The Perfect Score Project by Debbie Stier, 2014

Synopsis (from Goodreads - I clipped off a couple paragraphs because it's really long):

It all began as an attempt by Debbie Stier to help her high-school age son, Ethan, who would shortly be studying for the SAT. Aware that Ethan was a typical teenager (i.e., completely uninterested in any test) and that a mind-boggling menu of test-prep options existed, she decided – on his behalf -- to sample as many as she could to create the perfect SAT test-prep recipe.
Debbie’s quest turned out to be an exercise in both hilarity and heartbreak as she took the SAT seven times in one year and in-between “went to school” on standardized testing. Here, she reveals why the SAT has become so important, the cottage industries it has spawned, what really works in preparing for the test and what is a waste of time.
Both a toolbox of fresh tips and an amusing snapshot of parental love and wisdom colliding with teenage apathy, The Perfect Score Project rivets. In the book Debbie does it all: wrestles with Kaplan and Princeton Review, enrolls in Kumon, navigates khanacademy.org, meets regularly with a premier grammar coach, takes a battery of intelligence tests, and even cadges free lessons from the world’s most prestigious (and expensive) test prep company.
Along the way she answers the questions that plague every test-prep rookie, including: “When do I start?”...”Do the brand-name test prep services really deliver?”...”Which should I go with: a tutor, an SAT class, or self study?”...”Does test location really matter?” … “How do I find the right tutor?”… “How do SAT scores affect merit aid?”... and “What’s the one thing I need to know?”The Perfect Score Project’s combination of charm, authority, and unexpected poignancy makes it one of the most compulsively readable guides to SAT test prep ever – and a book that will make you think hard about what really matters.
(304 pages)

So, I realize this is a bit off the beaten track for this blog. "Where's the YA?" you ask. "Or at the very least MG like last week's review?" Well, bare with me on this one. I'm a high school junior, okay? I saw a review of this book at Tea Time With Annie Kate and knew immediately that I needed to read it. And I did. And now I'm going to review it.

This book is part memoir, part how-to guide. The story of Debbie's path to understanding the SAT intertwines with revelations about her relationship with her children and her approach to parenting teenagers. I'm going to break it down into the two components and review them separately, but if you want the short version, here it is: high schoolers, read this book only if you want to start panicking about the SAT! If you do want to start panicking, then this is a good place to start.

First, the personal story line. Debbie is one of those super-obsessive moms who latch onto something and don't let it go. It gets a bit much for both me and her children (who revolt at the idea of Kumon lessons and move in with their dad) somewhere around the middle, but she pulls out strong at the end of the year/story. It was nice seeing that relationship, and the very promise that she loves her son so much she takes seven SATs to motivate him is pretty neat.

As an aside, how much money has this lady got? She spent half the book buying various test prep sources, the fate of which she describes on page 98:

. . . my shelf of rejects bulged ever wider until I had to move the forsaken books to a larger space downstairs, and then ultimately, when they outgrew that room too, to the big bookshelf in the sky.

Anyway, on to the SAT portion. I know very little about the SAT, but she knows a ton. She tried just about every resource there is out there and weeded out quite a few bad ones. It's extremely intimidating reading about the amount of prep that goes into taking that test - for some people at least. How can I compete with private tutors and hours spent poring over old tests like they're the new Bible? I suppose the answer involves a huge amount of work, and I'm not exactly thrilled about beginning. However, when I do I'll be sure to use this book (and the website that goes with it) as a resource. My biggest fault with the book? No "cheat sheet" in the back. An appendix summarizing good study techniques and bad ones would have been so helpful. Fingers crossed that's on the website.

Lack of appendix aside, this book is chock full of every SAT prep tip imaginable, about everything from what snacks to bring (she recommends dark chocolate, water, a sliced red apple, and Listerine strips) to how to motivate a teenager to study (parental enthusiasm and involvement). The results she came to at the end of her trial and error experiment don't seem exotic or crazy; they scream "experience" more than most SAT "tip" books. By the end of the year, Debbie saw the SAT as one big puzzle she would never be able to crack. She had fun trying, but she just didn't have the math background to do it.

