Aru Shah and the Nectar of Immortality (Pandava #5) by Roshani Chokshi, at Feed Your Fiction Addiction
4/10/22
This week's round-up of middle grade sci fi and fantasy from around the blogs (4/10/22)
Aru Shah and the Nectar of Immortality (Pandava #5) by Roshani Chokshi, at Feed Your Fiction Addiction
4/9/22
When the Sky Falls, by Phil Earle
When the Sky Falls, by Phil Earle (April 5th 2022 in the US by Bloomsbury Children's Books, June 2021 in the UK), is a moving book about a boy battered by life, and further traumatized by World War II.
When we first meet 12-year old Joseph he's a kid arriving in London during the blitz; unlike the other young travelers at the station who are being evacuated out of the city, he's been sent into it after his grandmother decides she can no longer cope with him. He's been packed off to stay with an old friend of hers, Mrs. F., who doesn't really want Joseph either. Joseph is violently furious at his situation, and at the world, and before the reader knows his story, his frightening anger makes it hard to warm to him.
Mrs. F. is strong enough, though, to compel Joseph to some degree of cooperation, setting him to work helping keep up her family's zoo. It's not much of a zoo anymore, thanks to the war. Most of the animals have been shipped off to other zoos, or died. One of the few left is a gorilla, Adonis. Joseph finds Adonis terrifying at first, but as he sees the love Mrs. F. has for him, and learns that Adonis is grieving for the lost of his mate and his child, he opens himself to empathy and caring.
School is a torment (again, his extremely reluctant attendance is a testament to Mrs. F.'s strong will), where his dyslexia keeps him from being able to read (he, and all the teachers he's had throughout his life, who have convinced him he's stupid, don't know it's dyslexia), and other boys make his life miserable. When the boys climb the zoo's fence to come beat him up, one gets too close to Adonis' cage, and the gorilla grabs him by the jacket. Although the boy isn't physically harmed, he could well have been, and his father wants Adonis killed because of being a danger to the community.
Indeed, every night there's an air raid, which is most nights, Mrs. F. sits outside Adonis' cage with a gun to shoot him if he's ever freed by an explosion, because of the threat a free, angry gorilla would pose.....even though she loves him. (This part is based on a true story).
Gradually we learn details of Joseph's past--how his mother abandoned the family when he was five, and how his father went to war. Gradually Joseph becomes able to accept help, both from Mrs. F. (espeically when she's found the strength to share her own past tragedy with him) and from a girl who's just been orphaned by a bomb; neither will give up on him. But it is his growing bond with Adonis that helps him most. Part of it is the warmth of growing trust, that makes Jacob feel like a person worthy of trust. I'm wondering a bit as well, though it's never stated, if Jacob gets a bit of help with anger management from the dreadful possibility of what Adonis, with no control over his own anger, is capable of. The book is thought provoking like this, which I appreciated.
In any event, I found their relationship nicely convincing; I'd been afraid that my suspension of disbelief re human/primate friendships was going to be put to the test. I needn't have worried; it was a plausible relationship, not a sentimentally idealized anthropomorphic one.
There is not a happy ending. But though it is sad, it is an ending that give hope for a new beginning, as Mrs. F. and Joseph become family.
It's a grimly vivid picture of life in a city being destroyed, with a protagonist on the verge of destroying his own life. When I reached the end, it took me a while to shake of the tension of it all; like all really good and engrossing books, I'd been living it. A truly powerful read.
disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher
4/7/22
Healer and Witch, by Nancy Werlin
Sylvie is a girl learning healing from her mother and grandmother in Renaissance France. Her mother's skill as a healer is based on knowledge and understanding, but her grandmother can do more, to the point of being magical. When Sylvie gets her first period, her own gifts blossom, and like her grandmother there a magical twist to them--she can enter peoples minds, and tweak their memories. When her grandmother dies, Sylie can't stand to see her mother suffering in a morass of grief, and so tries to help with a bit of memory removing. It goes horribly wrong, and her mother doesn't remember her own mother, or even Sylvie.
So Sylvie sets out alone into the world to try to find another wise woman who can teach her how to use her gifts, so that she can fix what she broke, and never make such a mistake again. She is both healer and witch...and the later is a dangerous thing to be when suspicions of witchcraft can lead to death. A much younger boy, the blacksmith's son whose always getting into trouble, follows her out of their village, and refuses to be sent home, and proves to be an important part of her journey (and a nice part of the story!). A meeting with a wise woman in the nearest town sets her off to the city of Lyon, as part of a wealthy young merchant's caravan.
