1) For the first exercise, I picked one of my favorite Meg Cabot books, Size 12 is Not Fat. It's a chick lit mystery. What could be more fun?
Using Novel List Plus (which is the slowest website known to man. I rarely use it when patrons are standing at the desk because it takes at least five years to load), I found an article with a nice list of mystery chick lit novels in the same vein as Meg Cabot's Heather Wells mysteries.
1 - Foul Play by Tori Carrington (Sofie Metropolis mysteries)
2 - One for the Money by Janet Evanovich (Stephanie Plum mysteries)
There were others, of course, but those were the most interesting looking. Ironically, none of these books were on the list from the What Should I Read Next site. That list was mainly filled with YA books. I know Meg Cabot writes YA, but this particular series is definitely for adults. That site was not helpful.
I tried using the two booklist sites, but they were too complicated to use for finding read-alikes for a specific book. They were both great resources, but seemed overly complex for this assignment. So instead I used the "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought..." feature on Amazon.com. This is actually my favorite reader's advisory tool and the one I use most frequently. While the results there did lean a little more towards YA or chick lit, the Janet Evanovich series was included. Much more helpful than some of the other resources.
2) For this portion, I used Mid-Continent Public Library's Juvenile Series and Sequels database. Kids and teenagers like series books, so this seemed like a safe way to go. This site features a handy series subject search function, which brings up long lists of books on animals.
For the fourth grade girl interested in animals, I would probably recommend any of the books from Ben M. Baglio's Animal Ark series (#1 is Kittens in the Kitchen) or, for something classic, Hugh Lofting's The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle.
For the thirteen year old boy interested in ghost stories, I ended up using a different site. I tried using the Library Booklists site because they have a link to horror stories for YA readers. Unfortunately, most of the links to the actual lists were broken. What an incredibly frustrating experience! Clearly, that site has not been well maintained. I did finally fine a worthwhile list here. I would probably recommend Andrew Nance's Daemon Hall and Anthony Horowitz's More Horowitz Horror.
3)Using Novel List Plus, I would recommend Dan Simmons, Charles Grant and John Saul. Using Library Booklists, I eventually (after a really long time) reached this site which had a link to a list that recommended Stephen King, Greg Bear and Peter Straub. Unfortunately, it took at least five years for the site, If You Like Dean Koontz" by Wake County PL to load. Inconvenient.
4) For this part of the exercise, I used Mid-Continent Public Library's Juvenile Series and Sequels database. I've used this database before and always found it incredibly helpful. (Of course, I always forget about it when I need it most and end up relying on the internet at large to answer my questions.) According to that resource, this Tamora Pierce book is the first book in the Song of the Lioness series. The whole series is as follows:
1 - Alanna: The First Adventure
2 - In the Hand of the Goddess
3 - The Woman Who Rides Like a Man
4 - Lioness Rampant
Pretty cool site!
