AR Test – Page 36 – Sneak Peek Books

Disney After Dark

Have you ever wondered what happens after Walt Disney World is closed at night, when no one is around, and the characters are all alone? When middle schooler Finn Whitman becomes a Disney Interactive Host, a hologram meant to guide guests through the parks, he finds that the answer is a lot more magical and frightening than he ever thought possible. Every night, Finn and his four fellow hosts “crossover” and become a human-hologram hybrid able to explore the parks. Wayne, the Imagineer responsible for creating the DHI program, reveals the hologram hosts were created to become the parks first line of defense against an army of evil characters called the Overtakers. The evil characters want to use the magic that powers the parks to bring darkness to the world. The five hosts must solve Walt Disney’s Stonecutter’s Quill fable, defeat the Overtakers, and restore peace to the “Most Magical place on Earth.”

The hosts are all middle schoolers with starkly different personalities. At first, each character feels alone and afraid, and they do not want to go on the mission. None of the hosts believe they are equipped to take on Maleficent’s black magic, but in the end their teamwork makes saving the park possible. As the book progresses, they each learn to make sacrifices for each other, utilize their individual strengths, and work together to become a powerful team. The book develops the theme that teamwork is necessary to overcome challenges.

The story emphasizes the value of working as a team and maintaining the power of one’s beliefs. Wayne believes the ability for the characters to come to life is powered by the parkgoers who believe the magic in the parks to be real. Finn later discovers that his own thoughts are powerful enough to transform himself from a physical being into light. Pearson shows that the characters’ thoughts and beliefs can alter reality, making that power a significant theme in the book.

In the earlier stages of the text, the characters are hindered by their simple personalities (pretty, smart, athletic, quiet, leader). However, as they learn to work together, they become more likable. The plot of the story, and the setting, create the true magic of this book. Pearson ensures that every corner of the Magic Kingdom is featured, and he fully explains the details that are necessary to feel as if you are traveling around with the characters. He also incorporates some fascinating park history and operational fun facts which offer insight into the parks.

Disney After Dark includes some facts about the park’s operations and may poke holes in the illusion of magic that the parks create. Fans of the Disney Parks may enjoy reading about the hosts’ quest to solve Walt’s fable throughout the Magic Kingdom and MGM Studios. Pearson does not visit every park in this first book, leaving other areas to explore in later additions to the series. He also makes it clear that while Maleficent is certainly a powerful foe, she is not the only villain the five hosts will have to face. This builds anticipation for the following books, while still creating a satisfying end to this story. Much of the book focuses on the children avoiding harm from the hand of the Overtakers, but the violence is fairly mild, with many of the interactions between the villains and the kids resulting in minimal injuries. The effect on the hosts is fear more than anything else. Pearson creates a well-paced story that is just thrilling enough to draw readers into the adventure, using mystery, action, and creative storytelling to bring Disney magic through the pages of this first installment in the Kingdom Keepers series.

Sexual Content

Finn develops a crush on his friend Amanda. The first time he sees her, she is stretching in gym class. “Finn wasn’t big on girls, but something about Amanda grabbed and held his attention.” At the same time, his friend Dillard does not think Finn can go talk to her, because “Dillard thought of girls as a separate life-form.”
Amanda smiles at Finn’s jokes. Finn thinks she probably did not want to show that she thought he was funny, because “it wasn’t cool for a girl to show she liked a boy any more than the opposite.”
Amanda tells Finn that Willa, another host, “said [he was] cute.”
When Amanda visits Finn at his house, Finn’s mom tells him to leave the door to his bedroom open.
Willa becomes afraid of the witch Maleficent and holds Finn’s hand. Finn is “glad they were all invisible” because “he wouldn’t have wanted to explain their holding hands” to the other hosts.
Finn describes Jezebel as beautiful. “Her deep-set gray eyes captivated him, even from a distance.” She frequently charms the boys into doing what she wants. Her ultimate goal is to distract them from completing their tasks.
At the Girl Scout car wash, Finn observes Jezebel joining in a water fight while in a bathing suit. She looks at him. His friend notices and asks, “You think she likes you?” Later, when Maybeck, another host, and Jezebel have a water fight, Finn thinks, “for some reason [he] wanted to be at the center of that battle.”
When Maybeck expresses wanting to hurry up with a mission, Charlene jokingly asks if he has “a hot date.” Maybeck responds, “Not with you I don’t.” Later, it is discovered that he did have a plan to meet up with Jezebel.
Jezebel arrives at the Halloween party dressed in “a skintight black-and-white leotard with black-and-white tights” and “bright red lipstick.” Finn thought, “She looked like a college girl . . . she drew looks from a good number of boys as she passed.” When she approaches Finn, she “stepped up to Finn, standing a little too close” and “spoke softly, privately.” When she makes eye contact and smiles at Finn, his friend coughs and interrupts the encounter. Finn suggests Jezebel may have already put a spell on him after all.
Maleficent, Charlene, and Amanda try to draw Finn into a trap. Maleficent says, “If you didn’t care so much about your two girlfriends up there, you wouldn’t have followed us down here.”

Violence

A rumor spreads that Finn is going “psycho.” Finn says, “I’m not stabbing girls in showers or anything.”
In the Haunted Mansion, a man is depicted “dangled from a noose attached to the ceiling.”
Wayne the Imagineer talks about an event that went wrong. The dragon that is meant to be slain by Mickey Mouse rebelled and set Mickey on fire. Wayne says, “Mickey could have . . .” Mickey could have died, but he was able to survive by jumping into water.
Finn is approached by some of the animatronic pirates from the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. He offends them and they draw swords and knives, though they do not use them. Instead, they use the laser guns from a different ride’s vehicle, which are supposed to be harmless beams of light, to attack Finn. The magic has made the lasers real, and Finn is burned. Finn “smelled burning hair” and skin, realizing what had happened. Later, the burn turns into a painful “pea-size red-and-brown scab with” a “dime-size scarlet circle of flesh that surrounded it.”
Maleficent’s presence makes the air incredibly cold. When Finn first feels this effect, he fears the “cold might kill him.” Later, Jezebel uses her magic, making the same cold effect. Finn was touching the surface of the door when ice starts to form. He gets stuck to the door and eventually “tore some skin off the palms of both hands as he pulled away from the icy bar” of the door.
While looking for clues in the ride It’s a Small World, the animatronic dolls come to life and attack the hosts. “One bit down onto Finn’s arm, locking its jaw. It drew blood.” Maybeck is able to pick up a doll and throw it against the wall so that “it struck the wall and smashed into pieces.” As the dolls continue to attack, Maybeck suggests using an “automatic weapon” to fight them off, while Charlene prefers a “baseball bat.” Maybeck continues, asking if they could use a “stick of dynamite.” In the end, they tame the dolls with a smile.
While floating along Splash Mountain, Finn and fellow-host Philby, face the final drop which Finn is unsure whether to call a “thrill or kill” drop. The current pulls Philby down the drop and he “tumbled through space and water, holding his breath and sucking for air. His lungs burned.” Finn rescues Philby.
Maleficent turns herself into a bird and dives after Finn with “talons like dinner forks.” When Finn tries to hide in the water, she turns herself into an eel and “dragged him under. . . It climbed up Finn’s body…and squeezed…He felt the wind being choked out of him.” Before he suffocates, Philby uses his boat’s propeller to “cut the eel like a meat grinder.” Maleficent then let’s go and escapes.
A biker chases Amanda and Finn through a skatepark. To stop his pursuit, they clothesline him. He is “thrown to the concrete.”
After the Overtakers kidnap Maybeck, Finn recognizes the Overtakers are willing to kill the hosts. He also believes they have been causing the brownouts that make the kids have fainting spells and feel sick.
The Overtakers attack and drain an electrical company power station of all its power.
Charlene and Willa looked for clues in the Winnie the Pooh ride. They realize their car has stopped and they are trapped in one room. Rain started to fall from the ceiling. “But then it wasn’t simply rain, it was a torrent. Buckets. Both girls gasped for breath . . . it was hard to breathe without coughing.” The danger grows as an increasing number of “electrical wires were submerged.” Willa fears they “could be electrocuted.” The car the girls are on is “pinned with the girls inside it.” They manage to dislodge the bar that is blocking the door.
While searching the Big Thunder Mountain rollercoaster, a T-Rex skeleton comes to life and chases Finn and Philby. “The dinosaur had all its bones, with no eyes, no skin, no flesh—but all its teeth.” Finn notices “the dinosaur’s jaws clapping open and shut, sounding like a door being slammed.” While the dinosaur gets a piece of Finn’s shirt, the boys remain unharmed. They stop the T-Rex by waiting until the “skeleton’s teeth were a foot away” and then moving so he crashes into the wall. The skeleton’s bones “splintered and snapped at the knee” and the T-Rex landed “with a noisy explosion of broken bones that scattered like tree branches.”
Finn and Amanda accidentally run into one another and “they went down hard.” Finn “came to his knees, dazed.”
A spell affects Amanda and Charlene, causing them to go weak and faint. Finn thought, “She felt cold, really cold, and stiff, as if she were suffering some kind of seizure.”
Maleficent forms a magical version of what she likens to “shock collars” and “wireless fences.” She puts one on Finn and says, “I don’t advise testing it, but be my guest, if you must.” Later, Finn tries to escape and “he was knocked back off his feet and onto the floor.” The electricity caused him to “[feel] as if he’d been stabbed in the chest.”
Maleficent uses magic on Finn, Maybeck, and Philby. On Philby, she uses a spell that makes him “[seem] to lose every bone in his body . . . he fell to the floor in a heap of unwilling limbs and muscle, a lump of flesh.” With Maybeck, Maleficent makes him unable to speak and then suggests she can “add some pain” but does not. For Finn, Maleficent conjures balls of fire which she bowls at him. She “singed his cape” but she fails in hurting Finn. He escapes by using a magic pen on her. When the pen touched Maleficent’s skin, “she [flies] back and [falls] to the stone floor.” He “[stabs] at Maleficent” again, weakening her enough to escape.
After Finn uses the magic pen on Maleficent, he describes that “she was either half dead or ready to kill.”
Philby uses the pen on Maleficent. He and Finn watch as she is “thrown violently . . . into the heavy black shelves.” She ends up “pinned to the computer shelves, impaled onto a stack of electrical outlets and surge suppressors” but she is alive and gains power from the incident.
In order to get stolen papers from Jezebel, Finn “dove at [her], knocked her down, and took the plans back.” She in turn casts a spell on him which causes him to feel “a sharp pain flood through him.”
While escaping through a trash shoot, Finn “slammed into some kind of mesh gate.” When Maleficent reaches for him, he “kicked out and pushed her back.” She casts a spell meant to turn him into a rat, but she misses and hits a piece of trash. Finn then “grabbed hold of the clawing rat and threw it at her.”
Maleficent is captured and Wayne promises “We don’t kill anything here. Not even witches.” They plan to lock her in a prison instead.

Drugs and Alcohol

From afar, Finn sees Tom Sawyer “smoking a pipe with a long stem.”
Rather than telling his mom what actually happened with the laser-burn, Finn tells her that a bully burned him with a cigarette. He knows he can’t tell her it was his own cigarette because “Finn had once walked across a restaurant and boldly asked a smoker to put out his cigarette so that his own hamburger didn’t have to taste like an ashtray.” His mom smells his breath just to confirm his story.

