More SSYRA 3-5 2021

 School started this week and I'm a little behind the power curve on the SSYRA books this year.  I blame the shortened summer-we started late last year and so we ended three weeks late -three weeks less vacation.  Uh, gosh, that sounds like a first world problem, doesn't it?  Let's get to the book reviews, shall we?

The first one is a terrific speculative fiction title called The Total Eclipse of Nestor Lopez by Adrianna Cuevas.  It's about Nestor, who has just moved to New Haven.  His dad is in the Army and they've moved often.  His dad is currently deployed in Afghanistan and Nestor misses him a LOT.  Nestor and his mom have moved in with Nestor's Abuela-his dad's mom, so there are lots of pieces of his dad around, like his dad's old baseball glove and the animal encyclopedia his dad made when he was a kid.  Nestor is very interested in animals too, and he can talk to them.  To his surprise, Nestor finds school to be ok.  He finds new friends almost right away and they recruit him to join the trivia team.  But weird things are happening-people's pets are disappearing and somehow, the people of the town seem to think Nestor's abuela has something to do with it.  Nestor doesn't think that could be right, but then he sees Abuela going into the forest with a big knife.  The animals start telling him about a witch that's been attacking the animals and Nestor decides he has to try to stop the witch.  This is a really fun story to read.  The voices of Nestor and his friends are clear and easy to connect to, the animals voices are so much fun.  There is some connecting to Cuban culture (Abuela is from Cuba) and the parts about how the family handles the father's military deployment are just terrific.  This is a book with a lot of heart and I think the kids are going to love it. 

This second one is realistic fiction.  It's called Wish Upon a Sleepover by Suzanne Selfors.  It's about Leilani who lives with her mom and her grandmother (Tutu) in an apartment in Seattle.  Leilani has a best friend named Autumn but Autumn's parents have divorced and now Autumn spends some weekends with him.  Leilani is worried that she won't have anyone to hang out with, so she sets her sights on a group of girls called the Haileys-6 girls all named Hailey (they're all spelled differently) who have sleepovers almost every weekend.  Leilani can see some of the sleepover action because her apartment is right across the street from the condos where some of the Haileys live.  She comes up with a plan to have her own sleepover and invite all the Haileys plus her best friend Autumn, but as she's making the list invitation list, she also makes a DO NOT INVITE list.  THAT list includes her second cousin Todd who is always trying to get Leilani to admit that they are really related, William, a new boy who lives in her building who doesn't really speak and Tanisha, a girl who always wears ears or a hoodie with ears and is always drawing.  Tutu invites all the kids on the DO NOT INVITE list and Leilani is completely mortified.  She tries as hard as she can to get out of it and eventually grudgingly decides to go through with it.  Her grandmother makes a Hawaiian sleepover soup where each guest is meant to put something into the the soup and then make a wish in front the moon.  The journey of finding each thing helps Leilani and the other kids see each other in a different light, including Leilani seeing a not so flattering version of herself. The journey also helps them to see who they really want to be friends with and what being friends really means.  Ok and it's really not as preachy as I'm making it sound!   Leilani is a really terrific character with a bit of tunnel vision that I think we all have about our lives and being able to recognize how our own actions might be interpreted by others is a great lesson. Beyond that,  this was a really fun story to read.  The characters are people that I recognized and the plot moves FAST.  I did put it down but only once because we were eating dinner!  I also loved the connection to the folk tale Stone Soup. I think the kids are going to like this one a lot.  I know I did!