The biggest take-away I got from the book is to take the SAT multiple times, so it's not do-or-die the first few times. I'm going to peruse her website a bit more to see if there are any more specific tips I can glean (the book is good, and the tips are put together in gray boxes to separate them from the rest of the narrative, but it's still a pain to find anything in it). I'm not going to say this is the be all and end all of SAT prep advice books, because I don't know enough about the SAT to know that. I do, however, know that this is a good place to start my journey to the SAT.

Top Rick Riordan Cliches (I Need Your Help!)

Hello, readers! Today I'll be doing something a bit different: Lakshmi commented on my review of Blood of Olympus suggesting I put together a list of the top Rick Riordan cliches, and I decided to do it. As you can see in my review, I loved the original Percy Jackson series but have been pretty disappointed in the Heroes of Olympus books. Don't jump all over me for hating, I just want to poke some gentle fun at the cliches Uncle Rick likes to lean on.

And without further ado, let's get started! Here are a few I thought of:

1. Love stories. With angst. Cause someone's always wondering if their girlfriend/boyfriend really likes them as much as they say.

2. Land ship. Fight monsters. Leave. Repeat.

3. This can't possibly get any worse. Oh wait, it just did!

4. Every character has to have some kind of internal fear/something they're hiding from the team. If not related to cliche #2, these fears usually turn out to be really important to the plot

5. There's a prophesy that seems horrible, but in the end we discover a different way to intrepret the prophecy, and now no one has to die.

6. The gods. They're SO USELESS, except for when they're vital to the plot.

What are your top Rick Riordan cliches? Leave them below, and I'll add them to my list! I'll post the full version on December 2, unless we need more time.

Edit 12/5/14:
This is now closed. I will post the final list of cliches next week. Feel free to continue posting cliches on here, as I will keep monitoring it for comments. If you post before my list is up and running, and I have time, I will add your cliche(s) to the end of the list.

Edit 1/6/15:
I just realized I should add the link to the final list. Here it is!

Teaser Tuesdays (Nov. 25)

Okay, so for those of you who are new to this meme, here's how it works:

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read

• Open to a random page

• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page

• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)

• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

If you read last week's teaser and want to know more about Masterpiece, click here to read my review. It was a lot of fun revisiting an old favorite!

My current read is The Perfect Score Project: Discovering the Secrets of the SAT by Debbie Stier. I know it's a bit different from my usual reviews, but I couldn't resist reading it after seeing Annie Kate's review of it.

Synopsis (from Goodreads):

It all began as an attempt by Debbie Stier to help her high-school age son, Ethan, who would shortly be studying for the SAT. Aware that Ethan was a typical teenager (i.e., completely uninterested in any test) and that a mind-boggling menu of test-prep options existed, she decided – on his behalf -- to sample as many as she could to create the perfect SAT test-prep recipe.
Debbie’s quest turned out to be an exercise in both hilarity and heartbreak as she took the SAT seven times in one year and in-between “went to school” on standardized testing. Here, she reveals why the SAT has become so important, the cottage industries it has spawned, what really works in preparing for the test and what is a waste of time.
Both a toolbox of fresh tips and an amusing snapshot of parental love and wisdom colliding with teenage apathy, The Perfect Score Project rivets. In the book Debbie does it all: wrestles with Kaplan and Princeton Review, enrolls in Kumon, navigates khanacademy.org, meets regularly with a premier grammar coach, takes a battery of intelligence tests, and even cadges free lessons from the world’s most prestigious (and expensive) test prep company.
Along the way she answers the questions that plague every test-prep rookie, including: “When do I start?”...”Do the brand-name test prep services really deliver?”...”Which should I go with: a tutor, an SAT class, or self study?”...”Does test location really matter?” … “How do I find the right tutor?”… “How do SAT scores affect merit aid?”... and “What’s the one thing I need to know?”
The Perfect Score Project’s combination of charm, authority, and unexpected poignancy makes it one of the most compulsively readable guides to SAT test prep ever – and a book that will make you think hard about what really matters.

