How to Be The Someday Suitcase by Corey Ann Haydu Share the lives of believable and genuine characters: Ten-year-old, curious, and easily distracted Danny who is in charge of passion and of reminding others how to have fun; eleven-year-old Clover who loves science, has a knack for observation, and is in charge of reason and reminding Danny to focus; six-year-old Jake who can make any situation lighter, sillier, and simpler because his moods are big, buzzy, and contagious. Look for scientific reasons to explain life’s mysteries but realize that science shows us both certainties and limitations to those certainties. “Ms. Mendez says the best scientistsRead More →

If you’re looking for a novel this summer that will inspire thought about all of life’s big topics, like love, sex, kissing, loss, and death, Cath Crowley’s Words in Deep Blue is that book.  Although a simple-looking book on the surface, Words in Deep Blue packs a philosophically powerful punch by asking some tough questions, inviting the reader to wrestle with a variety of options about topics that matter, questions like: Are all worthwhile things—like love and the ocean’s depths—also terrifying?  It poses some theories, too—about how people are like secondhand books, full of mysteries, or how science attracts us because it is rich withRead More →

As Jing turns eleven, she realizes that the age is “like an age of breakthroughs – tea-drying for the first time, my first offering to the guardian, visiting a new city, getting a new hanfu…new adventure, new experiences” (30). What seems like an exciting new period of her life quickly turns into her greatest fear, though. Jing’s widowed Aunt Mei has led the family since the death of Jing’s mother, and because of low resources, she convinces Jing’s father that it is time for Jing to get married. Jing is spirited enough to fight back against the plan to sell her to a big cityRead More →

“Sometimes we hold on to guilt or grief because it’s the last thing we have that ties us to the person we miss” (329). Ethan Truitt’s been holding onto his grief and guilt every moment since he’s lost his best friend, Kacey. He feels responsible for what happened to her and his frustrations fill him with the urge to run, to find Kacey and feel whole again. After his third attempt at running, where his older brother Roddie catches him, Ethan’s parents decide to move the family from their home in Boston to Palm Knot, Georgia. The family moves in with Grandpa Ike, who isRead More →

As far as the world is concerned, Jonathan Grisby is a trouble-making delinquent, a criminal. As far as Jonathan is concerned, the world is right. After a mysterious incident leaves Jonathan riddled with guilt and pain, he is sent to Slabhenge Reformatory School for Troubled Boys, “a dark place for dark youths” (2). Slabhenge is a building made of decaying, grey stone, sitting far from land in the foaming sea. The tall, jagged building has no land surrounding it, only a small dock where mail, supplies, and new criminal boys are delivered. When Jonathan first arrives, it’s clear that Slabhenge is not the “kind ofRead More →

Everyone loves a good ‘whodunit,’ and the most famous of them all are the gruesome murders of Jack the Ripper. Occurring in 1888, Jack the Ripper committed a string of murders so gruesome that “no one, not even the most criminally insane would attempt” (291). In Kerri Maniscalco’s debut novel, the first Young Adult acquisition under James Patterson’s new children’s imprint, she explores the adventures of Audrey Rose Wadsworth, a girl with the knowledge and determination to find the killer who alludes all. Audrey Rose is a young woman in high society, but she is not the typical young socialite. After her mother’s death yearsRead More →