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Best selling fantasy authors Holly Black and Cassandra Clare are launching a 5 book fantasy series for middle readers this fall with The Iron Trial.  In their introductory letter to booksellers, they invite us into their world where “a chosen hero, whose high and lonely destiny is to defeat the villain, whatever the personal sacrifice to himself… [who has] tragedy and secrets in his past, magical power” awaits us, but “we wanted people to believe they knew what kind of story they were in for.  And then we wanted them to be surprised…” Indeed, Black and Clare have succeeded in taking the now all-too-familiar conventions of children’sRead More →

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Nothing is going right for 11-year old Jarrett: he’s gotta pass summer school at an all-boys charter school if he wants to advance to seventh grade, and he overheard the teacher tell the principal she thinks he stupid and won’t pass; his best friend Ennis, recently back from his summer trip to see his dad in Jamaica, is acting aloof and strange; he’s scared to tell the girl he likes, Caprice, about his feelings for her; but worst of all, the most recent foster baby that his mom has taken in came to them with an older brother, Kevon, who’s Jarrett’s age and has takenRead More →

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I don’t even know where to begin, exactly. Jacqueline Woodson‘s lyrical, exquisite, and lovingly crafted verse memoir, Brown Girl Dreaming, seems beyond my abilities to critique.  Poems spanning her birth in February 1963 through her fifth grade year take us from Columbus, Ohio to Greenville, South Carolina, and ultimately to Brooklyn, New York.  Born on the edge of the Civil Rights movement, Jackie’s childhood is framed by the Jim Crow south and the hope of the Great Migration, but its richness, texture, and heft comes from her beloved family: her grandfather Gunnar, called Daddy, and grandmother Irby, who raised Jackie and her brother Hope andRead More →

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One night near the beginning of sixth grade, Ellie’s mom unexpectedly brings home a surly teenage boy, who turns out to be Ellie’s curmudgeon grandfather, Melvin.  Melvin is a scientist (some in the scientific community think he’s a kook), but as it happens, Melvin has discovered a genetic formula to reverse the effects of aging and is now 13 again.  Despite the palpable tension between Ellie’s divorced, thirty-something mother and her now-teenage father, Ellie embraces the chance to really get to know her grandfather.  Ellie discovers that she has quite a bit in common with Melvin (more than she does with her artistic parents), and herRead More →

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Lucille “Lucy” Peevey dreams of leaving Sunnyside Trailer Park and becoming a famous scientist. She lives with her mother, Margaret, and her younger sister Izzy. Lucy’s biggest supporter, her grandmother, recently passed away. Before Gram passed, Lucy promised her that she would participate and win the annual BotBlock competition. The BotBlock competition requires applicants to create and program their own robots to complete various challenges. Lucy and her best friend Cam have created their step by step plan to succeed in their goal and win the competition with their own robot, PingPing200. Easy enough right? Wrong. First, Lucy is struggling to survive seventh grade. There is aRead More →

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While Matt Hunter seems like a typical middle school student, his world is anything but normal. Matt’s town, Edenvale,  is now acquainted with a new kind of species…zombies! There are also a team of police officers to regulate the zombies, known as The Zombie Squad. Their job is to protect the living members of Edenvale and ensure the zombies stay in their walled off community. Citizens of Edenvale are also responsible for registering themselves and all pets with the Zombie Squad to protect other citizens in the event of a death. To not register yourself or animals is against the law. Matt isn’t concerned about theRead More →

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Another Day as Emily – Eileen Spinelli Have you ever been so tired of life that you decided to change who you were? Eleven-year-old Suzy has.  After her brother becomes a “Little Hero” around town, and her best friend gets wrapped up in her acting pursuits, Suzy is all but forgotten.  She determines to live her life in a new way – Emily Dickinson’s way. Amidst white dresses, letters, baking, and cleaning Suzy learns who she really is in Spinelli’s new novel. Written in verse, it is a very easy, quick read, but one that teaches as it goes. Historical facts and figures abound, engagingRead More →

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I’ve been thinking about vulnerability a lot lately.  Part of it is due to reading this; and what surprises me is once you start looking for authenticity and its root, vulnerability, you see it everywhere.  What you also see are the walls, suits of armor, and other shields our culture teaches a person to use to hide, protect, and deny this most human of all qualities.  Imagine how thrilled I was when, just a few pages into National Book Award Nominee Lisa Graff‘s forthcoming Absolutely Almost, I realized that I was holding a book deeply interwoven with vulnerability and authenticity.  And my excitement was not disappointed inRead More →

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If it weren’t for Vance the Bully, Teddy Fitzroy would have a pretty cool life:  he does OK in 7th grade (sure, he’d like more friends), but he gets to live at FunJungle, the world’s biggest zoo, where his world-renowned parents are live-in scientists.  Being around all the animals has its perks and Teddy enjoys his unusual living situation most of the time.  But Vance’s incessant bullying has gotten Teddy into some trouble, since none of the adults at school will help him ward off Vance’s assaults.  Having taken matters into his own hands, Teddy’s latest prank on Vance has gotten him into a no-winRead More →