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Eight years ago, as just a nine-year-old, Darius Logan lost his parents and baby brother in The Attack. Since the band of ACU-64 Killbots wreaked havoc, destroying his life and devastating his neighborhood, Darius has been fighting to survive. His juvenile probation officer, Edith O’Malley is the closest thing to family he has looking out for him. However, Darius is a fighter who refuses to give in to fear. “If he knew anything at all, he knew how to fight—it came as naturally as breathing” (9). Eventually, Darius gets himself into trouble with the law, and he can’t fight his way out of the sentence.Read More →

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Emily Taylor shares her vivid imagination for magical worlds in her recent young adult novel, The Otherwhere Post. Taylor tells the tale of Maeve Abenthy who has lived for the past seven years with the knowledge that she has a murderer’s blood running through her veins.  Believing her father unleashed the Aldervine in Inverly, separating families and causing the deaths of many innocent people, Maeve feels cursed, so she hides behind aliases. Despite his abhorrent legacy, Maeve, a lover of the written word, has always found fascination in her father’s work with scriptomancy, “the art of enchanting any piece of existing handwriting” (8). When sheRead More →

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XiXi Tian’s debut young adult novel, This Place Is Still Beautiful, features the stories of Margaret and Annalie Flanagan. The two sisters face the complicated elements of identity, family dynamics, ugly truths about racism, and growing up as mixed race teens in Illinois.  Tian’s approach challenges the reader’s perspective as she shares insight and invites us to look from various lenses. Annalie’s father left when she was only three, so she has no memory of him. Her Chinese mother is determined to protect her girls from the pain she herself endured in a biracial marriage that ultimately fails when cultural differences intrude. Still, Margaret lovesRead More →

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Although Ruth Behar’s historical fiction novel for middle grade readers is titled Across So Many Seas, the author could just as easily have named it Across So Many Generations. Set in four locations over multiple centuries and following the lives of four twelve-year-old girls, Across So Many Seas tells the story of the Jewish expulsion from Spain in 1492. The first segment is told from Benvenida’s viewpoint and captures a time when the high arts, such as reading, writing poetry, and singing sacred prayers in the synagogue were left to men. Still, Benvenida seeks freedom and autonomy. Her mother encourages her to “always live theRead More →

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Stephanie Faris‘ recent middle grade novel, Finding Normal tells the story of severe storm that causes a flood which destroys an entire neighborhood. Now, twelve-year-old Temple Baxter and her family are homeless. In order to save money, Temple has to stop attending her private school in exchange for a public school closer to their temporary home. Not one for the spotlight, Temple grows tired of people seeing her as a victim. All she wants is to get her old life back, so she hinges all her hopes on organinzing a fundraiser. She solicits the help of two schoolmates: Jesse Fletcher and Asha Taylor to raiseRead More →

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A Izenson lives in a world where transgender youth are an unwelcome anomaly. Although assigned female at birth, fourteen-year-old A is nonbinary. Because his parents think he is gender confused, they force him to attend Save our Sons and Daughters (SOSAD) meetings, where a type of conversion therapy takes place through counseling for “temporary emotional issues.”  A’s parents not only want their daughter back, they want to see legislation passed to prevent estrogen or testosterone treatments that might support youth who wish to transition during puberty and to put an end to “this transgender craze.” At SOSAD, he meets Yarrow, an agender teen who doesn’tRead More →

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Readers of Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, or the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys mysteries will likely find These Deadly Prophecies by Andrea Tang a thrilling “who dun it.”  Under the influence of Tang’s pen, readers will revel in the plot twists as they follow the various leads. The story begins with seventeen-year-old Tabatha Zeng who works for Sorcerer Julian Solomon. Although Tabatha knows that sorcery is a liar’s game and the product of want, that knowledge doesn’t change her passion for predicting fortunes and fates. “Telling the future required clearing your mind of wants, of desires. [A sorcerer’s] job isn’t to change the future—merely toRead More →

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Marigold (Mari) Anderson-Green is anxiety prone, and because of a drug overdose and a recent stay at Strawberry Pines Rehabilitation Center, her mother, Raquel, accepts a Grow Where You’re Planted (GWYP) Residency in a new midwestern city. The GWYP provides a free house for three years, and Mari feels guilty about the circumstances that have made money tight, so she doesn’t complain too much about this search for a “fresh start.” However, Mari will now be a resident of Cedarville during her junior year, and she has no marijuana supplier to provide the weed that helps her take the edge off her anxiety and makeRead More →

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Eyes on the Sky by J. Kasper Kramer is a delightful book with multiple layers. As the reader pulls these back, we learn a good deal about the desert and about Roswell, New Mexico, during 1945-1947 when the USA was conducting experiments. We also learn a great amount about twelve-year-old Dorothy Duncan and her brother Dwight. A lover of science and comic books, Dorothy is a Junior Member of the American Rocket Society. She cares a great deal about jet propulsion systems and radio echoes from the moon, so she gets odd looks from others who invite her into conversation. As far as she isRead More →