Language

Finn thinks his teacher’s British accent makes him sound “like a pompous snob.”
When Finn says something a bit too confidently, his mom calls him “Mr. Hotshot.”
Finn thinks Willa, another host, seems “a little geeky.”
When Finn tells his friend, Dillard, about his experiences as a hologram, Dillard says, “You’re going psycho on me.”
Amanda tells Finn to “get a life.”
Finn notices a variety of tourists including “fat people, sweaty people, smelly people, bald people . . .”
Stupid is used several times. For example, a girl student corrects her friend, saying, “It’s not Zoom, stupid.”
Philby, a host, tries to distract some pirates saying, “Hey, dog breath!”
Philby asks his fellow host Maybeck if he is “a computer freak.”
Dumb is used a few times. For example, Amanda makes a reference to “some dumb thing [her] mother” had said. Later Maybeck says, “I can’t go through a dumb wall.” When he realizes he can, he exclaims, “What a dumb jerk!”
The pirates use “a roar of rough-sounding words.”
Dillard, Finn’s best friend, is described as “big.” He explains that for this reason, “people make fun of him.”
Wayne calls himself an “old goat,” a phrase that Finn later uses to describe Wayne.

Supernatural

The book is centered around the existence of magic, both good and evil. Inanimate objects and fake characters come to life. People can become holograms. Frequently, witches use spells to fight against the hosts.
The Overtakers harness the power of a hurricane, draining its strength. Wayne says it is like “a vampire sucking blood.”
Finn thinks the environment in the Splash Mountain ride looks “devilish” in the dark.
Finn finds himself rhyming in his thoughts without meaning to, which Amanda explains is a sign of witches.
Maybeck tells the group that the Overtakers have the ability to “put thoughts into your head. . . They’re like orders.”
Finn doesn’t speak his fears aloud for fear of jinxing the group and causing something worse to happen.

Spiritual Content

Maybeck, another host, “made a point of telling Finn that he was a Baptist.” Maybeck has a Bible on the bedside table.
Finn “wasn’t terribly religious.”
Finn says he cannot tell his mom the truth because “she’d cart him off to the mental ward, or worse, their minister.”

by Jennaly Nolan

Annie John

Annie John is a young, genius schoolgirl who wants to grow up to be just like her mother. Annie finds her mother beautiful – physically and internally – and her greatest wish is to stay forever with her, in their matching dresses, repeating their familiar daily routine of preparing dinner and washing clothes. They even share the same name: Annie. However, as young Annie starts to come of age, she is hit with the realization that she and her mother are not so similar after all. When Annie points out a fabric to make a pair of dresses for them both, her mother replies, “You are getting too old for that . . . You just cannot go around the rest of your life looking like a little me.”

Annie’s world crumbles. As she advances to a new school, the differences between Annie and her mother become more apparent. Annie likes girls – especially those who don’t have to bathe and comb their hair every day like Annie is forced to. She likes to play marbles – even though her mother forbids it, since it isn’t ladylike. And Annie steals. To have what she wants, Annie is forced to steal things like trinkets, money, and marbles. She begins to resent her mother’s strict ways and desires her own, free existence.

When Annie falls ill for a long time, she is nursed back to health by her mother. After which, she leaves her family in Antigua behind to go to England to become a nurse, since she “would have chosen going off to live in a cavern and keeping house for seven unruly men rather than go on with [her] life as it stood.”

While Annie’s young teenage rebelliousness sounds familiar to many, she struggles deeply with the divide between the life she wants and the life her mother wants for her. Annie says, “In the year I turned fifteen, I felt more unhappy than I had ever imagined anyone could be. My unhappiness was something deep inside me, and when I closed my eyes, I could even see it . . . It took the shape of a small black ball, all wrapped up in cobwebs. I would look at it and look at it until I had burned the cobwebs away, and then I would see the ball was no bigger than a thimble, even though it weighed worlds.”

Annie John is not a difficult story to read in terms of language or length, but as a story it is tough to swallow since it is about growing up, which comes with the heavy realization that you must become your own being. Mostly, the story focuses on events from Annie’s life that are narrated rather than her depression and related illness. These topics are not discussed in detail, rather left open for the reader to think about.

Annie John is not told chronologically, which can be confusing at times. This story is historical fiction and showcases some of the culture of Antigua, an island in the Caribbean, whose native population has been impacted by colonization. This is most apparent in the strict gender norms emphasized by Annie’s mother and the teachings in Annie’s school. This story is wonderfully crafted. While these issues seem like major ones, they are carefully blended into Annie’s life so subtly that the reader can fully understand what it’s like to live as Annie John. The events of the story are personal to Annie’s life, however, the sadness that comes with growing older is universal. Because of that, this story is timeless and a must-read for those who seek to understand a genuine, flawed character, as she escapes from her restrictive past and sails to a new future.

Sexual Content

The schoolgirls wonder when their breasts will grow larger. Annie tells the reader, “On our minds every day were our breasts and their refusal to budge out of our chests. On hearing somewhere that if a boy rubbed your breasts they would quickly swell up, I passed along this news. Since in the world we occupied and hoped to forever occupy boys were banished, we had to make do with ourselves.”
Later, Annie thinks about spending time with her friend, Gwen, who she is in love with: “Oh, how it would have pleased us to press and rub our knees together as we sat in our pew . . . and how it would have pleased us even more to walk home together, alone in the early dusk. . . stopping where there was a full moon, to lie down in a pasture and expose our bosoms in the moonlight. We had heard that full moonlight would make our breasts grow to a size we would like.”
The Red Girl, one of Annie’s crushes, pinches her, then kisses her. “She pinched hard, picking up pieces of my flesh and twisting it around. At first, I vowed not to cry, but it went on for so long that tears I could not control streamed down my face. I cried so much that my chest began to heave, and then, as if my heaving chest caused her to have some pity on me, she stopped pinching and began to kiss me on the same spots where shortly before I had felt the pain of her pinch. Oh, the sensation was delicious – the combination of pinches and kisses. And so wonderful we found it that, almost every time we met, pinches by her, followed by tears from me, followed by kisses from her, were the order of the day.”

Violence

Annie torments a girl she likes. “I loved very much – and used to torment until she cried – a girl named Sonia . . . I would pull at the hair on her arms and legs – gently at first, and then awfully hard, holding it up taut with the tips of my fingers until she cried out.”
Annie recounts an incident with one of her friends. “In a game we were making up on the spot, I took off all my clothes and he led me to a spot under a tree, where I was to sit until he told me what to do next. It was long before I realized that the spot he had picked out was a red ants’ nest. Soon the angry ants were all over me, stinging me in my private parts, and as I cried and scratched, trying to get the ants off me, he fell down on the ground laughing, his feet kicking the air with happiness.”

Drugs and Alcohol

None

Language

After Annie’s mother sees her talking to boys, she calls Annie a slut. Annie narrates the event like this: “My mother said it had pained her to see me behave in the manner of a slut in the street and that just to see me had caused her to feel shame. The word ‘slut’ was repeated over and over until suddenly I felt as if I were drowning in a well but instead of the well being filled with water it was filled with the word ‘slut,’ and it was pouring in through my eyes, my ears, my nostrils, my mouth. As if to save myself, I turned to her and said, ‘Well like father like son, like mother like daughter.’”

Supernatural

None

Spiritual Content

The kids sometimes go to choir and church on Sunday, and carry bibles, but this is rarely described, only referenced. For example, Annie’s mother “checked my bag to make sure that I had my passport, the money she had given me, and a sheet of paper placed between some pages in my Bible on which were written the names of the relatives with whom I would live in England.” Annie does not discuss God or her beliefs.
When Annie is sick, an obeah woman from her family tries to help her by giving her herbs and using other remedies, although Annie is too sick to note them.
The obeah women of Annie’s town believe that Annie falls ill because of a “scorned woman” from her father’s past. There is no further elaboration on this topic.

by Madison Shooter

The Curse of King Tut’s Mummy

The desert hides many secrets. Day after day, Howard Carter and his crew search the sand for signs of Egypt’s ancient kings. Many tombs were looted long ago, but he was sure that one was still out there—the tomb of King Tut! But were the old stories true? Did King Tut’s mummy and the royal treasure come with a deadly curse?

Follow Howard Carter’s story, beginning when he was just a sickly child who fell in love with ancient Egypt. Through Carter’s experiences, readers will begin to see how education, perseverance, and endurance helped Carter find King Tut’s tomb. Even though Carter was thrilled to find King Tut’s treasures, he knew the importance of recording every artifact’s location and preserving the find for future generations. The end of the book contains Tut’s Mummy Timeline, photographs, and additional interesting facts.

The Curse of King Tut’s Mummy uses short chapters and easy vocabulary, which makes the book accessible to young readers. Large black and white illustrations appear every 3 to 7 pages and bring many of the ancient artifacts to life. While the book is easy enough for young fluent readers, the content will be interesting to older readers as well.

The Curse of King Tut’s Mummy explores ancient Egypt’s culture and beliefs in a way that makes archeology fun. The book is full of interesting facts. Detailed illustrations show the inside of many of the tombs. Anyone who is interested in Egypt’s ancient kings will enjoy The Curse of King Tut’s Mummy. Zoehfeld discusses some of the curses written on the tombs and some of the Egyptian superstitions, but she makes it clear that curses are not real. Younger readers who want to learn more about King Tut can jump back into time by reading Escape from Egypt by Wendy Mass.

Sexual Content

None

Violence

Carter was an archeologist who had to fight off rude tourists who came to visit a tomb. Carter “asked the rowdy visitors to leave. They demanded to be let into the tomb. The guards tried to block their way. The tourists threw chairs. They swung their walking sticks at the guards.” Two tourists were injured. The tourists also “damaged the walls and broke chairs.”
The reason King Tut died is still unknown, but “the bone just above his left knee was broken.” Some speculate that “the young king had a bad accident during a battle or a hunting trip. The accident that broke his leg might have also crushed his chest.”

Drugs and Alcohol

During ancient times, there was a funeral for the dead king where the guests’ “cups had been filled with beer and wine.”

Language

None

Supernatural

When an ancient Egyptian official and his wife were buried, their tomb had a warning: “All people who enter this tomb. Who will make evil against this tomb. And destroy it: May the crocodile be against them on water, and snakes against them on land. May the hippopotamus be against them on water. The scorpion against them on land.” Many believed that anyone who destroyed the tomb would be cursed.
When Carter went to Egypt, he took his pet canary. Carter’s Egyptian housekeeper and his three foremen thought, “the bird of gold will bring us good luck!”
Later that summer, a cobra got into the canary’s cage. “The deadly snake was gulping the poor bird down, headfirst. . . Carter’s housekeeper and foremen were horrified. They thought it was a sign of terrible things to come.”
When there was a blackout, “many believed this blackout was a bad omen.”
King Tut’s tomb had a warning: “For those who enter the sacred tomb, the wings of death will visit them quickly.” There were many stories of curses, but they “were all made up.”

