Book Beat Reviews

Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls

My name is Judah and I am in the 6th grade. I enjoy playing soccer and baseball. In the winter, I enjoy Nordic and alpine skiing. When it comes to reading,  adventure books are my favorite.

Where the Red Fern Grows is story about a boy named Billy and his coon hunting dogs. It takes place in the Ozark Mountains in Oklahoma on an Indian reservation, with his three sisters, his ma and pa, some chickens and a cat. It starts out with Billy’s desire to get two pure bred coon hunting dogs. His family is poor and can’t afford to buy two dogs themselves. However, his families’ lack of money does not stop Billy. He is a boy of great determination and works hard to save enough money to buy his pups.

The dogs become his best friends. He trains them how to hunt and they set off on hunting adventures almost every night. He even enters them in a coon hunting competition. It is amazing how strong the dogs’ relationship is to Billy. The dogs and Billy seem to understand each other and have a great love and loyalty towards one another. This is a very exiting book which includes sleeping in a cave out in the wild, and even coming face to face with a mountain lion!  It is a book about great determination and never giving up on your dreams. I recommend this book because it is exciting, fun and makes you want to read more.

Find it in print, ebook, eaudiobook, DVD, CD here.

The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien

Hi! My name is Madeline, I am in 9th grade and live in Hailey Idaho. I love politics, philosophy, writing, and playing the violin. I could talk about these topics all day. I also love reading, my favorite books are The Lord of The Rings, anything written by Tolkien, and Fahrenheit 451.

The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien is about an epic quest, set in fictional the land of Middle Earth.

Frodo Baggins is as ordinary as a hobbit could be, and lives in the Shire, the most comfortable land on Middle Earth. Frodo is happy with his peaceful life but is unexpectedly thrown into an adventure when he is left a magical ring by his uncle. His mentor, Gandalf, warns Frodo that the ring his uncle gave him has the potential for great harm. It is the One Ring that Sauron, the greatest enemy of Middle Earth, has lost. If Sauron were to find it, all of Middle Earth would be destroyed. Gandalf tells Frodo he must destroy the ring since Middle Earth is in danger while it remains. However, the ring cannot be destroyed easily. It can only be decimated where it was created by Sauron, in the fires of Mt. Doom in the land of Mordor. During his dangerous journey to Mordor, eight companions join with him creating the Fellowship of the Ring. Frodo is appointed to be the ring bearer, and though he has many companions it is his job alone to cast it into Mt. Doom.

The Fellowship of the Ring is the first book in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. It exemplifies courage in the face of danger, and hope when all seems to be lost. I recommend this trilogy for ages 12 and up.

Find it in print, ebook, eaudiobook, DVD, CD here.

Gulliver’s Travels by Johnathan Swift

Hi! My name is Madeline, I am in 9th grade and live in Hailey Idaho. I love politics, philosophy, writing, and playing the violin. I could talk about these topics all day. I also love reading, my favorite books are The Lord of The Rings, anything written by Tolkien, and Fahrenheit 451.

Gulliver’s Travels, by Jonathan Swift, is a witty, satirical book sure to make you laugh and shake your head at times.

The story focuses on an adventurous man named Gulliver, who can’t stay on land for long. He signs up to be a ship’s surgeon. The voyage is everything he hoped for until a fierce storm starts, and the ship is torn to pieces. Fortunately, they shipwrecked a few miles from land and Gulliver is able to swim to shore. He sees no trace of his companions and realizes he is the lone survivor. He is too tired to worry and promptly falls asleep. In the morning, he finds he has been taken captive and is tied down with ropes. This is unsettling, but what shocks him most is the size of his captors, who are only six inches tall. The book describes this and other adventures he has, including his encounter with many strange peoples and places, such as giants, a floating city, and an island of civilized horses.

This book is very symbolic and satirical and Swift uses the adventures of Gulliver as a way to criticize English society where he believes people think more highly of themselves than they ought. Swift constantly uses changing perspectives to highlight his opinion that people are prideful and overestimate their greatness when, in reality, they are petty and frail.

Overall, this was an enjoyable book, although it became redundant after a while. I recommend it for ages 12 and older.

