Four stories of four different children how find a mysterious blue library card. Each finds there life changed by the library. There is a tagger, a tv addict, a homeless boy and a girl who has moved to a mushroom farm. ( )

Mongoose, Brenda, Sonseray, and April have nothing in common...until a mysterious blue card appears as if by magic and begins to change each of their lives. None of them guesses it at first, but that strange blue card will be their ticket to the past--and to a future that they never imagined. In stories that range from humorous to heartbreaking, Newbery-award-winner Jerry Spinelli reveals the amazing possibilities lurking behind library doors.

loved the four stories about the four conflicted individuals. When Mongoose, Brenda, Sonseray, and then April find the blue library card, it affects each of them in a different way. Perhaps somewhat unbelievable, but so too, was what happened in real life: the class wanted access to more Jerry Spinelli books!

A must read for anyone who believes in the power of books to transform lives.

One part fantasy, one part character study, this book follows the lives of four seperate teenagers, each one touched in some strange way by a simple, mysterious blue library card that finds its way to each one.

Mongoose is a juvenile deliquent, goaded along by his friend into spray painting walls and ditching school. But when Mongoose finds a book of amazing facts about the world around him at the library, he realizes there's much more to life than he thought.

Brenda is a compulsive eater and a TV addict, not understanding that there could be anything better than her favorite teen comedies and soap operas. But when she finds a book in the library that seems to have somehow recorded her life, she has a startling revelation.

Sonseray is rude and arrogant, a typical jerk teenager. Until the day he enters the library, and hears the children's librarian reading aloud from a book that strikes a chord of memory deep within his heart.

April has just moved to a lonely farm in the country, with the smell of manure all around and the library far away. But then she meets the area's traveling bookmobile and its prickly, layered attendant...and she realizes making a new friend in a new place may not be as she'd thought.

Humorous and heart-breaking in turns, this will reaffirm the idea that just a single encounter with books can change a life.





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Published in 1997, but it's my first time reading it—whimsical, mystical short stories about how libraries might transform your life. ( )

the concept was better than the story itself. ( )