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When Mike Jung was a kid, I have to believe he was like Vincent Wu, the kinda-geeky, big-hearted, superhero-crazed kid at the center of his debut novel, Geeks, Girls, and Secret Identities. Except Vincent is lucky enough to live a world that’s actually populated by real-life superheroes, maniacal evil geniuses, and giant killer robots. Vincent and his best friends, Max and George, are the hands-down experts on Captain Stupendous, even if they don’t get any respect from the “official” Captain Stupendous fan clubs in Copperplate City.  They thought geeking out on Captain Stupendous trivia and regaling his exploits from afar would be the extent of their connectionRead More →

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Reminiscent in tone to his Magic Shop Books, Bruce Coville‘s latest, Always October, is an imaginative chase through a land of nightmares. Sixth grade friends, Jake Doolittle and “Weird Lily” Carker, take turns telling the story of their discovery of, journey through, and daring escape from, a parallel universe, Always October, that is filled with humanity’s fears, nightmares, horrors, and monsters (literally).  It all starts on the day when a baby is left on Jake’s doorstep with a note imploring him and his mom (his dad’s been missing for years) to take care of “Little Dumpling.”  Both Jake and his mom are quickly won overRead More →

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In a beautifully crafted, delicately told story about hope, family, and love, Patricia Reilly Giff enchanted me with Gingersnap. Set in 1945 in a small town in Upstate New York, Jayna lives with her older brother, and only family, Rob.  When he’s called to active duty on a naval battleship in the Pacific, Jayna goes to stay with their difficult landlady.  But before he left, Rob told Jayna about a suitcase in his closet that contains a cookbook with a name and an address for a bakery in Brooklyn. Could it be a clue to family they don’t know they have?  Then Rob’s ship isRead More →

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Linda Gerber’s recent release, Lights, Camera Cassidy captures common tween conflicts such as searching for independence, navigating identity issues, and developing relationships with the opposite sex.  Twelve year old Cassidy Barnett, daughter of reality television stars, likes a challenge and craves attention—until she is in the spotlight and experiences all the drawbacks of the limelight, which demands she wear a plastic smile and practice her princess wave.  When she sneaks out of the house while in Valencia, Spain, to take video and pictures for the blog she writes to stay connected to her deceased grandfather, Cassidy inadvertently catches a contrabandista in the act of committingRead More →

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Set in the early 1940s, Kimberly Newton Fusco’s upcoming release, Beholding Bee, features Beatrice Rose Hockenberry, an adolescent girl whose life readers follow from age eleven to thirteen.   During this time of victory gardens, sugar rations, and fuel stamps, Bee—whose  parents died when she was four—works for a travelling carnival show and lives in the back of a hauling truck with sixteen year old Pauline as her guardian. Bee’s greatest nemesis is Ellis, the owner of the show, who threatens to put Bee on display in the freak show because she has a birthmark, “the color of rose at dusk” (4), that stretches from her hairlineRead More →

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Readers of historical, regional fiction—like Faith, Hope, and Ivy June by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, Child of the Mountains by Marilyn Sue Shank, and A Year Down Yonder by Richard Peck—are liable to enjoy True Colors by Natalie Kinsey-Warnock. Rich with childhood pleasures like popsicles, swimming holes, and cotton candy but also replete with childhood fears like divorce, abandonment, and acceptance, Kinsey-Warnock’s book features Blue Sky, a ten year old girl living on a dairy farm near Shadow Lake, Vermont in 1952.  Blue, who at two days old was “found stuffed into the copper kettle Hannah Spooner grew her marigolds in” (1), longs to learn herRead More →

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Young readers who wonder whether a pet is “just a dog” will discover Michael Gerard Bauer’s impression in Just a Dog, a chapter book featuring nine year old Corey Ingram and his mostly white Dalmatian cross, Mister Mosely. Mr. Mosely’s black markings—“a spot under his right eye that looked like a black tear coming out, and a few big black spots on his chest that all joined together an made a wonky heart shape” (20)—contribute to his almost human characteristics.  Mr. Mosely has a heart “too big for all of it to fit on the inside” (20), a truth readers will discover in Moe’s patience,Read More →

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Middle school readers with a penchant for super heroes and super villains will likely appreciate the conflict presented by Jeramey Kraatz in The Cloak Society.  Set in Sterling City,Texas, the story opens with a description of supervillainy as a passion and a way of life, not something one joins like an after-school club: “It’s not all doomsday devices and dramatic entrances.  All of your days are spent plotting, strategizing, inventing, training” (1) so as to emerge victorious when facing a nemesis. Early on, readers identify with Alex, a villain with a moral conscience who values life and is terrified of the Gloom, a wretched place createdRead More →

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My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece, by Annabel Pitcher, is a touching story about a young boy named Jaime Matthews whose sister, Rose, died in a terrorist bombing. Jaime was five years old and Rose was ten when she passed away in London. After the terrorist bombing, Jaime’s mother became very distant and left the family. With Jamie’s world crashing in around him, his father decided to move him and Jasmine, Rose’s twin sister, to the quiet countryside. Jaime is constantly reminded of his sister’s death; Rose is sitting on the fireplace mantelpiece and Jaime’s father constantly puts down Muslims and refuses to acknowledge themRead More →