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Mix adventure, jokes, and a little mystery, and you have a recipe to keep most readers engaged.  Dave Eggers applies this formula to the writing of his recent middle-grade novel, The Lifters, which is actually an extended metaphor for combatting despair. The protagonist of The Lifters, twelve-year-old Granite Flowerpetal wishes for a name that is both easily understood and easily spelled, so he shortens his name to Gran, not realizing at the time how readily that version might be confused with the term some individuals use to refer to their grandmothers. Gran, who shares a bedroom with his five-year-old sister Maisie, hears his parents talkRead More →

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Strongheart: Wonder Dog of the Silver Screen written by Candace Fleming and illustrated by Caldecott medalist Eric Rohmann is based on the true story of Etzel, the German shepherd from the Bavarian Alps region who made it from a sun-washed barnyard to the Berlin Police Force and finally to silent-movie stardom in the 1920s. Through a technique called anthropomorphism—attributing human characteristics or behavior to an animal—Fleming invites readers to imagine a dog with movie star abilities and with a talent for reading people and making human connections. Etzel’s transformation from a carefree life as a puppy to “a cold, uncaring police dog, who slashed at otherRead More →

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In a style similar to that of Lemony Snicket and Roald Dahl, Nicholas Gannon writes The Doldrums and the Helmsley Curse, a stand-alone sequel to The Doldrums, and adds illustrations similar to those drawn by Brian Selznick in The Invention of Hugo Cabret.  This combination of ingredients makes Gannon’s book a reading treat for middle grade readers. The story’s protagonist, Archer Helmsley is a troubled child who talks to taxidermied animals and sets tigers lose in museums.  He has been waiting for twelve years to meet his grandparents, famous explorers and “practically fictional characters” to Archer, who has read their journals and knows their talesRead More →

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Similar to the Harry Potter and Charlie Bone series’,  Ed Masessa’s Wandmaker series focuses on magical learning. Wandmaker’s Apprentice is the second novel in the series and picks up from the dramatic events of Wandmaker. In that first novel, Henry and his sister, Brianna, came to terms with their different abilities connected to wand making. In this world, hidden behind the scenes from ours, magical ability is harnessed through different wands for various purposes. For those in this magical world, “your wand is an extension of you” (99). After defeating the villainous Dai She, Henry and Brianna are taken in by Wand Master Coralis. CoralisRead More →

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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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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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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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Bravelands: Broken Pride is the first book in a beast fable series by Erin Hunter.  The novel offers significant lessons for human society about identity, change, excessive ambition, and the value of believing in a higher power or of adhering to a Code, such as “You may kill only to survive” (18).  Although Hunter recycles plot elements from the Disney film Lion King, she reshapes the story with new connections and perspectives, adding threads to develop her themes. Hunter’s novel follows the adventures of the young lion Fearless, who has been exiled from his pride by the ambitious and evil Titan, who kills Fearless’ father,Read More →

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The third and final installment of Gordon Korman’s Masterminds series packs a punch to conclude an epic trilogy. Masterminds: Payback begins right where Masterminds: Criminal Destiny left off. Amber, Malik, Tori, and Eli have been split up escaping from the “Purple People Eaters” chasing them. They’ve been on the run ever since they discovered that their entire lives were fake. They were raised as experiments in a town called Serenity. Living in a fake city where nothing goes wrong, the four pre-teens were actually clones of the most notorious and terrible criminals in the world, living science experiments for something called Project Osiris. “Basically, theRead More →