But neither the wise woman or the young merchant are exactly who they seem, and Sylvie's gifts place her in great danger. She must fight fiercely for her right to use her powers as healer/witch as she sees fit, figuring out how to use them ethically, and making sure she is making decisions for herself in a time and place that's often unkind to young women. There's a nice romance too-- the powerful young merchant offers to protect her by marrying her, and she declines (and figures out how to protect herself), but in the course of travelling together they start trusting each other enough to share their darkest secrets. It's a slow romance, but a sweet one.
It's not a swirling fast-paced book full of Things Happening, and indeed a lot of what happens takes place in Sylvie's head, which was fine with me! Sylvie is beautifully thoughtful and intelligent, and I appreciated her lots. There is trauma (in the young merchant's past too, from his desperate childhood as a thief "and worse") and of course in Sylvie's life--her love for her mother is unchanged though her mother doesn't know who she is. But there is healing too, and (slight spoiler) I appreciated that magic isn't the answer for this.
It's good historical fiction too, with enough of the history part (especially social and economic history) to be interesting without info dumping on the reader. My only gripe is that the blurb says this is medieval France. Not. Clearly it's Renaissance- Henry VIII is on the throne in England, and the Medici family is busily doing their Medici thing down in Italy....
short answer--I really liked it!
*note about target audience--recently there was a lot of chat on twitter from folks wanting more books for the 12-14 year old kids who are leaving middle grade (9-12 years old) but who aren't the target audience just yet for much of Young Adult. This is a book for those in-betweenish sort of readers, who want a bit of romance, who want books about independent young women (the heroine here is 15) figuring out what sort of person they want to be. This isn't a book that I'd give to a 9 or 10 year old, but I'd give it in a flash to 11-13 year old me and other dreamy kids who aren't quite ready to grow up but are enjoying starting to think about it from the safe perspective of fantasy....and I think the cover does a great job at targeting this group of readers!
disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher
4/4/22
Meant to Be, by Jo Knowles
We first met sisters Rachel and Ivy in Where the Heart Is, which ends with the family loosing their home out in the country and having to move to an apartment. That book was mostly Rachel's story; this is Ivy's, and it stands alone just fine.
Ivy is happy with the new apartment home. For the first time in her life, she has friends close at hand--Lucas and Alice, two other kids the same age as her. Together they religiously watch a cooking show, and try to use the ingredients the contestants use in their own culinary experimentation (which is mostly successful). She is not happy, though, that the her sister and parents can't see that the apartment, though small, is a great place to live. She just doesn't empathize with them.
And when Alice, who lives with her grandmother, gets sad news about her absent mother, whose troubles with addiction lead to her leaving Alice behind, Ivy missteps her response, straining their friendship almost to the breaking point.
With the help of the building superintendent, who's teaching Ivy how to fix things, she starts to realize that helping other people with their problems doesn't always mean doing what she, Ivy, things is best for them. And though she still, at the end of the book, likes living in the apartment, and is still anxious because she doesn't want things to change, she's become quite a bit wiser and more considerate of other people's feelings.
Which isn't to say this is a preachy book! It all happens naturally and warmly, and although I imagine that if I'd read this when I was ten or so I might have taken the message to heart, there's definitely enough happening (small things, but interesting ones) to make this a good story and a good read.
Definitely one for kids who like sort of quite slice of life books, particularly for young foodies! I myself would have put a cupcake prominently on the cover if I'd been designing it...the eggs and mixer do indicate the cooking, but not as appealingly, perhaps, as a nice cupcake!
short answer--I enjoyed it lots, and perhaps am an even more thoughtful person than I was before (?)
disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher (thanks!)
4/3/22
This week's round-up of mg sci fi and fantasy from around the blogs (4/2/22)
today's mg sci fi/fantasy round up is delayed
blogloving is over capacity, and I can't get in to find all the posts I was saving for today.....will keep trying!
In the meantime, here's a cautionary tale--don't put books on radiators.
