this week's round-up of middle grade fantasy and sci fi from around the blogs (3/31/24)

Here's what I found this week; please let me know if I missed anything!

The Reviews

Ace Adler and the Pendulum of Doom, by John H. Matthews, at  Mark My Words

Amari and the Great Game, by B. B. Alston, at Sifa Elizabeth Reads

Amari and the Night Brothers, by B.B. Alston, at Novels Alive

Dragon Force: Devourer’s Attack, by Katie & Kevin Tsang, at Scope for Imagination

Festergrimm, by Thomas Taylor, at Puss Reboots 

The First State of Being, by Erin Entrada Kelly, at Charlotte's Library

Into the Witchwood, by Méabh McDonnell, at Book Craic

The Island at the Edge of the Night, by Lucy Strange, at Library Girl and Book Boy

Night of the Squawker (Goosebumps SlappyWorld #18), by R.L. Stine, at Ms. Yingling Reads 

The Rise of  the Legends, by Jake Zortman, at Mr Ripley's Enchanted Books

The Secret Doors of Cannondale, by Stephanie Brick, at  PR Newswire

The Secret Library, by Kekla Magoon, at Log Cabin Library

Sparkling Mist of Time (The Deliverers 4), by Gregory Slomba, at The Secret Files of Fairday Morrow

Things that Go Bump, by Kathryn Foxfield, at Twirling Book Princess

Two at School Library Journal--Daughters of the Lamp, by Nedda Lewers, and Medusa, by Katherine Marsh

Other Good Stuff 

"Why adults should read children's books" by Katherine Rundell at the BBC

The First State of Being, by Erin Entrada Kelly, for Timeslip Tuesday

The First State of Being, by Erin Entrada Kelly (March, 2024, Greenwillow Books) is a delightful and heartwarming middle grade time travel book that I enjoyed lots.

In August, 1999 (which will seem very strange and far away to the target audience), 12-year-old Michael prepares for the potential disaster that is Y2K.  When we first meet him, he's shop lifting a can of peaches to add to his survival stash kept under his bed--his mom is working three jobs and can't give him the money he'd like to spend getting properly prepared.  Though money his tight, his mother insists on paying 15-year-old Gibby to keep an eye on him, and though Michael feels confident he'd manage find without her, he still enjoys her company, both because he has a crush on her and because his anxiety and social awkwardness has made it hard for him to have friends. His only other friend is the old maintenance man for the apartment complex.

But then into the mediocre life of Fox Run Apartments, in Red Knot, Delaware, comes a teenaged boy, Ridge, strangely dressed and disoriented.  He's a time traveler from the future, and when Michael learns this, he's desperate to know what happens with Y2K.  But Ridge isn't telling.  He's in enough trouble already, as we learn from glimpses of what's happening in the future.  He wasn't supposed to be the first time traveler ever, and he's not going to risk spoiling the future by letting on all he knows.  He just wants to experience life in 1999, especially seeing what a mall is like....

There aren't any dramatic happenings in Ridge's time in 1999, although there are many complexities that Gibby and Michael must deal with.  And although Ridge doesn't tell all he knows, the time Michael spends with him gives him confidence not just about the future but about the present.  And it all ends in a beautiful, time travel wonderful way!

I enjoyed it very much.  The time travel has just the right amount of sci fi to it to make it if not plausible at least acceptable, and the repercussions of Ridge's trip to 1999 are lovely. It will bring that long lost time vividly to life for young readers, and the interpersonal dynamics and tension will keep the pages turning for them very nicely indeed.  I even grew a bit at one particularly poignant point in the best possible way.

this week's round-up of middle grade sci fi and fantasy from around the blogs (3/24/24)

Hi all, and greetings from a cold spring morning here in Rhode Island (a good day to read by the fire....)

Please let me know if I missed your post!

The Reviews

Bubba and Squirt's Shield of Athena, by Sherry Ellis, at Bookworm for Kids 

Cloudlanders, by Christopher Mackie, at Mark My Words

The Deadlands: Survival (The Deadlands #3), by Skye Melki-Wegner, at The Story Sanctuary

Enchanted Glass, by Diana Wynne Jones, at Staircase Wit

Ferris, by Kate DiCamillo, at ReadWonder and Redeemed Reader

The Island at the Edge of Night, by Lucy Strange, at Scope for Imagination

Nemesis and the Vault of Lost Time, by P.J. Davis, at The Fairview Review

Nightmares in Paradise (Ring of Solomon 2), by Aden Polydoros, at Mark My Words

Once There Was, by Kiyash Monsef, at Pages Unbound

Pages of Doom, by Jeff Szpirglas, at Bookworm for Kids 

Shadowhall Academy: The Whispering Walls. by Phil Hickes, at Twirling Book Princess

