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Some books engender an anger and a disgust so intense that readers want to reach inside the pages to yank an abuser right out of a child’s life.  A List of Cages by Robin Roe is one of those books.  Julian Harlow’s Uncle Russell joins Dave Pelzer’s mother from the A Child Called It trilogy and Liam’s father from King of the Screwups by K. L. Going as characters with diseased brains. Having lost his parents in a tragic accident, Julian is orphaned and spends some time in a foster home before his Uncle Russell takes him in.  However, Russell is unfit for parenting, abusingRead More →

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Just when I was beginning to think The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl was simply a fantasy to entertain tweens in a Marvel Comics style, the book turned into a legitimately powerful tale (pun entirely intended!).  With this Squirrel Meets World installment, the husband and wife team of Shannon Hale and Dean Hale cleverly pens a multi-genre adventure-mystery featuring superhero “Doreen Green, age fourteen. Over five feet tall and not an inch mean” (6), who is also “ with powers of squirrel and powers of girl” (259). Despite her super hero abilities, Doreen has realistic and adolescent relatable life-dilemmas—she has body image issues and friendship challenges at UnionRead More →

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Alex Meadows has just passed from primary to secondary school in Lambourn, England, so he is constantly on guard to protect his status and to avoid being targeted by Alan’s Battalion, a gang of school yard bullies commanded by Alan Tydman.  Alex plans not to react to any of the gang’s bait since reactors get hurt, a truth that David Marsh can testify to when he refuses to fly under the radar.  But when Alex—and everyone else in his grade—gets an invitation to the Icarus Show, he dares to believe in possibility.  From the teaser campaign to the main event, Alex is intent on solving theRead More →

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With the overwhelming amount of homework in middle school, Gregory Korenstein-Jasperton wonders how all the popular kids at Morris Champlin Middle School have time to be popular.  He hasn’t even found the time or the energy for writing the poetry and short stories he loves.  When his dropping grades get him grounded, preventing him from attending open mic night at Booktastic, an indie bookstore and his favorite place on earth, Gregory decides to take action. Borrowing inspiration from Dr. Seuss’ character, the Lorax, Gregory realizes change never comes unless someone speaks up: “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going toRead More →

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Her brother Nolan is dead, her parents are divorced, her aunt Joan is a “hurricane,” and Mel Hannigan has one of many versions of bipolar disorder, but some things you just don’t tell the world.  In the same spirit with which Terry Spencer Hesser skillfully and credibly illustrates obsessive compulsive disorder in Kissing Doorknobs  and Mark Haddon writes about life for someone coping with autism in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Eric Lindstrom shares his honest and informative novel,  A Tragic Kind of Wonderful.  Books like these, with realistic representations of people who experience mental health issues, can help readers notRead More →

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For almost four years, birthdays have been a problem for fifth grader Cadence Mariah Jolly, the main character in Sherri Winston’s novel The Sweetest Sound.  The trickiness of birthdays began the day after Cadence’s seventh birthday, when her mother left a farewell note on the coffeepot revealing that life in Harmony, Pennsylvania, was hampering her passion to be a singer.  When Chantel Marie Jolly abandons her family, her daughter’s world slips into darkness. Now, Cadence, whom everyone calls Mouse, is known as the shy and quiet girl whose mother has left.  For Cadence, spending an entire day reading and writing or listening to music andRead More →

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Despite his warm, friendly, and generous nature, junior Lawrence Barry is on the verge of expulsion for his actions at a diversity assembly at Meridian High School while stoned.  Because his father is a powerful attorney of the law firm Barry, Yu and Singh and because his counsellor Mr. Lunley believes Lawrence has potential and simply needs to channel his energies in more positive directions, the expulsion hearing is thwarted.   However, with his dad’s threat of Langdon Military Academy hanging over his head, with Mr. Lunley’s having recruited him for the Buddy Club, and with Principal Stone scrutinizing his every action, Lawrence has to reformRead More →

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Charlie’s father has always told Charlie that he’s a very special and fragile boy.  Protective of his son, Rajesh Pondicherry is a creative inventor and designer of various mechanisms in 1887 London.  Because Charlie has special needs and no mother, his bap doesn’t allow him to wander and doesn’t like him to spend too much time outdoors.  These limitations make Charlie an avid reader of adventure stories and the Almanack of the Elder Folk and Arcana of Britain and Northern Ireland by Reginald St. John Smythson.  Charlie’s vocabulary and imagination grow under the influence of this reading, which further teaches him about kobolds, trolls, dwarfs,Read More →

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Just as an apple, cut and cored, cannot be put back together, Nella Sabatini–a young Italian Catholic girl–feels undone, confused, and incomplete.  Restless with desire for things her parents cannot afford, for popularity that evades her, and for a sense of peace and quiet that is in short supply with a houseful of “barbarian brothers” and a grandmother who is demanding and grumpy, “ancient and ignorant,” Nella aches for answers to life’s toughest questions and difficult dilemmas.  With happy moments so ephemeral, she wishes, “If only you could store up happiness. . . . Dig a happiness hole, or keep a happiness piggy bank, savingRead More →