Middle Grade

The Charmed Children of Rookskill Castle

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charmedchildrenby Janet Fox
First sentence: “It is 1863.”
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Review copy provided by the publisher.
Release date: March 15, 2016
Content: There’s some scary imagery, and the narrative is a bit confusing. I’d give it to a precocious 3rd grader, but definitely 4th and up. It will be in the Middle Grade (grades 3-5) section of the bookstore.

At first glance (at least for me), this looks like a kind of off-beat historical fiction. It’s the middle of WWII, and the children in London are being sent out to the countryside in order to escape the bombing. Kat and her siblings Robbie and Amelie are among those kids sent away, in this case to a castle in Scotland where a boarding school of sorts has been set up.

But things aren’t always what they seem. Including this book.

Rookskill Castle is a dark place (and not just because fall in Scotland is dreary), and the lady of the castle is up to something. Kat is sensible and practical, and not at all inclined to believe that what it going on could be dark magic.

And yet.

I loved this book, with reservation. On the one hand, the story was compelling — by the end, I was flying through it — and I adored Kat. She was practical, mechanically-minded and good at math, all things you don’t usually get from fantasy heroines. She was also willing to admit when she’s scared, and the boys were mostly willing to support her in the decisions that had to be made.

However,  I have issues when I know more than the characters. Fox flits back and forth through time, from WWII backwards to the mid-1800s, in order to give the reader the backstory of the castle. I’m not the most careful reader, and so I was able to piece things together before the characters did. I’ll admit it kind of heightened the tension — I wanted Kat to figure things out before they got too bad — but I was also annoyed that it took her so long. In the end, I found I didn’t mind so much, but it did niggle at the back of my mind while I was reading,.

The magic, however, was great. I loved the way Fox wove good vs. dark magic, and how it was a very practical sort of magic as well. That much — plus the  general, overall creepiness — definitely nakes the book worth reading.

Fridays with the Wizards

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fridaysby Jessica Day George
First sentence: “It was good to be home.”
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Others in the series: Tuesdays at the Castle, Wednesdays in the Tower, Thursdays with the Crown
Content: These books are so great for those middle readers who don’t like super long books, but want action-packed stories. Not too many difficult words, and George keeps them short and sweet. It’s in the middle grade (grades 3-5) section of the bookstore.

Now that Castle Glower is whole again and Wizard Arkwright is captured, Celie figures her work is done and she can just go back to normal. Except that normal isn’t, well, normal anymore. Lilah and Lulath are engaged (yay!) and so there are preparations to go to Grath and meet Lulath’s family. The king decides that a ship really needs to be built. And people keep bonding with all the baby griffins, though they soon learn that it’s the griffins who choose, not the people.

Celie isn’t happy with all these changes, but she can deal. Until they discover that Wizard Arkower has escaped his prison and is creeping around the secret passageways of the Castle. Celie’s the one who knows the Castle best, and so it falls on her to figure a way to capture the wizard. If she can.

This series is such a delight. I love that the family is a good one, that Celie has challenges that are outside of her family and that her family is generally supportive of her as a person. It’s wonderfully refreshing. I also enjoy that these books build on each other while offering an individual adventure that actually comes to a stopping point. No real cliffhangers, which is nice. And that she writes at a kids’ level without talking down to them. It really is a fun series. I’ll definitely be sad when it ends.

As a bonus, I got to host her here for school visits and a store event a couple weeks ago. She’s just as delightful as her books!

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The Key to Extraordinary

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keytoextraordinaryby Natalie Lloyd
First sentence: “It is a known fact that the most extraordinary moments in a person’s life come disguised as ordinary days.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy pilfered off the ARC shelves at my place of employment.
Release date: February 23, 2016
Content: It’s short(ish) and the words aren’t too terribly difficult, but there’s kind of a little romance, so maybe it’s not for the 3rd graders? It’s in the middle grade (grades 3-5) section of the bookstore.

