My Book Shelf - 2015 Favorites

In 2015 I read more than 100 books. The criteria for my favorites was simple - which ones stood out in my memory at the end of the year.

ECHO - As I read the first few pages, I thought, I'm not going to like this book. It's fantasy - a boy lost in the woods, three sisters imprisoned by a witch's curse, and a harmonica. Definitely not my kind of story. The harmonica links the stories of Friedrich, a disfigured outcast in Nazi Germany and Mike, an orphan during the Depression, and Ivy, an itinerant farmer's child during WW II.

I LIVED ON BUTTERFLY HILL - 11 year-old Celeste lives in Valparaiso, Chile. She loves the view from her home on Butterfly Hill - the harbor below, pelicans and colorful gardens. Things start to change. Neighbors and classmates disappear. Military ships fill the harbor. People are careful of what they say and are not sure who their friends are. Books are burned. No one feels safe. A dictator takes over the government. When Celeste's parents go into hiding, she is sent to America to live with her aunt. She does not know if she will see her parents again.

THE GREAT AND ONLY
BARNUM: The Tremendous, Splendous Life of Showman
P.T. Barnum is a fascinating biography filled with circus life and the 19th century world. Before he had a circus, Barnum had a multi-story museum in New
York City that
even had live
animals.

I read more than 100 picture books, fiction and nonfiction books. My criteria for favorites was simple: what books stood out in my memory at the end of the year.

ORANGUTAN HOUDINI escapes his zoo enclosure at will. At first the zookeeper thinks the staff is careless. But surveillance reveals how he does it.

BROTHER HUGO AND THE BEAR
Hugo can't return his library book, a
precious manuscript - a bear ate it.
The abbot tells him to borrow another
monastery's copy and make a replace-
ment. When he sets off to return the
borrowed copy, he is trailed by the bear.

Lynn B. Connor - Adventures in History