Here´s my quote, taken from page 98:

. . . my shelf of rejects bulged ever wider until I had to move the forsaken books to a larger space downstairs, and then ultimately, when they outgrew that room too, to the big bookshelf in the sky.

Let me know what you think of the book, and check back on Saturday for my review!

Masterpiece by Elise Broach, 2008

Synopsis (from Goodreads):
Marvin lives with his family under the kitchen sink in the Pompadays’ apartment. He is very much a beetle. James Pompaday lives with his family in New York City. He is very much an eleven-year-old boy.After James gets a pen-and-ink set for his birthday, Marvin surprises him by creating an elaborate miniature drawing. James gets all the credit for the picture and before these unlikely friends know it they are caught up in a staged art heist at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that could help recover a famous drawing by Albrecht Dürer. But James can’t go through with the plan without Marvin’s help. And that’s where things get really complicated (and interesting!). This fast-paced mystery will have young readers on the edge of their seats as they root for boy and beetle.

First, an important note to my readers: Two months ago I fell off a horse (during my third and final horse-back riding lesson), spraining my left and dominant hand. We went to the doctor and got a wrist brace which helped it get better, but in the last two weeks it has become painful once more and so I'm under orders not to use it for anything. Sadly, that "anything" includes typing. I'm left to do my school-work and blog writing either one-handed or with my computer's pretty faulty dictation device. So if I miss a typo here or there, just let me know in the comments and I'll fix it.

Anyway, on to the review.
I read this book for the first time several years ago, back when I was actually part of the target audience.  The first time I read it, I picked it up because I had loved Shakespeare's Secret by the same author.  I didn't really know what to expect with this one, but once I got into this book, I was enthralled.  Now, a few years later, I am not quite as in love as I was the first time (and caught a couple logistical issues that escaped my notice the first time), but it is still the fun, sweet story I remember - and even cuter than I thought it was!

I'm not really going to nit-pick through this one. The fact that the beetles are so similar to humans requires a leap of faith (I mean, Marvin has an uncle who fixes the electronic devices when they malfunction!), but the charming picture of a tiny family living in the walls and mimicking the lives of the larger inhabitants is indubitably an appealing one to elementary and middle school-aged children. You only have to look at the success of The Littles and The Borrowers to see this. Stuart Little and The Cricket in Time's Square are some  more successful additions to this sub-genre about tiny people or animals who behave like people. Masterpiece joins the ranks of these stretch-of-the-imagination classics with all the charm that can be desired, if not all the logic (at one point Marvin can't see and knows he's in an  elevator because of the swooping feeling in his stomach - how can this pubescent beetle who has never left home before possibly know what it feels like to be in an elevator?).

The story is told third person past tense from Marvin's point of view. Marvin is the hero of this book, no doubt about it. It's his decisions that carry the story, starting with his impulsive present to James. Marvin doesn't really have much unique characterization. The novelty is in what Marvin is and what he can do, not who Marvin is. Marvin is pretty straight-forward (kind, curious, artistic, etc), and you can't help but automatically be on his side.

James, the main human character in the book, is just as nice as Marvin, and is also very perceptive. James is probably my favorite character in the book not only because of his shy kindness, but because his mother and step-father walk all over him and you can't help but be on his side. Even James's real father Karl (divorced from James's mother several years before the book begins) seems oblivious to James's real desires in life: he gives James a pen and ink set for his birthday, clueless to the fact that James can't even draw. James doesn't throw a fit about getting a pen and ink set for his birthday (which is what most bratty kids in today's MG would do). He thanks his dad with as much enthusiasm as he can muster, and goes upstairs to start testing the kit out. See why I like this kid? There have been too many self-absorbed MCs lately, and I enjoyed reading a book with two kind and even compassionate main characters. Maybe I should read younger kid books more often.