Spiritual Content

Ancient Egypt’s gods and goddesses are occasionally discussed because there were many statues of them. For example, “the Egyptian goddess of good health was always shown as a woman with a lion’s head.”
In the 14th century B.C., “Akhenaten felt that Egyptian priests were getting too powerful. So he banned all the gods the Egyptian people were used to worshiping. He created a new religion with only one god.”

Dogs in the Dead of Night

Beware of avalanches! To save one of their best friends, Jack and Annie must travel back in time to the Swiss Alps and find a rare flower. But how can they look for the flower under ice and snow? When they stumble upon a monastery where monks and Saint Bernards live, Annie offers to train a troublesome young dog named Barry. Then Barry runs away, and Jack and Annie have a new task—find Barry! Will Barry lead them to the mysterious flower, or into one of the most thrilling adventures of their lives?

Jack and Annie’s newest adventure takes them to a frozen land. Much of the suspense comes from Jack’s belief that they will never find the flower they are looking for. While Jack worries, Annie promises to train the Saint Bernard, Barry. Unbeknownst to them, Barry will help them accomplish their mission.

Barry’s playful behavior adds a little humor to the story, but mostly he gives readers a picture of the important role Saint Bernards had during the nineteenth century. Jack, Annie, and Barry end up saving Napoleon’s life; however, most readers will not understand the significance because the story doesn’t have historical information on Napoleon. Despite this, readers will enjoy the story’s adventure and love getting a peek at how it feels to be a dog. Readers who want more information on how dogs help humans should read The Magic Tree House Fact Tracker: Dog Heroes.

Black and white illustrations break up the text and show Jack and Annie’s adventures. Illustrations appear every 3 to 7 pages. In addition, the book ends with a recipe to make puppy chow. Dogs in the Dead of Night is part of a series; however, the book begins with a summary of the events in previous books. While this allows the reader to understand the plot, for maximum enjoyment the books should be read in order.

The Magic Tree House Series will entertain readers because each book is full of mystery and adventure as Jack and Annie jump through time. Dogs in the Dead of Night has short chapters, black and white illustrations, and an exciting plot that readers of all ages will enjoy. For more information about the dogs in the book, read Magic Tree House Fact Tracker Dog Heroes. Readers who want more time jumping adventures should also read the Time Jumpers Series by Wendy Mass.

Sexual Content

None

Violence

Jack and Annie are caught up in an avalanche. A chunk of snow “knocked Jack off his feet and sent him tumbling headfirst down the slope. Jack kept falling downhill until a wall of frozen snow stopped him.” Jack is stuck in the snow. “The soft snow around his body had turned hard and solid. Jack felt as if he were trapped in cold concrete, buried up to his neck.” A Saint Bernard saves him.
Barry saves a man who was buried by an avalanche. Barry “had uncovered a face. . . with bloody scratches and blueish lips.” Barry begins licking the man while Jack and Annie, who were changed into Saint Bernards, begin to dig the man out of the snow.

Drugs and Alcohol

None

Language

Darn is used once.
After Jack and Annie return to their human forms, Jack imagines Barry’s words, “How the heck did you change from dogs back into people?”

Supernatural

The magic tree house transports the kids into the past. Jack “pointed at the picture of the Great Saint Bernard Pass in their Alps book. ‘I wish to go there!’ he said.” The tree spins and when it stops, Jack and Annie are in the Swiss Alps.
Someone accidentally puts a spell on “Merlin’s beloved penguin, and turned her into a stone statue.”
Jack and Annie are given a potion. The directions say, “One sip with a wish will turn you into anything you want for one hour. Use only once.”
Jack and Annie use the potion to turn themselves into Saint Bernards. After taking the potion, “Jack was hurled face-first into the snow. The world went black, and Jack felt his body shaking uncontrollably.”

Spiritual Content

None

Mr. Murry and Thumbkin

Once there were two very different, but lovable mice. Mr. Murry worries about every little thing all day long. He worries especially about his new neighbor, Thumbkin, who moved into the pumpkin next door. Thumbkin is the most laid-back mouse around and has not a care in the world.

While manic Mr. Murry works and frets to get all of his fall chores done before winter arrives, lethargic Thumbkin lazes around in his yard, soaking up the sun and eating fat pumpkin seeds. Will Mr. Murry, who worries too much, and Thumbkin, who worries too little, even be able to get along and meet somewhere in the middle?

Mr. Murry’s world comes alive in comical, full-page illustrations that have realistic details such as Mr. Murry using a cat food can as a wood stove, and a teapot as a home. The two mice’s facial expressions reveal their varying emotions. Many of the illustrations show Mr. Murry and Thumbkin side-by-side, which highlights the differences between the two. While Mr. Murry is doing laundry, Thumbkin is laying around gnawing on a stalk of hay and singing.

Mr. Murry and Thumbkin teaches the importance of hard work and preparing for autumn. Because Thumbkin spent all summer laying around, his pumpkin home rots. But not even this can discourage Thumbkin, instead, he decides to “lie back and take in the view.” In the end, Mr. Murry saves the freezing Thumbkin and gives him a home. The conclusion shows the two mice happily living together, and the two “met somewhere right in the middle.”

Younger readers will fall in love with the two mice and enjoy looking at all of the details in each picture. Each page has 1-6 simple sentences that use rhyming and onomatopoeia. Even though Mr. Murry and Thumbkin is a picture book, the story is intended to be read aloud to a child, rather than for the child to read it for the first time independently. Mr. Murry and Thumbkin uses humor to contrast two mice as it teaches readers not to worry or laze around too much. Mr. Murry and Thumbkin is a wonderful story that younger readers will want to read again and again.

Sexual Content

None

Violence

None

Drugs and Alcohol

None

Language

None

Supernatural

None

Spiritual Content

None

Clark the Shark

Clark is a shark with zing, bang, and BOOM. Clark zooms into school, crashes through the classroom, and is rowdy at recess. Clark loves life and always means well—but when his enthusiasm is too much for his friends, Clark’s teacher (Mrs. Inkydink) helps him figure out a way to tone it down.

Clark the Shark celebrates boisterous enthusiasm—and knowing when it’s time for indoor voices! The picture book is fun to read aloud because it uses rhyming, alliteration, and fun wordplay such as when Clark makes up a new game called “tail-whump-a-lumpus.” Another positive aspect of the story is that when Clark has a hard time remembering the rules, he turns the rules into a rhyme. “In class, when lessons got exciting, Clark wanted to bounce up out of his seat. Instead, he told himself: ‘When teacher’s talking, don’t go walking.’”

Clark’s struggle to “stay cool” comes to life in bright, full-page illustrations that show Clark and an array of other classmates—a fish, a crab, a jellyfish, and an octopus. The sea creatures are adorably cute as they take on human characteristics such as wearing clothes, reading books, and sitting at a desks. One fish even wears glasses! Clark’s facial expressions are sometimes silly, but they show the shark’s wide range of emotions.

Each page of the picture book has 1 to 7 sentences. Some of the text is large and bold to illustrate the idea that Clark is yelling. Even though Clark the Shark is a picture book, the story is intended to be read aloud to a child, rather than for the child to read it for the first time independently.

Get ready to use silly voices as you read Clark the Shark to your little reader. The book is a perfect introduction to going to school and following the rules, which include staying still during class, not yelling, being gentle with your classmates, and not munching a bunch of your classmates’ lunches. Clark the Shark uses humor to teach readers about controlling their impulses. If you are looking for picture books that use sharks to teach about friendship, you should also add The Pout-Pout Fish and the Bully-Bully Shark by Deborah Diesen and Shawn Loves Sharks by Curtis Manley to your reading list.

Sexual Content

None

Violence

None

Drugs and Alcohol

None

Language

None

Supernatural

None

Spiritual Content

None

The Sun is Also a Star

Natasha Kingsley, a lover of science, believes in facts and evidence. According to Natasha, nothing lasts forever. There is no “meant to be,” and there is no such thing as love.

Daniel Jae Ho Bae, a poet, believes in love and destiny. He trusts that the specific amount of circumstances required to bring two strangers together has meaning, even if it can’t be scientifically explained. On his way to a Yale interview, Daniel sees a beautiful girl with large pink headphones walk into a record store. Obeying what he believes are signs from the Universe, Daniel follows her and finds his world colliding with Natasha’s.

Compelled by the inexplicable feeling that they are meant to be, Daniel postpones his interview in order to prove that love is real by making Natasha fall in love with him in one day. Natasha reluctantly agrees to this plan. However, Natasha is almost certain they are not meant to be a couple because it is likely her last day in America. Natasha and her family, who are Jamaican immigrants, have been asked to leave the country and return to Jamaica following her father’s DUI.

Despite the impending threat to her life in America and her aversion to love, Natasha finds herself falling for Daniel. Eventually, the secret of Natasha’s deportation is revealed and the two vow to make the most of their time together by condensing a whole relationship into one day. Despite their respective responsibilities for the day, they always find their way back to one another, proving their destiny is to be in each other’s lives.

However, in the end, Natasha cannot change her fate and must return to Jamaica with her family, while Daniel remains in America to pursue his dreams of becoming a poet. Due to the distance, Natasha and Daniel grow apart. But chance brings them together years later, making the readers wonder if they are meant to be after all.

The novel mainly switches between Daniel and Natasha’s perspectives, with brief interruptions to feature the perspective of supporting characters or to explain scientific concepts relevant to the story. Other chapters also provide historical context for relationships between racial groups in America. For example, the historical connection between Korean immigrants and the black-hair care industry.

The novel also depicts the experiences of young first and second-generation immigrants. Although Daniel was born in America, his parents view American culture as a threat to their Korean values. On the other hand, Natasha was not born in the United States but still views America as her home. Despite the history of racial tension between their cultures, Daniel and Natasha bond over their shared identity as Americans.

Overall, The Sun is Also a Star is an irresistible love story that explores the connection between art and science. Through beautiful metaphors and complex characters, Nicola Yoon exposes the poetic nature of science, which ultimately brings people together.

Sexual Content

Natasha finds herself attracted to Daniel and assumes his “sexy ponytail may be addling my [Natasha’s] brain.”
The science behind love and attraction is explained. “Oxytocin is released during orgasm and makes you feel closer to the person you’ve had sex with.”
When Natasha says, “I like it big” in reference to her hair, Daniel’s brother makes a crude joke that she “better get a different boyfriend.”
Daniel gets a glimpse of Natasha’s thighs when her dress shifts. “They have little crease marks from the couch. I want to wrap my hand around them and smooth the marks with my thumb.”
Daniel and Natasha start kissing in the norebang, a Korean karaoke place. “We start out chaste, just lips touching, tasting, but soon we can’t get enough…She’s making little moaning sounds that make me want to kiss her even more.” Daniel and Natasha move to the couch and continue to kiss passionately. Eventually, they stop; there is no sex or nudity.
Daniel stares at Natasha “because I’m picturing her in a candy striper outfit and then picturing her out of it.”

Violence

Daniel and his brother, Charlie, get into a fight over Charlie’s racist and sexist comments regarding Natasha. Daniel’s “fist catches him [Charlie] around the eye socket area, so my knuckles hit mostly bone.”

Drugs and Alcohol

Natasha’s father gets a DUI.

