A smartly plotted dip into the Gullah-Geechee culture of early 60s rural South Carolina, this book weaves family, history, and spooky stuff together like a braid.
Review of the Day: Amber and Clay by Laura Amy Schlitz, ill. Julia Iredale
January 27, 2021 by
This is a book positioned to impress, that then sneaks over and steals your heart. Hermes would be proud.
31 Days, 31 Lists: Great Middle Grade Novels of 2020
December 30, 2020 by
The penultimate list. Maybe, with lists like this one, we can all try to end 2020 on a slightly less terrible note.
Review of the Day: King and the Dragonflies by Kacen Callender
November 6, 2020 by
I’m late to the party in celebrating this book, but now that I’m here, let’s dance until dawn! This is one book that kids and adults alike will read and never ever forget.
Review of the Day: The Girl and the Ghost by Hanna Alkaf
October 6, 2020 by
A book that shows in the most eloquent way possible how family trauma lives on, from generation to generation, taking shape, forming us one way or another. The elements that make a great novel for children aren’t difficult to understand. Hanna Alkaf has laid them out for you.
Review of the Day: Hide and Seeker by Daka Hermon
August 13, 2020 by
If you have kids looking for outright, down and out, horror horror (the ones who’ve watched Stranger Things but balk at the heft of a Stephen King novel) this little book is an answer to your prayers. Prayers / nightmares.
Review of the Day: A Game of Fox and Squirrels by Jenn Reese
July 23, 2020 by
It’s a mystery. It’s a game. It’s filled with puzzles and riddles and clues. It’s funny, and it’s deadly serious. Parts are evocative and parts are heartfelt and parts are completely unforgettable. Having a rough day/week/month/year? Cuddle up to this. Challenging enough to intrigue you. Enticing enough to keep you.
Review of the Day: Show Me a Sign by Ann Clare LeZotte
July 1, 2020 by
May casual cruelties fall by the wayside in the presence of such books as this ione. May our children find it and love it and read it repeatedly. And may we see more such books from Ann Clare LeZotte and authors like her, that put work and care into the very folds of their stories.
Review of the Day: Wink by Rob Harrell
May 28, 2020 by
They say, write what you know. And if what you know is how to lie on a steel table, your head screwed into place, a laser pointed at your face, that might be a good place to start. We live in dark times. How dark are they? SO dark that a book about a kid with a potentially deadly eye cancer is the bit of lighthearted levity we all need and crave.
Review of the Day: Fighting Words by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley
May 7, 2020 by
Not every 12-year-old is going to be ready for the abuse and pain addressed in Bradley’s latest. But for those kids that want a book can be honest with them about the world, written at their age-level, with funny parts and a happy ending where things get better, this is that book. It ain’t easy but it’s there for you.
Review of the Day: Stand Up, Yumi Chung! by Jessica Kim
February 20, 2020 by
Hats off to Stand Up, Yumi Chung! Sure it’s a funny story couched in a meaningful one, but for what it’s saying and how it says it, I award it a great big rubber chicken. It may not be a work of grit and suffering, but it’s fun and that, to my mind, is worth all the hoity-toity awards in the world.
Review of the Day: Echo Mountain by Lauren Wolk
January 31, 2020 by
Hand this to the kid that yearns for that freedom. For wide-open spaces and mysterious figures hiding in the shadows and snot nosed brothers and lots and lots of puppies. Hand it to someone who needs their own mountain. Even if it’s just a literary one.
31 Days, 31 Lists: 2019 Middle Grade Novels
December 30, 2019 by
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?
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