friendship – Page 23

Marshmallow reviews Paint the Wind by Pam Muñoz Ryan

Today Marshmallow reviews Paint the Wind, a 2007 novel by Pam Muñoz Ryan.

Marshmallow’s Quick Take: If you like books about horses and family, then this might be the book for you.

Marshmallow’s Summary (with spoilers): Maya has been living in Southern California with her paternal grandmother Agnes Menetti since her parents’ death. Maya doesn’t remember too much about her parents, especially her mother Ellie. But she does know that her grandmother hated her mother and that she blamed her for the death of Maya’s dad. Agnes has destroyed everything about Ellie, cutting her out of pictures and throwing away her belongings. The only thing in the house remaining which belonged to Ellie are her toy horses, and only because Maya has kept them a secret.

Maya’s grandmother Agnes likes to control everything: people, things, lives. For example she has never had a housekeeper for very long because she’s always been dissatisfied; she believes everything in the house must be kept a certain way and it is hard for people to live up to her expectations. Of course it’s not always the housekeepers’ fault. Maya seems to have a habit of sabotaging the housekeepers’ jobs. For example one time Maya put a blue sweater in the white laundry to get one of the housekeepers fired.

Maya also has a habit of lying. When the new housekeeper discovers her playing with the toy horses, she lies about how her parents died and why she’s hiding the horses. But the housekeeper tells the grandmother anyways. So Maya sabotages her job, too. After that housekeeper is fired and a new one is hired, Agnes starts acting differently and showing signs of memory loss. Eventually, one morning, she collapses into her breakfast, and soon we learn that she has passed away from a stroke.

Afterwards, Maya is sent off to live with her mother’s family. Her mother‘s family lives in the open fields in Wyoming and rides horses. Maya has never met these people before except for when she was a baby and so she’s very nervous. Living with her new family will lead to some changes. She will have to adapt to survive.

A second thread of the book develops around a wild horse named Artemisia. Several chapters, including the first one, have the reader follow Artemisia and the other mustangs as they go through their lives in the wilderness of Wyoming.

As you can expect, the two storylines eventually do merge together and we see Maya and Artemisia forge a strong bond. But not all is fun and games. There is serious trouble ahead.

Marshmallow is reading Paint the Wind by Pam Muñoz Ryan. — Marshmallow is reading *Paint the Wind* by Pam Muñoz Ryan.

Marshmallow’s Review: I think that Paint the Wind is a neat book. The plot line is very intriguing and the whole book is overall very informative. I learned a lot of new things about horses which I didn’t know before. I can see how this would be a great book for bunnies who love horses. I am not especially interested in horses, not more than any other four-legged creature, but I too found the book compelling.

I also found the characters interesting and unique. Though Maya starts out as a lying and inconsiderate person, the book does show us how she transforms into a person who cares about people and living creatures other than herself.

I found the repeated theme about ghost horses interesting: Maya remembers a story about them told by her mom Ellie, and this comes up a few times throughout the book. However I was a little confused about the ending. I wanted to know more about the ghost horses.

The author Pam Muñoz Ryan also wrote Esperanza Rising, which I recently reviewed. The two books have a similar writing style, and they both involve a young girl being forced to leave the life she was used to, though the plots and the characters are very different. I do have to admit that I found Esperanza Rising a lot more touching.

Marshmallow’s rating: 90%.

Marshmallow rates Paint the Wind by Pam Muñoz Ryan 90%. — Marshmallow rates *Paint the Wind* by Pam Muñoz Ryan 90%.

Marshmallow reviews Dear Student by Elly Swartz

Today Marshmallow reviews Dear Student by Elly Swartz, published in February 2022.

The book bunnies received this book as a review copy.

Marshmallow’s Quick Take: If you like books about family, friendship, and school, then this might be the book for you.

Marshmallow’s Summary (with Spoilers): Autumn Blake’s father left her, her sister, and her mother to work in the Peace Corps. He wanted to “seize the day”, but Autumn doesn’t see why he has to go to Ecuador with the Peace Corps to do so. Now she, her sister Pickle, and her mother are living without her father.

Her father is not the only important person who has left Autumn. Her best friend Prisha has also just moved to California. So Autumn is starting middle school without a good friend.

The book starts on the first day of school. Autumn is starting sixth grade and neither her father nor her best friend will be there. But it turns out that the first day is still quite eventful.

On that first day of school, a boy runs over an iguana’s tail. Autumn and the boy, named Cooper, take the iguana to the veterinarian. Autumn’s mom is the vet, and she starts to try to save the iguana. Autumn then starts spending time with Cooper every day at lunch, and they become friends quickly. They decide to do a whoopie pie stand to raise money to take care of Cooper’s dog, Mr. Magoo.

On that first day of school, Autumn also makes friends with a girl named Logan. Logan’s mother is a famous human rights lawyer. Logan is nice, but Autumn feels that everything she does is forced: her smile, her words, her agreements.

Unfortunately, Logan dislikes Cooper. She thinks he is weird. Autumn starts to have trouble choosing between which friend she will spend time with.