Language

Ass/asshole is used numerous times by Daniel. For example, Daniel calls his brother an “overachieving asshole.”
Pissed is used three times. For example, Daniel states his brother “was so pissed that his voice cracked a little.”
Shit is used repeatedly.
Daniel explains his brother’s anger after his mother’s disapproval of him. Daniel’s mom “could’ve called him an epic douche bag, an animatronic dick complete with ball sac, and it would’ve been better than telling me not to be like him.”
Goddamn is used five times. For example, Daniel’s parents believe America has made him soft and Daniel thinks, “If I had a brain cell for every time I heard this, I’d be a goddamn genius.”
Profanity is used in the extreme. Profanity includes fuck, dick, shit, ass, pissed, damn, bastard, and douche-bag. For example, a passenger on Daniel’s train tells the conductor to “shut the fuck up and drive the train.” Also, after a fight, Daniel explains his lip “split open on the outside because the bastard [Charlie] hit me while wearing some giant-ass secret society ring.”

Supernatural

None

Spiritual Content

Charlie hears a hurtful comment from his mother “because of God or Fate or Sheer Rotten Luck.”
Natasha’s father believes their deportation is part of God’s plan, but Natasha thinks “he shouldn’t leave everything up to God.”
On the train, Daniel hears the conductor give his testimony. “God HIMself came down from HEAven and he saved me.”
Daniel believes when people are born, “they (God or little aliens or whoever) should send you into the world with a bunch of free passes.”
Natasha’s father is sure “God wouldn’t have gifted him with all this talent with no place to display it.”
While entering the subway, Daniel decides to “say a prayer to the subway gods (yes, multiple gods).”
Daniel explains if he could invite anyone for dinner, it would be God.

by Elena Brown

Amari and the Night Brothers

Amari Peters’ brother Quinton is missing. Without tax records or a single piece of evidence to use, authorities look at the Peters’ family address in the Rosewood low-income housing projects and prematurely chalk the disappearance up to “illegal activities.” Then, Amari gets into a fight with bullies at her school. This leaves Amari without a scholarship and without a sense of belonging, but a ticking briefcase in Quinton’s bedroom closet quickly instills tangible hope that Quinton will return. The briefcase leads Amari to the Bureau of Supernatural Affairs, a secretive organization tasked with hiding all the magicians, fairies, and supernatural creatures of the world. When Amari joins the organization, she again feels like she doesn’t belong among classmates who already have extensive knowledge of magic. Even more intimidating is the fear and bias that her classmates hold towards Amari’s supernaturally enhanced talent—an ability for magic that has commonly been deemed evil in the supernatural world. Will she find friendships here in this other world, or will she again be judged and half-seen?

It is only through battling bullies, outsmarting Junior Agent Tryouts, and overcoming powerful magicians that Amari can find her brother Quinton and regain confidence in her uniquely beautiful power. Even in the midst of facing all of these obstacles, Amari is eventually able to say proudly, “I’m not the girl who gives up. I’m the girl who tries. The girl who fights. The girl who believes. My eyes open with a burning realization. I’m unstoppable.”

Amari and The Night Brothers follows Amari’s entertaining, witty, and strong perspective as she contemplates what it means to belong in a community that continually sets out to ostracize her. While the plot is an action-packed, engrossing story of every magical creature you have ever heard of (from magicians to mermaids, to golden lions and Bigfoot), this intricate plot also works to explore issues of race and class discrimination. In defining Amari’s supernatural power of being a “magician” as illegal and dangerous, this story aims at bringing to light the way that prejudices act to divide our society, as well as how we can aim to overturn them. The result is an empowering and wonderful story of power, love, friendship, and the ability to overcome.

Throughout its narrative, Amari and the Night Brothers addresses issues of racism, classism, and prejudice in an easily digestible ways for young readers. Additionally, this book presents captivating scenes and vivid settings which weave together to create a tangible fantasy world filled with every type of supernatural creature that an imaginative kid could hope for. Dragons, vampires, magical forests, and funny dialogue all paint a narrative that stays action-packed, captivating, and evocative until the end. The story ends in a moment of triumph and reaffirmed empowerment for Amari, while also leaving things open for the potential of a sequel. Amari and the Night Brothers is the perfect book for any elementary to junior high fantasy and action fanatic who is searching for a meaningful and magical story.

Sexual Content

None

Violence

Early in the novel, Amari gets sent to the principal’s office for giving a classmate “a tiny shove.”
Later in the book, Amari tries to shove another bully, Laura, but Laura twists and pushes Amari to the ground instead.
In an act of revenge, Laura attacks Amari at a festival. Amari describes this scene by saying, “Laura dashes forward and kicks out her leg. It’s so fast I don’t even have time to react. I just feel my legs get knocked from under me and land hard on my side. Next thing I know, she’s on top of me, pinning both my wrists above my head with one arm. That means she’s still got one hand free.” Amari escapes after this moment.

Drugs and Alcohol

One of the Bureau agents tells Amari that the hotel she stays at has a “killer cigar selection.”

Language

In a moment of cyber bullying, Amari’s classmates celebrate the loss of her scholarship by writing comments such as, “We finally took out the trash at Jefferson. Never wanted her here. I heard she used to steal from the lockers. All it took was her dumb brother to drop dead.”
In another bullying incident, Amari’s bedroom at the Bureau of Supernatural Affairs is vandalized. Someone paints an image of “a Black girl with two X’s for eyes and a stake in her heart NO MAGICIANS ALLOWED is written just below it.”
At one point, another peer from the Bureau of Supernatural Affairs calls Amari a freak.

Supernatural

The Bureau of Supernatural Affairs covers living beings “passing off as myths.” This includes “trolls and sphinxes, mermaids and oddities you could see with your own eyes and still not believe.” Mainly, the term supernatural covers fantastical creatures and magic, thus a lot of the narrative focuses on supernatural elements. This also applies to a group of hybrids (part-human, part-creature) who invade the Bureau of Supernatural Affairs.
Amari is deemed a magician when she places her hand on a Crystal Ball and “a plume of black smoke appears, swirling and filling the ball completely. A crack reaches across the surface.” As Amari stands back, a screen behind the Crystal Ball says, “Talent Enhanced to Supernatural Ability: Dormant Magic to Active Magician (Illegal).” It is in this way that Amari realizes that she is a magician, a role that is considered dangerous in the supernatural world.
After she touches the Crystal Ball, the Bureau of Supernatural Affairs has Amari step on what they call a “Magic-Meter,” which looks like a small scale. When Amari steps on the Meter it says that she is at 100 percent, meaning that “every drop of this girl’s blood is magical.”
When Amari grows angry at being bullied, “anger surges through me. And then, suddenly, a swirling blaze of fire erupts on the table between me and Laura.” Amari creates the fire with her magic.
Amari’s best friend, Elsie, is a weredragon (part-human, part-dragon), and can therefore read auras. Because of this, Elsie can read Amari’s emotions based on the color of Amari’s aura.
Amari’s classmate explains that there is another type of magician known as the technologist, which is a magician that can manipulate electronics like phones or security devices. The classmate also describes a Weaver, which can weave together new spells.
Amari is given a book of spells called The Spells and Musings of Madame Violet, Foremost Illusionist of her Era. This allows Amari to learn how to practice the Dispel spell, which allows a magician to erase any illusions set by other magicians. Among the other spells in this book is also the Solis spell, which allows a magician to create a ball of light with their hands and the darker, Magna Fobia spell, a spell from the “Magick Most Foul” section of Madame Violet’s spell book, which allows the magician to pull the “very darkest fears from an opponent’s mind to craft an illusion around them that they believe is real.”
During her final trial in the Junior Agent Program, Amari shows her illusions to the Bureau, and she creates an illusion of the street in her neighborhood. Then she also creates the illusion of a cloudless, starry night sky and the aurora borealis on the ceiling.
A boy shows Amari a whole forest that he created as an illusion using magic. Amari creates her own illusory blossom to this forest that they call the “Amari Blossom.”
In order to trick the dangerous plant known as “a Mars mantrap,” Amari uses her magic to create an illusion in which she duplicates herself. This becomes Amari’s tactic in fighting powerful magicians later in the novel.
Amari’s brother Quinton and his partner at the Bureau are put under a spell which is said to extract someone’s “life essence,” causing them to suffer “a very slow death.”
In order to defeat the magicians that have her brother, Amari sends a spell that not only duplicates herself but also puts a cage of lightning around her attackers.

Spiritual Content

At one point, Amari goes to visit the Department of Good Fortunes and Bad Omens, and the director of the Department reads the constellations for her. In this scene, the director plucks stars from the sky to place in Amari’s hands, and then has Amari scatter the stars again in order to tell her future based on her unique constellation. The director also speaks to the “spirit” of the stars, stating, “Every natural thing exists in two places, both here and there. If we are physically here, then we are spiritually there. Likewise, if the stars are physically out there, then it only makes sense for them to be spiritually here.”

by Hannah Olsson

Francine Poulet Meets the Ghost Raccoon

Francine Poulet is the greatest animal control officer in Gizzfor County. She has battled snakes, outwitted squirrels, and stared down a bear. Francine is never scared—until she’s faced with a screaming raccoon who may or may not be a ghost. Maybe Francine isn’t cut out to be an animal control officer after all!

But the raccoon is still on the loose, and the folks on Deckawoo Drive need Francine. Can she face her fears, round up the raccoon, and return to the ranks of animal control?

While not everyone has faced a ghost raccoon, everyone will be able to relate to Francine’s fear. While chasing the raccoon, Francine is injured. After failing to catch the raccoon, Francine “didn’t know who she was. She was not an animal control officer. And she was not a Poulet, because Poulets never panic.” It isn’t until Francine meets Frank, a talkative child, that she faces her fears.

Francine Poulet Meets the Ghost Raccoon tells a humorous tale that highlights the importance of overcoming one’s fears. At one point, Francine quits her job because of her fear. Like Francine, readers may need help and encouragement to face their fear. When Francine tracks down the ghost raccoon, she gains confidence in her abilities, which allows her to overcome her fear.

The Tales from Deckawoo Drive Series uses the same humor and characters as Dicamillo’s Mercy Watson Series. While this story focuses on Francine Poulet, each character is unique and interesting. Unlike many books, Francine Poulet Meets the Ghost Raccoon shows a wide range of people—some are old and wrinkled, some are heavy set, and one is a pig. The people in the story are similar to the people you would find in your neighborhood. Despite their differences, they have a sense of community and sit around the kitchen table to share a snack of toast.

Large black and white illustrations appear every 1 to 3 pages and will help readers understand the story’s plot. The illustrations highlight Francine’s facial expressions, which will help readers understand her emotions. Many of the illustrations are full-page, and they have humorous elements to them. Even though Francine Poulet Meets the Ghost Raccoon is intended for younger readers, they may need help with the difficult vocabulary such as reclamation, recede, metaphorically, and hailed.

Francine Poulet Meets the Ghost Raccoon is a wholesome and entertaining story that shows the importance of facing your fears. The interesting characters, a ghostly animal, and sweet conclusion will appeal to many readers both young and old.

Sexual Content

None

Violence

Francine tries to capture the raccoon. “She opened her eyes just in time to see a shimmery, raccoon-shaped object flying through the air. . . She started to run. She could feel the raccoon at her heels. . . The raccoon hit Francine with such tremendous, raccoon-y force that she lost her balance and fell forward.” Francine falls off the roof and breaks an arm and a leg.