Find it in print, ebook, eaudiobook, evideo here.

Ishmael by Daniel Quinn

My name is Lucy, I am in the ninth grade. I like to play hockey, ski, and rock climb.

Ishmael is an intriguing book about a gorilla and a man. It is set in the early 1990’s.The man sets out to find a teacher who can show him how to save the world. They find each other through an ad in the newspaper, and the gorilla becomes the man’s teacher. In the evenings the man arrives at Ishmael, the gorilla’s, apartment and he learns incredible ideas and truths about the philosophy of the world. Time and time again the man becomes aware of things that he had never thought of before. He learns from Ishmael about topics like cultural separation and ethical situations. You, as the reader, can learn along with the man. This book will open your eyes to things you may have never thought of before.

I really enjoyed this book but it is written for more mature audiences. I thought that at first the plot was a bit boring, but as the book progressed it became more entertaining. I learned so much while reading this book and I really came away from it with more consciousness of culture and different views on the world. I would find myself trying to guess the themes that Ishmael was hinting at before the man did. I will always remember reading this book, and it will be a turning point in my life forever. If you haven’t yet I would highly recommend giving this book a try. It is worth it. 

Find it in print here.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Hi! My name is Madeline, I am in 9th grade and live in Hailey Idaho. I love politics, philosophy, writing, and playing the violin. I could talk about these topics all day. I also love reading, my favorite books are The Lord of The Rings, anything written by Tolkien, and Fahrenheit 451.

Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury, is a suspenseful story about life in a dystopian America.

Guy Montag is a fireman, but instead of putting out fires, he starts them. Whenever books are found in a house, he and his crew burn the books, along with the house. Books are considered dangerous and are banned for fear they might offend someone or raise uncomfortable topics. Instead, people are encouraged to watch T.V., live in the present, and not think twice about anything.

Guy accepts this life and believes he is content until he meets a young girl named Clarisse. Clarisse takes time to think, and never takes anything for granted. She is unlike anyone Guy has ever known, and the two easily become friends. Clarisse encourages Guy to think and wonder if life was always this way.

Guy starts to question everything he has been told and begins reading the banned books he has taken from the burnt houses. He undertakes a journey to discover the past where people weren’t afraid, and there was more to life than what is in front of you at the moment. Guy rebels against the life of a fireman and becomes a hunted enemy of state as result.

This is an amazing book about the dangers of government control and standing up for freedom. I recommend it for ages 12 and up. This is one of my favorite books, because it is very exciting and makes you think deeply. I also like that even though it is fiction, it is realistic and it feels like the events in the book could really happen in a few hundred years.

Find it in print and ebook here.

Furia by Yamile Saied Méndez

Hi, I am Sarah. I am fourteen years old and an avid reader; it is one of my favorite things to do. Inspired by authors’ creations of magnificent places and surprising havens built by simple letters, I aspire to be an author and, meanwhile, nurture the love to write.

Camila Hassen is the cautious daughter of her timid mother and abrasive father, making as little space as she can under her brother’s rising soccer stardom. She keeps up her grades, works on her English, working on going to medical school and become un Doctora. She keeps her big mouth shut and tries not to make waves.

Until she’s on the field.

Furia, she’s called, a talented fútbolera, where her dreams explode and her feet have wings, where her world is the ball and its trajectory, where she can be anyone and do anything.

Where she can be a girl in Rosario, Argentina and play fútbol. But it isn’t that easy. In her wildest dreams, she gets to go to a school in North America on an athletic scholarship, to go on and play professionally. When her team qualifies for a South American tournament, she gets that chance… but she needs her parent’s permission, and they don’t know about, nor would they approve of the double life she leads. And to complicate things further, the boy she once loved-turned-international-soccer-player is back in town, and she can’t let herself be distracted by her feelings for him. She has one goal, and one goal only: to be La Furia in a world that doesn’t have room for a girl like her.

Yamile Saied Méndez has written a powerful story about a seventeen-year-old girl making a place for herself in a place that doesn’t want to accept her, a story of love and passion and dreams and hurt and soaring through it all, in a blur of black and white—fútbol.

Find it in print, ebook, and eaudiobook here.