A. L. Kaplan

Tag: books

  • Looking for that perfect gift?

    Looking for that perfect gift?

    Books make excellent gifts and I have several to choose from.

    If you’re game for something to wear, visit my Redbubble Shop.

    They have a 50% off sale going on right now!

    STAR TOUCHED

    Sometimes it’s hard to be who you are meant to be.

    Especially when your powers can get you killed.

    Eighteen-year-old Tatiana is running from her past and her star-touched powers eight years after a meteor devastates earth’s population.

    Her power to heal may be overshadowed by more destructive abilities. Fleeing the persecution of those like her, Tatiana seeks refuge in a small town she once visited. But this civil haven, in a world where society has broken down, is beginning to crumble.

    Only by harnessing the very forces that haunt her can Tatiana save her friends…and herself.

    HUMMINGBIRD

    Plagued by memories not her own, a young hummingbird struggles to decipher the visions and powers that set her apart from her fellow birds. But the road to awareness is fraught with danger that could doom her to repeat history.

    One step toward understanding.

    One stride toward survival.

    One leap toward flying free from the past.

    MARK OF THE GODDESS

    Sometimes a blessing can be a curse.

    Young Maya bears the mark of the moon goddess, a sign that would doom her to be sacrificed in her village where the death god is revered. Forced to dye her golden eyes dark, Maya lives in constant fear of discovery. To save her family and the village’s future, she must find the courage to stand up to the high priest before he can bring the death god into this world.

    WOLF DAWN

    A Hidden Past – A Deadly Secret

    Gifted with the ability to wolf-talk, Kara has lived with the wolves since she lost her memories eight years ago. Now at sixteen, snippets of her past send her searching for answers.

    But the warm welcome she receives in the human village hides more danger than life with the pack.

  • Carroll County Farmers Market Author Day November 1, 2025

    Carroll County Farmers Market Author Day November 1, 2025

    Come To The

    Carroll County Farmers Market

    November 1, 2025

    8:00-2:00

    I’ll be there with my books and a few other special items.

    Carroll County Agriculture Center
    700 Agriculture Dr.
    Westminster, MD 21157

    STAR TOUCHED

    Sometimes it’s hard to be who you are meant to be.

    Especially when your powers can get you killed.

    Eighteen-year-old Tatiana is running from her past and her star-touched powers eight years after a meteor devastates earth’s population.

    Her power to heal may be overshadowed by more destructive abilities. Fleeing the persecution of those like her, Tatiana seeks refuge in a small town she once visited. But this civil haven, in a world where society has broken down, is beginning to crumble.

    Only by harnessing the very forces that haunt her can Tatiana save her friends…and herself.

    HUMMINGBIRD

    Plagued by memories not her own, a young hummingbird struggles to decipher the visions and powers that set her apart from her fellow birds. But the road to awareness is fraught with danger that could doom her to repeat history.

    One step toward understanding.

    One stride toward survival.

    One leap toward flying free from the past.

    MARK OF THE GODDESS

    Sometimes a blessing can be a curse.

    Young Maya bears the mark of the moon goddess, a sign that would doom her to be sacrificed in her village where the death god is revered. Forced to dye her golden eyes dark, Maya lives in constant fear of discovery. To save her family and the village’s future, she must find the courage to stand up to the high priest before he can bring the death god into this world.

    WOLF DAWN

    A Hidden Past – A Deadly Secret

    Gifted with the ability to wolf-talk, Kara has lived with the wolves since she lost her memories eight years ago. Now at sixteen, snippets of her past send her searching for answers.

    But the warm welcome she receives in the human village hides more danger than life with the pack.

  • Banned And Challenged Books I’ve Read: James and the Giant Peach

    Banned And Challenged Books I’ve Read: James and the Giant Peach

    Exercise Your Rights:

    Read Banned Books

    James and the Giant Peach

    Roald Dahl

    I was surprised to learn this book has been challenged. Yes, it has scarry things, but so does life. In the end, James finally finds the home he deserves. I read it years ago.

