The Grimm Legacy is one of the more original worlds I’ve encountered in a while. Elizabeth could be a modern day fairytale heroine. Her father remarried after her mother died, and Elizabeth’s stepmother expects her to do a lot of housework. Putting her stepsisters through college costs money, so Elizabeth recently had to give up […]
Anne of Green Gables
May 18, 2012 by 4 Comments
Review written by my 11 year old daughter, MRValentine. Anne of Green Gables is about Anne Shirley and her adventures at Green Gables in Avonlea. She gets into all kinds of trouble, finds friends, and loses her temper about her “hair of the most disastrous red.” I liked the book because you can find connections […]
Icefall
May 17, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Review written by Jocelyn Koehler. Icefall is well-conceived suspense story that also happens to be a historical novel…with vikings. Somewhere in medieval Scandinavia, a king sends his children (daughters Solveig and Asa, and son and heir Harald) to a remote outpost, accompanied by a small band of warriors, where they’ll be safe from the coming […]
Stout Hearts and Whizzing Biscuits
May 16, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Stout Hearts & Whizzing Biscuits is an amusing story of 11 year old Oliver Stoop whose family inadvertently stumbles on the kingdom of Patria, a sovereign nation nestled in Indiana and founded thousands of years ago by ancient Greeks. It’s somewhat inexplicably similar to medieval Europe with castles and knights (plus an old Studebaker), although […]
The Wide-Awake Princess
May 15, 2012 by Leave a Comment
In The Wide-Awake Princess, Princess Annabelle (Annie) is the younger sister of Gwendolyn—the most beautiful princess in the world, cursed to prick her finger on a spinning wheel and sleep for a hundred years. When Annie is born, their parents want to avoid another fairy curse, so they ask the wisest fairy to protect her. […]
Stone Fox
May 11, 2012 by Leave a Comment
My son mentioned in passing that he loved the book he was reading in school so much that he started it over as soon as he was done. Of course I had to know what this wonderful book was, and thus I first heard about Stone Fox. What’s interesting is that if you described a […]
Gregor the Overlander
May 8, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Gregor the Overlander has much in common with other books I’ve read—a bit like A Wrinkle in Time meets Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland—but it still feels like an original tale. 11 year old Gregor follows his toddler sister, nicknamed Boots, into a hole in the basement which leads to a new land (Underland, as you […]
Beryl
May 6, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Beryl: A Pig’s Tale begins in a commercial warehouse, where all the pigs live together in concrete sties. Beryl is an orphan, living with her aunt and cousins who all hate her. One of the workers comes around, putting stickers on the biggest piglets. Everyone knows this means the piglets will be leaving and not […]
The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I Mean Noel)
May 6, 2012 by 2 Comments
Ellen Raskin was one of my favorite authors as a kid, so after the success of reading The Phantom Tollbooth with my kids, I was eager to share her books with them as well. The first book we read was The Mysterious Disappearence of Leon (I Mean Noel). It led to much laughter with the […]
Bridge to Terabithia
May 5, 2012 by 1 Comment
Bridge to Terabithia is one of the reasons I started this site. It’s become a childhood classic, but it’s also one that many people list among the most traumatic books they read as kids. Because I’ve been thinking a lot about depictions of death in kids books, I decided I’d better reread it, instead of […]