The women in Emma’s family have had a long history of doing Extraordinary things. They have a dream, which they call their Blue Wildflower dream, and in that dream they are Shown Their Path, the way in which they’ll be extraordinary. At almost 13, Emma’s convinced that in spite of all this, her life won’t be that special. She lives in a smallish town in Tennessee, and while she loves her Grandma Blue and the cafe she runs, where Emma’s older brother is the baker, there really isn’t much else.

Then Emma gets her wildflower dream, and it doesn’t make sense.  Then developers start sniffing around the cafe, wanting to buy it, and suddenly maybe Emma can piece together some lost history and save the cafe while filling her destiny.

I liked Snicker of Magic quite a bit, and I like Southern Quirky (as Ms. Yingling calls it), but this one didn’t work for me.  I’m not sure I can pinpoint why, though. Maybe it’s a bit of a reading slump (I tossed aside about four books partially read before I settled on this one), maybe it’s that I’m a bit under the weather. Either way, Emma and her plight didn’t sit with me. It even had a Nice Moral at the end: follow your dreams and expectations and don’t let the accomplishments of the past make you intimidated (or at least I think that’s the message), but I kind of just shrugged and said, “Meh.”

Which is too bad. I did want to like this one more.

Friday Barnes, Girl Detective

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fridaybarnsby R. A. Spratt
First sentence: “Friday Barnes was not an unhappy child.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy snagged off the ARC shelves at work.
Content: There’s some biggish words, and a bunch of swoony 7th-grade girls, but other than that’s it’s aimed toward the 3rd-5th grade crowd. It’s in the middle grade section of the bookstore.

Friday Barnes excels in going unnoticed. In fact, she prefers it that way. She prefers just sliding through school, being little noticed. She also is incredibly observant, so when her uncle (who’s a private investigator) needs some help solving a bank robbery, she helps, solving it. Which means she received the $50,000 reward money. She uses that to go to a posh boarding school, mostly because she wants a change.

What she gets is a brilliant but absent-minded roommate, some ditzy teachers, and a few mysteries to solve (she makes a tidy profit doing so, too.)

It’s not a bad book. I like that Friday is a girl, and that she uses deductive reasoning to solve cases (kind of like Sherlock Holmes, or Encyclopedia Brown). And while the mysteries were run-of-the mill, I didn’t catch the clues enough to solve it myself, so they were pretty smart. That said, the stereotypes drove me nuts. The absent-minded smart girl with the dumb jock brother. The silly 7th grade girls who swoon over a hairy mystery guy in the forest because “hairy guys are cute”. The super hot boy who’s got it out for Friday. Yeah, it’s all supposed to be funny, but it kind of just fell flat. I’d love it if authors stopped using silly stereotypes for humor.

So, in the end, while I like the idea of this one, I didn’t really like the book.

Mr. Lemoncello’s Library Olympics

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libraryolympicsby Chris Grabenstein
First sentence: “Just about every kid in America wished they could be Kyle Keeley.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Others in the series: Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library
Content: Much like the first in the series, this one has short chapters and not much objectionable content. There are some bigger words, but Grabenstein defines them for you. It’s in the middle grade (grades 3-5) section of the bookstore.

Ever since they won the competition to get out of Mr. Lemoncello’s library, Kyle and his friends Miguel, Sierra, and Akimi have had a certain amount of celebrity. Signing autographs, starring in commercials, the whole deal. Which, of course, has made everyone (not just Charles and Andrew, who lost the previous competition) a bit jealous. So they demand a rematch. And Mr. Lemoncello responds with the Library Olympics: kids will compete to be on regional teams which will then come to Alexandriaville to compete against the winning four.

The competitions are one part fun and one part silly and one part learning. And, of course, Charles and his mother (ugh) are up to their no-good tricks, trying to wrest control of the library from Mr. Lemoncello (in order to make it a More Respectable House of Learning) and kick him out of town. Additionally there’s a scary good (and kind of scary) competitor from Michigan, Marjory, who really knows her stuff.

