Books Abound!

We've hit the "school year" season with a boatload of reading in our house, and today things got even more exciting. Andrew has been eating up Magic Treehouse and Andrew Lost books like there is no tomorrow, reading one per sitting, and gladly not asking for them to be read aloud. Scott has started reading a Jack London book to him (my mind is drawing a blank...) and
I've been reading to him from the first book in the Sisters Grimm series, hoping to hook him on these better written books, and he also fit in the first book from the new Spiderwick Chronicles series, having polished off the last SC series earlier this summer.
Today we are entering in to these three tomes:
The 39 Clues is something Andrew stumbled across at the bookstore today and I got all excited when he started looking into it. The publisher is the now infamous publisher of the Harry Potter series and not only is it going to be a ten book series, but there is an online website that coincides with the book with cards that contain clues and prizes to be won. THIS is up his alley. From a recent Time magazine article:

It's all very entertaining, and the educational stuff goes down with only the faintest academic aftertaste. (David Levithan, executive editorial director at Scholastic and a young-adult author himself, calls The 39 Clues "subversively educational," by which he presumably means that kids won't notice they're learning, not that the books actually subvert any societal norms.) "It's very much about family dynamics," Levithan says. "That's the heart of it. The most relatable factor about it is that every kid thinks their family is just really strange and large and weird. The idea that you can be born into this family that has these secrets — almost every kid feels that way."

Whether he's right about that or not, Amy and Dan are certainly appealing — Dan is nerdy (he's an obsessive collector) and bratty but surprisingly resourceful, and Amy is brilliant but touchingly shy and insecure. The plot ticks along with the iron reliability of an atomic clock. If you forcibly interbred Lemony Snicket and National Treasure and chose the most viable of their mutant offspring, you might come up with something like The 39 Clues. Scholastic is printing a first run of a million copies and holding launch events in seven cities.

The next book, Twilight, is for me (and Lisa). Everyone in the scrapbooking world is going NUTS about this book series, I've nearly lost all my scrapbooking friends to reading of this four book series that was aimed at teen girls. I tried to resist, and tried to resist, but all the hubbub over it lead me to read about the author and from that moment on I was officially intrigued. Certainly on a smaller scale, but true JK Rowling potential here...unknown mom, never written before, skyrocket to success (five months after writing the first word of her first ever book she had a FAMOUS agent and a $750,000 three book deal). That ladies and gents does not happen every day. JK was offered $105,000 and a one book deal, and I think this author would be more than happy to admit that the raging success that was JK made for an easier book deal for this young mom. I'm withholding judgement until I'm further in, but I have to say in the half hour I read this afternoon I was already interested in continuing to read.

Finally, in three short hours, the third in the homeschooled Christopher Paolini series comes out, and I'm trying to bribe my husband into picking it up at Walmart after his shift is over tonight. I am the only one in this house already in love with this series, but Andrew has potential, and I know they will be hooked once winter sets in. Lisa and I and my mom are all excited about settling in for a long week or two of reading Brisingr, which is sure to be a gem.

Gotta go, I have alot of reading to do!