Midsummer's Mayhem, by Rajani LaRocca

Midsummer's Mayhem, by Rajani LaRocca (middle grade, Yellow Jacket, June2019), is a delightful charmer of a book, mixing magic and the real world beautiful in a Midsummer Dream inspired story of family, friends, and baked goods!

Mimi suffers from youngest child syndrome--one big sister is a wonderful dancer (modern dance fused with classical Indian dance), one a wildly talented soccer player, and her big brother is great at acting.  Mimi's a talented baker, inspired by her Indian-American mother's own cooking, but that seems like small beans compared to the rest of the family talents.  The rather depressing summer ahead, with her best friend gone off to Australia, brightens when a new café opens in town, and announces a baking contest for kids, Mimi sets out to win it and show everyone she matters too.  But it is a most unusual café, in which there is magic afoot...

The café is not the only odd thing about this summer.  Mimi follows snatches of music into the woods near her house, and there she finds Vic, a mysterious boy who shares both her Indian heritage and her interest in cooking.  When Vic is in the wood, it becomes a place of strangeness, with wild boars, cobras, and a massive banyan tree.  Mimi accepts it unquestioningly, perhaps a bit bemagiced by it, and hopes that Vic can be her best friend for the summer.

First to fall to the magic is Mimi's father, a food critic, who looses all his gastronomic intelligence and starts eating with insane voraciousness after trying a chocolate from the café.  Then Mimi and Vic start experimenting with the alleged properties of herbs to affect moods...and mayhem breaks out when one of her sisters is besieged by two love-sick swains.

Mimi has to figure out how to undo the magic, and win the baking contest, and both are rather touch and go.  Because Mrs. T., the cafe's proprietress, is none other than Titania, queen of the fairies, and what she wants is usually what she gets.  And this summer, she wants Mimi....

Mimi's challenges, both the real world baking and the magical baking tensions (especially the curse on her father), are sufficient to keep the plot gripping, especially for young foodies!  But we never lose sight of Mimi the person, dealing with her family, and with very relatable anxieties and insecurities, and emerging a more confident person.

It's one that I can imagine being loved both by fans of realistic family and friend stories and by those who crave magic intruding into the real world.  I know Shakespeare's play pretty well, and so I had the great enjoyment of seeing it reworked in a real world setting, but I think it would work just fine for kids who don't know the original.

Basically, if you love the cover (and what's not to love!) you'll love the book.

The Secret Spring: a Mystery Romance for Young People, by Emma Atkins Jacobs

The past few days have been rather harrowing, and I needed something soothing and mindless to read, that came with no obligation or expectation.  I picked The Secret Spring: a Mystery Romance for Young People, by Emma Atkins Jacobs (1944) off my to-be-read pile; I picked it up from my local used bookstore a few months ago, and thought it looked undemanding.

And indeed, it made no demands (except on my credulity) and actually proved more enjoyable than I thought it would.

The spring in the title isn't the season, but a hardware type spring in an old trunk, that our heroine, 16-year old Laurel, impulsively buys at an auction, and what's in the trunk when the secret spring is secret no more is what sparks the mystery, such as it is (not much--two strangers are much too interested in the trunk).  Indeed, though the book advertises itself as a mystery romance, it's really about a shy girl in a musical family who are on tour for the summer in the Chautauqua circuit, who pushes herself to step past her shyness and work on talking to people.  It's a pleasure to see her succeed, and I felt like I picked up some useful tips. She does get a romance, but (surprise!) not one built on realistic friendship.

What I found most unrealistic though is that Laurel (in, I think, 1905) could find in the old trunk a wedding dress at least thirty years old and wear it to perform in without trying it on first to make sure it fits and it does fit perfectly.  The cover suggests she tries it on, but I really don't think she ever does until the big night....also how could that dress be fit into that trunk along with a bunch of other stuff without being mangled to death?

I really enjoyed the Chautauqua setting--I knew nothing about this going in, and it was pretty interesting, with lots of details about the folks in the audience, and the different lectures and performances.  There were lots of small domestic details too, like all the ironing that had to be done by Laurel and her mother....

I also thought it was appropriate that I was reading this on the D-Day anniversary, because it's a wartime book.  Here's the back of the book:

which then sets my mind wondering if there are any books about high school victory chorus members....I would read those books.

And here's the inside back flap:

Perhaps if the publisher hadn't splurged on including a full page reproduction of the cover opposite the title page, we'd have won the war faster.

as an added bonus, the book came with the January 1945 edition of "Young Wings: the Book Club Magazine for Young Americans."   It was fascinating reading, almost like reading a blog.... Llamas were big in 1945.

The Story Web, by Megan Frazer Blakemore

If you are in the mood for a very moving book about the power of stories, and how they connect us to each other, do pick up The Story Web, by Megan Frazer Blakemore! (middle grade, Bloomsbury, June 4, 2019)

Alice's dad was the shining light of her small town in Maine, and the light of Alice's life (her mother is loving too, but very busy), with his stories and fun and ice-hockey playing (Alice is a wicked good goalie).  But then he went to war, and when he came back, he wasn't shining any more, and now he's gone.  He writes her letters, full of love and fully of whimsical mythological reimagined bits of his life, but he doesn't say when he'll come back to her.   Blaming herself, she turns away from her best friend Lewis and her beloved hockey.

When she was five, her father took her into the woods and showed her a giant spider web.  It was a story web, whose spiders were given strength by true stories they were told.  Now the story web is failing, and it seems to be taking Alice's community down with it.  Another girl, Melanie, is the only person who knows of this problem, and she's determined to get Alice and Lewis to help her fix it.  But Melanie is the niece of an eccentric woman the townsfolk say is a witch, and neither she nor her aunt have friends in town.

