Hattie Ever After by Kirby Larson. Delacorte Press. 2013. Reviewed from ARC from publisher. Sequel to Hattie Big Sky. The Plot: June 1919. Hattie Inez Brooks has a dream: she wants to be a reporter. She’s seventeen years old. She doesn’t have a high school diploma. She’s an orphan. She doesn’t have any money. She’s [...]
Scowler by Daniel Kraus. Delacorte Press, Random House. 2013. Review copy from publisher. The Plot: August, 1981. Changes are coming; Ry Burke, 19, knows this. The family farm is dying and he, his mother, Jo Beth, and his eleven year old sister Sarah, will have to leave. Sarah hunts the sky for changes of a [...]
In Darkness by Nick Lake. Bloomsbury. 2012. Review copy from publisher. The Plot: A young man is trapped in darkness: one minute he is in his hospital bed, the next the building is rubble around him and he is alive but there is no way out. He will tell you a story, his story, of how he [...]
Wonder Show by Hannah Barnaby. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2012. Review copy from publisher. Morris Finalist. The Plot: Portia Remini has not run away from home to join the circus. First, its’s a carnival, not a circus, and it’s called Mosco’s Traveling Wonder Show. Second, it was not home, not a home with parents or family. Parents [...]
Never Fall Down by Patricia McCormick. Balzer & Bray, an imprint of HarperCollins. 2012. Review copy from publisher. The Plot: Cambodia, 1975. Arn, eleven, lives with his sisters and brother. The family is poor, yes, but they are close and have each other. The are about to lose even that. The Khmer Rouge seize power. [...]
The FitzOsbornes at War, the Montmaray Journals, Book III by Michelle Cooper. Knopf Books for Young Readers. 2012. Sequel to Sequel to A Brief History of Montmaray and The FitzOsbornes in Exile. Reviewed from ARC from publisher. The Plot: Life in Great Britain during World War II, as told by Sophie FitzOsborne. The FitzOsborne story began in the mid 1930s in A Brief History [...]
The Diviners by Libba Bray. Little, Brown. 2012. Reviewed from ARC from publisher. Series website. The Post: New York City, 1926, is the best place in the world to be! At least, according to Evie O’Neill, who — get this — has been punished by her parents by being sent away from home to New York [...]
The Dark Unwinding by Sharon Cameron. Scholastic. 2012. Review copy from publisher. The Plot: June, 1852. England. Orphaned Katherine Tulman owes everything to her Aunt Alice. Not in a good way. When Katherine was left orphaned, Alice was the one who took in her late husband’s niece. Aunt Alice makes it known that in every possible [...]
Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey. Knopf Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Random House. 2011. Review copy from publisher. The Plot: 1965 Australia. Charlie Bucktin, 13, is reading a book on a hot summer night when there is a knock on his window. It is Jasper Jones, the town “bad boy,” and he needs [...]
Okay For Now by Gary D. Schmidt. Clarion Books, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2011. My review of the ARC. Audiobook: Listening Library, an imprint of the Random House Audio Publishing Group. Narrated by Lincoln Hoppe. 2011. Listened from copy from publisher. The Plot: The late 1960s. Doug Swieteck’s father has moved his family to stupid Marysville in upstate New [...]
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