Review written by Jonathan Lavallee Howl’s Moving Castle takes place in a Kingdom, somewhere. The eldest of three has read all the tales and she knows that she’s destined for failure—the eldest ones always are, especially when there are two younger siblings and your father has remarried. Even if your stepmom does her best to […]
Beauty Sleep
August 28, 2012 by 1 Comment
Beauty Sleep manages to retell the story of “Sleeping Beauty” while incorporating a proactive princess and true love despite the curse of a hundred year sleep. This is no mean feat! I thoroughly enjoyed this novel which occasionally brought me to happy tears as things fell into place (I’m also sleep deprived, which may factor […]
Auralia’s Colors
August 22, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Auralia’s Colors isn’t explicitly a middle grade book, but it’s clean enough to be appropriate for precocious older tweens (i.e., the violence isn’t described in particularly graphic detail, the sex is only hinted at). It’s a great introduction to epic fantasy, with its somewhat complex story and not quite epic length. It contains metaphors that […]
The Aviary
August 9, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Review written by MG Wells. The Aviary is a mystery set in Maine during the late 1800’s and similar to the classical style of The Secret Garden. The protagonist, twelve-year-old Clara, lives a lonely life in a creepy, dilapidated mansion, with Ruby (the cook), her mother, Harriet (the housekeeper) and the elderly owner, Mrs. Glendoveer. […]
Cinder
August 7, 2012 by Leave a Comment
For an analysis that isn’t full of spoilers, read my review on the Broadsheet. Cinder is a futuristic fairytale, and although there are obvious connections to “Cinderella,” it’s really its own tale with nods to many other familiar stories, particularly “Snow White.” Cinder is a cyborg—after a horrific accident, parts of her body have been […]
Sammy Keyes and the Psycho Kitty Queen
July 30, 2012 by Leave a Comment
My nieces have really enjoyed the Sammy Keyes mystery series, so they let me borrow one of their books when they came to visit. I read Sammy Keyes And the Psycho Kitty Queen, which I think is the 9th book in the series. Although you certainly don’t need to read the books in order, there […]
How to Be a Pirate
July 12, 2012 by Leave a Comment
How to Be a Pirate is the second book in the How to Train Your Dragon series. The look and tone are pretty much the same—scrawled illustrations, vaguely rude humor, splotches in the margins, changing fonts and random capitalization, maps and lists and such that further explain parts of the story. Hiccup is still far […]
The Shadows: The Books of Elsewhere
June 29, 2012 by Leave a Comment
It’s been awhile since I’ve read a book that made me question the wisdom of reading just before I fell asleep! The Shadows: The Books of Elsewhere, though quite middle grade appropriate, plays off of several of my personal fears and is the creepiest kids’ book I’ve read since I was a kid myself. The […]
The View from Saturday
June 22, 2012 by Leave a Comment
I’ve been meaning to read The View from Saturday for years now, and it took me several false starts before I finally got into it. But it was worth it. It’s an unusual book, told unchronologically from multiple points of view. At its simplest, it’s the story of four sixth graders—Noah, Nadia, Ethan, and Julian, AKA […]
Lulu and the Brontosaurus
June 20, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Lulu and the Brontosaurus is a delightful book for younger readers. With short chapters and illustrations by the wonderful Lane Smith on every page, it’s great for kids who are transitioning from picture books to chapter books. That said, it’s likely to appeal to older kids as well because of its sense of humor. The […]
