#BookReview “SIDESHOW” Brian Kindall

Now for the review. "SideShow" takes place before "Delivering Virtue" and "Fortuna and the Scapegrace". As I have read the latter two it was really fun to get a picture of who Didier was before those two great adventures take place. "SideShow" is both a great introductory and companion to flesh out the world of Didier Rain. If you start with "SideShow" you'll be hooked. For so little pages, it does a great job of showing the complexities of the world through the eyes of my favorite swashbuckling dandy.

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“An Authentic Experience” Kelly Wittmann #BookReview

"An Authentic Experience" is one of those books that I call a builder. At the beginning I didn't like Silver. Not even a little. She seems hollow, selfish and shallow. BUT....(and here is why I call this book a builder) by about the middle of the book I realized that her initial shallowness was part of her evolution as a character. This is one of those books about growing up. It's about gaining wisdom through experience. "An Authentic Experience" is really about how lifes challenges (whether they be our own challenges or those closest to us) morph us into someone different. Someone deeper. Someone wiser. Someone who is actually authentic.  

“Artemis” Andy Weir #BookReview

In "Artemis", we are also introduced to some judicial ethics that, if not carefully considered and worked out now, will plague us as we've already experienced with the explosion of tech and our judicial systems sluggish pace in keeping up. Is it ethical to deport someone to a planet they haven't been on since they were a young child knowing that it will cause them severe health issues? Is it ethical to deport someone to a country they know nothing of since they didn't grow up there? What constitutes a persons citizenship? As humanity becomes ever more connected is it ethical to continue to divide us into countries? How we move forward with these issues now and later will have a huge effect on our momentum technologically. 

Book Review “There Was An Old Sailor” Claire Saxby & Cassandra Allen

The story is perfectly complemented by Cassandra Allen's jaunty, simple and playful illustrations, which provide a terrific source of visual clues for pre-readers looking to recognize words. The rhyming and repetition will make this a favorite read-aloud choice for storytime, as children will happily participate in reading the repeated sections, which are so easily and quickly memorized. In addition, there is a ?Fishy Facts? spread at the back of the book that contains a true fact about each animal in the story (including ?A blue whale can eat millions of krill a day!?), which would make for a fantastic introduction to a discussion on the size of sea creatures and the food chain.