The Mutant Mushroom Takeover, by Summer Rachel Short

The Mutant Mushroom Takeover, by Summer Rachel Short (Simon and Schuster, Sept. 22 2020) is a great one for kids who love science (especially real-world science taken into the realm of the speculative) mixed with mystery and danger!

Maggie has set her sights on winning the Junior Naturalist Merit Award offered by Vitaccina, the one big employer in the small southern town of Shady Pines.  If she wins, maybe she can convince Vitaccina to offer her dad a job again. An unfortunate occurrence of rats in a vat of Vitaccina soda (made with rainforest ingredients) led to his firing, and now he's miles away working for the Park service, while Maggie and her older brother Ezra live with their grandma in a trailer park.  

When her best friend Nate talks her into exploring a forbidden woods where weird "ghost lights" have been seen, Maggie agrees to trespass with him--maybe the lights are a natural phenomena she can photograph.  And indeed, they find a host of bioluminescent mushrooms.  Old Man Bell, the owner of the woods also finds them, but while he's threatening them with his dogs, he has a heart-attack and dies. Ezra, who joined the younger kids, tries to save the man, but ends up having weird glowing spores coughed all over him...

When Maggie figures out that the last word Old Man Bell tried to say was "ophiocordyceps," and looks it up, she becomes convinced the fungi are seriously strange, and quite possibly dangerous.  Ophiocordyceps is a real fungus that turns ants into zombies, driving them to infect their own nests. This is just what seems to be happening in Shady Pines--Ezra, his friends, and other townsfolk are acting like they are becoming zombified.  

Maggie and Nate can't find help anywhere--not from the heads of Vitaccina, though they do seem very interested in Maggie's research, and no from the CDC, who think they're pranksters.  But Maggie has a sharp mind, and knows how to use it...and though the fungus becomes an almost insurmountable adversary, with it's human puppets doing its will, she figures out how it came to Shady Pines, and how to defeat it.

It's a great to see Maggie putting her love for science and research to work, nice to see the teamwork and loyalty of the two kids, and grossly horrible to see people infected with nasty fungi!  The pace picks up dramatically as the spores spread and the pages turn, and the final confrontation is a cinematic whammy! And as a result it's easy to imagine lots of kids eating it up! There isn't an awful lot of mg science fiction with  kid doing actually research and investigation, and this is a good one.

(not a criticism-- I myself found it a bit too hot and sticky for this to be a really pleasant read--the spore-filled southern summer was really vividly described!  so perhaps a good one to read in January....)

NB:  The Mutant Mushroom Takeover is eligible for this year's Cybils Awards, and has yet to be nominated....the public nomination period closes October 15!

disclaimer: review copy gratefully received from the author

The Last Lie, by Patricia Forde

The Last Lie, by Patricia Forde (August 1, 2020, Sourcebooks Young Readers), is the sequel to The List,* the story of the girl who's the keeper of words in a dystopian future society where language for the majority of the people living in  the city of Ark is limited to 600 words.  Letta loves words, and takes her job as keeper of them seriously.   In the first book, she escapes Ark; now she lives with people who call themselves the rebel Creators, trying to keep culture alive.

When Letta learns that the leader of Ark wants to limit language even further, and when the soldiers of the city move against the rebels, capturing her friends, she is compelled to act to free her friends in particular, and her people more generally from a wordless subjugation to tyranny.  She has her good friend Marlo on her society, and together they make a dangerous journey outside of their familiar world, finding dangers and allies.  But the rebels are outnumbered, and in the end it's up to Letta to use her words to tip the balance in favor of freedom.

Letta's a great character, full of understandable doubt as to what she is able to accomplish.  She doesn't see herself as a leader, and often her heart rules her head, causing her to make choices that are not always the safest.  But she's able to step into the role required of her with great bravery, and she's always true to her personal commitment to keeping words from being lost.

It's a gradual build up to the excitement of the end, when introspection and journeying becomes direct action, so a bit of patience is needed.  And it certainly is a book that will work much better for those who have read The List; lots of things won't really make sense otherwise.

The List was solidly a middle grade book; here Letta is preoccupied by her feelings for Marlo in a way that's pushing more YA-ward, making this a great pick for readers of 12 or so, moving from mg into YA.  More generally, anyone who's interested in how controlling language can control people will be fascinated.  That would be me, and my favorite part of this book was Letta's preoccupation with words--collecting them, taking comfort from them, and being determined to pass them on.

*The List was first published in Ireland as The Wordsmith, and The Last Lie was originally Mother Tongue.

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher.

Consolation Songs: Optimistic Speculative Fiction For A Time of Pandemic, edited by Iona Datt Sharma, for a baby shower gift

Consolation Songs: Optimistic Speculative Fiction For A Time of Pandemic, edited by Iona Datt Sharma (June 29, 2020), is an anthology of, as the title suggests, stories that hopeful reading. All proceeds are donated to the COVID-19 appeal being run by the UCLH Charity, the charity supporting the University College London Hospitals NHS Trust.

A co-worker is having a baby, and so we all bought baby shower gifts, to be opened in a zoom meeting next week.  When I was having baby showers, it was lovely to get all the baby stuff, but no one gave Me anything, and since this co-worker enjoys reading spec. fic., I thought a nice new book would be a lovely thing to give, along with something for the actual baby.  I had heard about Consolation Songs from Stephanie Burgis, who has a story in the anthology, and as well as supporting a good cause,  I was thinking comforting spec fic stories are just the thing one wants to read with a new born.

I read the book first, of course, to make sure it really was suitable, but very very carefully and then let it sit after wrapping it give any germs a chance to die.  I did, however, run into a problem. I liked the stories very very much (a nice mix of funny, moving, and comforting), and wanted to keep the book for myself! It is basically perfect pandemic reading, whether or not you have new born.