Sona and the Golden Beasts, by Rajani LaRocca, at Charlotte's Library

Stinetinglers 2, by R.L. Stine, at Twirling Book Princess

Stitch, by Pádraig Kenny, at Sifa Elizabeth Reads and A Cascade of Books

Teddy vs. the Fuzzy Doom, by Braden Hallett, at Twirling Book Princess

Tourmaline and the Museum of Marvels, by Ruth Lauren, at Book Craic

The Traitor of Nubis (Umbra Tales 2), by Janelle McCurdy, at  Mark My Words

The Unicorn Legacy: Tangled Magic, by Camilla Benko, at Ms. Yingling Reads

When the Wild Calls, by Nicola Penfold, at Scope for Imagination

The Witch in the Woods (Grimmworld #1) by Michaelbrent Collings, at Kiss the Book

Authors and Interviews

Linda Crotta Brennan (The Selkie’s Daughter) at the Kansas  Public Radio podcast

Other Good Stuff

Greenwild: The World Behind the Door by Pari Thomson is the winnder of the Waterstones children’s book prize The Guardian

The 2024 Unicorn Report (100scopenotes.com)

2024 Books from Newbery Winners (100scopenotes.com)

Five new arrivals are spotlighted at Take Five: Middle Grade Fantasy (teenlibrariantoolbox.com)

Sona and the Golden Beasts, by Rajani LaRocca

Sona and the Golden Beasts (March 5, 2024, Quill Tree Books) is Rajani LaRocca's first other world fantasy, and having read and enjoyed many of her other books (especially Midsummer's Mayhem) this was a must read for me with no languishing on the tbr pile as soon as I got my hands on it! 

The alternate world is a fantasy version of India under British rule. Devia is a place where music calls forth magic, now forbidden by the conquering and exploiting Malechians.  They grow rich from Devia's gems, mined at great cost to its people.  Sona has lived relatively safe and privileged life as the daughter of a Malechian farmer, but her world is upended when she finds that she's actually his niece, and her father was a Devian (a forbidden marriage).  But the implications of this are overshadowed by the threat to the young wolf cub she's just adopted--one of the Malechian Hunters, who's determined to kill all five of the Great Beasts of Devia, its magical protectors) arrives at the farm, and cub shows signs that she might be the child and heir of the mythical golden wolf.  

She flees with the cub to the nearby Devian village that is her beloved Ayah's home and her extraordinary journey across the provinces of Devia begins. 

At first this is a relatively straightforward sort of challenge--to find a legendary cure for her Ayah accompanied by Raag, Ayah's grandson.  But it turns out it's a journey to fulfill a prophecy about the Great Beasts that will free Devia from its oppressors....and the two children must learn to work together to bring it about, while the fearsome Hunter pursues them.  

It's no surprise that they succeed, and the twist was apparent enough that even I, who am usually dim about things, saw it coming.  That being said, it's a gorgeously detailed journey full of wonder and danger, vividly described and full of excitements.  And in-between the happening are bits of folklore, letters, and songs that make the Devia and its history come even more to life.

As an adult reader, I came into the story with a fairly solid grasp of the English colonial exploration of India, and so the parallels were glaringly obvious.  For young readers with less knowledge, this will be eye-opening.  What with all suppression of books that hold harsh truths about the past, I'm glad that this story of the evil of colonization comes in what looks to be an ordinary fantasy, so that those young readers might have a better chance of finding it in their schools (maybe?), and get the chance to think about it.  It's also a good read, with great magic and characters to cheer for too!

no round-up today

 It's end of spring break, which means me about to set to take my kid back to college....see you next week!

The Other Place, by Nancy L. Robison, for Timeslip Tuesday

Today's Timeslip book is The Other Place, by Nancy L. Robison (1978).

Mine, happily picked up at a booksale, turned out to be a review copy (very cool to see the retro promotional info, shown below), but I don't think I'll send in two clippings as requested.

I'm making no effort to hold back on spoilers here with this whacky 1970s sci fi story for kids, so if you are a little kid who's never read any science fiction (which you aren't), go read the book and see if you agree with the two Goodreads readers whose first sci fi it was, and who loved it before I ruin everything.

The Other Place starts with Elena and her dad driving off to the house in the country (USA) where they are now going live, following the death of Elena's mom.  Things get weird, and Elena can't see the road behind them anymore, and her dad's stilted remarks don't do much to sooth her growing sense of wrongness.  The cabin is fine, and seems normal enough, except that Elena is woken up by strange noises, and goes off into the woods to see what's happening, and the townsfolk are dancing around in the middle of nowhere. 

