The Book Search

 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. ...

 Ahhh, summer!  Time to take a break from the usual and try a few new things...  We've been traveling this year to someplace completely different-Alberta, Canada.  The weather was forecasting rain every single day for the entire two weeks we were here and today, they were really right.  It's 49 degrees and windy and raining so we're staying tucked in our hotel!  We've seen some beautiful places  like this- The Athabasca Glacier Me and my sweetie at Emerald Lake     At the Valley of the Five Lakes-all of them are beautiful! But it's good to think about reading...  I've read so many wonderful ones while we're on vacation!  Here are two of my new  favorites.    The first one is called "The Summer of June" by Jamie Sumner.  I heard her read some of her first book "Roll With it" in this YouTube video. And I love her voice SO MUCH.  I could really hear her reading her new one as well.  June is a girl who live...

 New books are blooming!  Check out this new bumper crop! Falling Short by Ernesto Cisneros is a terrific new book told from two points of view-Marco and Isaac.  They've been best friends since kindergarten, but are really different kinds of people.  They each live with their mothers, Marco's dad has been out of the picture for awhile.  He has a new family and often posts pictures on social media of the new family but is highly critical of Marco.  Isaac's dad has only recently left the family home and is struggling with a drinking problem.  Issac is an excellent athlete and Marco is more studious.  Marco is also very short, which makes him a target for bullies.  As they start middle school, they are each wondering if they will remain friends.  On the first day, they each people they identify with strongly-Isaac finds the basketball team and Marco finds a group of coders but they also find allies in the other's group-Marco is rescued from...

 It's so lovely to have time to read.  I talked to a lovely woman today at the doctor's office who was telling me she loved to read to and there are so many good ones to recommend!  Here are some of my newest favorites! The first one is called The Verdigris Pawn by Alysa Wishingrad.   It's Wishingrad's debut novel, so I hope there are more to come!  It's a fairy tale (squee!!!) about Beau, who is the son of the ruler, called Himself.  Beau's mom died when he was very young and his dad has set him up with a series of tutors.  Himself sets some very high standards for academic performance and behavior that Beau finds hard to meet.  Beau has been playing a strategy game called Fist that involves trying to unseat the king.  Himself seems to be worried that Beau (or maybe someone else) is trying to unseat him through magic and charms.  The Fist set belonged to his mother, so Beau feels connected to it in surprising ways.  When Himself tu...

Social issues for middle graders take a lot of forms.  Kids in 3rd through 8th grade are starting to consider that they are no longer the epicenter of the universe.  They look more to their friends for recognition (much to their parents' and teachers' annoyance!) and start to develop an understand of some of the bigger issues around them.  These two books are wonderful opportunities to help kids understand difference points of view through a variety of social issues. The first one is called "The Space Between Lost and Found" by Sandy Stark-Mcginnis.  It's about Cassie, who is in middle school and lives with her mom and dad.  Her mom has had to stop working and they employ a housekeeper who comes every day to help with her mom.  Her mom has dementia and is forgetting a lot of things.  Including, sometimes Cassie's name.  Sometimes she seems perfectly normal and Cassie really wants to believe she's going to get better.  But her mom's behavior...

I have been hoping for some fantasy fiction, because frankly, real life is real enough for me!  However, the advanced reader copies I've been getting are realistic fiction, so realistic it is!  Luckily, both these books were awesome and so different from my life, that they were both a great get away. The first one is called Turtle Boy by M. Evan Wolkenstein.  It's about 12 year old Will who's having a hard time.  First, his dad died when he was four.  Will's dad went into the hospital to a hernia repaired and died.  Part of Will's coping mechanism has been withdrawing, which brings the reader to problem 2, Will doesn't really have any friends.  Well, he has one good friend, Shirah and one friend who annoys him, but is still his friend, Max.  Shirah and Max and Will have been friends since they were small and the rest of the kids at their school do a lot of teasing, which Will perceives as bullying.  Will is also coming up on his Bar Mitzvah...