This is not to say that the stories are all sweetness and light; there's some darkness and underlying sadness and anger too.  But they all have hope.  Some I wanted to hug, like Seaview on Mars, by Katie Rathfelder, a story of a woman moving into a retirement community on Mars; being an old woman, who lived through years when the planet was barely habitable, she has been through a lot, and some bits of her memories made me teary.  Some stories made me grin, like Stephanie Burgis' light romantic comedy, Love, Your Flatmate, about two room-mates, stuck with each other in lockdown, one woman a human editor and the other a fey musician, who find a very mutually satisfying (romantic) solution to their conflict...It's an epistolatory story, which made it even more fun.   And then there are some that are testaments to the indominable human spirit, like This Is New Gehesran Calling, by Rebecca Fraimow, in which scattered refugees from a place that no longer exists find that it is still alive as long as they are still there to collectively remember, thanks to an underground radio station. It made me chuckle, and made me a bit teary.  

There are other great stories, but these three are my favorites!  I would so much rather have had this on hand to read when I was home with my own newborns--with my oldest, the first book I tried to read was The Hero, by Louise Le Nay.  It was supposed to be "a charming, poignant, and optimistic tale of an adolescent girl's journey of discovery set during World War I" but  I found it horribly depressing, and it  had very small type.  In my depressed desperation for soothing escape and inability to read small type (one of the fun things about that experience was having brain surgery two weeks after he was born, which fucked up my eyesight) I put it aside and pitifully reread the Xanth books, which goes to show how bad things were (there's a lot I don't find soothing about them when I'm in my right mind).  With my second baby, and type size no longer a problem, I read Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which had just come out, and we all know how cheerful that is, not.

So in any event, I would much rather have had Consolation Songs.   And I would still rather have it than have given it away, but then I would have had to find some other present....and nothing else would have been as exactly the sort of book I wanted to give!  I hope she likes it.

Rise of ZomBert, by Kara LaReau

Rise of ZomBert, by Kara LaReau, illustrated by Ryan Andrews (Candlewick, July 14 2020), is an excellent light horror story for 8-9 year-olds (although it's not actually horror unless you are a small woodland creature). It fits nicely into that slice of reading confidence development that falls between early chapter books and full throttle middle grade, with plenty of illustrations, but plenty of text as well.

In a cold, dark laboratory, a cat, Y-91 escapes its cage and makes it to the freedom of the world outside. Weak and starving, the cat finds shelter in a dumpster outside the YummCo Foods factory. The Big Boss of the lab is furious, and demands the cat be found.

The cat is found, but not by the lab assistants. Two nine-year old kids, Mellie and her best friend Danny, are using the factory as the setting for one of the horror movies Danny likes to make. Mellie's heart goes out to the poor animal when she see him in the dumpster, and she names him Bert and takes him home, even though her parents probably won't let her keep him. If she bothers to ask them, that is. So she doesn't, counting on them to be so wrapped up in their food and family blog, which stars her little twin siblings, that they don't even notice.

Mellie, a responsible new pet owner, hits the books to find out how to care for cats, and buys high quality cat food. Bert will have none of it, but demands to be let outside. He is a hunter, and the next day Mellie finds the distressing evidence of his prowess--headless corpses. Bert trusts her, though, and returns to her room to rest. And though Mellie is disturbed by the corpses Bert tries to share with her (his fondness for brains is rather zombie-like, and extends to the decapitation of her stash of stuffed animals), she loves him.

But the Big Boss and his minions are looking for Bert, and it's clear from the chapters told from the cat's point of view that he is not an ordinary animal. The lab is a place where bad things happen, the Big Boss is not nice at all, and Bert is in danger....

The story is delightfully creepy and full of dark mystery, and also full of friendship and family life. Mellie's relationship with her parents, strained by their obsession with creating food and family moments to document for the blog, improves; though they seem not to be paying much attention to her, they actually are better parents than she's giving them credit for. Her partnership with Danny is top notch, and it's his horror movie fixation that sets their minds turning to zombies...Bert is a character in his own right (though he stays always and clearly a cat, and never seems to be a thinking human person in cat form, which I appreciated). I also appreciated that as a result the reader is left not knowing just who or what he is...

The possibility that Bert's a zombie is creepy, but it quickly becomes obvious that the real horror is what's happening in the lab. Part of me wants to recommend the book to animal lovers, who will be right there with Mellie looking out for Bert, but sensitive animal lovers might be distressed by the all too real nastiness of experiments on lab animals (hinted at, though not explicitly described).

It was an abrupt shock to reach the end of this book only to find that we don't get the answers yet! I myself am suspicious of YummCo Foods, and their economic hold on the town....The sudden stop makes me want to read the next book, but it also was very harsh to be just left there with all the questions. This might annoy some young readers greatly.

But that being said, it's really easy to imagine lots of third grade kids loving Zombert, and I will be right there with them grabbing his next book!

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

Equality Girls & the Purple Reflecto-Ray, by Aya de Leon

Equality Girls & the Purple Reflecto-Ray, by Aya de Leon (published by the author, May 2020) is a really fun chapter book full of radical girl power!

Daniela's an ordinary fourth-grader, disappointed that budget cuts means there's no coach for her soccer team.  Then there's a freak accident, involving her dog and her mom's top secret science experiment.   She doesn't think much about it, but when she and her friends ask if they can play soccer with two 7th grade boys, and are met with sexist stereotypes, she becomes furiously angry, and purple beams shoot out from her eyes!

When the boys get hit by them, suddenly they are embodying the very stereotypes they'd taunted the girls with--one tries to use flowers as makeup to make himself pretty, and the other becomes obsessed with  a little cat.  The effect has worn off the next day, and the girls think it's maybe a one time thing, until Daniela gets angry again at the man presenting sexist puppet show at school.  Once more the purple beams flash out, and once more their target starts acting out the stereotype, begging to be saved from the fierce girls!

