Young Adult and Children's Literature

I'm taking a Young Adult and Children's Literature class right now, which I've mentioned a couple of times already. I have read several books for this class that I'm counting toward my 50 because they're chapter books and I've really enjoyed them! I already talked about The One and Only Ivan and Paper Towns. 

Three Times Lucky This was another of the books I read for class. It's about a little 6th grade girl who is an orphan in Tupelo Landing, NC. She lives with the 2 people who found her floating up the river as a baby. The first is the Colonel, who named her Moses because of how they found her, and the second is Miss Lana. The book features really colorful and interesting characters, a small town with lots of gossip and relationships, and then a murder mystery! It's great for kids 10 and up. I've recommended it to students in my class. It does have the murder mystery aspect, but very kid-appropriate. It's really adorable and I loved the characters! The second book has come out called The Ghosts of Tupelo Landing and I've ordered it on my Scholastic Book Order to have in my classroom! I definitely recommend this one to anyone with kids about that age!

Turtle in Paradise This is also a great book for kids about 9-12 years old. It's about a little girl named Turtle who has to move and live with her aunt in Key West, FL during the Great Depression. It's a historical fiction piece and it definitely captures the feel of the Great Depression at that time. It also features the hurricane in Key West about that time. Turtle is a feisty kind of girl who speaks her mind and I like that a lot. In both Three Times Lucky and Turtle in Paradise, you find strong female characters in the lead who struggle through things and figure things out on their own and they're great little models for other girls reading the books. I enjoyed this one a lot as well!

Anna and the French Kiss This is the last book I've had to read for my Young Adult and Children's Literature class, although there are several more I will be reading anyway that I've put on my list for the rest of the year! But this is the last one I'll be writing about in class. This book is about a girl named Anna, whose dad is a sort of Nicholas Sparks type of writer who sends her to an American boarding school in Paris to help her and himself look more "cultured." This book is aimed toward high school students and is more grown up that the other 2 mentioned in this post. I really enjoyed it and would definitely recommend it to high school girls because it's very different than the normal young adult books you find that are focused on relationships. For one thing, they stay friends for the majority of the book and their relationship grows and changes as they get to know each other - not that there isn't sexual tension, but it definitely wasn't one of those "we met and immediately we're in love" kind of things. I enjoyed that aspect of it. I also like that both the girl and guy in the story aren't the typical dreamy types. The guy is pretty short and the girl has a gap between her 2 front teeth. It's just an adorable, really real view of a high school relationship. Nothing really unrealistic or silly or far-fetched. I just thought it was a great, sweet story that adults as well as high school students would enjoy! The one thing I didn't like was the name. I hate when great books have silly names that make me feel stupid when I tell people what I'm reading...but oh well.
Three Times Lucky by Sheila Turnage Turtle in Paradise by Jennifer L. Holm Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins


On a side note, there is one book I started, but wasn't able to finish. A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray was one that I got about 14 chapters into, but it took me 2 1/2 weeks and I just wasn't loving it. Maybe I wasn't really in the mood for something magic-related or maybe I just didn't get invested enough in the characters right off the bat, I'm not sure what it was exactly, but I put it down after 2 1/2 weeks and I picked up Anna and the French Kiss at 4:00pm one night....and I finished Anna and the French Kiss at 11:00pm the same night. Couldn't. Put. It. Down. So there ya go.