In My Mailbox (2)

The stars must be aligned in my favor. I'm waiting on several books in the mail, but I have a ridiculously huge pile of library books waiting for me, and I didn't get much reading in this week for a combination of reasons, the least of which it's allegery season. Anyhoo, I got two books this week. To see what others got this week, check in with Kristi at The Story Siren and Marcia at The Printed Page.

I got a reader's request, Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult from Frugal Reader. It seems we only had one Picoult title, My Sister's Keeper in our library and the regular visitor really enjoyed it so I requested four Picoult titles from the trading site. If you're looking for a good place to trade books, check out frugalreader. com.

If you're a regular reader at BES, you know I'm a huge Jacqueline Woodson fan. Not only do I really enjoy her work, but our community of readers seem to like her as well. I get a lot of mileage out of her work for a few reasons: her YA appeals to both older middle schoolers through older high school. The slim volumes appeal to reluctant readers who are intimidated by books with too many pages. Because her books deal with serious issues, my older readers don't feel like they're reading books too young for them.

From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun deals with sexual orientation, first love and new love and race. One of the things I love about Woodson's work is that while her main characters are ususally African American, race typically informs but is often not the central theme of the book. In Woodson's work, we see whole and functioning families. And we see diversity in families. In this particular novel, it's a family of two but the mom is not a victim and the son is not caught up in a major crisis well not until his mom tells him she's in love. I got the paperback which is really small and that's probably a plus for our readers. I'm glad though, when I read it, the library copy was a hardcover. Much easier on my old eyes.