The Book Search

We're on winter break now and winding down the CYBILS awards.  In fact, I was really surprised to come home from school on our last day and find two new books to read!  They were SO worth waiting for! The first one is "Homerooms and Hall Passes" by Tom O'Donnell.  It's about a group of adventurers who live in a magical, medieval kind of realm called Briandalor, where they spend their days searching for treasure and battling vile monsters.  To relax, they spend Thursday evenings playing a role playing game called Homerooms and Hall passes, which has each of the players assume the role of a student in a 21st century middle school.  The students have to try to navigate middle school without getting thrown out.  The leader of the group, a good wizard in training named Albiorix, is a big fan of the game (he has 26 reference books about the game that he carries with him).  The group also includes a second leader, Vela the Valiant, a paladin (or knight), as well as Dev

I'm getting down to the end of my list of books to read for CYBILS awards.  I always really love being able to read for this award, but it's kind of intense-the window for reading books is pretty short (3 months) and the list of titles is pretty long (for middle grade fiction, there are usually at least 100 titles), but oh my gosh, is it worth it.  Getting to read all the newest books is amazing, I'm so lucky I get to do it!  Like this year, these two new titles are terrific! The first one is called "Tristan Strong punches a hole in the sky" by Kwame Mbalia.  This is part of a new Rick Riordan Presents series.  If you by chance have never read any of Riordan's work, he started a series of books about a boy named Percy Jackson who struggled in school because it turned out his dad was a Greek god.  Riordan went on to write a series about a group of kids who's parents were Roman gods and then Egyptian gods and then Norse Gods.  He's now lending his name

I might have mentioned before that I'm actually not a big fan of science fiction.  It's not my jam, but actually, after this round of the CYBILS reading, I might have to rethink that label, because there has been some righteous science fiction this year. The latest one I've read is called "The Time Traveler's Theory of Relativity" by Nicole Valentine.  It's about Finn, who's a middle schooler and a bit of a loner.  His mom has left the family and no one is talking about where she is or how long she'll be gone and she's not answering her phone or responding to text messages.  Finn is worried.  His dad sends him to stay with his grandmother in rural Vermont and that's kind of a good thing.  He adores his grandmother, it puts him closer to his best friend, Gabi, and since his dad has been really distant and kind of unresponsive, it's kind of good to be away from him.  Except that once he's there at his grandmother's, really weird

I am not usually attracted to science fiction.  I blame a steady diet of fairy tales and magically related books in my youth, but one really great thing about CYBILS is that it sends you places you didn't even know you wanted to go, reading books you didn't even know you should look for.  So here are two of my new favorites (go ahead, call me fickle). The first one is called Cog and it's written by Greg Van Eekhout.  It's about COG, which is short for cognitive development.  Cog is a robot with artificial intelligence, so he's meant to learn things and he looks exactly like a 12 year old boy.  He lives with his inventor, Gina and she's trying to teach him lots of things, like shopping and smiling.  Gina tells him that he learns from his mistakes.  So one day Cog decides to make a mistake to learn something new.  He goes outside by himself.  He sees a dog in the street and car coming straight for the dog.  He calculates the speed at which the car is moving and

My students are super excited about dragons.  They love Tui Sutherland's series Dragonwings but these two new ones are going to thrill them! The first one is by one of my favorite authors, Sarah Beth Durst.  If you missed it, she wrote an amazing magical story called "The Girl Who Could Not Dream" that had one of the best characters (Monster) that I've read in a long time.  Her newest one, Spark, is about a girl named Mina who is quiet and lives with her very noisy family in a country called Aloria.  Aloria is special because they always have perfect weather, thanks to storm beasts and their guardians.  There are different kinds of storm beasts, wind, rain, sun, snow, and lightning that each provide things that their country needs. The guardians spend two years bonding with their storm beast while it's still inside the egg, but they don't know what kind it will be until it hatches.  Everyone is very surprised then, when Mina's egg hatches and it is a lig