Now Daniela and her friends know what she can do, they decide to tackle the sexist in chief, the president of the United States, who's coming to town to judge a beauty pageant.  He's not named, but he certainly evokes our current president (here's the back cover, that makes that clear!).  And it's lovely to see him get his comeuppance for his sexism, when he gets zapped and wants to take part in the pageant himself, wearing his own bikini bottoms and proclaiming that he's the loveliest of all.

It might seem heavy handed and didactic, but it's actually a lot of fun, and I chuckled out loud several times (kids will probably find it even more entertaining!)  The sci fi powers are cool, though little effort is made to explain them, and though there's not a lot of page time for characterization, Daniela and her diverse group of friends manage to be believable.   And as well as the more egregious examples of sexism, the girls talk to each other about the issue, in healthy ways, such as this conversation:

“What is beauty anyway?” Malaya asked. The crew walked past a pair of
girls taking pictures, both of them wearing “Miss Tween” T-shirts.
“I think it’s just an idea somebody made up to get girls to worry about
things that don’t really matter,” Daniela said.
“But sometimes I like putting on fancy clothes and enjoying how I look,”
Jalisse said.
“That’s different,” Malaya said. “That’s about enjoying fashion and color
and style. There’s so much creativity in that. You sew a lot of your own clothes.
It’s not about competing with other girls for who some guy thinks is prettiest.” 

So in short, I enjoyed it lots, and if I had a kid 7-9 years old on hand, I'd certainly offer it to them. And I'd certainly enjoy reading more adventures of the four equality girls!

disclaimer: e-arc received from the author's publicist.

Limited Wish (Impossible Times #2) by Mark Lawrence

Limited Wish (Impossible Times #2) by Mark Lawrence (May 2019, 47 North), is the sequel to One Word Kill, which I reviewed here.  It begins with a brief recap of book 1, which was thoughtful, because though I remembered things more or less, this a complicated sort of time travel, with lots of alternate pathways and various twisty shenanigans of continuum manipulation.

When we meet Nick again, its still the 1980s, he's still 16, still in remission from Leukemia, and still playing D. and D. with his group of friends.  But now he's a student at Cambridge.  Knowing he was going to have to come up with the mathematics for time travel kicked him into high gear, and he mathematically muscled his way into studying with the one conveniently located person who might be able to work with him to do this.  But though the math goes well, the rest of his life is pretty crumby. Mia has broken off their relationship that had just begun in the first book, largely in reaction to fate throwing them together (more literally than is usually the case).  In D. and D., his saving throws are 1s, and in real life, statistically improbable events (like an exploding chip shop) are becoming everyday occurrences.  A build-up of paradoxes has caused time to become a shaken bottle of soda, and unless it's calmed down, it will pop, taking Nick with it.

Nick's future self, and someone else from his future, are showing up in his present and trying to figure out how to unravel the paradoxes.  Thought there's a violent element involved (slightly contrived), this unravelling is  basically a matter of social dynamics, calculated risks, and lots of good math (impossible without the contributions of a girl who's even more brilliant than Nick).  In the end, when Nick has to choose between two alternate futures to calm things down, it comes down to him deciding to act as if he were a free agent, like anyone else, choosing to be loyal to himself, right there in the present.

I don't really like complications for the sake of complications, and lots of alternate future paths spinning off in all directions don't do much for me.  But Lawrence does a rather remarkable job having both complications and alternate paths kept firmly within a coherent narrative with a single main story, that of Nick's experience as a 16 year old genius teen living with the fear of death from  cancer, and more ordinary social anxiety.  He is like the still center around which the busy story spins, although he is making his own interior journey.  He knows his choices will effect future time lines, but he has the wisdom in the end to realize that's true for everyone.

Adding to my enjoyment was Nick's love for math-- I like craft books, in which characters are immersed in the making of things they love, and for Nick, equations are his craft, and it was lovely (disclaimer--I don't do math myself, so this is considerable praise).  I also enjoyed the details of the D. and D. game--an alternate adventure of choices and consequences nicely nested in the main story.

I don't think the sleek sci-fi cover captures the feel of the book; something more 1980s campy fantasy would have been closer--beautiful Cambridge students falling out of a punt while an explosion happens in the distance sort of thing.

I would have been happy with the series ending here; though there is lots still unresolved, that's the way life is.  But I just realized there's a third book,  Dispell Illusion (another D. and D. spell...), and I look forward to seeing what illusions will be dispelled!

Jinxed, by Amy McCulloch

I'm working my way through all the library books I had checked out before they closed (there were a lot of them; when I feel despondent at work I place library holds, and I guess I felt despondent a lot in March...).  In any event, this week I reached Jinxed, by Amy McCulloch (middle grade, Sourcebooks, Jan 2020 in the US), and what a very nice read it was!

Lacey Chu dreams of one day working for MONCHA, the premier tech company in North America that became rich and famous after its founder, Monica Chan, invented "baku," customizable robotic pets that are both smart phones etc. and companions (like Philip Pullman's daemons, but internet connected and needing to be charged).

Lacey thinks she'll be accepted to Profectus, the feeder academy for MONCHA.  She has the grades, and she's a whizz at repairing baku; she's made her apartment's basement storage space into her own workshop.  But she's rejected.  Instead of being launched into a career as a companioneer, designing the next generation of baku with a high level companion of her own, she has to make do with a basic level insect baku, and ordinary school.

Just when she's most miserable, she finds the remains of a baku in a muddy gully. It's recognizable cat-shaped, but mangled horribly.  All summer she works to fix it, marveling while she works at the sophistication of its design, which is like nothing she's ever seen, and she succeeds in restoring it to functionality.

