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Set in Manhattan, New York, with scenes from Santa Monica, California, History Is All You Left Me by Adam Silvera is a deeply unsettling but important book about the total nightmare of life after losing a loved one.  Although th e book features more references to sex than some readers might find necessary, the book captures how love and heartbreak can turn someone crazy and suspicious and how the death of a loved one can make us “the worst kind of alive” (139), a life after death zombie without a brain, heart, light, or direction. Griffin Jennings, a seventeen-year-old with a fixation for even numbersRead More →

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Despite his warm, friendly, and generous nature, junior Lawrence Barry is on the verge of expulsion for his actions at a diversity assembly at Meridian High School while stoned.  Because his father is a powerful attorney of the law firm Barry, Yu and Singh and because his counsellor Mr. Lunley believes Lawrence has potential and simply needs to channel his energies in more positive directions, the expulsion hearing is thwarted.   However, with his dad’s threat of Langdon Military Academy hanging over his head, with Mr. Lunley’s having recruited him for the Buddy Club, and with Principal Stone scrutinizing his every action, Lawrence has to reformRead More →

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Readers who enjoy reading fantasy-adventure stories like the Fablehaven series by Brandon Mull or the Artemis Fowl series by Eoin Colfer will likely find pleasure in the Secrets of the Pied Piper series by Matthew Cody. In The Magician’s Key, the second book in Cody’s series, thirteen-year-old Max Weber and her younger brother Carter are separated after the Pied Piper used Carter to free himself from imprisonment in the Black Tower.  What had begun as a quick research trip to German so that Max’s father could work on his new book turned into something stranger than fiction.  Now Max’s parents are missing, her brother isRead More →

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Girls who love science, engineering, and creativity; girls who are subversive and revolutionary; and girls who have moxie—that’s what Nothing But Trouble by Jacqueline Davies is made of–forget sugar and spice and everything nice!  Although this is mostly Maggie Gallagher’s and Lena Polachev’s story, it is also the story of Grandpop, Mrs. Gallagher, Mrs. Dornbusch, and any number of other secondary characters who reveal their ability to face difficulty with spirit, courage, determination, and attitude. Set in Odawahaka, a small town where the humiliations of childhood follow an individual forever, the plot of Davies’ book revolves around the town’s middle school, its teachers, its students,Read More →

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What if poets, musicians, painters, and actors—who have art and talent in their blood—could use their craft to weave magic, much like the magic that scientists work with chemical reactions, cymatics, and other means to make the impossible suddenly appear possible?  This is only one of the questions that Destiny Soria explores in her debut book, Iron Cast.  Her plot and its conflicts make readers think more deeply to wonder why society is so eager to marginalize those who are different.  Although differences in socioeconomic circumstances, language, ethnicity, age, race, place, religion, exceptionality, gender, and health have potential to cause division, the world might be aRead More →

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Two young people, one twelve and the other only thirteen, aspire to change the world. Hobson Smythe is muir, an ordinary human from a remote settlement called Dusk where everything is “cold and dull, a tiny outpost smothered in snow and pine needles” (106).  Hazel Faeregine is mehrùn, a magical being who has lived her entire life sheltered from hardship in Impyria, where everything is “an explosion of colors and sound, swift riptides of people and money” (106).   Despite their different backgrounds, both Hob and Hazel wish to matter, to make a difference, and to fight the injustices they see. Hazel’s family has ruled theRead More →

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Sixth grader Molly Cooke and her twelve-year-old brother Addison—who enjoys inadvisable adventures and has a “stunning capacity for getting himself into trouble” (60)—attend Theodore Roosevelt Middle School in the Upper West Side of Manhattan.  Because they are Cookes born into a long line of archeologists, they have grown up on archaeology digs and in museums.  Consequently, Addison Cooke and the Treasure of the Incas by Jonathan W. Stokes is rich with geography lessons, historical allusions, and opportunities to learn about cultural artifacts. When the tweens’ Aunt Delia and Uncle Nigel get kidnapped by treasure hunters and thieves, Addison calls a Code Blue—a mission of theRead More →

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Like all good dystopian fiction, Frost by M. P. Kozlowsky begins with a social question that has currency and relevance and then exaggerates the answer to warn society of what could happen if we don’t take the appropriate actions or proceed with caution.  Kozlowsky’s plot revolves around wishes for everlasting life–for human immortality–and Dr. Alex Simmelfore has found an answer: Create a robot and download human consciousness to a chip that can be planted into the robot.  These improved robot beings will have human instinct, human thought, and human complexity combined with a body that won’t age, wear down, or succumb to illness. As readers will suspect,Read More →

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Had Molly Rosenberg known that middle school was going to be the high point in her life, she would have tried harder to enjoy it.  Now, she’s a freshman at Santa Monica High School in Southern California, and she’s friendless and living a life haunted by past mistakes and regrets.  Because she suffers from severe anxiety and panic attacks, her service dog Pixel coaxes her to breathe. But life wasn’t always like this.  Before everything changed, the Rosenbergs were a regular family who played Monopoly or snuggled under blankets to watch old movies together.  “After the awful thing that happened last winter” (47), Mom became addictedRead More →