As for the plot, it's a fun adventure through art, history, and museum security with a clever twist ending. As I mentioned above, James's parents are divorced. It's handled neatly throughout the book, and younger readers will quickly catch on to the fact that James's parents just weren't compatible because of their completely different approaches to life. While I may not agree with the idea of "incompatibility" divorce, there's no fault in the way it's handled.

Now, I keep saying this is a book for younger kids. This is true, but keep in mind: it's 292 pages long. It packs quite a heft for a middle grade book, so be careful that you only give it to kids who've got some endurance training under their belt. Also, older people are not excluded from reading it. I'm a high school junior and I read it, and I'm even admitting to reading it online!

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book for free through Barnes & Noble's summer reading program this past summer. No one asked me to review it, and it didn't affect my review in any way.

Teaser Tuesdays (Nov. 18)

Okay, so for those of you who are new to this meme, here's how it works:

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read

• Open to a random page

• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page

• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)

• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

If you read last week's teaser and want to know more about The Silver Bowl, click here to read my review. It's one of my favorite books!

My current (re)read is Masterpiece by Elise Broach.

Synopsis (from Goodreads):

Marvin lives with his family under the kitchen sink in the Pompadays’ apartment. He is very much a beetle. James Pompaday lives with his family in New York City. He is very much an eleven-year-old boy.After James gets a pen-and-ink set for his birthday, Marvin surprises him by creating an elaborate miniature drawing. James gets all the credit for the picture and before these unlikely friends know it they are caught up in a staged art heist at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that could help recover a famous drawing by Albrecht Dürer. But James can’t go through with the plan without Marvin’s help. And that’s where things get really complicated (and interesting!). This fast-paced mystery will have young readers on the edge of their seats as they root for boy and beetle.

Here´s my quote, taken from page 32:

 And then, without planning to - without meaning to, without ever thinking for a moment of the consequences - Marvin found himself crawling out into the open, across the vast desktop, directly in front of James. He stopped at the edge of the picture and waited, unable to breathe.

Let me know what you think of the book, and check back on Saturday for my review!

The Silver Bowl by Diane Stanley, 2011

Synopsis (from Goodreads):
Unwanted at home, Molly goes to work for the king of Westria as a humble scullery maid. She arrives at the castle with no education, no manners, and a very disturbing secret: She sees visions, and those visions always come true.One day, while she's working in the king's great hall, young Prince Alaric passes by. Molly finds him unbearably handsome—but also unbearably rude. But what does it really matter? She'll probably never see him again.In time Molly is promoted to polishing silver and is given a priceless royal treasure to work on: the king's great ceremonial hand basin. But there's something odd about it. The silver warms to her touch, a voice commands her to watch and listen, and then the visions appear. They tell the story of a dreaded curse that has stalked the royal family for years. There have already been deaths; soon there will be more.As tragedy after tragedy strikes the royal family, Molly can't help but wonder: Will the beautiful Alaric be next? Together with her friends Tobias and Winifred, Molly must protect the prince and destroy the curse. Could a less likely champion be found to save the kingdom of Westria?


After my third or fourth reread, I've decided that this book officially goes on my all-time favorites list. It's got everything I love - magic, royalty, danger, and subtle humor - without falling into any of the tired cliches that characterize most books that involve royalty and magic. In fact, Molly, the kitchen girl, is the MC - not the cute royal prince she rescues. I love seeing her roll her eyes at the prince's clueless-ness in the real world when they're hiding - like, "gee, sure, give them your royal brooch in gratitude for helping you. I'm sure no one will think they stole it if they try to sell it for, you know, actual money to replace all the food and medicine they just used on you." Okay, she didn't phrase it like that - like I said, the humor is subtle - that's just my paraphrase.

Okay, characters. As I already wrote, Meg is awesome. She's smart, and clever, but not in that really cloying cliche way. She's a bit of a wild-child in the first few chapters, but we quickly watch her flash forward about ten years. Even though she's wild, as soon as she goes to work at the castle (at age seven) she catches on to the fact that she has to do anything people ask, and not get into any trouble, if she wants to keep her post. Her stubbornness is not a tool to show that she's a flawed character (but secretly not, because stubbornness just shows strength of character!). It's a part of her personality, but a part that she knows how to deny when she needs to.

