by N. D. Wilson
ages: 10+
First sentence: “The man in the pink shirt stopped outside his house.”
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Others in the series: The Dragon’s Tooth

I’ve been looking for quite some time for that book to give kids who love the Percy Jackson series. Something fantasy, of course. But with a bit of mythology, a gripping story, a bit of humor, fast-paced, and likeable characters as well.

I’ve found my series.

I read this one out of order: The Drowned Vault is the second in The Ashtown Burials series. But, honestly? It didn’t matter. Yeah, there was some stuff that I didn’t fully  understand because I haven’t read the first one (yet), but it was such a fun, interesting, cool world that Wilson developed it didn’t really matter.

From what I can gather: there are immortals abroad, and there’s a team of mortals — called the Order of Brendan — that basically keep the immortals in check. Brother-sister team Cyrus and Antigone Smith are recent inductees into this Order (I’m assuming all this comes down in Book 1), and they have let something called the Dragon’s Tooth (Ah! The name of the first book) — which can kill immortals — fall into the hands of the Bad Guy, Phoenix. This puts them a bit on the outs with both the immortals and the O of B (as it’s often referred to), so the main goal of this book is to get the Dragon’s Tooth back from Phoenix. This is not as easy as it sounds (it sounded easy?). Especially since the immortals are banding with another Big Baddie, the brother of one of the Vlads (you know, as in Vlad the Impaler), Radu Bey, who is head of the Dracul order, which (obviously) wants to Take Over. So, not only do they need to stop Phoenix from raising an army of dead people, they need to stop Radu as well. And this means they need to raise the Buried. (Don’t ask. It’s much too complicated for here.)

I know that didn’t make much sense (moral: read the first one first!), but it really is a lot of fun. There’s humor, action-packed battle scenes, the girls are as awesome as the guys (Antigone reminds me a lot of Annabeth and Hermione, and there’s this really kick-butt older girl, Diana Boone), and Wilson mixes world mythology with American history, for a really unique world feel.

So, yeah: I’ve found a new series to be a fan of. I’ve already bought the first one and I can’t wait for the next. Bring it on!

(Just for the record: because this is a Cybils nominee, I’ve been asked to make sure y’all know this is my opinion only, and not that of the panel.)

by Kate Saunders
ages: 9+
First sentence: “At least look at the picture!” Flora’s dad begged.”
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Flora Fox is a spoiled brat.

That’s putting it mildly.

As an only child of older parents, she always gets her way. In everything. So, it’s beyond her capability to understand why her parents would want to send her to boarding school (of all places!) while they go to Italy to fetch Flora’s grandmother (the old bat) and build a flat for her in the garage of Flora’s Wimbledon home. It’s just. not. fair.

I’m going to stop here a minute and say that I found Flora to be Insufferable. So much so, that I thought quite seriously about putting the book down (or at the very least throwing it across the room. Or slapping Flora on the behind). I’m glad I didn’t.

On the train to her boarding school, Something Happens, and when Flora wakes up, she’s no longer in the 21st century, she’s in 1935.

(Yay for time travel!)

She has to adjust to the whole all-girl boarding school thing, the 1935 thing, the sharing a room with other people thing, the making friends thing, and the fact that Flora may be stuck in 1935, unless the three girls who summoned her there — Pete (short for Daphne Peterson), Pogo (Cecelia Lawrence), and Dulcie  — can figure out a way to send her back.

As I mentioned, the beginning was rough because Flora was so unlikeable. Once it hit 1935, Flora was still unlikeable, but it was more understandable: I am giving Saunders full points (or ponys as they’re called in the book) for making Flora have a difficult time adjusting. I would have hated it if Flora had hit the ground running, finding transitioning to 1935 a breeze. Rather, it was difficult and jarring for Flora to adjust, which made the whole experience that much more interesting for me.

And, to be fair, Flora made a remarkable improvement over the course of the book. (I was quite grateful for that!) In the end, I thought that Saunders wrote a great fish-out-of-water story, with some lovely lessons (and  yet wasn’t too heavy-handed!), and I found the book to be wonderfully enjoyable.

