Dream Within A Dream

Title: Again, but Better Author: Christine Riccio Publisher: Wednesday Books Publication Date: May 7, 2019 Synopsis: From one of the most followed booktubers today, comes Again, but Better , a story about second chances, discovering yourself, and being brave enough to try again.  Shane has been doing college all wrong. Pre-med, stellar grades, and happy parents…sounds ideal—but Shane's made zero friends, goes home every weekend, and romance…what’s that? Her life has been dorm, dining hall, class, repeat. Time's a ticking, and she needs a change—there's nothing like moving to a new country to really mix things up. Shane signs up for a semester abroad in London. She's going to right all her college mistakes: make friends, pursue boys, and find adventure!  Easier said than done. She is soon faced with the complicated realities of living outside her bubble, and when self-doubt sneaks in, her new life starts to fall apart. Shane comes to find that, with the right amount...

The people I tend to admire most are the ordinary citizens who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances and who act bravely in the face of danger. Which probably explains why I like resistance stories do much. One of those people who has always been high one my list is Sophie Scholl, the young German university student who stood up to the Nazis and paid with her life. So naturally, I was pretty excited when I read that a novel in verse about Sophie and the other members of the White Rose resistance was being published. And when I was offered an ARC of Kip Wilson's work, I jumped at the chance to read it. I was not disappointed. Wilson definitely did Sophie justice in this fictionalized biography. Told in free verse, Wilson opens her fictionalized biography of Sophie with her arrest in 1943 and her first interrogation by the Gestapo, then immediately sends the reader back to 1935 and happier, almost carefree days with her large, loving family. At first, Sophie and older brothe...

Young readers can follow two friends as they experience the first year and a half of World War II in completely different circumstances  in this epistolary chapter book and discover just what it was like for kids at that time. Londoners Harriet Hale, 11, and Teddy (Edward) Wilson, 10, have always been best friends and comic book lovers. In fact, they have even been working on their own comic book for a while now, working on it inside the Anderson shelter in Harriet's backyard. But Teddy has a secret and Harriet doesn't find out what it is until she receives a letter on 1st August 1940 and learns that her best friend has been evacuated to America. What a blow! Not only that, but he took Harriet's newest Beano comic book with him. Meanwhile, Harriet is left in London, and although most of the other kids there have been evacuated to the countryside, Harriet is staying home with her mum. Soon, Harriet and Teddy begin corresponding with each other and their letter exchange is h...

This is a novel that is so atmospheric and so spell binding, that I couldn't put it down. It begins with the legend of the Daughters of Stone and the Wyrm, the treacherous sandbank that caused boats to sink. According to the legend, four daughters bargained their souls away for the safe return of their fathers, lost at sea and sunk by the Wyrm in a days-long dense fog. The Wyrm returned their fathers, but the daughters were turned to stone, and now stand in a semi circle on the edge of a cliff in front of a lighthouse overlooking the English Channel. Petra Zimmermann Smith, 12,  has always imagines that the stones were just like her family - her lighthouse keeper Pa, her German Mutti, her older sister Magda, or Mags, and herself. It's been an almost idyllic life but now World War II has just begun. Soon, there is talk of evacuations, gas masks are being given out and the government is requiring that they paint their beautiful lighthouse green from top to bottom to try to camouf...

Sometimes, silence can speak louder than words as this novel about the world-famous mime Marcel Marceau shows. Late one night siblings Helen, 14, and ten-year-old Henry Rosenthal arrive with their mother at a convent in the south of France, having clandestinely traveled there from their home in Kronberg, not far from Frankfurt, Germany. Their father had been arrested on Kristallnacht, and they have had no news of him for over a year now. Frau Rosenthal could hid with a Catholic family, posing as a servant for safety, but not the children and so they have journeyed to France, to a convent that was taking in Jewish children. After their mother leaves to return to Germany in the hope of one day being reunited with her husband, Helen and Henry have their names changed to more French sounding names. Their new names are Claire and Andre Rochette. They are expected to assimilate into life at the convent and to be very careful about guarding who they and the other children really are, because ...