Welcome to Chuggington

Welcome to Chuggington
Chuggington
Scholastic
ISBN 9780545261302

This board book has different layered pages each outlining a different train from Chuggington station. It outlines each of the trains and their main role. It highlights some of the locations in and around the station also. Bright, vibrant colors, sturdy board book construction and trains, trains and trains. So hop aboard and go for a ride around Chugginton. Kids of all ages will love it.

Skipping Stones At The Center Of The Earth - Andy Hueller

Skipping Stones At The Center Of The Earth
Andy Hueller
Bonneville Books
Cedar Forts
ISBN 9781599554884

This book was surprisingly entertaining. The title grabbed my attention, but once I read the beginning, I was grabbed. The story focuses around Calvin Comet Cobble who lives at the Hidden Shores Orphanage, which is located on the shores of Lake Arctic below the earth's crust. A giant screw was found in the Arctic, and as they unscrewed it, they discovered a giant cavern, part of which gets light and part that is always dark. They build a super max prison on the dark side and an orphanage in the light. Calvin is a twelve-year-old boy and he has a great imagination and a knack for getting into trouble.

Soon he meets Mr. E, the school's custodian who lives in a shack right on the shore of the lake. His best, and maybe only friend, is Bernetha Twiggins, and between Bernetha and Mr. E they soon help Calvin discover more about his past and he embarks on an adventure to find out who he really is.

This book is the beginning of a great series. The story is fun and unique. The characters are interesting and well written. Give the book a try; you will enjoy it.

James Bow - Author Profile

James Bow, is the author with numerous published books both fiction and non-fiction. He is a graduate of The University of Waterloo and is very involved in and around campus and Kitchener Waterloo. He has worked as a database manager, web designer, circulation manager, administrative assistant, layout designer and office manager. But his passion is literature, especially Young Adult Fiction.

1. If you had not become a writer what do you think you would be doing for a living?

Writing is something I fell into. I always enjoyed writing, all the way back to high school, but it was a hobby for me, at first. It was something subservient to what I intended to do for a living which, at the time, had been to become an urban planner. However, I graduated from the University of Waterloo's school of urban and regional planning in 1995, during tough economic times and a period of government downsizing, when I was competing with senior managers with ten years experience for entry level positions. So planning was what I wanted to be, and I couldn't get into it - not without slaving away as a long-term intern, or upping sticks and moving to Florida. Instead, I got temp jobs and ended up falling into the tech industry, although that wasn't as good of a fit. I still enjoyed the writing and creation aspects of the job, but it was far too dry and technical for my tastes. Becoming a writer required a lot of courage, because I knew it was hard to make it work financially, and there were all these demands on my finances. But in the end, I needed to work at something I loved doing, because the other jobs were demanding too much of my time and I simply didn't enjoy doing the work. So, if I wasn't a writer now, I think it would only have been because I'd found a good planning job and progressed in that career. Today, though, it's my secondary interest. I run a public transit historical website called Transit Toronto, and I earn my keep with column writing, and contract work (writing marketing profiles) for an up-and-coming apartment brokerage company. I'm pleased that I've been able to put that part of me back into my professional life, but I am a writer first and a planner second.

2. When did you know you wanted to be a writer? How did you nurture that dream?

As I said, I'd been writing since high school. I've been a fan of Doctor Who for just about ever, having seen my first episode (Genesis of the Daleks, part 6) on TV Ontario when I was four years old. When I entered high school, I discovered the world of fandom and joined a Doctor Who fan club. From there, I learned of the existence of fan fiction. I submitted my first Doctor Who fan fiction story when I was fourteen. By the time I was nineteen, I was producing my own fan fiction magazines. From 1991 to 2004, I wrote for and edited nearly twenty Doctor Who fan fiction publications. I've met a lot of friends through fan fiction, including the woman who became my wife, and I keep in touch with them to this day.

