The Book Search

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 read two books this week that both had to do with postwar trauma.  One is historical fiction and one is present day and they were both terrific! The first one is called "A Galaxy of Sea Stars" by Jeanne Zulik Ferruolo.  Jeanne wrote a terrific book last year called "Ruby in the Sky" that I really enjoyed, so I was delighted to see she had a new book out.  This one is just as good, and maybe even better!  In "A Galaxy of Sea Stars", Izzy, the main character is starting middle school.  She's nervous like most kids are but she's got a lot on her plate.  Her mom has gone to stay and work with her sisters in their family restaurant, and although it seemed like she would be gone just a short time, it's turning out to be longer than Izzy figured it would be.  Part of why her mom left, is that her dad is different now.  Her dad served in the army in Afghanistan and came back different.  He's had to take a different job, they've had to move ...

Summer vacation is so awesome.   House projects.  Lunches with friends.  No alarm clock.   AND uninterrupted time to read!  I'm finally dusting off the TBR pile and wow, are there some great ones in here. I love historical fiction and this new one is terrific.  It's called The Taste of Rain by Monique Polak.  It's about a group of girls who are Girl Guides (like American Girl Scouts).  The story starts and you might start thinking this is just an ordinary group of girls in a boarding school somewhere with their relentlessly cheerful teacher.  Except they aren't just anywhere, they are in Weishen which was a prison camp in Japan during World War 2.  The kids are being held there because their boarding school was taken over by the Japanese as headquarters.  The kids' parents were missionaries or had other jobs and after 2 1/2 years, they don't know where their parents are or whether they'll ever see them again.  Their teacher, ...

I've been enjoying my spring break and since we were traveling, I had some long uninterrupted time to read (because when I'm at home, there's a lot of "Oh look!  Something shiny!" going on).    There are some terrific new middle grade fiction books in the pipeline.  Here are two of my favorites. The first one is called "The Orphan Band of Springdale" by Anne Nesbet.  It's historical fiction but it's based on the author's family stories.  It's set in World War 2 and I really loved that it tells the story of what it was like growing up in America at that time, with some of the ugly prejudices that people held as well as some of the social issues that have since been resolved.  Gusta's dad leaves her on a train as they were heading to Maine because Gusta's dad is a socialist and believes that workers should have rights and he is being pursued by the police.  Gusta ends up at her grandmother's house, which is a kind of an orphan...