by Joan Bauer
ages: 10+
First sentence: “Mr. Bennett walked into room 212 carrying a plastic bag.”
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Having been on a Middle Grade Fiction Round 1 Cybils panel a few times, I am quite familiar with dead moms, absent moms, crazy moms, overbearing moms, controlling moms, and all sorts of other bad moms. Kids have had to deal with homelessness, with abuse, with death. Which they usually do with varying degrees of success.

But never before have I read a character with so much down-to-earth pluck and good-natured spirit as I have in Sugar Mae Cole.

Her father — she calls him Mr. Leeland — is a gambler, and comes with pretty much all that baggage that that entails. He’s taken out loans against the house, gotten involved with less-than-respectable characters, and is absent more than he is home. Sugar’s been basically raised by her mother, Reba, and her grandfather, King Cole (pretty awesome name if you ask me). But, King died a year back, and it’s been increasingly more difficult for Reba and Sugar to make ends meet. Until they don’t anymore, and the lose the house.

The bounce around from living with family to living in a shelter while Reba tries to find a job. Then she gets a sort-of lead on a job in Chicago, so on a whim the two of them head up there. Things — of course — don’t go the way they are supposed to, and Reba has a mental breakdown. Sugar is shuffled off into foster care, and Reba’s in an institution while they figure out the best way to rebuild their lives.

I should mention the dog on the cover: his name is Shush and he’s adorable. He’s more a metaphor than an actual character: he’s been abused by a previous owner, and is insecure about his place in the world. But, through love and acceptance, Sugar helps him gain the confidence he needs to be a courageous dog. Which is a parallel to Sugar’s experience: she has a difficult time trusting, but through a loving foster family and an amazing teacher, she blossoms.

As I said to begin with, this novel rests squarely on Sugar’s shoulders, and she carries it superbly.

by J. Scott Savage
ages: 9+
First sentence: “Please relax and make yourself comfortable.”
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Review copy provided by the author.

There are two things you should know about Nick, Carter, and Angelo. One: they are inseparable. Two: they love Halloween. This Halloween’s a bust, though, because Nick has been spirited off to the Bayous of Louisiana in order to go to the funeral of a great-aunt he’s never met.

Who might possibly have been a voodoo witch.

So when Nick finds an amulet in a crypt (at midnight), you should expect weird things to happen, right? How about turning into a zombie? At first it’s cool — who wouldn’t want to be a zombie, right? — but Nick and friends eventually end up racing against the clock before Nick ends up undead permanently.

On the one hand, this is a fun, silly, horror-lite story. It’s just about my speed when it comes to zombies (I just don’t do the undead), and I kind of liked both Nick and Co’s reaction to the zombifying. Very 10-year-old reaction. And the chapter titles –“Do Not Try This Part at Home” and “This Chapter is Where Things Really Start to Get Weird” — totally killed me. Oh, and I liked the increasingly decaying cartoon of the boy at the beginning of each chapter.

But, the more I read the less I liked it.  From the narrator that bookends the story (unnecessary) to the snotty girls that were supposed to compete with Nick and Co (pointless; why have them, if all they’re going to do is get in the way?) to the mildly weird and kind of confusing ending (huh? Where’d HE come from?), it’s internal logic (as Sondy would put it) just didn’t hold up for me.

Then again, I’m not 9. So it may just be me.

by Ellen Byran Obed, Illustrated by Barbara McClintock
ages: 8+
First sentence: “The first ice came on the sheep pails in the  barn — a skim of ice so thin that it broke when we touched it.”
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There are some books where you can write pages and pages about them. There are other books when one word can sum up everything you read.

Charming.

It’s not really a story, it’s a catalog of winter memories. The progression of winter through ice, from the first crack of ice through building a rink in the backyard, to the melting that comes with spring. The illustrations are lovely, the prose spare, and the result: charming.

It made me miss a real winter, the winters I remember from my childhood (though I’m not sure I’ve ever had a winter like they get in Maine). And it made me wistful that my children don’t get those kind of deep winters that make for good ice here in Kansas.

In short: charming.

by Lois Lowry
ages: 9+
First sentence: “I’ll race you to the corner, Ellen!”
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I read this a long time ago, but only wrote this little review about it:  “A compelling story about a Danish family during the Nazi resistance and how they help save their Jewish neighbors. Made me proud to have Danish ancestors. (Though, admittedly, none were there in 1943.)”

While I had much of the same reaction upon rereading, I was struck with how simple this book was.