 Right after it wakes up, she gets an acceptance letter to Profectus, and it seems like her dreams will come true. Jinx, as she calls him, is no ordinary baku.  He has a mind of his own, far from the complacent and unquestioning co-operation of ordinary companions.  And though Jinx opens doors to her, such as landing her a place in the competitive club of elite baku dueling at school, he also lands her into a world of trouble.

Jinx isn't supposed to exist, and there are powerful people who want to make sure he doesn't.

But he is real, and alive, and Lacey loves him...and she'll do anything to save him.

So for starters, this is a story about girls (not just Lacey) with mad tech skills.  Lacey's a maker constantly scavenging for materials to tinker with (money is tight in her home, so she has to find rather than buy what she needs),  and other girls are coders, and electronics whizzes (and founders of tech companies!).  It's also a friendship story, with one plot point being Lacey struggling to be a good friend to her bestie from her old school.  There's a bit of upper middle school romance, and considerable competition at school (Lacey must prove she has what it takes to be worthy of Profectus, and there's a nasty rich boy who hates her and wants to drive her out).  The school's baku battles are like mini-Hunger Games arena tournaments, adding excitement to the unfolding of the larger plot, and giving Lacey a chance to prove her tech credibility.  And on top of all this, there's also the mystery of Jinx--what is he?  And what does he have to do with troubling goings-on at MONCHA?

And as the final sci--fi icing on the cake, there's the question of whether an independent, intelligent, self-aware construct, which Jinx is, has the right to be autonomous.

The only part of all this that didn't work for me was the romance--the older, rich, good-looking boy in question reciprocated her interest too quickly and too easily for me to swallow it, but the target audience, not being as jaded as me, probably won't mind this at all.

It's a really fun read, especially if you like girls focused on their particular interest, and doing it brilliantly!  (if you like cats, you'll love it even more).  The sequel, Unleashed, came out in the UK last August, and I hope it gets here soon!

The Secret Deep, by Lindsay Galvin

The Secret Deep, by Lindsay Galvin (Scholastic, Feb 4 2020), is a sci-fi mystery/adventure that's difficult to review, because it's best read without spoilers, but hard to talk about without them.  So conclusion first--this is a fun adventure with science pushed to fantastical limits, with lots of ocean adventure, and a thought-provoking consideration of the ethics of medical consent.  It's upper middle grade (classic "tween")-- 11-14 year olds. There's some nascent romance, but it's not a plot point.  It wasn't really a book that hit all the right notes for me, but if you look at Goodreads you'll find lots of readers who loved it.

It begins with two sisters, Aster and Poppy, flying to New Zealand to live with their aunt after their mother dies from cancer.  Aunt Iona is an oncologist, but she wasn't around to help her sister; instead, she was travelling frenetically around the world, helping various disadvantaged communities, seemingly unaware of how dire the situation for her nieces had become.

But after several months living with a family friend, the girls are on their way to their aunt.  Who turns out not to have a real home for them.  Instead, she takes them to a wilderness camp, where she's gathered refugee and homeless teens for an experiment in healthy living.  It is an odd set up, but the girls try to make the best of it.

It gets odder when Aunt Iona bundles all the kids onto a boat, ostensibly for an enriching expedition, and odder still when a sleeping gas fills the boat, knocking all the kids out.  At this point the reader can't help but realize that Aunt Iona is a piece of work, though just what work that is still unclear.

When Aster regains consciousness, she's on a small island, and is joined by two other teens.  Things are strange, and get stranger still....and (skipping over lots of the strangeness), it turns out (and this isn't a spoiler really because all the clues are there) Aunt Iona has been doing medical tinkering on the kids, without their consent, in the name of making them safe from cancer, and things haven't gone the way she planned.

Meanwhile, a second point of view character, a young New Zealand teen named Sam, who met the girls on their journey, is following his own trail of clues into this mystery.  He's motivated by his desperate need to help his grandfather, who's dying from cancer, and unwittingly he brings the most dangerous piece possible on the board of this medical chess game, another scientist who Aunt Iona was emphatically trying to cut ties with, whose ethics are even more questionable than hers....

Aster is in the middle of a mystery, and desperately worried about her sister, but can't do much in the way of solving things.  She's more a spectator than an instigator in the events that unfold.  Sam also doesn't actually do anything that helps the situation.  And I think this is why the story, for all it's entertaining science gone crazy, felt a little flat; yes, it's interesting to see the two of them noticing the strangenesses and starting to put the pieces together, but the resolution happens without their direct instigation, although both play parts in the violent final confrontation.

But what really left me feeling a bit cheated is that the most gripping story of all isn't told.

(Spoiler here! really real spoiler)

While Aster and the two other teens are on their island, all the other kids from the camp, including Poppy, are living underwater, breathing with gills, unable to talk to each other and afraid to try to breath air again.  For nine months they live like this.  And yet this experience, so fascinating, so awful, and so strange, gets almost no page time.  And Aster, when she realizes she too can breathe underwater, doesn't seem to give it much thought.  

Oh well; I did enjoy reading it though I didn't love it...

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher.

The Infinite Lives of Maisie Day, by Christopher Edge

I'm still holding on to the middle grade sci fi/fantasy books of 2019, with a slightly over the top grim determination to read all the ones at hand before the end of January...(fortunately January 2020 is not a huge mg sci fi/fantasy release month, so I'm sure I can catch up on this year's in just a few days of reading!).

The Infinite Lives of Maisie Day, by Christopher Edge, is an English import that came out here in the US back in April 2019 (Delecorte), and in 2018 in the UK.  It's a story of sisters caught in an altered reality, with time and space gone wonky, with birthday balloons and tasty food meeting a horror of chaos and despair.