A trip to the store the next day adds to the weirdness, when she sees the storekeeper has eyes filmed over with jelly...as do the kids and the teacher in the one room schoolhouse.  One kid, with mostly non jelly eyes, is friendly, lending her a horse to ride, but when she tries to ride her way out of the valley, she finds she can't.  She's stuck.

Turns out the townsfolk are aliens in a little bubble cut off physically and temporally from the rest of the world, her mom was one of them, and her dad has volunteered to help them fix their space craft so they can go home.  Happily for Elena, the friendly kid helps her get out of the valley, but her dad wants to go off with the aliens because he loves his dead alien wife more than he cares about his living kid (the book does not say it quite like this....).  And when Elena escapes after what felt like weeks away from the city, almost no time has passed, and her aunt is there to meet her....and her aunt has.....JELLY EYES!  The end.

The illustrations add a certain 1970s something to the story.

The paperback cover, if you are so lucky to be reading that one, adds even more.  

This week's round up of middle grade fantasy and sci fi from around the blogs (3/10/24)

Here's what I found this week, please enjoy and let me know if I missed anything!  I had good intentions to read and review lots this past week, which got derailed when I found out I would not just be getting my kid home from college this week, but lots of friends too, so instead of reading I cleaned and decluttered...

The Reviews

Closet of Dreams, by Mark Ukra & Tara Mesalik MacMahon, at Mark My Words: 

Creepy Creations, by Jennifer Killick, at Sifa Elizabeth Reads  

 Ferris, by Kate DiCamillo, at Cracking the Cover, Fuse #8, and Log Cabin Library

The Girl in the Window, by Lindsey Hobson, at Faith Elizabeth Hough

 Goblin Monday (Goosebumps: House of Shivers #2), by R.L. Stine, at megsbookrack

Greenwild: The World Behind the Door, by Pari Thomson, at V's View from the Bookshelves 

Grimmworld: The Witch in the Woods, by Michaelbrent Collings, at Always in the Middle…  and Melissa's Bookshelf

Magicalia: Race of Wonders by Jennifer Bell, at Little Blog of Library Treasures

Magic Beyond the Mark, by Emily Swiers, at Independent Book Review

Mind Over Monsters, by Betsy Uhrig, at Bookworm for Kids 

Nemesis and the Vault of Lost Time, by PJ Davis, at Mark My Words  

Over Sea, Under Stone (The Dark is Rising, #1), by Susan Cooper, Bookshelf Fantasies

Twice Upon A Time, by Michelle Harrison, at Valinora Troy

The Whisperwicks, by Jordan Lees, at Chris Soul

Winston Chu vs. the Whimsies, by Stacey Lee, at  BookstrovertReviews

Wrath of the Rain God (Legendarios Book 1), by Karla Arenas Valenti, at Mark My Words

Authors and Interviews

Katherine Marsh (Medusa) "On The Double Standards As An Author", at The Nerd Daily

Rajani LaRocca (Sona and the Golden Beasts)  "How to Grow Your Career as an Author" at Literary Rambles: 

Nasuġraq Rainey Hopson  (Eagle Drums) "When Mystery and Mythology Collide" at Writer's Digest 

Kate DiCamillo (Ferris), at AP News

Other good stuff

Here's the Wild Robot trailer, courtesy of 100scopenotes.com

Anne Frank and Me, by Cherie Bennett and Jeff Gottesfeld, for Timeslip Tuesday

Anne Frank and Me, by Cherie Bennett and Jeff Gottesfeld (1997), is this week's Timeslip Tuesday offering. It tells of a teenaged girl, Nicole, who's mind is full of stereotypical teen stuff, including pining over Jack.  Her diary thoughts of pining will perhaps be familiar to many readers who are, or once were, teenaged girls with their own hopeless crushes.  

At school, her history teacher is trying to explain the horrors of the holocaust, but it seems distant, and even Anne Frank's diary seems, according to the internet searches Nicole does, a possible fake....so she's not really interested in the class trip to the local "Anne Frank in the World" exhibit, except, of course, that Jack is going to, and maybe he'll want to sit with her on the bus...and he does!  but it turns out that he's actually interested in a friend of hers, and everything is horrible, and then there are gunshots, and everyone thinks is the strange goth-type boy shooting, and she falls and hits her head....

And comes to as a Jewish girl in German occupied Paris. 

