The Book Search

 My husband and I were traveling last week and lucky me!  I had lots of books on my Netgalley app and lots of time to read!  Here are two of my new favorites. The first one is called Octopus Moon.  It's written by Bobbie Pryon. I hadn't read anything by her before, so this one was a great surprise.  It's written in free verse and it's about Pearl, a girl who lives in a small town on the Florida Gulf Coast.  Pearl is part of a loving family that includes her big sister, her mom and dad, and her grandparents, who live close by.  Pearl feels especially connected to her grandfather.  Pearl also has some really great friends, including her bestie-Rosie.  But lately, Pearl has been struggling.  She feels sad a lot for no particular reason.  She's tired a lot.  She doesn't want to get out of bed or go to school or hang with her friends.  She doesn't even want to run with her dog Tuck, even though she loves running.  It turns...

 I adore historical fiction and the middle grade versions are typically wonderful!  Here are two terrific ones to look for! The first one is called "The Enemy's Daughter" by Anne Blankman .  I haven't read any of her books before, but I'm definitely going to be looking for more!  "The Enemy's Daughter" has such an interesting point of view.  It's told by Marta, a German girl who has been living in America with her extended family but is returning back to Germany, on the eve of World War 1.  She and her dad are traveling on the Lusitania and have been trying to make sure that no one knows they are German.  Marta is an excellent actress and loves trying out different accents and attitudes to match.  When the boat sinks, Marta and her father are separated, but both are rescued and taken to England, where her dad is an accused of being a spy for Germany.  Marta decides that rather than going home, she will go to find and then rescue her dad. ...

 Now that I'm done with the CYBILS for the year, I can dig back into the realistic fiction pile.  Here are two of my latest favorites! Weirdly Walter by Julia Walton is a terrific new book.  It came out in October and I read it over the winter holidays and I wondered why it had taken so long (oh, yeah, I remember-I was reading for the CYBILS award-107 middle grade fantasy books, that's right).  Walter was such a charming and heartwarming read-I think you're going to love it.  Walter is a fifth grader who has always lived with his dad, a musician.  They've traveled around quite a bit and Walter is used to being the new kid at school.  But this is different.  His dad has left him for the first time, with Walter's grandfather, and there's no end in sight for when Walter will go back on the road with his dad.  Walter adores his dad and records some of his dad's wisdom in his journal.  But he's also kind of mad at his dad, that there was no c...

 There have been some amazing new titles in my Netgalley TBR pile and YAY for finally reading them!  Here are two of my newest favorites! The first one is called Westfallen.  It's written by a sister and brother team - Ann and Ben Brashares. This is Ann's website.    Ben doesn't seem to have his own website, but they are both prolific writers and their skills show in this tightly written and exciting story.  The book opens with Henry, a middle schooler who is feeling abandoned by his two best friends-Frances and Lukas.  Frances and Lukas have found different lanes (Frances is goth, Lukas is a sports guy), Henry is neither but when the hamster that they adopted together dies, he invites them over to bury the hamster.  In digging a hole, they find an old radio that remarkably still works.  They are able to connect with three other kids, who also live in their hometown.  The 6 kids agree to meet at the local park and all six are disappointe...

 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...

 There is some terrific new middle grade speculative fiction coming out this month that I think kids are going to love!   My first new favorite is called Majestica by Sarah Tolcser.  It's about Hattie, who is an orphan who works in a hotel in a magical animal preserve.  She tries hard and wants to do a good job, but things don't always go the way she thinks they should.  One day, a new group of guests arrives and the group includes Evelyn, the niece of the hotel owner.  When Evelyn's chaperone takes sick (because Evelyn poisoned her), the head of the staff asks Hattie to take over as Evelyn's companion.  Hattie tries to be positive, but Evelyn is pretty headstrong and disagreeable.  They go out on a safari and Hattie starts to think something might be amiss.  When the train they're traveling on derails, Hattie knows something is wrong and wonders if Evelyn or one of the other guests might have something to do with it.  Each of the guests...

 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 ...

 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...

And the hits just keep coming!  Boy, have I read some great books lately!  Here are two of my favorites. The first one is "Max in the House of Spies" by Adam Gidwitz.  I haven't read all of Gidwitz's works, but I loved "The Inquisitors" so I was excited to see this one come up in my Netgalley feed.  It did NOT disappoint.  It's about Max, an 11 year old living with his parents in Berlin in 1939.  The family is trying to figure out how to cope with the limitations on their lives that the Nazis are putting in place.  After Kristallnacht, Max's parents insist that he go on the Kindertransport to London.  He doesn't want to leave his parents, but they don't give him a choice, so he goes.  As he's traveling on the ship, he finds he's picked up two immortal beings, Stein and Berg (who sound a bit like tiny vaudevillians) that are now sitting on his shoulders, simultaneously trying to throw him under the bus and help him get through all this...

 I'm branching out from all the speculative fiction I've been reading to catch up on some realistic fiction.  Here are two of my new favorites! The first one is called "The Partition Project" by Saadia Faruqi.   She also wrote this one that I liked a lot too called "A Place at the Table"  It's about Maha (short for Mahnoor) who lives in Texas with her loving parents and her older brother.  The story opens with the family at the airport getting ready to pick up Dadi, who is Maha's dad's adoptive mother.  Dadi is going to come and live with the family and Maha is meant to act as a kind of a baby-sitter to Dadi.  Maha is not happy about losing her bedroom (she gets her own room, but it's up in the attic) to Dadi and she's struggling to connect to Dadi, who is often abrupt and and kind of cranky.  Maha's deepest passion is journalism and she's very excited when her teacher assigns them a documentary project.  Except she has no idea w...