3. Who were some of your biggest supporters and contributors to your early success?

I grew up in a family that loved the written word. Both my parents were trained as librarians, and my mother (Patricia Bow) had been writing and submitting stories to publishers for as long as I could remember. When I was a teenager, my mother let me read over and critique one of her YA submissions, and she read over and critiqued my fan fiction. Along with my wife (Erin Bow), she's my best editor. I met my wife, Erin, when I submitted one of my fan fiction stories to the newsgroup alt.drwho.creative. We became penpals and eventually fell in love. She was already a talented poet, and I encouraged her to write some fan fiction, which I published, and which a lot of people liked. We've supported and encouraged each other ever since, sharing scenes and critiquing them. She's made me a much better writer than I would have been without her.

4. What authors influenced your writing style and format?

I read a lot in the field I like to write in, so I think that has an influence. Really, I'm writing what I'm writing because I love the YA, science fiction and fantasy genres and I want more such books on the shelf. When you read a lot, there's a lot of cross-pollination. I love what Kenneth Oppel did with his Airborn trilogy, and I want to emulate that. Arthur Slade and Phillip Reeve have helped introduce me to steampunk. I also love Terry Pratchett. But I think the two longest standing influences have been the television show Doctor Who and Australian children's writer Patricia Wrightson. Doctor Who is the most flexible format in fiction. At its core, it's the tale about a wizard with a magical cabinet that can take him anywhere in the universe. He's a portable hero that can be dropped into any story, regardless of setting or genre. That gave me a love for wide ranging storytelling that I think has influenced my writing. Patricia Wrightson is not really well known in Canada. Somehow, one of her books, An Older Kind of Magic made its way here, and my mother read it to me when I was eight. It's a story about how a group of children help save a park in Sydney from developers, with the help of creatures from Australian aboriginal folklore. A sense of magic infuses the book, but one thing that stood out for me at the time was that a couple of the children were siblings that lived with their parents in a cabin located on the roof of a government building in downtown Sydney. Their father was the chief caretaker of the building and he got to live at the top of the building with his family, and the children got to roam the abandoned offices after hours. That magical, almost spooky, setting just burned itself in my mind and I remembered it instantly when I came upon the book twenty years later. The interesting thing is, when I read the story to my wife, she said that my writing style was very similar to Patricia Wrightson's in this book. So perhaps she's influenced me more than I know.

5. What advice do you wish an artist had passed on to you early in your career, which you only learned through experience?

People say it, but you can only really learn this first hand: it's better to make a living doing what you love than what you don't love, even if what you don't love earns you more money than what you do love. Even if you struggle to make ends meet (and you will), it's far more fulfilling if you enjoy what you're doing. I spent years avoiding being a writer because I didn't think it would pay the bills, but it was far better for my soul, and that's more important than my pocketbook.

6. What does your writing process look like? Takes us through the steps from idea to publishing?

I try to spend every spare moment writing something. I often have to struggle against wasting time on the Internet, checking e-mail, surfing websites or following Twitter. Sometimes I'm successful; sometimes I'm not. Now that my youngest daughter is attending preschool, and my eldest is in grade one, I have mornings to myself. This is a treat I haven't had in years. My wife needs to have her own writing office, and has rented space downtown to give herself a controlled mental space in which to work. I'm better at blocking out distractions, but in order to motivate myself to write, I sometimes find that I do have to step outside and find a space that isn't my home. By buying a coffee at a coffee shop, I tell myself, "right, I've spent money. Now I've got to sit down and write something in order to earn what I've spent." I also do a fair amount of writing late at night, after the kids are in bed but before I go to sleep myself. I don't have a set process other than that. The stories that I wrote were often discovered. I had a few seed ideas, perhaps a scene at the beginning, cool stuff in the middle and a possible scene in the end, and my task is to find a fun way to connect the dots. I rarely outline or anything like that or, if I do, it's something that I do at the same time as writing out scenes. Writing for me is the same act of discovery that readers do by reading.
 