The world of this town is not just it's people, though.  The animals in the woods around it know about the story web too, and they're sending envoys to Alice so that she can use the gifts for story that she learned from her father to encourage the spiders again.  And so at last Alice, Lewis, and Melanie join forces, and not only is the web restored, but Alice finds the courage to tell her community true stories they need to hear--about her father, about Melanie's aunt, and about herself.

And so the reader gets a pretty strong nudge to think about the power of the stories we tell about ourselves and each other, how the stories we tell can sometimes show more about ourselves than about the people in them, and how stories, whether they are true or not, can change lives. It's not a didactically presented Message, but it is a powerful one.

What's really lovely about this book though is Alice's pain and her struggle through to the other side of it, with help from Lewis, who never wanted to stop caring about her, and Melanie, who never had friends before.  Her dad's struggle with mental illness is moving, and I especially like that he never stopped loving his family, nor they him (mental illness doesn't automatically mean dysfunctional parenting....).

It's warm and loving and hopeful, and the characters (except the not so nice ones) are real and loveable, and although the story web itself requires a huge suspension of disbelief, the thinking animals, acting to save it, bolster the magic and give it a place to stand.  (If you can't believe in the actual web with magical spiders, you can just think of it as a metaphor.)  I think it's my favorite of Megan Frazer Blakemore's books so far...

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

The Edge of Forever, by Melissa E. Hurst

The Edge of Forever, by Melissa E. Hurst (Sky Pony, 2015), is a YA time-travel mystery, with a nascent romance, lots of secrets, nefarious goings on, and murder.  

In the future it's been discovered that some people possess a gene that allows them to time travel, and these people have been taken under the control of the government and trained as historical observers.  In 2146, 17-year-old Bridger is one of these being trained.  On a routine  school-time travel training trip, things go wrong-- he gets distracted by seeing his dead father in the crowd, and partly because of that, his partner is killed.  Now Bridger's determined to find out what his dad was doing at that time and place, and he finds that his father was trying to break the most fundamental rule of time travel.  He was trying to prevent the murder of a 16 year old American girl, Alora.

Back in 2013, Alora has started having blackouts, each time waking up in a different place.  That's not the only thing on her mind--her Aunt Grace is struggling to keep their property, and she has a mystery of her own--what happened to her parents?  A darker mystery is about to shake her community, when one of her classmates is murdered.  And who is the mysterious boy who's shown up unannounced?

It is, of course, Bridger, there illegally to save her from the fire that will claim her life, and maybe save his father in the process.  But he's three months too soon.  And so the two teens have plenty of time to tackle all the mysteries, before being hit at the end with the biggest and most dangerous surprise of all....

This is the sort of book that reminds me why "government/corporate controlled time travel in the future" is generally my least favorite time travel sub-genre.  It's often too confusing (in this case I was confused by aspects of the future world, and all the various jumpings around through time, but this could just be me) and often it's not as magically and emotionally compelling as happenstance time travel.  The fact that half the book is from Alora's realistic quotidian point of view (high school, family uncertainty, asshole boy, classmate murdered....), and that for most of Bridger's point of view he's also reacting to our present day world, with very little culture shock, did not make it more interesting for me.   

One the other hand, the mysteries were engaging, and the last third was gripping (all the answers come Bang at you at the end).   So if you think high school drama, murder, and sci-fi sound like fun, you might well enjoy it.


This stands alone just fine, but there is a sequel--On Through the Never, and though I didn't love this one, I might give it a try.....

this week's round-up of middle grade sci fi and fantasy from around the blogs (6/2/19)

Here's what I found this week; as ever, please let me know what I missed!

The Reviews

A Box of Bones, by Marina Cohen, at Charlotte's Library

The Curse of Ragman's Hollow, by Rhys A. Jones, at splashesintobooks

The Fairy Tale Detectives, by Michael Buckley, at proseandkahn

The Last Spell Breather, by Julie Pike, at Mr Ripleys Enchanted Books

The Library of Ever, by Zeno Alexander, at For Those About To Mock

Nevermore: the Trials of Morrigan Crow, by Jessica Townsend, at TBR and Beyond

Order of the Majestic, by Matt Mvklush, at Always in the Middle

Ronan Boyle and the Bridge of Riddles, by Thomas Lennon, at Redeemed Reader

The Root of Magic by Kathleen Benner Duble, at Log Cabin Library

Rumblestar, by Abi Elphinstone, at Snow White Hates Apples

Time Sight, by Lynne Jonell, at Charlotte's Library

The Tragical Tale of Birdie Bloom, by Temre Beltz, at Pages Unbound

Twice Magic (The Wizards of Once, #2), by Cressida Cowell, at Of Books, Photography, and Tea

Two at Lost in Storyland--Spark, by Sarah Beth Durst, and Briar and Rose and Jack, by Katherine Coville

Authors and Interviews

Ronald Smith (The Owls Have Come to Take Us Away), at Middle Grade Book Village

Zeno Alexander (The Library of Ever) at Maria's Melange

Malayna Evans (Jagger Jones and the Mummy's Ankh) at steaMG

Other Good Stuff

"Coming out on top of a bidding war, Universal Pictures has optioned the rights to Amari and the Night Brothers, the debut novel by first-time author B.B. Alston." (Read more at The Hollywood Reporter)

At Dream Gardens podcast, you can hear Roshani Chokshi talking about The Iron Ring, by Lloyd Alexander

A Box of Bones, by Marina Cohen

A Box of Bones, by Marina Cohen (middle grade, Roaring Book Press, May 28 2019), is a lovely and moving book that's part mystery, part fantasy, and part child acquiring greater wisdom story.

