Life of Pi by Yann Martel

This is an amazing story! It started off a little slowly and without my immediate strong engagement. But it slowly grew on me, and then suddenly, I was hooked! The voice of the main character, Pi, is so endearing and intelligent; so like many young Indian people I have known, that I was totally charmed. The humor is delightful and clever. His foray into religion resonated with my own experience in many ways, and that was fun. The conversation between the Christian, Hindi, and Muslim as they discover Pi's divided devotion, is CLASSIC! Quite enjoyable and deeply truthful... And Pi's story of survival is so very engaging. Using his wits as he floats across the Pacific with his tiger is fascinating. There are so many subtleties that I'm sure I missed that I'm going to read it again.
It's an incredibly creative and original story, too. I marveled at the way the story unfolded and the way things connected and reconnected. It was also amazing to read about how Pi's survival ordeal brought him to a deeper understanding of being human...and what people will do to survive. As he surprises himself with his reactions, it's so enlightening. I could easily believe and understand how people could do the unthinkable; his reflections help us see the possibilities in us all.
There are some poetic descriptions of the universe and his state of mind as he's floating...the descriptions of the sky, sun, and wind are breathtaking.There's also a lot of biology here and zoology included. I wonder how accurate it is? That will be my next little Google task...to see how authentic these are. They felt very authentic, but the tree growing around human teeth did cause me to question whether this was imagination or possibility!

Aliens Ate My Homework by Bruce Coville

This is the last of Ann's recommendations for Gabriel that I ordered...and I did NOT save the best for last! In fact, I'm surprised she recommended this one. It's a little weird and I thought, dumb! The only thing I can figure out about her recommending this one is that her fourth graders really liked it. That shows me how far my thinking is from a typical fourth grader!

Ann told me she thought it was a very funny book, but I didn't connect very much with this humor. These little aliens are creative and so is their space ship, but I didn't find anything funny. Weird, yes, but funny, no! And the bully in the book turns out to be a criminal alien. The main character, Rod, doesn't handle the bullying well, and gives kids nothing much to learn from. One positive trait that he displays is his care for his younger twin siblings. The part about him not being able to lie could have been done better...also his missing father is not resolved in any constructive way. Just weird, with an aburpt anti-climactic ending. I will not be buying or reading any more in this series... I'm kind of puzzled about what to tell Gabriel about this book. Hmmmmmm...