7. Dows your writing process differ when writing fiction versus non-fiction?

Yes, they do, because the objectives of non-fiction are quite different. There is a lot more research involved and it stands to reason that the process has to be much tighter. In my non-fiction work, the deadlines are much tighter, so the work is more frenzied, but often the "story" is right there in front of me, and I simply have to write to that.

8. Do you prefer writing fiction or non-fiction?

There are elements I like of both. I'm proud of my non-fiction work, but fiction is more rewarding for me, I think. The story is far more mine in this instance.

9. Do you use a playlist when writing? Are certain books written while predominantly listing to the same music?

I do have "soundtrack albums" that I associate with some of my stories. As with my fiction writing, these came together organically. Often, I'd discover a new artist or album as I was writing my new project, and I would make connections between the two. I discovered the Quebec artist Jorane back in 2001, when I started writing Fathom Five, and I believe she had a great influence on that work; the atmosphere of her music just fit the atmosphere I was going for in the novel. The Unwritten Girl was more of a Pink Floyd tale. My latest novels (currently unpublished) also have their own soundtracks. The Night Girl is a bit of an eclectic mix with a lot of alternative stuff; The Dream King's Daughter has a lot of Jorane and Tori Amos, and Icarus Down was written as I was discovering the works of avant-garde techno-cellist Zoe Keating.

10. I once heard Madeleine L'Engle state that her characters were real to her and almost an extended part of her family, she said once that at the dinner table she sat up and stated "Meg just finished her PhD." Are your characters real to you, do you ever get glimpses of what they are up to now, or once you finish a book is that it?

That's certainly the case with Rosemary and Peter, whose first novel, The Unwritten Girl was heavily influenced by L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time (I'm sure you've spotted some of the explicit connections). I started writing the series in 2001, five years before the first book was published, and I had a draft of all three novels finished by 2003. I knew what their lives were like from 12 to 18, and I had plans for a fourth novel (now shelved) that would have taken them to 24, when they were adults and expecting their first child. It's similar for the other characters I've created since, although in those cases, the development of their lives have come in the form of potential sequels rather than anything as detailed as Peter and Rosemary's lives.

11. If you could only recommend 10 books to a reader looking to be a well-rounded and whole person what books would you suggest?

I can suggest ten books, but I don't think they'd be well rounded. My love is YA literature, with a healthy dose of fantasy and sci-fi. That has been the bulk of my reading for the past fifteen years. I haven't read Margaret Atwood, though I greatly respect her contributions to Canadian literature. My favourite Canadian writers are Kenneth Oppel and Arthur Slade. And I don't keep lists, so what I would suggest one day might be different on another day. So, here and now, off the top of my head, are ten books I'd recommend other readers read, in no particular order: 1. Kenneth Oppel's Airborn trilogy 2. The Hunchback Assignments by Arthur Slade 3. The Boneshaker by Kate Milford. 4. Small Gods by Terry Pratchett 5. Nation by Terry Pratchett 6. The Mortal Engines sequence by Phillip Reeve 7. Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino 8. The Chestnut Soldier by Jenny Nimmo 9. The Nargun and the Stars by Patricia Wrightson 10. Plain Kate by my wife, Erin Bow

12. In many ways you are a modern renaissance man, philosopher, educator, researcher, student, author and more. Very few people today are as well rounded as you are to what do you attribute this?

Quite possibly by not excelling in a particular field with good career opportunities. I've always enjoyed learning, and I was a rather studious kid, but I never seemed to take the most obvious path. Back in high school, I decided my focus would be geography, of all things, since that wasn't the obvious choice as something more math or language related. Maybe a part of me thought it would be fun to explore. The problem is, choosing such paths means the paths aren't exactly clear, since they're not as well trod. They're more fun to explore, but the final destination isn't easy to see. It took me a while to understand that it was writing that I loved the most, and that of all of the things I've done in my life - urban planning, office work, working at a high tech company and so on - the things I loved most about those things have been the creative writing elements. That doesn't exactly line up. I've dabbled in journalism, but I like to write fiction. I like to speak my mind, and putting a blog together naturally helped get those words out. I've dabbled in a lot of things, but at the core of it all has been my writing. I suspect being a writer leads to a lot of dabbling. We're explorers, not necessarily researchers. We don't always have the necessary focus to be experts in only one thing.

