This week's round-up of middle grade fantasy and science fiction from around the blogs

Welcome to another fun-filled middle grade science fiction and fantasy round-up of what I read around the blogs this week! Please let me know if I missed your link; please feel free to email me links at any time during the week.

I am toying with the idea of offering these round-ups as a direct email newsletter type thing--would anyone be interested?

Reviews:

13 Gifts, by Wendy Mass, at Book Nut

The Apothecary, by Maile Meloy, at The New York Times Book Review

Breadcrumbs, by Anne Ursu, at Good Books and Good Wine and Waking Brain Cells

The Cheshire Cheese Cat, by Carmen Agra Deedy and Randall Wright, at TheHappyNappyBookseller

Chronicles of the Red King: The Secret Kingdom, by Jenny Nimmo, at Charlotte's Library

Darwen Arkwright and the Peregrine Plot, by A.J. Hartley, at lucy was robbed

Finding Angel, by Kat Heckenbach, at Magical Ink

The Grimm Legacy, by Polly Shulman, at Jean Little Library

Harding's Luck, by E. Nesbit, at Tor

The History Keepers: the Storm Begins, by Damian Dibben, at Mr Ripley's Enchanted Books

The Inquisitor's Apprentice, by Chris Moriarty, at Good Books and Good Wine and Charlotte's Library

Ivy and the Meanstalk, by Dawn Lairamore, at Reading Vacation

Justin Thyme, by Panema Oxridge, at Charlotte's Library

Liesel and Po, by Lauren Oliver, at books4yourkids

Phillipa Fisher and the Dream Maker's Daughter, by Liz Kessler, at What's Happening in Rm 249

The Princess Curse, by Merrie Haskell, at Library Mama and The Book Smugglers

Rip Tide, by Kat Falls, at Karissa's Reading Review, Book Reviews and English News, and Bart's Bookshelf

The Royal Treatment, by Lindsey Levitt, at Good Books and Good Wine

Skulduggery Pleasant: Death Bringer, by Derek Landy, at The Book Zone (for boys)

Son of Neptune, by Rick Riordan, at A Backwards Story

A Tale Dark and Grimm, by Adam Gidwitz, at So Many Books, So Little Time, The Book Zone (for boys) and Brooke Favero

Wildwood, by Colin Meloy, at Books Kids Like

A Year Without Autumn, by Liz Kessler, at Birdbraind(ed) Book Blog and Becky's Book Reviews

Authors and Interviews:

Janice Hardy (Darkfall) at Literary Rambles

Greg Fishbone (Glaxey Games) at Odds and Ends and From the Mixed-up Files (the full tour schedule can be found here)

Kimberley Griffiths Little (Circle of Secrets) at From the Mixed-up Files

Patrick Carman (one of the authors of Guys Read: Thriller) at Literary Asylum

Simon Haynes (Hal Junior: The Secret Signal) at Susan Kaye Quinn

PHC Marchesi (Shelby and Shauna Kitt and the Dimensional Holes) at Susan Kaye Quinn

Adam Jay Epstein and Andrew Jacobson (The Familiars) at The O.W.L., and at The Enchanted Inkpot

Matthew Kirby (Icefall) at Whatever (even though Icefall isn't, technically, fantasy, it still reads as such!)

Shannon Messenger (the forthcoming Keeper of the Lost Cities--congratulations, Shannon!) at Author Turf

An interview with Stacy Whitman, of Tu Books (publishers of multicultural sci fi/fantasy for kids and teens) at Diversity in YA

Other Good Stuff:

A steampunk appreciation of Scott Westefeld's Leviathan trilogy at Tor

The science behind Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, at theeldertree

Fifty years of The Phantom Tollbooth at The New Yorker

A panel of authors addresses the question "Magical Schools: What are they Good for?" recapped at Tor

Trivia Tuesday at Books Kids Like features A Wrinkle in Time

Very excitingly, Shannon Hale has announced that there's a forthcoming sequel to The Princess Academy!

Here's a news item I missed--the winners of the 2011 Golden Duck Awards (for excellence in Children's Science Fiction Literature)

And I missed this article in the Guardian last week on "The enchantments of witch fiction." (One of my favorite books, Witch's Brat, by Rosemary Sutcliff, is mentioned)

Nominations have closed for the Cybils; here's the list of what was nominated for mg sff (down about 25 from last year's 150). It will change somewhat as a few books get shuffled around categories. If anyone wants to read along, at Hope is the Word you can find an Armchair Cybils challenge.

At Seven Miles of Steel Thistles, Katherine Langrish has a lovely mystical voyages series--up now, Jason and the Argonauts.

And just in case you want inspiration for Halloween desert, here's a gallery of horrific cakes!