley is the best thing that has happened to William since the death of his grandfather, until Riley decides to chase the neighbors prize winning racehorse.
It this hearbreaking twist of fate, Riley is taken from William because it is the law in Oregon that any animal that chases livestock must be put to death. William and his best friend Grace must come up with a plan to save Riley while facing strong opposition. Will they have enough time to do what needs to be done to save Riley?
This book is heartwarming and charming. The young man William, who is the dominant character in this book, overcomes many obstacles that children this age can identify with. He must deal with death, the divorce of his parents, and a broken relationship with his father. With the absence of Riley, he must focus and deal with all of these stuggles.
I would higly recommend this book for any 4-6 grader or even any reader who enjoys a good animal story.

This book is about a boy named William. William's grandfather dies and his parent's are divorced. To help make things better his mom gets him a dog named Riley. William thinks riley is the perfect dog but one day Riley chases his neighbors horse. The neighbor calls a pound and the people come and take Riley away.They say Riley has to be put to sleep William and his friend Grace are trying to save Riley but can they? To make things worse the school bully is on the horses side and is trying to get Riley put to sleep. Who will win. Find out by reading this book. It is one of my favorites.

I gave this book 5 stars because I love this book. It shows how a young boy can grow a bond with a dog in a few days, and also how hard someone will work to save a life even though they might never see them again. I recommend this book to everyone who loves animals. This book is well-written and it kept my interest.
This book is about a kid named William whose grandfather died and his mother got him a dog to help him out with the death.Well the dog seemed perfect but it chased a old horse. And the pond was called Riley was supposed to be euthanized. William and his friends are trying to save his life.

I realy liked this book but i thought the scenes with dawson and joey got a bit boring but i loved the parts with pacy and jen they were the best and the ending was good too. I think this book is likeable becouse it has many themes.

I loved this book cause I am a Dawson's Creek fan.It was a very good book. It gives good detels. I could even hear the characters realy talking. They made it seam so real. I realy liked it so much it made me want to go buy the other books that where also great.I wish they would make more books though.

This book was great. Even though I love the show and it really wouldn't matter to me if it was good or bad, I still think that it was sensational. I couldn't put it down when I started reading it.The story had alot of twists to it,so anyone can enjoy it. If you truly ARE a Dawsons Creek fan, then this book is a must. Buy it while it last. And trust me, you will want to read it over and over again.

You can tell that the author is also a poet because this book is very, very perfumy. Very, very detailed. A whole chapter almost on the trails that a sea gull makes. Beautifully written but very little context. Should have instead been made into a 5 page short story. Would love to meet this person and be friends with her though. She would make a great next door neighbor it seems! :) If you like Barbara Kingsolver style writing you will probably love this book but if you prefer the Memoir style writing of Joan Anderson of A Year by the Sea (also taking place on Cape Cod) this isn't the book for you.

This is one of the best books I have read in a while. I have been on a nonfiction kick for a few months. As a college student I don't often have much time to devote to "reading for pleasure" but since I'm on vacation I've had a little time. Reading this book in February brought me right back to June and July. It's descriptions were wonderful and reminded me why I love the beach. The author's reflections on her relationships seem to echo my own feelings that I can't express. I would recommend this book to anyone who loves the beach and enjoys being there by themself or with a loved one!

This book is destined to become a classic not only in the rich field of Cape Cod writing but in nature and memoir in general. Huntington's prose is simple and pure, evoking not only the outer landscape, but the inner landscape of a woman's mind. What a pleasure it is to be in a mind so generous, open, and curious about the world! This is a book I will read over and over.

I also read this book when I was around 8 or 9. I always dreamed of having a pony, and reading this book helped me feel what it was like to have one. I have looked everywhere for this one and the sequel Winter Pony. I am excited to finally locate something about them. I got my first pony shortly after reading these books, and he was in sad shape. I fixed him up and showed him just like the girl in the book. Ah memories.... Thanks

Ginny has always wanted a pony and when her parents agree to rent one for her, it is nothing like she thought it would be. Read the book to find out what happens and believe me it's great.

I first read this when I was nine, and 13 years later, I still love it! The characters, the emotions, and especially the "horse sense" are all so real and so well-developed. Anyone who loves horses or can remember being obessesed with them as kids, should read this and reread it! It's a dear book.

