by M. E. Breen
ages: 10 to 14
First sentence: “The sun sets so quickly in Howland that the people who live there have no word for evening.”
Review copy sent to me by the publisher.
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Hmmm. This book has an interesting premise: an orphan girl, Annie, is sold by her “Uncle” to the Drop, the mine where all the kingdom’s jewelstones are mined. Except, Annie — who has learned that she can see in the dark — gets away. She makes her way to the main city, gets into the palace, and begins to discover that the fact that the Drop is exploting children is only the tip of the iceberg.

But, the premise — complete with twists and turns and prophecies — wasn’t quite enough to make this book soar. With all it’s evocative language and descriptions, and Annie running about here and there and everywhere, I found myself slightly confused with what was exactly going on. And when the big reveal came at the end, I was completely underwhelmed. Maybe this has something to do with being an adult, but I’m not sure. The plotting felt uneven — too little happened for too much of the book, then it all came crashing down in the last 1/3. Which is too bad, becuase, really: it was an interesting premise.

by Jenny Han
ages: 10+
First sentence: “It is the end of a summer afternoon and the sun will be setting soon, our favorite part of the day.”
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Ah, first love. Generally speaking, I’m pretty jaded about the whole first love thing — especially if it morphs into True Love — but I found this book by Jenny Han to be exceptionally sweet and poignant as it looked at a girls first “real” crush, as well as the bumps and joys of growing up.

Twelve-year-old Annemarie Wilcox — Shug for short — has just realized she’s is in love. Unfortunately, it’s with her best friend, Mark, who increasingly — now that they’ve started the 7th grade — won’t admit that she exists. On top of that, things are getting increasingly worse between her parents, her best friend Elaine has a boyfriend and is spending less time with Shug. Not to mention that she’s being forced (for the sake of a grade) to tutor her mortal enemy. Increasingly, Shug just can’t seem to find where she fits in all of this change.

There is so many things to love about this book, from it’s genuine Southernness (I’m a sucker for Southern books), to the affection Han has for her characters, to Shug’s voice throughout the book. Shug is a charming character, torn between hanging on to childhood and yet entranced by growing up. She’s easy to relate to: everyone has a first crush, and, for me at least, I found the awkwardness Shug has to be completely believable.

In short, Han has captured a perfect slice of pre-teen life. And done it in a quiet, yet completely charming, way.

by Wendy Mass
ages: 9-12
First sentence: “The oddest thing about Angelina D’Angelo was that no one could remember a time when she didn’t live in Willow Falls.”
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When I saw this book over at Shelf Elf a while back, I knew I had to put it on hold if only because Wendy Mass wrote my favorite middle grade book of last year.

And, while I don’t think I loved this one as much as Every Soul a Star, it’s still charming and magical and sweet, and well worth the time to read.

Amanda and Leo were born on the same day. Their parents met, and nothing more was thought about it until a year later, when they both scheduled the same party place at the same time and on the same day and ended up celebrating their birthdays together. Thus a tradition was born. Fast forward 10 years, when Amanda overhears Leo trying to be cool with his friends, telling them he’s only her friend out of pity. The tradition end, the friendship broken.

Then comes her eleventh birthday, which really isn’t all that grand. It’s not, particularly, that anything goes wrong. It’s more that nothing quite feels right. And that evening, when her party is a spectacular flop — because Leo is having his across town instead of with her — it seems that nothing will ever be right again.

And then, the next morning she wakes up and it’s her birthday all over again.

It’s kind of a Groundhog Day for middle grade readers: Amanda and Leo are stuck in the loop together and have to figure out how to get it to stop looping their birthday. I have to be honest: this idea worked well enough as a movie (except for Andie McDowell, who sucks the life out of the movies she’s in), but I had little confidence that it would work as a book. Thankfully, Mass is skilled enough to pull it off. It’s amusing and gratifying to see how the enchantment all plays out, from the realization that they’re stuck in the loop (not only individually, but together), to their working out their differences, to the way they figure out how to get out of the loop. Mass has used the right amount of whimsy and magic to make this story believable, without overburdening it with charms and spells. Amanda and Leo are perfect friends, tentative at first because of the fall-out, but in the end making a perfect team.

It’s a cute story about finding and remaining friends even when it seems impossible. But then, with Wendy Mass, nothing is impossible.

by Michael Buckley
ages: 9+
First sentence: “Sabrina Grimm’s life was a collection of odd events.”

It’s been a year since I’ve visited Ferryport Landing and the Grimms, and if I were brutally honest (which — shock — I can be sometimes), I would have to say that I didn’t really think about the series. It didn’t really matter to me that the next one was coming out, and I didn’t rush to the library to get the next copy for my girls.

Yet, a copy came our way, both M and C devoured it, and I found myself wondering: what happens next? What’s the next twist and turn that Buckley can throw at us? So, I caved and read it (if only so I could get the book back to our friends who lent it to us).