12-year-old Kallie is following the path of her no-nonsense father, leading an organized life (a hanger with an outfit for each day of the week, for instance) devoid of whimsy and fanciful imagination.  (Which seemed almost pathological, and definitely unbelievable, to me whose life is the opposite!).  Her grandfather, who's her primary caregiver (her father having a job, and her mother having died years ago), is less rigid in his approach to the world, and so drags Kallie to a local fair.  There a mysterious stranger gives her a puzzle box, and Kallie's life changes.

The puzzle aspect to the wooden box overcomes Kallie's general aversion to inexplicable gifts from strangers, and so she sets out very scientifically to solve it.  When she does, a set of bone cubes with pictures on them fall out, and Kallie finds herself confronted with things she cannot explain.  Her best friend, the similarly scientific Pole Rodriguez, offers practical explanations for the odd occurrences creeping into Kallie's life, but a new classmate, Anna, who's wild imagination is her own coping mechanism, challenges Kallie with her exuberant embrace of the fantastical.  And for sixth grade English she has a teacher who's dragging her into Narnia, despite her best efforts to resist it.

Kallie starts wondering more and more about her mother, a very distant memory, and that story becomes the greatest challenge of all to her controlled, practical world-view.  When she turns on Anna and her stories about her life and rips them apart, wounding her friend greatly, she's forced to awknoldege that imagination is more than a pointless exercise, but something that can bring comfort, which Kallie will need when she finds out the truth about her mother.

Interspersed with Kallie's real-life story is a second story, a fantasy about Leah, a bone-carvers apprentice in a world under the cruel thumb of a tyrannical, murderous queen.  The two stories don't at first seem directly connected, but Leah's story, which seems tied to the bone cubes of the puzzle box, creates a dark and magical shadow for Kallie's ordinary life.  The ordinary life part is only just barely fantastical, but the reverberations of Leah's story make the whole thing magical (and will satisfy readers who are drawn to the book by its promise of fantasy!).  Illustrations by Yana Bogatch enhance the mood of dark fantasy (for readers who unlike me aren't reading so fast and immersedly that they don't see the pictures...sigh.  This is a Failing of mine.)

It is a gripping read (a single sitting one for me) poignant and magical and memorable.  It would make a great book discussion story for sixth graders; I'd love to be part of such a discussion, and pick apart the interconnections of the two stories.

For what it's worth, Kirkus is right there with me on this one, although they're more direct in calling it a mystery.  It is mysterious, but Kallie doesn't actually "solve" the mystery of the puzzle box and why she was given it in the first place, so kids who read mysteries for the sake of following clues along a direct path might feel a tad disgruntled.   I am not one of those readers, being ready to accept that sometimes strange and magical things just happen.

ps:  Kallie goes on to read the subsequent Narnia stories on her own.

ps 2:  this might be my favorite cover of the year so far

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

Time Sight, by Lynne Jonell

Time Sight, by Lynne Jonell, is a book that was published last week (Henry Holt, May 14, 2019), but it has very much the feel of classic British time travel from last century (which I love).  It's the story of two American boys, 12-year-old Will Menzies and his little brother Jamie, quickly packed off to relations in Scotland (mother taken hostage while on a medical relief mission, father flying out to try to do something to free her).  Their relations are the caretakers of the old castle of the Menzies family, and in the land of his ancestors, time starts to pull on Will, and his gift of time sight emerges.

Will can focus his minds vision in such a way that it makes windows to different times, through which people and things can pass.  And so Will, Jamie, and their cousin Nan become embroiled in wild and often violent adventures from the ancient past to the middle ages.  "Time hearing" is another gift that their family has, that softens the language barrier.  Not all the time travel is them going back to the past; one adventure involves a Pictish warrior girl coming back to our time, and almost braining a reenactor critical of her authenticity.

The first adventure takes the kids back to the middle ages, where little brother Jamie gets mistaken for the lord's nephew, and taken to life with him.   Will hasn't acquired the skill to fine tune his time windows yet, and so the window he opens to find him takes him to a year later in the past, when Jamie has grown to be at home in the castle, and barely remembers his real life, and has no desire to go home.  I've always been very moved by this emotional complication for time traveling children, and this was no exception.

Will is a great protagonist, realistically sick with worry over his mother and his loss of his little to brother to the past, and then burdened with other responsibilities to the past and the present, but facing those burdens bravely, because there's no other choice.  The rich tapestry of the Scottish landscape and its inhabitants is engrossing, and though there's no time to spare to fully characterize many of the people met in the past, there's enough to them to make it believable that they have lives of their own.

As Will grows more and more tired from his journeys into the past, full of violence that he can't stop, he takes comfort from the one actual place of peace along the timeline--visits with an old monk.  His conversations with the monk lead him to take comfort in the belief that each person can contribute to the light shining against the darkness of the world, and though this philosophy isn't very subtly delivered to the reader, it's a darn good one nonetheless.

Sometimes I wish I could give books to my child self, and indeed that self would have enjoyed this one lots.  But what I'd actually like, in this case, would be to have had a chance to give me in the present the chance to read as if I were my child self  during the summer I was ten (no job, food supplied on demand, no kids to make demands, etc.; in short, no pressures to do anything but enjoy the reading).*   Despite not being in that happy prelapsarian state of grace, I enjoyed it and was moved by it.  I imagine that surely there are young romantic (in the pure sense of the word) history-loving readers like I was still out there, and if indeed there are, I hope they find this book!

My one reservation is that there is rather a lot of adventure packed into one book, making the book rather long; if given the choice, I'd have split it into two or three volumes.

I'm happy to see Kirkus liked it too; here's their starred review.

