Author: Cindy

(Early ARC Review) Sally’s Bones

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Sally's Bones
Title: Sally’s Bones
Author: MacKenzie Cadenhead
Illustrator: T.S. Spookyytooth
Pub Date: September 2011
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky

Source: I received an advance readers copy of this book from Sourcebooks Jobberwocky for my honest and sincere review.

ABOUT THE BOOK:
Bones is the dreadfully delicious girl’s best friend who helps solve this Burton-esque mystery. Sally is a quirky character who loves Death Rock and faded blue jeans. She fits in better with the Addams Family than with a clique of catty sixth grade girls. After her mother’s death, grief-stricken Sally begs for death…and death is exactly what she gets: a tail-wagging skeleton dog called Bones. A gift from beyond the grave, Bones is a dreadfully delicious girl’s best friend. In this cleverly written, alliterative tale the neighbourhood’s dog treats go missing and everyone blames Bones. Sally must solve the mystery to save her cadaverous canine from puppy prison. “This unusually clever, fun teen comic is based on the novel premise that parents don’t just seem evil, they actually are evil supervillains… story with clarity, a dollop of drama and just enough pizzazz.” — Publishers Weekly praise MacKenzie Cadenhead’s The Runaways Vol 1 Grades: 4-7

I absolutely loved this book and would highly recommend it to everyone.

I absolutely loved the main character Sally Simplesmith and not just because of her last name. You can’t help but not fall in love with Sally. She is one of those kids you just want to take under your wing and love her.

She lost her mother when she was very young and her very busy father is raising her the best that he can do. Its only when old friends have come back into the picture (Vanderperfects) that poor  Sally wishes nothing more then “Give. Me. Death.” on her mother’s grave. Viola has made it her mission to make Sally feel like the outcast that she already feels like because Sally isn’t like most of the girls in the sixth grade.

The gift from beyond the grave (a dead dog made of bones) makes Sally’s day and probably her year because for the first time she is happy and decides that no one will bring her down even though they try. No one knows about her dog, Bones and she tries her best to keep him a secret but Sally quickly realizes that someone knows her secret because notes are suddenly appearing, who is behind them?

Sally tries her best to keep Bones her secret but before long her secret is revealed and purely by accident and its this new found friend that has peaked every ones interest and before long Sally and Bones have become the center of attention.  For once Sally feels what she has always wanted to feel, accepted.

But we all know that happiness comes at a price and it seems like there is someone (who isn’t happy about the latest development) out to get Sally and Bones because before Sally can blink and enjoy her new found popularity, Bones is being framed for stealing dog bones from all the dogs in the city. I have to say I really thought it was one person and ended up completely blindsided when the real person was revealed. You will too when you find out who did it and why.

I loved the fact that no matter what the dog looked like Sally loved him no matter what he looked like and I think more people need to realize this too. Its whats inside that really counts.

Thanks to Sourcebooks for sending me this lovely book to read and review and for allowing me to be a part of the tour for it.

copyright 2010, Cindy (Cindy’s Love Of Books)
If you are reading this on a blog or website other than Cindy’s Love Of Books or via a feedreader, this content has been stolen and used without permission.

It’s Monday What are you reading? #33

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It’s Monday! What Are You Reading, is where we gather to share what we have read this past week and what we plan to read this week. It is a great way to network with other bloggers to see what they have read and what they are reading this week.

The wonderful host of this weekly meme is Shelia from Book Journey. You can check out Sheila’s blog to find out all the details on how to take part in this fun weekly meme. Although I should warn you that this can lead to an ever increasing TBR pile, wishlist or borrowed books from the library.

Do you ever feel as though time seems to be passing you by? I have felt like that ever since we have gotten back from vacation. Its hard to believe that this is literally Michael’s  last full week left of summer vacation and its back to school on the 31st.

Since coming back from vacation we have been finishing up the last week of swimming lessons (that was last week) and the same for the summer reading programs so now this last week there is really anything to do apart from dentist, eye dr and hearing test appointments. School supplies are bought and labeled and put in the new back pack.

This past week I have to admit not much reading got done because of the construction happening behind my house.

They have been working on this street behind my house now since June and it wasn’t too bad until we got back from vacation and realized that they were literally working right behind the house and the wake up call was on Monday morning at 6:30AM.  So all this past week I have been up at that time and dragging through the days.

I was super excited when Friday came because I knew it would be a quiet weekend but yea you guessed it my bubble was burst big time but thankfully I don’t think they started until 7am. From the looks of it, it seems like they are finished and have moved up so I am hoping that next week will be just a little more quieter.

