Authors

Hello,
The topic of today’s post is authors. Not just authors, but authors that write books in a variety of genres. Many times we will see a particular author and automatically buy the book simply because of who wrote it. The four authors that I will share with you today all have books that are appropriate for an SDA school and books that may not be the best choices for our schools.

Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Ms. Naylor has written the beloved Shiloh series: Shiloh, Shiloh Season, and Saving Shiloh. I also enjoyed Beetles, Lightly Toasted; To Walk the Sky Path, The Fear Place, and The Great Chicken Debacle. Ms. Naylor has also written a series about witches which do not belong in our libraries. She also wrote and is still writing the Alice series about a girl growing up in Silver Spring, Maryland. I have read all the Alice books so far, BUT Alice gets herself into adult situations, and some of her actions aren’t what we promote, so I haven’t put them in the library. I also like Send No Blessings, but this title is probably more appropriate for a high school library. This is about a girl dealing with many younger siblings (the ‘blessings’) and the pregnancy of her mother.

Gary Paulsen

We all know about Hatchet and the sequels to it: Brian’s Winter, Brian’s Return, Brian’s Hunt, and The River. Gary Paulsen also wrote a book called Guts, which give some back story to these books. You may be aware that he ran the Iditarod a few times and has written some books about the experience and his dogs. Woodsong; Dogsong; Dogteam; My Life in Dog Years; and Puppies, Dogs, and Blue Northers. Other popular choices from Gary are Mudshark, Woods Runner, Tracker, Winter Room, Nightjohn, The Cookcamp, and The Haymeadow. He is a very prolific writer. There are some of his books that are questionable in my mind. They include violence in the Mr. Tucket series, and A Soldier’s Heart. Two of my favorite books of his aren’t appropriate because of language or the adult situations. Winterdance is the adult version of his Iditarod experience and would be perfect for our library if it were not for the four letter words used. Harris and Me is based on his experience living one summer with his aunt and uncle and cousins on a farm. I don’t believe there is a language issue, but there are adult situations in the book. It really is hilarious, though. If you have a chance to read either of these two books, you will enjoy them.

Andrew Clements

Andrew Clements is famous for his wonderful school stories: Frindle, The School Story, No Talking, A Week in the Woods, Extra Credit, Lunch Money, The Report Card, The Landry News, The Jacket, Lost and Found, The Janitor’s Boy, The Last Holiday Concert , and Room One: A Mystery or Two. He also has a new mystery series he is writing which is being published by Scholastic called The Keepers of the School. If you stick to the school stories, you probably won’t go wrong and you also may not be able to keep them on the shelves. They are very popular here. (In my research on him, I saw that he will have a new school story coming out the end of July 2011 titled Trouble Maker!) However, I happened to pick up one of his a few years ago off a Scholastic book fair, took it home, loved it, but took it off the fair shelves. Things Not Seen was the title. It looked Biblical to me, but it is about a teen that wakes up and finds that through some mysterious scientific occurrence, he is now invisible. The story deals with how at first he thinks it is pretty cool to be invisible, but then the problems of invisibility come up and how he figures out how to become visible again. The situation is a bit too farfetched, and although it is a good read, I left it off my shelves. Companion books to that are Things Hoped For, and Things That Are. Other books that are good are for the younger set. Brave Norman, Dogku, the Jake Drake series, and Double Trouble in Walla Walla. You will not be surprised to learn that I have multiple copies of the Walla Walla book!

Avi

Avi is wonderful. He writes in a variety of genre such as Fantasy, Realistic Fiction, and Historical Fiction. If you stick to the Historical Fiction and the Realistic Fiction you will be fine. Historical books include the Crispin trilogy, The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, The Secret School ( a personal favorite), The Good Dog, Iron Thunder, The Barn, Hard Gold, and Night Journeys. Realistic books include Never Mind, and Nothing But the Truth. Avi has written some fantasy about animals such as the Poppy series about a little mouse; A Beginning, A Muddle, and An End; and The Book Without Words. Other titles I noticed are ghost stories or magical stories such as Something Upstairs, The Seer of Shadows, and Midnight Magic.

My point is that these authors all have written great books some of which would be a good addition to your libraries and others that you may not want. Do not assume that a book is appropriate for your school libraries just because the author is someone you recognize. Evaluate each book individually when making your book choices.

Hope you have a great week,
Audrey
Sdalibrarian.blogspot.com