By:
On:
In: General Book Reviews, Historical Fiction (YA), Multicultural (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
With: 0 Comments

Randy Ribay, an author who writes through the lens of experience as a Filipino, shares tremendous history in his novel Everything We Never Had. Telling his story from multiple perspectives, Ribay provides the reader with insight into the Manong Generation, the Watsonville riots, Stockton’s Little Manila, the Delano grape strike, the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship, the assassination of Benigno Aquino, Jr., and the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes during the COVID-19 pandemic. The story opens in 1929 when Francisco Maghabol is sixteen years old. Believing in the Land of Opportunity, Francisco comes to the United States from Manila in the Philippines by way of Japan toRead More →

By:
On:
In: Action & Adventure, General Book Reviews, Middle Grade Reviews, Multicultural, Realistic Fiction
With: 0 Comments

Pablo Cartaya’s recent novel targeted to middle grade readers, A Hero’s Guide to Summer Vacation features a family dealing with grief and loss. Gonzalo Garcia lost his father when he was twelve, and after being known as the kid with the dead dad, he lashes out. Now, a year later, he prefers to be alone in his thoughts and drawings. He converts photographs of landscapes that he takes with his iPad into terrifying drawings of monsters, “the most frequent being a creature with menacing green eyes emerging from the fog. Those green eyes follow him everywhere he goes. Grief knows no hiding place” (3). WhenRead More →

By:
On:
In: General Book Reviews, Middle Grade Reviews, Supernatural & Horror
With: 0 Comments

In her newest novel in verse, Meg Eden Kuyatt again writes from personal experience to create her protagonist Valeria, aka V. Describing herself as possessing a “neuro-spicy brain,” V considers art her superpower, a key survival mechanism: “the one thing I know to do to help me survive the summer with Jojo. So even if I don’t know how just yet, I’ll find a way to paint my own reality” (14). With The Girl in the Walls targeted to middle-grade readers, Kuyatt takes on the topic of generational neurodivergence and describes how various characters employ their coping mechanisms. V hasn’t yet discovered the beauty inRead More →

By:
On:
In: Graphic Novels, Middle Grade Reviews
With: 0 Comments

Jules Bakes and Niki Smith collaborate on a graphic novel for middle grade readers, Sea Legs. Set in Florida and in various other water accessible communities, it tells the story of two twelve-year-old girls with different family dynamics who both live on boats. As readers follow the events in the lives of the pair, we discover not only the perils and the benefits of breaking out of one’s comfort zones but also that there are different ways to be friends. Our friends can make us feel better about ourselves as well as stretch us to be braver and smarter, inspiring us to try harder. PerhapsRead More →

By:
On:
In: Action & Adventure, General Book Reviews, Middle Grade Reviews, Multicultural, Sci Fi & Fantasy
With: 0 Comments

In her novel The Empty Place, Olivia Cole explores the themes of identity, truth, family dynamics, and self-discovery. To do this, Cole creates her protagonist Henrietta Lightfoot. Henry is an indoor girl, an earthworm whose father, Joseph, is a butterfly—always fluttering off to some new adventure. To Joseph, adventure is outdoors, where one can wander and discover new places. He shares these places with his YouTube followers who tag along with him on his adventures when his own daughter will not. Instead, Henry prefers the safety of home, “her cluttered desk, dotted with dried hot glue” (44), and the familiarity of her friend Ibtihay UmarRead More →