48-Hour Book Challenge

It's time again for MotherReader's 48-Hour Book Challenge! This event will take place June 3-5, and the goal is to read as much as possible over a 48-hour period. Related activities include writing reviews on one's blog and visiting other participants' blogs to read their reviews.

Last year, I read for 17 hours and finished 4 books, and Kate read for 10 hours and finished 2 books. This year, although we have a few commitments on the weekend, we're going to try our best to match those numbers.

We plan to donate a dollar for each hour we read to UNICEF Canada. Please join us for this fun event if you can. It's the perfect excuse to neglect housework for the entire weekend and curl up with a few good books instead. If the weather's good, I'll be on my patio with a glass of wine (Orangina for Kate)!

The 2011 Festival of Trees

Kate and I have shamefully neglected this blog, but that doesn't mean we haven't been reading! This year, I again offered to take her out of school to attend the Festival of Trees event in Toronto if she were to read 10 books from one or more of the Silver Birch lists. The Silver Birch reading lists are part of the Ontario Library Association's Forest of Reading programs. Every year, the OLA selects 10 book nominees in each of a number of categories. The Silver Birch program, which includes fiction, non-fiction and "express" (easier reading) categories, is meant for readers in Grades 3 to 6. You can check out all the lists here. Students all over Ontario participate by reading the books from a particular list and then voting for their favourites. The winners are then announced at the Festival of Trees.

Kate ended up reading all 10 from the fiction list and 5 of the non-fiction books, and so we were on our way to the festival. The trip this year was even better, as we were joined by Kate's good friend Sarah and her mother Ruth, both members of our parent-child book club. Kate and Sarah are big fans of Eric Walter, and here are pictures of them showing off his books and with the man himself. We have to thank Sarah for introducing us to Eric Walter by proposing We All Fall Down as one of our book-club selections. That book and its sequel, United We Stand, are both excellent stories based on the events of September 11, 2001.



The festival itself is a wonderfully fun event if you can tolerate the crowds. The organizers estimate that they get over 8000 visitors to the two-day event. There are workshops run by authors and illustrators, book-signing tables, a variety of children's activities and a marketplace with all the nominated books. Workshops can fill up quickly, and there are huge lines for signatures of the most popular authors. If you go, the trick is to pick a few activities most important to you and line up early! Normally, kids attend as part of school groups, but I'd discovered that individuals are welcome to attend on their own. Because we live some distance from Toronto, our local schools don't usually send kids to this event.

The award ceremonies are a key part of the festival, and for these, you must purchase tickets as seating is limited. All other activities are free. Last year, we attended the Silver Birch non-fiction awards, but this year, I managed to get tickets for the fiction awards ceremony, which is always the first to sell out. At the ceremony, the authors arrived on the stage, one at a time, to tremendous applause, cheers, hoots and whistles from their fans. Here, the authors get the rock-star treatment that they truly deserve. Who would have thought that book-loving kids would be such an enthusiastic, rowdy bunch?? Each author is then introduced by a student. Most of the students are very articulate, and I enjoyed their introductions as much as I did the authors' speeches.

This year, Kevin Sylvester won the Silver Birch fiction award, and as his name was announced, young fans cheered loudly and waved copies of his book, Neil Flambe and the Marco Polo Murders, over their heads. Kate actually voted for The Hunchback Assignments by Arthur Slade, but she also loves the Neil Flambe series. We met Kevin Sylvester at a literary event last year, and his talk was both interesting and funny. As there was a smaller crowd then, Kate and Sarah were fortunate enough to chat with him and get their books signed. On the day of the festival, though, he was very much in demand!

We had great fun at the festival and we plan to go back. Next year, we'll hopefully be attending the Red Maple awards ceremony, as Kate will be going on to the next level. I'm sure she'll enjoy that list as much as the Silver Birch selections she has read over the past few years.

Airman

by Eoin Colfer

After a very, very long break, I'm finally back to posting reviews.

Wow! All I can say is "wow" after reading Eoin Colfer's Airman. This book is amazing and is perfect for adventure, romance, action, and history lovers.

