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When Mike Jung was a kid, I have to believe he was like Vincent Wu, the kinda-geeky, big-hearted, superhero-crazed kid at the center of his debut novel, Geeks, Girls, and Secret Identities. Except Vincent is lucky enough to live a world that’s actually populated by real-life superheroes, maniacal evil geniuses, and giant killer robots. Vincent and his best friends, Max and George, are the hands-down experts on Captain Stupendous, even if they don’t get any respect from the “official” Captain Stupendous fan clubs in Copperplate City.  They thought geeking out on Captain Stupendous trivia and regaling his exploits from afar would be the extent of their connectionRead More →

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Reminiscent in tone to his Magic Shop Books, Bruce Coville‘s latest, Always October, is an imaginative chase through a land of nightmares. Sixth grade friends, Jake Doolittle and “Weird Lily” Carker, take turns telling the story of their discovery of, journey through, and daring escape from, a parallel universe, Always October, that is filled with humanity’s fears, nightmares, horrors, and monsters (literally).  It all starts on the day when a baby is left on Jake’s doorstep with a note imploring him and his mom (his dad’s been missing for years) to take care of “Little Dumpling.”  Both Jake and his mom are quickly won overRead More →

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Middle school readers with a penchant for super heroes and super villains will likely appreciate the conflict presented by Jeramey Kraatz in The Cloak Society.  Set in Sterling City,Texas, the story opens with a description of supervillainy as a passion and a way of life, not something one joins like an after-school club: “It’s not all doomsday devices and dramatic entrances.  All of your days are spent plotting, strategizing, inventing, training” (1) so as to emerge victorious when facing a nemesis. Early on, readers identify with Alex, a villain with a moral conscience who values life and is terrified of the Gloom, a wretched place createdRead More →

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How would you feel if all of your friends had super powers and you had none? Jealous? Insecure? Left out? What if you suddenly manifested the power to steal the powers from those around you, your friends; a power shared by a recently defeated super villain who had stolen the powers and memories from a hundred generations of “supers”? This is especially disconcerting to Daniel Corrigan, as he was the one who helped vanquish this villain, Herman Plunkett aka The Shroud. This new power appears as Plunkett’s grandson, Theo, returns to Noble’s Green and things begin to go awry in a disturbingly familiar way. Shadows,Read More →

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Just when you thought there was nothing else to imagine when it comes to dragons, out of nowhere comes Rachel Hartman‘s Seraphina.  This is a richly imagined, multifaceted, well-written tale bursting with unique ideas, intriguing characters (dragons and humans both), and a complex, riveting plot. At its heart, Seraphina is a book about belonging: “he did not know the truth of me, yet he perceived something true about me that no one else had ever noticed.  And in spite of that – or perhaps because of it – he believed me good, believed me worth taking seriously, and his belief, for one vertigious moment, madeRead More →

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   What  would it be like to lose both of your parents and then to live under the guardianship of a greedy, conniving, and cold-hearted aunt and uncle who threaten to uproot you from the familiarity of place?   Barbara Mariconda answers those questions in The Voyage of Lucy P. Simmons, the first installment in a trilogy of middle grade fantasy novels.  Set in 1906 New England, Voyage is not only a fantasy, adventure story featuring lore and legends of the sea but also the tale of Lucille Prudence Simmons and her family’s house—her father’s “ship on shore” that turns out to be both menacing andRead More →

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Chris Westwood’s Graveyard Shift combines the best elements from stories like Men in Black, GhostBusters, Harry Potter, and more into an action-packed fantasy adventure that will get your blood pumping.  It’s a quick, delightfully scary read full of magic and a couple of likeable middle school students embarking on an adventure of a lifetime. One sunny afternoon in the graveyard near his London apartment, Ben Harvester helps out an old man who appears to stumble from exhaustion over a nearby grave.  A few days later in a far-away town at his own aunt’s funeral, Ben again sees that same old man on the outskirts ofRead More →

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If everyone’s dreams are overrun by nightmares, how will anyone ever sleep again?  What if there was an evil force feeding on the negative energy in those nightmares, gaining power with every dream, preparing to take over the world?  Would anyone be able to stop the horror unfolding every night in every bed? For eleven year old Zac Wonder, all he knows is that he’s been having some realistic, recurring nightmares.  The London newspapers are full of reports of sleep-deprived people doing some harrowing things as a plague of nightmares seems to be sweeping the nation.  But even more strange than this night-time horror, Zac’sRead More →

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In the last installment of the action packed Archer Legacy, Gerald Wilkins and his friends Ruby and Sam are finally going to be able to put the danger posted by the ruthless Mason Green behind them and get on with their normal (well, normal for a billionaire) lives.  But just as  Mason Green’s murder trial is getting under way, Mason is mysteriously killed and Gerald is framed for his murder.  Now, Gerald is left with only one choice – to run – and his faithful friends join him in the quest to clear his name.  Their journey takes them from London to France, then toRead More →