This Sunday's round-up of middle-grade science fiction and fantasy book releated posts from around the blogs

Hi, and welcome to another week of my gleanings vs mg sff books from around the blogging world. Let me know if I missed yours, and feel free to let me know at anytime during the week if you have a post you'd like included, or if you've seen a good one! (Authors and publishers, I mean you too).

The point of this exercise is to make it easier for readers to find reviews of mg sff, which tend to be very scattered around the bloggosphere (bloggisphere?), and also a lot more thin on the ground than reviews of picture books on the one hand, and YA books on the other hand. I did some serious google work this morning, looking reviews of new releases of mg sff, and came up with no additional posts. I couldn't, for instance, find any reviews of The Freedom Stone, by Jeffrey Kluger, Enter the Zombie, by David Lubar, or The Secret Zoo: Secrets and Shadows, by Bryan Chick. *

But on with what I did find.

First, congratulations to The Shadows (The Books of Elsewhere, 1), the winner of the Cybils Award in middle grade sff! The sequel comes out this summer, and I can't wait for it!

The Reviews:

Brigitta of the White Forest, by Danika Dinsmore, at Charlotte's Library

The Children of Green Knowe, by L.M. Boston, at Stella Matutina

Dealing With Dragons, by Patricia Wrede, at The Blue Fairy's Bookself

The End of the World Club, by J & P Voelkel, at Books and Other Thoughts

The Farthest-Away Mountain, by Lynne Reid Banks, at The Blue Fairy's Bookshelf

Fever Crumb, by Philip Reeve, at books4yourkids

The Folk Keeper, by Fanny Billingsley, at Charlotte's Library

The Girl Who Could Fly, by Victoria Forester, at Shannon Whitney Messenger

Inkspell, by Cornelia Funke, at Musings of a Book Addict (guest student review)

Leviathan, by Scott Westerfeld, at Challenging the Bookworm

No Passengers Beyond this Point, by Gennifer Choldenko, at Waking Brain Cells

The Ranger's Apprentice Series, by John Flanagan, at YA Bibliophile

The Search for WondLa, by Tony Diterizzi, at TheHappyNappyBookseller

The Secret of Zoom, by Lynne Jonell, at Mister K Reads

The Shadows, by Jacqueline West, at One Librarian's Book Reviews and books4yourkids

Small Persons With Wings, by Ellen Booraem, at Charlotte's Library

Swept Away (The Secret of the Unicorn Queen, Book 1) by Gwen Hansen, at The Blue Fairy's Bookshelf, and book 2 of the series, Sunblind, also at The Blue Fairy's Bookshelf

Timeriders: The Doomsday Code, by Alex Scarrow, at The Book Zone (for Boys)

The True Meaning of Smekday (audiobook edition) by Adam Rex, at Book Nut.

The Weaver, by Kai Strand, at Welcome to All-Consuming Books

The Interviews:

An interview with Rebecca Stead at Bookwitch (When You Reach Me was released fairly recently over there in the UK)

Matthew Kirby (The Clockwork Three) at MP Flory

Hélène Boudreau (Real Mermaids Don't Wear Toe Rings) at Write On!

Other Good Stuff:

Thoughts on Middle Grade vs Young Adult fantasy, with some choice examples of the former, at The First Gates.

At The Spectacle, Kimberley Griffiths Little talks about magical realism (a subject that I find fascinating as I able, or not, the label "fantasy" to the books I review). You can also enter to win a copy of her book, The Healing Spell, which I didn't realize has magical elements...even if I, myself, don't win, I'll be looking for it.

Katherine Langrish has wrapped up her lovely Fairy Tale Reflection series with a post of her own, at Seven Miles of Steel Thistles (and by way of thanking her for all the wonderful reading this series offered, I wanted to mention the imminent release of all three of her "Troll" books in one volume, entitled West of the Moon).

I don't generally post about movie news, but this is so germane to the subject at hand I can't help it. Two middle grade fantasies by Eva Ibbotson books are headed for the big screen:

More information can be found at Bookyurt.

And finally, HarperCollins has a pretty neat program up and running (that you've probably already heard of) called Inkpop. It includes Weekly Writing Challenges; this week's challenge coincides with Courtney Allison Moulton's Angelfire. This isn't a mg book, which, since Inkpop is aimed at YA readers, isn't surprising, but maybe one week a mg book will be picked!


And even more finally, some of you who follow me in a reader might have seen a false start for this post; I just wanted to share the new paperback cover (left) for a book I liked lots, but whose original cover I found utterly incomprehensible: The Unnameables, by Ellen Booraem.

*Of course, I haven't reviewed these particular books myself...mainly because I don't have copies, and I am trying really hard to read the books I do have copies of (this isn't going so well. Sigh.)