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

*thinking back, however, the summer I was ten was the summer my little sister kept begging me to play monopoly over and over with her, which was annoying when I was trying to read and which just goes to show that uninterrupted sybaritic reading perfection can't actually be found in this imperfect world.

Friday's Tunnel, and February's Road, by John Verney

I have an online friend who is a connoisseur of vintage English children's books, of which I too am fond.  She has the advantage over me in that she is actually English, and so has much greater access to out-of-print books.  For instance, she's enthused repeatedly over the years about the books John Verney wrote about the Callendar family--how much fun they are, how intelligent they are, how much she loves the main characters, etc.

My local public library, which for many years had a fossilized children's collection, still had the third and fourth books when I moved to town, which I snatched up when they were weeded (it was really beautifully serendipitous how I arrived on the scene just as weeding was beginning again), and I have for years kept a look out for the first two--Friday's Tunnel and February's Road, to no avail.  But the first two eluded me, so when I was offered review copies of Friday's Tunnel and February's Road, which Paul Dry Books has just reprinted as affordable paperbacks, I was enthusiastic in my yes please.

February Callendar, the point-of-view character for the first two books, is the oldest girl in a large English family living in an old farmhouse.  Her parents were more interested in playing with words than giving their children sensible names, so her older brother is Friday, although the four younger sisters were spared that joke.  It's not otherwise a tremendously eccentric family (though like ylarge, intelligent, and opinionated fictional English family from the mid-20th century the provide plenty of entertainment) , and their daily lives of arguing about whose turn it is to milk, pony rides, and free range exploration of a wonderfully beautiful bit of the English countryside are fascinatingly different from modern American life.

When the first book, Friday's Tunnel (1959), begins, Friday is fixated on digging a tunnel through the chalk cliff at the edge of their land (with is perhaps a little eccentric), and is actually making progress.   Little do any of the Callendar's know that the tunnel digging is going to result in the family mixed up in an international crisis, involving a strange new mineral from a Mediterranean Island that could (this being the height of the Cold War era) be used to make a weapon even more powerful than the current atomic bombs....February finds herself following the threads of the international mystery that is taking place in her stomping ground until she ends up in real danger.  It's a gripping read, thrilling at times, at others offering the more relaxed pleasure of spending time with an large, interesting family.

The second book, February's Road (1961), presents a new crisis, although on a more local scale.  A new highway is going to be built right against the Callendar's property, cutting them off from the country side they love, and there seems to be no good reason why the area of outstanding beauty was chosen when other routes would have made more sense..  Of course February is against the road, but though she's suspected by some of sabotage, the solution to re-locating the road comes from following the money, and enlisting the help of the press.  So not quite as exciting, but still a fun read.

But what, I wonder, will modern American middle grade youth (for the series, I think, is best suited to 10-12 year olds) make of them?  I'd recommend them to kids who last year enjoyed the Vanderbeeker series for the large, entertaining family overcoming difficulties), or perhaps Sheila Tunage's books (Three Times Lucky, etc.) for the plucky kids solving mysteries in a very real, particular place that's a character of its own, and who enjoy the fantastical--the Callendar family books aren't science fiction, but might well be so strange to the modern readerer that they have the same feel....

Although I'm not as much of a fan as my aformentioned English firiend, I enjoyed the books lots! I'm very glad Paul Dry reprinted the books, and am looking forward to reading my copies of the next two, Ismo and Seven Sunflower Seeds, and then looking for the fifth, Samson's Hoard.  

As an extra bonus, the reprints include the original illustrations by the author, such as this one of the Callendar family Christmas, from February's Road:

And as a final postscript, Paul Dry's Young Reader list is not long, but it is very interesting (and includes a Rosemary Sutcliffe book I don't have, and medieval fiction by Barbara Leone Picard which I have heard is very good.....). I will be very curious to see what they publish next!

This week's round-up of middle grade sci fi and fantasy from around the blogs (5/26/19)

Welcome to this week's round-up!  Please let me know if I missed your post.

BREAKING NEWS:  Kidlitcon 2020 will be held in Ann Arbor, Michigan March 27th and 28, 2020!  The organizers this year are Katy Kramp @alibrarymama, Maggi Rhode, @mama_librarian, and Nekenya Yarbrough.  If you have any ideas for panels, or want to know more about being on panel, email kidlitcon@gmail.com.  A website is coming, but until then visit @kidlitcon on twitter.

The Reviews

Anya and the Dragon, by Sofiya Pasternack, at Hit or Miss Books 

Aru Shah and the End of Time, by Roshani Chokshi, at metalphantasmreads (audiobook review)

Boot: Small Robot, Big Adventure, by Shane Hegarty, at thereaderteacher

The First (Endling #2) by Katherine Applegate, at Say What?

The Girl with the Dragon Heart, by Stephanie Burgis, at Say What?

Lalalni of the Distant Sea, by Erin Entrada Kelly, at Abby the Librarian

The Library of Ever, by Zeno Alexander, at J.R.'s Book Reviews and Charlotte's Library

Lingering Echos, by Angie Smibert, at Always in the Middle

Malamander, by Thomas Taylor, at Whispering Stories

Maximillian Fly, by Angie Sage, at Fuse #8

Ogre Enchanged, by Gail Carson Levine, at Book Scents

The Polar Bear Explorers Club, by Alex Bell, at Pages Unbound

The Queen's Secret, by Jessica Day George, at The Story Sanctuary and Charlotte's Library

Ronan Boyle and the Bridge of Riddles (Ronan Boyle #1), by Thomas Lennon, at Say What?