Drugs and Alcohol

None

Language

When Francine climbs a roof in order to catch a raccoon, the owner of the house asks her, “Are you truly an animal control officer? Or are you just some nut job gallivanting on my roof?”
While trying to catch the raccoon, the neighbors talk about Francine. One lady says she is worthless and another says “she looks like a fraud to me.”

Supernatural

Francine gets a call from Mrs. Bissinger, who thinks the raccoon on her roof is a ghost because it says her name. Mrs. Bissinger says, “He is an extraordinary raccoon! He shimmers! He screams like a banshee!”
While in the hospital, Francine’s dead father appears and tells her, “There aren’t ghost raccoons, Franny. You know that.”

Spiritual Content

None

Ace Lacewing, Bug Detective: Bad Bugs Are My Business

While on the way to the bank, someone knocks Scratch over the head and takes his money. The upset flea is desperate to find the culprit, so he goes to detective Ace Lacewing. The detective bug discovers that Scratch has a lot of enemies—a hissing roach, a carpenter ant, and bo weevil.

Ace’s investigation takes him to Scratch’s amusement park, where he goes through the Termite Tower of Terror, Anteater Falls, and the House of Mirrors. Ace’s girlfriend and Police Sergeant Zito “The Mosquito” join Ace on his investigation. Will Ace be able to find the missing money?

Bad Bugs Are My Business uses first-person narration, which allows Ace’s personality to shine. Throughout the story, the characters use some funny insect humor. For example, while interrogating a ladybug, Ace says, “Seems like someone was trying to play flatten-the-flea with your boyfriend.”

As Ace talks to possible thieves, each one points the finger at someone else, which helps propel the story forward. In the end, it’s Ace’s knowledge of insects that allows him to solve the crime. The story has some interesting insect facts and reinforces the importance of family. Unfortunately, the message is watered down because the thief is the one who talks about the importance of family. He says, “You don’t have family, you don’t have nothin’.” In the end, the thief used his “little pupae” to hide his crime.

The picture book’s illustrations bring the bugs’ world to life with bright colors. Readers will have fun looking for all of the insect references. For example, while a group of bugs rides a roller coaster, they pass a sign that reads, “Please Keep Antenna and Legs inside.” The detailed illustrations have so many fun elements that readers will want to look at them again and again. While several pages have no words, many of the other pages are text-heavy and include up to 9 sentences. Even though Bad Bugs Are My Business is a picture book, the story is intended to be read aloud to a child, rather than for the child to read it for the first time independently.

Readers may not understand all of the story’s lessons, such as paying workers a fair wage. Despite this, the basic plot is easy to understand, and Ace’s investigation is fast-paced and interesting. Young readers who are looking for a fun detective story will enjoy Bad Bugs Are My Business. This creative story has all of the enjoyable elements of a mystery.

Sexual Content

None

Violence

When Scratch was heading to the bank, “Bam! He got hit on the head with a carpenter aunt’s toolbox.”

Drugs and Alcohol

None

Language

None

Supernatural

None

Spiritual Content

None

Cheer Up

It’s winter and Unicorn and Yeti want to spend time together because they are each other’s best friend. When Unicorn gives Yeti a gift, Yeti wants to give Unicorn a gift too! Then, after Yeti is crunching icicles, Unicorn decides to eat icicles too! The icicles are yummy, but they make Unicorn so cold! Yeti has a solution—he’s going to knit Unicorn a hat, a scarf, and leg warmers for a gift. After Unicorn is warm, the two friends take a walk in the forest.

Unicorn and Yeti is a fun series designed for children who are learning to read. Cheer Up contains easy-to-read text. Each page has a full page of illustrations and contains no more than three sentences. When each character talks, their words appear in different colored quote boxes. Beginning readers should be able to read the text alone and will enjoy flipping through the story multiple times to look at the colorful pictures.

Cheer Up is the perfect book for all young readers—even the ones that become a little bit wiggly after a short time. As the fourth installment in the series, it can be read as a stand-alone story. Unicorn and Yeti show how friends can be different from each other and still enjoy a special friendship. The two friends react to things in different ways and their friendship helps them see another side to the situation. If you’re looking for a fun book that shows the importance of friendship, Cheer Up is a winter-themed book that will warm readers’ hearts.

Sexual Content

None

Violence

None

Drugs and Alcohol

None

Language

None

Supernatural

None

Spiritual Content

None

Take Me Home Tonight

Kat and Stevie have been best friends since they met in their high school’s theater department. Both are passionate about performing, and the two become as close as sisters (something that they love to hear). Kat hatches a plan to sneak out of their small town and go to New York. Kat plans to surprise Stevie by getting tickets for a play put on by her theatre teacher. As the two sneak into the city, they create a contingency plan; if they are separated they will meet at Grand Central Station at 11:11. But once they arrive in the city, things go horribly wrong.

Stevie runs into her stepsister, Mallory, who asks her to stop by her apartment and drop off a wallet. Once inside, Stevie and Kat meet Mallory’s Pomeranian and promptly get locked out of the apartment with no money and a dog in tow. Kat is content to roll with the punches, desperate to impress her teacher. Stevie, however, would rather just go home. The two fight and separate; Stevie goes to find Mallory’s spare keys while Kat goes to her teacher’s play. As Stevie embarks on a wild goose chase for Mallory’s keys, hitting various NYC landmarks along the way, Kat traverses the city with Cary, a boy she meets. She accompanies him through his various jobs, flirting and having fun. Kat then goes to see the play, which is astonishingly bad. Both friends are furious with each other, believing themselves to have been abandoned by the other. But Stevie and Kat still meet up at 11:11 and eventually recognize how much they need and rely on each other.

Take Me Home Tonight is a fast-paced, engaging novel that allows the reader to come along for a night-out-gone-horribly-astray. Told from both Stevie and Kat’s point of view, as well as another character called Teri, the reader is able to get to know these characters well. Although they have their flaws, both girls are generally likable and relatable to high school girls. Through their separation, Kat and Stevie learn that they will always find their way back to each other. “Not because we couldn’t be apart—the night we’d had proved that we could. But because we wanted to be together, which somehow made it that much better.”

The story contains a subplot surrounding Teri, one of Stevie and Kat’s friends who is kidnapped by a member of the Albanian mafia on the run with stolen goods. However, this subplot feels out of place in the novel, and—although resolved—feels rushed.

While at first glance, the story seems to be singularly focused on Stevie and Kat’s relationship, Take Me Home Tonight is a novel about relationships of all kinds—friendships, romantic relationships, parental relationships—and most importantly—your relationship with yourself. These elements form an entertaining story full of characters that seem familiar and real.

Through Stevie’s and Kat’s experiences, the story emphasizes the importance of understanding others, focusing less on yourself, and knowing that what is best for you may not be what is best for others. Although the plot can seem confusing or disconnected at times, Take Me Home Tonight is an intriguing novel with a multitude of complex, intertwining stories.

Sexual Content

Kat describes when she and Stevie lost their virginities. Kat says, ”The first time I slept with anyone, I drove to Stevie’s afterward, even though it was past midnight, and we stayed up for hours in her kitchen, eating whatever we could find in the fridge and talking about every detail. But the first time Stevie and Beckett slept together, she didn’t even tell me for three days, and even then, she didn’t want to go over every moment like I had.”
Kat kisses Cary after they spend the day together in New York. “I gathered all my courage, and stepped forward, and kissed him.”
When at a play, months after they initially meet and have begun dating, Cary kisses Kat. “Cary . . . [gave] me a quick kiss.”

Violence

Stevie is mugged by a man holding a fake knife.
Teri is kidnapped by a member of the Albanian mafia posing as a CIA agent while she is babysitting. The man, Dimitri, threatens her with a tire iron to get into the car. “The guy sighed and set down the tire iron. Teri started to breathe a little easier, but then he reached behind him and pulled a gun out of his waistband.”
When stopping at a murder mystery party, Kat sees “a group of people, all dressed up, standing around in little clusters with drinks, and what appeared to be a dead body on the floor, lying in a pool of blood.”
Teri escapes Dimitri and finds the CIA agent Dimitri was impersonating. But Dimitri finds them and shoots the CIA agent. “And then, a second later, to see Dimitri shoot him, right in the chest.” The CIA agent is wearing a bulletproof vest (revealed later) and survives.

Drugs and Alcohol

Kat mentions, “I’d been taking prenatal vitamins for years in an attempt to get my hair to grow thicker.”
While describing the school’s campus, Kat says, “We pushed open the door and walked outside, heading across campus, past the faculty parking lot and the dumpsters people were always vaping behind.”
While at dinner, Stevie’s ex-boyfriend, Beckett, (who is 17) is served an alcoholic drink by mistake.

Language

Profanity is used occasionally. Profanity includes fuck, shit, hell, and asshole.

Supernatural

Stevie talks about premonitions that she has, stating, “Every now and then, I would get a feeling about something. It wasn’t even anything close to psychic powers—which I wasn’t entirely certain I believed in, despite the fact that I’d watched a lot of Little Medium marathons with Teri and Kat.”

Spiritual Content

None

by Sara Mansfield

They Both Die at the End

Mateo Torrez and Rufus Emeterio both receive a call from Death-Cast at around midnight on September 5, 2017. Death-Cast tells them that they will die sometime in the next 24 hours.

Until that day, the boys had nothing in common. Mateo has spent his life inside, fearing the day he gets the call and doing everything he can to avoid bringing it about early. Rufus, on the other hand, has seen death up close and personal. After losing his family in a car accident, he has vowed to live every day to the fullest.

Their paths cross when they each download the app Last Friend, designed to give people a chance to connect with someone on their End Day. The novel follows the boys as they try to make each final moment count, and learn to balance healthy fear with the pursuit of feeling truly alive one last time.

The spoilers are in the title, but knowing the ending makes the reading journey more valuable. The audience is given happy moments, not a happy ending. Readers must grapple with their own mortality and ask whether they have been living more like Mateo or Rufus. For these reasons, the book is recommended for older teenaged readers. While the message is valuable, it is at times difficult to confront, so readers should approach the book with caution. They Both Die in the End addresses death, illness, difficult upbringings, terrorism, spirituality, suicide, and first loves.

The story alternates between the first-person perspectives of Rufus and Mateo as well as a third-person view of characters whose stories intertwine with theirs. As their lives intertwine, characters who may seem unrelated at first, find themselves deeply affected by the boys. This unifies the plot and allows Silvera to explore a diverse collection of characters and their relationships with death without becoming too unfocused. Despite the sadness of a short life, the collective experiences of Rufus and, more particularly, Mateo, leave readers with the hope that though the boys may not have lived long lives, they each lived fully on their final days.

