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With the overwhelming amount of homework in middle school, Gregory Korenstein-Jasperton wonders how all the popular kids at Morris Champlin Middle School have time to be popular.  He hasn’t even found the time or the energy for writing the poetry and short stories he loves.  When his dropping grades get him grounded, preventing him from attending open mic night at Booktastic, an indie bookstore and his favorite place on earth, Gregory decides to take action. Borrowing inspiration from Dr. Seuss’ character, the Lorax, Gregory realizes change never comes unless someone speaks up: “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going toRead More →

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Sixth grader Molly Cooke and her twelve-year-old brother Addison—who enjoys inadvisable adventures and has a “stunning capacity for getting himself into trouble” (60)—attend Theodore Roosevelt Middle School in the Upper West Side of Manhattan.  Because they are Cookes born into a long line of archeologists, they have grown up on archaeology digs and in museums.  Consequently, Addison Cooke and the Treasure of the Incas by Jonathan W. Stokes is rich with geography lessons, historical allusions, and opportunities to learn about cultural artifacts. When the tweens’ Aunt Delia and Uncle Nigel get kidnapped by treasure hunters and thieves, Addison calls a Code Blue—a mission of theRead More →

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In A Riddle in Ruby: The Changers Key by Kent Davis, the brave Ruby Teach is back, and has found herself a voluntary captive of the man she was running from. While Ruby is training to be a soldier for an upcoming war, her father and friends are searching for her by means of a special coded journal.  As Ruby is fights to prove her worth, and train to be as good a soldier as the other Reeves, she is experimented on by the scientist in hopes of finding out her secret. She makes new friends along the way, and is confronted with her darkRead More →

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Three-time Newbery Honor winner Jennifer Holm shares a historical fiction account in Full of Beans about life during the Great Depression in Key West, Florida, where there was a tradition of nicknaming. Conchs, for example, were those who often ate conch chowder.  Ten-year-old Beans Curry is a Conch who mines the garbage bins for milk cans to recycle for coins so that he can watch his favorite Shirley Temple films or buy coconut ice cream since times are tough and money is scarce.  Because he’s “a good boy,” however, his money often purchases deworming medicine for his brother Kermit or hand cream for his mother,Read More →

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Written by daughter of baseball legend Jackie Robinson, The Hero Two Doors Down by Sharon Robinson, recounts the historical fiction tale of tumultuous times of global, racial, cultural, and religious unrest in the late 1940s.  Because of its inspirational message about the need to depend on faith, family, and friends during the worst of times, contemporary readers will find this story of friendship and unity especially relevant as Martin Luther King, Junior’s 87th birthday approaches. In 1948, Steven Satlow is eight years old, and a train ride to Ebbets Field costs five cents each way.  Because Steve is the shortest kid in his class andRead More →

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Not only unaware of the meaning of the word decorum but also oblivious as to how to show it, Angelo Fabrizzi detests the formal education his mother, Julietta, wishes upon him in Paris.  Uninspired in the classroom, Angelo feels most alive when he’s working in his father’s workshop where he doodles car designs and fires up the welding torch to work and rework metal scraps into fantastical creations.  Like his Italian father, Luca Fabrizzi, Angelo is a passionate and creative car-lover with a sweet tooth, who believes that magical ideas take shape under the influence of sugar. After the front wheel drive sensation of 1934,Read More →

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Living on the Northern Tier of Montana called the Hi-Line, I’ve seen the aurora borealis break dance with a rhythm similar to that described by Rodman Philbrick in his book The Big Dark: “Imagine a lightning bolt hitting a box of crayons and turning it into a colored steam.  Like that.  Electric colors rippling and pulsing as if they were alive” (3). In The Big Dark, Philbrick, an award-winning author of the classic Freak the Mighty and numerous other books for young adults, not only writes in richly descriptive prose but posits a possible answer to the question: How would human kind respond to a massive solarRead More →

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Set in 1939-1943 in occupied Poland, Anna and the Swallow Man by Gavriel Savit tells the difficult story of growing up during the Second World War, a time rife with barking dogs, tank invasions, bullying soldiers, fiery sacrifices, and other acts of hate and genocide.  In 1939, Germans occupied Kraków with the sole purpose of purging the city of its intellectuals and its academics.  As Germany pushed in from the west, the Soviets closed in on the east.  The occupation of Poland has been called one of the darkest chapters in the history of World War II since it marked the beginning of the Jewish Holocaust when almostRead More →

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From a book that begins with the line, “We were the only ones left alive,” a reader will typically expect a terrifying story, and My Brother’s Secret by Dan Smith delivers.  Set in West Germany during the summer of 1941, Smith’s novel tells the tale of Karl Friedmann, a twelve-year-old boy, “trusted and reliable and ready to die for the Führer” (10).  Although Karl feels sympathy for his weaker comrades, he wants to make the world a better and stronger place, so he participates with vigor during physical education, which has been replaced with a Hitler Youth curriculum.  A lot transpires in Karl’s life toRead More →