And… it’s much of the same as the other ones. Fun — I like Buckley’s interpretations of the fairy tales — with multiple twists and turns, and… well, vaguely annoying. I spent less time with the book this time around because I read it to myself rather than reading it out loud, and so I wasn’t as annoyed. Still, I think Buckley’s dialogue is awkward, and he spends too much time spinning his wheels instead of moving forward with the plot. That, and the whole “to be continued” still grates on me.

That said, M and C still really like this series, and the big reveal of the identity of the Master is, well, shocking. And yeah, I’ll probably read the next one when it comes out, even as I ask myself: when will this series end?

by Brandon Sanderson
ages: 10+
First sentence: “So, there I was, slumped in my chair, waiting in a drab airport terminal, munching absently on a bag of stale potato chips.”

I enjoyed the first one in this series enough that I should have jumped at the chance to read the second, especially after Becky’s and Tricia’s reviews reminded me how much I liked these.

The book picks up where Evil Librarians left off, basically (it’s been more than a year since I read the last one, and I didn’t really feel like I was missing anything). This time, however, Alcatraz needs to find his grandfather who has gone searching for his father in the (dreaded) Library of Alexandria (you only thought it was destroyed). Teamed up with Bastille and having met his uncle Kaz and cousin Australia — oh, and being chased by a member of the Scrivener’s Bones, a half-human, half-Alivened machine-thing that’s pretty ominous — he heads down into the bowels to see what he, and his Talent of Breaking things, can do.

Going back and rereading my review for Evil Librarians, I found that my reactions were similar: while I liked the snide comments, the tongue-in-cheek-ness, it also simultaneously annoyed me. I did think quite a few times as Sanderson/Alcatraz took detour after detour in the narrative that maybe it was several times too many. That maybe the fish and shoes and other distractions were a bit much. But, aside from that, it’s still a very enjoyable journey, with lots of asides about authors and writing (The Honorable Council of Fantasy Writers Whose Books are Way Too Long — the good old THCoFWWBAWTL; or the aside about serial killers wanting to read these books because they have some vendetta about the author, in which case, the author is not Brandon Sanderson or Alcatraz Smedry, but rather Garth Nix, who lives in Australia) that have absolutely nothing to do with the plot, but are entertaining nonetheless.

At any rate, even though it’s not as good as the first one, I’m still interested in where the story will go. After all, Alcatraz, torturer that he is, left us with a bit of a cliff-hanger. Which makes me curious.

Buy it at Amazon, Powell’s or your local independent bookstore.

by Sarah Pennypacker
ages: 7-10
First sentence: “I have noticed that teachers get exciting confused with boring a lot.”

Clementine’s school is having a fundraiser for the big spring trip. All the grades are pairing up to do something (car wash, bake sale), and the third and fourth grades are having… a talent show (“Talent-Palooza, Night of the Stars!”). Which is all fine and good, except Clementine doesn’t have a talent. Can’t sing. Can’t dance. Can’t even hop. (Has problems sitting on occasion.) So, in her own unique and hilarious way, she sets about trying to find a talent to share for the show, from begging her friend Margaret — who has talents to spare — to borrow a talent from her (in which she glues beer bottle caps — the bottles were full — to the bottom of her sneakers) to attempting to create her own talent (in which she puts a leash on her baby brother, whose name she keeps changing to different vegetables, in order to have a trained dog). Of course none of these work, and as the date for the talent show creeps closer, the stress (for Clementine, as well as for the reader) mounts. Will she be able to find a talent for the show in the end? Of course. And it’s pretty impressive — and very Clementine-ish — and quite delightful what she comes up with in the end.

Buy it at: Amazon, Powell’s or your local independent bookstore.

by Hilary McKay
ages: 10+
First sentence: “I do not like it when people shout.”

When I read this for the Cybils last November, my review wasn’t really a review, more like a bemused reaction to never having heard of the Casson family before. Since I didn’t write a “proper” review, and since I read the last one first, I figured I ought to go back and revisit Rose after having read the other four in the series.

I’m so glad I did; while it’s still funny, and sweet, and entertaining, and enjoyable, and I’m still in love with the Casson family, it’s a much more poignant book now that I know the “history”.

Without giving too much away, a year and a half after Caddy Ever After ended, it’s Christmas time and Rose is at home, alone. Eve is sequestered in the shed with illness (she, very sensibly, doesn’t want to spread germs); Bill is still in London, though he’s become increasingly dissatisfied with the arrangment (finally!); Caddy has disappeared after taking off in hopes of finding Michael; Saffy and Sarah are busy with school and are rarely home; same with Indigo. The only person left in the whole empty house is Rose, which she doesn’t like. Especially since it’s darker earlier. She doesn’t like that every one is still bossing her around: she is in Grade 6, after all, and while no one wants to worry about her, no one remembers that she doesn’t like worring about them. There’s also a subplot about Rose figuring out the magic of stories, which is very sweet (yay for fairy stories!). Typical to the Casson family books, it doesn’t stay that way: it begins when Indigo’s friend David starts coming around after fighting with his mother, and eventually, the house becomes full again.

