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The series was light fun and original. I liked that the princesses weren't typical proper princesses and all had unique and interesting personalities. The stories were simple and easy to read.

1 - Princess Power #1: The Perfectly Proper Prince (Princess Power) - Princess Lysandra holds auditions for a talent show in order to find other adventurous princesses. On their first adventure, the girls discover a real frog prince.
2 - Princess Power #2: The Charmingly Clever Cousin (Princess Power) - Fatima is staying with her sister Selime to help care for her new nephew. But when Selime's husband Ahmed goes missing and his cousin Yusef takes over the castle, Fatima gets suspicious. Fatima and her friends must discover the true whereabouts of Ahmed.
3 - Princess Power #3: The Awfully Angry Ogre (Princess Power) - Tansy's kingdom is having ogre trouble, and two of her brothers are determined to put a stop to the terror. But when her brothers are turned to stone Tansy and her friends must save the day.
4 - Princess Power #4: The Mysterious, Mournful Maiden (Princess Power) - Elena finds a comb on the beach and starts having dreams about the comb's lost owner. Elena and her friends must find the owner before it is too late.
5 - Princess Power #5: The Stubbornly Secretive Servant (Princess Power) - The Princesses are visiting Lysandra at her sister Gabriella's castle. Everyone is looking forward to Prince Jonathon's visit, but for some reason he never shows up.
6 - Princess Power #6: The Gigantic, Genuine Genie (Princess Power) - Fatima buys a genie bottle at the market. Unfortunately the genie is powerless. Can Fatima and her friends help the genie get his powers back?

This is one of my favorite young, girly, princess series. The authors take elements from the original fairy tale stories (Cinderella, Briar Rose, Rapunzel, and Snow White) and apply them to a princess junior high type setting. The books are an easy read and they are really funny.

1 - Princess School: If the Shoe Fits - Ella's family wants to keep her from attending princess school and its royal ball.
2 - The Princess School: Who's the Fairest? - Snow's stepmother tries to kill her at the Princess School Maiden Games.
3 - The Princess School(Let Your Hair Down) - Madame Gothel discovers that Rapunzel has been sneaking out of her tower.
4 - Princess School: Beauty Is A Beast (Princess School) - Rose is sick of everyone fawning over her and she is determined to do something about it.
5 - Princess School #5: Princess Charming: Princess Charming (Princess School) - Rapunzel disguises herself as a prince so she can compete in the Charm School Jousting Tournament.
6 - Princess School #06: Apple-y Ever After: Apple-y Ever After (Princess School) - Snow's father has physically returned from sea, but he doesn't remember who he is.
7 - Princess School: Thorn In Her Side (Princess School) - Rose gets the part of Princess Perfecta in the school play and must act with someone who really does want to kill her.
8 - Slippery Steps (Princess School) - I can't find this book anywhere. Does anyone know where you can get it?

Ever by Gail Carson Levine

Rating:
Ever is yet another brilliant story by Gail Carson Levine. In the book, Levine weaves classic fairy tale elements with basic mythology, immersing the reader in a whole new world. The story and language isn't quite as simple as it is in some of her other books, and would be easier understood by older children. The book is a must read for Gail Carson Levine fans.

Description:
Kezi's life has been pledged to the one god, and unless she can find a way to thwart her fate, she has only one month to live. Olus, the god of the winds, falls in love with Kezi, and is unwilling to let her die. With the help of Olus, Kezi embarks on a perilous journey to become an immortal god. Can Kezi past the test, or is she doomed to die without love?





I got my advanced readers edition from the publisher - book is released on May 6, 2008

Beastly by Alex Finn

Rating:
This was a fun modern twist on beauty and the beast. The beast was mean, arrogant, and self-centered. And the beauty character was smart, kind, and kinda pretty. Even though the characters were young and had to deal with the typical high school problems, they also had to face life in the real world. I think lots of teenage girls would be able to relate to the characters. My main criticism of the book is once again the content. There were a few swear words in the book and a couple sexual innuendos. It would have been a really good book without it, and I just don't understand why it was necessary.

Description:
Most people considered Kyle to be the perfect boy with the perfect life. He was tall, blond, rich, and handsome and was dating the most popular girl in school. He had the potential to be smart but was too concerned with his looks and popularity to concern himself with anything else. But when he asks an ugly girl in school to the Prom as a joke, his life changes forever. The girl is really a witch in disguise, and she transforms him into a terrible beast. Ashamed of having an ugly son, Kyle's father hides him away from the world. Kyle must find true love in two years, or risk living the rest of his life as a beast.

Runemarks by Joanne Harris

Rating:
This was an extremely detailed book, and it seemed like it would be very difficult to write. The writer created an in depth history and a whole new language and did it well. I liked the background story, but all of the detail was a little too much. I could only read a little bit of the book at a time, and it ended up taking me a week to read it. That might not seem very long to most people, but the last time it took me a week to read a book, I was reading the complete unabridged version of Les Miserables. The book also swore a few times and had some crude language.

Description:
Madi lived in a world where order ruled and anything strange was avoided. Because Madi was born with "the ash" ruinmark, she was always treated like an outsider in her town. The only person that treated Madi like an equal was One Eye, a nomadic traveler who also had a ruinmark. One Eye became Madi's only friend and he taught her about the old god's and the forbidden powers. As Madi grew in strength, hatred grew in the heart of the local parson. In time, Madi learned that she was really Modi, the first born god of the new age. And it had been prophesied that only she could save the world from Chaos. Madi must decide who she can trust and where her loyalties lie as she embarks on an epic journey through Hel and the Nine Worlds.