    James Henry Trotter lives with two ghastly hags. Aunt Sponge is enormously fat with a face that looks boiled and Aunt Spiker is bony and screeching. He’s very lonely until one day something peculiar happens. . . At the end of the garden a peach starts to grow and GROW AND GROW. Inside that peach are seven very unusual insects – all waiting to take James on a magical adventure. But where will they go in their GIANT PEACH, and what will happen to the horrible aunts if they stand in their way? There’s only one way to find out . . .

    James and the Giant Peach is not permanently “banned” but has been frequently challenged and temporarily restricted in various schools and libraries due to its depiction of scary scenes (like the death of the aunts), references to drugs, alcohol, and tobacco, vulgar language (such as “ass”), and themes of disobedience and mystical elements. These challenges stem from concerns that the book promotes unsuitable behavior, contains offensive language, or is too frightening for the intended audience.  

  • Banned And Challenged Books I’ve Read: A Wrinkle in Time

    Banned And Challenged Books I’ve Read: A Wrinkle in Time

    Exercise Your Rights:

    Read Banned Books

    A Wrinkle in Time

    Madeleine L’Engle

    I read this book in collage as an assignment. It was a lot of fun. My daughter really liked it as well. While not banned, it has been challenged several times.

    It was a dark and stormy night; Meg Murry, her small brother Charles Wallace, and her mother had come down to the kitchen for a midnight snack when they were upset by the arrival of a most disturbing stranger.

    “Wild nights are my glory,” the unearthly stranger told them. “I just got caught in a downdraft and blown off course. Let me sit down for a moment, and then I’ll be on my way. Speaking of ways, by the way, there is such a thing as a tesseract.”

    A tesseract (in case the reader doesn’t know) is a wrinkle in time. To tell more would rob the reader of the enjoyment of Miss L’Engle’s unusual book. A Wrinkle in Time, winner of the Newberry Medal in 1963, is the story of the adventures in space and time of Meg, Charles Wallace, and Calvin O’Keefe (athlete, student, and one of the most popular boys in high school). They are in search of Meg’s father, a scientist who disappeared while engaged in secret work for the government on the tesseract problem.

    A Wrinkle in Time is not an officially banned book, but it has been frequently challenged and sometimes removed from school libraries for various controversial reasons, including its blend of science and religion, the portrayal of witches and magical elements, and the depiction of Jesus alongside other great thinkers, which some find blasphemous while others find it too secular. 

  • Banned And Challenged Books I’ve Read: The Golden Compass

    Banned And Challenged Books I’ve Read: The Golden Compass

    Exercise Your Rights:

    Read Banned Books

    The Golden Compass

    Philip Pullman

    Lyra is rushing to the cold, far North, where witch clans and armored bears rule. North, where the Gobblers take the children they steal–including her friend Roger. North, where her fearsome uncle Asriel is trying to build a bridge to a parallel world. Can one small girl make a difference in such great and terrible endeavors? This is Lyra: a savage, a schemer, a liar, and as fierce and true a champion as Roger or Asriel could want. But what Lyra doesn’t know is that to help one of them will be to betray the other…

    Banned and challenged because of religious viewpoints

  • Banned And Challenged Books I’ve Read: Water for Elephants

    Banned And Challenged Books I’ve Read: Water for Elephants

    Exercise Your Rights:

    Read Banned Books

    Water for Elephants

    Sara Gruen

    When Jacob Jankowski, recently orphaned and suddenly adrift, jumps onto a passing train, he enters a world of freaks, drifters, and misfits, a second-rate circus struggling to survive during the Great Depression, making one-night stands in town after endless town. A veterinary student who almost earned his degree, Jacob is put in charge of caring for the circus menagerie. It is there that he meets Marlena, the beautiful young star of the equestrian act, who is married to August, the charismatic but twisted animal trainer. He also meets Rosie, an elephant who seems untrainable until he discovers a way to reach her.

    Water for Elephants has been challenged or banned in schools and libraries due to its depictions of violence, animal cruelty, and sexual content

  • Banned And Challenged Books I’ve Read: To Kill A Mockingbird

    Banned And Challenged Books I’ve Read: To Kill A Mockingbird

    Exercise Your Rights:

    Read Banned Books

    To Kill A Mockingbird

    Harper Lee

    This was another book that I read in HS. I’m beginning to wonder what they are using now. I really enjoyed this one.