I'm having SUCH a good time reading middle grade speculative (or fantasy) fiction for the CYBILS awards.  I LOVE being a first round panelist.  It can seem overwhelming at times (90 chapter books before Christmas?!  GAH!!) and then you open one up and it's awesome and amazing and wonderful and then you remember, why it seems like such a good idea to do this!   This first one is exactly like that.  It's called "The Spinner of Dreams" by K. A. Reynolds.  It's about Annalise, who is 12 and was born cursed.  Her left hand is twice the size of her right and it has a black broken heart on it.  The people of the village know about the curse and are not happy to have someone cursed living in their midst, so her wonderfully kind and loving parents have built fences around the house to protect her but as she had grown bigger, her big hand had grown more powerful and the people of town more afraid of her.  Her parents decide to get her a pet (since she doesn't have

I've been plowing through the fantasy fiction list for  CYBILS.  The librarians at my local library are stunned that I want to check out 12 books at a time.  I'm not sure if they're more surprised that I want to read that many or that I can CARRY that many at a time.  Either way, there have been some amazing titles! The first one is called a companion, but I think you could totally call it a sequel.  I'm not sure how well it stands alone, because I loved the first one SO MUCH.  This one is called The Bootlace Magician and it's by Cassie Beasley.  It's the companion or sequel to Circus Mirandus, which came out a couple of years ago.  The Bootlace Magician opens with Micah living in the Circus Mirandus.  He's a knot tier and doesn't really see how tying knots is going to be anything magical but he keeps going.  His guardian, the Lightbender, gives him a lot of support, as do the other magicians in the Circus Mirandus.  Micah's hoping to see his frien

I'm super excited to get to be a part of the CYBILS awards this year.  In case you don't know what that is, CYBILS is a group of people who blog about literature for young people and each year, they give out several awards in different categories.  I'm SO lucky this year to get to be part of the first round panelists for speculative fiction (which some people call fantasy fiction).  I've got a lot of reading to do over the next few weeks, but I thought I'd share a couple of the best ones here. My first new favorite is science fiction.  It's called "We're Not From Here" by Geoff Rodkey.  This story starts with Lan, who is living with his (or possibly her-in the book, Lan's gender is never specified, which was amazing to me!) family on Mars.  Earth has become uninhabitable and Mars is on it's way to also becoming uninhabitable.  Happily, there is another planet (very far away) that is willing to take them.  So Lan's family along with an

Some stories are hard to tell.  Here are two that must have started in a place where it was hard to tell these stories.  They are voices we haven't heard very often, but these story tellers told them brilliantly. The first one is called "Maybe He Likes You" by Barbara Dee.  It's about 12 year old Mila who is in 7th grade and lives with her mom and her little sister.  Her dad is more absent than Mila would like.  Mila has a tight group of friends that she hangs with.  They are celebrating her friend Omi's birthday on the playground and have a group hug, when the boys from the basketball team come and ask to join the group hug.  Mila feels really uncomfortable  but tries to be a good sport because her friend Zara likes one of the boys and Mila doesn't want to make a scene.  But then the boys seem to keep wanting to touch her and keep making excuses about how and why it happens.  Mila continues to feel uncomfortable about it and the boys keep making excuses tha

I do love middle grade fiction.  Middle grade fiction has such an amazing array of topics that it's willing to discuss and hash out.  Here are my two new favorites. The first one is just about to be published.  It's called "Roll With It" by Jamie Sumner.  It's about Ellie who is 12.  She lives with her mom and because Ellie has cerebral palsy, she is mostly in a wheelchair.  Ellie's mom is worried about Ellie, but also about her dad (Ellie's grandfather), who is suffering from dementia.  So Ellie's mom decides to quit her job and move in with her parents.  Ellie thinks is on one hand, great.  She loves her grandparents and loves spending time with them.  On the other hand, terrible.  Her grandparents live in a small, single wide trailer.  Their trailer isn't handicapped accessible, which makes things difficult.  Ellie doesn't really have any friends at home, so she's not sorry to leave any of them behind.  She finds some new friends-next

