Summerlost

Ally Condie's middle-grade debut is a distinct departure from her Matched trilogy and Atlantia--no dystopian world here, though Cedar Lee feels as though her life has cracked wide after the accidental death of her father and brother. On a visit to her mother's childhood home, her mom falls in love with a house and buys it for the summer. As the summer goes on, Cedar falls "in like" with a new friend and takes a job working for a Shakespeare festival (and giving unauthorized tours in the early mornings about one of the festival's most famous actresses).

The story is driven by the characters, particularly by Cedar, who is still coming to terms with her loss and her tangled relationship with her brother Ben, who died (Ben has autism, like one of Condie's sons, though this is never spelled out in the book). I thought it was a lovely meditation on family, friendship, and grief. I loved Cedar's relationship with her surviving brother and her new friendship, and the resolution of the story made me cry (in a good, cathartic kind of way).

Mostly, though, the story reads as a love letter to the town where Condie grew up (and the town where I now live), and for that alone I would have loved the book. The house Condie describes is a real house, some four houses down the street from me, and the university campus where the festival takes place is the same campus where I teach, where my husband teaches.

A sweet, tender, must-read middle grade. 

Circus Mirandus

After seeing a couple of friends raving about this new middle grade novel, I snatched it up at my library. I'm glad I did. Cassie Beasley's debut, Circus Mirandus, is a charming, magical story about a boy and his grandfather--and a magical circus.

Micah Tuttle has believed in magic his whole life, thanks to his grandfather Ephraim's stories about the Circus Mirandus. But now his grandfather is dying, Micah's life is being overrun by his horrible aunt Gertrudis, and a miracle from the Lightbearer (a Circus magician) may be the only thing that can save his grandfather. With the help of his friend Jenny Mendez and a few unexpected visitors, Micah sets off to find a miracle.

I thought the story was delightful--just the right amount of magic and heart. Now I'm trying to get my kids to read it.

The Sound of Life and Everything

I might be prejudiced toward this lovely middle grade book because I've met the author (and my sister is one of the lucky early readers mentioned in the acknowledgments)--but I don't that matters much. The story is a powerful, heart-warming exploration of prejudice, love, and family in post WWII California.

Ella Mae Higbee's crazy aunt has found a scientist who thinks he can resurrect her cousin Robbie, killed at Iwo Jima, from some blood on his dog tags. But when Ella Mae, her mother, and aunt show up at the laboratory, it's to find a young Japanese soldier waiting for them instead of Robbie. While their aunt repulses the boy, it's up to Ella Mae and her mother to take him in, and find their lives transformed in exchange.

Although the science in the book is a little far-fetched and the premise might lead you to expect a more science-fictiony adventure story, the story is a touching look at friendship, as the boy (Takuma) becomes Ella Mae's best friend, and Ella Mae struggles to understand how his presence can unleash so much turmoil and hatred in her small town, even in her family. But I loved how fiercely Ella Mae and her mother fought for him, and for doing the right thing. A terrific look at a historical era and a great jumping point for discussions about prejudice and friendship.

Sky Jumpers: The Forbidden Flats

Peggy Eddleman does a terrific job of making her middle-grade world come alive in her Sky Jumpers books. In The Forbidden Flats, Hope and her friends are again called on to do what they do best: save their families and friends from danger by taking calculated risks. In this sequel to Sky Jumpers, after a massive earthquake upsets the chemical balance in White Rock, the deadly band of gas known as "bomb's breath" begins to lower. Calculations reveal that the gas will be low enough to make White Rock uninhabitable in a little over three weeks, unless someone can fetch a specific chemical from the Rocky Mountains several hundred miles distant.

Of course, Hope and her friends join up, and much of their adventure involves dealing with the various towns and groups that have sprung up along the plains. As always, Hope is intrepid (sometimes too intrepid), and the story moves along quickly. Since Hope's character was established in the first book, we didn't learn as much about her in this sequel, but Hope learns more about her birth mother and the family she came from as they travel through the town where her birth-mother was born.

But mostly, I was impressed by the fun science in the book. I'm not a chemist (that's my husband), but Eddleman's ideas about how a massive "green bomb" might have changed the chemical characteristics of rocks was fascinating--and, of course, Hope and her friends still get to do cool gravity-defying feats involving the Bomb's breath.

I read this one quickly--now to pass it off to my kids!

Almost Super

My 9 year-old-son read Marion Jensen's Almost Super a few weeks ago--and reread it again the next day he liked it so much. So I figured I should probably see what the appeal was, and after reading, I have to say I get it.

Jensen's book has a lot of humor, heart, and action, and if not everything is plausible, well, it's a super hero story.

