This Week's Middle Grade Fantasy and Sci Fi Round-up!

Happy Fourth of July weekend! My town had its fireworks on Friday (why?) so all is anti-climax hereabouts, but mg sff rounding up must go on.

Apologies in advance if I missed your review! During the week, I fill my two email accounts with links mailed back and forth between them, and sometimes (most weeks) things fall through the cracks.

Here's what I found in my blog reading this week:

The Reviews

Astronaut Academy: Zero Gravity, by Dave Roman, at Back to Books

Bloodline Rising, by Katy Moran, at Just Booking Around (older mg/ya)

The Boy at the End of the World, by Greg van Eekhout, at Becky's Book Reviews

Breadcrumbs, by Anne Ursu, at Fuse #8

Bubble in the Bathtub, by Jo Nesbo, at the excelsior file

The Emerald Atlas, by John Stephens, at Challenging the Bookworm (audio book review)

Fire and Flood, by Emily Diamond, at Eva's Book Addiction

How to Train Your Dragon, by Cressida Cowell, at Giraffe Days

Kat, Incorrigible, by Stephanie Burgis, at One Librarian's Book Reviews

Knightly Academy, by Violet Haberdasher, at Beyond Books

The Owl Keeper, by Christine Brodien-Jones, at Reading Vacation

The Search for WondLa, by Tony DiTerlizzi, at Becky's Book Reviews

Season of Secrets, by Sally Nicholls, at Charlotte's Library

The Secret Spiral, by Gillian Neimark, at There's a Book

Starcrossed, by Elizabeth C. Bunce, at One Librarian's Book Reviews (one of those tricky books balanced between mg and YA...)

Tomorrow Girls: Run for Cover, by Eva Gray, at Rebecca's Book Blog

You'll Like it Here (Everybody Does) by Ruth White, at Eva's Book Addiction

and The Queen Must Die is on Blog Tour --here's a post at My Favorite Books where you can find the stops (I need to get this one!)

Authors and Interviews

Steve Arntson (The Wikkeling) at Candace's Book Blog

Nathan Bransford (Jacob Wonderbar and the Cosmic Space Kapow) at Cynsations

Cornelia Funke, on "Who Is Jacob Reckless" at Mr Ripley's Enchanted Books, and also at My Favorite Books (where you can find the blog tour schedule--this just came out in the UK)

Other Things of Interest (I hope)

I've put up a page of all my reviews of fairy tale retellings...which I though would give me a sense of Accomplishment, but has mainly served to make me keenly aware of how many of these I've read but haven't reviewed....If you have a favorite that isn't up there, please suggest it!

For us readers of the middle grade--My Favorite Books is dedicating July to "Under 14's Only." (and I've been meaning to mention for ages that at somewhere in the middle you can find (almost every week, except of course this one--typical of the way things work for me) a most excellent round-up of posts of interest to readers and writers of mg).

I've also been meaning to mention that, in response to the WSJ article of YA Darkness, Jennifer over at From the Mixed Up Files of Jennifer Bartman has started The Light and Round Project, gathering reviews of YA books that are not dark and edgy.

And for what its worth, here's my own response to that article about the darkness of current YA: It all started when a mother was looking for a book for her 13 year-old in the YA section. She couldn't find one that wasn't too dark and edgy. So why, for goodness sakes, didn't she mosey on over to the children's section? To heck with the limiting, false restrictions of Age Categorization. Just because someone is 13, or (naming no names) 44 (sigh), doesn't mean they can't find books they want to read in places that are officially not their reading level. And they don't have to be ashamed about it.

For a very insightful discussion of this very point, and other, even better points, here are Greg van Eekhout (The Boy at the End of the World) and Carrie Vaughn (Steel, which is YA, but I plan on reading it even though it might be too dark for me) talking about the mg and YA "genres" at Tor.

There's a new blog in town, The History Girls, covering historical fiction from kids to adults

Here's a chance to show your favorite fictional world some love--nominate it for inclusion in If You Lived Here: The Top 30 All Time Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Worlds. I haven't done it yet, because mine is the world in Patricia McKillip's Riddlemaster trilogy (if you haven't read these books, please do--here's my post on them), and I haven't taken the time to go see it it actually has a name....