It’s the story of a Danish family in 1943. The Nazis have taken over Denmark, and the Johansens — Father, Mother, daughters Annemarie and Kirstie (their older sister Lise died a couple years before) — is learning to adapt. It’s not fun, it’s not easy, but they’re stalwart and determined. Then, one night, the rabbis warned their congregations that the Nazis were coming for them. That includes the Johansens’ neighbors and good friends, the Rosens. It falls to the Johansens to help the Rosens escape to Sweden.

I think the best part of the book is that it’s based on a true story. The Danish really did help the Jews escape the Nazis. There really were courageous people who sacrificed their safety to help their friends.

But the story itself was… simplistic. I know Lowry was writing for middle grade readers, but there lacked a complexity that even the best middle grade readers have. It was straightforward, matter-of-fact, and lacked a depth that I had hoped for.

It’s not that I didn’t enjoy the book; I did. It’s just that there are better WWII books out there. Even though, as a Dane, I do appreciate having this story told.

by Clare Vanderpool
ages: 10+
First sentence: “If I’d know what there was to know about Early Auden, that strangest of boys, I might have been scared off, or at least kept my distance like all the others.”
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Review copy provided by my place of employment.
Additional disclaimer: I’ve chatted with the author on numerous occasions when she’s stopped into Watermark.

It’s 1945, and Jack Baker’s father has come back to Kansas from serving in World War II. Except, he came home to a son he doesn’t recognize and a wife who recently died. So, he packs up the house and tows Jack up to Maine to attend a boarding school near the Naval station where he’s based.

None of this sits well with Jack.  He’s a Kansas boy, through and through: loving the wide-open spaces, the sky, the heat, the wheat fields. And so Maine, especially Maine in the fall, throws him for a loop. Not to mention that he’s lost his anchor — his mother — and he’s adrift in the sea of boys and New England customs (like rowing), that are completely foreign to him.

Until he meets Early Auden, a boy who only listens to Billie Holiday when it rains; who lives in the school basement and only comes to class when he feels like it; and — most amazingly — has all the digits of pi memorized, seeing colors, patterns, and stories in the numbers. It’s all overwhelming for Jack; he really has no idea how to deal with everything. Until fall break, when Early leads Jack on an adventure, both literal and metaphorical, to find something that neither boy thought they were looking for.

It’s an evocative novel, one which explores loss and belonging, of being uprooted and searching for a place to fit.  To be honest, everything I said about Moon Over Manifest works here as well: even though the novel isn’t set in Kansas, Jack’s love for his home state comes through loud and clear. (And after 6 1/2 years here, I’m beginning to see what it is to love about being here.) But, Vanderpool also creates a sense of the Maine wilderness, of the early- to mid-fall glory of the woods, of tramping around in the rain. I enjoyed the juxtaposition of the two climates.

In fact, the thing I enjoyed most about the novel was the way Vanderpool juxtaposed elements: Kansas and Maine; the death of a mother with the death of a brother; Early and Jack’s story with that of Pi’s (pi the number becomes Pi the character in Early’s mind; the numbers tell his story.); the various characters Early and Jack meet on their journey. It kept me interested throughout, wondering how everything would weave together in the end.

Actually, the end was probably my least favorite part: while it came to a conclusion, I felt something was, not quite fitting together. It doesn’t have a happily-ever-after bow — something I appreciated — but it didn’t quite sit well with me either.

But that’s a small quibble in an otherwise excellent book.

by Kelly Barnhill
ages: 10+
First sentence: “The end of my world began with a story.”
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Princess Violet is not beautiful. In fact, she is the furthest thing from it. But, she is gregarious, intelligent, and well-loved by all. She isn’t entirely satisfied by this arrangement: she thinks she’d much rather be beautiful than anything else. So, when the 13th God, the Nybbas, starts whispering in her ear, making promises to Violet, she’s willing to risk the entire mirrored world for beauty.

Or, so she thinks.

That’s about as far as I got. It’s not a bad premise, though the illustrations don’t do Violet’s deformities justice, but the execution drove me batty. Generally, I have no problems with intrusive narrators (I liked A Tale Dark and Grimm and the Incorrigibles of Ashton Place books, after all), but this one drove me batty. First of all, the narrator is an actual character in the story, and an adult one at that. And the story is written in first person. All of which doesn’t add up to me. Who is the main character? Violet. Then why is this storyteller guy (who calls me “my dear” all the time, too!) telling the story?

Sad to say, even though I think that this book has a good moral (be accepting of yourself, and you may change the world), I never got past the annoying narrator to get to that point.

(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.)