I fell down into a well of grown up fiction that was just terrific but I'm finding my way back to middle grade fiction, because, well, because I can.  Here's some amazing books to look for! The first one is called Chirp by Kate Messner.  I was lucky enough to get to meet her in November at the FAME conference in Orlando and my friend David was brave enough to try the Chirp Challenge she describes in the book.  I'd been looking forward to reading it since November and I finally got to! It was totally worth the wait.  One of the things that Kate does so well is give you characters that are interesting and likable immediately, but there's always something bigger that comes as you read.  In this case, Mia and her family have moved back to Vermont to be closer to her grandmother.  Her grandmother had a small stroke and is recuperating well, but runs her own business, which Mia's parents would like her to sell.  Mia's grandmother sells crickets for food an...

Some stories are hard to tell.  Here are two that must have started in a place where it was hard to tell these stories.  They are voices we haven't heard very often, but these story tellers told them brilliantly. The first one is called "Maybe He Likes You" by Barbara Dee.  It's about 12 year old Mila who is in 7th grade and lives with her mom and her little sister.  Her dad is more absent than Mila would like.  Mila has a tight group of friends that she hangs with.  They are celebrating her friend Omi's birthday on the playground and have a group hug, when the boys from the basketball team come and ask to join the group hug.  Mila feels really uncomfortable  but tries to be a good sport because her friend Zara likes one of the boys and Mila doesn't want to make a scene.  But then the boys seem to keep wanting to touch her and keep making excuses about how and why it happens.  Mila continues to feel uncomfortable about it and the boys ...

Are you sensing a trend here?  Yeah, a little fantasy fiction is a good way to pass the time during a hurricane watch!  A hurricane watch where we had both power and internet access.  It was a LITTLE scary to pull up the weather radar and see a Category 5 hurricane sitting 90 miles from us (sorry Bahamas), so reading scary stories was a good thing for me to do! The first one feels like a folk tale.  It's called Anya and the Dragon by Sofiya Pasternack.  It's about Anya who is an only child.  She lives with grandmother and her mother.  Her dad has been conscripted by the army and they aren't sure where he is.  The town magistrate is threatening her mother-either pay their taxes right away or move out of their house and out of the town.  Anya really wants to help but she's been seeing weird things as she's out and about doing her chores.  She makes a new friend, Ivan,  who has come to town with his dad and the rest of his family. ...

So you might not be able to tell from the blog, I'm not a big fan of scary stories.  I like suspense but a lot of the scary things are, well, just too scary for me.  I had nightmares after Doll Bones and Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.  So I have NO IDEA why I chose "Scary Stories for Young Foxes" by Christian McKay Heidicker.  It WAS scary but it was SO well written and I think it's going to be perfect as a mentor text for my students. It's told in two different voices-Mia and Uly.  Both are fox kits that are living really different lives.  Mia comes from a family with a loving mom and brothers and sisters that are kind and supportive of one another.  Uly, not so much.  Uly has a deformed front paw and his sisters seem bent on getting rid of him.  Each one tells a tale of how they end up separated from their moms and their litter mates (terrifying), how they survive,  and then how they come together to help each other.  E...

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, ...

We’ve been on summer vacation and I had time to do some great reading, but due to lamentable internet access during our travels, I’m just now uploading them!   The first one is called “For Black Girls Like Me” by Mariama Lockington.  It’s about Makeda, who at the start of the book, is crossing the country, from Baltimore to Albuquerque in a car with her mom and her big sister.  Makeda’s dad has taken a new job as a cellist that required the move and the move also required that Makeda’s mom has to give up her job as a violinist.  Makeda was adopted by her parents when they found they couldn’t have a second child and Makeda is African American and her parents and sister are white.  Makeda is worried about the move-particularly moving away from her best friend, Lena, who is also African American and was adopted by a white family.  What’s great about this one is learning about what it’s like to navigate a world where most of the people you know (and even ...