On top of this, Autumn has become the writer of Dear Student, the famous advice column in the student paper, following the advice her dad gave on her first day to “do one thing”. Her job is to respond to questions sent anonymously by students, and her own identity is also to be kept secret. But one piece of advice she gives ends up forcing her to choose between her two friends. Will she be able to make it through with both her friends?

Marshmallow is reading Dear Student by Elly Swartz. — Marshmallow is reading *Dear Student* by Elly Swartz.

Marshmallow’s Review: Dear Student is a great book and a quick read. Written in fifty-four short chapters, it tells us a compelling story about friendship, family, and finding one’s voice.

The character Autumn is a nice person (her mom calls her “a gentle spirit”) and a great sister. She is relatable and she has a realistic personality. The other characters are also very realistic.

I think the author Ella Swartz did a great job of showing Autumn’s dilemma in the book and also her confusion and hurt about her father’s departure. The whole story is told through Autumn’s perspective (except for the student letters she reads and responds to, the postcards from her dad, and the messages from her friend Prisha), and in the present tense, and both these help make Autumn and her feelings come across as very real and almost urgent.

Ella Swartz’s Dear Student does not have a big mystery like Carl Hiaasen’s Hoot or Rebecca Stead’s When You Reach Me or any of the FunJungle books, but when I was reading it, I still wanted to read on to find out how things would turn out. The plot is not completely predictable and keeps you wanting to read further. The central dilemma of the book involves animal rights, just like in Hoot, but in Dear Student, we get a human dimension, too, complicating the issue further.

I thought that the questions addressed to the Dear Student column were sometimes related to how Autumn was feeling, which worked really well. And the column responses give the reader good advice on all types of topics. It was also neat to see a reference to a book Caramel read and reviewed before: Drawn Together by Minh Le and Dan Santat.

All in all I really enjoyed reading Dear Student. I look forward to trying the whoopie pie recipe at the end of the book…

Marshmallow’s Rating: 95%.

Marshmallow rates *Dear Student* by Ella Swartz

Marshmallow reviews Sheets by Brenna Thummler

Today Marshmallow reviews the 2018 graphic novel Sheets by Brenna Thummler.

Marshmallow’s Quick Take: If you like books about ghosts and friendship, then this might be the book for you.

Marshmallow’s Summary (with Spoilers): Marjorie Glatt has a lot of problems in her life. She has to run her deceased mother’s laundromat to support her brother and father, she has to deal with mean kids at school, and she has to battle Mr. Saubertuck, a rude man who is trying to take Marj’s laundromat and convert it into his yoga spa. Mr. Saubertuck sabotages her laundromat, making her lose her customers and their trust. And school isn’t much better. She doesn’t have any friends and one girl in particular, Tessi, is very mean to her.

However, her life is about to change when Wendell arrives. Wendell is a ghost who escaped from the land of the dead. For Wendell, the laundromat is a playground compared to the dreary Land of the Dead. However, Wendell gets a little carried away and starts to hurt Marj’s business. He makes a blanket fort with the sheets Marj just washed for her customers. They get dirty again and it makes Marj look both bad and like a liar when she tells her customers that it was the wind. At this point , Marj doesn’t know anything about ghosts, but she gets suspicious when Tessi’s dress for a recital gets dyed red. We learn that Mr. Saubertuck put red dye into the detergent to ruin Marj’s business. When Wendell tried to dispose of the dye, he spilled it accidentally on Tessi’s dress. Marj, understandably, gets upset at him.

Will Mr. Saubertuck drive Marj out of her mother’s business? And will Wendell and Marj ever be able to become friends? You need to read to find out!

Marshmallow is reading Sheets by Brenna Thummler. — Marshmallow is reading *Sheets* by Brenna Thummler.

Marshmallow’s Review: I think that Sheets is a very interesting book. The author Brenna Thummler has created a very unique book and it was definitely a fun read. I liked how the author created two very interesting worlds; both the Land of the Dead and the real world were both realistic but had a touch of fantasy and fiction.

Sheets is a graphic novel which made it very easy to read and also showed me what the characters and their world look like. I think that the author’s portrayal of Mr. Saubertuck made him a very dislikeable character. He is self-centered and presumptuous. I felt really sympathetic toward Marj when he kept saying stuff like, “I won’t be paying you. Your family will have a room in my extravagant five-star spa and yoga resort, remember?” (Keep in mind, his “extravagant five-star spa and yoga resort” hasn’t even been established yet.)

I felt really sad for Wendell because he is a small child who, we learn, died at the young age of eleven. He is immature, playful, and not ready to face death. He makes up stories about how he died which he tells to the other ghosts in the Land of the Dead. We don’t learn how he really died until Marj looks it up on the Internet. I felt sad that Wendell died, especially after we learned that Marj had met him before when she was lost in a corn maze.

There is another book from this author, Brenna Thummler, called Delicates, published in 2021, which explores the friendship of Marj and Wendell further. I haven’t read it yet; I just finished Sheets this week! However, I would enjoy the chance to read about Marj and Wendell once more.

