For readers who equate “corn maze” with dread, this is your book. This perfect Halloween season story is narrated by Claire, a teenager who is about to testify in her sister’s murder trial. She’s a horror movie fanatic, but a total scaredy-cat of anything that moves in real life. The plot twists in cryptic ways and I certainly couldn’t have predicted the conclusion. It’s a real nail-biter and readers will have a hard time putting it down …to go to sleep (!?).
I read this book in record time. The author has a highly emotional, gripping writing style that made it hard to put down. There’s lots of internal struggle that Isaac is processing, having never had a dad in his life. He has always felt like half of himself is missing. The quest for his father and his slow breakup with his boyfriend have him on the edge of a breakdown, but surprising events (no spoiler!) change that trajectory. This book will appeal to readers who enjoy realistic fiction and stories about mental health.
Does the intrigue into the lives of kings and religious temple life from distant tropical islands interest you? How about gifted women who possess spiritual powers, enabling them to gain knowledge and secrets of the unseen world make for an interesting read? Lizz Huertauses flowery, descriptive words to bring you into the hearts and minds of her characters as they interact with Indir, the Dreamer, the seer.
Royalty passes the throne of power from the father to the son and song with this succession, comes change. Immediately, the new king tells his audience of the old traditions that, “I am here to usher in a new age.” The tradition of Dreamers is now threatened. What does Alcan, the new king want? Power. He believes power means having control over others.
But Alcan is also an angry person. Indir escapes from Alcan’s threats. Not until three quarters into our story is Indir told the source of this anger, the secret brother of Alcan. Even kings are not spared from the consequences of unfaithfulness in a family. You’ll just need to read for yourselves how Indir’s lost Dreamer is found.
Attention all superhero fans! Award winner, writer of a New York Times Bestseller edits this story of heroes and superheroes in an anthology format with popular and diverse YA writers. If you want to fly, figuratively, this is the book to read. When is the last time you deliberately made mistakes or performed poorly to avoid the suspicion that would inevitably follow a perfect performance. It’s here in the book for you! Compelling graphics begin each new chapter. If you are looking for an exciting “can’t put it down” book, this one’s for you.
The author, Jessica Goodman, is a New York Times best selling writer – and like her other titles, this book does not disappoint.
Have you ever been sent to summer camp for 8 weeks? Our main character, Goldie, in this book has, but for the first time she returns to camp as a counselor. You will learn the secrets that haunt Camp Alpine Lake, previously a very safe place. She has had a very hard year and her reputation has followed her to camp. The real mystery and thrill ride begins when Goldie’s ex, who broker her heart, turns up dead in the lake. Put yourself in her shoes and try to get used to being hated by some, loved by others. An exciting read.
I’m sorry to say I didn’t like this one as much as I hoped to. The illustrations are fun and bright and silly, and fans of the other Henry Duck books will pick this one up and the young readers may be more willing to take it as it is, but I was hoping for something a bit more. On the very first page, when Henry’s friend Clara phones to ask him to help him with a chore that evening, but forgets to wish Henry happy birthday, any reader with much story experience is likely to already be predicting that the day will end with a surprise party at Clara’s house (spoiler alert, it does). Henry’s day proceeds as a series of pizza deliveries, as all his friends and family seems to have sent the same gift, until his table literally collapses under the weight of 14 pizzas (funny perhaps, but less than believable). Bummed that he didn’t get to enjoy any of his gifts, he trudges to his friend’s house where he is indeed surprised with a pizza party. The whole middle part of the story just seemed like filler, disconnected to the beginning and the end, except that he did get pizza after all.
David Shannon’s fabulous artwork illustrates this modern tale alluding to the folktale of King Midas. In Shannon’s version, young Maximilian Midas’s first word is gold, and his obsession leads him into unscrupulous ways in his efforts to acquire the shiny substance, from cheating on all his tests in school to accumulate gold stars to sabotaging the efforts of the lemonade stand competition. He spends all his earnings on gold until he has a mountain of it, topped with a castle with a gold fountain. When he takes to the idea of sprinkling gold dust on his breakfast cereal, he finds himself transformed into a gold statue, alone in his castle, forced to watched the joyful life going along outside his window without him. When he’s moved enough to shed the last tear he has within himself, it melts his statue self as well as his mountain, allowing him to return to his family and neighborhood a changed boy, ready to share his millions to make the world a better place because he’s learned that gold can’t make you feel as good as being nice. The rich humor of Shannon’s artwork and the silly rhyming text he uses to tell his story allows the message to be delivered without seeming overly pedantic.
It’s a good tool for introducing young artists to some of the most famous artists of the last 100 years. Using the device of touring a mouse museum (each of whom appear to have been the companions/apprentices of the famous human artists of the last century), it exposes young readers to some big art concepts, vocabulary, and biographies, without being intimidating or high-brow. Each two-page spread is dedicated to a different artist or movement, with the left side offering a bit of an explanation of their work, and the right side offering ideas for young artists to attempt their own exploration of that artistic style. In the back there a couple pages dedicated to offering more formal information about the human artists the mice emulate, as well as a glossary of vocabulary.
Following a classic alphabet book format, the rhyming text introduces 26 words and how they refer to cats, each accompanied by a related fun fact in standard prose. The illustrations will be what really draws the cat-lovers in: they absolutely adorable, sometimes silly, sometimes endearing, always the kind of cute that make you say, “Awwww…!” The simple text manages to pack in a lot of information, in small enough doses not to intimidate beginning readers.
It’s a redrawn, forty-fifth anniversary edition of Sandra Boynton’s first book, originally published in 1977. I don’t have the original drawings to compare, but this one certainly captures the classic Boynton style, with simple, colorful illustrations, full of personality. It’s a rhyming, counting book, first counting forward and then back, as one hippo calls two, and then further (ever growing) groups arrive for a party, then depart the next day. It invites the reader into math, wondering just how many hippos did party together, and the final line of the book provides the answer.