She still is her American self at first, but very quickly she fades into the place of the girl whose life she is now living.  Things get worse and worse for the Jewish people of Paris, and she and her little sister end up in hiding.  But they are betrayed and sent on a hellish journey to a concentration camp.  Miraculously she actually meets Anne Frank, who tells her which way to go when they arrive, but the little sister goes the wrong way, Nicole follows, and they end up in a gas chamber.  And as she starts dying, she awakens in her own time again.

And it's not a shooting after all, it was a fireworks prank.

So this started off as a play, and I think this is why it doesn't quite work as novel.  Nicole's tone is very flatly matter-of-factly descriptive through all the horror she endures.  There's little emotion or introspection, and in general it's all told without much inner character development, which is possibly due to her not being herself anymore.  But still it's very gripping and impactful, and I stayed up late finishing it, and was moved by the hideous evil tragedy of it all...

,...with an extra coda of discomfort, not intended by the authors--this was written before the era of school shootings began in earnest with Columbine, and the fact that the shooting with which the time travel begins turns out to be a joke is pretty disturbing to a person reading it now.

 

This week's round up of middle grade sci fi and fantasy from around the blogs (3/3/24)

 Hi all, here's what I found this week!  Let me know if I missed anything.

The Reviews

Bumps in the Night, by Amalie Howard, at Ms. Yingling Reads

 Daughters of the Lamp, by Nedda Lewers, at Islamic School Librarian

Dread Wood: Creepy Creations, by Jennifer Killick, at Scope for Imagination

Dreamstalkers: The Night Train, by Sarah Driver, at Bellis Does Books and Books Up North

Fright Bite, by Jennifer Killick, at  Sifa Elizabeth Reads 

Impossible Creatures, by Katherine Rundell, at Mark My Words

Juniper Harvey and the Vanishing Kingdom, by Nina Varela, at Cannonball Read

Lia Park and the Missing Jewel, by Jenna Yoon, at Kiss the Book

Lili Gray and the World's Most Embarrassing Superpower, by Ada Loewe, at Mark My Words

Medusa by Katherine Marsh, at The Adventures of Library Girl

Paper Dragons: The Fight for the Hidden Realm, by Siobhan McDermott, at Courtney Reads Romance 

Pirates of Darksea, by Catherine Doyle, at Book Craic

The Princess Protection Program, by Alex London, at Baroness' Book Trove and Cannonball Read 

The Selkie's Daughter, by Linda Cotta Brennan, at Faith Elizabeth Hough

 Sona and the Golden Beasts, by Rajani LaRocca, at Steph's Story Space  

Too Many Interesting Things Are Happening to Ethan Fairmont, by Nick Brooks, at Charlotte's Library

The Unicorn Legacy-Tangled Magic, by Kamilla Benko, at Always in the Middle… 

Authors and Interviews

 Meredith Davis (Beneath the Swirling Sky) at Cynthia Leitich Smith

Other Good Stuff

 'Kiranmala And The Kingdom Beyond' To Be Adapted As Animated TV Show (deadline.com)

Too Many Interesting Things Are Happening to Ethan Fairmont, by Nick Brooks

I very much enjoyed meeting Ethan Fairmont and his friends, including the alien they call Cheese in his first outing (my review) so I dove into Too Many Interesting Things Are Happening to Ethan Fairmont, by Nick Brooks, (middle grade, November 2023, Union Square Kids), with pleasure, and was rewarded by a good read.

Ethan is happily planning interesting inventing and pleasant hanging out at the old industrial building now turned maker space where he met Cheese, and foiled the other hostile aliens hunting down Cheese and his people.  And he's happily looking forward to the start of sixth grade.  Less happily, he misses Cheese lots, and he and his family are still cooping from the trauma of the local police and the feds threatening the black community of Ferrous City and his family in particular.  And then school gets off to a rocky start, when a new girl, Fatima, threatens his self-worth with her own inventor smarts, and Ferrous City is experiencing a population boom that's raising real estate prices, and Ethan's parents, who are doing fine but aren't well off, are considering cashing in. On top of all this, the feds are back in town (and what are they up to?)

Turns out, though, that Fatima is just the new team member Ethan needs to re-establish communication with Cheese.  And Fatima is even more needed when the evil aliens renew hostilities....

It's not a comfort read; as the title suggests, too many interesting (and not very joyous) things are going on in Ethan's life.  But it's a gripping read, and a thought-provoking one, and I enjoyed it. The young characters are believable and very relatable, as is Ethan's growing maturity about teamwork and living in the moment instead of what if-ing, the tension builds at a nice pace, and the ending is satisfactory!  The social justice theme of the first book is here as well, as is an age-appropriate romance.  And of course a lovely alien friendship! 

If there is a third book, I'm there for it!