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Making its US debut in May 2011, German YA best-seller Ruby Red  is a perfect mix of mystery, supernatural fanasy and romantic adventure.  Gwen is a typical 16 year old girl living with her mom, siblings and her extended family in a posh London neighborhood.  She’s a spunky, skeptical teen who’s managed to live a fairly normal life despite the time-travelling gene that runs in the women of her family (although Gwen isn’t without some supernatural abilities of her own – she can see and converse with ghosts).  This generation’s carrier is her haughty cousin Charlotte, whose been through years of secret training to prepare herRead More →

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Master Storyteller Joseph Bruchac’s latest novel, Dragon Castle, draws on the rich and magical legends of his Slovakian heritage as it explores themes of the hero’s journey, the journey to find oneself, and the courage to face one’s destiny.  15 year old Prince Rashko has lived his whole life in a peace secured by a distant ancestor, Pavol the Brave.  It’s a good thing that peaces abounds, too, because his parents and older brother Paulek seem to be more interested in daydreaming, sword fighting and living a life of ease than in doing much of anything to secure the safety and long-term security of the realm.  But RashkoRead More →

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23 interwoven stories and poems are edited by Holly Black and Ellen Kushner in Welcome To Bordertown: New Stories and Poems of the Borderlands.  Carefully crafted, skillfully interwoven, and richly textured, the collection flushes out the dark and the magical, the secrets and the mysteries, of the border between the Faerie Realm and The World.  Truebloods (High and Low-born Elves), Halfies (mixed race elves & humans), and mortals, as well as many other magical creatures live in, search for, and get lost in Bordertown.  It’s a city that’s been lost to The World for 13 years (only 13 days to those in Bordertown) where neitherRead More →

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Getting shipped off to spend the summer with a grandmother you’ve never met, who lives out in the middle-of-nowhere Washington State, while all of your friends have basketball camp, pool parties, and days of uninterrupted hanging out ahead of them is a pretty cruddy turn of events.  To make it worse, what if your grandmother is the town kook and runs a space-themed “intergallactic” bed and breakfast that is crawling with weird guests and is the joke of the town?  For middle-schooler Scrub, it’s his worst nightmare.  And he has the whole summer ahead of him before he can go back home to Florida. Grandma needs help atRead More →

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Jeffrey Kluger’s Freedom Stone is a rare gem of a book.  He takes the reader on a magical journey to a beautifully realized time and place and leaves the reader feeling connected with the characters long after the last word is read. Lillie has lived her whole life on the Greenfog plantation in South Carolina with her parents and younger brother, Plato.  With the War not going well for the Confederate Army, slave volunteers are being accepted to fight with the promise of freedom for themselves and their families.  Lillie’s father joined up, but months ago he was killed in action and with Union gold found inRead More →

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When Millie was little, a magical “small person with wings” (don’t ever call them fairies!) lived with her and her family.  He was her special, secret friend: he made beautiful illusions in her room, turned squash (yuck) into candy corn, and most off all, he never made her feel bad about her weight. One day Millie brags about him to her kindergarten class, promising to bring Fidius to show and tell, and instantly the kids want to be her friend. When Millie tells Fidius about what she did, she realizes she broke his trust and the next day he leaves her forever.  The loss ofRead More →

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Perfectly capturing the enterprising spirit of the turn of the 20th century, Gary Blackwood’s Around the World in 100 Days is an enjoyable update on the classic Around the World in 80 Days.  This time around it’s Phileas Fogg’s only son, Harry, whose vision, guts, and bravado will be tested. Caught with the same fire and courage of his father, Harry embarks rashly on his adventure, but this time it’s to prove to the skeptical world that the motor vehicle, his Flash, is the way of the future. Boldly, and sometimes heedlessly testing the limits of technology, Harry and his mechanical-genius Johnny, along with theRead More →

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Check out this review of Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld from briangriggs.com: “I realized today that there is no main antagonist in the Leviathan/Behemoth series. It’s straight character vs. self and character vs. society. I wonder if that’s why students don’t quite get into the action. The only complaint I’ve received is that there’s so much focus on the history and not on excitement. The “focus on history” comment is an interesting one, considering the book is about giant flying whales and steam-powered mechs. Behemoth is a great sequel to Leviathan. It continues documenting the travels of the airship crew as they delve into the Ottoman Empire.Read More →

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Mike Lupica’s Hero, due from Philomel/Penguin Books in November 2010, is a variation on familiar territory for both Lupica and the teen-hero genre.  When 14 year old Billy Harriman’s dad, the globetrotting special advisor to the President, is mysteriously killed in a small aircraft crash, Billy’s world is turned upside down.  Billy had always looked up to his famous hero-of-a-dad, but also secretly wished he’d been around more, instead of always putting others, and America, before Billy and his mom.  But now that his dad is gone and never coming home, he is forced to confront the anger, resentment, and longings he’d suppressed for years. But that’sRead More →