Marshmallow’s Rating: 95%.

Marshmallow enjoyed reading Sheets by Brenna Thummler and rates it 95%. — Marshmallow enjoyed reading *Sheets* by Brenna Thummler and rates it 95%.

Caramel reviews Three Tales of My Father’s Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett

Today Caramel reviews Three Tales of My Father’s Dragon, that brings together the 1948 classic My Father’s Dragon, a Newberry Honor recipient, and its two sequels, Elmer and the Dragon (1950) and The Dragons of Blueland (1951), all written by Ruth Stiles Gannett and illustrated by Ruth Chrisman Gannett. As usual, Sprinkles is taking notes and asking questions.

Caramel reviews Three Tales of My Father's Dragon, written by Ruth Stiles Gannett and illustrated by Ruth Chrisman Gannett. — Caramel reviews *Three Tales of My Father’s Dragon*, written by Ruth Stiles Gannett and illustrated by Ruth Chrisman Gannett.

Sprinkles: So Caramel, tell me about this book.

Caramel: This book is nice if you like happy books and dragons.

S: Oh, so it is a happy book about dragons?

C: Yes and no. It’s also about Elmer Elevator, who meets a cat, who tells him about a dragon. Then Elmer goes and finds this dragon.

S: So is Elmer the father in the title?

C: Yes. The first part of the book is told by someone who calls Elmer “my father”. It makes it sound like it is a true story that happened to someone’s dad.

S: Hmm, so the narrator of the first book, My Father’s Dragon, is Elmer’s child, right?

C: Yes. And Elmer is a nine year old boy when things are happening.

S: So it really reads like you are hearing a tale that Elmer told his child and that child grew up and is telling you the story. And then the remaining two books are told in the third person, right?

C: Yes. There is no narrator calling Elmer “my father” anymore. Elmer is only a boy in those two parts.

S: I see. So then Elmer finds this dragon and they get to be friends?

C: Yes. The dragon has blue and yellow stripes and has a long tail and has red eyes and red feet.

S: That’s a very colorful dragon!

C: Yup. The cat helps Elmer devise a plan to help the dragon and Elmer goes and saves the dragon. The first part of the book is all about Elmer finding the dragon. Then they become friends, and in the second book, they are stuck in an island. Then the dragon takes Elmer home, and in the third part of the book he goes to his own home, Blueland. And then there is some trouble there, and Elmer helps him.

S: That sounds like a sweet story.

C: Yes, I think so.

Caramel is reading Three Tales of My Father's Dragon, written by Ruth Stiles Gannett and illustrated by Ruth Chrisman Gannett. — Caramel is reading *Three Tales of My Father’s Dragon*, written by Ruth Stiles Gannett and illustrated by Ruth Chrisman Gannett.

S: So you have read a lot of books about dragons. Does the dragon in this book resemble any dragons you know of?

C: Not really. This dragon is completely different. He does talk, and he is very colorful, like he is wearing striped PJs, dragon-sized and shaped of course. And I don’t think he can breathe fire or anything.

S: Do any one of Elmer’s family or friends meet this dragon?

C: No.

S: So is Elmer the only human involved in the stories?

C: Yes. There are canaries, there is the cat, there is an adult gorilla, and six baby gorillas, but there are not any other humans in the story. I mean, some show up, but they don’t really play a role in the story.

S: That is interesting. Somehow a lot of the things you are telling me about this book remind me of another classic Marshmallow had reviewed way back: Mr. Popper’s Penguins by Richard and Florence Atwater, There were humans in that story, but the tone of the book and the happiness you are talking about reminded me of that one. Anyways, did you enjoy reading this book?

C: Yes. I especially liked the pictures.

S: Oh, tell me more.

C: They are all black and white, but they are very detailed and I could see exactly what Elmer and his dragon look like.

S: That sounds great Caramel. Would you have enjoyed being friends with Elmer and the dragon?

C: Yep. They are both fun and nice.

S: So did you know that there is apparently a 1997 animated movie version of this story?

C: Yes, we just found it, but it is in Japanese!

S: Yes, so we could not really watch it and understand it fully, but it was nice to look at, wasn’t it?

C: Yes. Let’s put it in here!

S: Sure. We can put a link to it. Here it is: https://youtu.be/5obEfjUyr6k. We might still watch it some day.

C: Especially if we learn to speak Japanese.

S: True. Okay, let us wrap up our review. What are your three words to describe this book?

C: Adventure, happy, friendship.

S: Hmm, those are not quite descriptive words, but I get your point. Thank you. So what do you want to tell our readers as we wrap things up?

C: Stay tuned for more book bunny reviews!

Caramel really enjoyed reading Three Tales of My Father's Dragon, written by Ruth Stiles Gannett and illustrated by Ruth Chrisman Gannett. — Caramel really enjoyed reading *Three Tales of My Father’s Dragon*, written by Ruth Stiles Gannett and illustrated by Ruth Chrisman Gannett.