Welcome to Litsy!

I enjoyed this book about White Rose, a German student resistance group during WWII, but I wish I would have waited to read it in print. I sometimes had a hard time following the back and forth of the timeline while listening and missed seeing how this novel in verse actually looked on the page.

#audiobook #YA #TRS2020

I thoroughly enjoyed the search and rescue aspect of this story and the relationships between the teenagers and the dogs. The mystery and the connection to Kira‘s own past made for a fascinating story. I didn‘t quite appreciate the little twist at the end that leaves this book open to a sequel.

#TRS2020 #YA

This book about a middle school aged genius has plenty of unbelievable exploits, but it was a fun read. I loved the math and the fun facts, as well as the action packed adventures. It is the first of a series, but the problem of the first book is pretty we resolved. I also enjoyed the character dynamics.

#TRS2020 #MiddleGrade

So many books recently have dealt with the death of a parent. This one is about a boy who throws himself into preparing for a world apocalypse while trying to ignore his mother‘s death. He has great family and friends who don‘t really know how to help him but also refuse to give up on him. Along with the serious topics there‘s also plenty of humor, and of course things work out hopefully in the end.

#TRS2020 #MiddleGrade

This was a pretty fast paced #YA about a group of rich HS students on a hijacked private plane, but I couldn‘t seem to make myself care that much. I‘m really not sure why it didn‘t work for me, but I was not attached to the characters. It had quite a bit of death, both in the background stories and during the hijacking.

#TRS2020

Gordon Korman is pretty close to an auto buy author for my class library, and books with this kind of humor and heart are the reason why. This story includes a frustrated and burnt out teacher as well as a class of middle schoolers that for the most part nobody has tried to help.

I bought this and leant it out before getting a chance to read it, so I listened to the full cast audio and recommend it as well.

#audiobook #MiddleGrade #TRS2020

This is a story of two girls figuring out who they are and how to truly be themselves. It is told in verse, mostly alternating, but sometimes with dual voices as on this page, and including a chorus. I can be critical of novels in verse, but I think this one uses the format as well as any I‘ve read recently.

#NovelInVerse #TRS2020 #YA

This story is set in a futuristic Chicago that seems very similar to our own, but the reader soon realizes it is a supposedly environmentally conscious paperless society. The messages about control through censorship and technology made sense, but everything just happened too quickly and too easily for the main character to satisfy me. Additionally, it‘s the first in a series.

Photo from today‘s #audiowalk.

#audiobook #YA #TRS2020

My final book of 2020 was finished a few minutes before midnight.

This story includes a lot of loss and grief, and then it looks at how a young girl follows her mother‘s dream to move forward. The loss seemed like too much and took away one of the great relationships in the story. None of the others really filled that space. The information about sharks was fascinating, but it also took a while to build.

#TRS2020 #MiddleGrade

I thoroughly enjoyed this story of Coyote and Rodeo‘s road trip lifestyle. It is very much a story of grief, good and bad ways to deal with it, and family. The characters in this story were also wonderful, including the cat and the goat.

This is also the reason I don‘t post book stats until the last few days of the year. Yesterday, on December 30, I finished one of my favorite #MiddleGrade reads of the year.

#12BooksOf2020 #audiobook #TRS2020