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At twelve years old, Hannah Silver has idiosyncrasies: thinking out loud, using words from an invented Muffin Language, hearing the bossy voices of Nancy and Belinda in her head, and fearing that stairs are traps with hidden torture devices.  She soon discovers that her family belongs to a sect of Guardians who guard the door to the afterlife.  Hannah’s mother tells her the story, that the secret door in the lighthouse near their home leads to the city—temporary home to everyone who has lived and died in our world.  Beyond the city lies Ascension.  To ascend requires certain qualifications—Watchers enforce these rules. On a stormyRead More →

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Readers of The Diary of a Wimpy Kid will likely enjoy The Boy Problem: Notes and Predictions of Tabitha Reddy by Kami Kinard. While it doesn’t have the plethora of pictures, it has relevance and ‘tween appeal in its plot.   Tabitha Reddy, who believes in signs and clues, thinks it’s possible to predict the future and that wishing on a star increases the likelihood of that wish’s coming true.  Her BFF, Kara McAllister disagrees, saying: “Nothing helps your wishes come true unless YOU do something yourself” (11).  She encourages Tabitha, who is in search of a boyfriend, to be proactive. The social scenes and peerRead More →

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The Freedom Summer Murders by Don Mitchell was a difficult book to read.  I am always flummoxed by hate, preferring instead to stand up for social justice, to act as Anna Sewell said in Black Beauty all those years ago: “With cruelty and oppression, it is everybody’s business to interfere when they see it.” Still, this is an important nonfiction book, one that can easily be read alongside The Road to Memphis by Mildred D. Taylor.  As he commemorates the 50th anniversary of the murders of three civil rights workers by the Ku Klux Klan, Mitchell provides a look into one of the dark cornersRead More →

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One month before their 11th birthday, all is peaceful in Maine for the Brennan twins, Gus and Leo, until their mother develops a mysterious illness and boats begin to mysteriously disappear.  These freakish events are just a beginning, however, as solitude turns to emergencies, screaming, lying, and nighttime visitors.  And Ila, who has never previously spoken in her five years of life, starts to speak nonsense about morays and watchers. By the time a shape-shifting messenger arrives, Gus is furious, frightened, confused, and full of grief, but she and her siblings step out of their previously idyllic life into something completely unknown. The Bedell takesRead More →

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A magical realism tale, Boys of Blur by N.D. Wilson is set in Taper, Florida, “where the sea of sugarcane stops and swamps begin” (1). The thick, mucky place intrigues twelve-year-old Charlie Reynolds who is attending the funeral of his stepfather’s father. While the family is in Florida, Charlie notices a look on his mother’s face, the old look of fear, placed there by an abusive father. He knows his mother does not like this place, so when the townspeople ask Prester Mack to coach the football team, a position vacated by the death of Willie Wisdom, Charlie worries that the place will dredge upRead More →

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Sixteen-year-old Calliope Knowles is a self-described bitch, but that word hardly describes her true self, a traumatized young woman who is a ward of the state of Illinois and a clinically diagnosed graphomaniac.   Graphomania is a compulsion to write; Callie writes “for the same reason most of us breathe” (3).  Although she feels like a carnival side show and hates being a slave to the words in her head, the words motivate her to remember. Ever since her father disappeared, Callie has been compelled to write.  Although the authorities don’t believe she killed her father, they do think she knows something about his disappearance andRead More →

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A sixth grader in Mesa, Arizona, Cole Randolph is concerned about fairly typical topics for tweens: homework, sibling rivalry, whether he has feelings for Jenna, and whether he should go trick-or-treating.  He and his best friend Dalton decide to visit the haunted house in Spook Alley, where the guy who just moved in previously performed special effects for Hollywood.   The effects turn out to be more gross than scary at first with bones, black bug juice,  a host that seems a little off to Cole, “not very bright, big creepy-looking, maybe not totally sane” (16), and a whiskered woman who eats venomous cockroaches as ifRead More →

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For readers who remember the adventures of Shade, a silverwing bat in the Silverwing Trilogy, Kenneth Oppel  delivers with equal measure, the action-packed and compelling story of Will Everett’s life in his most recent novel, The Boundless.  Set in in the late 1800s, at the time the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) was being built, Will, who taught himself to draw when he was ill and bedridden for weeks, is looking for adventure.  The only adventures he has had have been in his head or drawn in his sketchbook or lived out vicariously through his father’s letters from various rail construction sites. When he arrives inRead More →

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Ben Mikaelsen fans will likely appreciate his newest book, Jungle Bones, which is about a young boy who is angry and fighting to survive.  As I read, many times I was reminded of scenes from Touching Spirit Bear. Dylan Barstow is defiant, disrespectful, and determined to do whatever annoys adults the most.  The only sane part of his life is a black lab named Zipper.  Not quite an eighth grader, this king of contempt has a “file as thick as a phone book” (10) and a chip on his shoulder “as big as a log” (29).  Resentful that his mother treats him like a screw-up, heRead More →