Mayne Island Skeletons – Review by Leanne Dyck

Mayne Island Skeletons is not only a fun read for children 9 to 12 years of age but it also teaches many valuable lessons—such as how to be a good friend.

 

Mary Magdalene Sommers’ mother is attentive and reliable; whereas, Brent Green is the son of a neglectful parent. Despite these differences Magda values Brent’s friendship. She continues to believe in his good character even in the face of negative public opinion. In fact, she works tirelessly to prove his innocence and to secure his safety.

 

Through Magda’s example children are empowered to solve their own mysteries and resolve their own problems.

 

Thank you Amber Harvey for this uplifting read.

Mayne Island Skeletons is not only a fun read for children 9 to 12 years of age but it also teaches many valuable lessons—such as how to be a good friend.

 

Mary Magdalene Sommers’ mother is attentive and reliable; whereas, Brent Green is the son of a neglectful parent. Despite these differences Magda values Brent’s friendship. She continues to believe in his good character even in the face of negative public opinion. In fact, she works tirelessly to prove his innocence and to secure his safety.

 

Through Magda’s example children are empowered to solve their own mysteries and resolve their own problems.

 

Thank you Amber Harvey for this uplifting read.

 

Free Summer Reading – Another Mystery from Mayne Island

Free Summer Reading – Another Mystery from Mayne Island.

Yet Another Challenge

This isn’t a writing challenge.  It’s a reading challenge: “BookChickCity’s Mystery and Suspense Reading Challenge 2012.”

Can you believe a challenge that invites you to read mystery books and review them?  I can’t believe how lucky I was t o find this.  I read mysteries and crime books anyway, with a little feeling of guilt, of course, since they aren’t really “literature.”  I tend to shrug them off as a something I do between reading “real” novels.  But let’s face it.  I read them AND write them.  I love them.  I love page-turners, where the detective finds a new clue at the end of the chapter or is kidnapped or roughed up and you wonder what adventure is coming next.

Therefore, I was delighted to find this challenge.  All I have to do is link to that website and review the books I read.  And all I have to do is read and review from twelve to twenty-four mysteries this year.

Next time you see me reading I’ll be happy to boast that I’m reading a mystery book.  No more guilty pleasure; it will be number blank on my list of books I’m reviewing.

Want to join me?

Go to  http://www.bookchickcity.com/2011/12/sign-up-mystery-suspense-reading.html

Kathryn Poulin reviews Mayne Island Skeletons on MysteriesEtc

I don’t normally review children’s books however Mayne Island is very close to where I live so I knew I would find the book very interesting.  The story brings me back to my childhood when I loved reading the Enid Blyton mysteries and the wonderful adventures the children in her stories had.

Harvey’s adventure starring Magda her preteen sleuth is a great book for children to read.  I love the location, Mayne Island, and I love the writing style of the author.  The children in the book are active, they are not glued to electronics.  They are inquisitive and mostly they show great character traits as they show the value of friendship.

Highly recommend this great read for preteens!

Skeletons on Smashwords

As of today, Mayne Island Skeletons is available on Smashwords.

I would love to have you read this book and then post a review on Smashwords.

Go to  http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/93378

Thank you.

Magda’s Mayne Island Mystery – review by Denise Dunn

Having been honoured by my dear friend Amber Harvey’s request that I preview and critique her first novel for children, Magda’s Mayne Island Mystery, I read it together with my ten-year-old grandaughter.  We had fun in Magda’s island world watching the fictional yet believable characters deal with both life’s easy and tougher challenges.

This island setting is familar to my grandaughter and I. We recognised the charm of the place in Amber’s quietly inserted descriptions.   Like all good stories, the tale is universal – something like blaming others solves no conflict, look to your own feelings and needs.  Again, it’s quietly inserted, no moralising, no shoulds or ought to’s.

Alas that first granddaughter became a teenager and was already into vampire stories when Amber’s second book in the series Mayne Island Aliens was published.  I enjoyed it on my own.  Now my second granddaughter is coming up to the age for Magda so I have an excellent excuse to read them again!  Happily there will be three mysteries to enjoy with the publication of Mayne Island Skeletons.  I look forward to hours of reading with my grandaughter snuggled beside me.  But I might just sneak a read first when I get my hands on a copy of Skeletons because I can never let a good story sit on the shelf.

