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In writing Hamra and the Jungle of Memories, Hanna Alkaf begins in the fashion of a traditional fairy tale. In her reimagining of Little Red Riding Hood, Alkaf borrows heavily from the Malaysian Muslim culture and weaves her magical retelling with Malay customs and cuisine. The star of this tale is thirteen-year-old Hamra, who is stubborn, sad, rebellious, and angry. She is tired of wiping up messes and cooking and listening to her grandmother say things that don’t’ make sense now that she is living with dementia. Hamra is tired of always having to be nice and good and polite and responsible. And she isRead More →

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Megan Wagner Lloyd and Michelle Mee Nutter have collaborated to create a graphic novel for middle grade readers. Squished features eleven-year-old Avery Annie Lee who lives in Hickory Valley, Maryland, with her six other siblings. Squished for time, space, and a little peace and quiet to perform her artwork, Avery decides to raise the money needed to build a bedroom in the basement. After trying dog walking and a lemonade stand, Avery realizes that money-making carries its own challenges. Soon, Avery earns that her family might be moving to Oregon. Distressed by all of the change in her life, she pitches a fit and threatensRead More →

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Although The Boy Who Followed His Father into Auschwitz by Jeremy Dronfield is “another Holocaust book,” this nonfiction account retold for young readers reminds us all how vitally important it is to remember what happened “in those terrible years” (301). So as to brand their minds and inspire young readers to do whatever they can to ensure that nothing like the Holocaust ever occurs again, Dronfield captures the story of the Kleinmann family with a focus on Fritz, who is fourteen years old when the novel opens, and on Kurt, who is eight. By personalizing the tale so that readers can form connections, Dronfield buildsRead More →

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Just in time for summer, Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute will serve as a great beach book. Although Talia Hibbert’s debut young adult novel is light reading, it does occasionally rise above the cotton-candy fluff of a romance novel with its insight about human nature. Hibbert’s protagonists are a pair of seventeen-year-olds in their final year at Rosewood Academy in England. For any readers requiring introduction to this discourse community, Hibbert provides a glossary. As the story unfolds, Celine Bagura is an excessively sarcastic conspiracy theorist with the goal of attending Cambridge to earn a law degree. Focused, serious, and prone to being pedantic, sheRead More →

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Lydia Chass is not averse to pulling strings or to cracking the patina of politeness. But such behavior is frowned upon in Henley, Ohio, where kindness is a social contract. On the path to getting out of small-town Henley and into a prestigious journalism school, Lydia has always aimed high and never made a secret of it. However, that ambition gets derailed when she learns that she doesn’t have the history credits required to graduate, an oversight that Mr. Benson, Henley High School’s Guidance Counsellor, didn’t realize because he’s overly fond of Jim Beam and pill-popping. Now, Lydia has an independent study project “of appropriateRead More →

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Prickly, unhappy, and bruised by the tragic deaths of her parents, Maria Latif is bustled off from Pakistan to Long Island, New York. After being bounced from relative to unfortunate relative, she is now going to stay with family friends. Still, the orphaned Maria knows this is just another temporary landing place. When she arrives, Maria is prepared to hate New York, but there is a secret about the Clayborne House on Long Island that she doesn’t understand. Something about the way an unloved, untouched, and unclaimed garden hums and thrums makes Maria think that this bit of earth can be hers. With a gardenRead More →

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Set in the early eighties, Parachute Kids by Betty C. Tang is a graphic novel that shares the challenges faced by Chinese children who were “dropped off” with friends or relatives in foreign countries while their parents stayed behind. Hoping to provide a better life for their children, these parents often missed out on the trials endured by their offspring. Without the supportive nurturing and guidance of their parents, these youth faced the challenges of a new country, culture, and language. Arriving in California from Taiwan, Ke-Gāng, Feng-Li, and Jia-X are soon “abandoned” by their parents, whose Visas require them to return to their homeRead More →

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Just in time for National Poetry Month, Good Different is a novel in verse by Meg Eden Kuyatt. In lyrical prose, Kuyatt tells the story of Selah Godfrey who feels like a dragon in a world built for people. Because others perceive Selah as “dangerous, unpredictable, and damaged,” she draws to distract herself from the rough noises and loud textures that poke at her. A seventh grader at Pebblecreek Academy, a private school that prides itself on its family atmosphere, Selah wishes to be somewhere that allows her to be fully herself, a place where she can relax “and not feel like a freak” (9).Read More →

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Fierce, determined, proud, and furious, Leto wants to be remembered as extraordinary. Instead, at seventeen years old, she becomes one of the twelve girls sacrificed to appease the raging sea and to abate Poseidon’s wrath so that others in Ithaca can prosper. Only, Leto doesn’t die. She washes up on the shores of the island Pandou where Melantho introduces her to a mission: In order to break the curse and to save other girls from the annual hanging ritual, the Prince of Ithaca—who gives the orders for the deaths—must die. However, once Leto and Melantho reach the shores of Itaca under a ruse, they discoverRead More →