Middle school aged horse loving girls will enjoy this story of a young girl as she begins working with her first horse. The story, also, contains the conflict between the wealthy girl from a broken family and the girl who is willing to work hard to get the horse she wants.

Annie has worked for 13 months at the Top Tier Stables, mucking stalls and caring for horses, to earn enough money to purchase her own horse. The day has finally come! Top Tier’s stable manager, Jack Manley, and Annie are at the horse sale in Colorado after the wild horse round-up by the United States government. Annie is now the proud owner of a 4 year old Buckskin Mustang. Back at Top Tier, Peggy- a young wealthy girl about Annie’s age, is riding her Olympic dressage champion Thoroughbred (Jinx) and talks down to Annie ordering her around. Annie is just happy to have her own horse which she has named Poco. “I brush the coat of a horse that has never before been brushed, Imagine that.” (23) Jack and Annie begin to slowly show Poco a saddle blanket and saddle so she does not get spooked. Jack makes it look so easy, but when Annie tries, everything goes wrong. They will need to start over again tomorrow rebuilding the trust between Poco and Annie. In the meantime, Jinx and Poco are stabled next to each other’s stalls. Jinx has never left any other horse in that stall alone before now. A few days later, Jinx goes missing. Peggy blames Poco for corrupting her horse by her wildness. As it turns out, the lock on Jinx’s stall was broken by someone. The girls won’t go home until Jinx is found. An unspoken truce is formed between the girls.  Annie is awakened by Poco’s neighing, in the middle of the night, when Jinx returns wounded and cornered by a wolf outside. Jack hits the wolf with a baseball bat getting it to leave.  Jinx needs 46 stitches, but the wound is not from the wolf. Badly needing sleep, Jack and Annie will watch the newly installed security camera footage tomorrow. The next day when Annie returns with her step-father to view the security tapes, they ‘smell smoke’. The barn is on fire! Annie runs into the barn freeing the horses closest to the fire first. Jack is having to come up with a new method for undoing the new lock on Jinx’s stall in a hurry. Jeff is taking the horses from Annie and putting them into outdoor paddocks. As the firefighters arrive and start putting water on the fire, there is no sign of Jack or Jinx. Then, the barn’s roof collapses! Were Jack and Jinx still inside? It turns out, Jack and Jinx made it out of the barn and into the paddock on the far side of Jack’s house. When Jack, Jeff, and Annie finally watch the surveillance tapes, they discover Peggy’s and her father’s body guard / chauffeur injured Jinx and let Jinx run off. As they watch even more of the tapes it shows the same man setting the barn on fire. With some detective work on Jeff’s part, the injured Jinx and later the fire was set to solve Peggy’s father’s ‘bad business decisions’ leading him towards bankruptcy. He was after the insurance money on the horse.  The book ends with a silver lining when an old friend of Jack’s comes to the burnt out Top Tier Stables with her large horse trailer offering to put up the twenty-five horses until the barn can be rebuilt.

There are two proof-reading errors. The first one is on the first page, line 3, the third word should be capitalized, since it is the first word of a sentence. The second error is grammatical on page 32, on the seventh line. The subject and predicate do not agree. It should read, ” She doesn’t resist when I…” not “She doesn’t resists when I…”

In Silent Alarm by Jennifer Banash, the author creates a visually explicit story filled with detailed character development in a traumatic high school event.  The various stages of grief are followed as Alyse Aronson’s young life as a violinist is interrupted when her brother shoots and kills fifteen students at their high school resulting in Alyse’s guilt and internal struggles. The story follows Alyse’s life as she first hand discovers that the school shooter is her brother and the aftermath which follows her family who has been left behind to face the harsh realities of the school trauma. Throughout the book, the author has taken enormous care to develop all of the books characters and events in such heightened detail. However, these character descriptions can be excessively over developed and the reader could become lost within the narrative.  The intensively creative detailed language allows the reader to experience the range of emotions of a young high school student could feel in this situation, including the betrayal from her friends, parents, and a boyfriend.  The emotions are incredibly fierce and raw throughout the narrative.  Readers will appreciate the painstaking and haunting details which force them into such a terrible incident that is becoming too common in our high school communities.  All readers will travel this path with Alyse as she fights an internal struggle between loving her brother and wanting him back with their family to the unknown person who killed her friends and almost turned the gun on her.  Recommended for its point of view on a school shooting.

