Val Muller

It’s Halloween, and my daughter is obsessed with ancient Egypt, so when I saw this book for about a dollar at a used book store, I didn’t think twice, even though I had never heard of this Newbery Honor book. The novel employs largely omniscient narration, jumping from perspective to perspective as needed, following primarily […]

A friend loaned me this book last year, but in my sleep-deprived state, the metaphors in the first chapter were lost on me as impractical, and I put it off to the side in hopes of something more blunt. Fast-forward some months later, and I was able to read the entire book (It’s just over […]

I had purchased this book after hearing the author speak at a conference a few years ago. I’d forgotten about it and needed a quick read I could focus on while watching the kids this summer. While this is the third in a series, I had not read the other two: I chose this one […]

A while back, a group of my creative writing students reached out to me that they had found a local author at a book store. One thing led to another, and soon we had her scheduled for a visit during one of our meetings. Of course I purchased her book to check it out prior […]

Hatchet was one of my favorite books as a young reader. I loved imagining a survival situation and how I might use my resources and brain to survive even with the odds stacked against me. I’m also a fan of the American Revolution, simply because of the incredible odds the colonists faced. Hence, I was […]

A few years ago, this was a “1book1community” pick. I had picked up a copy but forgot about it until recently. By the time I picked it up again, I forgot the premise and didn’t bother to read the description. So at first, I thought it was about a boy who was on a ship […]

A former student of mine left me this book at winter break a year or two ago. Its absurdist nature is reminiscent of The Stranger and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, two works we read the previous year in our literature class. In the novel, a man named Cincinnatus is condemned to death for a […]

Author Adriana Mather is a real-life descendant of Cotton Mather. In some ways, this young adult novel is inspired by her real-life interest in her family’s history. In the novel, Samantha Mather, a descendant of Cotton Mather, moves to Salem with her step-mother. Her father is in a coma, and life in New York is […]

I received this book for free (from the publisher) as a review copy for possible use in my teaching. I teach AP Literature and am always on the lookout for modern books of literary merit that balance the ability to analyze elements such as symbolism with reader interest. The plot intrigued me, and the novel […]