Sexual Content

Mateo wants to go do something outside, so he does not spend the day “masturbating because sex with an actual person scares [him].”
Mateo’s best friend Lidia is an 18-year-old single mother.
A man approaches a woman at a club and says, “Maybe you’ll live to see another day with some Vitamin Me in your system.” This causes her friend to “[swing] her purse at him until he backs up.”
Rufus’s foster home has a “bulletin board with information about sex, getting tested for HIV, abortion and adoption clinics, and other sheets of that nature”.
Aimee, Rufus’s ex-girlfriend wishes Rufus would “watch porn” rather than reality TV.
Rufus remembers when he and Aimee were dating, and they would “rest underneath the blanket together.”
Mateo distinguishes between the Last Friend app and Necro “which is intended for anyone who wants a one-night stand with a Decker—the ultimate no-strings-attached app.” Mateo says, “I’ve always been so disturbed by Necro, and not just because sex makes me nervous.” Mateo doesn’t like the app’s eight-dollar fee because he feels “as if a human is worth more than eight bucks.”
Rufus describes his outfit, including basketball shorts over gym tights to prevent his “package” from “poking out there like Spider-Man’s.”
A potential Last Friend reaches out to Mateo, but she reveals she does not really want a friend. She says, “do you have an open house then? I’m supposed to lose my virginity to my bf but i want to practice first and maybe u can help me out.” Mateo blocks her after he sees the message.
Another potential Last Friend tricks Mateo by implying he can save Mateo from death. When Mateo asks him how, he says he should come over to his apartment because he “[has] the cure to death in [his] pants.” Mateo blocks him as well. Rufus later receives the same message when he downloads the app.
After hearing Rufus is dying Aimee cries, holds Rufus’s hand and hugs him. He remembers how “she would relax on [his] chest whenever she was about to watch one of her historical documentaries.” After noticing that “she’s mad close,” Rufus “[leans] in” to kiss Aimee but is interrupted.
Mateo changes his profile to only allow sixteen- to eighteen-year-olds to message him, so “older men and women can no longer hit on [him].”
Mateo can hear the sounds coming from different apartments, including “one couple moaning” and laughter which he says could possibly be from “being tickled by a lover.”
Mateo considers the life of birds who “mate and nurture baby birds until they can fly.”
On the party train, Rufus notices “a girl . . . hops onto the bench seat to dance. Some dude is hitting on her, but her eyes are closed, and she’s just straight-up lost in her moment.”
A girl described as gorgeous, hazel-eyed, and black approaches Rufus on the party train and he feels “her breasts against [his] chest and her [lips] against [his] ear.” She asks if he wants to go home with her, and Rufus refers to her as his type, but he ultimately says no, due to him not having “much [he] can offer her, besides what she’s obviously suggesting.” He acknowledges that “sex with a college girl has gotta be on mad people’s bucket lists—young people, married-dude people, boys, girls . . .” However, he remembers Aimee and thinks, “I’m not trying to cheat that with something fake like this.”
The girl ultimately leaves with another guy, and Rufus suspects “they’ll just have sex tonight and he’ll call her ‘Kelly’ in the morning.”
Mateo tells Rufus about his parents’ proposal story. He explains, “My mother turned him down twice. He said she liked playing hard to get. Then she found out she was pregnant with me and he got down on one knee in the bathroom and she smiled and said yes.”
Mateo discusses his parent’s relationship in terms of songs, saying, “Another of Dad’s favorites is ‘Come What May,’ which my mother sang to him and womb-me during a shower they took together before her water broke.”
Delilah places her phone on the pillow “on the side of the bed that was Victor’s whenever he stayed over.”
Rufus tells Mateo, “Your Last Friend is gonna make sure you go out with a bang. Not a bad bang, or a you-know-what bang, but a good bang,”
Rufus jokes that if observing makes one able to do something, then “[he has] watched enough porn to make [him] a sex god.”
As Mateo looks at Rufus’s Instagram, Rufus says he feels “exposed.” Rufus likens it to “someone watching [him] wrap a towel around [his] boys” after a shower.
When Rufus was thirteen, he describes how “flipping through magazines, [he’d] scout for pictures of girls in skirts and dudes in shorts and would tilt the page to see what was underneath.”
At Make-A-Moment, Mateo notices that “a couple are kissing in a hot air balloon.”
Mateo meets a boy who “was pretty sure love didn’t mean that your father slept on the couch and that your mother didn’t care when her husband was caught cheating on her with younger girls in Atlantic City.”
After Mateo’s nightmare, he notices how Rufus “shifts closer…[Rufus’s] knee knocking against [his].”
Rufus explains that Althea Park is “where [he] kissed this girl, Cathy, for the first time.”
Mateo tells Rufus he’s never dated anyone, but he has had crushes. Then Mateo thinks to himself, “I sense there’s something more he wants to say; maybe he wants to crack a joke about how I should sign up for Necro so I don’t die a virgin, as if sex and love are the same thing.”
Mateo describes riding the bike with Rufus. He says, “I would lean against Rufus, shifting my weight against him . . . keep holding him.” He determines that he is “going to do something small and brave.”
Rufus will not express his interest in Mateo, because, “He’s gotta make a move himself.”
When talking about the ending to his dream, Rufus says, “Nah, I think I started dreaming about sex or something and woke up from that.”
Mateo recognizes that Rufus is “probably not a virgin.”
While sitting next to each other on the train, Rufus “shifts, his body leaning against [Mateo’s].”
A comment could imply a history of sexual assault. A girl tells someone “all the heartbreaking [secrets] she always kept to herself because speaking up was too hard.”
Rufus, Mateo, and Lidia go swimming unexpectedly and strip down to their underwear. Rufus says, “[Mateo] avoids looking my way . . . unlike Lidia . . . who’s looking me up and down.”
When they prepare to jump into the pool, Rufus says, “I grab Mateo’s hand and lock my fingers in his. He turns to me with flushed cheeks . . . ” After they jump, they are still holding hands, and Rufus hugs Mateo in the water.
Later, Rufus thinks, “We don’t bring up the hand-holding or anything like that, but hopefully he gets where I’m coming from now in case he had any doubts.” Rufus says, “[The Plutos are] smiling at me like they wanna tag-team bang me.”
A girl “eyes [Rufus] up and down” and Mateo’s “face heats up.” He says, “But then Rufus catches up to me and pats my shoulder and the burn is different, like when he grabbed my hand back at the Travel Arena.”
Mateo and Rufus sing karaoke. Then Mateo drags Rufus “offstage, and once we’re behind the curtain, I look him in the eyes and he smiles like he knows what’s about to go down . . . I kiss the guy who brought me to life on the day we’re going to die.” Afterward, Rufus kisses Mateo.
Mateo and Rufus slow dance. “We place our hands on each other’s shoulders and waist; [Mateo’s] fingers dig into him a little, the first time I’m getting to touch someone else like this.” Mateo admits that “maintaining eye contact with Rufus is really hard” because it is “the most intense intimacy [he has] ever experienced.” They speak into each other’s ears and continue to dance before they kiss and part.
Rufus thinks, “Part of me can’t help but wonder if Mateo is bringing me home so we can have sex, but it’s probably safe to assume sex isn’t on the brain for him.”
Mateo sings “Your Song” for Rufus, and in the middle of the song, Rufus kisses his forehead.
Mateo and Rufus sit on the bed, “linking [their] arms and legs together.”
Rufus tells Mateo, “I would’ve loved you if we had more time . . .Maybe I already do . . .” Mateo then says, “I want to say it as many times as I want—I love you, I love you, I love you.” To which Rufus responds, “You know damn well I love you too . . . I don’t talk out of my dick, you know that’s not me.” He says he wants to kiss him again, but he doesn’t.
Rufus narrates as Mateo “climbs into [his] lap, bringing [them] closer.” They stay close together and kiss one more time before sleeping side by side.