 Middle grade speculative fiction is SO MUCH FUN.  The characters are always interesting, the problems are often rooted in social issues, which those middle graders are just beginning to notice, and the fantastical situations that authors put these characters in is just a blast.  Here are two new ones that I really enjoyed. The first one is called the Princess Protection Program and it's written by Alex London.  He's written several other books and this is a link to his website .  I thought the title was intriguing and I wasn't wrong!  The story starts with a prince who is about to kiss Sleeping Beauty, except that Alex brings up some of the details that other authors might have missed.  Like, if this prince has been out scouring the countryside for the princess, is he really going to smell all that great?  When was the last time he bathed?  Or shaved?  Or even brushed his teeth?  And if you've been asleep for 100 years, are you rea...

 Need some great new middle grade books with relatable characters?  Wait till you hear about these! The first one is called Shark Teeth by Sherri Winston.  I've loved Sherri Winston's writing since I first discovered her when she wrote a column for the Sun Sentinel.  She has such a terrific voice in her writing and her latest story is no exception.  Shark Teeth is about a 12 year old named Sharkita.  She is the primary caregiver for her 5 year old sister, Lily and her 8 year old brother Lamar, who has fetal alcohol syndrome.  She's the primary caregiver because her mom is unreliable as a parent.  Kita loves Lily and Lamar and would do anything to protect them.  But awhile back, things were pretty terrible.  Their mom disappeared for 9 days and Lamar had a giant melt down and knocked Kita out.  Kita called 911 to get some help and all three kids ended up in different foster homes and their mom wound up in jail.  Kita is determin...

 I might have mentioned before that I'm not typically a fan of graphic novels.  I like creating my own mental images of characters and settings and so I don't usually choose graphic novels. BUT, holy cow, these two new ones have such interesting story lines and the art work is SO compelling, you have to look for them! The first one is called Atana and the Firebird by Vivian Zhou .  This is her first book, but it better not be her last!  The cover is stunning and that's exactly what made me want to read it.   All the art work has this magical, glowing quality to it, which is perfect because it's about Atana, a mermaid, who is living alone on an island.   One day, a Firebird comes to earth.  Her name is Ren and she has been hearing stories all her life about how wonderful Earth is and so even though it's been hundreds of years since a Firebird has come to earth, Ren has come to experience Earth life.  But there are evil forces afoot and it's not saf...

 I don't often read YA but two showed up on my Netgalley list this week, how lucky!  They couldn't be more different, but they were both terrific! The first one is called Mere Mortals written by Erin Jade Lange.  It's about two vampires, Charlie (Charlotte) and Reg, sister and brother, who have been expelled from being vampires because of an unfortunate incident.  They are dropped off at a halfway house of sorts, where they can learn to be human again.  Charlie and Reg are very unhappy about this, particularly since the town where they've landed is a small town in Iowa that seems completely empty of culture or shopping or any of the things that Charlie and Reg think are fun.  They are staying with a man named Sal, who is meant to help them with the transition and they have been registered to attend the local high school.  They send out appeals to different groups of vampires to try to get their punishment cancelled but either get a negative response or...

I love picture books.  I think some of the most talented artists are illustrating children's books instead of creating masterpieces that hang in museums and I think that's just wonderful.  Here are two awesome new books that are going to have book birthdays tomorrow! The first one is a sequel to one of my favorite books ever-The Most Magnificent Thing by Ashley Spires.  This new one is called The Most Magnificent Idea, also written and illustrated by Ashley Spires and it's as wonderful as the first one.  This one is also about a girl who has a wonderful (dog) assistant who helps her make things.  She makes things all the time!  Until one day, she doesn't have any new ideas.  She tries some of her former idea generating strategies.  Nothing.  She tries some new idea generating strategies with some fairly large consequences.  Still nothing.  And then she is inspired.  It's a super fun book for thinking about the whole design proc...

 We started back to school three weeks ago and it's so great to be back with the kids!  We spent a lot of the first week getting organized so I hope this week we'll get to talk books because there are some great new ones coming out!  These two are both stories about animals.  What's great about them is that even though it's fiction (we can't REALLY know what's happening in animals' heads!) we can think about what their life experiences are like and further think about how our actions might impact their lives.  Pretty cool idea... The first one is called Violet and Jobie in the Wild. It's written by Lynne Rae Perkins, who wrote the 2006 Newbery award winner called CrissCross.  She's also written several other novels and picture books and this new one is a middle grade reader and I think the kids are going to love it.  It's about Violet and Jobie, a pair of mouse siblings.  They live in a house with their extended family and they have figured out a...

It's been so hot out that I've been spending a lot of time indoors reading.  Hooray for awesome new books to read!   These two realistic fiction books could not be more different, but I thought they were both terrific.  The first one is called Thirst and it's written by Varsha Bajaj.  It's about Minni, who lives with her loving family in one of the poorest parts of Mumbai, India.  Her dad runs a tea stall, her mom works as domestic worker for a rich family, her older brother works in a restaurant and Minni goes to school, but it's hard!  One of the things the family has to do each day is wait in line for water.  There is a tap not far from Minni's house, but it doesn't operate consistently or very efficiently, so sometimes they wait a long time and other times, not as long.  Sometimes the water is discolored or bad smelling and they are told to boil the water before drinking it.  One day, Minni's brother gets invited for a ride in a friend's ...