Red

Redby Liesl Shurtliff, 243 pages

"Followed by a wolf, a huntsman, and a porridge-sampling nuisance called Goldie, Red embarks on a quest to find a magical cure for her ailing grandmother."  I really enjoy retold fairy tales and this book was no exception.  Red’s character was fascinating and hearing the snippets of other people’s tales throughout the main story was also a lot of fun.  This is the third installment in this collection and I hope there will be more.  Any child who likes fairy tale retellings will want to check out these books.

In Her Kitchen

In Her Kitchen : Stories and Recipes from Grandmas Around the World by Gabriele Galimberti, 248 pages

This really was a cookbook but with every recipe was a story about where and who it came from.  What started as a series of magazine articles about people's lives around the world culminated in this book.  The little stories were nice and the recipes were interesting.  I was not inspired to try any of them but I probably would have eaten most of them if someone else were making it.  Most were pretty normal, several were dishes I had heard of but at least a couple were pretty unusual and definitely not something the average American has ever tried or probably wanted to try.  Overall I'd say liked this more for the glimpse into other lives and cultures than the actual recipes.

Teen Spirit

Teen Spirit by Francesca Lia Block             234 pages

Julie’s life has been pretty decent.  She doesn’t have a lot of friends, but she, her mother, and her grandmother have always been close, and Julie has always felt like that was enough.  When her grandmother dies, everything starts to fall apart.  A week later her mother loses her job and reveals that they are about to lose their house.  They are forced to move to a small apartment and her mother seems to retreat into her own world, leaving Julie feeling completely alone.  She makes one friend at her new school, Clark.  Clark is kind of odd, but really nice.  They become study partners and Julie tells him a little of her story.  One night, she asks him to help her try to contact her grandmother’s spirit.  Julie feels like she is close, but she can’t break through.  Clark reluctantly agrees, and they do contact a spirit, but it isn’t Julie’s grandmother.  It seems they have contacted a more malevolent spirit and Julie and Clark have to figure out how to fix things before the spirit can do irreparable harm.  A good, supernatural, love story, lots of teen fans of ghost stories and romances will like this.