Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Promise

Review written by MR Valentine. Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Promise Parts 1, 2, and 3are comics/graphic novels that follow after the events that restore peace to the world in the Nickelodeon TV series Avatar: The Last Airbender and bring the series to a close. If you haven’t already, you should watch the series before you read […]

Sure Signs of Crazy

Review written by Jonathan Lavallee. The beginning of Sure Signs of Crazy assures the reader that you’ve never met anyone like Sarah Nelson. Sarah feels isolated in her life, and it’s because she is. When she was two, her mother tried to kill her and her twin brother by filling up the kitchen sink with […]

Grasshopper Jungle

Review written by Jonathan Lavallee. This highly acclaimed and award winning YA novel might grab the interest of your tween, but Jonathan offers some insight into why you’ll want to make an informed decision about letting your young reader put this on their “to read” pile, and why it should end up on your “to […]

The Zodiac Legacy: Convergence

The Zodiac Legacy: Convergence is the first book in the new series by Stan Lee, Stuart Moore, and Andie Tong. The premise is that during the convergence, the power of the Chinese Zodiac was brought back into the world, but Maxwell—our villain who wants to control all the Zodiac power—lost control when some people tried […]

Fairest

Fairest, a prequel to Cinder, will have to tide us over until Winter, the last of the Lunar Chronicles, comes out in fall 2015. Fairest tells the story of Levana, the awful Lunar queen we first meet in Cinder, and her rise to power. Like all really good villains, hers is a complicated story and it’s impossible not to […]

The Silver Thread

The Silver Thread is the second book in The Unicorn’s Secret series, following Moonsilver. It only increases my feeling that this isn’t so much a series as one longer novel broken down into chunks that are manageable for newly independent readers. If you haven’t read Moonsilver, The Silver Thread won’t make much sense at all. […]

Waistcoats & Weaponry

Waistcoats & Weaponry is the third in what will be the Finishing School quartet (the final book is scheduled to be published November 2015). The novels should be read in order, so start with Etiquette & Espionage and Curtsies & Conspiracies before reading this one. The finishing school itself plays a minor role in this […]

Dream Girl

Review written by Jonathan Lavallee. I will admit that I judged a book by its cover. Dream Girl has this kind of over flowery, white dress, far away look vibe happening on the cover. I thought I was going to hate it. When my tween daughter suggested that we pick it up because it was in […]

Bliss

My daughter loved Bliss, the story of the Bliss family who runs a magical bakery. When the parents are called away to help a neighboring town, the four kids—Thyme (Ty), Rosemary (Rose), Sage (uh, Sage), and Parsley (Leigh)—are left on their own to keep things running, along with Chip and Mrs. Carlson who have no […]

The Sea of Trolls

The Sea of Trolls is a great historical fantasy epic for the middle grade set. It follows the adventures of 12 year old Jack after he and his little sister Lucy are captured by Northmen. After gravely insulting Frith, a half-troll queen, Jack needs to go on a quest to see the queen of the […]