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Life is about to change in the sleepy little town of Blackbird Tree for two 12 year old best friends, Naomi and Lizzie.  When a charming, but unusual boy, Finn, drops out of a tree, the girls don’t quite know how to react to his questions about their town and the people who live there.  Finn’s unexplained arrival isn’t the only mystery in town, either;  a dapper Dingle Dangle man has also recently arrived, snooping around asking the adults lots of questions.  And Naomi wonders about other mysteries and secrets too: 3 dusty, sealed trunks, a pair of crows, a crooked bridge, and some long-supressedRead More →

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17 year old Jack’s summer job, as a “nanny” for an 8 and 12 year old brother and sister, seems like it would be a cake walk.  He’ll be making really good money and all he has to do is hang out with a couple of kids for a couple months.  The major downside is that the kids live on an isolated island off the mainland that’s devoid of any modern connectivity; sure, they have generator-powered electricity, but there’s no phone, no wi-fi or internet, and the only connection to the outside world is the twice weekly ferry that passes by the island.  Willing toRead More →

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Kids who love James Patterson and Chris Tebbett’s Middle School series, as well as those who love the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, will go nuts for Patterson’s latest, I Funny: A Middle School Story, which this time has him partnered with Chris Grabenstein.  Middle School series illustrator, Laura Park is also back filling the pages of I Funny with a minimum of three energetic, detailed cartoons per chapter.  It’s a combination, along with Patterson’s trademark short chapters and snappy pacing, that will rocket this book to the top of plenty of reluctant readers’ favorite lists. Middle schooler Jamie Grimm has a mission –Read More →

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In the sequel to his Printz Honor book, Stuck in Neutral, Terry Trueman takes us back into Shawn McDaniel’s life:  “Night before last my dad tried to kill me. At least, I’m pretty sure that was his plan. For weeks and months I’d been worrying about it. I guess Dad had his reasons, but he didn’t do it. Obviously. Lucky me, huh? Sorry, sarcasm is one of the few weapons I possess.” (1) The power of Stuck in Neutral  lay in the dynamic between Shawn and his dad, as both characters struggled to understand and connect with each other.  In Life Happens Next, Shawn’s dadRead More →