PS Like a good elder I read one of those vampire stories, just to check ‘em out and have to admit I might well have been attracted at thirteen!

Denise Dunn

full-time grand-mother, social activist and retired teacher-librarian

Review for Amber Harvey for “Skeletons”

Amber Harvey’s third book in her Magda series is well-paced and well-written, and a charm to read. Although Ms. Harvey retains a flavour particular to Mayne Island, where she lives, this story could occur in any small community.

Ms. Harvey’s love for, and knowledge of, children is apparent in all her books and she has a firm handle on her young characters who, although they display typical childish traits, are also shown to have compassion and caring for their peers.

In all, Skeletons, is another delightful story from Amber Harvey, and I look forward to the next chapter in her characters’ lives.

Celia Leaman

Author of Mary’s Child

http://www.devonshirebabe.com

September 16, 2011

Why Can’t We Just Laugh At Sexism?

When I think about what V.S. Naipau said about w omen’s writing being inferior to men’s, and there being no female writer whom he would consider his equal, I want to scream. He stated that women’s writing was “quite different”, reflecting women’s “sentimentality, the narrow view of the world”.

I suppose I think that the time is long past when women writers were “lady novelists” and only wrote about “sentimentality, the narrow view of the world,” if that time ever existed.

My favourite author is Jane Austen.  The depth of her understanding of people and her humour as well as her storytelling and her descriptions that she  paints swiftly and sharply have delighted me for decades.   She was an author who was also a woman.

 

I wish we could just laugh this off, but this person, V.S. Naipau, receives  prizes for his work, even the Nobel Prize, and people listen to him.  That’s why we can’t just laugh it off.

 

Why Reading Fiction is Good For Us

“If you read fiction, what you get good at understanding is what goes on between people.””

Brain scans, experiments and studies indicate that we really get better at understanding people and their interactions if we read fiction.  And if we talk about what we’ve read, perhaps with a friend or more formally in book groups, our understanding increases.  So don’t think of reading and talking about novels as simply a wonderful way for us to pass the time.  Think of it also as educational, a study in human psychology.

 

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/why-fiction-is-good-for-you/article2159339/singlepage/#articlecontent

Nancy Drew Goes To Mayne Island – Book Review by Sonja de Wit

Nancy Drew Goes To Mayne Island  — Sonja de Wit

When I was a kid, the Nancy Drew books were the page-turners every girl read. It’s been many, many years since I read those books, but I still remember her well, though you may want to judge whether I remember her accurately.

Nancy had no mother but a tall, handsome father, who never criticized or told her what to do. She had a dashing roadster. I wasn’t totally sure what a roadster was, obviously some kind of car. She wore dressy, perfect clothes we would have died for, and she had two somewhat silly guys hanging around at her beck and call. She did exactly what she wanted to do, and all grownups, including bad guys and police officers took her completely seriously.

Amber Harvey’s Magda books are page-turners, too. They have the same fast pace, cliff-hanger chapters, and improbable coincidences as well as the complete plot wraps, that I seem to remember were part of the Nancy Drew formula, which, face it, has been an indubitable success.

Magda, though, is a completely different girl. Although she is brave and adventurous, she is human enough to sometimes feel the need to remind herself of this. She has a mother who works, and who does not indulge her every whim. She has a bicycle, rather than a roadster, and although her clothes are not described in detail, I’d be willing to bet that some may have been bought second hand.

Where Nancy boldly called herself the girl detective (if I remember right), Magda happens on her adventures in the style of many contemporary adult detectives, just by being in the right (or wrong) place at the right time, and not backing off. Her friends are also grounded in real places and times, with (or without – one boy is under threat of going into foster care) real parents, who behave like grown-ups. They worry, provide advice, misunderstand, but also come through with help and support.

Amber Harvey has chosen Mayne Island, which she knows well, as the setting for her youthful heroine, and provides many interesting and telling details of this somewhat old-fashioned (people don’t lock their doors) Gulf Island.

If I were a ten to fourteen year-old today, urban or rural, you’d find me curled up with Magda and her adventures, envying her just a little, for her freedom to roam her safe, rural, lovely island.