The Shadow Cipher, by Laura Ruby, at 24hryabookblog

Spark, by Sarah Beth Durst, at Ms. Yingling Reads and pamelakramer.com

Spindrift and the Orchid, by Emma Trevayne, at Not Acting My Age

Tilly and the Book Wanderers, by Anna James, at A Dance With Books

We're Not From Here, by Geoff Rodkey, at proseandkahn

and at the B. and N. Kids blog, I made a list of recent series starters that has a lot of fantasy on it....

Authors and Interviews

Dominique Valente (Starfell Willow Moss and the Lost Day), at thereaderteacher (also review)

Rajani LaRocca (Midsummer's Mayhem) at Kidlit411 and, with her agent Brent Taylor, at Literary Rambles

The Library of Ever, by Zeno Alexander, for Timeslip Tuesday

The Library of Ever, by Zeno Alexander (Macmillan, April 30 2019), is a fun fantasy for younger middle grade readers that happens to include a nice bit of time travel in its adventures.

Lenora has been in left in the care of an inattentive and uninterested nanny while her parents are off travelling, and mostly she's bored.  But one day the chance comes to give the nanny a slip at the library, and Lenora escapes to try to find the children's section.  Instead, she finds the opportunity of a life time--a doorway into a marvelous magical library of every book in existence.  Lenora becomes a Fourth Assistant Apprentice Librarian, and is determined to rise through the ranks as quickly as possible.

Her first assignment is to help patrons at the calendar desk, and her first customer is a time travelling robot from the year 8000.  Lenora agrees to travel to the future with the robot to settle a calendrical catastrophe, and she does so in fine intelligent style (and I learned more about leap years!).    Other adventures ensue with different branches of the library, pleasantly episodic, full of quirky details (tardigrades launching themselves into space, for instance, and why not?), and more or less self-contained, reminding me a bit of Edward Eager's books.

All is not fun and games in this great library, though.  The librarians are dedicated to preserving and sharing the light of learning, but there are those working on the side of darkness, who want to suppress knowledge.  Lenora is menaced by agents of the darkness during several assignments, and at the end barely escapes from them.  But to her disappointment, this escapes lands her back in the normal, real-world library.   Only a bit of time travelling help from the robot of her first adventure let her get away, and that bit of time travelling also gives her hope that she'll make it back again.

Fun and detailed adventures, with a strong pro-library, pro-knowledge message (not at all subtle, but certainly worthy), make this a fast, pleasant (and for young readers, even thought-provoking) read.

The Queen's Secret (Rose Legacy book 2), by Jessica Day George

The Queen's Secret, by Jessica Day George (Bloomsbury, May 14, 2019), continues the story begun in The Rose Legacy.    I just read through my review of that one, and was struck by this bit:

 "Me being me, I actually liked all the part before the action and adventure gets going best--orphans exploring new homes and learning to ride is right up my alley!  But I can generously appreciate that many readers do, in fact, enjoy Plot, and so I don't begrudge the wild ride and the political intrigue.  The magic of horse/human communication is something that works better for a child reader; the larger political framework, with hints of imperialism, is more interesting to the adult reader than the love story between girl and horse, but less emphasized in the story."

And so on to The Queen's Secret, which is much more about what is happening in the kingdom, and less about horse love (though that's still here!), and of course Thea, the main character, now has a home and horse and a family.  She doesn't get much time to enjoy them though.  A sickness has been spreading through the kingdom, with many deaths, and most of the people think the horses are to blame.  The kingdom itself is on the brink of war with the kingdom of Kronenhof.  Thea and her friends Jilly and Finn are doing what they can to help, acting as couriers of medicine and news.  Then Thea's evil mother shows up again, and the plot takes a fast tight spin with a set up for a third book that might well be the most plot filled of the series!

Along with Thea, we, the readers, see more of the history of the kingdom in this second book, and more of what the Queen is up against in her efforts to change things (the King is not part of these plans....).  Much of this book is a story of frustration--the set-back of the sickness, with the reluctance of people accept help from the horse couriers is hard on the characters!  But as the book opens up to a bigger story toward its end, there's the promise that change for the better might actually happen (if, of course, war can be averted and Thea's evil mother doesn't keep up her nefarious meddling, which she almost certainly will be doing!).

My only complaint about this instalment of the series is that me being me, I would have like to have stayed longer in the old manor house in the isolated village that's a library/museum, with chapters about the kids sitting around reading books and looking at stuff instead of just the few lovely pages we got, and I wish that one particular part of the ending had been different (I had to skim bits of the ending because of not want to be pained).

That being said, and my own personal feelings set aside, this is a solid fantasy series with strong girls and women, lovely horses, tangled histories and families, and strong friendships. 

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

This week's round-up of middle grade sci fi and fantasy from around the blogs 5/19/19

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

The Reviews

Begone the Raggedy Witches, by Celine Kiernan, at Random Musings of a Bibliophile

Cape, by Kate Hannigan, at Youth Services Book Review

The Clockwork Ghost (York #2) by Laura Ruby, at The Book Monsters and Charlotte's Library

Dragon Pearl, by Yooon Ha Lee, at Sharon the Librarian and Locus

Dragonfell, by Sarah Prineas, at Ms. Yingling Reads

The Eternity Elixer (Potion Master #1), by Frank L. Cole, at The Write Path.

Game of Stars, by Sayantani Dasgupta, at Reading Books With Coffee

The Girl with the Dragon Heart, by Stephanie Burgis, at Log Cabin Library

In the Lake of the Moon (Arlo Finch #2), by John August, at Say What?