Today's example of "Why Charlotte can't accomplish anything because of always having to spend precious time solving problems of her own creation"-- I thought, as I placed the library book on top of the radiator--"sure hope this doesn't fall down the back of it!" It did. And the book was too wide to just be pulled out (and even my small, delicate (?) hands don't fit) so it had to be lifted up and out with a piece of random home-renovation wood that was conveniently close at hand...ten minutes of my life, gone just like that!
But the book has been recovered, so all is well in the end.....
3/29/22
Black Was the Ink, by Michelle Coles, for Timeslip Tuesday
3/27/22
this week's round-up of mg sci fi/fantasy from around the blogs 3/27/22
The Dream Spies (The Nightmare Thief #2) by Nicole Lesperance, at Say What?
S.T.E.A.L.T.H.: Access Denied, by Jason Rohan, at Mr Ripleys Enchanted Books
3/22/22
Out of Time, by Peter Lerangis, for Timeslip Tuesday
This is the third book of a series about a kid from New York, Corey, who finds out he's a time traveler, like his grandfather (there are more time travelers around than one would think...), as told in Throwback. Corey turns out to be a one of a kind time traveler, though--he can alter the past. And so he does. In the second book of the series (The Chaos Loop), he traveled to Germany right at the end of WW II to save his great uncle...but in doing so, he changed the past by keeping his grandparents from meeting, and so he was never born. The Corey who time travelled makes it back to his own present day in New York....but changed into a wolf.
His best friend, Leila (another time-traveler), is the only one who remembers the Corey who no longer belongs in the current time line, and she's determined to help him figure out how to become himself again. They find help from a secret society of time travelers, who are able to take the gene that gives Corey his unique ability and transfer it to her. Now the two of them, wolf and girl, head back to the cold winter at the end of Nazi Germany, hoping to give Corey's grandparents their chance to meet, while still keeping his great-uncle alive....
It is tremendously tense! Wolf Corey's health is failing (a side effect of his situation), and Leila isn't certain she can change the past...but it all works out in the end, mostly thanks to Leila's bravery.
I didn't register it at the time of my reading, but the secret society of time travelers, which includes "trackers" who can tell when the past has been changed, shouldn't really want to be able to create other's with Corey's gift--they are creating for themselves the problem of altered realities that they are contending with (unless Corey and Leila are responsible for them all)....but no matter. The story at hand is well worth reading regardless!
Time travel-wise, not only to we get to go back to Nazi Germany, but we also get a solo trip by Leila to witness the building of Central Park, and learn a bit of its history, which was very interesting.
short answer--a solid series, that I can easily imagine middle grade kids loving!
3/21/22
Cameron Battle and the Hidden Kingdoms, by Jamar J. Perry
3/20/22
This week's round-up of middle grade sci fi and fantasy from around the blogs (3/20/22)
A Comb of Wishes, by Lisa Stringfellow, at Charlotte's Library
Much Ado About Baseball, by Rajani LaRocca, at Sonderbooks
3/19/22
A Comb of Wishes, by Lisa Stringfellow
3/15/22
Thirty Talks Weird Love, by Alessandra Narváez Varela, for Timeslip Tuesday
3/13/22
This week's round-up of middle grade fantasy and sci fi from around the blogs (3/13/22)
Good morning fellow US time travelers. I hate springing foreword, but here we are. And here's what I found this week. Let me know if I missed your post please!
The Reviews
The Boy in the Post, by Holly Rivers, at Book Craic
Girl Giant and the Monkey King by Van Hoang, at Feed Your Fiction AddictionNew in the UK, at Mr Ripley's Enchanted Books
8 books for mg D and D fans at Book Riot
Here are the finalists for the Andre Norton Nebula Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction, glad to see two mg books I loved! (Thornwood and Root Magic)- Victories Greater Than Death, Charlie Jane Anders (Tor Teen; Titan)
- Thornwood, Leah Cypess (Delacorte)
- Redemptor, Jordan Ifueko (Amulet; Hot Key)
- A Snake Falls to Earth, Darcie Little Badger (Levine Querido)
- Root Magic, Eden Royce (Walden Pond)
- Iron Widow, Xiran Jay Zhao (Penguin Teen; Rock the Boat)
3/11/22
Secret Beneath the Sand (Unicorn Island #2), by Donna Galanti, illustrated by Bethany Stancliffe
Sam now knows her uncle's big secret--he's the caretaker of a magical island off the coast that's shielded by magical mist to keep it safe from discovery. It's home to unicorns and other magical creatures, and Sam is gung-ho to pitch right in and help out! But her uncle hasn't shared all his secrets. When the magic of the island starts draining away, threating the unicorns, one of the darkest of his secrets proves to be responsible for a monstrous manifestation on the island must be confronted. And Sam is the one who has to lead the charge, even though it upends her world.
