And now for some realistic fiction!

 I've been having a great time reading the books on the new Sunshine State Young Reader lists.  They never fail to find such fun books!  Here's a link to the K-2 list.  And here's a link to the 3-5 and 6-8 lists. They have such a variety of books.  And here's a link to my TPT store where there are reading comprehension questions for all the 3-5 and 6-8 books and lesson plans for the K-2 list.  

But lucky me!  I've had to read some advanced readers copies from Netgalley and boy, did I find some good ones!  The first one came out a couple of weeks ago-it's called "The Cookie Crumbles" and it's written by Tracy Badua and Alechia Dow.  It's about Laila and Lucy, two girls who have been best friends since kindergarten, even though they have very different interests AND they live on opposite sides of town.  If they want to go to high school together, they BOTH need to get into the prestigious high school, Sunderland.  Laila is trying to win a scholarship based on her baking prowess by entering a baking competition.  The judge is her favorite TV Chef, who it turns out, is not exactly a nice person.  Lucy goes along to try to build her portfolio as news writer.  When the Chef gets really sick and has to go to the hospital, it turns out almost everyone had a reason to want the Chef out of the way.  Lucy wants to solve the crime, but who else will get hurt along the way?  This is a really fun mystery book, with interesting characters and a lot of delicious sounding baked goods (unfortunately, no recipes are provided).  There are themes of friendship and trust as well as finding your own voice.  I think the kids are going to like this one a lot.  

Here's the book trailer!

The second one is by a favorite author-John David Anderson.  He's written several terrific middle grade books, my favorite being "Mrs. Bixby's Last Day", which you should totally look for if you haven't read it.  This new one is called "Keep it Like A Secret" and it's also terrific.  It's about siblings, Claire and Morgan.  Claire has adored Morgan since the moment she laid eyes on him when he was born and she was a 6 year old.  They've had lots of adventures together but Claire really struggles with her relationship with her mom.  They are very different people and when the story opens, they're having a gigantic, ugly argument.  At the end of the argument, Claire leaves and Morgan isn't sure what will happen next.  His mom is sad that Claire is gone and angry about all the harsh things that were said and done.  When Claire makes contact with Morgan, they go out to spend the day together doing a variety of things that are meaningful to them and at the end of the day, Claire is finally ready to tell Morgan what she thinks is going to happen next, which I am SO NOT going to tell you!  These are super interesting, complicated, well thought out characters and the way the story unfolds is really wonderful.  There are themes of love, family and finding your own way, separating yourself from the safe places and being confident that you can find something that will make you happy.  I loved this one!  Make sure you look for it!  It comes out in July.