I am super excited because I am hoping to get through these books this week and to get reviews up as well for them. Here is what is on my reading pile this week:


Sally’s Bones by MacKenzie Cadenhead. This is coming out in September 15,  2011 and it sounds really good.
Product Description

Bones is the dreadfully delicious girl’s best friend who helps solve this Burton-esque mystery. Sally is a quirky character who loves Death Rock and faded blue jeans. She fits in better with the Addams Family than with a clique of catty sixth grade girls. After her mother’s death, grief-stricken Sally begs for death…and death is exactly what she gets: a tail-wagging skeleton dog called Bones. A gift from beyond the grave, Bones is a dreadfully delicious girl’s best friend. In this cleverly written, alliterative tale the neighbourhood’s dog treats go missing and everyone blames Bones. Sally must solve the mystery to save her cadaverous canine from puppy prison. “This unusually clever, fun teen comic is based on the novel premise that parents don’t just seem evil, they actually are evil supervillains… story with clarity, a dollop of drama and just enough pizzazz.” — Publishers Weekly praise MacKenzie Cadenhead’s The Runaways Vol 1 Grades: 4-7


The Warrior Sheep Go West by Christine & Christopher Russell. This is the second book in the series and this comes out Sept 2011.

This is a wildly western adventure about five sheep, one mad professor and a quest to save all of sheepdom. A strange monster called Red Tongue has threatened all Rams, Ewes and Lambs. The Warrior Sheep know it’s up to them to stop him. Last time they saved the Sheep God. This time they have to save all of sheepdom. ‘We did it once, we can do it again,’ Wills the lamb says. And so the Warrior Sheep go West! To America, to the desert and the hot air of Las Vegas. But they have a crazy scientist following them, and Tod and Gran have been slung in jail by a over-zealous Sheriff. Can the Warriors give Professor Boomberg the slip and stop the sheep-killing monster? They’ll need to hoof it, before Red Tongue tramples all over America…Read it: it’s absolutely baaarmy!



The Quest of the Warrior Sheep by Christopher & Christine Russell. This is book one in the series and I bought it while I was in the US because I knew I was going to read the second book very soon. This one came out last year.

This is a super-funny, super-crazy crime caper with five rare-breed sheep! A silver object falls mysteriously from the sky and lands on Sal, a matronly Southdown ewe who lives happily with her sheep friends on Eppingham Farm. The sheep are convinced that an ancient ovine prophecy is being fulfilled. They must go North (so to Scotland, perhaps?), on a mission to aid Lord Aries, Sheep of all Sheepdom, Ram of Rams, in his battle against the powers of darkness in the shape of Lambad the Bad. Thus the Eppingham Posse of Rare Breed Warriors is born. In fact, the silver object is a mobile phone, dropped from a hot air balloon by Luke and Neil, who have been stealing bank money over the internet. They need that phone back to hide the evidence. And a couple of woolbags aren’t going to stand in their way! The chase is on…

So guys, this is what I am planning on reading this week, what about you?

copyright 2010, Cindy (Cindy’s Love Of Books)
If you are reading this on a blog or website other than Cindy’s Love Of Books or via a feedreader, this content has been stolen and used without permission.

Blogiversary Week

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Its hard to believe that come August 26th, Cindy’s Love of Books will be three years old.

I truly am greatful for this chance to be able to share my thoughts about books with some many awesome people. Your comments and emails have meant so much to me over the years and I truly appreciate them.

I know there have been times I felt like throwing in the towel but it would just take one person to say the most amazing thing to me or about the blog to make it worth the while and time invested into Cindy’s Love of Books.

I have so many people to thank that I really can’t put you all here but you all know who you are when I say this THANK YOU so much.

To all the amazing Reps and publishing houses who have graciously sent me books over the past three years to read and review. I have discovered so many great authors through this. Thank You so very much for thinking of me when you send the books.

To bloggers I have met online who have become the best of friends in real life. You guys are the best and I truly love meeting up with you and looking forward to another year of great friendship and great books.

To some pretty amazing authors I have gotten to know online (Kerry) we wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you and your books.

Thank you everyone. Words can’t express how much you truly mean to me.

So this week I have a few things planned and some great contests as well. So just remember to check back throughout the week to see what is happening.

copyright 2010, Cindy (Cindy’s Love Of Books)
If you are reading this on a blog or website other than Cindy’s Love Of Books or via a feedreader, this content has been stolen and used without permission.

Impressive Booksale Today

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Today I went to a very impressive booksale at a library here in Montreal, called The Atwater Library.

Every summer the Atwater Library hosts this booksale out on the lawn in front of the library. Along with great book finds you can grab some food from the BBQ set up. We didn’t grab any food but we did grab some great books.

Today was the perfect day for the sale because the weather was fantastic. As you can see the sun was out and it was a some what cool morning weather wise.