This is a perfect series to give to an elementary school kid who loves fantasy and who is still getting their reading feet firmly under them! The sparkly cover with its shiny stars and the pleasant interior illustrations add kid friendliness. Although I enjoyed reading this, and appreciated that there was some complexity to the plot involving family secrets, I think the story doesn't have quite enough heft for the older "middle grade" age range of 11-12, but younger readers may well love it! I would have devoured this joyfully when I was seven or so....so give it to the kid that's been binging Early Reader and young graphic novels about unicorns!
disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher
3/6/22
This week's round-up of middle grade sci fi and fantasy from around the blogs (3/6/22)
Kingston and the Echoes of Magic, by Rucker Moses and Theo Gangi, at Proseandkahn
Too Bright to See, by Kyle Lukoff, at Sonderbooks
Julian Randall (Pilar Ramirez and the Escape from Zafa) at Fuse #8
3/4/22
Girl Giant and the Jade War (Girl Giant and the Monkey King #2), by Van Hoang
So I was eager to rejoin Thom as she tries to stop the Monkey King in his tracks. It is a pretty difficult proposition--she has to find her way back into the Heavens, and figure out if there is any weakness she can use against the Monkey King. Much of the story involves a quest for allies. Accompanied by her dragon friend, Kha, and a fox demon who was once a fairy, Thom tries to find someone who will help her get back to the Heavens before the Monkey King and his demons take over...though she's not at all sure what she'll do when she gets there!
Interestingly, the more she thinks about what the Monkey King wants--respect, and a place for demons in the Heavens--the more she can understand his point of view, though she can't condone his approach. Adding to her confusion are visits from the Monkey King's magical doubles--she can remember trusting him (though memories of betrayal are sharper). Her friendship with Kha is strained, and when she gets to the Heavens, she has to get the person she herself betrayed most unforgivably, the daughter of the Jade Emperor, to believe she knows what's she doing.
There's all the cultural richness that filled the first book, and plenty of adventures, but it's a bit more thought-provoking, in a good way. An excellent series for middle grade readers who enjoy kids having their lives upended by magical figures of legend, and a nice addition of Vietnamese mythology to the "books for kids who love Rick Riordan" genre. Thom is a very relatable kid (though the universal "finding one's self" middle school ARC is of course complicated by being the child of a deity, and also complicated by Thom's feeling out of place as a Vietnamese American kid) and even her sometimes questionable choices make sense for someone her age, and work well within the framework of the story.
This second book closes everything nicely, but I wouldn't mind more....
3/1/22
Operation Do-over, by Gordon Korman, for Timeslip Tuesday
Mason and Ty were the best of friends, as close as it is possible for two twelve year old boys to be. But then new kid Ava arrives at their school, they both crush on her hard, and she unwittingly destroys their friendship when she picks Mason....even when they are 17, the wound is still raw, and leads to trouble that gets Mason expelled from school.
Then, bang. A car accident sends Mason back in time, and now he is 12 again, still remembering the original time-line. Knowing what went wrong last time, can he save his friendship with Ty? (and while he's at it, his dog from a fatal encounter with a Rotter-rooter truck, and his parents' marriage?)
It is not the deepest time-travel story in the world, but not without interest and entertainment. Mason #2 decides to shake his life up by joining the football team (and as one of the top geeky nerds of the school, the others being Ty and Clarisse, a girl whose been their third wheel for year). This is a shocker to everyone, and leads to some quite funny football bits). It hits one main bulls eye of the middle grade experience--friendships of childhood strained by adolescence, and the whole exploration of other possibilities and identities will ring true to the target audience.
I would have preferred it, I think, from a time travel perspective, if Mason had lived out the entirety of his new timeline; instead, he gets another blow to the head that shoots him back to being 17 again, and it's rather abrupt--17 the second time around is a mix of the original timeline and difference from his being 12 a second time, and the reader is presented with this rather abruptly. I would have liked more time exploring this, but I realize this isn't the point of the book....
