Gordon Korman’s books are among the most popular novels for middle grade readers. Kids love them. His “Swindle” series is addictive, and his stand alone novels like “Restart” and “Slacker” are thoughtful and humorous at the same time. “War Stories,” his newest middle grade novel, is thoughtful, but necessarily less humorous; it delves into a much more serious topic — war.
“ICK! Delightfully Disgusting Animal Dinners, Dwellings, and Defenses” by Melissa Stewart is a book that will astonish adults and delight children who never realized all the myriad synonyms for the word “poop.” This non-fiction magazine-type book published by National Geographic Kids is filled with glorious photos and ample information about animals whose personal habits will make many of us blanch. Really.
The Table of Contents divides the information into three parts: Disgusting Dinners, Disgusting Dwellings, and Disgusting Defenses. There is also an introduction and conclusion, with a glossary and an index. For a classroom teacher, having a book that will intrigue and entertain children and that includes all these important nonfiction text features is priceless.
“The Rider’s Reign: A Rose Legacy Novel” is the final book in the trilogy that began with “The Rose Legacy,” the book that is also the title of the three-book series. In it we learn of a world in which some humans can communicate with horses. And any horse-loving human reading this trilogy would only wish that this was, indeed, a real thing. Talking to horses — how amazing would that be?
“The Unadoptables: five amazing kids. One UN-ordinary adventure to find the home they deserve,” by Hana Tooke, is a middle grade historical fiction that is Dickens-esque while it also charms and touches the heart. The story takes place in Amsterdam and begins in the year 1880, over the course of which five infants are abandoned on the premises of the Little Tulip Orphanage.
Remember Bob, the scrawny little dog with lots of bravado who was Ivan and Ruby’s buddy in “The One and Only Ivan“? Well, author Katherine Applegate decided that Bob deserved his own story, and “The One and Only Bob” is this survivor’s tale.
First, let’s be clear about one thing: Bob is NOT a good dog. Sure, he’s loving and appreciates his two square meals a day, but don’t expect him to listen or obey commands like “sit” or “leave it.” He’s the first to say that he’s a street dog, and he’s proud of it. His opinion of Hachiko, the dog who waited at the train station for his owner for nine years? “That dog was a ninny. A numskull. A nincompoop.”
Margaret Peterson Haddix is truly the queen of series writing. It’s tough to write a second book in a series that has more than two books. You can’t write the ending, but there needs to be some kind of closure, and yet you have to make sure that the readers are involved enough to want to know what’s going to happen next. Haddix manages it all brilliantly.
Sarah Beth Durst loves fantasy, and she loves cats. In “Catalyst,” she combines those loves to create a kitten that grows and grows and grows. When almost twelve-year-old Zoe finds the tiny kitten, she knows her mother won’t let her keep it. She knows because she wasn’t able to keep any of the other animals she rescued, including the last one, a skunk.
I started the middle grade story “A Guard Dog Named Honey” by Denise Gosliner Orenstein predisposed to dislike it. I don’t usually approach books with that attitude, of course, but this one is about a girl who wants to sell a dog for profit in order to raise the bail money to get her brother out of jail. I’m all about the dogs, and if her brother was in jail, I reasoned, no dog should suffer because of his stupidity.
Spring is here and it’s time to enjoy the outdoors — while safely keeping social distance, of course. And for those shut inside on rainy, gloomy days, what could be more enjoyable than reading about animals in nature while at the same time learning fascinating and important facts about the world around us? These five picture books are perfect for reading and will become favorites at bedtime. Continue reading
“Alex Rider: Nightshade” is the very lucky thirteenth entry in Anthony Horowitz’ extraordinarily popular Alex Rider series. Here again, the young hero is up to his neck in absurdly dangerous situations — which Horowitz makes entirely believable — fantastic though they are. Continue reading
“The Blackbird Girls” by Anne Blankman is so much more than its description. It is about two young girls who are rivals, Valentina Kaplan and Oksana Savchenko who end up escaping from the town of Pripyat, their town near the nuclear power plant Chernobyl where their fathers worked. After the explosion, we learn that the government hid news of the explosion for two days, and the day after it happened, residents of that small town strolled about the streets as if it were a normal day in spite of the clouds of blue smoke and the red skies that lit up over Chernobyl. Continue reading
There’s a pandemic going on, and now more than ever, children need to read about inspirational figures. Few women have motivated more young girls than Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Three recent releases celebrate her life; each is appropriate for a different age group of children and all three are books that are worthy to be read to children and by children right now. All of them cover the amazing life of Ginsburg, but each is special in a different way. Additionally, two other new picture books feature the lives of two relatively unknown women, Mother Jones and Febb Burn, both of whom changed the lives of women in our country. Continue reading