I LOVE picture books.  I love how the authors and illustrators can use both words and images to tell stories.  I how the pictures can illicit emotional responses in ways that words can not.  I love how engaged my really little kids get with a great picture book.  Here are a couple of new ones to look for. The first one is called "My Footprints" by Bao Phi.  It's about Thuy, who is being teased and laughed at by kids at school.  When Thuy goes home, her two moms try to help her feel better.  Thuy notices different tracks in the snow and decides to create tracks from the strongest possible animal to protect herself from the bullies.  Her moms offer different suggestions, including mythical animals from their own cultural backgrounds.  Together they come up with a brand new animal.  It's a lovely story about coming up with strategies for coping in general and specifically with bullies.  The connections to different cultures is affirming and enlightening.  The art work

I got some terrific new books this week from Netgalley-compelling, adventurous books! The first one is called "The Okay Witch" by Emma Steinkellner.  It's a graphic novel (not my favorite) about a girl named Moth, who is 13 and struggling with all the usual middle school issues-friends, clothes, her mom, teachers.  But on Halloween, Moth discovers that she's actually a witch and her mom is a witch too.  Her mom chose to give up being a witch because her coven had been chased into hiding hundreds of years ago.  Her mom wanted to live life in the real world and not in the utopia that her own mother had created.  Moth is stunned at this revelation and has to decide if she wants to live a magical life or if she wants to live in the magic free zone her mom has created.  Complicating matters are a cute new boy in town and the evil doers that chased Moth's family into hiding in the first place.  It's a really fun, adventurous story and I liked it a lot, even if it

My students love non-fiction books so I'm always on the look out for some great new non fiction.  We are a Montessori school, so books about the history of man are always a big hit.  This latest one is just terrific.  It's called "When We Became Humans" written by William Bright and illustrated by Hannah Bailey.  It's a picture book full of short pieces of text about how humans evolved from hominids.  The vocabulary is rich which may require some assistance for some kids, but over all the book is very accessible, especially to upper elementary students.  The pictures are terrific too-the soft water colors help with understanding some of the concepts.  The short pieces of text will provide a nice introduction to the concepts presented.  There's an excellent time line in the back of the book along with a map that shows human migration patterns.  I think the kids and the teachers are going to love this one. The second one, in my school, is a no-brainer.  It

Are you sensing a trend here?  Yeah, a little fantasy fiction is a good way to pass the time during a hurricane watch!  A hurricane watch where we had both power and internet access.  It was a LITTLE scary to pull up the weather radar and see a Category 5 hurricane sitting 90 miles from us (sorry Bahamas), so reading scary stories was a good thing for me to do! The first one feels like a folk tale.  It's called Anya and the Dragon by Sofiya Pasternack.  It's about Anya who is an only child.  She lives with grandmother and her mother.  Her dad has been conscripted by the army and they aren't sure where he is.  The town magistrate is threatening her mother-either pay their taxes right away or move out of their house and out of the town.  Anya really wants to help but she's been seeing weird things as she's out and about doing her chores.  She makes a new friend, Ivan,  who has come to town with his dad and the rest of his family.  His dad is trying to catch a dragon

So you might not be able to tell from the blog, I'm not a big fan of scary stories.  I like suspense but a lot of the scary things are, well, just too scary for me.  I had nightmares after Doll Bones and Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.  So I have NO IDEA why I chose "Scary Stories for Young Foxes" by Christian McKay Heidicker.  It WAS scary but it was SO well written and I think it's going to be perfect as a mentor text for my students. It's told in two different voices-Mia and Uly.  Both are fox kits that are living really different lives.  Mia comes from a family with a loving mom and brothers and sisters that are kind and supportive of one another.  Uly, not so much.  Uly has a deformed front paw and his sisters seem bent on getting rid of him.  Each one tells a tale of how they end up separated from their moms and their litter mates (terrifying), how they survive,  and then how they come together to help each other.  Each of their voices is so differ

One of the trends in libraries and the literary world over the past few years, is to offer readers different view points.  Traditionally, literature has been full of white people.  People of color or other religions or sexual orientations were relegated to best friend roles or were minor characters.   So to have a number of stories, where the main character is a person of color and isn't a stereotype (like  African Americans only portrayed as slaves or in stories about the Civil Rights movement, or Hispanic characters only portrayed as migrants), is to offer a wider variety of people the opportunity to see their own stories in print.  It also offers an opportunity to people like me (a middle aged white lady) to see stories that are different from my own.  Here are two brand new stories that offer voices that are fresh, charismatic, AND happen to be told by and are about people of color. The first one is by author Renee Watson.  I read her book "Piecing Me Together" that