It's Maisie's tenth birthday, and her parents are making a huge effort to give her a great party.  The greatness of the party is supposed to make up for the fact that none of her friends are coming.  Maisie in fact has none at all.  She's a home-schooled science and math prodigy, who's never had a chance to socialize with other kids (me--not really convincing that her parents would have tried harder on this front, because clearly they care about her lots).

Maisie's jealous of her older sister, 15-year-old Lily, who isn't doing great at school but who has friends.  Lily, in turn, is jealous of Maisie, not just for being so incredibly brilliant, but also, a bit, for being protected by their parents.  Her "friends" aren't, in fact, all that great.

So anyway, here's Maisie getting reader for her party.  But then the narrative breaks.  And here's Maisie, alone in the house, with a black void outside, that starts creeping inside bit by bit.

Back and forth between normal birthday Maisie, happy on a sunny day, thinking about her life, and chaffing at it's limits, and learning things about Lily she hadn't realized before, and Maisie trapped by dark matter (?)  some other cosmic vortex of destruction and reality altering implosion (?), alone and scared.  She can't call her parents, but when she tries her sister, Lily picks up...and before the connection breaks off, Lily says she'll try to put things right.

But reality is collapsing around Maisie, and the darkness is pressing in....and in the other timeline, something shattering is about to happen as well....even finding out why and how this has happened doesn't help her get out of it.  Finally trapped Maisie has to do the unthinkable if she can get her life back to normal, and so she does.

And then comes a page of binary numbers that means nothing to me,  The reader (me) is left wondering, as the author intends,  what is "real."

Give this  to young readers who like their sci fi/fantasy claustrophobic and entrapping, with science (and bravery) the only way to make things come out right in the end....It's on the short end for mg fiction these days, which will add appeal for some readers; though there are plenty of twists, it's more novella than novel in feel.  No one could call this book over-blown (except perhaps with regard to Maisie's wonderfully unapologetic enthusiasm for figuring out the universe...)

In short, the twists are nicely twisted, and the lonely dark of the chaos world is beautifully balanced by the sunny birthday world.   And though Maisie is super smart, she's not insufferable, and though Lily is a teen aged jerk sister, she has more to her than that. Not one that particularly spoke to me (perhaps because of the particular way the twists twisted), but one I'm happy to recommend.

final note--the currency was Americanized for this edition, but the food and a few other things were not (a bit disconcerting!).  I wish publishers wouldn't Americanize at all!  I think that US kids today, exposed to life outside this country, can cope with more than they are being given credit for.  And in a book like this, where the stairs become an Escher-esque nightmare, spending pounds instead of dollars isn't all that odd.....

The Last Human, by Lee Bacon

The Last Human, by Lee Bacon (middle grade, Abrams, Oct 8, 2019), is set in a future in which robots exterminated humanity to save the earth from environmental destruction.  Now the robots live peaceful lives, carrying out their duties, and every day the President reminds them via its universally shared messages just how horrible humans were, and how good robots always do what they are supposed to do (which includes never keeping secrets).

12-year-old XR_935 is a good robot, working with his team-mates to install and maintain solar panels every day, then going home to their family units to recharge.  Each has a role--Ceeron is the brawn of the group, lifting and carrying, zippy little SkD is the electrical engineer, and XR-935 is the analytical one, making sure all the numbers work.  Then one day their peaceful lives are disrupted when an Unknown Lifeform comes into the solar field where they are working.

It is an unthinkable lifeform, a human girl called Emma.  Emma survived with a handful of other humans in an underground bunker, but was the only one to make it through a devastating sickness.  Now she is trying to do what her parents wanted, following a map to the place they wanted her to go.

The robots face a dilemma.  Emma doesn't seem like a monstrous world destroyer; she seems like someone who needs their help.  XR_935 crunches the numbers, and realizes that the probability of Emma making her way through a world full of enemy robots is almost nil.  A little bit of help for Emma at the beginning snowballs into the robotic threesome going AWOL, setting out with Emma and getting themselves into greater and greater trouble.   

The journey with the human girl forces XR_935 to question not just whether humanity was a horrible as it's been led to believe, but whether the President is in fact not being a good robot itself.  And indeed, the President has been keeping information from the robot community; information that can, and does, change everything (the ending offers the promise of human/robot co-existence).

It's a story told in short chunks, making it very friendly for readers daunted by large swaths of text.  XR_935, and his comrades, are also very engaging traveling companions, and it's delightful to see XR_935, the point of view robot, stretching its consciousness past acceptance of the status quo.  Ceeron and SKD are delightful in their own ways as well, bringing considerable humor to the tense adventures.

I thought at first this would be a dystopia from the human point of view--attempted extinction and a world ruled by hostile robots is fairly awful.  But it turns out that the robot society itself has dystopian elements, with knowledge controlled by a de facto dictator, and free will (these robots are so advanced that free will is possible for them) suppressed.   I also thought Emma's journey would be the center of things, but instead it's just as much as story of XR_935 growing from trusting kid robot to questioning thinker, taking responsibility for its own actions.   And so I found it much more interesting than I expected!

I enjoyed it lots, and I think it has tons of kid appeal. Definitely one to give to fans of The Wild Robot, or kids who love reading about plucky kids copying with unimaginable circumstances.

Stolen Time, by Danielle Rollins, for Timeslip Tuesday

If you are in the mood for a real page turner of a YA time travel story (it only took me two and a bit hours to read 400 pages), with lots of twists, lots of great characters, and lots of action, look no further than Stolen Time, by Danielle Rollins (Febraury 2019, HarperTeen).

It begins in Seattle, in 1913, when Dorothy runs away from the marriage her con-artist mother has inveigled her into.  Her flight leads her to a time traveler, from New Seattle, 2077.  Ash is on a mission to find his mentor, the professor who figured out time travel technology, and who disappeared. leaving his team of young people gathered from different times without guidance and purpose.  Dorothy stows away in his ship, and Ash inadvertently takes her back to his own time, to a city devastated by earthquakes and inundated by tidal waves.

