Ms. Stewart's Elementary Book Review Blog - April 2, 2020

Hello Aidan families!  

This is my book review blog for Aidan Elementary students.  

I want to hear what books you are enjoying reading too, so please email me and share your reviews!

While we have more time at home right now, it can be a good time to read books that are complex. The Parker Inheritance by Varian Johnson is two things at once: a mystery, and a historical fiction book. Twelve year-old Candice and eleven year-old Brandon spend their summer trying to solve a mystery about events that took place many years earlier, so the story goes back and forth in time. Candice’s grandmother knew about the mystery first, and when she couldn’t solve it she left clues for her granddaughter, whom she knew as a very good puzzle-solver. The mystery involves figuring out identities, maybe even a double identity, and the meaning of objects such as a little bracelet with mysterious initials on it, but most of all it involves deciphering clues in an old letter. Until the very end of the book, Candice and Brandon are secretive about their investigations because they aren’t sure the mystery is real - maybe it is all just a hoax….

If you have read The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin you will see that there are some similarities between that story and The Parker Inheritance, and you haven’t read it you will probably be intrigued to try it after reading how characters in this book are fans of that book! 

If you are an Upper Elementary student and you like The Parker Inheritance, try this other book by Varian Johnson: The Great Greene Heist.

The Parker Inheritance and The Westing Game are for ages 9-12 and most area public libraries have them as an e-book. The Great Greene Heist is for ages 10-14 and Arlington Public Library has it as an e-book.

In an earlier blog for the Library, I wrote about Song for a Whale by Lynne Kelly, and I want to recommend it in more detail here. The plot is really good but my favorite thing about the book is the main character, Iris, because she is so interesting. She is crazy about big old radios and loves to collect and fix them, and the owner of a shop that sells them even pays her for her repairs! She learns a lot about whales in the story, such as how they communicate by sound, so as the reader you learn cool facts about whales too. And Iris sometimes lets her frustrations get to her, landing her in the principal’s office at school.  She is deaf, and sometimes people don’t understand how to help her, or realize she doesn’t need help, which is frustrating! Some of the other characters in the story are really good too - Iris’s brother, for example, who is her partner in crime when she wants to get around a no-radios consequence her parents gave her.   

Song for a Whale is for ages 8-14 and most area public libraries have it as an e-book.

Happy reading!

Here’s some access-to-books info:

The books I review in this blog are accessible online through at least one of our area public libraries’  Overdrive and Libby app.  

You need a library card to use Overdrive and Libby - if you don’t have one yet you can do it online: 

DC Public Library 

Montgomery County Public Library 

Prince George’s Public Library

Arlington Public Library

Alexandria Public Library