13. Some of your books are available in electronic formats but with that comes bootleg distribution. What are your impressions of ebooks and the distribution of them through torrents and other illegal means?

I really don't think we're going to be getting the genie back in the bottle in terms of bootleg downloads. It's just too easy to put something on the Internet and get it off, and making it difficult penalizes legitimate users unfairly. I think the best approach is to just call for an honest payment, noting that if we don't get paid, the world will lose our future content. I can only hope that anybody who downloads a bootleg copy of my book (I haven't heard of anyone doing that; my wife's Plain Kate is pretty high on the list of illegal downloads, however) eventually decides to get a legitimate copy that will get reflected on my royalty statement. If he or she ends up doing so as a result of encountering my book as a bootleg, so much the better. But I'm not going to lose sleep over it.

14. Some authors monitor torrent sites and have their publishers contact them to remove their content. Do you do so are have someone do so for you?

There isn't enough hours in the day for me to do this, and I'm not sure what my publisher does. Again, I have things to write, so I'm not going to waste that time by trying to police the Internet.

15. Completely off topic but what TV shows or movies do you enjoy?

We cut the cable television soon after my eldest daughter was born, so what we have tends to be downloaded via iTunes or streamed from Netflix, or grabbed through an off-air antenna. My favourite show remains Doctor Who, but I quite like Community and The Big Bang Theory. We watch Mythbusters with our kids. And I have a healthy diet of children's television under my belt… enough for me to build conspiracy theories as to what really happened to Max and Ruby's parents. My favourite movies include Hitchcock's North by Northwest and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I'm also partial to anything by Pixar. Other than that, we haven't been out to see a movie all that often since the kids were born.

16. I once had a university professor state that the true goal of a university education should be to teach one to learn how to think. What would you state should be the goal of higher education and why?

I have to agree that learning how to learn is the best thing the university system ever taught me. Because once you get the basics down, there's so much more that's out there, you've just got to go and get it yourself - or ask the right people the right questions in order to get the answers you need. Everything else that our higher education systems are obliged to do - give us job skills, do high level research, et cetera - becomes much easier once this foundation is laid.

17. If you were stuck on a desert island and could only have 10 books to read again and again, what books would you want with you?

Well, I would go back to the list that I gave you in question 11. I'd knock out numbers seven through nine and bring along my wife, her laptop and my laptop. That way, I'd have good stuff to read, and she and I could work on our books and read them over for each other. That should keep us occupied for years. We'd also need a solar charger, so knock out number six as well.
 
18. What advice would you give to young aspiring authors and artists?

My sister-in-law (now sadly passed away), Wendy once said "never buy anything you don't love". That made her very difficult to shop for. She later amended it to "never do anything you don't love." There is far too little time in your life to waste focusing on getting a high-paying career you're not passionate about because you want something to pay the bills. You have to be passionate about what you do in order for what you do to have meaning. It's hard to make a living, no matter what you do, but it feels a lot easier if you have fun doing it.
 
Thank you James for taking some time to answer some questions for the readers at Book Reviews and More. I look forward to reading more books by you and your wife.