It’s a bit more didactic than the last one — yes, we know: learning can be fun and censorship is bad — but I found I didn’t mind. It was fun, and filled with riddles and puzzles that will entertain kids. It’s delightful to revisit the wacky fun library again, even if we didn’t spend as much time there this time. And even though sequels aren’t often as good as the original, it was enjoyable.

Summerlost

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summerlostby Allie Condie
First sentence: “Our new house had a blue door.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Content: There’s a lot of talk of death, but nothing too sad. It’ll be in the middle grade (grades 3-5) section of the bookstore.

Cedar Lee didn’t expect much from her summer visiting her grandparents in Iron Creek. Her dad and brother died in a freak accident the hear before, and the rest of the family has been just barely managing. Then Cedar’s mother finds a house in Iron Creek and purchases it as a summer home, not something they can afford, but perhaps something that will help with healing.

Cedar’s not happy about it; she misses her dad and her brother, and doesn’t really want to move on. But between the new house, a summer taking care of her other brother, Miles, and her new friend, Leo, maybe she can heal.

This is a really difficult book to summarize, mostly because not much happens. It’s an incredibly introspective story, driven by characters — most notably the friendship (and just that, nothing more) between Leo and Cedar — rather than by plot. But it’s a lovely look at friendship and healing and enjoying the simpler things of life. There’s also is a love of Shakespeare and acting that weaves through the story which helps tie the whole story together.

An interesting aside: this is a very Mormon book. Oh, Condie does a lot to disguise it, but it’s really the Shakespeare festival in Utah (to which I’ve never been). And it — at least to a Mormon — just feels Mormon. But, that said, it’s something I noticed because I was tuned into the clues. And it’s not something I minded at all.

In fact, I thoroughly enjoyed this one.

The Fog Diver

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fogdiverby Joel Ross
First sentence: “My name is Chess, and I was born inside a cage.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: There’s some intense moments, and it’s a bit difficult to follow plot-wise, but it’s great for grades 4 and up. It’s in the middle grade (grades 3-5) section of the bookstore.

It’s the distant future, and the nanites that the world had designed to clean up the smog went crazy and created a fog that is inhabitable for humans. They’ve moved up to the tops of mountains to survive and have developed a whole society up there. Chess and his friends are at the bottom of the totem pole, being junk divers: they troll the Fog in their airship and it’s Chess’s job to dive in the fog to find relics of the lost age. The reason why Chess is so good at this is because he was born in the fog and his eye is swirling with nanites. He’s in hiding, somewhat, from the evil Lord Kodoc, who will take Chess and work him to death if he ever finds out he exists.

Huh. I’m not sure if that does this justice. (Probably not.) It’s a fantastic, wild weird world that Ross has created. My favorite part? The obscure references to pop culture. Harry Otter, or the X-Wing Enterprise or skycatchers (instead of skycrapers), all made me smile. It’s was a wink to current times without being too trendy and it was perfect. I also loved the supporting characters. Chess was pretty great, but so was the captain Hazel, the pilot Swede, and the gear girl (who had shades of Kaylee from Firefly) Bea. They worked well as a team and I ended up loving all of them equally.

I do have to admit that this took me a bit to get into. It’s slowish to start, but once it gets going, it’s a LOT of fun. And fun is just what I needed right now.

Nomad

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nomadby William Alexander
First sentence: “Nadia Antonovna Kollontai, the ambassador of her world, was not on her world.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Others in the series (though I’ve not read it): Ambassador
Content: There’s some intense moments, and maybe some difficult made-up words, but I’d give it to a 4th grader or higher. It would be in the middle grade (grades 3-5) sections of the bookstore.

I didn’t know what to expect heading into  William Alexander’s latest. From the cover, something in space, most likely. What I got was an epic adventure that involved aliens, space travel, time travel, and kids learning to put aside biases and learning to work together. There’s also a side story (which was never truly fleshed out to my satisfaction, but it didn’t deter from my overall enjoyment) about deporting illegal immigrants and how that affects people. In short: there’s a lot packed into this one.