(Just for the record: because this is a Cybils nominee, I’ve been asked to make sure y’all know this is my opinion only, and not that of the panel.)  

by Brit Trogen and Kari Trogen
ages: 8+
First sentence: “If this were a proper world, beautiful faces would belong to beautiful people.”
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Margaret was not one of those Lucky People for whom Good Things happen. Rather, even though she was Good, bad luck seemed to follow her. First, her parents died, and no one wanted to take her in. Cousin Amos, finally did, but he never spoke, so Margaret lived in a House of Silence. Then he died, and Margaret was taken in by Great-Aunt Linda, who was Very Proper. Then, she died, and at ten years old, Margaret was left Alone.

She was given into the care of the Concerned Ladies Club, which delivered her to what seemed to be a Fairly Nice Orphanage, run by the Beautiful Miss Switch. Except — as we are often reminded in this slim book — Appearances Can Be Deceiving: Switch is much like her name. When adults are around, she is all kindness and caring concern. But as soon as they depart, her True Nature comes out: she is horrible. Worse than horrible: cruel.

Margaret suffers Innumerable Torments at the hands of Switch and her Pets (the good-looking orphans; the rest are Dregs), but to her surprise, she hears Voices. It turns out that the moths in the backyard tree can talk (and only Margaret can hear them), and they are more than willing to help her Get Rid of Switch Once and For All.

I know all the capital letters makes me sound a wee bit sarcastic, but honestly, I found this book to be sweet. It was just the right length for an 8-year-old to get a handle on, and the story was neither Too Scary, Too Dark, or Too Preachy. In fact, I found it to be Quite Sweet.

And sometimes, that’s Just Right.

(Just for the record: because this is a Cybils nominee, I’ve been asked to make sure y’all know this is my opinion only, and not that of the panel.) 

by Diane Stanley
ages: 10+
First sentence: “
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Molly, who was once a scullery maid and is now a lady, is best friends with the king. There’s no one he trusts more than her, it’s Molly (and her… something… boyfriend? best friend?… Tristan, as well as a knight, translator and a lady companion) that he sends to find the Loving Cup, something which the king will use to make a princess fall in love with him and marry him. (I think she was betrothed to his brother, who was murdered.)

Before I go much further, yes this is a sequel. And no, I didn’t read the first one first. (Though I kind of want to now. When there’s time.) In many ways, though, this one works as a stand-alone: Stanley gives you enough information to get the gist of the previous story, but I don’t think it got in the way of the telling of this one. I may have felt differently had I read book #1 first, but I didn’t, so there it is.

Anyway.

Molly goes on her quest to find the cup, which turns out her grandfather was a specialist in making. Also, it turns out her grandfather was from a super-secret magical place where Everything Is Perfect. Except when they find it, they arrest all Molly’s friends and take her prisoner. So they can teach her. And it’s for the protection of the city because if their secrets got out, it would be Bad.

For the most part, I really enjoyed this book. Molly’s a great character: strong, stubborn, opinionated, yet loyal, trusting, and resourceful. I enjoyed watching her figure out how to get out of her prison, and how her friends rallied around her at the end.

But, it also felt clunky. I think it went back and forth between the right amount of showing and telling, to lecturing me about what the characters were doing.  In the moments when there was a balance, I loved it, but then I would be jarred out of the story for a while, until I could get my groove again.

Maybe that’s a fault of my own, for not having read the first book, because I really did like the overall story (and while the story ended, I’m not sure it’s quite done). Even with its faults, it’s a good book.

(Just for the record: because this is a Cybils nominee, I’ve been asked to make sure y’all know this is my opinion only, and not that of the panel.)

by Vivian Vande Velde
ages: 11+
First sentence: “My mother isn’t normally the kind of parent who comes to school and has me yanked out of class because she needs to see me.”
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Grace Pizzelli is your average teenager. Nothing special (at least nothing like her older sister, Emily, who seems to be Perfect), but nothing terrible either. Then, one day, the CEO of Rasmussem, Inc., the creator of the world’s best virtual immersion games, comes to school to pull Grace out. It seems that Emily, who was working as an intern at Rasmussem, has plugged herself into a game and reprogrammed it so she can’t come out. She only has hours left to live before the being connected to the game overheats her brain (or something like that) and kills her.

