The Fiance and I have been planning our wedding since May. We still have 11 months to go. All of this planning makes me really excited for the future, but it's also making me oddly nostalgic for the past. I keep remembering the days when I would draw my ideal future wedding dress (oddly not too far off of what I got), or when my childhood BFF and I would play wedding with our barbies. From these memories, I inevitably start recalling the books I adored as a kid. Most of them, in retrospect, were kind of odd but I remember them happily.
This month's Variations on a Theme contains all the books from my childhood that I would re-read time and again.
This Place Has No Atmosphere
Paula Danziger
Baby-Sitters on Board!
Ann M. Martin
The baby-sitters have a million adventures during their fabulous summer vacation which includes several days in Disneyland.
Six Months to Live
Lurlene McDaniel
When 13-year-old Dawn Rochelle is diagnosed with leukemia, she's scared. While in the hospital undergoing chemotherapy, Dawn meets Sandy, who also has cancer. Dawn and Sandy battle the disease together, and remain best friends even after they both go into remission and return home. But when Sandy gets sick again, Dawn wonders what the future holds both for Sandy and herself.
Meet Kirsten
Janet Beeler Shaw
This month's Variations on a Theme contains all the books from my childhood that I would re-read time and again.
Paula Danziger
It's the year
2057 and students take classes in ESP, people live in malls, there
aren't any parks left, and thanks to an airtight dome, there is a colony
on the moon. Fourteen-year-old Aurora couldn't be happier—she's part of
the "in" crowd, her best friend is a celebrity, and Matthew has asked
her to Homecoming.
But Aurora's parents have new
jobs on the moon, and she and her little sister must leave their friends
and schools to go with them. Aurora is sure she will hate life on the
moon, because there are only 750 people in the whole colony. What if
none of them is a boy her age? Fifteen-year-old
Aurora loves her life on Earth in the twenty-first century, until she
learns that her family is moving to the colony on the moon a place with
no atmosphere. [Side Note: I borrowed this from the classroom library so often that my teacher gave it to me at the end of the year.]Baby-Sitters on Board!
Ann M. MartinThe baby-sitters have a million adventures during their fabulous summer vacation which includes several days in Disneyland.
Lurlene McDaniel
When 13-year-old Dawn Rochelle is diagnosed with leukemia, she's scared. While in the hospital undergoing chemotherapy, Dawn meets Sandy, who also has cancer. Dawn and Sandy battle the disease together, and remain best friends even after they both go into remission and return home. But when Sandy gets sick again, Dawn wonders what the future holds both for Sandy and herself.
Meet Kirsten
Janet Beeler Shaw
Kirsten Larson and her family arrive in America in 1854, after a long sea
voyage. Everything looks so different from the life Kirsten knew back
in Sweden--the ways people talk and dress seem strange! Getting lost in a
big city and parting with her best friend only add to Kirsten's worry.
Will she ever feel at home here? It is only when the Larsons arrive at a
tiny farm on the edge of the frontier that Kirsten believes Papa's
promise--America will be a land filled with opportunity for them all. Nine-year-old Kirsten and her family experience many hardships as they travel from Sweden to the Minnesota frontier in 1854.
Shel Silverstein
Come in … for where the sidewalk
ends, Shel Silverstein’s world begins. You’ll meet a boy who turns into a
TV set, and a girl who eats a whale. The Unicorn and the Bloath live
there, and so does Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout who will not take the
garbage out. It is a place where you wash your shadow and plant diamond
gardens, a place where shoes fly, sisters are auctioned off, and
crocodiles go to the dentist. Shel Silverstein’s masterful collection of poems and drawings is at once outrageously funny and profound. Irreverent,
hilarious and wildly popular, Silverstein’s collection of verse is hard
to put down. His black pen drawings are an integral part of the poems,
which range from funny and gross to introspective or tender. Silverstein
is a master at tickling the funny bone, and his book is definitely not
just for kids!
Caroline B. Cooney
No one ever really paid close attention to the faces
of the missing children on the milk cartons. But as Janie Johnson
glanced at the face of the ordinary little girl with her hair in tight
pigtails, wearing a dress with a narrow white collar—a three-year-old
who had been kidnapped twelve years before from a shopping mall in New
Jersey—she felt overcome with shock. She recognized that little girl—it
was she. How could it possibly be true? Janie can't believe that her
loving parents kidnapped her, but as she begins to piece things
together, nothing makes sense. Something is terribly wrong. Are Mr. and
Mrs. Johnson really her parents? And if not, who is Janie Johnson, and
what really happened? A photograph of a missing girl on a milk carton leads Janie on a search for her real identity.
Other Nostalgic Reads
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs - Judi Barret
Island of the Blue Dolphins - Scott O'Dell
The Jolly Postman and Other Letters - Allan Ahlberg
Island of the Blue Dolphins - Scott O'Dell
The Jolly Postman and Other Letters - Allan Ahlberg
Nobody's Perfect - Elizabeth Levy
Nutcracker on Ice - Melissa Lowell
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark - Alvin Schwartz
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