For parents back to school season can be quite stressful. If your child consistently pleads with you to stay home from school, skips school, or has anxiety related to attending school then they may have “school refusal behavior.” Christopher A. Kearney, PhD, is Professor of Psychology and Director of the UNLV Child School Refusal and Anxiety Disorders Clinic at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. His new book, Getting Your Child to Say “Yes” To School: A Guide for Parents With School Refusal Behavior is filled with concrete strategies and step-by-step instructions to make painful morning more routine. Below are some guidelines excerpted from the book about when you should allow your child to stay home.

Parents often ask which somatic complaints should keep a child home from school. We recommend a child go to school except when there is: (more…)

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Earlier today we posted a Q & A with Allan V. Horwitz, co-author with Jerome C. Wakefield, of The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow Into Depressive Disorder. Below is an excerpt from the book which uses Willy Loman from Death of A Salesman to show how our perceptions of sadness have changed over time.

The Concept of Depression

The poet W. H. Auden famously deemed the period after World War II the “age of anxiety.” For Auden, the intense anxiety of that era was a normal human response to extraordinary circumstances, such as the devastation of modern warfare, the horrors of the concentration camps, the development of nuclear weapons, and the tensions of the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union. Were Auden still alive, he might conclude that the era around the turn of the twenty-first century is the “age of depression.” (more…)

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Thanks to the meeting of my writing group this evening, I put aside the column I'm halfway through and decided to pull out a middle grade idea that I'd worked on two years ago before starting on The Novel Formerly Known As Ketchup. Churned out over 1,000 words and felt good about it. My critique group loved the voice. It feels good to be back in novel writing mode again - I'd been starting to get the "OMG! What if my first two novels were flukes?" anxiety. I guess this is progress from the "What if I'm a one-hit wonder?" anxiety I experienced previously.

For those of you who've written lots of books - does this anxiety that all the books have come before were just flukes and you'll never be able to write another book again go away? (please say yes...)

And now...I've got to go do some research for my column so I can finish it tomorrow.

This morning we introduced you to the Treatments That Work series. Each workbook for patients is paired with a Therapist’s Guide which your doctor will use to work with you throughout your treatment. To give you an idea of what your therapist is reading here is an excerpt from the Mastery of Your Anxiety and Panic Therapist Guide about patients that have problems with the breathing exercise we learned this morning.

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Everyone has anxiety, it is a normal response to stressful situations, and in moderation it helps us perform better. But when anxiety begins to rule your life, to keep you from the people you love and the things you enjoy doing, you have to seek help. The Treatments That Work series explains the most effective interventions for a particular problem in user-friendly language. In Mastery of Your Anxiety and Panic users learn concrete strategies and techniques to deal with their fear. Below is an excerpt that explains a breathing exercise that will help you face fear calmly. Remember though that this an excerpt from a complete program that is only proven to work when practiced from beginning to end with a physician’s help.

Step One
The first step is to concentrate on taking breaths right down to your stomach (or, more accurately, to your diaphragm muscles). (more…)

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Autism confounds researchers but one way of understanding it is to look through the lens of stress and coping. That is exactly what editors M. Grace Baron, June Groden, Gerald Groden and Lewis P. Lipsitt do in their book Stress and Coping in Autism. Contributions by researchers, clinicians, teachers, and persons living with autism illustrate how it is possible to reduce the impact of stress in autism by understanding both the science and the experience of it. Below we excerpt part of the introduction. To learn more be sure to visit our morning post, Helping Children With Autism Learn.

The construct of stress has expanded our understanding of both typical and atypical human development in a revolutionary way. Research into a number of disorders that are often comorbid with a diagnosis of autism, such as anxiety, shyness, phobias, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and thought disorder, already include a systematic theoretical and applied analysis of the contribution of stress to the disorder. Autism, in its own right, might also benefit from such a focus for a number of reasons.

Anxiety, an indicator that someone is experiencing stress, was associated with autism as early as Kanner’s (1943) first description of the syndrome. A few early clinical and research reports (e.g., Marks, 1987; Matson & Love, 1990) examined the correlation between fear and anxiety and autism. In 1994, Groden, Cautela, Prince, and Berryman presented the first systematic framework for using the concepts of stress and anxiety to describe and treat autism and proposed that those with autism may, in fact, have a special vulnerability to stress. We now have a better understanding that the clinical problems often associated with stress, such as anxiety, are more prevalent among people with pervasive developmental disabilities than in the general population.

Autism has long been seen as a problem of faulty or different arousal responses to environmental intrusions (Dawson & Levy, 1989). This has given rise to continued speculation about the role of such patterns of arousal as diagnostic markers or even indicators or subtypes of autism. As early as 1979, Piggott’s review of selected basic research in autism suggested that, “Children called autistic probably represent a complex of clinically similar manifestations in a variety of difference physiological disturbance[s]. Objective markers are needed as to allow the demarcation of subgroups of autistic children for further study” (p. 199). More recently, Tordjman, Spitz, Corinne, Carlier, and Roubertoux (1998) offered a stress-based model of autism, integrating biological and behavioral profiles of individuals wish ASD. They propose that stress and anxiety may be core problems of autism and that an analysis of differential responses to stress can lead to the identification of different subtypes. Similarly, Porges’s The Listening Project (2002) documents hyperarousal and vagal disruptions in children with autism and offers a biologically based behavioral intervention designed to stimulate the social behavior of children with autism.

Some of the known biological or behavioral effects of stress (see McEwen, 2002; Sapolsku, 1998) can be seen in persons with autism. For example, there is recent evidence (Krause, He, Gershwin, & Shoenfeld, 2002) of suppressed immune system function in some persons with autism. Under- or oversentivity to pain is a hallmark behavioral symptom for many with autism, and turbulent sensory and perceptual experiences are documented regularly in first-hand reports (e.g., Jones, Quigney, & Huws, 2003). Fur