It's a city living in fear of a vicious gang, whose co-leader, Roman, was once one of the professor's brightest students.  But Roman wanted time travel to be used to save his city and its people before it was destroyed, and the professor refused to believe this was possible (for good reasons).

When Dorothy goes exploring by herself, and is kidnapped by Roman, she's caught in the greatest long-con of her life.  But who is its mastermind, Roman, or someone else entirely?  And why did the professor disappear, and where has he gone?  And can Dorothy find a place for herself with Ash and the other members of the professor's team, earning their respect for her skills, and not just being admired for her pretty face?  A trip back to a military base in the 1980s gives her the chance to do just that; but whose hands is she playing into?  Will she be on the side of the destroyers, or the saviors (and is saving anything she cares about actually possible?)

Dorothy is a fascinating character.  She's badly damaged by her horrible mother, who's used her as a beautiful pawn in various scams her whole life.  Even though Dorothy is a point of view character, I was never sure I liked or trusted her, but it's clear that it's not her fault she's the way she is. She's been taught never to trust anyone, and no one has given her any reason to trust them...until she meets Ash.  Ash, a young World War II pilot, is less complicated, but still appealing in his loyalty to his comrades.

And then everything goes bang at the end, leaving one tremendously anxious for the next book.  Don't be me, and look at the end of the first book half way through to make sure it comes out all right in the end, because it isn't the end!  Fortunately book two, Twisted Fates, comes out reasonably soon, in February of 2020 (but don't read the blurb for that yet, because spoilers).

It's good fun time travel through technology, with lots of different jumps through time and tangled timelines, that manages not to be too confusing.  An interesting twist is that time travelers start to get glimpses of their future lives...used to good effect to ratchet up the tensions of their present lives....

The Shores Beyond Time, by Kevin Emerson

The Shores Beyond Time, by Kevin Emerson, is the third book in the Chronicle of the Dark Star series that began with Last Day on Mars, and continued in The Oceans Between Stars (links to my reviews).   Basically the premise is humanity, and an alien race with whom humanity is at war, are out among the stars after our sun went nova (and some other stars have too), both races looking for new homes (the aliens because humanity decided the Telphon's planet would be a great new home, and essentially nuked it, so there are only about three hundred of them left).  One human boy, Liam, and one Telphon girl, who goes by Phoebe, became friends on Mars and Liam met an ancient time travelling alien of a different species (as told in the first book) and were both separated from their people on a long lonely space flight, and Liam started travelling in time himself (the second book).

In this third book, Liam and Phoebe find themselves at the heart of the mystery of the supernovas and the time traveling Liam's been doing.  Is the Dark Star, with its miraculous ability to create new universe, the answer to humanity's problems?

This took me right back to the days back in the 1980s when I first discovered science fiction--the sense of mysteries upon mysteries out in space, strange alien technology of unbelievable power, whose makers aren't necessarily friends, and the aliens and humans maybe about to kill each other, or not.  But without the sexism and imbedded racism and imperialism of much mid 20th century sci fi.

And so I recommend this series to today's middle grade readers with strong conviction.  It is a great story of friendship, action and adventure, and marvelous science fiction.

This being my time travel book of the week, I should mention that it is just full of Liam, and to a lesser extent, Phoebe, bouncing up and down timelines.  It is confusing at times, but not so much as to vex the easily confused reader (me).  The past on Mars is where Liam goes to retreat, the futures he sees are part of his path to questioning the present.  So it's good and useful time travel, and it allows for an especial bitter sweetness to the epilogue....

Cog, by Greg Van Eekhout

Cog, by Greg Van Eekhout (HarperCollins, Oct 1 2019), is a charming, funny, smart middle grade sci fi story with tons of appeal for both kids and grown-ups!

Cog looks like an average 12-year-old boy.  He reminds me of one of my own boys at that age--driven to accumulate information and eager to share tidbits of learning to others, without stopping to gauge the recipient's interest in facts about the platypus, for instance (who I am I kidding--it's reminding me of me).  Still with a lot of practical life-lessons to learn, and with a loving adult on hand to help steer him toward independent thinking.  Cog, however, isn't an ordinary boy.  He is a robot, and the loving adult is Gina, his programmer; his brown skin matches hers.  She works for uniMIND, a big corporation of robot designers, but she's gone slightly rogue, and added programing to Cog that gives him control over his own choices (and more, but that's a spoiler).  She and Cog live alone, and the corporation doesn't know what she's up to.

But when Cog takes to heart Gina's lesson that making mistakes can lead to learning, and leaves home one morning on his own to learn in this way, his choice to save a dog from being runover lands him in the uniMIND labs, in the hands a roboticist who believes devoutly that robots are tools, and the financial bottom line is what's important.  And when Cog realizes, through observation and experience, the danger he's in, he knows he must escape and find Gina again.

So he does, with a trashbot, a robot dog, a robotic car, and ADA, Gina's previous robot child, designed to be tool for war. A desperate, often funny, often terribly tense road trip ensues, with uniMIND and the police on the hunt for the fugitives.  (Car is my favorite fictional car ever, btw, though it's possible the first sentient fictional car I've ever actually felt fond of). Happily, it ends well (though around page 120 I cracked and had to read the end to make sure).  

This is more than just boy/robot adventure/coming of age/found family story with lots of danger and humor, though.  It has a thought-provoking punch about the choices we make, and the dangers we face if we loose our freedom to think for ourselves.  "I may be a weapon," [ADA] says, "but I will decide for myself how I'm used."

short answer: I loved it.  It made me grin a lot, and even chuckle out loud, I was riveted (except for having to put it down a couple of times when things got too tense),and I appreciated that it was a relatively short, compact package of goodness, making it one to recommend to younger mg readers.