The Battle of Britain is one book of a 10 book series titled the Essential Library of World War II produced by Abdo.  A very readable book suitable for middle and high school libraries, author Tom Striessguth begins in medias res describing attention grabbing details of midair duels between Britain and German sources for the 1st chapter.  Once hooked, readers are escorted into Chapter 2 with the chronological march of events up to the Battle of Britain, the time period in which Germany’s focus was on bombing Britain from the air.  Students will not only learn about strategies deployed by both sides and weaponry used, but they should be able to glean critical pieces of information from the full page primary source photographs of men, women and the technology of the time.  Additional side bars add further dimensions to the snapshot in history.  What stands out to this reader is how well the author’s focus on the tactical maneuvers made by each side are interwoven with the realities of what life was like for average civilians as well as pilots.  Personalized accounts such as the story of RAF pilot Douglas Bader who was shot down over France, had already lost both of his legs earlier in the war, and was treated to dinner by a German pilot before being sent off to a POW camp.  The only drawback is a lack of maps when specific places are discussed.  For example, most students don’t know the distance between England and France or how close London is/isn’t to the coast.  Still, this individual book is worth ordering if one doesn’t have this battle covered in their collection and this librarian will be looking at the other titles as well.  Recommended.

In the scheme of things, senior Higgs Bosun Bing’s last week at Sally Ride High School ought to be a dream, following his four years as a leader, a winner, a Harvard-bound super-achiever who had never before questioned his lucky life or his family-inspired goals. Instead, it becomes an out-of-control awakening as Higgs realizes, in painfully accelerating circumstances, how little the life he’s led so far has to do with who he really is, what his heart really desires, and what it may cost those around him.

It starts with a hypothetical question from his flighty but popular steady girlfriend. “If I needed a kidney, would you give me yours?” Unable to take the question seriously, he does not answer, and so finds himself vilified by her and her friends in ways that begin to unravel his future plans, his self-confidence and his image in the school. Lisa Yee has skillfully created a loveable central character whose journey towards self-awareness takes him into the company of a challenging Goth girl in an Airstream trailer, a person who is not what she seems. As the final seven days before graduation progress, we follow Higgs as he tries to discover who is making his life miserable in school and why this is happening to him.  And he finds true, clear-eye understanding that he wants to follow a far different career path than dentistry: Something like farming! The book explores themes of family, loss, friendship, peer-pressure, self-deceit, humor, love and self-discovery in a very readable way. Highly recommended.

Daniel looks nothing like his family. He feels quite distant from them, especially when he learns that his mom saved a newspaper clipping about a meteor that landed nearby on his birthday. He figures he must be an alien, and decides he must find a way to get back to his home planet, planet Keplar 22B. He and his two oddball friends formulate plan after crazy plan to get Daniel reunited with his alien community. However, when a plan backfires causing his mom and dad to be kidnapped, Daniel, his friends and his sister need to work as a team to take action to save what he realizes is the most important thing in his life: family. Crazy, silly humor is riddled through out this story.

I have seen Skylander toys at the checkout stands in stores, but I never knew the background story behind them until now. In my case, it might have been advantageous if I had read the four mini-bios on the last four pages of this book before reading the graphic novel itself. That way, I could have gotten a feel for the characters I was about to come across. More than likely, young readers won’t have this same problem, as the characters are licensed from Activision.

As the story begins, a new Skylander Academy is opening with its first class of students about to arrive. The celebration is waiting for Flynn to arrive with the students on a dreadyacht. The dreadyacht crash lands, but Flynn is not on board! The students report that Flynn went overboard. Now Tessa and Cali  go searching for him, while the new students go to their first Skylander Academy orientation. Tessa and Calli find a weeruptor (one of the students from the dreadyacht) stuck up in a tree as they search for Flynn, not realizing the weeruptor who exited the dreadyacht was an evil impostor who threw this one overboard so he could take his place at the academy. As the three of them fly after Flynn, Tessa and Calli give give the weeruptor a history lesson on the Portal Masters. Just as the lesson ends, they encounter Troll Bombers who have Flynn. The weeruptor helps Tessa and Calli get Flynn back from the Troll Bombers when who should show up, but -Wildfire to help in the fight. Slowly, the Kaos amnesia spell is wearing off Flynn and Flynn tells his story. Now, they must all go back to the Skylander Academy to track down evil Kaos who is disguised as the weeruptor before he can do any damage.