Meg also has this mysterious ability to sense the future, which isn't explained much in this book (the author delves a lot more into that in the second and third book, both of which are good but not quite as good as this one). I love how she's not going crazy with excitement about her powers: she actually sees them as a curse, not a blessing, and is deathly afraid of her visions through not only this book but actually most of the entire trilogy. She fears the burden that has been placed onto her.

Tobias is Meg's best friend, and a great character in his own right. A bit more cookie-cutter, he has all the usual side-kick bits: loyal, funny, smart, helps the MC catch her bearings in a new place (in this case the castle), and has a sad back-story to boot. However, you can't help but like Tobias. He's just so nice!

The prince doesn't actually get a huge amount of screen time in this book, because Molly the servent girl doesn't really get to interact much with Alaric the prince in the first half of the book, and then later he's pretty wounded and spends quite a bit of time unconsciouse. However, the bits that you do see give the bare outline of a compelling character. From the moment Meg (shamelessly eavesdropping) overhears him arguing with his parents as a child, you know that he's not going to be a cookie-cutter prince. Later, I love how strong he is. He still even keeps a bit of his humor! I won't go into it more than that, for fear of spoilers.

I can't really think of anything else to say, besides "read this book!" Like I said above, this is one of my all-time favorite books, and I recently bought it so I could have it forever. If you have any questions about the book, post them in the comments below! Also, I want to hear about your favorite books. Let me know what book you never get tired of, and I might just review it!

Note 5/19/15: This review is also available on the blog Bookshop Talk. Click here to check it out, and browse the reviews sent in by other book lovers!

Teaser Tuesdays (Nov. 11)

Okay, so for those of you who are new to this meme, here's how it works:

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read

• Open to a random page

• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page

• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)

• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

My current (re)read is The Silver Bowl by Diane Stanley.

Synopsis (from Goodreads):

Unwanted at home, Molly goes to work for the king of Westria as a humble scullery maid. She arrives at the castle with no education, no manners, and a very disturbing secret: She sees visions, and those visions always come true.

One day, while she's working in the king's great hall, young Prince Alaric passes by. Molly finds him unbearably handsome—but also unbearably rude. But what does it really matter? She'll probably never see him again.

In time Molly is promoted to polishing silver and is given a priceless royal treasure to work on: the king's great ceremonial hand basin. But there's something odd about it. The silver warms to her touch, a voice commands her to watch and listen, and then the visions appear. They tell the story of a dreaded curse that has stalked the royal family for years. There have already been deaths; soon there will be more.

As tragedy after tragedy strikes the royal family, Molly can't help but wonder: Will the beautiful Alaric be next? Together with her friends Tobias and Winifred, Molly must protect the prince and destroy the curse. Could a less likely champion be found to save the kingdom of Westria?

Here´s my quote, taken from page 108:

 . . . I felt uneasy. Everyone and everything that came near the king might be suddenly transformed into something else. Something deadly.

Let me know what you think of the book, and check back in a couple of days for my review!

A Faraway Island by Annika Thor, 2009

Synopsis (from Amazon)

It's the summer of 1939. Two Jewish sisters from Vienna—12-year-old Stephie Steiner and seven-year-old Nellie—are sent to Sweden to escape the Nazis. They expect to stay there six months, until their parents can flee to Amsterdam; then all four will go to America. But as the world war intensifies, the girls remain, each with her own host family, on a rugged island off the western coast of Sweden.
Nellie quickly settles in to her new surroundings. Not so for Stephie, who finds it hard to adapt; she feels stranded at the end of the world, with a foster mother who's as unforgiving as the island itself. It's no wonder Stephie doesn't let on that the most popular girl at school becomes her bitter enemy, or that she endures the wounding slights of certain villagers. Her main worry, though, is her parents—and whether she will ever see them again.

