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Inspired by ancient Chinese folklore and woven with both adventure and villainy, When the Sea Turned to Silver by Grace Lin is a lyrical, well-told tale, complete with full-color illustrations.  It is the tale of Pinmei, a shy girl whose words freeze in her throat at the sight of anyone unfamiliar, and of Yishan, a boy who often forgets he is young and speaks with a confidence and vehemence that belie his youth. Both Pinmei and Yishan live on a remote mountain, a place of solitude.  But the tranquility of their lives is shattered when soldiers come and capture Amah, Pinmei’s grandmother, who is the famous storyteller.  People areRead More →

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Keeping secrets can lead to danger, and danger gives life to fear, but fear can sharpen you and make you stronger.  Under the influence of fear, the challenges you encounter can, in fact, help you to grow into your best possible self.   These are the truths that eleven-year-old Reuben Pedley learns in Trenton Lee Stewart’s new release Secret Keepers. In many ways, Stewart’s book parallels The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick; the main character, whose father is also dead, is a thief of sorts with an interest in clocks, although not for the same reason.  Reuben, too, must solve a mystery which began several generationsRead More →

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Love isn’t all emotion; it is also biology and chemistry, and according to Krystal Sutherland in her debut novel, Our Chemical Hearts, “all love is equal in the brain” (287).  Like hunger and thirst, love drives us to act, and satisfying that craving becomes a goal.  Although we tend to identify love most often with euphoria, that is hardly the only emotion we feel when under its influence. Ecstasy, compassion, surprise, anxiety, anger, jealousy, and despair, all play a role as the brain releases chemicals like pheromones, dopamine, and serotonin. Sutherland’s seventeen-year-old protagonist, Henry Isaac Page experiences these emotions as he swings between highs and lows,Read More →

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In this rational, scientific age, can people still take the leaps of faith necessary to believe in miracles?  This is the question explored by James Patterson in his mystery-thriller Cradle and All in a fashion similar to that pursued by Dan Brown in books like The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons.  During a second coming of the dreaded disease polio, thought eradicated by Dr. Salk’s and the Sabin vaccine, people—mostly children—are dying or surviving with deformed limbs and crippled spines.  This unusual pandemic seems connected to the lives of two girls.  Kathleen Beavier, a seventeen-year-old with a model’s beauty and a Catholic girl’s innocence,Read More →

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Although some people believe that facts are more important than fiction, Phineas Taylor Wilkie—who prefers to be called P.T.—isn’t a believer in the “truth conquers all” motto because he thinks that some stories have more power.  Chris Grabenstein–the award-winning bestselling author of Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library–shares that theory with tween readers in his recent book, Welcome to WonderLand: Home Sweet Motel, a book cleverly illustrated by Brooke Allen.  P.T. and his mom Wanda live in a Florida motel on St. Pete’s Beach with Grandpa Walt, who wants nothing more than to snatch from “the other Walt,” the title of “Hottest Family Attraction in the Sunshine State” (12). P.T. lovesRead More →

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The only thing certain in life is that it will change, and how we adjust to those changes will determine our satisfaction on the journey.  Sharon Creech weaves this thematic thread into her new novel, Moo, a clever blend of the prose and poetry genres with a target audience of tweens. Moo features twelve-year-old Reena and her brother Luke, “a seven-year-old complexity” (6) with a talent for drawing and an aversion to animals and to being touched.  Inspired by both his imagination and what he sees, Luke has the eye and the demeanor of a creative soul.  His sister, too, has an artist’s eye, but sheRead More →

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Twelve Reasons to Read (and Enjoy) The Twelve Days of Dash and Lily Rachel Cohn’s and David Levithan’s novel Is a “mittens and hot chocolate and snow angels that lifted from the ground and danced in the air” (3) romance, until it’s not. Confirms that some people together are toxic. Shares multiple definitions of love, including a piece of exquisite pattern prose on pages 28-29, and explores the paradox: “The people you know the most, the people you love the most—you’re also going to feel the parts of them you don’t know the most” (80). Shows why “trying too hard plus good intentions does notRead More →

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Of all the revelations that her afterlife brings, perhaps the most startling for Molly Bellamy is the discovery that being dead doesn’t mean being done with life.  Murdered by a trusted friend when she was sixteen and in love, Molly finds herself, not in heaven, but trapped in a valley of nonexistence beside a lake—like being in a snow globe but without glass walls.  She shares this virtually unchanging place devoid of sensations with others like her who have also died young and in a violent, sudden, and painfully brutal way. All of the ghosts beside the lake occasionally travel back into the real worldRead More →

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When coping with emotional turmoil, our subconscious often takes us away as a kind of protection.  In the event that disassociation doesn’t occur, we find other ways to deal with or to control deep psychological pain.  Because physical pain can cancel out emotional pain, some people resort to self-harm to feel a sense of control over an otherwise uncontrollable situation.  This external way to express inner turmoil distracts the sufferer from painful emotions or helps the person who self-injures to actually feel again. Inundated with impressions of horror and hiding those impressions until they are unbearable, Charlotte Davis, the seventeen-year-old protagonist in Kathleen Glasgow’s debutRead More →