This book is about Jake Sherman. He doesn't want to
go to summer camp but his mom made him go. His friends don't want to go either but Jake's mom told their mom to go too. Jake's sister is very selfish because she took Jake's donuts. Then the bus arrives. Jake's friends' names are Josh and Andy.
While they are going to the camp, Jake sleeps. Then when he wakes up, the cool guys call him Sleeping Beauty. There is a dork named Peter that nobody likes.Jake, Peter, and the three cool guys share the same cabin. Everyone picks on Peter. The cool guys make Jake to pick on Peter too.
He puts a plastic bag on Peter's cup. Then the juice spills on him. He doesn't want to pick on Peter but he does it because he wants to fit in with the cool guys. Then when he sleeps and wakes up, he is on the bus again.He is trapped at camp. Then he knows what to do. He should teach Peter some self-defense
and everything will be back to normal.
He teaches him that. But he gets stuck for six days. Then Peter starts to defend himself. Then when Jake goes to sleep and wakes up, he is at the second day of camp. Everything went back to normal.

By: Grigor Papazyan
Marshall Fundamental/Pasadena

The book I read was Help I'm trapped in First Day of Summer Camp by Todd Strasser. I liked the story because the days keep repeating and each day it was funnier then the previous one. My favorite character was Josh. The story took place at camp and it was interesting because each day something different happened. I would recommend this book to other people because it was both funny and interesting.

My 9 yo boy loves this series so I gave this one a quick read and was very pleased. This particular book explores the problems of kids (boys in particular) as they try to firgure out how to behave when confronted with kids who seem 'cool' but are mean. The first day repeats itself for Jake until he gets it right. The first time he is mean to the oddball so he can be accepted by the 'cool' guys. The 2nd day he ends up starting a fight with the mean kids to defend the 'dork' they are picking on. The third day he gets it right by helping the 'dork' to stand up for himself and get the other kids who are standing by to unite against the two who really are mean, and force them to back off.

The book is written at just the right level for my 4th grader with a bit of humor and belevable dialogue. It amuses him and I am glad he gets an important message without feeling preached to.

Frenchtown Summer is a book written in verse form. It is written from the point of view of Eugene, a 12-year-old, and tells the story of his summer living in Frenchtown, hence the title.

I was disappointed in this book. When I first saw it, I thought since it was short it would be very easy to read. This book was 113 pages long, but it took me 4 days to read it, which is sad since usually I finish books in this format in a day.

This book has no plot. All it is is this kid telling about different things that happened in his summer. The only thing close to a plot is him feeling separated from his family, especially his father, and then at the end he finally feels close to him. But that is just a minor part of the story, the rest of it is just descriptions of random things. The first few chapters aren't too boring or anything. They set the stage and setting for what seems like a good story. But then the rest of the chapters pretty much just describe random things. All of those random chapters are tied together slightly, but not enough to make it a good story.

If you are looking for an action-packed story, find another book. Even if you are looking for a book that describes a 12-year-old's summer, there are better books out there. If you are looking for a good book of poems that tells a good story, tying in the random chapters really well, there are also better books out there. Try Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse or What My Mother Doesn't Know by Sonya Sones. If you are looking for a book that you can finish fast and read easily, don't be misled, this isn't one of them. This book just doesn't have that element that good books have that keep you wanting to read more. Sure, it's not the most boring book I've read, but it's sure one of them.

The way the verses are written isn't bad. They are actually written pretty well. This is a talented author, but this book isn't one of his best.

This book was chosin in a book club at my school as the next book to read. I thought when I first saw it that it was small so it would probably be pretty boring, but easy to read. After I had begun to read it I found that it was anything but boring. Many different things occur that are mysterious or hard to understand. After reading the book within a couple of hours I had a couple of questions that lingered in my mind about it, with several different answeres that I could think up. When we were all done my club hada group discussion and answered some of those questions. I reccomend this book just because it is so mysterious yet easy to read. ~4 stars~

Magnificent sights, sounds, smells, and emotions; all intertwined into one book, written in verse. A young male, one extremely eminent summer. Many different memories, some more outstanding than others.

Eugene, pushing his way through a summer in the 1930's in the book Frenchtown Summer by Robert Cormier.

