Nan’s Notes: The Maze Runner

by James Dashner
October 6th, 2009 by Random House
374 pages

The Maze Runner tells the story of a group of boys and one girl, who are trying to solve the mystery of the maze. These kids live together in the Glade, a large walled in area surrounded by a giant maze. At night the maze is crawling [...]

Nan’s Notes: American Born Chinese, by Gene Luen Yang

Gene Luen Yang
Age Range: Young Adult
Pub. Date: December 2008
233 pp
colored by cartoonist Lark Pien

Awards:

finalist for the 2006 National Book Awards
2007 Michael L. Printz Award.

I read this book back in October during the Read-a-thon. I really wish I had written the review before now! I returned the book many weeks ago, so this is from my [...]

Nan’s Notes: The Strain, by Guillermo Del Toro, Chuck Hogan

Pub. Date: June 2009

401 pages

I am so behind in putting up reviews! I am finally starting to feel better (I’ve been dealing with a bad cough and a general feeling of blech  for a month) – antibiotics are kicking in today! Over the next week and a half I hope to get up some short, [...]

Nan’s Notes: The Giver, by Lois Lowry

by Lois Lowry
Pub. Date: September 2002
180 pages
Awards:

Newbery Medal (1994)
Mythopoeic Fantasy Award Nominee
Horn Book Fanfare Best Book (1994)
Garden State Book Award for Teen Fiction Grades 6-8 (1996)
American Library Association (ALA) Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) Best Books for Young Adults for Young Adults (1994)

The Giver is one of the books I read for the read-a-thon. [...]

Nan’s Notes: The Impostor’s Daughter: a true memoir, by Laurie Sandell

Pub. Date: July 2009
247 pp

I was lucky to win this book from She Reads and Reads.
The Impostor’s Daughter is a graphic memoir. Laurie Sandell writes about her experience growing up with her larger-than-life father. As a young adult, Laurie starts to question many of the stories that her father told her as a child. She [...]

Nan’s Notes: The Lost Symbol, by Dan Brown

by Dan Brown
Pub. Date: September 2009
508pp

The Lost Symbol is Dan Brown’s latest book with his character Robert Langdon. The book is filled with Masonic secrets, symbology, historic buildings in Washington D.C., and a few other mysteries thrown in. It’s action packed and a very quick read, despite the length of it.
Is The Lost Symbol a [...]

Nan’s Notes: Dork Diaries – Tales from a Not-So Fabulous Life

by Rachel Renee Rusell
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing
Pub. Date: June 2009
Age Range: 12 and up
282 pages

I won this book through a giveaway on Goodreads.com.
The first thing I noticed when I got the book Dork Diaries:  Tales from a Not-So-Fabulous Life, is that it is packaged very similarly to Diary of a Wimpy Kid by [...]

Nan’s Notes: Catching Fire

by Suzanne Collins
Publisher: Scholastic, Inc.
Pub. Date: September 2009
ISBN-13: 9780439023498
391 pp
Series: Hunger Games Series, #2

This review contains a spoiler part way through. The spoiler is labeled and you will need to highlight the text in order to read it.
I read The Hunger Games this summer after seeing it on so many blogs. I loved it [...]

Nan’s Notes: Found

by  Margaret Peterson Haddix

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing
Pub. Date: April 2009
Age Range: 8 to 12
314pp
Series: Missing Series, #1

DCF nominee
Found opens with a mysterious plane arriving at the airport. An airport employee goes to the gate to let everyone off, but no one comes out of the plane. The employee goes into the plane and [...]

Nan’s Notes: Hidden Roots

by Joseph Bruchac

136 pages
Scholastic Press

This book counts towards the Take a Chance Challenge, task number 1:

Random Book Selection. Go to the library. Position yourself in a section such as Fiction, Non-Fiction, Mystery, Children (whatever section you want). Then write down random directions for yourself (for example, third row, second shelf, fifth book from right). Follow [...]