The Book Search

 I LOVE picture books.  I love the short stories with big messages.  I love the gorgeous art work.  Picture books are such a great way to tell a story.  Here are two of my new favorites. The first one is called A Hen for Izzy Pippik written by Aubrey Davis and illustrated by Marie LaFrance.  This is a folk story based on Jewish and Islamic traditional texts.  It's about Shaina, who is starts the lamenting the fact that the people in her community are struggling financially.  She's thinking about what to do when a hen comes up and pecks her toes.  It's not JUST a hen, it's a hen with emerald green feathers, gold speckles and a ruby red comb, gorgeous!  She doesn't know who this amazing hen belongs to, but she intends to find out.  She asks all the merchants in town and no one knows, but she finds a sign that says "Izzy Pippik Chicken and Eggs" next to  a broken wooden crate.  Shaina takes the chicken home and her family sta...

 These two brand new middle grade books are all about games- and you know that since it's middle grade fiction, it's really about way more than the game.  Bigger stakes and bigger rewards!  Both of these books are high reward books!   The first one is called The Mystery of Locked Rooms by Lindsay Currie.  I was lucky enough to get to talk to her at our librarians conference (FAME) back in November and I was super excited to read it.  It did NOT disappoint.  The story is told by Sarah, a 12 year who loves doing puzzles, especially locked room puzzles with her two best friends-West and Hannah.  Sarah compares their friendship to a triangle-each one of the friends has different strengths that make them good at solving the puzzles to get out of an escape room, which is how they get their name for their threesome-The Deltas.  But Sarah is working on a different problem-her dad has been sick and her mom is working extra hard to make ends meet. It a...

 It's funny how sometimes there's kind of a "thing" in middle grade literature.  This week, I read two different books that were published in the same week and both were about kids who were dealing with a missing mom.  It's fairly often that children are left to their own devices, particularly in middle grade literature-think James and the Giant Peach, Harry Potter, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, to name a few, so it's not really surprising to find missing parents, but these two books both showed the emotional toll this can take on kids, particularly if the leaving hasn't been explained to them.  Let me show you what I mean. The first one is called Olivetti.  It's written by Allie Millington and it appears that this is her first book but she has several that are coming out in the next year or so.  Here's a link to her website if you want to find out more.  This story is told from two perspectives, one is Ernest, who is 12 and is having a ha...