In the Bailey family, everyone over the age of twelve gets their super power on February 29th at 4:23 p.m. So Rafter and Benny are eagerly awaiting the powers that they'll use to fight their arch-enemies, the Johnsons. But when the pivotal time comes and goes, they discover that their powers are, respectively, the ability to light a match on polyester, and turning an innie belly button into an outie. (Incidentally, my kids and I had a hilarious dinner-time discussion trying to come up with our own useless super-hero abilities).

All this would be bad enough, but now they have to face Juanita Johnson at school. But when a chance conversation with Juanita reveals that the Johnsons think *they* are the super-heroes and the Baileys are the villains, and that an unknown enemy might be using their long-time enmity to conceal a real villainous plot, Rafter discovers that they have a chance to be . . . almost super.

This really is a fun book: the story rockets along and the characters are funny and likeable. (If some of the adults are a little dense, that just lets the kids shine more). A great book for younger readers.

Time of the Fireflies

 Kimberley Griffiths Little's Time of the Fireflies is a charming middle grade story that combines creepy (a weird voodoo doll) with a lovely family saga.

Twelve year old Larissa is struggling with life in the town where her family lived for generations, but where she is a relative newcomer. Sensitive about the scar on her face and worried about her mother's pregnancy (past ones haven't gone well), Larissa is just trying to get through the summer, spending her days helping her parents at the family antique shop. But then a strange girl calls on one of the antique phones in the store (one without a functional wire), and tells her to follow the fireflies.

When a swarm of fireflies surrounds her near the bayou, Larissa follows them across the broken bridge where she got her scar and finds herself miraculously transported into the past, to a time when her great-grandmother was a girl.

But there's a reason she's been drawn to the past, and a family secret that Larissa will have to uncover and heal to save herself, her mother, and her unborn baby sister.

Although I guessed the identity of the unknown caller pretty early on, other elements of the story surprised and charmed me. I particularly liked the glimpses of the past and the way they helped inform Larissa's growing understanding of herself and her place in the world.

Now I need to go check out the companion novels to this!

Sky Jumpers

(Whitney Finalist, middle grade)

Peggy Eddleman's Sky Jumpers is a terrific middle grade novel--it's easy to see why it's been getting all the buzz it has. It's got a great action sequence combined with heart, and should appeal to most young (and not-so-young) readers.

After the green bombs of World War III wipe out most of humanity (but don't destroy the planet because they're "green"), the survivors struggle to rebuild their communities. Some fifty years or so after the war, 12 year-old Hope lives in a unique community in White Rock, a rich farming community inside a bomb crater, protected from marauding bandits by a ring of deadly, super compressed air known as "Bomb's Breath." Because so much of the pre-war technology was lost, Hope's community values inventors and inventions above anything else. And Hope--who is smart, funny, and courageous--is a lousy inventor. What she likes to do, more than anything else, is jump through the "Bomb's Breath," where the denser air catches her and slows her fall.

But when bandits find a way into White Rock and demand the last of their critical medical supply, Hope realizes it's time for her to use her strengths. Since the bandits only count adults and youth 14 and up, Hope and her friends are able to sneak away. But it takes all of her considerable smarts and resourcefulness to find the help her town desperately needs.

Eddleman's writing is pretty straight-forward and unadorned, but that works perfectly for this novel, as it doesn't get in the way of the action. But what I liked best was that, in addition to the great concept, Hope has a rich character development, as she finds a way past her concerns about fitting in and making her parents proud. The central message--to find your strengths and use them--is one that all children need to hear.

Rump

Liesl Shurtliff, Rump (Whitney finalist, Middle Grade)

As one might suspect from the title, Rump is a retelling of Rumplestiltskin, from the point of view of the title character. In this version, Rump is a twelve-year-old boy who is perpetually a little cold and a little hungry as he and his grandmother scratch a living out of the mines in the mountain. But when Rump discovers an unexpected talent for spinning, his life beings to change, and not necessarily in a good way. Red, the closest thing he has to a friend, warns him that all magic has a cost--and the more powerful the magic, the bigger the cost. And she's right.

In his attempt to figure out his gift and to right some of the mistakes he's made (leading, among other things, to the miller's daughter being taken by the king to spin straw into gold) take him to parts of the kingdom he's never seen before, brings him in close contact with pixies and trolls, and teaches him about his own abilities, his name, and the kind of person he wants to be.

There was a lot to love here: I loved Shurtliff's effortless writing, and Rump's charmingly flawed character. I loved his off-beat sense of humor and his propensity for rhymes. I as also impressed with the way Shurtliff stayed true to the original retelling (down to the promise of the first-born child) and still make Rump likeable. And I liked Shurtliff's exploration of the power of names, something I've long been fascinated with. Overall, I think this is a delightful middle grade book--one most young readers would find fun, relatable, and funny to boot.

*I'm also predisposed to like this because the author is one of my sister's critique partners (it was fun to see her name in print, even if only in the acknowledgements!)