Meeting of 31 May 2014

This was a very small meeting of two.  The venue was The Block in Blockhouse Bay, on Market Day.  Once we had parking sorted beside the public library it was broche and croissant with a hot drink to get the discussion flowing.

So what did we discuss...

Trash by Andy Mulligan

Raphael is a dumpsite boy. He spends his days wading through mountains of steaming trash, sifting it, sorting it, breathing it, sleeping next to it. Then one unlucky-lucky day, Raphael's world turns upside down. A small leather bag falls into his hands. It's a bag of clues. It's a bag of hope. It's a bag that will change everything.

Kira-Kira by Cynthia Kadohata

kira-kira (kee' ra kee' ra): glittering; shining Glittering . That's how Katie Takeshima's sister, Lynn, makes everything seem. The sky is kira-kira because its color is deep but see-through at the same time. The sea is kira-kira for the same reason. And so are people's eyes. When Katie and her family move from a Japanese community in Iowa to the Deep South of Georgia, it's Lynn who explains to her why people stop them on the street to stare. And it's Lynn who, with her special way of viewing the world, teaches Katie to look beyond tomorrow. But when Lynn becomes desperately ill, and the whole family begins to fall apart, it is up to Katie to find a way to remind them all that there is always something glittering -- kira-kira -- in the future. Luminous in its persistence of love and hope, Kira-Kira is Cynthia Kadohata's stunning debut in middle-grade fiction.

The Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K Le Guin

Ged was the greatest sorcerer in all Earthsea, but once he was called Sparrowhawk, a reckless youth, hungry for power and knowledge, who tampered with long-held secrets and loosed a terrible shadow upon the world. This is the tale of his testing, how he mastered the mighty words of power, tamed an ancient dragon, and crossed death's threshold to restore the balance.

Meeting of 3 May 2014

Last weekend of the holidays - so first of all we had to talk about all the adventures we had been having since the last time we met.  Over breakfast at  Olaf's in Mt Eden Bronwyn, Kat and Yvonne went on to discuss the following books.

Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain - actually we didn't discuss this too much as two of the three there had not finished reading it!

Beloved for more than a century, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and continues the adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, and Jim as they travel the Mississippi river valley. Criticized for its colloquial language and use of racial stereotypes and slurs, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn exposes and challenges racist attitudes in the Southern United States at the close of the 19th century.

One Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes

Eleanor Estes’s The Hundred Dresses won a Newbery Honor in 1945 and has never been out of print since. At the heart of the story is Wanda Petronski, a Polish girl in a Connecticut school who is ridiculed by her classmates for wearing the same faded blue dress every day. Wanda claims she has one hundred dresses at home, but everyone knows she doesn’t and bullies her mercilessly. The class feels terrible when Wanda is pulled out of the school, but by that time it’s too late for apologies. Maddie, one of Wanda’s classmates, ultimately decides that she is "never going to stand by and say nothing again."

Go Saddle the Sea by Joan Aiken (Um, two people hadn't read this!)

Despised by his Spanish relatives and ignored by his distant grandfather, twelve-year-old orphan Felix Brooke is lonely and unhappy. So when he's given a parcel with a blood-stained letter from his dead father, it inspires him to track down his long-lost English family. Felix packs his bag, jumps on his trusty mule and heads for the coast and a new life. But his journey across the mountains and over the sea does not prove to be plain sailing - as Felix soon discovers . . .


Something tells me that we were all too busy holidaying to read.  Maybe next meeting will see more books finished.