By:
On:
In: Historical Fiction, Historical Fiction (YA), Middle Grade Reviews, Young Adult Book Reviews
With: 0 Comments

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 →

By:
On:
In: Action & Adventure, Action & Adventure (YA), Historical Fiction, Historical Fiction (YA), Middle Grade Reviews, Multicultural, Multicultural (YA), Realistic Fiction (YA), Romance (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
With: 0 Comments

Debut author Stacey Lee‘s Under a Painted Sky lyrically intertwines aspects of America’s Western expansion that are rarely, if ever, explored.  Into the very real world of the California Gold Rush, the pioneers’ homesteading journeys  along the Oregon Trail, and the lawlessness of the “Wild West“, Lee creates a powerfully moving story of friendship, race and gender politics, and above all, courage and faith.  It’s a treat to spend time with a writer who takes pains to research and then accurately represent, with beautiful, vivid prose, a world gone by and in so doing, make it vibrant, interesting, and resonant. 15 year old Chinese AmericanRead More →

By:
On:
In: Elementary Book Reviews, Historical Fiction, Historical Fiction (YA), Middle Grade Reviews, Realistic Fiction, Realistic Fiction (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
With: 0 Comments

It’s been awhile since the last time I fell head over heels in love. And, like all really good loves, I wasn’t looking for it.  Sure, I was anticipating a good story (I loved her first effort) but, “Hi-Yo, Silver”, I was not prepared for my intense reaction to Kristin Levine‘s The Paper Cowboy.  I’ve set aside everything else and have read this book 3 times (and that’s saying a lot) because there is just so much to unpack within these amazingly written 333 pages.  Rumor has it that there’s already buzz for the Newbery list (I hope so!) and I can’t wait until someoneRead More →

By:
On:
In: Historical Fiction (YA), Mystery & Suspense (YA), Romance (YA), Supernatural & Horror (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
With: 0 Comments

“i became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity” — EDGAR ALLAN POE I love origin stories.  How did the times in which a person lived, the circumstance of their life, their internal demons, weaknesses, and strengths, all collide into make him (or her) into whatever it was he/she became?  The darker, the more enigmatic, the better; and so I was delighted by Jessica Verday’s foray into the youth of a man whose torment we know all too well. It’s a dark and stormy night in Philadelphia in 1826, when Annabel Lee disembarks from a steamer ship that has brought her from Siam to live withRead More →

By:
On:
In: Historical Fiction (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
With: 0 Comments

Olivia (Livie) Mead trades safety, comfort, and normalcy for a rare and enchanting adventure on her seventeenth birthday, October 31, 1900, when she participates in a women’s suffrage rally. Later that night, in the spirit of a good Halloween fright and under pressure from her friends, Livie agrees to subject herself to hypnosis and experiences the utter bliss of deep relaxation.  Henri Reverie, the hypnotist, tells Livie that because of her birth date, “legend says you are a charmed individual. You can read dreams and possess lifelong protection against the spirits” (9), but from that night onward, Livie’s life changes drastically. Livie’s father, the infamousRead More →

By:
On:
In: Historical Fiction (YA), Multicultural (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
With: 0 Comments

In 1941, seventeen-year-old Zenji Watanabe is Japanese born in America, a Nisei, with the gift of language.  Colonel Blake sees that gift and offers Zenji an opportunity to travel from Honolulu, Hawaii, to places like Manila, but that opportunity comes with a price beyond the patriotism, strange excitement, and pay check valued by Zenji. With the code name Bamboo Rat and his bilingual gifts, Zenji is recruited as a low profile, military spy.  In that role, he learns the difference between civilian Japan and military Japan.  He also discovers the difficulty in befriending those whom he may have to betray and confronts the dilemmas in a country’sRead More →

By:
On:
In: Historical Fiction, Historical Fiction (YA), Middle Grade Reviews, Realistic Fiction, Realistic Fiction (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
With: 0 Comments

Aspiring to be a female version of Walter Cronkite, thirteen-year-old Teresa (Tree) Taylor wants the freshman reporter position on the newspaper staff at Hamilton High School, despite her nemesis Wanda vying  for that same role with the “Blue and Gold.”  Her second goal for the summer is to kiss a boy, preferably Ray “with the eyes like two pieces of sky” (3), to collect a kiss worth writing about. Besides those two ambitions to move the plot forward, The Secrets of Tree Taylor by Dandi Daley Mackal, set in Hamilton, Missouri, in 1963, features a collection of quotations from famous writers and alludes to HarperRead More →

By:
On:
In: Action & Adventure, Action & Adventure (YA), Historical Fiction, Historical Fiction (YA), Middle Grade Reviews, Multicultural, Multicultural (YA), Realistic Fiction, Realistic Fiction (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
With: 0 Comments

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 →

By:
On:
In: Action & Adventure, Action & Adventure (YA), Historical Fiction, Historical Fiction (YA), Middle Grade Reviews, Multicultural, Multicultural (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
With: 0 Comments

For readers who remember the adventures of Shade, a silverwing bat in the Silverwing Trilogy, Kenneth Oppel  delivers with equal measure, the action-packed and compelling story of Will Everett’s life in his most recent novel, The Boundless.  Set in in the late 1800s, at the time the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) was being built, Will, who taught himself to draw when he was ill and bedridden for weeks, is looking for adventure.  The only adventures he has had have been in his head or drawn in his sketchbook or lived out vicariously through his father’s letters from various rail construction sites. When he arrives inRead More →