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A novel in verse, Wild Dreamers by Margarita Engle is dedicated to scientists and future scientists. It features two Cuban American youth: Leandro and Ana Tanamá, who take inspiration from Jane Goodall and other conservationists to protect the planet by rewilding. Rewilding efforts attempt to restore biodiversity. Seventeen-year-old Leandro fled Cuba at the age of seven with his family. His father drowned saving his son, so Leandro blames himself and has suffered from  uncontrollable attacks of dizzy panic ever since. His service animal, Cielo is a blue merle dog who shares her perspective intermittently in the novel. After living in Florida for a time, theRead More →

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Readers of Carl Hiaasen and Katherine Applegate will likely enjoy The Secret Language of Birds by Lynne Kelly. Set in Houston, Texas, Kelly’s novel for middle grade readers features thirteen-year-old Nina whose parents are investment bankers. Nina spends her time immersed in her birding apps, but flounders when it comes to making friends, believing she was absent on the day any instruction manuals were handed out. For example, although she tries to befriend Iris, a hearing impaired classmate, she fails in that attempt. When Nina’s older sister Sage encounters the concept of zugunruhe and its impact on the bird brain, she wonders if something insideRead More →

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Set in London in 1963, Wildoak by C.C. Harrington features eleven-year-old Margaret Stephens. Maggie stutters, but not whenever she speaks to her pet mouse Wellington or to the injured dove Flute whose wing she has wrapped for healing or to the two snails, Spitfire and Hurricaine, whom she has rescued from the garden. Still, it’s not her gifts that she sees. Maggie sees herself as broken, a child that doesn’t work properly. Some of these fears derive from people’s reactions to her blocking and her inability to get the words out. Her father even threatens to send her to Granville, a special school where rumorRead More →