Violence

After he finds out that he is going to die, Mateo wants to “curse into a pillow” because his dad is in a coma or “punch a wall because [his] mom marked [him] for an early death when she died giving birth to [him].”
Mateo tells the story of a President who “tried to hide from Death in an underground bunker four years ago and was assassinated by one of his own secret service agents.”
Frequently, Mateo and Rufus imagine the scenarios in which they could die. These are often worst-case scenarios, and some are gruesome. For instance, Mateo says, “I could choke on a cough drop; I could leave my apartment to do something with myself and fall down the stairs and snap my neck before I even make it outside; someone could break in and murder me.”
A fight between Rufus and Peck, Aimee’s new boyfriend, occurs over nine pages. Rufus repeatedly punches Peck, while pinning him down. Rufus fears he may kill Peck. He checks to make sure Peck doesn’t have a pocketknife, concerned that Peck may be the one to kill him. Rufus picks “Peck up by the back of his collar and then [slams] him against the brick wall . . . Blood slides from an open wound in [Peck’s] forehead.” Finally, a friend of Rufus’s looks like he is “about to kick [Peck] like his head’s a soccer ball.” Peck is not killed but walks away severely injured.
Rufus explains that his family’s car “flipped into the Hudson River” killing his sister and parents. Rufus later goes into more detail about the crash. He explains, “I’d sat shotgun because I thought it bettered our chances of surviving a head-on car crash if both my parents weren’t in front.” He says that it did not change anything “before going on about the screeching tires, the way we busted through the road’s safety rail and tumbled into the river. . .” Rufus says, though he forgets their voices, “I could recognize their screams anywhere.”
Victor, a Death-Cast employee, explains that his day included telling a mother her four-year-old daughter will die today and sending police to her home just in case the mother is responsible for the impending death.
While contemplating death, Rufus thinks “I’m praying that I don’t drown like my parents and sis.” He then says he’s “counting on not getting shot.”
Despite telling his friends he “wasn’t going to kill” Peck, Rufus internally admits, “I could’ve killed him.”
Rufus says that his survivor’s guilt after his family’s death was so strong that “there’s no way in hell [he] would’ve been chill with [himself] for beating someone to death.”
Wondering what happened to a blogger who died, Mateo considers looking into “muggings or murders in Central Park” to see if one victim was the blogger.
Rufus tells the readers that his friend “Malcom’s parents died in a house fire caused by some unidentified arsonist, and whoever it was, Malcolm hopes he’s burning in hell.” He later says Malcolm learned from “the flames that burned his house, parents, and favorite things” how to value people over things.
Rufus’s friend’s father “committed suicide.”
After telling Aimee that he promises not to die before he gets to see her again, she responds with the question, “How many Deckers make those promises and then pianos fall on their heads?”
Rufus warns Aimee that Peck “better not call the cops” so that Rufus doesn’t “find [himself] on the wrong end of some officer’s club.”
A picture in Rufus’s room is described as showing his friend with a bloody nose after an attempt to create a handshake went awry “because of a stupid head-butt.”
A man using the Last Friend app “unwittingly befriended the infamous Last Friend serial killer.”
The characters occasionally joke that another character could kill them from frustration. For instance, Rufus says, “It’s possible I’m gonna die at the hands of my foster father; if you’re not his alarm clock, you shouldn’t wake him up.”
Rufus describes how Aimee pushes him, and that, “She doesn’t play when it comes to violence because her parents got real extra when they tag-team-robbed a convenience store, assaulting the owner and his twenty-year-old son.” He clarifies that she will not be arrested like they were for “shoving [him] around.”
Peck is described after the fight as having “one eye shut, a cut on his lip, spots of dried blood on his swollen forehead.”
Playing a video game, Mateo watches his avatar “[step] on a land mine” which causes the virtual “arm to fly through a hut’s window, his head rockets into the sky, and his legs burst completely.” However, a moment later, the character returns “good as new,” which makes Mateo contemplate the finality of his own death.
Mateo has a panic attack and lashes out. He throws “these books across the room and even kick some of my favorites off their shelves . . . I rush over to my speakers and almost hurl them against the wall, stopping myself.” He stops because the electricity could kill him.
Rufus, while biking to Mateo’s home, says, “He better not be a serial killer or so help me . . . ”
Rufus’s friends, Malcolm and Tagoe, are arrested by the officers who are trying to track down Rufus, because “Malcolm argued with the police officer and resisted arrest” and “Tagoe jumped into the argument too with more aggression than Malcolm himself was using.”
The narrator explains that “Malcolm has never even been in a fight before, even though many paint him to be a violent young man because he’s six feet tall, black, and close to two hundred pounds.”
Mateo is concerned that Rufus is going to rob him when he first meets him. He checks the hallway “to see if he has some friends hiding against the walls, ready to jump me for the little I have.”
Mateo imagines his death again and cringes from the phantom feeling of “falling face-first onto spiked fences or having your teeth punched out of your mouth.” He runs through a list of scenarios with Rufus and their plan, should one of them occur. These scenarios include “some truck might run us down,” “someone pulls out a gun,” and “a train kills us.”
Mateo and Rufus come across a dead bird that “has been flattened; its severed head is a couple inches away.” Mateo thinks “it was run down by a car and then split by a bike.” When Mateo goes to bury the bird, he fears its head will “roll away.”
Mateo remembers seeing a baby bird fall out of its nest and how “its leg broke on impact.”
Rufus is grateful their train arrived because “we can safely rule out falling onto the exposed tracks, getting stuck while rats run by us, and straight chopped up and flattened by the train.”
Rufus says that getting Mateo “out of the apartment was one thing, but I’m probably gonna have to knock the dude out and drag him out of the hospital,”
Mateo tells Rufus about a childhood incident in which a bully took his lunch money, saying, “He punched me in the face and took it all.”
When Mateo goes to an ATM, he is “praying someone doesn’t come out of nowhere and hold [them] up at gunpoint for the money—we know how that would end.”
When exploring a ditch, Rufus tells Mateo, “If you find any toes in there, we’re jetting.” Mateo says there are no body parts, but in the past, he has found a “guy with a bloody nose and no sneakers. . . [he was] beat up and robbed.”
“Four six-foot-tall kids jumped [Kendrick] and stole” his sneakers. He ended up with a bloody nose and “walking home in his socks was painful.”
Mateo has a nightmare. “My skis disappeared and I flew straight off the mountain while headless birds circled overhead and I kept falling and falling.”
Rufus cries, mourning his own death, and becomes violent in response. He narrates, “I hammer at the railing with the bottom of my fist. I keep going and going. . . I stop, out of breath, like I just won a fight against ten dudes.”
An angry man, Vin, is said to “like to be feared” which is why he wrestles. However, he got sick and now cannot do that to take out his aggression. This results in him deciding to build a bomb to destroy the gym, those inside, and his coach, as his coach “suggested a new career route.” The narrator says, “Vin is going to die where he was made. And he’s not dying alone.”
Mateo and Rufus are caught in the explosion. “Glass shatters and we’re suddenly thrown backward through air as fire reaches out toward a screaming crowd. . . I slam against the driver’s side of a car, my shoulder banging into the rearview mirror. My vision fades—darkness, fire, darkness, fire.” He has no idea what happened, just that “Rufus is struggling to open his eyes and others are screaming. But not everyone. There are bodies on the ground, faces kissing cement.” He sees a woman whose “blood is staining a rain puddle.”
Deirdre is described “on the ledge of her apartment building” contemplating suicide. She sees people below and assumes they are betting on “if she’s a Decker,” or someone who knows they will die that day. Deidre says, “The blood and broken bones on the pavement will settle their wager.” It is said that this is not the first time she has thought about killing herself.
When Deidre was in a fight at school when she was young, someone called her “that lesbian with the dead parents.” This prompted her to go to a ledge, though her friend talked her out of killing herself.
Rufus seems to have struggled with suicidal thoughts before. He tells Mateo, “There was a point where I didn’t think any of this was worthwhile.” He goes on to say, “I would’ve been game with game over…but surviving showed me it’s better to be alive wishing I was dead than dying wishing I could live forever.”
Rufus tells Mateo he doesn’t deserve to die. Mateo responds that no one does. Rufus asks, “Except serial killers, right?” However, Mateo does not respond, implying he believes they are no exception.
Peck’s friend has been “stealing candy from the drugstore . . . fighting those who are the Goliath to his David. Starting a gang.”
Peck’s friend wants to hurt those who hurt Peck. He “imagines Rufus’s face where the dartboard is. He throws the dart and shoots bull’s-eye—right between Rufus’s eyes”.
The narrator says, “Peck will gain respect by unloading his gun into the one who disrespected him.”
Mateo hugs his best friend, Lidia. “She says everything in this hug—every thank-you, every i-love-you, every apology.” Mateo returns the hug. However, after a moment “Lidia steps back and slaps [him] hard across the face.”
A police officer is afraid of getting the call every night, “especially since losing his partner two months ago.” His partner died tracking someone participating in Bangers, which encourages Deckers to “kill themselves in the most unique way possible” and post videos that can win their family money. However, he says, most do not win, and “you don’t exactly get a second shot.” The Decker’s attempt to kill themselves resulted in the partner’s death.
There is a car crash. In the midst of a car ride, “Sandy’s eyes widen” then “the car jerks and Howie closes his eyes, a deep sinking in his chest.” The crash is narrated from the perspective of the boys who caused the accident. “The two boys laugh when one car bangs into another, spinning out of control until it crashes against the wall.” A girl survives the accident and remembers the “way [Howie’s] head banged against the reinforced window, heard the sickening crack that will stay with her forever—”
Peck pulls out the gun at the club, intending to kill Rufus. There is a stampede and Mateo says, “People are stepping on me and this is how I’m going to die, a minute before Rufus gets shot to death.”
There is a fight to get Peck to put the gun away. “Mateo punches Peck in the face.” Then, “Peck’s homie swings at Mateo” and someone runs “into Peck and his boy like a train, carrying them through the air as the gun drops, and he slams them against the wall.” Rufus is able to get the gun after he kicks “Peck’s other boy . . . in the face as he goes to grab it. . . Rufus unloaded the gun. All the bullets find their way into the wall.”
Mateo dies in a fire. “When I switch on the burner, my chest sinks with regret. Even when you know death is coming, the blaze of it all is still sudden.”
Rufus fights through the fire to try to find Mateo. He inhales a lot of smoke but reenters the apartment. He finds Mateo and grabs “Mateo, my fingers sink deep into boiled skin . . . half of his face is severely burned, the rest is deep red.”

Drugs and Alcohol

Mateo regrets that “no one will ever get high with [him].”
Rufus describes his appearance in a photo saying, “my eyes uneven, kind of like when I’m high, which I wasn’t (yet).”
Two potential Last Friends reach out to Mateo with the message subject line being “420?” Mateo narrates, “I ignore Kevin and Kelly’s message; not interested in pot.”
Rufus says the gas station “smells like piss and cheap beer.”
Mateo changes his profile to only allow Deckers to reach out, “so I don’t have to deal with anyone looking to buy a couch or pot.”
A girl approaches Rufus on the train who has “an extra can of beer” and asks, “Want one?” Rufus refuses.
Rufus later takes pictures of the “crushed beer cans and water bottles” on the train.
Mateo does not regret going to the party but thinks, “I don’t want to be around people who get so drunk they pass out and eventually black out the nights they’re lucky to be living.”
A girl has a cigarette at one point.
Officer Andrade and his partner “traded dad jokes over beers.”
Officer Andrade plans to “share a beer” with his partner in heaven.
Lidia says while drinking, “I wish this had some kick to it . . . I can’t be sober when I lose you.”
Rufus and Mateo sing “American Pie” which includes lyrics about “whisky and rye.”

Language

Profanity is used often. Profanity includes asshole, god, dumbass, jacked up, damn, multiple forms of shit, hell, fuck, pissed, bullshit, ass, bitch/bitching, dope, dick, bastard, motherfucker, and piss.
Mateo says he’ll “feel ballsier” once he has said his goodbyes to those he loves.
Rufus says to Aimee, “There isn’t a bigger kick to the nuts than you turning your back on the Plutos for the punk-ass kid who got them locked up.”
After Mateo talks about wanting to “leave [their] mark,” Rufus jokes, “We going outside to piss on fire hydrants?”
When Rufus says he loves the Plutos, he notes that “No one cracks homo jokes.”
After Rufus refers to Malcolm and Tagoe as “shadows,” Malcolm jokingly responds, “That because we’re black?”

Supernatural

Rufus asks the Death-Cast employee about how they know when people will die. He guesses, “Crystal ball? Calendar from the future?” He remembers the theories told to him about Death-Cast being a “band of legit psychics and . . . an alien shackled to a bathtub and forced by the government to report End Days.”
Mateo believes Rufus is not a monster because monsters “trap you in your bed and eat you alive” rather than “come to your home and help you live.”
A boy was writing a book about a “demon doctor wearing a stethoscope that could read his patients’ minds.”

Spiritual Content

Rufus considers taking a picture of Aimee’s church to post to Instagram but decides his “nonbelieving ass” shouldn’t have that as his last post.
Aimee is described as “pretty Catholic.”
Rufus explains that “Malcom and Tagoe are always mocking the churches that shun Death-Cast and their ‘unholy visions from Satan.’” He goes on, saying that he finds it “dope how some nuns and priests keep busy way past midnight for Deckers trying to repent, get baptized, and all that good stuff.”
Rufus says, “If there’s a God guy out there like my mom believed, I hope he’s got my back right now.”
Mateo implies that his mother wanted to marry his father before he was born due to “her family’s traditions” believing him to be a “bastard” if she should not. He thinks “the whole bastard thing is stupid.”
Rufus and Mateo visit a graveyard and discuss how they, and others, view the afterlife. Rufus thinks that there are two afterlives: one “when Death-Cast tells us to live out our last day knowing it’s our last” and “then we enter the next and final afterlife without any regrets.” He also believes that if we live too long after knowing we will die then “we turn into ghosts who haunt and kill.” He thinks the final afterlife is “whatever you want.”
Mateo’s dad “believes in the usual golden-gated island in the sky”, which Lidia likes because “the popular afterlife is better than no afterlife”. Mateo thinks it will be “a home theater where you can rewatch your entire life from start to finish”.
Rufus says, “I’m not religious. I believe there’s some alien creator and somewhere for dead people to hang out, but I don’t credit that all as God and heaven.”
Mateo says, “I hope reincarnation is real.” This becomes a recurring wish for him. That in another life, he will be able to find Rufus again.
Mateo asks if Rufus believes in fate. Rufus says he doesn’t, but Mateo asks, “How else do you explain us meeting? . . . If you can believe in two afterlives, you can believe in the universe playing puppet master.”
A girl talks about the book that she is writing which is about reincarnation and a girl trying to find her sister after the sister’s death. The girl also mentions the origins of her name in “a heroine in Irish mythology who took her own life.”
Rufus says after cliff jumping, “It’s like I’ve been baptized or some shit, ditching more anger and sadness and blame and frustration beneath the surface.”

by Jennaly Nolan

A Good Night for Ghosts

When Merlin the magician sends Jack and Annie to New Orleans, Louisiana in 1951, they are on a mission to inspire a young Louis Armstrong to bring jazz to the world. Unfortunately, Louis is too busy working to support his family to spend any time playing music. What’s more, Jack and Annie discover that New Orleans is not only the birthplace of jazz—it’s also haunted. It will take a host of ghosts and a daring plan from Jack and Annie to make this mission a success.