Books by James Bow:  
The Unwritten Books:
The Unwritten Girl
Fathom Five
The Young City

Mysteries Revealed:
Animal Mysteries Revealed
Earth Mysteries Revealed
Space Mysteries Revealed

Non-Fiction:
Lamborghini: Superstar Cars
Earth's Secrets: Invisible Worlds
Deep Space Extremes
Baseball: Sports Science
Cycling: Sports Science
Saving Endangered Plants and Animals: Science Solves It
Rescue Missions: Science Solves It


Author Profile and Interview with James Bow

The Sisters Club - Megan McDonald - Book 1

The Sisters Club
Sisters Club Book 1
Megan McDonald (Author)
Pamela A. Consolazio (Illustrator)
Candlewick
ISBN 9780763632519
eISBN 9780763651862

Reading this book was like going back to my own childhood. I grew up in a home of three boys, and reading this book about three sisters made me realize that I never knew how much boys and girls were alike. Megan McDonald, who grew up the youngest of 5 sisters, writes about the friendship, love, hate and trials of family life among siblings. Our cast of characters is:
Three Sisters:
Alex Reel (the oldest)
Stevie Reel (middle the glue)
Joey Reel (the youngest)
Parents:
Mom (Susan Reel Actress)
Dad (Richard Reel famous actor who played King Lear)
Great Great Grandmother, founder of the town Hepzibiah McNutty Reel
Other Cast Members:
Sock Monkey
Scott Howell (the first boy to come over for dinner)
And more.

The three sisters have the Sisters club. They have sleep overs and meetings in Alex's room. They put on plays. This is a well-written book, in a mix of traditional text and what look like journal entries with comments from the other sisters. The illustrations really add to the book. It is a really fun read and another great book for readers of all ages by Megan McDonald.

Books by Megan McDonald:
Sisters Club:
Sisters Club 1
Sisters Club 2 Rule of Three
Sisters Club 3 Cloudy With a Chance of Boy

Books by Megan McDonald and Peter H Reynolds:
Judy Moody books:
1. Judy Moody
2. Judy Moody Gets Famous!
3. Judy Moody Saves the World!
4. Judy Moody Predicts the Future
5. Judy Moody, M.D. The Doctor Is In
6. Judy Moody Declares Independence
7. Judy Moody Around the World in 8½ Days
8. Judy Moody Goes to College
9. Judy Moody: Girl Detective
10. Judy Moody and the NOT Bummer Summer
10a. Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer (Movie Tie-In Edition)

Judy Moody Activity Books:
Judy Moody's Double Rare Way Not Boring Book of Fun Stuff to Do
Judy Moody's Way Wacky Uber Awesome Book of MORE Fun Stuff to Do

Stink Moody Books:
1. Stink: The Incredible Shrinking Kid
2. Stink and the Incredible Super-Galactic Jawbreaker
3. Stink and the World's Worst Super-Stinky Sneakers
4. Stink and the Great Guinea Pig Express
5. Stink: Solar System Superhero'
6. Stink and The Ultimate Thumb-Wrestling Smackdown
7. Stink and the Midnight Zombie Walk

Stink-O-Pedia Volume 1: Super Stink-y Stuff from A to Z
Stink-O-Pedia Volume 2: More Stink-y Stuff from A to Z

Judy and Stink Books:
Judy Moody & Stink: The Holly Joliday
Judy Moody and Stink: The Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Treasure Hunt

Stink and Judy Moody a Visual Bibliography

The Dig - Zoe and Zeus Book 1 - Audrey Hart

The Dig
Zoe and Zeus Book 1
Audrey Hart
Backlit Fiction
ISBN 9781937704131

Zoe is an orphan and she spends her summers on archeological digs with her aunt and uncle, and the year at the Greeley Academy boarding school. She loves being on digs but really doesn't feel like she fits in anywhere. Seventeen is a hard age to be, but even more so with the fragmented life she has lived. Zeus on the other hand is a Greek God. He appears 17 also, but has been this age for 500 years. He is the leader of the Mount Olympus gang, the 12 gods and goddesses of the ancient world. Then magically a giant iPhone transports Zoe back in time, from the present day archeological dig to when the mysterious temple was being built. And not only that, she has superpowers and is maybe even a goddess.

