Flinkwater is a city similar to Silicon Valley in which most of the people are employed by a computer company. Those people are super smart and nerdy, as are their children. However in an attempted takeover, people are reduced to a catatonic state by watching the screen saver for the local school’s mascot. The founder and CEO of the town’s tech industry was actually the culprit. Hautman does a terrific job with the main character, Ginger, a 13-year-old girl. The dialog and self speak is snappy and funny, and goes off on tangents pretty much just like a 13-year-old girl. Kids will enjoy the humor and fast pace of the story.

Welcome to the Hotel Ruby, a suspenseful story laden with foreshadowing and figurative symbolism that mystery fans will enjoy.  Audrey and Daniel Cassella have recently lost their mother.  Their father was never really into parenting them and made plans for them to live at their maternal grandmother’s for the summer after Audrey had a party at her house.  On the drive from Phoenix to Elko in northern Nevada, they stop into the Hotel Ruby, which is a splurge.  Visually stunning, Audrey’s room is separated from her brother and fathers– hers being on the 13th floor which is under renovations.  Immediately, each person in the family is swept up, and away from each other, by the hotel’s oddities.  But when Audrey begins visually seeing people with blood on them when they are perfectly fine, she knows there isn’t quite right. Drama and tension build to a point where Audrey even tries to leave the hotel, but “the door only leads into the Ruby.”  Each character is questionable in their motivations, leading the reader, like Audrey, unable to know who to trust.  And while one might think they know how the story will wrap up, they too should not trust the oddities of the Hotel Ruby.  This page turner from Suzanne Young is recommended for high school audiences.

Middle school boys see if you could keep up with Jack Sullivan if your world turned upside down with roaming monsters and zombies!

Jack has not had the easiest of lives being an orphan and shifting from one bad foster home to the next, but then the monsters and zombies take over. “But one thing I’ve learned about life after the Monster Apocalypse: nothing’s quick and nothing’s easy.” (p. 4) Now, Jack lives in a tree house which he has fortified.  On one of his trips to the CVS to get replacement parts for is walkie talkie, Jack runs into BLARG, a monster who will make several appearances for revenge on Jack. Jack spends his days calling out on the walkie talkie trying to make contact with his one friend Quint. [Foster kids don’t make or keep real friends easily.] Jack new life philosophy “Ever since the Robinsons peaced out– that’s forty-two days ago, now–I’ve been forced to survive alone in a world of monsters. That’s pretty much the plot of a video game, right?! So I said, y’know what, I’ll treat life like a video game.” (p. 23)

In video game fashion, Jack finds his best friend Quint. Jack helps move Quint and all of his science stuff in Quint’s mother’s suped up pickup truck, they call BIG MAMA, back to the tree house. They have a fine life eating Brown Sugar Cinnamon Pop-Tarts, drinking Mountain Dew, along with other junk foods. All the while, Jack is looking for June Del Toro, a girl from his former middle school, whom he wants to save as a damsel in distress. This is one of Jack’s Feats of Apocalyptic Success! video game style. While looking for gas to keep Big Mama running, Jack meets up with a humungous  pet monster (perhaps a dog- soon to be called Rover). On another trip out looking for June, Jack runs into the former middle school’s bully – Dirk. Dirk is not having any trouble fending off the monsters, but Jack talks him into coming and living with him in the tree house. BLARG makes an appearance, but between Dirk and Jack they are able to escape in Big Mama.

Quint makes a saddle for Jack to use to ride Rover. While riding Rover, the monster pet, Jack spies June’s sweat shirt stuck in the grating of a middle school window. Jack, Dirk, and Quint go to rescue June. As it turns out, June ends up rescuing them inside the abandoned middle school when BLARG makes yet another appearance. June does not want to be rescued. She’s trying to make contact with her parents. She saw them evacuating the city when the Monster Apocalypse began, but she was not able to reach them at that time.  Once again, Jack is able to talk another person into joining Quint and him back at the tree house fortress. Quint, Dirk, Jack, and now June deck themselves out in the school’s protective sports gear before going out to face the zombies and BLARG so they can return to the tree house. They are almost to Big Mama when Jack starts running away to lead BLARG away from the group. The rest of the group make it back to the ree house, but Jack is cornered by BLARG. Rover bounds in, in the nick of time. Back at the tree house,  Jack and friend use all of the fortress’s defenses to defend the tree house. Jack Slays BLARG. “I completed the ULTIMATE Feat of Apocalyptic Success! and now? Well, now, I think it’s time we all relaxed. At least for a little while…[until] the next giant monster comes around the corner….   THE END! (for now…)  (page 255)

Douglas Holgate’s graphic novel style illustrations are generously spread throughout the book making this a middle school boy favorite.