There’s so much to love about this series, and I found this one to be a very satisfying end to the series (on the one hand, I do want it to go on, and watch them all grow up — but Rose has a blog to help with that — but this one did end remarkably well). Rose has always stolen the books from under her siblings, and to have a whole book focus on her works really well (especially since this one is much less soap-opera-y than the last book that focused on only Rose). As I said before, it’s quite poignant; there’s little references here and there to events in all the books: from Saffy’s angel and the picture Rose drew on her first day of school, through to the catastrophe of Caddy’s wedding (and everything inbetween).

I’m so glad I was introduced to the Casson family. I’m sure they’re books that I will revisit periodically when I need a smile or a pick-me-up. Because they’re just so loveable. Especially Rose.

Buy it at Amazon, Powell’s or your local independent bookstore.

by Sarah Pennypacker
ages: 7-10
First sentence: “I have had not so good of a week.”

Since C has abandoned our nightly reading sessions in favor of her own reading time, I’ve been feeling a bit lonely. I like reading aloud. Then it occurred to me: A is 5, she’s starting kindergarten, I could read to her!

We conferred, she was willing, and we settled on a book: Clementine.

I’ve read the third in the series, which works well as a stand-alone, but hadn’t read any of the others. You don’t need to start at the beginning, but it doesn’t hurt. And that way you can fall in love with Clementine properly. Because she is an absolute dear. One of those characters that I want to wrap up and put in my pocket.

Clementine’s been having a bad week. She was sent to the principal’s office Monday for cutting her friend Margaret’s hair — and she was only trying to help! — and it only got worse. But, honestly, what I really loved were the little things like ideas sproinging into her head, or her myriad of names for her little brother (like Radish and Zucchini and Lima Bean — if she got stuck with a fruit name, why shouldn’t he have a vegetable name), or her desire to do things right but they always come out wrong. As I said, she’s an absolute dear.

And A loved her, too. She couldn’t wait until reading time, and didn’t want to stop once we started. She adored Clementine, she loved looking at the pictures, and while some of the humor went over her head, she found enough to enjoy.

Which is why we’re reading the next book now.

Buy it at Amazon, Powell’s, or your local independent bookstore.

by M.T. Anderson
ages: 10+
First sentence: “On Career Day Lily visited her dad’s work with him and discovered he worked for a mad scientist who wanted to rule the earth through destruction and desolation.”

First impressions are everything.

First sentences, first books by an author, first foray into an author’s work… it doesn’t matter: the first impression you take away from a book colors much of what you read by that author.

My first impression of M.T. Anderson is that he’s brilliant. Odd, sure. But brilliant. He’s another one that tickles my sense of humor just right and I find myself laughing out loud, often. Sure, the plot — Lily’s, our main heroine, dad is working in an abandoned warehouse for a “man”, Larry, who wears a bag on his head, helping him make stilts for whales, but it turns out that Larry is set on world domination, but only Lily and her friends Katie and Jasper can stop him — is really very weird. But, it wasn’t the plot that made the book so, well, great. It was the little asides, the footnotes, the fact that the book was littered with random ads for dime-store novels — the fact that this felt, looked, and read like a 1950s adventure novel or even bad B-movie you probably have seen on Mystery Science Theater 3000 (if you’re not old enough to have seen it in the theater) — that’s what made this book so brilliant.

One quote, and then I’ll tell you that you need to find this one and read it. The context really doesn’t matter, just so you know:

There is nothing better than friends working together against incredible odds. It is a great feeling. Some friends of mine and I, for example, once had to stop this jerk we knew from middle school who was trying to carve his face next to the presidents’ on Mount Rushmore. He was the richest kid in school, and he had won a bunch of Italian stonemasons in a game of Go Fish. He and the stonemasons were headed down to Mount Rushmore in a bus.

You guessed it — he had won the bus in a karaoke competition with his mom. He had won singing “You Trouble Me Bigly.”

I won’t go into the whole thing, because I’m just trying to make a point that when you work on a project together with friends, and you’re rushing around with climbing gear and scissors, and your friend Dana is explaining how to go up mountainsides, and your friend Lick is showing everyone how to disable a helicopter, and you’re doing your part by writing personalized haiku for each of them, you get this intense feeling of love for your friends, and you come to admire them even more than you did before.

You should read this book. As for me, I’m going to find one of Anderson’s other ones to enjoy.

Buy Whales on Stilts! at: Amazon, Powell’s, or your local independent bookstore.