Consider this just a sampling of titles that I found particularly toothsome in 2019. You will miss some of your favorites, no doubt, but these are the books that truly made my little heart sing.
Review of the Day: Rat Rule 79 by Rivka Galchen
November 29, 2019 by
This book doesn’t look like anything but itself. It doesn’t read like anything but what it is. It is not flashy but it is weirdly engrossing. I think it could have been truly great, but there’s no shame in being merely grand. A book that bucks conformity with every pretty page. Swings big. Aims for the stars.
Review of the Day: The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise by Dan Gemeinhart
November 1, 2019 by
It’s kind of gratifying to know that the story has been finding its audience. And what child wouldn’t find the notion of living on a school bus, tricked out like a long, yellow mobile home, enticing?
Review of the Day: The Usual Suspects by Maurice Broaddus
October 5, 2019 by
You know why you haven’t heard more people talking about this book? Because nobody knows how to sell it. Well, sorry folks, but the secret is out now. It’s one of the best books I’ve ever read for kids, and maybe the best school rated children’s novel I’ve encountered period. This, right here, is the book of our times.
Review of the Day: I Can Make This Promise by Christine Day
September 12, 2019 by
Set in contemporary Seattle with a Suquamish/Duwamish protagonist, Day (Upper Skagit) highlights a historical injustice by writing a book a kid might actually enjoy reading. No mean task. I think I may have devoured it entirely in one sitting.
Review of the Day: Look Both Ways by Jason Reynolds
August 15, 2019 by
Good news. I know exactly what to do with this particular middle school book. You need to weigh it down with awards, so many that it can no longer stand under its own weight and is forced to stagger to the display unit that stands front and center in the library where all the best books go. Then, and only then, will it have found its true home.
Review of the Day: A Good Kind of Trouble by Lisa Moore Ramée
July 5, 2019 by
Lisa Moore Ramée has taken the complexity of the real world, with all its police shootings and racism and destructive tendencies and made it personal for young readers. I don’t care what kid you hand this book to. Every single one of them will understand what’s going on here and, maybe, what’s going on in the wider world. The new required reading.
Review of the Day: Maximillian Fly by Angie Sage
May 24, 2019 by
“I am Fly. Maximillian Fly. I am a good creature. I am not bad, as some will tell you.” Considering that Maximillian is a human/cockroach hybrid of sorts, this is not particularly surprising news. Meet the dystopian/Steampunk/action adventure novel that’s like nothing you’ve ever read before.
Review of the Day: Trace by Pat Cummings
May 1, 2019 by
With Trace, Ms. Cummings takes time to examine what we owe our ancestors, even as we try to live our daily lives. We live with their decisions, whether we want to or not, and sometimes we relive their mistakes. This is a ghost story that asks you to stop and listen to the voices that are dead but not gone. Who are the ghosts that haunt your story? And what are they trying to tell you?
Booklist’s 50 Best Middle-Grade Novels of the 21st Century (Now With Ample Edits!)
April 26, 2019 by
If you received your latest issue of Booklist in the mail then you might have noticed that its editors got together and created nothing less than the 50 Best Middle-Grade Novels of the 21st Century. I substitute some of their choices for my own for fun.
Review of the Day: The Line Tender by Kate Allen
April 10, 2019 by
There are books for kids that dare to be more thoughtful than pulse pounding. If chosen freely by a child, they can unlock something inside. Something that means more to the person reading than anyone else. The Line Tender carries this promise in its pages. It’s the right book for the right reader.
Review of the Day: Spy Runner by Eugene Yelchin (bonus interview included)
March 21, 2019 by
Here’s an idea: Why not take the idea of a world gone mad and give it a jolt of lightning to the veins? Set your book in another era when America went a little crazy, then liven things up with spies, car chases, murder attempts, gunshots, traitors, double agents, and that’s just the first few chapters! A book for the kids that want to read a response to our age that will thrill them to the core, and maybe plant a couple of seeds of rebellion in their craniums at the same time.
Review of the Day: Pie in the Sky by Remy Lai
February 27, 2019 by
Gracefully switching between text and comics, comics and text, author Remy Lai feeds breadcrumbs (or, more accurately, cake crumbs) of humor and sequential art to kids, luring them towards a storyline with a deeper, darker meaning. For the kid that avoids serious stories like the plague, Pie in the Sky is the perfect gateway drug.
31 Days, 31 Lists: 2018 Middle Grade Novels
December 30, 2018 by
The penultimate list! I’m so excited! This year I did a bit better than in 2017 in terms of reading middle grade fiction. Thanks to a system of following starred reviews, the recommendations of readers I trust, blogs, Twitter, Mock Newbery lists, the whole kerschmozzle, here are the 2018 books that I think are great.
Review of the Day: The Season of Styx Malone by Kekla Magoon
November 21, 2018 by
The Season of Styx Malone By Kekla Magoon Wendy Lamb Books (an imprint of Random House Children’s Books) $16.99 ISBN: 978-1-5247-1595-3 Ages 9-12 On shelves now And it was around this time that I started wondering why more people weren’t talking about The Season of Styx Malone. So let me tell you a little story. […]
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