Knock Three Times (Wizards of Once #3), by Cressida Cowell, at Magic Fiction Since Potter 

The Missing Alchemist, by Cladric Blackwell, at Red Headed Book Lover

The Queen's Secret, by Jessica Day George, at Cracking the Cover

Sal and Gabi Break the Universe, by Carlos Hernandez, at Provo Library Children's Book Reviews

Spark, by Sarah Beth Durst, at BooksForKidsBlog and Charlotte's Library

4 fantasies from outside the US, at alibrarymama

Authors and Interviews

James Riley (Revenge of Magic) at The Children's Book Review

Other Good Stuff

New in the UK, at Mr Ripleys Enchanted Books

The Clockwork Ghost (York, book 2), by Laura Ruby

The Clockwork Ghost, by Laura Ruby (middle grade/YA, Walden Pond Press, May 15 2019), continues the adventure begun in The Shadow Cipher without missing a beat.  Twins Tess and Theo, and their friend Jaime, are still following a twisting trail of impossible clues through an alternate New York of mechanical marvels.  They still have more questions than they have answers.  And they still have enemies, most notably a nasty piece of work  and his henchwomen who want to eliminate the threat they might pose to greedy plans to revamp the city.

There's no point in recapping the story.  It is a dream of puzzles and ciphers and mechanical machinations as clues are found and followed.  And it is a very bright and vivid sort of dream, that doesn't make sense exactly but never leaves the reader twitchy and wondering if there will be an ending or not. And the clues and such are cool, and are anchored into the history of the city.

But what I loved most were the three kids at the heart of the story--their person-ness was never overwhelmed by the bright and shininess (or sometimes dimness) of what was happening around them.   Their characters don't Develop in a journey from a to b, but rather become more and more strongly who they are.  As a reader who finds it off-putting when action and adventure leaves a character with no time for me to get to know them, I appreciated this lots.

There are also many touches of humor and whimsy that pleased me very much, as did many direct discussions of social justice issues.

And then the ending.  I hope we don't have to wait two more years for the third book!

I liked the first book lots (here's my review) but I liked this one more, mostly because as someone who works professionally in historic preservation the threat to the historic apartment book in the first book was much too uncomfortable for me!  The threat to historic buildings is still here, in a general sense, in this one, but not right in one's face.

In my review of the first book, I said:

"At one point the kids hear the story of a zoo giraffe who escaped captivity and threw itself into the river, and they sit, "watching the water together, imagining giraffes loping gracefully beneath the surface, making their way home" (page 246 of the ARC).  Which I think might be the overarching metaphor of the whole book (or perhaps not), but which in any event is an image I love."

And this feeling I have about the metaphor of the giraffes (impossible home-goings, the beauty of the unreal and impossible, the graceful loneliness of giraffes/people doing their best)  is even stronger now I've read the second book.

If you want a more coherent sort of synopsis, here's the (starred) Kirkus review.

Note on reader age--this is being sold as one of those 10-14 year old sort of books, not clearly YA because there's no romance/sex/growing up in a YA sort of way, but one that will appeal to kids older than MG.  Basically give it to smart thoughtful kids/grown-ups who have the patience not to want answers right away.

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

Spark, by Sarah Beth Durst

There are times (many of them), when I'm really really really glad I started blogging lo these many years ago!  Mostly these times involve book mail from favorite authors, such as Sarah Beth Durst, whose adult, YA and middle grade books all delight me very much!  

Spark, by Sarah Beth Durst (middle grade, Clarion Books, May 14 2019), is the story of Mina, a quiet girl in a boisterous family, who learns that she can effect much needed change to right a wrong without changing the truth of who she is.  It's also the story of Mina's storm beast, Pixit, and how the magic of the storm beasts shapes Mina's world.

Mina's country is blessed with perfect weather that's gaurenteed by the storm beasts (basically elemental dragons with feathers) who manage every detail of it.  Some bring rain, some soak up the warm and light of the sun, some control the winds...and some can gather electricity, to power the cities.  Selected children are given storm beast eggs to hatch, and telepathically bond with the beasts.  Mina is one such child.  But to her family's shock, quiet, thoughtful Mina's egg hatches one of the lightning beasts.  They can't imagine her going to the training school for such beasts and their riders, who are the most impulsive and wildest of all the types.   But Mina and Pixit, her beast, love each other, and are determined to pass the tests and be a good team, doing what they are supposed to do for the good of the country.  So they head off to the school for lightning beasts, in the barren lands butted up against the mountains marking the boarder of the realm.

And indeed quiet, reserved Mina is overwhelmed by the kids around her.  The book-learning side of things offers some respite, and she's happy spending time amongst the schools books. learning about her country's history (something many of us can relate to!).  It's also a help that her room-mate, though just as exuberant and loud as any of the other kids, is a decent, sympathetic girl, and she starts to make friends with a few other kids as well.  But Mina's confidence is shaken when she can't seem to hold and control the lightning Pixit pulls from the sky the way the other kids can. Maybe she's not meant to be at the school after all...maybe she's a failure.

 But when she and Pixir get blown over the mountains, past the boundary of their homeland, she meets outsiders for the first time. And she finds out that her country idyllic weather comes at a cost.  She can't ignore what she's learned.  But how can a quiet girl make her voice heard?

Happily, Mina doesn't miraculously become a different person in order to achieve what she sets out to do, because she's not alone (being surrounded by confident, uninhibited classmates), and because she realizes just whose voice it is that needs to be heard (hint-not hers, and not her classmates....).  A pebble can start an avalanche without becoming a boulder....and a girl can be brave and do what's right without taking the limelight herself.

So if you love any combination of magical school stories, friendship stories, dragon stories, dark sides of utopia stories, social justice stories, and girls who love reading stories, you will find Spark wonderful! (except that it is perhaps too short.  I'd have liked it to go on longer....)

a second opinion from Kirkus- "Warm, exciting, hopeful, and ethical."