Originally I did not plan on attending the booksale because we are into the last week of swimming lessons but when we woke up it was 15 degrees out so we knew that the water would be cold so we skipped on going to the swimming lesson and decided at the last minute to attend the Atwater Booksale.

I quickly got a hold of  http://bookshipper.blogspot.com/2011/08/library-stash-oh-my.html to find out the details and in the end I decided that I would just drive to Tina’s and park in front of her building and we hopped on the metro and headed downtown.

We weren’t there long when we met up with http://moonlightgleam.blogspot.com/. Lucy already had an armfull of books when we saw her. She had already picked up some great books.

We all sorta of spread out and were looking around and picking up books. It was once I was near the table to pay when I over heard the lady asking the guy in front of me where did he get those children books and when I realized that there was another table I headed over there. Well this table was full of Young Adult books and many of them were brand new 2011 and 2010.

There was this really nice and super friendly guy manning the ya table and all the proceeds from the sale of those books were going to the Montreal Children’s Library.Well let me tell you that between Lucy and myself we made a huge dent into the table we grabbed all kinds of books from there. I think we made the guys day, we even had him laughing.

He also let us into a little secret that there was more books in the basement and with a little begging and pleading a nice lady who worked there let us into the inner layers of the library. This was literally book heaven for us. It smelled of books and despite the heat down there we walked away with some more books.

I want to thank the super nice lady (Anne or Anna sorry not sure of the name) who graciously got me a tote bag when she realized how many books I had bought. I came home with 25 books all under $20 Canadian. (The total retail value was well over $400)

After that we all headed over to the mall’s food court for drinks and thankfully Tina suggested pictures so here are mine:

Lucy, Michael and myself with all our book purchases.


I managed to convince Tina to join us in the picture and thanks to our little photographer Michael for  taking this picture.

I think we took the pictures after we had eaten and drank. I love getting to meet up with friends who share the same things  with me and not all our conversations are about books 🙂

It was a great morning spent at the booksale with some great bookbloggers and some great books.

Without further hesitation here is a little vlog I made with the books I bought. Please excuse any construction sounds you might hear in the back ground but the lovely city (not) is doing all kinds of construction behind my house and I was trying to wait for them to finish up for the day but it seems like they are extending the hours and working earlier (6.30am) and longer into the evening.

-The Kneebone Boy by Ellen Potter
-The Hunt of the Unicorn by C.C Humphreys
-The Anti-prom by Abby McDonald
-Ascendant by Diana Peterfreund (book 2)
-Love, Inc by Yvonne Collins & Sandy Rideout
-I so don’t do spooky by Barrie Summy (book 2)
-I so don’t do makeup by Barrie Summy (book 3)
-The Poison Diaries by Maryrose Wood with the Duchess of Northumberland (book 1)
-The beautiful between by Alyssa B. Sheinmel
-Fall for Anything by courtney Summers
-Cinderella Ninja Warrior by Maureen McGowan
-The lighter side of life and death by C.K Kelly Martin
-Recipe for Disaster by Maureen Fergus
-My So-Called Death by Stacey Jay
-The Last Good Place of Lily Odilon by Sara Beitia
-Ice Rose by Alison Neuman
-Old Photographs by Sherie Posesorski
-Sirenz by Charlotte Bennardo & Natalie Zaman
-Gimme a call by Sarah Mlynowski
-Department 19 by Will Hill
-Codemaster book 1 by Marvin Miller
-The book of Cards for Kids by Gail MacColl
-Card Games for Little Kids by Gail MacColl
-Ali Bongo’s Book of Magic
-Top Secret Personal Beeswax A journal by Junie B. and myself
-Then He Ate My Boy Entrancers by Louise Rennison

Tina gave Michael The Complete Book of Chess Strategy by IM Jeremey Silman

Lucy gave me two books (RAK) and they were Hexbound and Firespell by Chloe Neill along with a beautiful little card and inside the books were two bookmarks. Thanks Lucy. Can’t wait to read them now.

Thanks ING Direct for the pen.

To find out more about the sale be sure to check http://bookshipper.blogspot.com/ and http://moonlightgleam.blogspot.com/ to see what they had to say about it.

copyright 2010, Cindy (Cindy’s Love Of Books)
If you are reading this on a blog or website other than Cindy’s Love Of Books or via a feedreader, this content has been stolen and used without permission.

(Guest Post) Margaret Dilloway

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How to Be an American Housewife

Today I am very honored to be able to have the author of How to Be an American Housewife, Margaret Dilloway stop by to do a blog post for me. How to Be an American Housewife was just released in paperback.
The topic of the guest post is:  The entertaining experiences of being a half-Japanese, half-American young girl in the 60’s and 70’s.

