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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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This is the second book of the Mystic City series, and while I would have liked to have read the first book, not having done so was not a detriment.  This book stands alone perfectly. I am not sure if one could label this a dystopian novel, but there are dystopian elements present. There is a segment of the society that is mystic. The mystics look and act like “normal” humans, but as their name implies, they have mystic powers.  Somehow these mystics have been exploited to, basically, serve the wealthy. OK, as I write this, perhaps it would be better to read these books inRead More →

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In Katherine Kirkpatrick‘s Between Two Worlds, travelers on a race to the top of the world interrupted life during the 1900’s in Greenland.  The Greenland Inuits were amazed at the expansive wooden ships that rammed upon their shores bringing white men, women in impractical dresses, and canned food. Billy Bah was not exempt from the amazement. She followed the captain of the ship – Captain Peary – and spent time with his wife, especially after the birth of their daughter in the barren tundra of Greenland.  When the Peary’s sail home to America they ask to take Billy Bah with them – the first “Eskimo” toRead 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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Nina finds herself at one of the many crossroads of life: that weird time between middle and high school, where we all begin to experiment with who we are, and what we want to be.  The thing is though; Nina doesn’t feel as though she is really changing.  She is the quiet observer to the chaos around her. What began as a way to honor her grandmother’s memory becomes Nina’s summer project.   She decides that she will do something nice for someone – one thing for each of the 65 days of summer.  In better observing her neighbors, in order to discover what she mightRead More →

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One hundred years from now, Great Britain will become an isolated police state with the Agency for Crime Investigation and Defense (ACID) controlling everything. People marry the Life Partners chosen for them, work at careers assigned to them, and live in apartments chosen for them, all by ACID.  Speaking out against the System is punishable by law, as are many things that we currently take for granted. Being accused of a crime is a certain prison sentence, as ACID will do everything within its power, and it is all powerful, to protect itself. Jenna Strong has been behind bars for the past two years, theRead 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 →