This week's round-up of middle grade fantasy and sci fi from around the blogs (5/12/19)

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

The Reviews

Aru Shah and the Song of Death, by Roshani Chokshi, at Marzie's Reads

The Books of Earthsea: the Complete Illustrated Edition, by Ursula Le Guin, illustrated by Charles Vess, at Locus

The Falcon's Feather (Explorer Academy 2), at Always in the Middle

The Halfmen of O, by Maurice Gee, at Tor

Little Apocalypse, by Katherine Sparrow, at Say What?

The Lost Boy's Gift, by Kimberly Willis Holt, at For Those About to Mock

The Lost Girl, by Anne Ursu, at A Kids Book a Day

Magic, Madness, and Mischief, by Kelly McCullough, at fangirlknitsscarf

Order of the Majestic, by Matt Myklusch, at Charlotte's Library

Peasprout Chen, Future Legend of Skate and Sword, by Henry Lien, at Fantasy Literature

Playing with Fire (Skulduggery Pleasant #2), by Derek Landy, at Hidden In Pages

The Prairie Thief, by Melissa Wiley, at Intentional Homeschooling

Puddlejumpers, by Mark Jean and Christopher C. Carlson, at Say What?

Ra the Mighty, by Amy Butler Greenfield, at Pages Unbound

Riverland, by Ran Wilde, at Good Reads with Ronna

Sal and Gabi Beak the Universe, by Carlos Hernandez, at alibrarymama

The Strangers, by Margaret Peterson Haddix, at Middle Grade Mafia

Thomas Wildus and the Book of Sorrows, by J.M. Bergen, at The Spine View 

The White Tower, by Cathryn Constable, at Mom Read It


Other Good Stuff 

New in the UK at Mr Ripleys Enchanted Books

Alice Payne Arrives, by Kate Heartfield, for Timeslip Tuesday

I just gave Alice Payne Arrives, by Kate Heartfield (Tor, November 2018), a four star rating over at Goodreads, despite the fact that this is the sort of time travel that makes my head hurt.

I can say with conviction that if you are looking for a book about a lesbian couple in the 18th century, one of whom is biracial (the Alice of the title) and the other is a mechanical genius inventor (Jane) who get caught up in a time travel war being waged centuries in the future, this is the book you want!  Alice is peacefully maintaining her father's home by moonlighting as a highwayman, carefully preying only on men who have assaulted/molested women and girls.  Jane, who came to live in Alice's home as a companion a while back, is a whiz at mechanics, and has made a handy automaton that serves as Alice's highway robbery assistant.  They make a good team, and love each other lots.

But then things get screwy when the coach Alice holds ups disappears into a strange glimmer-ness,.  Alice, feeling both curious and responsible, heads through the glimmer to see what's happened to it, and finds herself in a future where there's a war going on between two rival groups of time travelers. Each side has the same goal--saving humanity from the coming apocalypse.  Each has the same technique--tinker with past events until you get the desired outcome.  But they have very different ideas about what tinkering to do.  History is getting more and more messed up, disasters are metastasizing (Heartfield's metaphor), and little progress (if any) is being made toward achieving the ultimate goal.

Prudence, who works for one of these groups in the future, is fed up with it all.  She has a plan of her own to put a stop to it.  All she needs is a nice 18th century naïf to push a button....

Instead, she gets Alice when Alice arrives along with the highjacked coach and its passengers and crew.   Alice might be just the person Prudence needs, but with Alice comes Jane, a Jane who's pretty fed up at Alice not treating her as an equal partner and decision maker, who's zinging through glowy spaces into the future without talking it through etc., a Jane who just happens to be smart enough and mechanically gifted enough to maybe throw a spanner in the works...or maybe not.

I'm not entirely sure what exactly happened at the end, and would need to sit down with pencil and paper and make a list of what we know and can surmise etc.  I am glad this looks like it's going to be a series, which will spare me the work of doing that...on the other hand, I'm sad that I don't have to anyone to talk to about the book, because I'd love to go through it with another person to bounce ideas off of--what does Jane know and how and when does she know it, etc.  Fortunately history has so many alternate timelines that very few people in the book know what happened originally, so the sense of being confused isn't unique to me, the reader....

And once I accepted this, I just relaxed and enjoyed the ride!

Order of the Majestic, by Matt Myklusch

Order of the Majestic, by Matt Myklusch (middle grade, Aladdin, May 7 2019), is one to offer kids dreaming of magic, and hoping it will find them one day.

12-year-old Joey Kopecky wasn't one of those kids.  He was content flying under the radar, living an unambitious life of computer gaming in New Jersey, when his life was upended by perfect standardized test scores.  Now he's been offered a place at one of the most exclusive schools in the country, where every kid is a genius.  He feels like a fraud--knowing how to take tests is a skill, certainty , but is it really a hallmark of genius?

But one final test, a strange one involving 150 magic tricks to solve, leads to a 151st trick that transports him to the ghostly shell of a once grand magical theater, the Majestic.  It's fallen into ruins, and to get inside Jack must pass through spooky wraiths, but once he makes it, he finds the magician who once made it famous, the Great Rodondo.  Rodondo was once the leader of the Order of the Majestic, working to keep real magic alive by encouraging his audiences to believe.  Sadly, belief waned, and an enemy order sprang up, wanting the power of magic with no obligation to use it altruistically.

Rodondo sees in Jack the potential for magic, and decides to teach him in one last effort to keep the diminished Order alive.  Two other kids, from offshoots of the order, are invited to join the training as well.  Shazad and Leonora have been brought up with magic, and each thinks they are the one who should be bequeathed the most powerful artifact of the Order, the magic wand once wielded by Houdini.  Jack just wants to learn magic...he doesn't want the responsibility of being head of any order.

