Monday, August 24, 2015

Found Things by Marilyn Hilton -OPTIONAL

Hilton, Marilyn Found Things 232 pages Atheneum, 2014. $16.99 Content: Language: G (0 swears); Mature Content: PG Violence: G
When River’s big brother disappears she is very upset and misses him so much. She starts having problems, like speaking with an accent and daydreaming of a detailed house that she has never been in. Things at school aren’t going great either, she is being bullied and doesn’t have any friends. But River finds solace in the river by her house and finding little treasures there. When she makes a new friend, things start to look up.
This might be cliché, but I am a children’s librarians because I am a child at heart. Like many of today’s students I am drawn to fast paced reads and fantasy books. So it takes a really intriguing realistic fiction book to keep my attention and this one wasn’t it. I can already imagine the essays and themes and symbolism questions that a teacher would ask students to extrapolate from this book and it fills me with horror. I see how the author brought all the plot threads together into a tapestry in the end, which is skillful, but I didn’t care about the character or outcome so that careful presentation became irrelevant.
EL, MS –OPTIONAL  Reviewer: Stephanie Elementary School Librarian & Author.

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