City of Fallen Angels excerpt

As a teaser, the first chapter of City of Fallen Angels by Cassandra Clare is up on her website! Go check it out! I'm counting down the days until April 5th...

Pretty New Covers!

The past few weeks, there have been so many pretty cover releases! You've probably seen most of these already, but here are my favorites:

The sequel to Heist Society... I love how it follows the theme of the first cover with the same model and sunglasses, but the color scheme is different. I love the purple and the teal!

The sequel to Paranormalcy... the dark reds are gorgeous!

And this one is my absolute favorite - the last book in the Theatre Illuminata series. Everything about this is amazing. :)

It doesn't help that I can't WAIT to read all of these! Only a couple more months...

Breakage

I go down to the edge of the sea.
How everything shines in the morning light!
The cusp of the whelk,
the broken cupboard of the clam,
the opened, blue mussels,
moon snails, pale pink and barnacle scarred—
and nothing at all whole or shut, but tattered, split,
dropped by the gulls onto the gray rocks and all the moisture gone.
It's like a schoolhouse
of little words,
thousands of words.
First you figure out what each one means by itself,
the jingle, the periwinkle, the scallop
full of moonlight.

Then you begin, slowly, to read the whole story.

-by Mary Oliver

(Poetry Friday roundup here.)

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day to everyone! I hope you had a wonderful day filled with lots of candy and sweets. :)

A couple updates:

First of all, I'm going to be doing another CSN review soon! CSN is a chain of online stores that sells a variety of goods from office desks to yoga mats. I would highly recommend checking them out!

Second of all, my sister Maya and I were the featured guests on the Seedlings show on the Bit by Bit podcast. The show is hosted by three teachers and basically is all about education and technology in the classroom. Here's the link to our show if you're interested in listening. By the way, I read this poem at the very end.

Enchanted Ivy

by Sarah Beth Durst

Lily Carter, age 16, just wants to finish high school and get into her dream college, Princeton. As everyone knows, the admissions process can be very difficult - however, her grandfather, a Princeton alumnus, has signed her up for the Legacy Test, which, if she passes, will grant her automatic admission into Princeton. Her task? To find the "Ivy Key." What's that? Who knows. As Lily struggles to complete the test, her magical past is revealed and she realizes that the world is nothing like she thought it was.

Enchanted Ivy was yet another entertaining read from Sarah Beth Durst. With witty writing, a fast plot, and a cast of admirable characters, this book was so much fun to read. I appreciate how closely readers can identify with Lily - college admissions is definitely a big part of high school and it was nice to see a character who finally cared about their education and wasn't constantly off having adventures and not doing their homework.

However, I felt like Lily was so skeptical whenever she encountered magic. She was always looking for secret controls and speakers, even when there obviously were none. I understand why she would deny that magic exists at the start, but after being exposed to it several times, she still refused to admit that magic exists. That was annoying.

I still tremendously enjoyed the book though, and I would recommend it to anyone who loves YA, fantasy, and gargoyles. :-)