Airman is a book set on the Saltee Islands about a boy named Conor Broekhart who is destined is to fly. As a friend to King Nicholas's daughter, Isabella, Conor spends his childhood playing with Isabella and studying with his tutor, Victor Vigney, on fencing and building flying contraptions. When he discovers a plot to kill the king, the murderer, Marshall Bonvilain, blames Conor instead, and Conor gets put in the Saltee Island Prison. He ends up being cellmates with Linus Wynter, a blind composer and musician, and joins a tough gang called the Battering Rams. Will he ever escape? Is Conor going to die? Will he save Isabella and his parents from poisoning from Bonvilain? Those were the questions circling through my head while reading Airman.

The author describes the living conditions in the prison on Little Saltee Island so well, I felt I was actually a prisoner myself. Eoin Colfer hooks you into the book right away, and I couldn't put down the book for hours!

Reviewed by Kate

Dewey's Read-a-Thon: The End

Kate slept through the final 10 hours of the Read-a-Thon, but I managed a final hour this morning. Kate did get up in time for us to read one last book together before 8am EDT, a 4-page story written on Storybird by my nephew Oliver and his friends. What a great way to finish off the read-a-thon!

Our final statistics are below.

Paulina's stats:

Partially finished: The Murder Stone by Louise Penny and Never Look Away by Linwood Barclay (audiobook)
Finished: Under This Unbroken Sky by Shandi Mitchell, Storm Warning by Linda Sue Park (started prior to Read-a-Thon), and my nephew's book.
Total hours read: 7.5 hrs + 2 hr audiobook
Total pages read (not counting audiobooks): 474
Mini-challenges done: Hour 1 meme, Hour 2 Back-in-the-Day Children's Book Challenge, Hour 4 Indie Pride Challenge, Hour 11 Attempting Audiobooks Challenge, Hour 12 meme

Kate's stats:

Partially finished: The Borrowers by Mary Norton, Alexander the Great by Penny Worms
Finished: The Secret of Terror Castle by Robert Arthur, The Mystery of the Stuttering Parrot by Robert Arthur, Storm Warning by Linda Sue Park (started prior to Read-a-Thon), and her cousin's book.
Total hours read: 4.5 hrs + 1 hr audiobook
Total pages read (not counting audiobooks): 384

I read (or listened to audiobooks) a total of 9.5 hours this year, which was the exact same total as last year. However, I did (at least) an hour of cheerleading this time, so my overall participation increased. Kate didn't meet her goal of finishing her research reading, but I didn't really expect her to. (That's based on my own experience. How many times have I put aside the research/work reading for a good mystery?) Still, she managed 5.5 hours of reading (including audiobook time). Together, we read for 15 hours, so we'll be donating $30 to UNICEF.

Many thanks to the organizers of the event and mini-challenges, as well as to the cheerleaders and other readers who visiting my blog during the event! I'm looking forward to doing this again next year.

Dewey's Read-a-Thon: Update #4

It's hour 16 now and it's bedtime for me. Kate went off to bed two hours ago. I finished Under This Unbroken Sky, and Kate finished her second book, The Secret of the Stuttering Parrot, another Three Investigators mystery. She ended the night by reading with her Dad a few pages from Saturday Evening Pearls (A Pearls Before Swine collection) by Stephan Pastis.

Kate and I had an hour left on an audiobook that we've been listening to together over the week, and we finished it off earlier in the afternoon. This was Storm Warning, the 9th book in the 39 Clues series, written by Linda Sue Park, and superbly narrated by David Pittu. We had commented on this in the Hour 11 Attempting Audiobook challenge.

