Melissa at Book Nut describes her blog as "[t]he assorted book reviews (and other mostly book-related things) of a
Stay-Home Mom with Four Daughters who has an Avid Love of Reading but
is cursed with a Bad Memory." Her reviews are down-to-earth and intelligent with an honest personal angle, and she also poses reading challenges, like the upcoming Well-Seasoned Reader Challenge.
Recently, Melissa reviewed Cybils Middle Grade Nominee A Thousand Never Evers by Shana Burg. Melissa's own experiences living in Mississippi for a year gave her reading of the book additional depth–it's the story of seventh-grader Addie Ann, whose Uncle Bump is blamed for the mysterious destruction of a public garden in 1963 Kuckachoo, Mississippi. However, Melissa says, this is more than just the story of one girl:
[T]his book isn't that easy to sum up in one paragraph: there's an awful lot going on. A lot of it centers on the basic conflict between white and black: in employment, in housing, in voter registration, in the administration of justice.
Click here to read the full review.