A summer of new experiences: his first love, interesting conversations with friends, arguments with fiends, dealing with death, and the airplane, being the most outstanding. Throughout the story, Eugene complains of how he feels "like a ghost on Mechanic Street, transparent as rain..." especially to his father, who rarely paid attention to him. The airplane represents the stretch between him and his father contracting.

"First, a wink of color, orange, in the corner of my eyes, at the far end of an alley between two three-deckers." Eugene finally, vividly, describes (like the rest of the chapters) the airplane. "...I tossed my paper bag to the sidewalk and followed the flash of orange to a backyard where I saw, unbelievably, and airplane, orange, yes, with lightning streaks of white on the fuselage..." Eugene thinks that the airplane has landed in a back yard of someone in Frenchtown, but no one believes him. His father then mentions it, and Eugene is enthused by his father seeing it as well.

If looking from above into someone else's life from a different time period than today, not to mention the wonderful details of everything, from Eugene's new glasses, to his 'silent uncle' interests you then I would suggest Frenchtown Summer to you.

This is really more of a novella than a novel. It's very short, and it's written in a very casual teenage point-of-view kind of way that makes it a very quick read.

It's difficult to say very much about this book without spoiling it and giving away the ending, since very little happens until the very end.

I can say that it seems to be pretending to be an exploration of callous predatory gang behavior amongst bored middle class teens, but it doesn't succeed. It fails because it's too neat and too tidy to ever take on any real life. In fact, the ultimate ending and resolution is so neat as to be utterly ridiculous and it makes a total mockery of everything before, defeating all narrative credibility.

This book also comes across as a pre-novelized screenplay. I saw the movie 30 years ago, and I was fairly disturbed by it at the time. I am reading this book now that I am middle aged to try and look further into it. I can now safely say that there's nothing more to it, so you'd really be better off sticking to the movie. The movie is shorter to watch and is a more pleasant visual exprience.

Anyway, in terms of actual content, I'd give this book one and a half stars. But the author is a very skillful writer, so I gave it 3 stars for that: for evocative technique and carefully crafted structure. The author makes a passing reference to Hemingway in the book by having two of his characters share a private feeling in public by alluding to a book by an author, i.e., Hemingway, that they are both fans of. And what with the very spare style this is written in, I guess you could view this book as a sort of homage to Hemingway. And maybe fans of hemingway would also like this book, I don't know, since I'm not one of them.

Told in the sparest of prose, this dark coming of age novel recounts the loss of innocence of three teens on a posh summer resort island in the sixties. pulling away from the lighter activities of thier peers, the three create a private world fraught with social isolation and not so subtle sexual undertones. when a less sophisticated, kinder girl lonely for acceptence tries to penetrate the trio's barriers, tensions escalate with disturbing outcomes. the novel is brief but brutal, evoking the less idyllic flipside of the love generation. while it's detached and spartan prose may make it difficult for some to get involved in, Last Summer is makes for an interesting, ruthless glimpse into the perils of adolesence and the corrosive nature of peer pressure.

Evan Hunter's Last Summer is an incredible period piece, but more than that it is an engaging look at the coming of age of three teens. Warning, this is no sugar-coated nostalgia. This is hard-hitting and real. Emotions run from joy through callousness, and never blink. A movie version came close to capturing the mood of the book.

Although the premise of this small novel is intriguing, especially given current events at a national and world level, The Last Summer of Reason is not worth the time. Yes, the manuscript was discovered after the author's death, which leads to a certain romanticism about him and the work. However, it is still an unfinished, unpolished, unfocused book, badly in need of revision and editing.

It is obvious that this book was still in manuscript form when it was discovered. My belief is that the author would have edited out certain passages, tightened up some of the prose, and fleshed out what is now only lightly sketched. Still, as a reader, I felt extraordinarily privileged in being able to read what was here. The novel is chilling and achingly beautiful. There are turns of phrase that are breath-taking, and there are descriptions of totalitarianism that caused my chest to constrict in dread. Reading this book is like reading novels written in the wake of fascism or Stalinism--the idea that all is controlled, no one is to be trusted, the only safety is within one's own head. But it is the meditations on books--on what books mean and how they mean--that is the true gem in this book. And the comparison of how one Book (be it Bible, Koran, or Little Red Book) can be given such power that it must eliminate all competition that comes from other books. And his thoughts on gender and what totalitarianism does to sexual relationships is deeply moving. There are so many things in this book to talk about. I grieve that its author is not around to participate in those discussions.