From what I understand, Gabe and Nadia’s story begins in Ambassador, but since this is a Cybils book (I could have checked it out, but I honestly didn’t know until after I’d finished Nomad) I just dove right in. And aside from some initial getting used to the world that Alexander had created — a world in which aliens from all over space and time meet together in a dream space that you get to by, well, dreaming — I fell headfirst into the story and thoroughly enjoyed my time there.

I really enjoyed the problem-solving aspect of this as well. Nadia has been in space for 40 years (and hasn’t aged; isn’t speed-of-light travel fun?) and has to learn how to get along without her sight (she lost it in a failed experiment). She didn’t moan or whine about it; she just tackled the problem and looked for solutions. Gabe was the same way with being put into a new situation with being the Ambassador of Earth. He needed to learn the rules and guidelines and how to cooperate with people who are vastly different from him, and he did.

The only thing I didn’t think fit exactly was the subplot involving Gabe’s dad being deported. It did give Alexander an excuse to use a holding area near the border in Arizona, and to spotlight the awful conditions that immigrants (especially children) were being held in. But, other than that, it really didn’t serve much of a purpose to the overall story.

But even with that one little quibble, it was a delightful book, one I’m glad I read.

(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.)

The Dungeoneers

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bdungeoneersy John David Anderson
First sentence: “Colm Candorly had nine fingers and eight sisters.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: There’s some violence and it’s a little thick and somewhat intimidating for reluctant readers. It’s in the middle grade (grades 3-5) section of the bookstore.

Colm is the son of a cobbler in a small town in this world. They’re struggling for money (9 kids is no walk in the park) and one day, Colm decides that he’s going to help out. He heads to the town square and proceeds to pickpocket those who look like they could afford it. His father is (rightly) appalled, and heads out to talk to the magistrate. Instead, he brings back Finn Argos, a rogue and a teacher at the training school for Thwodin’s Legions, a band of dungeoneers — those who raid the hoards of elves, dwarves, and orcs for treasure.

I really, really , really wanted to like this one. It’s essentially a Dungeons & Dragon’s adventure in novel form. In Colm’s little group where he’s the rogue, there’s a mage, a druid, and a barbarian (she’s pretty awesome) and together they work to become awesome. There’s another group that bullys Colm’s, and there’s predictable ups and downs at school. I ended up skimming the last third, because I just got bored with it. It wasn’t doing anything new and the characters weren’t enough to keep my interest. Which was disappointing.

(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.)

 

To Catch a Cheat

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by Varian Johnson
First sentence: “Jackson Greene placed his pen on his desk, loosened his red tie, then flipped the page on his American History exam.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy provided by publisher.
Release date: January 26, 2016
Others in the series: The Great Greene Heist
Content: There’s a slight romance. It’ll be in the middle grade (grades 3-5) section of the bookstore.

Jackson Greene’s in retirement. Again. For real this time. No more cons. No more heists. He’s focusing on getting Gaby de la Cruz to be his girlfriend and on passing American History. Then he gets called into the office: someone flooded the bathrooms and ruined the carpets over the weekend, and the principal is convinced it’s Jackson and his crew.

Except it’s not: every single member of the crew has an alibi for the time frame, albeit ones they’re reluctant to give. And then Jackson is texted a video — obviously faked — of him and his crew performing the prank. It’s blackmail: steal the answers to the huge American History test or the principal gets the video and Jackson gets suspended.

There’s more to the plot than that, of course, including a brilliant long con with lots of twists and turns. Sure, it’s implausible, but it’s a lot of fun as well. The diverse cast is back as well, which is also incredibly gratifying. It’s very nice to have a fun book with diverse characters and have it be (mostly) issue-free. (I’m not sure how well the Asian kids came out of this; the character development of the minor characters seemed a little weak, but maybe Johnson was relying on what he did in the first book?)

I thoroughly enjoyed it.