Library Guild Book Club

The members of our Library Guild are great readers, and now we will be posting their reviews of new fiction, non-fiction and biography, as well as some old favorites. Check back often for the latest in good reading!

Review scale, from highest to lowest rating:
A Must Read
Highly Recommended
Recommended
A Pretty Good Read
Nothing Special

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer B KAMKWAMB

William Kamkwamba grows up in a village in rural Malawi where people still believe in the power of magic and access to learning is very limited. William’s father is a farmer, entirely dependent on the seasonal rains to grow the crops to feed his family. When a devastating drought and famine strike Malawi in 2002, the crops fail and the family barely scrapes together enough food to survive until the next planting season, getting by on one meal a day of corn husks and pumpkin leaves. There is no money to send William to school, and he must drop out. To fill his time William begins frequenting a nearby library, really just a few shelves of random books donated from other countries. One of the books he finds there, however, changes William’s life. The book Using Energy sparks William’s mind and excites his imagination about the amazing world of electricity. He uses this knowledge to plan a windmill to generate electricity for his home which is only lit by kerosene lanterns, and to pump water from a well to irrigate his father’s fields so the family will not have to face the prospect of a killing famine ever again. Having no money and few resources, William scrounges parts for his windmill from rusted bicycles, broken tractors, and other abandoned machinery he finds in and around his village. He has very few tools and must improvise every step of the way. The villagers mock William, but he pays them no mind as his windmill project comes together and slowly climbs towards the sky. This inspiring true story left me marveling about what may be accomplished through little more than determination, inventiveness, and a hard-working, curious mind.

Sample Lines: “On the weekends, I walked the old city and learned about its buildings, many of them built by hand more than four hundred years ago without the kind of modern technology we have today. Seeing this, it gave me even more confidence that we Africans can develop our continent if we just put our minds and abundant resources together and stop waiting on others to do it for us.”

Highly Recommended for: 5th grade through adult.

Review by Mr. D. Scott Foshee

I Am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to Be Your Class President by Josh Lieb JUV FIC LIEB

Josh Lieb is an executive producer of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and has also worked on "The Simpsons," and so it's no surprise that the humor in this book for young readers is a bit edgy. The protagonist Oliver Watson is a chubby, unpopular seventh grader--or so his classmates think. In "reality" (reality is a bit slippery here), he is an evil genius and criminal mastermind who commands an invisible army of all-powerful minions and uses Lionel Sheldrake, Third Richest Man in the World, whenever he needs a grownup to act as his public face. The plot is ostensibly about the election of the seventh grade class president. The real story, though, is Oliver's desire for more attention from his father and his crush on Tatiana Lopez, Meanest Girl in the School. Oliver is never a very likable character, but the world of his imagination is funny and fascinating, and an enjoyable place to spend some time. Lieb has sold the movie rights to Warner Brothers, so maybe this evil genius will be coming to a theater near you.

Sample lines: I head for the center locker and give its lock a few quick twists. The locker swings open, as do both of the lockers next to it--they're really just one big door. I slip inside and pull it shut behind me. I'm greeted by an elderly English butler. "Good afternoon, sir."

Recommended for: 5th - 9th grades, adults with a tolerance for fart and booger jokes.

Review by Dr. Maura Mandyck.

My One Hundred Adventures by Polly Horvath JUV FIC HORVATH

The first chapter of this wonderful book is a bit misleading, beginning as it does with a slow, lyrical description of summers past. The writing is beautiful in that first chapter, but as I say, slow, and I wasn't so sure that I wanted to read a whole book about "long, nurturing days, watching the geese and the saltwater swans and the tides," zzzzz...... But things pick up dramatically in the second chapter and gallop through to the end, and include not quite one hundred adventures, but plenty to sustain your attention, touch your heart and make you laugh out loud. The main character is Jane, the eldest of four children who live with their mother in a house by the sea, and the story really begins when Jane is drafted into delivering Bibles with the local church pastor whose name is Nellie Phipps and who has an unchurchly fascination with faith healing, fortune telling and traveling (or rather, failing to travel) by time portal. When Jane drops a Bible from a hot air balloon (I told you things picked up) onto the head of the youngest child of the awful Gourd family, she is further conscripted into babysitting all the little Gourds all summer, while her mother's gentlemen callers come and go, Mrs. Parks and Mrs. Nasters compete over who is the sickest, Jane's friend Ginny plots her future career as dress designer, and a dog named Horace is rescued from the sea. Horvath is the author of many other books (soon to be available in the Athens Academy library), so you can begin with this absolutely delightful book and look forward to more.

Sample lines: I am sorry to say that by noon, after countless trips to the public washroom with all five Gourds because I don't dare leave any of them on the beach, these little excursions being the height of excitement after long minutes of watching sand blow across the horizon and watching the Gourds who are getting restless slap each other with whatever is handy...it is then that I decide I will take the Gourds on a long trek. It will be like the Long March. History always seems to be full of downtrodden people being forced to march great distances for other people's convenience and if it works for those dictators it should work for me.

A Must Read for: 5th grade and up, and would make a terrific read-aloud for younger children or families.

Review by Dr. Maura Mandyck.