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Bestselling author Sophie Jordan’s novel Vanish is about Jacinda’s life when she gets back to the pride. After being taken away from the pride by her mother and almost exposing her race’s one kept secret.  In this detailed sequel to Firelight, there are many issues Jacinda  must face: she has to choose between her love for her pride and her true love, Will;  her relationship with Cassian has an unexpected twist because Cassian want something more from Jacinda  than she is willing to give; Jacinda realizes she wants nothing at all but to be herself; Jacinda’s twin sister Tamara has some surprises; and you find out if theRead More →

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Reminiscent of numerous future dystopias, particularly Lois Lowry’s The Giver and TV phenomenon The Twilight Zone, Ruth White’s newest middle grade fiction offering, You’ll Like it Here (Everybody Does), is an unsettling, suspenseful adventure.  At first glance, the Blues are a typical American family: Mom’s an astronomy professor, Gramps is retired and loves puttering around his workshop and painting, 14 year old David and 12 year old Meggie are smart kids, who enjoy school and spending the summers traveling around the US.  But they’ve got a secret and when the townspeople become suspicious of them and barge into their farmhouse one summer night, the secretRead More →

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16 year old London Lane has a secret: every night since she was 6 years old, when she goes to sleep, her memory of her past disappears. Instead, she awakens with “memories” of her future life, remembering people, places, and events that have not yet occurred.  London can’t remember the day before today, or any day of 16 years of life.  Her mom and her best friend Jaime are the only people who know her secret and they use a system of nightly note reminders, cell phone alarms, and old-fashioned partnering to help London navigate her daily high-school life.  It’s a somewhat maddening, precarious existence,Read More →

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Never having been a 9-year-old boy, I can’t say for sure, but… if I had been, then I would have loved screenwriter EJ Altbacker’s new series, Shark Wars.  Easily identifiable character-types, sharks, fierce action, sharks, high stakes conflict, sharks, quick pacing, sharks, and highly cinematic detail, (and did I mention sharks?), combine into an easily readable series for 8-12 year old boys (and some girls too). These books are perfectly positioned for an animated life and already have a free game for smartphones.  Altbacker hooks his readers quickly and the attempts at conveying life lessons – choosing true friends over popularity, bullying, holding true to oneself, and doing the rightRead More →

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Making its US debut in May 2011, German YA best-seller Ruby Red  is a perfect mix of mystery, supernatural fanasy and romantic adventure.  Gwen is a typical 16 year old girl living with her mom, siblings and her extended family in a posh London neighborhood.  She’s a spunky, skeptical teen who’s managed to live a fairly normal life despite the time-travelling gene that runs in the women of her family (although Gwen isn’t without some supernatural abilities of her own – she can see and converse with ghosts).  This generation’s carrier is her haughty cousin Charlotte, whose been through years of secret training to prepare herRead More →

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Master Storyteller Joseph Bruchac’s latest novel, Dragon Castle, draws on the rich and magical legends of his Slovakian heritage as it explores themes of the hero’s journey, the journey to find oneself, and the courage to face one’s destiny.  15 year old Prince Rashko has lived his whole life in a peace secured by a distant ancestor, Pavol the Brave.  It’s a good thing that peaces abounds, too, because his parents and older brother Paulek seem to be more interested in daydreaming, sword fighting and living a life of ease than in doing much of anything to secure the safety and long-term security of the realm.  But RashkoRead More →

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23 interwoven stories and poems are edited by Holly Black and Ellen Kushner in Welcome To Bordertown: New Stories and Poems of the Borderlands.  Carefully crafted, skillfully interwoven, and richly textured, the collection flushes out the dark and the magical, the secrets and the mysteries, of the border between the Faerie Realm and The World.  Truebloods (High and Low-born Elves), Halfies (mixed race elves & humans), and mortals, as well as many other magical creatures live in, search for, and get lost in Bordertown.  It’s a city that’s been lost to The World for 13 years (only 13 days to those in Bordertown) where neitherRead More →

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Getting shipped off to spend the summer with a grandmother you’ve never met, who lives out in the middle-of-nowhere Washington State, while all of your friends have basketball camp, pool parties, and days of uninterrupted hanging out ahead of them is a pretty cruddy turn of events.  To make it worse, what if your grandmother is the town kook and runs a space-themed “intergallactic” bed and breakfast that is crawling with weird guests and is the joke of the town?  For middle-schooler Scrub, it’s his worst nightmare.  And he has the whole summer ahead of him before he can go back home to Florida. Grandma needs help atRead More →

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Jeffrey Kluger’s Freedom Stone is a rare gem of a book.  He takes the reader on a magical journey to a beautifully realized time and place and leaves the reader feeling connected with the characters long after the last word is read. Lillie has lived her whole life on the Greenfog plantation in South Carolina with her parents and younger brother, Plato.  With the War not going well for the Confederate Army, slave volunteers are being accepted to fight with the promise of freedom for themselves and their families.  Lillie’s father joined up, but months ago he was killed in action and with Union gold found inRead More →