by Cornelia Funke
ages: 9-12
First sentence: “I was eleven when my mother sent me to boarding school in Salisbury.”
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Jon Whitcroft, at war with his mother’s fiance (his father died years before), is sent away to boarding school. He feels it’s a punishment because his mother loves The Beard, as Jon has dubbed him, better. So, Jon expects to hate his time at school. But that was before he met Ella, made friends with Angus and Stu, and started seeing ghosts.

Turns out there’s a ghost of a old baron, Stourton, who has vowed to kill every Hartgill — Jon’s mother’s maiden name — who shows up at the school. And Jon’s his next target. The only way to stop him? William Longspee, bastard son of Richard the Lionheart, and sworn defender of those in need. Sure, he’s a ghost too, but since when has that ever stopped anyone?

This wasn’t a bad little ghost story. Which is to say that it wasn’t great, either. I think I’ve read a run of books that had telling vs. showing issues, and I have to admit that it’s driving me batty. Sure, this one was pitched as a man telling his reflections of a year at boarding school, and so maybe the telling can be forgiven. But, on the other hand, why tell it that way? Why give us the assurance that it would turn out all right? I think the tension, the story would have been greater if we didn’t know that the story would end happily, that perhaps Jon and his friends were in a danger that they couldn’t get out of. But Funke gave us that out, and I thought the book suffered for it.

Even so, it’s a decent walk through history, and I enjoyed Ella, Jon and Longspee as characters. It just wasn’t as great as I’d hoped it would be.

by Natalie Babbitt
ages: 10+
First sentence: “The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning.
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Once upon a time, there was a young girl named Winnie. She lived in a nondescript house next to a nondescript woods in a nondescript town. Then, one August day, she wanders into the woods and discovers a boy drinking from a spring. she wants to take a drink, too, which leads the boy to totally flip out. And then he, and his brother and mom, take her home with them.

To explain that the spring is really not good: it makes you live forever.

Let me stop there for a minute. I remember reading this, not as a child, but 10 or so years ago, when we got the 25th edition of the book. Hubby loved it, I read it and remember really enjoying it as well. Granted, M was only 4 at the time, and C was a baby.

This time, all I could think of was: what the heck! They KIDNAP her, she grows to LIKE THEM (Stockholm Syndrome, anyone?) and helps them escape. In what universe is this not a horror story???

I see the value of this book: there are a ton of ideas to talk about; C read it for her 6th grade language arts class last year, and I think it’d be a good book to teach. But as a story? I felt the writing was pedestrian, the characters unsympathetic, and the whole thing quite creepy.

But a classic?

I’m going to get creamed for this, but I don’t think it is. (Or maybe it is, if only for the themes.)

by R. J. Palacio
ages: 9+
First sentence: “I know I’m not an ordinary ten-year-old kid.”
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I’ve seen this one around for months — it has been on the New York Times Bestselling list, after all; and that’s not mentioning all the blogs I’ve seen it at — but for some reason, I’ve just never felt compelled to read it before now. Perhaps it’s because I figured it was one of the “those books”, feel-good stories about kids with disabilities that are supposed to enlighten me while making me somehow grateful I don’t have to go through that.

And in many ways it was that book.

August is an ordinary kid in many ways: he likes Star Wars, he enjoys reading and hanging out with his friends. Sure, he’s been home schooled, but that’s because he’s had so many surgeries that going to school wouldn’t have been practical. See, he has a condition that isn’t one of those you can hide: it affects his face. So, first impressions are not good.

But, now he’s starting fifth grade, and in addition to all the ups and downs, conflicts and highlights that go with fifth grade, August has to deal with a whole new set of people seeing his face, and judging him before they even get a chance to know him.

Of course, there will be kids (and parents) who can’t get past August’s facial anomalies. Of course, there will be bullies and problems and Things To Overcome. And, of course, August will Rise Above It All.

But — and this surprised me — it was also not that book.

There was a matter of fact-ness to this book that helped surpass the whole agenda for me. August was clearly an amazing kid, not because he’s special but because he’s not. He faces the world as any other ten-year-old boy would, and it’s everyone else — from his parents to his sister to his friends — who endow him with difference. I appreciated having the book from August’s point of view, but I also liked the chapters where we got to see him through different eyes (for the most part; there were a couple of times when I wondered why Palacio chose a specific character to move the story along). It was in doing this that Palacio got her main point across: that we are all people, no matter what we look like.

As an interesting side note: A picked up this other book the other day, and even though it’s not usually what she reads, she began reading this. There’s a friend of hers at school who is like August (though it’s his hands and arms, not his face), and she was interested in the idea that something like what her friend has would make a good book. I’m looking forward to talking to her about it when she finishes.

And, perhaps, that’s the best thing that can be said about Wonder: it will inspire conversation and discussion among those who read it.

by Eugene Yelchin
ages: 9+
First sentence: “My dad is a hero and a Communist and, more than anything, I want to be like him.”
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Sasha lives in Moscow, in Stalinist USSR, and wants to be exactly like his dad, a member of the State Security. The first step, of course, is joining the Young Pioneers.

Except, on the day when he was supposed to be inducted and everything was supposed to go just perfectly, Sasha’s world falls apart. First, his father gets arrested in the middle of the night; but Sasha figures it’s just a mistake. Then, his aunt won’t take him in. But at school, things get really weird. It doesn’t help that he accidentally breaks the nose off a Stalin statue — a federal offense, punishable by death — in the hall, which sets off a chain of events that leads to a basic revelation: maybe Stalin isn’t all that Sasha thought he was.

On the one hand, I can see how this is an important book. Instead of showing the horrors of Stalinism (and there are many) from the concentration camps (see Between Shades of Gray for that), it shows what it was like for an ordinary Soviet citizen. One who thought himself, and his family, to be in Stalin’s good graces. And who, like many ordinary Russians back then, got caught up in a web of conspiracies and lies that wrecked his life.

This should have been a powerful story. One of courage in the face of hopelessness and helplessness. Except, in many ways, this slim novel (which was gorgeously illustrated, by the way), it just didn’t live up to its potential. If was was being uncharitable, I would say that Yelchin didn’t quite know how to  handle a tough topic like this for younger readers. But, I’m not sure that’s what it is. See, this is really a confusing little book; as a reader, you never know quite what to believe or whom to trust, and I think that was done intentionally. It felt like Yelchin wanted to capture the sense of confusion, of suspicion, of mistrust that existed in the USSR back then. In that, he succeeded, though I’m not sure how well.

I’m not sure how much sense I’m making. The bottom line is this: I get what Yelchin was trying to do with his book, but I’m not sure 9-year-old kids will. However, this one will be the jumping point for a lot of discussion, not just on the USSR and history, but on following the crowd versus doing your own thing.

Which makes it very much worth your time.