The title – Mini But Might- describes the weeruptor in this episode of THE KAOS TRAP.

I have never lived in blizzard country or country that gets significant  snowfall. After reading this 8″ X 9″ book in the “This or That? Weather” series the biggest difference between a winter storm and a blizzard is whether or not there is strong wind involved.  I honestly am not sure why the publisher wanted to separate these six titles into individual books, instead of compiling them into one book on weather comparisons.

“A winter storm forms during cold weather. This usually happens in the winter. But a winter storm can also form in late fall or early spring. A blizzard is a severe winter storm. It happens in the winter. It has high winds. Blowing snow makes it hard to see.” (4-5) If there is wind greater than 35 mph, it is a blizzard.

The rest of the book is filled with photos of snow on the ground and / or blowing in the air. There is a satellite photo of the United States’ east coastline with clouds forming a blizzard. Another satellite photo over the Great Lakes region, labels the air movement of a ‘lake-effect storm’. A nor’easter is mentioned as a kind of winter storm that gets its’ name from the strong wind, but is not a blizzard. There is a quick “At a Glance” comparison page covering five elements of the two types of storms. And right before the glossary page is a craft project to make using a glass jar, glitter, water, and a small plastic animal to be swirled around creating a blizzard inside the jar.

Stella and Barry explore the idea of taking care of a person in Mini Goss’s Too Hot For Spots.  Barry is still in his pj’s when Stella arrives to play.  Stella says she’ll make him all better and proceeds to tap, squish and make Barry say “ahhh”. This would be the perfect book to accompany a Fisher-Price doctor’s play set as such toys take up a two page spread and Stella plays with all of them while trying to get Barry “all fixed.”  But of course, Stella wants to play the patient too, and her idea of chicken pox leaves both friends covered in red sticker dots.  The bright, warm colors and textures of these knit characters is charming and unique.  The end notes contain a small paragraph explaining their creation.  K-1 students will definitely enjoy its kid humor of tickles and giggles.  Recommended.

The 1860’s in the United States was a time of huge change. The war between the North and South to determine the outcome of slave ownership resulted in a tremendous loss of life. This war dominated the news, however, there was another war going on, the one started by wealthy New Yorker Henry Bergh. This war involved humans and their animals. Bergh was horrified by all the abuse heaped upon helpless, innocent animals. His observations began right in the streets of Manhattan where horses were whipped mercilessly. Horses lived to maybe one year of age and their carcasses were tossed into the river. This opened Bergh’s mind to other instances of abuse: dog fights, rat fights, slaughter houses, circus acts, cock fights, fox hunting, pigeon shooting, dairy animals, and so on. His work created legislation that made anti-cruelty animal laws which carried jail time as well as monetary fines. Bergh’s work also led to animal licensing and the ASPCA being formed. Another interesting fact is that his work to prevent animal cruelty led to legislation for anti-cruelty laws for children and child labor laws. It was his life’s work to protect the innocent. Interestingly enough, Bergh and his wife had no children nor any pets of their own. I was amazed that this all transpired 150 years ago. The United States was a relatively new country and had no means of mass media. However, through the efforts of one single but determined man, millions of animals and children’s lives have been saved or made better. This is truly an inspiring story.

In this version of the classic fairy tale, Goldilocks is portrayed as a sweet, polite, and curious child, who loved to wander and explore. She comes upon an unlocked cottage and knocks, but the smell or porridge lures her inside. She calls out to see if anyone is home first, then she enters and sees the porridge already in bowls and wonders why breakfast would be set out and no one home to eat it. She doesn’t think anyone would mind if she ate it. Afterwards she decides to sit down and wait for the people and tries the chairs, finding the smallest one perfect for her. But it broke. Now she knows she must stay and say she’s sorry about the chair. She wanders upstairs and finds the beds and falls asleep in the smallest one. While asleep, the three bears, first time they’ve been mentioned, come home and discover the eaten porridge, broken chair, and Goldilocks asleep. She awakens, sees the bears, screams, and runs all the way home, never to go there again. Goldilocks is actually a nice little girl and so are the bears. Again, Little Hare has produced a quality version of a popular fairy tale making the characters likable and nothing scary about it.