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With her debut graphic novel, On Guard!, Cassidy Wasserman creates a clever metaphor between fencing and life.  As the story unfolds, Grace Collins is beginning seventh grade at Marshall Middle School. To further complicate life, her parents have divorced, the custody agreement adds challenges, and her best friend has moved on to a new friend group, replacing Grace with Lana. Adrift, angry, and alone, Grace starts watching the eighth grade fencers during her lunch hour. Although she imagines herself armed with a sword, she considers herself unathletic and chooses to sit on the sidelines instead. However, when her father notices Grace’s withdrawn demeanor, he encouragesRead More →

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Written by Jessixa Bagley and illustrated by Aaron Bagley, Duel is a graphic novel about family relationships as much as it is about fencing. With creative word play and pictures, the pair tell the story of Lucy and Georgia (Gigi) Jones whose passion is fencing, a passion developed by their father and passed on to his two daughters. When Dad unexpectedly dies, the girls and their mother forget how to be a family, and soon, they are in turmoil. Feeling inadequate and unsure of themselves, the two tweens take out their frustrations on one another. Pushed to her limits, Lucy challenges her sister to aRead More →

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With its first line: “The prison is always quiet but never still,” I suspected The River Has Teeth would be suspenseful and riveting. Erica Waters did not disappoint.  Her novel joins the ranks of good psychological crime thrillers like Silence of the Lambs or the television series Criminal Minds. Besides the main plot thread of girls going missing in The Bend and the mystery of who is murdering them, the book carries several other threads to keep the reader engaged. One thread follows Della Lloyd and her family’s magic, murders, and infinite crimes in brewing potions for customers with vengeful thoughts. The Lloyds live inRead More →