If you have a super curious, quirky kid of 9 or so who needs a book to read, offer this one. Then, if you are a smart, quirky grown-up, read it yourself.

(NB:  Cog is eligible for this year's Cybils Awards (in Speculative Fiction: elementary/middle grade, but still needs someone to nominate it!  Click the link above to find out how to nominate this and an other great kids and YA books in lots of different categories).

This is How You Lose the Time War, by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, for Timeslip Tuesday

This is How You Lose the Time War, by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone (July 2019, Gallery / Saga Pres), is an epistolary love story between two agents (Red and Blue) on either side of a time war that stretches millennia in both directions.  Red and Blue are skilled at manipulating the strings of time, braiding them into patterns that will result in the desired outcomes of the two very different futures that spawned them.

But when they begin a correspondence that starts as a taunting challenge, they find that they are braiding themselves together, tugging each other toward a future that seems impossible.

It's not a doorstopper of a book (198 pages), so I thought it would be a fast read, but it's not, because all the words deserve consideration, and it's so rich in literary allusions and historical details and epistolary conceits that it demands to be savored.  It' s a very complicated sort of time travel (constant back and forth manipulation of history can make my head spin), and I wasn't sure I'd be able to keep my mental footing secure, but it's a very simple story of two lonely women learning to value, then trust, then love each other passionatly, and their two distinct selves kept me grounded.

In short, it's a very good, very strange, very sweet book.

It's written for grown-ups, but the theme of finding who one is amidst the trappings impossed on us by birth and rearing is one I imagine teens finding very appealing.

One Word Kill, by Mark Lawrence, for Timeslip Tuesday

One Word Kill, by Mark Lawrence (47North, May 2019) , is a time travel story in which changes to the past create multiple timelines.  It's the story of 15 year old Nick, a math genius who enjoys playing D. and D. with his three buddies, and what happens when a girl, Mia, joins the game.  It's the story of Nick finding out he has cancer.  These concerns, even the fact that Nick might be dying, are back-burnered when a strange man starts stalking Nick, telling him that Mia is in danger and needs his help.

Saving future Mia involves a dangerous heist, and it also involves surviving the violent attentions of a gang of drug-dealing thugs, one of whom is a true psychopath.  Fortunately, the strange man is there to help when things get really ugly.

Turns out (and this isn't much of a spoiler, because it's told to the reader fairly early on) that this stranger is Nick from the future, come back to save future Mia.  Though his timeline's Mia might be in jeopardy, there are many many timelines in which this won't be the case, but future Nick is concerned only about saving the one Mia he knows, so he can't alter his own past too much, or he'll simply go off on a different timeline.  It's a delicate balance, and a delicate premise for the reader to except, because future Nick is making choices that present Nick can't entirely condone, choices that bring tragedy to one of the D. and D. boys.

It's not one that was exactly to my personal cup of tea-the heist and the violence of the gang members, and my inability to embrace future Nick's plans kept me from truly enjoying it.  That's a mater of taste, though, and not a criticism of the book.   It was fun going back to the 1980s, though, and the characters were great. Nick, being thoughtful and smart, and with a mathematical brain, adds a philosophical depth to the rushing around; here's a quote that captures, pretty well, how he's thinking:

"The equations that govern the universe don't care about 'now'. You can ask them questions about this time or that time, but nowhere in the elegance of their mathematics is there any such thing as 'now'. The idea of one specific moment, one universal 'now' racing along at sixty minutes an hour, slicing through the seconds, spitting the past out behind it and throwing itself into the future... that's just an artefact of consciousness, something entirely of our own making that the cosmos has no use for."

This sort of digression seems like it might slow things down, but it actually helps the story stay conherent, keeping the larger time-travel element of the plot in the forefront of the reader's attention.  

The relationship between Nick and Mia starts to become a romance, but given the circumstances, it doesn't get very far, so on that grounds this would be fine for younger tween-ish readers.  It's also quite short, and quite fast-paced (albeit with the aforesaid digressions), so it is not a daunting book, though it does require some focus to wrap your mind around it all.  Kids who want to read it for the D. and D. might feel a bit sore when gaming gives way to real life adventures, but what there is of the game is solid (and the book's title refers back to a spell that's important to the game...).

It's a self-contained story, but leaves room for more.  And indeed it's on Goodreads as "Impossible Times #1" so more should be coming, which pleases me.

Banneker Bones and the Alligator People, by Rob Kent

Banneker Bones and the Alligator People, by Rob Kent (Create Space, May 2019) brings 11-year-old cousins Banneker and Ellicott back for a second action packed adventure!  No sooner had they foiled an evil plot involving giant robot bees, as told in their first book  (my review), then they are caught up in an even eviler one.   

When they set off flying on their jet packs that night (Banneker is a mad inventor extraordinaire), little did they know they end up following an alligator person into the city sewer!  It didn't go well, but worst of all, no one believes they were attacked by an alligator person.   Possibly this is because Banneker, never one to pass up a chance for the spotlight, proclaims on tv that "This is the start of the alligator people apocalypse!" 

It's actually not, though the alligator people are indeed real, and they are indeed unhappy with the non-alligator people.  The real villain of the piece is an incredibly wealth and powerful man who puts getting even more wealth and more powerful ahead of anything else, including his family.  Banneker might have a nice arsenal of technology and cool gadgets, but the villain has an army of robots and an even greater arsenal.  Banneker, though, has a brain, and he has Ellicott, who provides additional brain power, and a rational balance to Banneker's excess (possibly it's more accurate to say that Ellicott, the real hero of the series, has Banneker as a sort of incredibly powerful loose cannon).  