It’s up to Grace to go into the game and find a way to get Emily out.

Once in, Grace discovers that the game she was expecting (something Gruesome and Horrible) Emily to choose is not the game she chose. No, this game is all sprites and pink and princes and sparkles. Nothing deadly here, right? Well…. the longer they are in the game, the more sinister it becomes. It turns out that not everything pink is fun and good.

This was a lot of fun to read. Aside from the having to save a sibling theme (there are a lot of those this year, and I’ve only read a sixth of those nominated!), the idea of having a fluffy video game turn against its players is a creative one. And, Velde’s pacing is tight. She kept me involved an interested in how the game is going (and whether or not Emily was going to make it out) through the whole book. And even though it got moralistic (the reason why Emily plugged herself into the game were not, shall we say, entirely honorable) in the middle and again at the end, it wasn’t horribly heavy handed.

No, the only drawback to the book was that I wanted more: the world to get More Evil, the sisters to have to Endure More Trials. It was all too… fluffy in the end.

That said, call it punk gamer fluffy. Which is a kind of fluffy that I don’t mind.

(Just for the record: because this is a Cybils nominee, I’ve been asked to make sure y’all know this is my opinion only, and not that of the panel.)

by Adam-Troy Castro
ages: 9+
First sentence: “The neighbors though Gustav Gloom was the unhappiest little boy in the world.”
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Gustav Gloom isn’t really the unhappiest little boy in the world. He just lives in a house full of ghosts and shadows, and not real people. It’s hard to be really happy when you don’t have a family or friends. But he’s not sad, either. The only real danger he has is staying out of the way of the People Taker and his Beast. It’s not a bad life.

Then a family moves in across the street, one that has two little girls — Pearlie and Fernie — who court danger. So, of course, Fernie wanders over to the Gloom Mansion (in the middle of the night) following her wandering cat.  Little does she know what she’s in for… (cue sinister music)

To be honest: this really wasn’t all that scary. Maybe it’s because I’m an adult (I need to have A read it, just to see if it is scary), but the Terrifying Parts weren’t all that Terrifying. That said, it was a pretty good adventure, a nice tale of friendship, with just a smidgen of ghosts and baddies.

But what really won me over with this one (yes, it’s the start of a series, but from what I can tell, they’re all individual adventures), was that it’s really tightly written, and excellently plotted. There was enough going on to keep me turning pages, and I enjoyed the journey.

And sometimes, that’s all a book needs.

(Just for the record: because this is a Cybils nominee, I’ve been asked to make sure y’all know this is my opinion only, and not that of the panel.)

by Katherine Applegate
ages: 9+
First sentence: “I am Ivan.”
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Months ago, I saw a review for this one over at Abby the Librarian, and I thought to myself: y’know, I ought to read that one.

But I’m not really into animal stories, and it kind of fell by the wayside. There is so much else to read, after all.

Then, we got the amazing luck to have it land on the Middle Grade Science Fiction/Fantasy list, for even though it’s not a fantasy in the traditional sense, it is a fantastical novel, something which probably could never happen, even though there’s a slight outside chance that it could.

I’m so happy we ended up with it.

Because, like Abby and others have said: it’s a wonderful novel.

Slim, written not in verse but rather in short sentences and chapters, it’s a story told by a gorilla in captivity. He’s not an especially happy gorilla, but he’s not an especially sad one either. Because his family was killed and he was sold when he was a baby, he doesn’t know anything other than captivity. He is friends with an old circus elephant and a mutt of a dog, and he has a sort-of relationship with Julia, the daughter of the nighttime janitor in the mall where Ivan lives.

He probably would have spent the rest of his life in his “domain”, until his owner buys a baby elephant, Ruby. Suddenly, Ivan has someone to protect. And he realizes that there could be more to his life, and Ruby, at least, deserves more.

It’s a simple novel, something that a third grader could get a grasp of. But it’s a powerful one: one that drew me into Ivan’s world, filled me with sympathy and love for these animals who just want to live a decent life. And yes, I did cry at the end.

It’s about time I read it. Beautiful.

(Just for the record: because this is a Cybils nominee, I’ve been asked to make sure y’all know this is my opinion only, and not that of the panel.)