Over the course of a sophomore year, everything can change.  This is the experience of Lima.  Attending a private school where students call their instructors by first names, Lima’s life has always been simple.  She was the only child.  She had the best of best friends since grade in grade school in Hailey.  She didn’t get herself caught up in the drama around boys.  And she did well in her classes.  But the realities of high school life begin to creep into her world starting with Hailey’s 1st sexual encounter.  Hailey’s lack of desire to discuss it with Lima began the mixed messages she would receive, send and feel throughout the year.  Lima watches Hailey start to hang with a crowd who parties and pull even further away because of a new girl friend, Skyler.  Hailey toys with Lima’s emotions, coming back into her life over the course of the year whenever things get too out of control with her new scene.  Lima’s frustration bends to confusion when Hailey’s long time crush, Nate, shows interest in Lima instead.  But this is so much more than a battle for the boy book.  Lima meets an edgier group of students in seniors Meredith, Walker, Henry and Lily who will allow her to test out who she is and establish who she is not.  And slowly, the path to Nate will open with all of the physical and emotional connections going full boar.  Juliana Romano takes an honest look at a year in the life of Lima as she truly comes of age.  Lima even says “We had all played our parts in the things that happened over the course of the year.  No one person was to blame.  Maybe growing up was about being able to live with the fact that things weren’t ever totally black or white.”  Romano handles the most personal of choices with raw emotion and delicacy, just as it probably is for most teen girls who are deciding how to keep friendships alive and whether to have sex.  First There Was Forever is definitely for high school libraries, but can be a justifiable addition to a collection as Lima stays true to herself throughout the book.

I have always enjoyed counting books with pictures little children can physically touch and count along with the story.This book fits that bill.

Little chicky is showing off her counting skills for Nana by counting from one to five. But when Nana tries, she starts off fine, then she puts in numbers higher than five. After reading Marika’s dedication, it must be that Nana is just having fun with little chicky. Little chicky takes it all in stride and shows Nana how to count again and again. Then little chicky brings in items to count for a happy wordless conclusion to the book,  counting all the way to ten.

1 snail, 2 butterflies, 3 mushrooms, 4 flowers, 5 bumble bees, 6 frogs, 7 leaves, 8 lady bugs, 9 ants, and 10 clouds

This is a reissue of a book originally printed in 1953. There is a reason why this book hasn’t been reprinted in over the last 50 years. It’s old! The illustrations are simple, the colors are dull and muddy. There is no challenge for kiddos to name various things beginning with the assigned letter; there’s just one image. I believe that today’s technology in book making and in general have made kids too sophisticated to make one of these ‘vintage’ books one of their favorites.

This is the traditional Sleeping Beauty fairy tale, but Sarah Gibb has added her own distinct style. Her artwork is beautiful and the twisting vines and flowers seem to take you from one page to the next. She uses black silhouettes on many pages, just as she did in Rapunzel. There is no lingering fright in this story; the evil fairy is quickly mentioned and then quickly a quick-thinking fairy helps to soothe things. This is a lovely version of the scary Disney fairy tale and won’t cause any nightmares.

This is a story about a divided family, a family affected by divorce, told from the point of view of the child, Cardell.  Cardell had a perfectly good mama and a perfectly good daddy, but they lived on different sides of the desert, and Cardell spent time with both of them.  Cardell was a coyote.  Daddy had remarried and Cardell’s stepmother and stepbrother were fine.  But now a new neighbor, Otis, was coming around and trying to court his mother, and he wasn’t sure that was okay with him.  His mother had chased off other suitors but Otis was different.  After a time, Cardell got to know Otis and found him to be a good guy and good for his mother.  This story takes a difficult situation and makes it easier for kids to understand.  A great read aloud for younger and middle grades.

Gordon Korman is a popular author among third through seventh graders.  It almost feels like you are eavesdropping on conversations while reading his books, the dialog is so natural.  Unleashed is book 7 in the Swindle Mystery series.  Korman’s popularity is oftentimes based on having so many series with multiple books in them; kids enjoy getting to know the characters and then want to read another story that is based more on the plot.  In this episode, as in all other episodes, there are a number of side stories intertwined.  The kids’ school is having an ‘Inventa-palooza’ — an invention contest.  Griffin gets sucked into entering by his arch nemesis, Darren, namely because Griffin’s dad is a professional inventor.  But Darren’s ploy is just to make a fool out of Griffin; he already has what he thinks is the winning invention made with the help of his father’s company.  Griffin is stumped; his dad’s creativity just didn’t passed along with the genes.  He hopes to rope in his brainiac friend Melissa, but she has already entered the contest herself.  Her invention is a system to keep Luthor, a Doberman dog, from chasing a truck down the street.  The first time it’s used, it works brilliantly, but then it gets stolen.  They can’t figure out why or by whom.  Griffin’s invention involves a household appliance, and although it seems to work, it causes power outages whenever its turned on.  The humor is pervasive throughout the whole story, especially during the blackouts and Darren’s hysteria.  Those familiar with Korman’s other books will enjoy this one as well.

This is the newest in the beloved Encyclodedia Brown detective series (# 13) . In The Case of the Midnight Visitor, Encyclopedia solved ten baffling mysteries, including the case of a kidnapped millionaire, a dangerous dog and it’s mean owner, a well known big-town crook, and more.

As is usual in this series, at the end of the book are the solutions to each case.