Young Readers Share Views on Stories of Wimpy Kids, Vampires

The month is drawing to a close and for many Hartland students their monthly reading calendars are exploding with minutes, hours and pages that the previous months have not experienced.

The incentives are great during March is Reading Month. Maybe your class can earn a pizza party. Perhaps the top reader gets to have dinner with their teacher. Or maybe, just maybe, it's all just for the love of reading.  

This time, the Hartland Page Turners share a couple of book series. First, Owen Wiltshire, a second-grader at shares what he likes about the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. Owen's review is timely considering Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Roderick Rules opened in theaters on Friday.

Fifth-grader Ryann Swann jumps on the vampire phenomenon with the My Sister the Vampire series about twin sisters separated at birth. The sixth book in the series, Love Bites, was just released.

Hopefully, the end of March is Reading Month has taught competitive readers that reading can be for pleasure as well prizes. And we should all be reminded of the wisdom of Dr. Seuss: "The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go."

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days by Jeff Kinney

• Reviewer: Owen Wiltshire
• Age, grade: 8, second grade
• School:
• Parents: Brent Wiltshire and Tonya Grueschow-Wiltshire
• Hobbies: Baseball, playing with legos, and video games
• Favorite genre: Comedy

I really like all of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books. I have them all and have read through number four, Dog Days. I just started The Ugly Truth which is number five.

I like them because they are really, really, funny. My favorite character is Manny, Greg's brother, once he washed his hands in the toilet.

In Dog Days, Greg and his best friend Rowley must find work to pay back Rowley's dad for their big smoothie bill that they ran up at the country club.

One of their jobs was to mow lawns. It was funny because Greg mowed around the dog poop in the lady's yard, leaving a circle of long grass and poop behind. The owner would not pay them.

Greg also has to give all of his birthday money to Rowley's dad for the bill.

The great thing about the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books is that they're written like comic books. So everything is funny in the books, the words and the pictures.  The speech bubbles and their newspapers are very funny too.

Maybe not all second-graders would like these books, but I think a lot of them will, especially boys.

My Sister the Vampire: The Series by Sienna Mercer

• Reviewer: Ryann Swann
• Age, grade: 10, fifth grade
• School:
• Parents: Cory and Stacy Swann
• Hobbies: Soccer, swimming, and playing clarinet
• Favorite genre: Mysteries or anything scary

I love the series My Sister the Vampire. These books are full of mysteries and I love mysteries.

My Sister the Vampire is about two girls Ivy and Olivia, who are twins. Olivia is just a regular human girl and Ivy is a vampire. They are twins but were separated at birth and then adopted. Olivia lives with her adoptive parents and Ivy with her adoptive father. They have no idea the other exists until they run into each other in the hall at their high school. As soon as they realize how much they look alike they find out they are twins.

A cool thing I found out in these books is that there is a secret entrance at the food market that leads to a blood market just for vampires.

Ivy and Olivia go through a lot of scary things in these books. They become famous, and they try to keep a local news girl from finding out about the vampires in Franklin Grove.

If you want to know more about Olivia and Ivy and their crazy adventures you should read the My Sister the Vampire series. I'm not going to tell you everything. Enjoy.

About this column: If you are a young person in the Hartland area and would like to review a book, please contact Stacy Swann at Swanngirlz@gmail.com. New releases are available for review as well as any of your favorites.