Paulina's stats:

Currently reading: The Murder Stone by Louise Penny and Never Look Away by Linwood Barclay (audiobook)
Finished: Under This Unbroken Sky by Shandi Mitchell and Storm Warning by Linda Sue Park (started prior to Read-a-Thon)
Total hours read: 6.5 hrs + 2 hr audiobook
Total pages read (not counting audiobooks): 410
Mini-challenges done: Hour 1 meme, Hour 2 Back-in-the-Day Children's Book Challenge, Hour 4 Indie Pride Challenge, Hour 11 Attempting Audiobooks Challenge, Hour 12 meme

Kate's stats:

Finished: The Secret of Terror Castle by Robert Arthur, The Mystery of the Stuttering Parrot by Robert Arthur, Storm Warning by Linda Sue Park (started prior to Read-a-Thon)
Total hours read: 4.5 hrs + 1 hr audiobook
Total pages read (not counting audiobooks): 380

Dewey's Read-a-Thon: Update #3

It's almost the end of hour 13, and I'll do the update by answering the questions for the hour 12 mid-event meme.

1. What are you reading right now?
I'm reading The Murder Stone by Louise Penny and Kate is reading The Mystery of the Stuttering Parrot (a Three Investigators mystery) by Robert Arthur.

2. How many books have you read so far?
I've almost finished my first but decided to take a break and move onto another one for a while. Kate has finished one. We both finished listening to an audiobook (39 Clues #9: Storm Warning by Linda Sue Park) that we had started before the read-a-thon.

3. What book are you most looking forward to for the second half of the Read-a-thon?
I'd been looking forward to reading the Louise Penny book (the fourth in the Inspector Gamache series) for a while now, so I hope I can get through a good part of it before I fall asleep. Kate's bedtime is coming up soon, so she won't be able to look forward to reading any more in the second half, but maybe she will squeeze in a bit more in the morning if she gets up early enough.

4. Did you have to make any special arrangements to free up your whole day?
I did as much housework as I could the night before, and I warned the rest of my family that Kate and I will be ignoring them and all other responsibilities for the day!

5. Have you had many interruptions? How did you deal with those?
Compared to last year, when I had to rush to Montreal on the morning of the read-a-thon for a family emergency, today's interruptions were very minor ones.

6. What surprises you most about the Read-a-thon, so far?
The number of people participating is surprising and wonderful!

7. Do you have any suggestions for how to improve the Read-a-thon next year?
It's terrific as it is.

8. What would you do differently, as a Reader or a Cheerleader, if you were to do this again next year?
I signed up for an hour of cheerleading but might consider doing more next year. It's great fun to visit all the blogs. It's also been great having Kate read along with me this year, and next year, I'll try to get more family members involved. (No one else is as addicted to reading as the two of us, though.)

9. Are you getting tired yet?
Yes, but I will try to persevere for another couple of hours. A glass of wine is making the experience more enjoyable but is not doing much to increase my energy level.

10. Do you have any tips for other Readers or Cheerleaders, something you think is working well.
Don't worry about pages read or books completed and just enjoy the hours of reading!

Dewey's Read-a-Thon: Update #2

We're just starting hour 8 now.

As well as reading on my couch, I went for an hour-long run in beautiful weather, while listening to Never Look Away by Linwood Barclay on my iPod.

For the Hour 2 Back-in-the-Day Children's Book Challenge, I wrote that the Anne of Green Gables series and the Little House series were my favourite childhood books. Kate's favourite is the Percy Jackson series.

For the Hour 4 Indie Pride Challenge, I posted a photo of Lesley Crewe's novel, Her Mother's Daughter, published by Nimbus Publishing, based in Atlantic Canada. I'm about half-way through this novel and hope to read more of it later today.

Paulina's stats:

Currently reading: Under This Unbroken Sky by Shandi Mitchell and Never Look Away by Linwood Barclay (audiobook)
Total hours read: 3hrs + 1 hr audiobook
Total pages read: 175
Mini-challenges done: Hour 1 meme, Hour 2 Back-in-the-Day Children's Book Challenge, Hour 4 Indie Pride Challenge.

Kate's stats:

Currently reading: The Mystery of the Stuttering Parrot by Robert Arthur and The Borrowers by Mary Norton
Finished: The Secret of Terror Castle by Robert Arthur
Total hours read: 3
Total pages read: 260