In any event, it's fun, fast read, and its easy to imagine kids liking it lots, though as an adult, it mostly evokes even more reflections on what a do-over like this would involve for oneself....
2/27/22
This week's round up of mg sci fi and fantasy from around the blogs (2/27/22)
Welcome to this week's gathering of posts of interest to us fans of MG sci fi and fantasy! Please let me know if I missed your post.
The Reviews
The Counter Clockwise Heart, by Brian Farrey, at Where the Lost Boys Met
Haven: A Small Cat's Big Adventure, by Megan Wagner Lloyd, at Bookworm for KidsIn The Red, by Christopher Swiedler, at Fistful of Wits
Kelcie Murphy and the Academy for the Unbreakable Arts, by Erika Lewis, at Log Cabin Library and A Dance With Books
The Midnight Unicorn, by Alice Hemming, at Charlotte's LibraryThe Ogress and the Orphans, by Kelly Barnhill, at The Winged Pen
Pax, Journey Home, by Sara Pennypacker, at Not Acting My Age
Revenge of the Beast (The Beast and the Bethany #2), by Jack Meggitt-Phillips, at Get Kids into Books
A Storm of Sisters, by Michelle Harrison, at Bellis Does BooksWillow Moss and the Vanished Kingdom, by Dominque Valente, at Sifa Elizabeth Reads
Two at Book Page-Kelly Barnhill's The Ogress and the Orphans and Ethan M. Aldridge's The Legend of Brightblade
Authors and Interviews
David Anthony Durham (The Shadow Prince) at The Brown Bookshelf
Pam Muñoz Ryan (Solimar), at SLJErika Lewis (Kelcie Murphy and the Academy for the Unbreakable Arts)-- "The Benefits for Kids in Reading Fantasy" at Teen Librarian Toolbox
Beth McMullen (Secret of The Storm), at From the Mixed Up FilesLisa Stringfellow (A Comb of Wishes) at The Horn Book
Other Good Stuff
"7 of the Most Anticipated Middle Grade Fantasy Retellings" at Book RiotA close examination of heroine super powers in Cece Rios and the Desert of Souls at kidlitcraft
2/26/22
The Midnight Unicorn, by Alice Hemming
Here's one that will please the younger end of middle grade fantasy who are capable of reading, skill-wise, just about anything, but whose imaginations are still best served by simpler, more fairy-tale stories than one finds moving up through middle grade towards young adult--The Midnight Unicorn, by Alice Hemming (Kane Miller, 2022). (If you read between the lines of the above, you will pick up that this does not describe me, and indeed it was not a book for me....which doesn't mean it isn't one that will make other readers happy!).
The story starts with two twin sisters being sent away in desperate haste by their mother, the Queen, when her wicked younger brother attacks to claim the crown for himself. One girl, Alette, is sent off with the Queen's sorcerer, and the other, Audrey, goes with their nurse. They have very different childhoods, with one raised in the wilds and learning magic, and the other raised in a peaceful village, learning baking. But each feels the lack of their twin...even though they don't know of each other's existence.
Then Alette learns the truth, and sets out, with her father figure, the sorcerer, to find her missing half...and fate indeed brings them together. Through the magic inherited from their mother, they can take the form of beautiful unicorns, which stands them in good steed on the fraught journey back to the city. There they find unexpected treachery, but are able to reclaim the throne, though only one can be queen....
Transforming into a unicorn is something sure to delight many young readers (and indeed I liked it too). And those readers will, I think, be more ready than I was to accept the unexpected magical encounters along the way (for adult me, one significant encounter presented me with much more magic than the world building thus far has led me to expect!). Young readers also won't be surprised by how easy it is in the end for the girls to take control of the court, which has a noticeable lack of power-hungry nobles, flunkies, and indeed, any semblance of people actually running the place!
I enjoyed seeing the sisters figuring out their relationship after being raised so differently. Fierce, wild, and magical Alette has trouble accepting Audrey, who has lots less flash and flamboyance, but strengths of her own. I always like a good sister story, and this did not disappoint in this regard.
Short answer--not necessarily one to read yourself if you are an adult fan of fantasy, but one that should delight the target audience. It is also the first book in a series, which is a plus if you have a unicorn loving bibliophile to find books for!
disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher