HSL's Kindle Deals of the Day for September 12, 2018
Today's Best Book Deals for Your Homeschool
(Prices are correct as of the time of writing, but y'all know sales move fast — check before you click the buy button! These are Amazon links — read more about how we use affiliate links to help support some of the costs of the HSL blog here.)
The Wild Robot is $2.99. I loved this book, which is a philosophical mash-up of a survival story and a what-does-it-mean-to-be-human thought experiment — it sounds like it shouldn’t work for middle grade readers, but it totally does.
Still on sale
The Glass Town Game is just $0.99. I snagged this one as soon as I saw it since it made Suzanne’s Best of 2017 list — she says “Similar in style to Valente’s Fairyland series with a dash of The Phantom Tollbooth, this would be a great read-aloud and introduction to the Brontes (although you may have to prepare your listeners for some post-book heartbreak when they learn about the eventual fates of the siblings). I especially loved the Jane Austen cameo, presented (as Valente apologetically notes) from Charlotte’s point of view (she’s not a fan).”
The Mysterious Edge of the Heroic World by E.L. Konigsburg is $0.99. This isn’t my favorite Konigsburg — but if this were any other author, this story about a new kid in town who dreams of discovering something new would be high on the list. Konigsburg just sets a really high bar for herself.
The Guns of August, Barbara Tuchman's brilliant (and Pulitzer Prize-winning) history of the month leading up to World War I, is $1.99. Tuchman has a knack for weaving sophisticated historical details into a text that reads like a story, and I feel like a high school U.S. history student who skipped this book would be missing out. (At least read the first chapter, about Edward VII's funeral, together!)
Salt: A World History is $1.99. I love books like this that trace some apparently insignificant item through history; Library Journal says: "Deftly leading readers around the world and across cultures and centuries, he takes an inexpensive, mundane item and shows how it has influenced and affected wars, cultures, governments, religions, societies, economies, cooking (there are a few recipes), and foods." Sign me up.
Sorcery and Cecelia, or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot is $1.99, and Suzanne and I are never going to stop recommending this epistolary novel set in a Jane Austen-ish world with magic.
Six of Crows is $2.99. We've recommended Bardugo's Grisha-verse trilogy as a binge-worthy series more than once, and this book returns to that world with a story of six talented people commissioned to pull off an impossible heist.
The Celery Stalks at Midnight — the third installment in the irresistible elementary series Bunnicula — is $0.99. The continuing adventures of the Holmes and Watson-ish family dogs and the (maybe) vegetarian vampire bunny are good, silly fun.
Rooftoppers is just $0.99. I am always surprised more people haven't heard of this lovely little book — Phillip Pullman likes it, too! — about a maybe-orphan in search of her origins on the rooftops of Paris.
The Strange Case of Origami Yoda is $2.99. From Booklist: "Tommy and his friends think that Dwight is a weirdo who’s 'always talking about robots or spiders or something.' In true Dwight fashion, he shows up at school one day brandishing a little origami Yoda finger puppet. The really weird thing is that it doles out very un-Dwight-like bits of wisdom, and the mystery is whether the Yoda is just Dwight talking in a funny voice or if it actually has mystical powers." Hand this to your 4th to 6th grader who loves the Wimpy Kid series.
The Girl from Everywhere is $1.99. From our review: "I mean, really, how can you resist a story that centers on a time-traveling pirate ship that can go anywhere someone’s taken the time to draw a map of?"
The Wednesday Wars is $1.99. This is a quirky charmer of a story about how Shakespeare can change your life, set in Vietnam-era New Jersey.
American Street is $1.99. This was one of our favorite books of 2017.
The Iron Trial is $1.99. From the fall 2014 issue: "Callum’s father has always taught him to avoid magic — so Callum is determined to do whatever it takes to get kicked out of the magical school he’s forced to attend."
Writing Magic: Creating Stories That Fly is $1.99. We recommend this in our great books for young writers list.
