By:
On:
In: Middle Grade Reviews, Mystery & Suspense
With: 0 Comments

A magnet for mystery and adventure and interested in creepy things, Devlin Quick loves sleuthing.  All her detective practice is training for the day she can devote herself to finding her dad’s killer.  Sleuthing runs in the family since Devlin’s dad covered international politics as an investigative reporter for the Wall Street Journal and her mom, Blaine, is New York’s Police Commissioner with a reputation for being “fierce and fair and fearless” (94).  Although twelve-year-old Devlin is willing to leave the fierce quality to others, she acts when she encounters a wrong. Set in both Manhattan, New York, and in Big Timber, Montana, The DevlinRead More →

By:
On:
In: Middle Grade Reviews, Sci Fi & Fantasy
With: 0 Comments

Consumed by grief, the Darrow family is broken, and nine-year-old Stanley is wishing with all his effort that some kind of magic will arrive to put his family back together after the death of his father.  “From the bottom of [his] flip-flops to the top of [his] Chicago Cubs baseball cap” (22), Stanley vows to find a way to make that happen. While searching for a solution, Stanley encounters a man in a green jacket who can make leaves dance.  When the mysterious man with a crooked grin shows up on the Darrow’s front step, Stanley wonders whether a male nanny (a manny?) can replaceRead More →

By:
On:
In: Action & Adventure, Middle Grade Reviews
With: 0 Comments

In a style similar to that of Lemony Snicket and Roald Dahl, Nicholas Gannon writes The Doldrums and the Helmsley Curse, a stand-alone sequel to The Doldrums, and adds illustrations similar to those drawn by Brian Selznick in The Invention of Hugo Cabret.  This combination of ingredients makes Gannon’s book a reading treat for middle grade readers. The story’s protagonist, Archer Helmsley is a troubled child who talks to taxidermied animals and sets tigers lose in museums.  He has been waiting for twelve years to meet his grandparents, famous explorers and “practically fictional characters” to Archer, who has read their journals and knows their talesRead More →

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

Similar to the Harry Potter and Charlie Bone series’,  Ed Masessa’s Wandmaker series focuses on magical learning. Wandmaker’s Apprentice is the second novel in the series and picks up from the dramatic events of Wandmaker. In that first novel, Henry and his sister, Brianna, came to terms with their different abilities connected to wand making. In this world, hidden behind the scenes from ours, magical ability is harnessed through different wands for various purposes. For those in this magical world, “your wand is an extension of you” (99). After defeating the villainous Dai She, Henry and Brianna are taken in by Wand Master Coralis. CoralisRead More →

By:
On:
In: Action & Adventure, Middle Grade Reviews, Mystery & Suspense
With: 0 Comments

A blood-stained note, reading “Who killed Darius Drake,” lures Darius into searching for an answer, since he’s still alive and living at Stonehill Home for Children after losing his parents in a tragic car accident when he was only three.  But the gangly orphan genius with thick glasses and a volcanic eruption of bright red hair needs a partner, whom he finds in Arthur Bash, “a big, fat, scary-looking dude” (2).  Known at school as a thug-for-hire, Bash Man will frighten foes with a menacing look for the price of a candy bar.  After his parents’ divorce, Arthur adopts the bully persona because he’d ratherRead More →

By:
On:
In: Middle Grade Reviews, Realistic Fiction
With: 0 Comments

More than an adventure story, The Care and Feeding of a Pet Black Hole by Michelle Cuevas is an earth (space) science lesson as well as a grief healing journey.  Overwhelmed by the pain of loss, eleven-year-old Stella Rodriguez narrates her story to her deceased father, whose “missing you feeling” follows her everywhere.  With the Voyager 2 launch date only months away, Stella is desperate to visit with Carl Sagan who might send something into space for her on his Golden Record.  On her way home from the failed attempt, she encounters big needy eyes, “eyes that shimmered and seemed to have tiny galaxies insideRead More →

By:
On:
In: Middle Grade Reviews, Realistic Fiction
With: 0 Comments

Maverick Falconer is the world’s lamest super-hero, in his estimation.  At age eleven, he’s small, weak, near-sighted, prone to allergies, and possesses an anti-dollar forcefield.  But none of those shortcomings deter Maverick from his goal: Doing good deeds, righting wrongs, standing up against evil, and protecting anybody who is small or weak. When Maverick was three, his military firefighter dad, died, leaving Maverick alone with an alcoholic and neglectful mother who dates a string of abusive men.  The only stable person in his life is Aunt Cat, who is as wild as her name.  But she loves, defends, and protects Maverick.  Wanting to live inRead More →

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

Three stories told, three countries represented, and three lives profiled.  Despite the years that separate them, the trinity of humanity featured in Alan Gratz’s novel Refugee experience remarkable and horrifying similarities with intersecting conclusions. Imagine feeling unwanted, dirty, and illegal.   Imagine hearing sirens, soldiers, shouting, gunfire, breaking glass, and screams daily.  Imagine thinking that if you want to live, you have to leave your homeland and all that is familiar.  These are the realities of three refugees and their families: Josef Landau, a barely thirteen Jewish boy living in Germany in 1939 under the reign of Adolph Hitler; Isabel Fernandez, a pre-teen Cuban citizen enduringRead More →

By:
On:
In: Middle Grade Reviews, Realistic Fiction
With: 0 Comments

Here’ the dirt on Dirt by Denise Gosliner Orenstein: Eleven-year-old Yonder attends Robert Frost Middle School in Vermont, where her classmates are “just dumb losers with mean mouths full of empty words” (5). After her mother dies, Yonder screams and yells for her mother to come back but realizes that words don’t work, so she stops speaking since “silence seems safer.” Yonder’s father masks his grief and fills the empty void with alcohol: “My father drank and drank and drank and didn’t really know how to be a regular father at all” (48). Despite his sobbing and his littering the floor with beer bottles, YonderRead More →