The Book Search

 Boy have there been some great new middle grade books out in September 2025.    Here are two of my favorites. The first one is called Three Blue Hearts and it's by Lynne Kelly.  This is Lynne's fourth book and although I loved her others,  I think this one might be my favorite.  It's about Max, who lives in the shadow of his dad, who is a local politician.  Max wants his dad to be proud of him, but Max likes different things than his dad-his dad likes sports and being the center of attention and Max likes animals and small groups.  So Max decides to go spend the summer with his mom on a small island where she is doing some scientific research and after a particularly embarrassing viral video event, decides to change his name to Milo so no one will recognize him.  There is a big storm the first night Max and his mom are there and in the morning, he decides to go for a walk on the beach and finds an octopus stranded on the shore.  He want...

 I've fallen deep in the dark heart of middle grade fantasy fiction this week and there have been many, many magical creatures!  These were my two favorite ones! The first one is "Impossible Creatures" by Katherine Rundell.  It's not her first book but it's the first one I've read and I thought it was great.  The writing is compelling and beautiful.  I fell into the book but I kept stopping so I could keep going back to it!  As an example, here's the opening line:  "It was a very fine day, until something tried to eat him."   The story is about two kids-Mal and Christopher.  Mal lives with her great aunt Leonor in a place where magical animals are commonplace.  Neither of them knows what happened to her parents, but the man who brought her to Leonor left a big coat that allows Mal to fly.  And then a murder shows up.  Mal narrowly escapes but Lenor does not.  Meanwhile, Christopher is going to spend the summer with his gra...

These books have a survival theme.  They are super hard to put down so I've had a couple of very late nights this week! The first one is called "Wolf Wilder" by Katherine Rundell.  It's about a girl named Feo who lives with her mom Marina in a wilderness part of Russia.  They live a simple life that they find satisfying... they rehabilitate wolves.  The story is set in Russia towards the end of the reign of the czars.  Rich people are adopting wolves as pets and finding that they are too wild to keep.  It is cultural taboo to kill a wolf so Feo and her mom teach the wolves to be wild again.  Unfortunately, the wolves are accused of killing some of the wildlife around the area (Feo is sure it's not them) and they attract the attention of a local military leader (who is completely terrifying).  He comes to take them to jail and Feo and the wolves make a run for it but Matrina ends up in a military prison.  Feo decides to rescue her.  The...