I love book sales! While away in Nelson last weekend, I visited a book store in the local mall. After about 15mins of hunting through an assortment of battered cardboard boxes, I had to finish up because, by that stage, all the others were waiting impatiently for me back in the car. But I managed to find 14 books to buy. I was very pleased with the result of such a rushed search.

Then, as some of my family members were going back to the mall to buy groceries the next day, I tagged along so that I could have a more lengthy browse of the boxes to check if there were any good books that I missed the first time. It turned out that there were a few that escaped me. I ended up buying another four books.

The majority of the books in the boxes were Young Adult fiction, with a selection of children's books thrown in. Usually when I borrow books from libraries, I tend to steer clear of YA fiction. However, there are a few authors that I do enjoy reading and will look out for their books on shelves or in shops - authors such as Joan Bauer, Richard Peck and Gennifer Choldenko.

During the hunt at the book sale on the weekend, I came across another author - Jean Fritz. She is a children's author and although I didn't have any of her books I recognized her name. There were about ten different books of hers in the sale, and I bought all of them!
They were all from a series written by Jean Fritz which focused on famous historical figures or incidents and were illustrated by numerous talented artists like Tomi DePaola and Trina Schart Hyman. I was just as excited to examine the pictures as I was to actually read Fritz's words.

Jean Fritz was born on 16th November (my birthday too!) and is now 96 years old. She has been writing since the mid 1950s and has an impressive list of titles to her name. I can't wait to read through her series of historical books.