Month: June 2019

The world of middle school is not easy. Add in going to a new private school where everyone already seems to know each other, being one of the only people of color at your school, and wishing you could have gone to art school instead and then the situation is even harder. This book exemplified the way Middle School feels for a lot of students and I enjoyed getting to see this experience through someone else’s perspective.

Seventh grader Jordan Banks loves nothing more than drawing cartoons about his life. But instead of sending him to the art school of his dreams, his parents enroll him in a prestigious private school known for its academics, where Jordan is one of the few kids of color in his entire grade.
As he makes the daily trip from his Washington Heights apartment to the upscale Riverdale Academy Day School, Jordan soon finds himself torn between two worlds—and not really fitting into either one. Can Jordan learn to navigate his new school culture while keeping his neighborhood friends and staying true to himself?

HarperCollins

Leave a Comment

Step one in the correct way to grieve…oh, if only there was a manual. Coyote and her Rodeo (don’t call him dad) are on a journey. They don’t know where or when it will end but she does remember when it began. 5 years. She has lived on this bus for 5 years and while part of her loves every moment of a life that is free, part of her is still pulled back to what was before. Follow Coyote and this meandering journey and you will wish this story would go on forever.

Five years.
That’s how long Coyote and her dad, Rodeo, have lived on the road in an old school bus, criss-crossing the nation.
It’s also how long ago Coyote lost her mom and two sisters in a car crash.
Coyote hasn’t been home in all that time, but when she learns that the park in her old neighborhood is being demolished―the very same park where she, her mom, and her sisters buried a treasured memory box―she devises an elaborate plan to get her dad to drive 3,600 miles back to Washington state in four days…without him realizing it.
Along the way, they’ll pick up a strange crew of misfit travelers. Lester has a lady love to meet. Salvador and his mom are looking to start over. Val needs a safe place to be herself. And then there’s Gladys…
Over the course of thousands of miles, Coyote will learn that going home can sometimes be the hardest journey of all…but that with friends by her side, she just might be able to turn her “once upon a time” into a “happily ever after.”

Henry Holt and Co.

Leave a Comment

Dragons, pollution, superheroes, dragons, high school, homework, dragons. This books was wonderful…weird…but wonderful. It is a fantastic alternate history where carbon emitting dragons are responsible for many historical disasters and modern day slayers and bards are in charge of keeping normal life possible.

Listen! For I sing of Owen Thorskard: valiant of heart, hopeless at algebra, last in a long line of legendary dragon slayers. Though he had few years and was not built for football, he stood between the town of Trondheim and creatures that threatened its survival. 

There have always been dragons. As far back as history is told, men and women have fought them, loyally defending their villages. Dragon slaying was a proud tradition. 

But dragons and humans have one thing in common: an insatiable appetite for fossil fuels. From the moment Henry Ford hired his first dragon slayer, no small town was safe. Dragon slayers flocked to cities, leaving more remote areas unprotected. 

Such was Trondheim’s fate until Owen Thorskard arrived. At sixteen, with dragons advancing and his grades plummeting, Owen faced impossible odds―armed only with a sword, his legacy, and the classmate who agreed to be his bard. 

Listen! I am Siobhan McQuaid. I alone know the story of Owen, the story that changes everything. Listen!

Carolrhoda Lab

Leave a Comment

You are no longer a citizen. You are considered a prisoner of war and are taken from your home, put behind barbed wire and into tiny barracks with your entire family. You leave behind your friends, your school, …your life. While your life is paused everything else around you goes on like normal. It happened here. Internment camps in America during World War II are a blotch upon the pages of American history… something we would rather forget. However, it did happen and this is the story of two girls and how their worlds collided in one of these camps.

It’s 1944, and World War II is raging across Europe and the Pacific. The war seemed far away from Margot in Iowa and Haruko in Colorado–until they were uprooted to dusty Texas, all because of the places their parents once called home: Germany and Japan.

Haruko and Margot meet at the high school in Crystal City, a “family internment camp” for those accused of colluding with the enemy. The teens discover that they are polar opposites in so many ways, except for one that seems to override all the others: the camp is changing them, day by day and piece by piece. Haruko finds herself consumed by fear for her soldier brother and distrust of her father, who she knows is keeping something from her. And Margot is doing everything she can to keep her family whole as her mother’s health deteriorates and her rational, patriotic father becomes a man who distrusts America and fraternizes with Nazis.

With everything around them falling apart, Margot and Haruko find solace in their growing, secret friendship. But in a prison the government has deemed full of spies, can they trust anyone–even each other?

Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Leave a Comment

I truly loved taking an alternate look at a character I thought I knew so well. This Ursula backstory is fabulous and heartbreaking at the same time. I was enthralled with the characters and enjoyed every moment I got to spend with them.

Ever since her best friend Anna died, Evie has been an outcast in her small fishing town. Hiding her talents, mourning her loss, drowning in her guilt.
Then a girl with an uncanny resemblance to Anna appears on the shore, and the two girls catch the eyes of two charming princes. Suddenly Evie feels like she might finally have a chance at her own happily ever after.
But magic isn’t kind, and her new friend harbors secrets of her own. She can’t stay in Havnestad—or on two legs—without Evie’s help. And when Evie reaches deep into the power of her magic to save her friend’s humanity—and her prince’s heart—she discovers, too late, what she’s bargained away.

Katherine Tegen Books

Leave a Comment

I loved it! I loved it! I loved it! I wish every middle schooler and truthfully their moms would read this book. It is perfection. Amy Anne was a wonderful character and narrator and I wanted there to be ten more books.

Well-behaved women seldom make history.
It all started the day Amy Anne Ollinger tried to check out her favorite book in the whole world, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, from the school library. That’s when Mrs. Jones, the librarian, told her the bad news: her favorite book was banned! All because a classmate’s mom thought the book wasn’t appropriate for kids to read.
Amy Anne decides to fight back by starting a secret banned book library out of her locker. But soon things get out of hand, and Amy Anne finds herself on the front line of an unexpected battle over book banning, censorship, and who has the right to decide what she and her fellow students can read. In the end, her only recourse might be to try to beat the book banners at their own game. Because after all, once you ban one book, you can ban them all…

Starscape

Leave a Comment

When everyone around us seems to be changing and we still feel the same, what are we supposed to do? This hilarious graphic novel takes a look at what happens when we try to be anything but our true selves. I thought is was a perfect look into the awkwardness of middle school and how even the most well adjusted of us, flounder at times!

It’s the beginning of the new school year and AJ feels like everyone is changing but him. He hasn’t grown or had any exciting summer adventures like his best friends have. He even has the same crush he’s harbored for years. So AJ decides to take matters into his own hands. But how could a girl like Nia Winters ever like plain vanilla AJ when she only has eyes for vampires?

When AJ and Nia are paired up for a group project on Transylvania, it may be AJ’s chance to win over Nia’s affection by dressing up like the vamp of her dreams. And soon enough he’s got more of Nia’s attention than he bargained for when he learns she’s a slayer.

Now AJ has to worry about self-preservation while also trying to save everyone he cares about from a real-life threat lurking in the shadows of Spoons Middle School.

Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

Leave a Comment