The book reads as a sort of celebration of the wild fictions of the National Enquirer, mixed with the feel of vintage action and adventure comics.  Lots of kapows!  Lots of robots and jet packs and fabulous wealth.  Lots of "alligator people amongst us."  And kids who love page turning excitement will find plenty here to keep the pages turning.

As well as the obvious (it didn't need to be belabored to be right there in the story) "family is actually more important than wealth" and "there are lines that shouldn't be crossed when pursuing wealth and power"  messages, there's also a more weighty side the story, though, about the ethics of genetic manipulation, and about the rights of non-human persons).  And in the midst of their adventures, Banneker, seen from the outside, and Ellicott, whose point of view the reader shares,  come alive to the reader as interesting characters.

So all this to say that Rob Kent seems to me to have done a really good job of writing the sort of story he wanted to write, and I can imaging lots of readers loving it!  That being said, it isn't actually my personal favorite type of book (I enjoy books in which people stay quietly at home, indulging in simple, domestic pastimes--weeding the garden, going shopping in the village, bantering with clever siblings, perhaps an exciting walk up the hill,, etc.) And this is most emphatically not that sort of book, which, depending on your own taste, either adds appeal or does not.

(for those looking for diverse characters, Bannecker's biracial-- his mom is black, his dad white).  He also has a slew of non-neurotypical characteristics, that don't define him but are part of his being who is). 

(for those leery of self-published books because of bad experiences reading poorly edited prose--there is no need for any worry in that regard!  I am easily annoyed by mistakes (my own included) and was not troubled once during my reading!)

disclaimer: review copy received from the author, who I've known through his blog, Middle Grade Ninja, for years and years.

The Owls Have Come to Take Us Away, by Ronald L. Smith (review and interview)

I first had the pleasure of meeting Ronald L. Smith at Kidlitcon back in 2015 (PSA--come to Kidlitcon 2020 in Ann Arbor next March!).  His first middle grade book, Hoodoo, a tale of supernatural horror in the south, had just been published, and I enjoyed it very much (my review).  I likewise enjoyed The Mesmerist (2017), about kids fighting evil in 19th century London (my review).  I never reviewed Black Panther: the Young Prince (2018)….someday I will.  So in any event, I was very excited about his most recent book, The Owls Have Come to Take Us Away (Clarion Books, February 2019).

This is the story of an air force kid, Simon, son of a black mom and a white dad, who's obsessed with aliens.  He's convinced owl-like aliens have arrived, watching and experimenting on humans.  His family has no time or patience for aliens, so Simon is alone with his fears of the Grays, as he calls them.  When something very strange happens on a camping trip with his dad, Simon is convinced he was targeted by the aliens, and that a chip has been implanted in his stomach.

Are the aliens a projection of Simon's own anxieties (he feels his father is disappointed in his lack of athleticism, fondness for gaming, and his social insecurity), or are they a real threat, that no one else around him believes in?  His parents think his fears are psychological, and take him to a psychiatrist who medicates him, but Simon doesn't cooperate.   Readers must keep guessing; Simon's other obsession, the fantasy book he's writing, makes it clear that he's a tremendously imaginative, creative person, and are the Grays simply another story he's telling himself?

Whether or not the aliens are real, Simon's distress certainly is, and the scary tension keeps growing throughout the book!  Young fans of sci fi horror creeping into our world will love it, especially those who feel that the grown-ups don't take them seriously.

Here are some questions I had for Ronald L. Smith, that he graciously answered.

What inspired you to write Owls? 

Well, I have a lot of ideas brewing in my brain. I thought it would be cool to try something more contemporary than my other books. I have an unhealthy fascination with UFOs and aliens so I thought it would be a good subject. Also, the book is set on an Air Force base, which is where I spent my life growing up. There is a whole subculture around military bases that people don’t know about. It’s a certain way of life. Since I know it well I thought it would provide a good backdrop. Also, aliens and UFOs are a timeless subject.

Part of what makes Owls so interesting is the uncertainty about the whether the aliens are real or not.  When you started writing Owls, did you know which way you were going to go?

Yes. But the book also changed a little in edits. The big idea stayed true to what I envisioned. 

Likewise, although Owls is a middle grade book (9-12 year olds) it felt to me like it could easily have been born a Young Adult book....did you always think of it as middle grade, or were there times it wanted to be YA?  (would you like to write YA?)

I always thought of it as MG. That’s the category I like most. It would be a little different, though, if it were YA. My main character, Simon, would have had different hopes and fears. A younger protagonist allowed me to tap into the mind of a twelve-year-old and imagine how he would handle such a weird subject. As to writing YA, I have some ideas. Maybe one day!

(a question for those of us who have read the book...) Do you think the ending is entirely happy?  

Well, I’ll leave that one up to the reader. It’s hopeful but also kind of disturbing! 

Which of your books did you most enjoy writing, and what are you working on now?

Oh, wow. I’m sure you know the answer, as you’ve interviewed a lot of writers. I can’t really say which is my favorite. They all have their challenges and bright spots. I really enjoyed writing Owls. It was fun to write something contemporary but with one disturbing—albeit big—element to it. My next book is called GLOOMTOWN. It’s a fantasy novel about two kids named Rory and Isabella who live in a town called Gloom. The sun never shines there. But there’s a reason for that. There’s also a creepy mansion called Foxglove Manor, Black Sea mariners, a carnival and a scary group called Arcanus Creatura. It’s gonna be fun! 

Finally, any advice for young writers and/or young believers in aliens? 

For young writers, read a lot. Fiction. Nonfiction. Comics. Graphic novels. Memoirs and biographies. Newspapers. Just read. Reading is your best teacher. Share your work with like-minded friends and writers. Try to write a little each day, even if it’s just your own thoughts. And if you believe in aliens, you’re not alone! (See what I did there?) 

Thank you, Ronald!  I'll look forward to Gloomtown.  I love creepy mansions!