Neil Armstrong Is My Uncle and Other Lies Muscle Man McGinty Told Me by Nan Marino

Neil Armstrong Is My Uncle & Other Lies Muscle Man McGinty Told Me

by Nan Marino

Jr Fiction

Neil Armstrong Is My Uncle & Other Lies Muscle Man McGinty Told Me gave me warm fuzzies inside when I finished it. Tamara loves to play kickball. She also loved her best friend Kebsie until one day Kebsie just packed up and moved away without even saying goodbye to Tamara. So when Muscle Man McGinty moves into the neighborhood Tamara is not looking for friends. Muscle Man really drives her crazy when he brags that he can beat the entire rest of the neighborhood in kickball. Tamara knows that he lies about other things, but there is no way that she is going to let people believe this lie. This book takes place in 1969. It was fun to see the children’s perspective on when America landed on the moon and the Vietnam War. A fun story to learn a bit of history and to help understand other people and the true meaning of friendship.

Comments

Funny Farm by Mark Teague 2009

There are things I liked about Mark Teague's newest book, Funny Farm , and things I didn't like. Where should I start? I'll do the "didn'ts" first. The illustrations show animals personified. Well, some of the animals are. The main characters, Edward, and his farm family relatives, all dogs, are humanized. They stand upright, do farm chores, eat at a table, wear clothes, knit (yes, with paws) and sleep in beds. Most everybody else on and around the farm, who are also animals, act like animals. They are outside, roll in mud, live in the barn, and require care from their owners. It struck me the most on the page spread where there are pigs playing in puddle in the rain and Edward, a black and white boxer, watches from inside the house. I thought "You're a dog! Go play with them!" But, alas, he can't, seeing as how he goes through his entire visit to the farm wearing a suit and red bow tie. Another picture that bothered me was the maple syrup pa...

The Girl Who Could Fly by Victoria Forester 2008

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Review: The Factory

The Factory By Catherine Egan New York, NY : Scholastic Inc., 2025. Fiction. 306 pages. Thirteen-year-old Asher Doyle has been invited to join the Factory, a secretive research facility in the desert which ostensibly extracts renewable energy from the electromagnetic fields of its young recruits. But Asher soon realizes something sinister is going on. Kids are getting sick. The adults who run the Factory seem to be keeping secrets. And the extraction process is not only painful and exhausting, but existentially troubling. Asher makes a handful of new friends who help him with an investigation that turns into a resistance, which turns into...a cliffhanger! The Factory is a page-turning sci-fi with multidimensional characters, an intriguing plot, and refreshingly straight-forward writing. Egan weaves in detail about climate crises and social unrest, making the story's dystopian setting feel rich and plausible. With its sophisticated themes and accessible storytelling, I would recomm...

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