Girl Power!

The books I've been reading this week seem to all have a theme of strong girls! My FAVORITE new one is called "Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy" by Karen Foxlee. It's is a wonderful fairy tale that is a very amazing mix of both fairy tale and realistic fiction. Ophelia is a girl who's mom died recently. Her dad is a museum curator and he's currently working on an exhibit of swords. Ophelia's sister is older and beautiful and kind of mad since their mom died. Ophelia is left to her own devices and ends up wandering around the museum. She takes a funny turn and finds a boy who is locked in a room. The boy explains to her that he has been there for 300 years, a prisoner of the Snow Queen and that she should help him and save the world. Ophelia is a person who believes in science and reality so she really doesn't think this is really possible, but she keeps going back to see him and the risks get bigger and bigger. It's very exciting, has very interesting characters (but realistic and magical) and some great twists to the plot.

I also read one called #16thingsithoughtweretrue by Janet Gurtler. It's about a girl named Morgan who has a summer job at the local amusement park. She doesn't like her boss (he's stuck up), she doesn't want to make friends with her co-workers (they are all laughing at her because her supposed best friend posted an embarrassing video of her on the internet which went completely viral) and so she's trying to get 5000 Twitter followers before the end of the summer. And then things start to change. Her mom gets sick and suddenly everything is upside down. It's a really nice transition that Morgan makes but wow, does this book cover a LOT of ground with personal relationships. I think there are some kids who will really identify with Morgan and some of the other characters. Here's a book trailer about it. The last one was a recommendation from my niece who lives in Vienna and attends an international school there. She is going into 6th grade and is loving this book. It might be hard to find in America, but it might be worth a look. It's called Best Friends and other Enemies by Catherine Wilkins. It's about a girl named Jessica who is best friends with Natalie. A new girl named Amelia moves in and Natalie wants to be friends with her too. However, Amelia is completely horrible to Jessica so Jessica doesn't want to have anything to do with her, but Natalie wants to be friends with both of them. Jessica also has a fairly complicated family life, but she has a super power, she's a cartoonist and she uses her drawing skills for good. I didn't really understand why Natalie was such a spineless wimp and let this new girl, Amelia be mean to her best friend, but my niece explained to me that sometimes girls do that to try to make everyone happy. I so glad she's so smart, and I hope she only has to read about girls as mean as Amelia and not have to try to figure out how to deal with them!