New things to discover in middle grade books

I'm taking a break from reading picture books.  I've been visiting my parents and my brother in NC and the picture books are too heavy to bring along!  Thank goodness I have my iPad loaded with middle grade fiction.  There are some great ones coming soon!

The first one is called "The Shadow Weaver" by Marcykate Connolly.  It's about a girl named Emmeline who can weave shadows using magic.  What that means is that she can use her magic to get the shadows to do what she wants them to do.  It's a very cool power to have but her parents think it's creepy and scary.  Emmeline also has a shadow friend who encourages her to use her power and kind of helps her along with the magic.  Dar has been her friend since she was little and really, Emmeline's only friend.  One day some people come to Emmeline's home and offer to take Emmeline to cure her of her magic.  Emmeline's parents think this is a great idea, since they think the whole shadow weaving is kind of creepy and weird things have happened to people that Emmeline has disagreed with.  So Dar encourages Emmeline to run away.  As they run, it turns out soldiers are chasing them and Emmeline comes across a boy who also has magic but his magic is light and his parents are supportive.  Emmeline stays with them and with Dar's encouragement, lies to them about why she's running away and about her magical powers.  When all of the plot elements converge, it's a pretty exciting ride.  I really liked Emmeline and her evolution as a character. I loved the idea of magic that was based on light and shadows (lots of great symbolism there!) and I'm really happy to see that this the first in a series!

The second one is called "From Ant to Eagle" by Alex Lyttle.  It's about a boy named Cal who tells you in the second sentence of the book that he killed his brother.  Cal's family has moved to a small town in the country from their big city digs and Cal is trying to figure out how to survive in the country.  His brother, Sammy adores his big brother, and will do anything to try to make Cal happy and proud.  Cal comes ups with a series of tasks for Sammy to do that are extremely difficult so that Sammy will leave him alone.  Cal has his eye on a beautiful girl who has also just moved to their small town but she is quiet and seems to want to spend a lot of time alone.  About half way through the book, there's a kind of a plot twist, or maybe just the real point of the book.  I don't really want to put a spoiler here, but since you already know Sammy dies, it's kind of a moot point.  What's interesting about this story is about how all the different characters deal with Sammy's death-how each of Cal's parents deal with it, how the community deals with it and ultimately, how Cal deals with it.  This is going to be a really good one to have in the library-Cal is a really likable character and his parents are very believable.  Dealing with the loss of a child is incredibly difficult and this book will be a great opening for conversations on dealing with anyone's death.

The last one is a non-fiction book.  It's called "Out of the Box" by Jemma Westing.  It's book full of projects to make out of cardboard.  In the spirit of full disclosure, my aunt, who was also a teacher, absolutely adores paper projects and instilled in me a love of crafting and particularly paper projects. She might be getting a copy of this book for Christmas!  The book has 25 different projects in varying skill levels.  The beginning of the book tells you about different kinds of cardboard and has lists of some of the different tools you might need to be able to successfully complete the project. It also has a little scale to show you how difficult the project is and bunches of photographic examples of the project.  I think this would make an excellent book for a makerspace resource.  The projects are easy enough that they could be completed in a fairly short amount of time (especially if you already had the materials gathered) and the steps are laid out so clearly that they would be easy for even some of the kids with limited reading skills would be able to follow them.  I think the kids are going to love this one.