The simple text reciting memories of farm life on the prairie is paired with detailed artwork that illuminates the setting. This book portrays an idyllic slice of white middle-America in what appears to be the 1930-40s, with cars but also horses pulling wagons. The illustrations are intricate collages layered with color and patterns. The artist uses a variety of materials and techniques including homemade stamps, acrylics, and layered tissue paper. The book is happy and calming.

As you may guess from the title, “Gloom Town” is a dark story. Rory’s single mom works hard to make ends meet. When they are yet-again short on rent money and threatened with eviction, 12-year-old Rory takes a job at the creepy Foxglove Manor. There he encounters hard work, isolation, and deprivation. Rory’s curiosity gets him into trouble and he barely escapes with his life. He teams up with his best friend Izzy attempting to solve the mysteries of the mansion, it’s inhabitants and it’s visitors. Violence, death, the supernatural, witchcraft and magic are central to the story. In the end a surprise character arrives, perhaps too conveniently, to fit together some of the missing pieces of the mystery.
The time period is unclear, but reflects the past with gas lights and sailing ships. I don’t believe Gloom Town’s location is on any map that exists today. The main characters are believable. Race is not specifically addressed, but Rory is described as dark skinned and his mother and friend Izzy are fair skinned. I can recommend the story, but feel the dark themes are not for younger readers. For example, a child’s heart discovered buried in a box in the garden was a bit much for me. I know, however, that there are students who would enjoy that level of horror.

A Place at the Table is told from two voices in clearly marked alternating chapters. Sara and her family are Muslim Pakistani immigrants. Her chapters are written by Saadia Faruki who is a Pakistani immigrant herself and her children’s experiences are reflected in Sara. Elizabeth’s Jewish-American father is married to her British mother. Her chapters are written by Laura Shovan whose personal story is similar. The story is told with intersections of faith, family, food, and friendship. Issues touched on in the book include: not fitting in; judging and being judged on appearance; death of a family member; a parent’s depression; and family financial struggles. These personal struggles take place in the framework of the first year of middle school for both girls and the first year of public school for Sara.
The authors’ personal experiences add depth to their characters. The story provides an appropriate amount of tension and conflict. The ending is satisfying. The book includes a recipe and the authors’ websites provide a few more, Saadia Faruqi also has posted an “Educator’s Guide.” I highly recommend this pleasure-to-read book.

Yanka is looking for the story of where she came from. Who were her true parents? Why did they leave her out in the wild forest? Yanka loves the woman, her Mamochka, who found her and raised her as her own, but still there are questions.

The story is set in and around a village on the edge of a frozen forest. Yanka enjoys when Anatoly – the woodsman ventures out of the forest, stops by Mamochka’s house, and tells her tales that are true and partly true. Mamochka puts no store in these fairy tales, but Yanka does. Yanka, ” ‘ I feel the pull of the forest, stronger than ever before. Somewhere, deep in the dark between the trees, hides the truth of my past.’ ” (11) The morning after the Winter Festival, Yanka wakes with the legs of a bear! “Something about me has changed, beyond just my legs. Something deep inside. The thought is both exciting and nerve-racking, because although understanding animals could be wonderful, and all this change might help me discover the story of my past, I don’t know what it means for my future.” ( 60-61)

Yanka sets her mind to discover the answers to all of her questions by going into the forest. There the real fairy tale begins. Her bear senses make Yanka extremely alert to her surroundings. Wolves talk to her and she understands them. Yanka reveals to a wolf she possess one of its claws from long ago. How can that be? But, it was a part of one of Anatoly’s tales. Soon, other parts of Anatoly’s tales are revealed as true.

Yanka finds the story of her family. Yanka, also, finds that family is all about who you care for and the people you love.

Sophie Anderson has sprinkled eleven of Anatoly’s short tales throughout the book. They include a curse, a castle, a father who turns into a bear, a Yaga (witch) with a house that walks on giant chicken legs, and a dragon. Fairy tales within a fairy tale.

Super thief turned “good guy” Carmen Sandiego is out to stop VILE make a fortune by stealing extremely rare or endangered species to a private collector. What makes this book extra fun for the reader is being given choices to make as to how the story turns out in the end. I tried over 28 scenario combinations as to whether or not I would be helping Carmen Sandiego save the animals or whether I would be helping VILE sell the animals to the private collector. Each scenario kept my attention and wanted me to keep trying other possilibities.

This book just proves there is more than one way to end a story.

Could you survive if you were washed overboard and marooned on a deserted island? This is not a new concept for a story, but it is a new modern version of survival for intermediate readers who enjoy graphic novels.

When a snobby entitled teenage girl (Valerie) gets washed off of a resort’s new yacht with a young teenage girl (Merissa) member of the yacht’s crew during an upcoming storm, the two must work together to survive. Merissa knows all of the survival skills and many of the dangers of the island they land upon. Merissa is more than willing to show Valerie the ropes. By the time they are rescued, the reader has gained important real life survival skills, and Valerie has learned an important lesson about respect for others, as well as survival skills.

This book includes: three true short tales of survival, an “Island Survival Guide”, “What Do You Think?”, “Island Survival Trivia”, nonfiction network resources through abdobooklinks.com and a QR code.

People of all ages taking care of their individual plots in a community garden. Planting, cultivating, watering, weeding, and playing in the garden over the long weeks before an edible enjoyment of the garden’s success.

Written in short phrases, the word garden makes 24 appearances. Two of my personal favorites are, ” Garden hardly makes a sound growing, slowly, underground” and “Garden growing like a child, rosy, leggy, fresh, and wild _”

Simone Shin’s illustrations are full of the pride and joy of gardening from the work of being hands-on in the soil.

Someday We Will Fly is the story of a Jewish family, as told through the eyes of 15 year old Lillia, as they escape Poland, without Lilla’s mother, and find refuge in Shanghai. Lillia, her young disabled sister, and her heart-broken father learn to fit in as best they can in a foreign culture. The father struggles to find work and the reader is moved to see a once-proud parent reduced to the beaten down hopelessness that settles over him.

Lillia works hard to learn English and to help her little sister whose disabilities and malnutrition weigh on Lillia. Desperate times make people act in ways they might otherwise never consider, as when Lillia takes a job (unbeknownst to her father) as a dancer in a gentlemen’s club.

The reader is impressed by how hard Lillia works to learn Chinese and to achieve in school. She makes friend with Wei, a Chinese boy in her school. Lillia has less supervision in Shanghai than she ever had in Warsaw, but this benefit is greatly overshadowed by the suffering of both the Jewish and the Chinese communities under Japanese occupation.

For a Young Adult novel, there is a pleasantly surprising lack of romance. The ending is a bit contrived and seemed unrealistically optimistic. But it was plausible.

Someday We Will Fly is unique from other WWII historical fictions, covering the little known history of Jewish refugees in Shanghai. The reader learns that 23,000 Jews escaped from Europe and found refuge in Shanghai during the Nazi Regime.

Author Rachel DeWoskin spent much of her life in China, including the past six summers in Shanghai where she researched and wrote this book. She teaches fiction at the University of Chicago, and is an affiliated faculty member in Jewish Studies and East Asian Studies. Her scholarly background is evident in the Author’s Note and the extensive Sources Consulted at the end of this novel.