WHO IS A JEOPARDY FAN?

Beans for 100 please. This girl is one of the biggest fan of Jeopardy, the game show, and tried unsuccessfully in the past to get on during Jeopardy Kids Week.   BUZZZZ.  Who is Olivia Bean?  

Olivia Bean, Trivia Queen by Donna Gephart is the biggest queen of trivia  and she must watch Jeopardy every night.  When there's finally a chance for kids to audition for the game show and possibly go to Hollywood, she's determined to find a way to get on.  But, Olivia has a weakness.  Geography.  Can she make it?  Only if she can enlist the help of her nemesis and next door neighbor who is the king of trivia and is great at geography.   She can't let the opportunity pass her by because this might also be her only way to see her dad in LA since the divorce. 

For readers and Jeopardy lovers in 4th-6th. 

POOR MOE

Moe is a button on Mattie's nightgown in a book called HOUND DOG TRUE by Linda Urban. Mattie is a shy girl who lives with her mother and her Uncle Potluck. Uncle Potluck is a Custodial Arts professional at the school Mattie will be starting in a few weeks. Only Mattie would rather be her Uncle's custodial apprentice than go to yet another school. Her Uncle tells great stories, that he swears are "hound dog true." Mattie is hoping that her mother doesn't pick up and leave any time soon, because she's finally found a place she can be comfortable instead of worrying all the time. Worry is what got rid of Moe in the first place! For grades 4 and up.

WINNERS - WORTH READING STILL?

This is my third attempt at reading Dear Mr. Henshaw by Beverly Cleary. First attempt: ran out of time, only read about 10 pages. Second attempt: I read about 50 pages and was bored by it.

Third attempt: WOW! I get why this won the Newberry in 1984. It's a boy who starts off writing letters to his favorite author as part of a class assignment who winds up unloading his thoughts about the author, his lunch, and his father in a diary (yes, there was a boy writing in a diary before Diary of a Wimpy Kid). I love the ending, because it's a happy ending, but not one that is expected. Leigh grows, befriends a classmate, learns his lessons, fields dissapointments, not all neat and tidy but we get a glimpse of his life during one year of diary entries. This is a sensitive and thoughtful look at a middle school age boy at a time in which life, his parents' divorce, is just too confusing.

This is the book group's selection for the month of June. Join Snacktime Readers on Wednesday, June 23 at 7:00 in the Children's Room of the Central Library, 222 East Harvard Street, Glendale, CA 91205, (818)548-2035.

FAMILY SECRETS

WATCHING JIMMY by Nancy Hartry is about a young girl named Carolyn who's best friend Jimmy has been involved in a horrible accident that makes him brain damaged. Only Carolyn knows the truth to how Jimmy got that way, and she's not sure how to tell people. As the weight of this knowledge continues to press down on her, Carolyn learns what it means to "find her voice" when she is asked to audition for a local choir group AND perform an important speech on Canada's Remembrance Day. This is an easy-to-read story set in the late 1950's and does a great job of portraying that era from a non-stereotypical perspective. For grades 4 and up.

INTERNET+13+BOY=TROUBLE

Puberty hits Eddie like a sledge hammer but when his mother finds out he's printing and looking at inappropriate pictures behind her back and lying to her on top of it, she ships him off to her uncle's farm. A farm where there's nothing to do. Nothing that is until he sees a gorgeous girl working in the store across the field. Intrigued by her but not sure how to approach her, he watches and begins to notice the things and people around him. And what he notices and finds out aren't always pretty.

Double Click for Trouble by Chris Woodworth is a worthy coming of age novel for mature readers 6th & up.

Anna and Mica meet by chance and become pen pals in this story told in the letters where their shared their love of science and nature brings them together. One of the girls is trying to adjust to a new foster situation and the other to her first time attending school and it is the trials of these experiences that they share with each other along with shells and other specimens. Their friendship though has its rough spots when Mica makes a friend from school and Anna's foster mother starts dating Mr. Webster but they ultimately overcome these and help each other in Adrian Fogelin's The Sorta Sisters. This tale of friendship and growing up is best for reader's in grades 5-8.

LOOKING FOR HAPPINESS

Is it possible to find happiness in death? If you were the one dying, what could you do to make your passing away less painful for others? These are just a few thoughts I had after reading THE HAPPINESS OF KATI by Jane Vejjajiva. Kati lives with her grandparents because her mother has Lou Gehrig's disease and feels she isn't able to take care of Kati. But Kati really knows nothing about her mother until after her death, through the paper trail her mother left her to follow. Recommended for grades 5 and up.