11/1/14
I just finished A Faraway Island, and I really liked it. It's not going on my top ten list of 
favorites, but it was really good. I've already begun the sequel, but I'll review A Faraway Island once I've finished that.

A few days later:
Okay, I have now finished the sequel (The Lily Pond) and am bemoaning the fact that the third and fourth books of the series have not been translated into English yet. You see, they were originally written in Swedish!

The book is written in third person present tense, from the point of view of the fictional twelve-year-old Stephie. Stephie and her sister Nellie are two of only five hundred Austrian children who were offered asylum by the Swedish, and I frankly hadn't known anything about the Swedish point of view of World War II. It was very interesting for me to read about the lives of the Swedish during WWII, in part because I am actually half Swedish.

The characterization in the book was good, but not to the point of drawing attention away from the story. Stephie is essentially supposed to be a stand-in for the reader - or at least, that's what she was for me. When I was reading this book I forgot that I was reading about someone else, and became Stephie. I felt perfect empathy with her, despite the fact that I've never been to Austria, World War II has been over for decades, and my real parents were literally in the same house as me for most of the duration of my reading. That didn't matter, because I was sucked in and I felt Stephie's pain. And that's why I enjoyed this book so much.

The secondary characters are still good, but not perfect. My favorite is probably Auntie Marta (with a mark over the "a"), because she's so much deeper than she seems at first (and because I have a thing for tough-love characters). Nellie was shallow and callous, and didn't care at all that she was losing her very heritage as she dropped her native German tongue for the more popular Swedish language. Then again, she was seven years old so what can you expect? She acted her age, even though I might not like it. There's some pretty interesting side threads with two of Stephie's school friends, neither of which I really loved. One of the girls she makes friends with is the illegitimate daughter of a man who died at sea before he married his fiance. She and her mother are sort of the scum of the town, but Stephie doesn't care. It's a nice story line, it just felt kind of dry and cliche.

The other friend Stephie makes at school is more on the in crowd. She's a bit of a goody-goody, and there's a scene later in the book she says that Stephie needs to do something or otherwise Jesus will be mad at her. Forget the fact that I don't agree with the Pentecostal religion that the people on the island follow (seriously, who is this girl to say whether Jesus will be mad at Stephie?!), I just think that's so obnoxious. Stephie. a Jew who was baptized before she even spoke English, gets very mad at her friend and tells her that Jesus doesn't exist. Of course she regrets that later, and I do believe that Jesus exists, but I'm still on her side in that scene.

As a whole, this is a great WWII book. You get to see a lot of the struggles that children who were separated from their families went through, and I never felt like it was fake. The sequel is also well-written, but I didn't find the subject matter as a whole (Stephie delves a bit more into the tween crush phase than I really enjoy reading about) as compelling as this book.

Are you interested in WWII books? Post your favorites in the comments, or ask for recommendations!

Teaser Tuesdays (Nov. 4)

Okay, so for those of you who are new to this meme, here's how it works:

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read

• Open to a random page

• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page

• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)

• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

My current read is A Faraway Island by Annika Thor.

Synopsis (from Goodreads):

It's the summer of 1939. Two Jewish sisters from Vienna—12-year-old Stephie Steiner and 8-year-old Nellie—are sent to Sweden to escape the Nazis. They expect to stay there six months, until their parents can flee to Amsterdam; then all four will go to America. But as the world war intensifies, the girls remain, each with her own host family, on a rugged island off the western coast of Sweden.
Nellie quickly settles in to her new surroundings. She’s happy with her foster family and soon favors the Swedish language over her native German. Not so for Stephie, who finds it hard to adapt; she feels stranded at the end of the world, with a foster mother who’s as cold and unforgiving as the island itself. Her main worry, though, is her parents—and whether she will ever see them again.

Here´s my quote, taken from page 43:

Stephie and Nellie's first week on the island is sunny.Every day, Stephie goes on a long walk from the white frame house at the end of the world to the yellow house with the enclosed veranda.

Let me know what you think of the book, and check back in a couple of days for my review!