But he certainly doesn't want the wand to fall into the hand of the sinister antagonistic Invisible Hand, and he certainly does want to keep himself and the other two kids alive. So he draws on the one talent he can count on to get himself out the clutches of the Invisible Hand--how to solve test questions without actually knowing the right answer...

It's a long book of some 400 pages, but it's a fast read, with humor and  the familiar edge of competition and familiar "kid discovering his powers" story keeping things going briskly.  It's not a book of numinous power and beauty, but it's a perfectly serviceable story.  Jack's solution to the immediate problem is rather lovely, and though there's the set up for more to the story, this installment comes to a satisfying end.

Short answer--not one that moved me in any powerful way, and not remarkably memorable (except for the end, which I did really like!)  but a solid read nonetheless that should please the target audience, especially kids who enjoy doing magic tricks! (a few useful tricks on standardized test taking are gracefully thrown in too, for a bit of added value!)

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

This week's round-up of middle grade fantasy and science fiction from around the blogs (5/5/19)

Welcome to this week's round-up; please let me know if I missed your post!

Here's why I do these round-ups--

--for selfish reasons
I started because I wanted someone else to present me with all the mg sff reviews, but had to do it myself

--for another reason
I want to connect with all the other folks reviewing mg sff so that I can plug the Cybils Awards.  I'm the Cybil's organizer for the Elementary/Middle Grade Speculative Fiction category, and in just a few months, the call for Cybils Awards panelists will be going out.  I love all the panelists that have joined me in years past, but it would be great to have some fresh faces, and  I would really love more diversity in my group of panelists. You don't have to have a blog, just an online platform you use to talk about books (goodreads, youtube, podcasting, Instagram, etc.)  In the first round, which is most of the reading, we keep it to folks in North America, but international folks can be second round panelists (fewer books to get a hold of).  Here's a post I wrote a while back about being a panelist; please think about applying when the call goes out, and please let me know if you have any questions.

The Reviews

Aru Shah and the Song of Death, by Roshani Chokshi, at The Reader Bee, Hypable, and the B. and N. Kids Blog (my review) and a look at both books at Books and Waffles

The Assasination of Brangwain Spurge, by M.T. Anderson and You at Book Invasion (YouTube)

The Collectors, by Jacqueline West, at Redeemed Reader

The Fire Maker, by Guy Jones, at Magic Fiction Since Potter

Game of Stars (Kiranmala and the Kingdom Beyond #2), by Sayantani Dasgupta, at Ms. Yingling Reads

The Golden Butterfly, by Sharon Gosling, at Mr Ripleys Enchanted Books

Hamilin Stoop series, by Robert B. Sloan, at Tots and Me

Hyacinth and the Secrets Beneath, by Jacob Sager Weinstein, at Tales from the Raven

A Long Forgotten World, by Shannon Briwen, at Rising Shadow

The Middler, by Kirsty Applebaum, at Schoolzone

Music Boxes, by Tonja Drecker, at Charlotte's Library

Nell and the Cirus of Dreams, by Nell Gifford and Briony May Smith, at The Lancashire Post

Nevermore: the Trials of Morrigan Crow, by Jessica Townsend, at A Strong Belief in Wicker

The Owls Have Come to Take Us Away, by Ronald L. Smith, at Always in the Middle

Riverland, by Fran Wilder, at Charlotte's Library

Rumble Star, by Abi Elphinstone, at Mr Ripleys Enchanted Books

Runaway Robot, by Frank Cottrell-Boyce, at Minerva Reads

Sweep, by Jonathan Auxier, at The O.W.L.

Trace, by Pat Cummings, at Fuse#8


Authors and Interviews

Kelly Barnhill (The Girl Who Drank the Moon) at the B. and N. Kids Blog

Kim Ventrella (Bone Hollow) shares her thoughts on magical realism in mg at Middle Grade Minded


Other Good Stuff

A gathering of books for Star Wars loving kids at Brightly

Music Boxes, by Tonja Drecker

If "ballet horror (not the gory kind, but the situational kind) for young readers" is your thing, Music Boxes, by Tonja Drecker (Dancing Lemur, February, 2019) might be one you'll enjoy lots.

Lindsay's parents have put her little sister first, moving to New York city so that she can go to the Julliard school.  Lindsay is proud of her sister's talent, but she's devastated that her own ballet training has been disrupted.  There's no money for her to go to a good school in New York, so instead her parents sign her up for classes at the community center.  Which isn't the same.

But then she meets Madame Destinee, who has her own ballet school just around the corner.  Madame thinks Lindsay has talent just by looking at her, and offers her a place in her school.  There Lindsay dances like she never has before, in the company of other wildly talented young dancers.

But it is a very strange school.  The midnight performances, Madame's constant offerings of delicious food, and stranger things that are absolutely impossible.....and Lindsay, though drugged by both the dancing and the praise, and the food, keeps a clear enough head to figure out that she and the other kids are in terrible danger.

It isn't just beautiful music boxes that Madame is collecting....

It's a fast, straight-forward read (by which I mean--there is the one plot, and the one mystery, and we see it unfold as Lindsay does without any twistyness....so basically, the reader gets to sit back and enjoy the ride).  So it's a good one for kids who love creepy!  I myself would have enjoyed it more it had been less straight-forward; I would have liked Madame to be a little more well-developed as a character, and felt the friendships (and anti-friendships) Lindsay makes at the school were pretty predictable.  So for me it was fine, and I can imagine lots of kids (especially young ballet students) loving it, but it's not one I'll feel the need to re-read to get more out of it than I did the first time.

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher