Mstr JRD JRD itibaren Sant Carles de la Ràpita, Tarragona, İspanya itibaren Sant Carles de la Ràpita, Tarragona, İspanya

Read this aloud to my 3rd graders in 07-08 and read it again to myself for 08-09 Battle of the Books. It's a nice story about a classroom pet and his after-hours life in and out of the classroom. There are sequels, so the adventures continue.

I am not going to lie, I only bought this book because the cover said "an upcoming movie starring Christina Ricci" and had a picture of her on the cover. That being said, there were no pictures on the inside, and I still enjoyed the book a lot -- and for the record, I never even saw the Ricci film version.

I was cleaning out my bookcase earlier and came across A House-Boat on the Styx, by John Kendrick Bangs, which was published in 1895. It's a very interesting book. The book starts off with Charon paddling down the river Styx, smugly thinking to himself about how he has a monopoly on boats there, when he suddenly spots the houseboat for the first time. At first he's upset, thinking that it's a competitor, but it turns out to be a clubhouse. The characters in the book are all famous figures from history, literature and mythology - Sir Walter Raleigh, Cassius, Shakespeare, Homer, Demosthenes, Moses and Confucius are just some of the people who appear. The conversations between them are my favorite part of the books. Some chapter titles are "Washington Gives a Dinner," "Hamlet Makes a Suggestion," and "A Disputed Authorship," which should give you an idea. The house boat soon becomes the most exclusive clique in the Underworld. In the sequel, Pursuit of the House-Boat, Captain Kidd is denied membership and decides to steal the boat for himself. He isn't the only one unhappy with the boat's exclusionary policies, since it doesn't allow women to join, either. Kidd happens to pick a day when several curious women, including Cleopatra, Queen Elizabeth and Mrs. Noah, snuck onboard earlier. Some of the men are distraught at the loss of the women, others are visibly relieved. They enlist the help of a certain fictional detective in tracking the boat down, but the women are more than a match for their captors.