Tahar Djout's words are absolutely beautiful. A lyrical sledgehammer....this book is ironic in its timing. The reader is given an idea of what it is like to live in a world of extremism and religious fanaticism. Wole Soyinka's introduction is worth the price. Invest a day in reading the words of the late author and think about the fanatics among you. Could we all become Djouts?

My first attempt at reviewing this book never appeared on the page; I think it's because I called Morgause a nasty name. LOL. So, my reviews for this book and the following book, _Guinevere: The Legend in Autumn_, will be out of order.

I didn't plan on reading this book, since I was disappointed with its prequel, _Child of the Northern Spring_. But I was in an Arthurian mood, and saw the last two volumes at the library, and said "Hey, what the heck." And I was pleasantly surprised by books two and three; I'm glad I changed my mind and read them.

_Queen of the Summer Stars_ starts slowly; Guinevere seems more like a fly-on-the-wall narrator than a character for the first half of the book. She constantly regales us with all of the doings in Camelot--every banquet, affair, and border skirmish. But she doesn't talk much about what's going on in her own head. The result of this is that, whenever she suddenly acts with strong emotion, it comes out of left field. For example, at one point she lets two strangers talk her into trading a treasured family heirloom for a fertility potion from a Saxon witch. The scene was shocking because, while we knw Gwen is sad about her barrenness, we never knew she was *that* desperate. The emotional buildup wasn't there, so her actions were unexpected.

However, Guinevere comes out of her shell as a character when she begins to fall in love with Lancelot. They hadn't always been close. When Lance first came to Camelot, he was standoffish and rude to her. She disliked him even though he was a dead ringer for her childhood sweetheart. But they developed a friendship over the years, and then one fateful night, Lancelot rescues a delirious Guinevere from the tyrannical Maelgwn. She thinks he spoke words of love during their night ride--but was it just the delirium talking? A dream? Or long-denied truth? Now, Guinevere and Lancelot struggle to figure out a way to acknowledge their love without betraying Arthur. This book presents perhaps the classiest, most dignified portrait of that romance of any retelling I have ever read, and for that I commend the author highly.

Guinevere has the chance to run away with Lancelot and live happily ever after--but Arthur needs her, and so does her new adopted son, Mordred. Mordred is Arthur's son by the vulgar and vicious Morgause; after Morgause's death, Guinevere cares for him, though Arthur refuses to get close to the boy. Guinevere must make tough choices, and nothing will ever be the same again at Camelot.

So, although I didn't expect to like this book, I was proven wrong. I recommend it, especially for the touching portrayal of the Guinevere-Lancelot romance. See also the third book, _Guinevre: The Legend in Autumn_.

I read this book for the first time about 10 years ago and I have re-read it many times since. You should start with the first book, "Child of the Northern Spring", then "Queen of the Summer Stars", then finally "Guinevere: A Legend in Autumn." Persia Woolley is actually the first author of an Arthurian romance to make me cry. I never wanted these books to end. They are so well written, and Guinevere is neither weak nor a feminist. She's absolutely wonderful. The way the affair with Lancelot is written is just some of the most beautiful that I've ever read. Not torrid and steamy, but soft and romantic. A very beautiful trilogy of books.

I first read this book when I was 13 years old, and I was immediately intrigued. But don't mistake me to mean it's full of juvenile content. Quite the contrary. This book is a beautiful story told from Guinevere's point of view as an elegantly spirited woman struggling to balance her instincts of freedom and love with her sense of regal duty as queen of Camelot and greater Britain. Not to mention her heart-wrenching dilemma between Arthur and Lancelot...I couldn't put it down! And I have read it again many times since. This is definitely not your average romance novel. It focuses on the enchanting story of a remarkable and inspiring woman's life instead of just graphic love scenes amidst a mediocre plot. I would imagine that many women today can relate to Guinevere's struggles. Ever since I first read this, I've been fascinated with the legend of Camelot, and I immediately searched for the prequel and sequel of this wonderful novel. I can't imagine why these books are out of print. Please let me know where I can find a reasonably priced edition of "Guinevere: The Legend in Autumn." Enjoy!