    One of the best-loved stories of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has been translated into more than forty languages, sold more than forty million copies worldwide, served as the basis for an enormously popular motion picture, and was voted one of the best novels of the twentieth century by librarians across the country. A gripping, heart-wrenching, and wholly remarkable coming-of-age tale in a South poisoned by virulent prejudice, it views a world of great beauty and savage iniquities through the eyes of a young girl, as her father — a crusading local lawyer — risks everything to defend a black man unjustly accused of a terrible crime.

    To Kill a Mockingbird is challenged and banned from schools and libraries due to its use of racial slurs and profanity, its portrayal of racism, and themes of rape and violence. While some see the book as a valuable tool for teaching about history and morality, others find the explicit language and sensitive subject matter too harmful or offensive for young readers.  

  • Banned And Challenged Books I’ve Read: The Handmaid’s Tale

    Banned And Challenged Books I’ve Read: The Handmaid’s Tale

    Exercise Your Rights:

    Read Banned Books

    The Handmaid’s Tale

    Margaret Atwood

    Here is another very relevant book. I didn’t read this one until earlier this year.  Margaret Atwood is a visionary.

    In Margaret Atwood’s dystopian future, environmental disasters and declining birthrates have led to a Second American Civil War. The result is the rise of the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian regime that enforces rigid social roles and enslaves the few remaining fertile women. Offred is one of these, a Handmaid bound to produce children for one of Gilead’s commanders. Deprived of her husband, her child, her freedom, and even her own name, Offred clings to her memories and her will to survive.

    Banned and challenged for profanity and for “vulgarity and sexual overtones”

  • Banned And Challenged Books I’ve Read 10-8-25

    Banned And Challenged Books I’ve Read 10-8-25

    Exercise Your Rights:

    Read Banned Books

    Animal Farm

    George Orwell

    George Orwell has the distinction of having two great books on this list. And yes, I read this one in HS.

    A farm is taken over by its overworked, mistreated animals. With flaming idealism and stirring slogans, they set out to create a paradise of progress, justice, and equality. Thus the stage is set for one of the most telling satiric fables ever penned-a razor-edged fairy tale for grown-ups that records the evolution from revolution against tyranny to a totalitarianism just as terrible. When Animal Farm was first published fifty years ago, Stalinist Russia was seen as its target. Today it is devastatingly clear that wherever freedom is attacked, under whatever banner, the cutting clarity and savage comedy of George Orwell’s masterpiece has meaning and message still ferociously fresh.

    Animal Farm has been banned or challenged globally for various reasons, including its critique of communist regimes in places like the Soviet Union and Cuba, and its perceived promotion of mass revolt and communist politics in the U.S. during the Cold War. In some Islamic countries, like the United Arab Emirates, it was banned for containing imagery, such as pigs and alcohol, that conflicts with Islamic values.  

  • Banned And Challenged Books I’ve Read 10/7/25

    Banned And Challenged Books I’ve Read 10/7/25

    Exercise Your Rights: Read Banned Books

    1984

    George Orwell

    Another HS classic read. 2+2 does not =5

    This one really stuck with me and feels even more relevant today.

    A masterpiece of rebellion and imprisonment where war is peace freedom is slavery and Big Brother is watching. Thought Police, Big Brother, Orwellian – these words have entered our vocabulary because of George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel 1984. The story of one man’s Nightmare Odyssey as he pursues a forbidden love affair through a world ruled by warring states and a power structure that controls not only information but also individual thought and memory 1984 is a prophetic haunting tale More relevant than ever before 1984 exposes the worst crimes imaginable the destruction of truth freedom and individuality.

    1984 has been challenged or banned for its social and political themes, including explicit depictions of totalitarianism, government surveillance, and rebellion, as well as for its sexual and violent content. Some critics also objected to its perceived pro-communist or anti-communist ideology, even though Orwell intended it as a critique of any authoritarian regime.