Thanks again Margaret for taking the time out do to this for me. Without further hesitation take it away Margaret.

When I was little, I never really thought of myself as Asian, even though my mother was Japanese.  I didn’t look particularly Asian.  I didn’t speak Japanese; my mother thought it would confuse us too much, though I did beg her to teach me.  We didn’t really know many other Asians, and the ones we did, we didn’t socialize with.  

Nonetheless, there were some traditions my mother followed that were different than any other local household I’d been in.  Everyone took off their shoes at the door. If anyone asked why, I’d just say, “It’s a Japanese tradition, and my mother’s Japanese,” and they’d do it.  Our house didn’t have tatami mats or tables close to the floor, so there was no worry there.

The shoes-off tradition got more amusing when my brother turned into a teen.   Teenage boys (surprise!) are kind of stinky.  So to have six pairs of athletic shoes lying by the door was not particularly pleasant.  Our cat loved it, though.  The cat would wait by the door for the boys to take off their shoes and then stick her head in them, rubbing and rolling, until she’d had her fill.  I remember this mainly because my mother got so much entertainment out of it; it was rare to hear her laugh, but this did it every time.

Mom also had some ideas different from the locals.  Once I borrowed an egg from a neighbor for my mother to complete a recipe.  In the U.S., when you“borrow” an ingredient, you usually don’t mean you’re going to return it; it’s just a neighborly thing to do, and one day the neighbor might request the same kind of help from you.  But my mother didn’t subscribe to this point of view.

The next day, after we bought more eggs, my mother sent me over to the neighbor’s house with two eggs.  “Tell her it’s how Japanese do it,” she instructed.  She did not want to be beholden to anyone, for anything.  The neighbor tried to wave me off, saying it was fine, she didn’t need the egg back, but I had to insist that she take both.
 
Also, nobody else celebrated New Year’s the way Americans celebrated Christmas.  My mother would spend all of New Year’s Eve making special foods,sushi and sometimes sashimi.  I would brag about the ability to eat raw fish to all my friends, who would be (I presumed) struck with envy.  She would set up a table with lacquered boxes filled with Japanese treats, like pickled cabbageand root vegetables.  There were always tangerines from our tree, and flowers,too.  Sometimes, on New Year’s Day, my dad would take us to the big sales to get us clothes and call it our New Year’s gifts.  However, I would not be allowed to go out.  My mother said it was because New Year’s was an important Japanese holiday, like Christmas, to be spent with family; she was really just worried about the crazies on the roads. 

Some things in the book didn’t really happen to me, but were sparked by others.  There’s a part in the book where another mother can’t understand Shoko’s accent, and there’s a big mix-up over popcorn balls.  As a kid, I was never aware of anyone not understanding my mother. But my husband’s mother, who never met mine, told me a story about a Japanese mom she knew when her kids were little. It was difficult to have a conversation with this lady, she said,and she expressed how badly she felt that she hadn’t tried harder to include her.  I included a similar scenario in the novel, for Shoko.

There’s also a part about Sue trying to win in the science fair with Shoko’s help.  Something similar did happen to me, without my parent’s help, as I attempted a science fair project.  This was more about class and income difference than about cultural difference, as my parents simply did not help us out with projects and did not understand what had to go into them.  I thought something similar might have happened with my characters.

Thanks again Margaret for taking the time out to do this.

copyright 2010, Cindy (Cindy’s Love Of Books)
If you are reading this on a blog or website other than Cindy’s Love Of Books or via a feedreader, this content has been stolen and used without permission.

Do you want to help?

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It’s hard to believe but Cindy’s Love of Books will be celebrating three years blogging at the end of the month. Where did the time go? I have had such a blast blogging.

The reason for today’s post is that I am thinking of doing some guest posts from fellow bloggers and authors.

Not sure what I want the posts to be about but if you are interested please leave me a comment in this post. All posts would be scheduled to post the week of August 21st. Along with those guest posts I will be having some give aways.

So if you would like to take part please let me know.

Thanks in advance.

copyright 2010, Cindy (Cindy’s Love Of Books)
If you are reading this on a blog or website other than Cindy’s Love Of Books or via a feedreader, this content has been stolen and used without permission.

On Vacation

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I just wanted to give you the heads up that I am taking a bloggy vacation for the next 11-12 days. I won’t be here physically but I will here with blog posts during that time.

So please note that all comments are going to be moderated and if you email me I will try to get back to you as soon as I can.

I hope you have a great week.

copyright 2010, Cindy (Cindy’s Love Of Books)
If you are reading this on a blog or website other than Cindy’s Love Of Books or via a feedreader, this content has been stolen and used without permission.