The concept of this story was intriguing so when I was offered a review copy I jumped at it. BackLitFiction is a new publisher specializing in eBooks, most of which so far seem aimed at the Young Adult to University age market. I have read a few now and they are all good books, but this one has something more. Audrey Hart, in writing this first book in a trilogy, has captured the essence of life in school and used that as a backdrop for moving out into the world and then being taken completely out of your comfort zone. Now most people do not get pulled 3000 years out of their comfort zone, but that is just the type of girl that Zoe is and the kind of things that happen to her.

At school, Zoe was not in the 'in' crowd and when she makes it through the trials to Mount Olympus she is not 'in' there either. In fact she experiences open hostility and threats on Olympus that were never part of boarding school. In order to survive she must learn to trust - first to trust herself and her new powers. She must also learn to trust a boy, a boy who is handsome, patient, kind and to whom Zoe just can't seem to release herself too completely. This was a great read and I look forward to the rest of the series. The writing is tight, the characters sharp and witty. The plot is a new and unique twist on girl meets boy. Let's see where things go from here! This was an amazing first novel. Give it a try!

Zebrafish - Sharon Emerson and Renee Kurilla

Zebrafish
Presented by Peter H. Reynolds
and Fable Vision
Sharon Emerson (Author)
Renee Kurilla (Illustrator)
Atheneum Books for Young Readers
an imprint of Simon and Schuster
ISBN 9781416995258

I am still fairly new to Graphic Novels. I have only been reading them a few years. But I do know stories and this is an amazing one. It is a story about a girl that wants to become a musician, Vita Escolar. Her older brother is a medical researcher. She puts up posters for band members but no one who comes is actually a musician except Jay. The main characters are:

Vita
Jay
Plinko
Tanya
Walt

They start out with different goals for the band, but in the end they discover a unified goal and purpose. They also lean that sometimes helping others is much more important than your own goals. This was an incredible book with an amazing story. It would be a great addition to any High School curriculum and will challenge anyone who reads it to learn to be a better person.

At First Bite - Poison Apple Book 8 - Ruth Ames

At First Bite
Ruth Ames
Poison Apple Book 8
An Imprint of Scholastic
ISBN 9780545324878

This series has been out for a few years now and this latest, the 8th book in the series, is the second to repeat an author. This series is a dark off-shoot of their popular Candy Apple Books. This series, Poison Apple Books, is amazing. The books explore such things as ghosts, vampires, haunting and other darker tales. Unlike most fluffy books for young girls, these tales have a little more grit but still have some humour and really fun reads.

This story continues shortly after This Totally Bites! Ashley Samantha Lambert is twelve years old, with blond hair and blue eyes, at her old school in New York she had been top of the social ladder, and then last fall she became a vampire. Now her family has moved to L.A. and things just seem to keep going downhill. Then she finds out she is living in a house famed for a vampire film, and the school play is the same story as that film: At First Bite. But not only are things rough for Ashley, she soon finds herself looking to uncover a dark one, a vampire that is attacking people. The Perfect life she pictured in L.A is not so perfect and life is even more complicated than she ever expected.

This book was another great read in a wonderful series. Give it a try.

Poison Apple Books:
The Dead End - Mimi McCoy
This Totally Bites! - Ruth Ames
Miss Fortune - Brandi Dougherty
Now You See Me - Jane B. Mason & Sarah Hines Stephens
Midnight Howl - Clare Hutton
Her Evil Twin - Mimi McCoy
Curiosity Killed the Cat - Sierra Harimann
At First Bite - Ruth Ames

Books By Aimee Friedman:
South Beach (2004)
French Kiss (2005)
A Novel Idea (2005)
Hollywood Hills (2007)
The Year My Sister Got Lucky (2008)
Sea Change (2009)

Contributed to:
Mistletoe (2006)
21 Proms

Graphic Novel:
Breaking Up (2007 - with Christine Norrie )

As Ruth Ames:
This Totally Bites - Poison Apple Book 2 (2009)
At First Bite - Poison Apple Book 8 (2011)

Author Profile Interview with Aimee Friedman