I've been home sick this week. It feels like forever, but it turns out, it's been a week.  The good news is, I have had some excellent books to keep me company.  This new one, The Story Web, is my new favorite book.  It is a completely amazing combination of realistic and fantasy fiction.  It's by Megan Frazer Blakemore.  I thought I recognized her name when I requested her brand new book, but as I read over the list of titles, I realized I'd never read one of her works before.  I'm so happy I fixed that today (yeah, I read the whole book TODAY because I totally couldn't put it down) and now I have an opportunity to read the rest of them. (Except it turns out, I have read one of her books before.  Not only read it, but blogged about it here .  I blame the cold I've been working on for a WEEK now).   But wait till you hear about this one.  "The Story Web" is set in a small town in Maine.  Alice and Lewis have been friends since they ...

I've been plowing through some of these books I've had stacked up from Netgalley.  I love looking at the list and seeing all that potential!  Although, I admit to being wracked with guilt for not getting to some of them before they are archived.  Part of the process apparently!  Anyway, I DID make it in time for two of my new favorite books. The first one is called "Solving for M" by Jennifer Swender.  This is her first middle grade book and I was so happy to see on her website, that she's working on a second one, because this was the best one I'd read in quite awhile!  It's about Mika (pronounced Mee-ka).  She is about to embark on a new adventure - middle school!  In her district, middle school starts at 5th grade and to make things seem less gigantic, they split the fifth graders into 4 pods and the kids in each pod have most of their classes together.  Unfortunately, Mika's best friend, Ella, is in a different pod, so Mika is left adrif...

So does it feel like January just streaked past?  How did it get to be February for goodness sakes?  I always heard as you get older time passes more quickly, but this is ridiculous!  Anyway, luckily, I had enough time to slow down and finish a book!  And even better, it was a really great book! It's called "The Storm Keeper's Island" and it's written by Catherine Doyle.  It came out in January and I was lucky enough to get to read it as an advanced reader's copy on Netgalley.  It's about Fionn and his sister Tara who go to spend the summer with their grandfather on the island where he lives and their parents grew up.  Fionn is especially missing his dad, who disappeared off the the coast of the island in a boating accident.  Right away things seem a little weird.  His grandfather's house is full of candles.  His sister keeps trying to sneak away to meet her boyfriend, an annoyingly smug and handsome boy from the island named Bartley. ...

I'm plowing through the CYBILS middle grade speculative fiction.  There were a few dogs in the pile but I've hit a bit of a hot streak and it's SO much fun to read such imaginative, creative, exciting stories!  Check out these beauties! The first one is called "The Shadow Cipher" and it's the first one a series called York by Laura Ruby.  I'm relieved that this only the first one because the characters and plot of this one were so interesting, I was really sorry for the book to end!  It's about fraternal twins, Tess and Theo, who live with their parents in an old apartment building in New York.  The apartment has been in their family for several generations and there is a story about a mysterious treasure that's hidden with lots of clues and ciphers.  They connect with a boy who lives in their building, Jaime, who is a computer whiz.  He lives with his grandmother, the building's caretaker.  Suddenly, they have a very sharp deadline for solvi...

I'm taking a break from reading picture books.  I've been visiting my parents and my brother in NC and the picture books are too heavy to bring along!  Thank goodness I have my iPad loaded with middle grade fiction.  There are some great ones coming soon! The first one is called "The Shadow Weaver" by Marcykate Connolly.  It's about a girl named Emmeline who can weave shadows using magic.  What that means is that she can use her magic to get the shadows to do what she wants them to do.  It's a very cool power to have but her parents think it's creepy and scary.  Emmeline also has a shadow friend who encourages her to use her power and kind of helps her along with the magic.  Dar has been her friend since she was little and really, Emmeline's only friend.  One day some people come to Emmeline's home and offer to take Emmeline to cure her of her magic.  Emmeline's parents think this is a great idea, since they think the whole shadow weav...