Summer vacation is so awesome.   House projects.  Lunches with friends.  No alarm clock.   AND uninterrupted time to read!  I'm finally dusting off the TBR pile and wow, are there some great ones in here. I love historical fiction and this new one is terrific.  It's called The Taste of Rain by Monique Polak.  It's about a group of girls who are Girl Guides (like American Girl Scouts).  The story starts and you might start thinking this is just an ordinary group of girls in a boarding school somewhere with their relentlessly cheerful teacher.  Except they aren't just anywhere, they are in Weishen which was a prison camp in Japan during World War 2.  The kids are being held there because their boarding school was taken over by the Japanese as headquarters.  The kids' parents were missionaries or had other jobs and after 2 1/2 years, they don't know where their parents are or whether they'll ever see them again.  Their teacher, Miss E remains positive in spit

We’ve been on summer vacation and I had time to do some great reading, but due to lamentable internet access during our travels, I’m just now uploading them!   The first one is called “For Black Girls Like Me” by Mariama Lockington.  It’s about Makeda, who at the start of the book, is crossing the country, from Baltimore to Albuquerque in a car with her mom and her big sister.  Makeda’s dad has taken a new job as a cellist that required the move and the move also required that Makeda’s mom has to give up her job as a violinist.  Makeda was adopted by her parents when they found they couldn’t have a second child and Makeda is African American and her parents and sister are white.  Makeda is worried about the move-particularly moving away from her best friend, Lena, who is also African American and was adopted by a white family.  What’s great about this one is learning about what it’s like to navigate a world where most of the people you know (and even the ones you love) don’t look

I LOVE picture books.  I love the directness of the language and how the pictures add to each layer of the story.  These are two new ones that I think will be great in my library. The first one is called The Golden Acorn by Katy Hudson.  Katy Hudson has written and illustrated some terrific books like Too Many Carrots or Runaway Baby Brother, but I think this one is my favorite.  It's about Squirrel, the fastest animal in the forest.  She loves being the fastest and has a room full of trophies to prove it.  There is a competition every year for the Golden Acorn and she always wins!  Except that this year, they've changed the rules.  This year, all the animals must compete with a team.  Squirrel is dismayed and first she tries to get her friends in shape and then she  gets mad that they aren't keeping up.  She eventually figures out that her friends are the most important part of the race and it's a happy cooperative ending.  I really love the art work in this one.  Th

There's some brand new fantasy fiction waiting in the wings and boy, are they worth the wait! This first one comes out in September.  It's called "Nevers" by Sara Cassidy.  It's set in a town called Nevers in the Burgundy Region of France.  Odette and her mother, Anneline, arrive there by cheese cart. They are poor and looking for a place to land.  Anneline has been unlucky in love - she's very beautiful and falls in love easily but all of her husbands have died and mostly they've been her fault.  Odette is a resourceful and practical girl who figures out how to get food and shelter.  Through a series of sometimes hilarious events, they solve a mystery (which I don't want to tell you about because it's so much fun figuring it out!).  There are some interesting historical pieces that lend a little weight to this very fun story as well as some beautiful figurative and philosophical language.  I thought this one was great.  It would be good for uppe

Summer vacation just started and so has the blissfully un-pressured reading!  I don't usually read science fiction (although I'm always surprised that I like it more than I think I will!).    There are two that I read that I really enjoyed. The first one is not brand new.  It's one on the Sunshine State Young Reader Award List this year.  It's called "Enginerds" by Jarrett Lerner.  It's a short, fast read about Ken who is part of a group of kids that he's known since he was in kindergarten.  They all like science and engineering and each of them has a different strength.  One day, Ken comes home to find a box on his front step.  He often gets presents from his grandfather so it's not too big of a shock, but the box is really heavy.  So he calls his best friend, Dan, and Dan helps him lug the box and start putting the thing together. It turns out the thing is a robot, but the robot seems to have a pretty limited skill set.  All it wants to do is e