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A blood-stained note, reading “Who killed Darius Drake,” lures Darius into searching for an answer, since he’s still alive and living at Stonehill Home for Children after losing his parents in a tragic car accident when he was only three.  But the gangly orphan genius with thick glasses and a volcanic eruption of bright red hair needs a partner, whom he finds in Arthur Bash, “a big, fat, scary-looking dude” (2).  Known at school as a thug-for-hire, Bash Man will frighten foes with a menacing look for the price of a candy bar.  After his parents’ divorce, Arthur adopts the bully persona because he’d ratherRead More →

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If you’re the sort of person who secretly reads the end of a novel first, then Emily Lockhart’s new book Genuine Fraud was written with you in mind because it begins with Chapter 18 and works its way to Chapter 1. Lockhart writes about two young women: Imogen Sokoloff and Jule West Williams, two orphans and school friends who defy social conventions but have histories that bind them.  Imogen, a New York City, private-school blond, is an open-minded, confident, and desirable friend and hostess who draws people in with her power, money, enthusiasm, and independence.  She refuses to strive for greatness or to work toward other people’s definitionsRead More →

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More than an adventure story, The Care and Feeding of a Pet Black Hole by Michelle Cuevas is an earth (space) science lesson as well as a grief healing journey.  Overwhelmed by the pain of loss, eleven-year-old Stella Rodriguez narrates her story to her deceased father, whose “missing you feeling” follows her everywhere.  With the Voyager 2 launch date only months away, Stella is desperate to visit with Carl Sagan who might send something into space for her on his Golden Record.  On her way home from the failed attempt, she encounters big needy eyes, “eyes that shimmered and seemed to have tiny galaxies insideRead More →

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Maverick Falconer is the world’s lamest super-hero, in his estimation.  At age eleven, he’s small, weak, near-sighted, prone to allergies, and possesses an anti-dollar forcefield.  But none of those shortcomings deter Maverick from his goal: Doing good deeds, righting wrongs, standing up against evil, and protecting anybody who is small or weak. When Maverick was three, his military firefighter dad, died, leaving Maverick alone with an alcoholic and neglectful mother who dates a string of abusive men.  The only stable person in his life is Aunt Cat, who is as wild as her name.  But she loves, defends, and protects Maverick.  Wanting to live inRead More →

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Three stories told, three countries represented, and three lives profiled.  Despite the years that separate them, the trinity of humanity featured in Alan Gratz’s novel Refugee experience remarkable and horrifying similarities with intersecting conclusions. Imagine feeling unwanted, dirty, and illegal.   Imagine hearing sirens, soldiers, shouting, gunfire, breaking glass, and screams daily.  Imagine thinking that if you want to live, you have to leave your homeland and all that is familiar.  These are the realities of three refugees and their families: Josef Landau, a barely thirteen Jewish boy living in Germany in 1939 under the reign of Adolph Hitler; Isabel Fernandez, a pre-teen Cuban citizen enduringRead More →

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Here’ the dirt on Dirt by Denise Gosliner Orenstein: Eleven-year-old Yonder attends Robert Frost Middle School in Vermont, where her classmates are “just dumb losers with mean mouths full of empty words” (5). After her mother dies, Yonder screams and yells for her mother to come back but realizes that words don’t work, so she stops speaking since “silence seems safer.” Yonder’s father masks his grief and fills the empty void with alcohol: “My father drank and drank and drank and didn’t really know how to be a regular father at all” (48). Despite his sobbing and his littering the floor with beer bottles, YonderRead More →

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Although a work of fiction, A Promising Life by Emily Arnold McCully reads like nonfiction with its rich history of the early 1800s and its biographic-like details.  The novel tells the story of Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, born among explorers on the Lewis and Clark Expedition to Toussaint Charbonneau and Sakakawea.  Half French Canadian and half Shoshone, Baptiste is métis American, but he finds himself caught by social circumstances that don’t wholly accept him.  Called Pompey, or Pomp, which means “the promising one,” Baptiste is favored by William Clark, so when his parents leave him in Clark’s care and travel upriver from St. Louis to aRead More →

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Set in San Francisco, Five Elements: The Shadow City by Dan Jolley tells the story of five young elementalists trapped in a magickal nightmare.  Together, the youth must combine their powers to fight the Eternal Dawn, an apocalyptic cult trying to merge two worlds into one so that Earth will be swallowed by Arcadia.  By speaking the language of dirt and rocks and sand, twelve-year-old Kazuo Smith can bend the earth to his will.  Thirteen-year-old Lily Hernandez has a similar ability with air, her twin brother, Brett, can harness the powers of water, Gabe Conway possesses the power of fire, and Jackson Wright is magick bound—aRead More →

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Actually, David wears the headphones to keep him from feeling anxious, to help him cope with his symptoms of highly functioning autism.  He also makes notes in a notebook, to learn social norms and social cues, to remember names, and to make sense of all the parts of the world that confuse him.  These differences and his predilection for honesty and disclosure often get him in trouble.  So, when Kit sits at his table at lunch, David is surprised. A month after her dad’s death in a car accident, Kit is looking for quiet, for a port in the storm of confusing emotions. Grief hasRead More →