A Good Night for Ghosts uses the setting of New Orleans to show how “musical talent is really a great gift to share with the world.” Jack and Annie meet Louis Armstrong, who goes by the nickname Dippy. As they spend time with Dippy, they discover he is hardworking, cheerful, and never complains. In an interview, Armstrong said, “I didn’t wish for anything that I couldn’t get and I got pretty near everything I wanted because I worked for it.” Armstrong’s can-do attitude is portrayed throughout the book.

When the ghosts of Pirate Jean Lafitte and his crew appear, they have a jolly good time dancing to music and then disappear into the night. Instead of being scary, the pirates’ appearance allows Dippy to show how music can express one’s emotions. The happy ghosts are shown dancing and singing along with the jazz song that Dippy plays.

At the end of the story, Jack and Annie see how the streetcars were segregated. “African Americans were sitting in the back, while only white people were in the front.” When Jack notices the segregation he wonders, “Why would anyone not want to sit next to someone just because they are a different color?” However, the topic is not discussed in any more detail. The back of the book includes facts about New Orleans and Louis Armstrong, as well as a recipe for making spooky slat-dough ghosts.

A Good Night for Ghosts is best suited for proficient readers who are seven or older. Black and white illustrations that show Jack and Annie’s adventures appear every 3 to 7 pages. Throughout the story, readers will learn historical facts about Louis Armstrong and New Orleans. A Good Night for Ghosts blends historical details, magic, and a visit from ghost pirates into an entertaining story that will keep readers flipping the pages until the very end. Readers interested in more ghostly facts should also read Magic Tree House Fact Tracker #20: Ghost.

Sexual Content

None

Violence

When Dippy was twelve years old, he “got too rowdy one time. . . It was New Year’s Eve. I was singing with the fellas, and I got carried away and fired off a gun. . . just into the air.”

Drugs and Alcohol

None

Language

Darn is used once.
Dippy calls Jack and Annie potato heads. “It means you don’t have any more brains than a pair of potatoes.”
Heck is used twice.
When Dippy’s friends leave a blacksmith shop that is rumored to be haunted, Dippy calls them scaredy-cats. Later he calls them fools.
Pirate Jean Lafitte calls Jack, Annie, and some of their friends “scurvy dogs.”

Supernatural

Jack and Annie are given a magic flute. They are told, “The trumpet’s magic will make you a brilliant performer. But the magic can only happen once.” When one person plays the trumpet, “The other has to make up a song. . . and whatever we sing will come true.”
Pirate Jean Lafitte and his crew appear. “The pirate looked like a real person, except you could see right through him.”

Spiritual Content

None

Room on the Broom

The witch and her hat couldn’t be happier, flying through the night sky on their broomstick—until the wind blows away first the witch’s hat, then her bow, then her wand!

Luckily, three helpful animals find the three missing items and all they want in return is a ride on the broomstick. But is there room on the broom for so many new friends? And when disaster strikes, will they be able to save the witch from the clutches of a hungry dragon?

Room on the Broom portrays a witch in a new way. Instead of being scary and evil, the friendly witch happily makes friends with the animals. The witch’s adventure comes to life through the large illustrations, which use a dark and dreary day to contrast with the bright animals and the red dragon. Young readers will love each illustration’s details, such as a fish jumping out of the river and a bird peeking out of a hole in a tree.

The illustrations are not the only fun aspect of the story. The text uses rhyming, repetition, and imagery that makes Room on the Broom an excellent book to read aloud. The surprising and silly conclusion will leave readers with a smile. In the end, the witch’s new friends save her from a dragon. In return, the witch casts a spell to make a new and improved broom that will keep the new friends together for a long time.

Even though Room on the Broom is a picture book, the story is intended to be read aloud to a child, rather than for the child to read it for the first time independently. Each page has 3 to 6 sentences. Even though some pages are text-heavy, the story will keep readers interested until the very end.

Room on the Broom is a great Halloween story that uses humor to teach about kindness and friendship. The silly plot will delight young readers who will want to read the book again and again. For those looking for another unique witch story, The Witch Who Was Afraid of Witches by Alice Low is sure to delight.

Sexual Content

None

Violence

A dragon threatens to eat the witch. He says, “witch with French fries tastes delicious to me!” The witch’s friends save her.

Drugs and Alcohol

None

Language

None

Supernatural

The witch says a spell, “Iggety, ziggety, zaggetry, zoom!” The spell makes a “truly magnificent broom” that has enough seats for all of her friends.

Spiritual Content

None

Gina: The Girl Who Broke the World

Hundreds of years ago, magic disappeared from Earth. At least…UNTIL NOW. Because suddenly, giant magical beings are appearing and only Gina can see them. Not to mention, Gina can somehow do magic herself. Magic is powerful. But it can also be dangerous. With D.J. and Hilo’s help, can Gina figure out how to protect the magical beings from the creatures who are after them? And can she learn how to use her magic to become who she was always meant to be?

Throughout most of the story, Gina does not want to use magic because she is afraid of the consequences. But when an alien shows up wanting to destroy the Nestors, Gina feels the need to protect the Nestors (even though she knows nothing about them). The story focuses on Gina’s attempt to keep the Nestors safe from other aliens. One of the aliens tells Gina, “You are meddling with forces far beyond your understanding. You will do more damage than good.” Despite this, Gina never questions the aliens to find why they want to destroy the Nestors. Instead, Gina fights the aliens, which allows the Nestors to change Earth’s timeline.

The relationship between Hilo, D.J., and Gina was one of the best aspects of the first six books of the series. Unfortunately, in Gina: The Girl Who Broke the World, Gina is left to fight the aliens alone. Instead of helping Gina, Hilo is trying to figure out his human body. Hilo’s struggle adds some bathroom humor. At one point, Hilo tells D.J., “Holy Mackerel! I just went to the bathroom! Pooping is outstanding.” However, this is not the only bathroom humor. Later, Gina meets another alien and she says, “Wow. . . smells like a possum’s butt.” While the juvenile humor may make younger readers smile, it adds nothing to the plotline.

The graphic novel’s panels are illustrated with bright colors that will capture readers’ attention. The graphic novel’s panels have 1 to 7 sentences which mostly use simple sentences with easy vocabulary. The many fight scenes give the story a fast pace and the many onomatopoeia words add interest because they appear in large, colorful text. Readers must first read the other books in the series or they will be confused, as Gina: The Girl Who Broke the World jumps right into the action and doesn’t explain the relationships between the characters

Gina: The Girl Who Broke the World is a confusing sequel that doesn’t have the same appeal as the first six books in the series. Instead of trying to help Gina fight the aliens, Hilo is more interested in food and his body functions. To make matters worse, the battle scenes are confusing not only because of the many aliens but also because the Nestors are shapeshifters. While Gina’s desire to help the Nestors is admirable, it’s unrealistic that no one tries to find out why the Nestors have come to earth.

While Gina: The Girl Who Broke the World is a disappointing sequel, the book may be worth reading because it sets up what could be an interesting conflict to be explored in the next book. If you’re looking for another humorous and fast-paced graphic novel, check out the Bird & Squirrel Series by James Burks.

Sexual Content

None

Violence

A strange blue alien shoots a laser at Gina. The alien puts Gina in a bubble, but she escapes. Gina jumps on the creature’s back. The creature hits a tree and knocks himself out. The fight is illustrated over nine pages.
Two alien creatures that look like “furballs” chase Gina. They snap their teeth at her and then throw up an orange substance that covers Gina. Gina finally lassos the creatures and then they disappear. The scene is illustrated over six pages.
A strange snapping bird creature chases two small alien rabbits. Gina saves the alien rabbits. The snapping bird creature ties Gina up. The scene is illustrated over 15 pages.
The blue alien appears and starts shooting lasers at Gina, who is trying to protect the Nestors. The alien blows up a house. Gina uses her power to chase the alien, who flees.
A giant robot-like alien appears wielding a large sword. The alien tries to kill Gina in order to get to the Nestors. Both Gina and the alien use magical powers during the battle. The fighting is illustrated over ten pages.

Drugs and Alcohol

None

Language

Hilo uses the phrase “holy mackerel” several times.
Dang it is used one time.
Crud is used four times. This includes when Gina uses the phrase “crud and scrambled eggs.”
J.’s brother, Dexter, calls his siblings dork and dorkus.

Supernatural

At first, Gina is the only person who can see the alien creatures. Gina discovers that she is an enchanter, who “draws magic from the planet itself.”
Alien creatures appear on Earth. Hilo explains who the creatures are. “Baba Yaga clan members—or, as I like to call them, Bab Yags!—aren’t natural shape-shifters. They need a magic totem or an amulet that enables them to transmogrify!”
Nestors have “the ability to enhance magic. To make spells or powers increase a hundredfold,” which is why they have been held captive on another planet. When the Nestors consume food of this planet, it makes them visible.
An alien uses magic to turn Gina into a huge otter.
The Nestors change Earth’s timeline. “The Nestors went back in time. They went back to the time before magic left earth. They changed the Earth’s history.” However, Gina was able to “shield” herself and three others from the change. Gina and her friends are the only people who know what the Earth used to be like.

Spiritual Content

None

The Raven Boys

The predictions from Blue Sargent’s house on 300 Fox Way never seem out of the ordinary for her. Blue’s mother Maura Sargent and the other women living in 300 Fox Way—Persephone, Calla, and Orla—are all psychics who weave their predictions throughout the town of Henrietta, Virginia so regularly that for Blue it seems like second-nature. Unlike the rest of her family, however, Blue can only amplify the psychics’ powers, without seeing any of that power herself. Other truths— such as the identity of Blue’s father, or the reason why her aunt Neeve comes to town after success as a TV psychic— also remain hidden from Blue.

Despite this, there is one conclusion clearly given to Blue, over and over throughout her life, in runes, in palm readings, decks of tarot and tea leaves: the prediction that if Blue were to kiss her true love, he would die.

Blue decides to never fall in love, casting this prediction aside like a fantasy. But when she arrives, Neeve tells Blue this is the year Blue will fall in love. And on St. Mark’s Eve, the day when Maura and Blue record the names of the spirits set to die in twelve months, Blue sees a boy from the Aglionby Acadamy. A boy named Gansey.

Blue usually avoids the boys at the wealthy Aglionby Academy. Rich boys, she says, “think they’re better than us.” However, after St. Mark’s Day, an encounter with the living Gansey and his friends—Ronan, Adam, and Noah— at the diner where she works draws Blue towards this group of boys as they sweep her into their continuous search for a sleeping Welsh king among the ley lines of Henrietta. As the ley lines form a pattern between significant supernatural quirks and historical signifiers, they also begin to show Blue and the Raven Boys an uncanny world hidden deep below this Virginian town’s mundane surface.

The story moves between the perspectives of Blue, Gansey, Adam, and an Aglionby Latin teacher known as Barrington Whelk. The Raven Boys grounds legends of the Welsh King Glendower and whimsical, otherworldly fantasy within a small town sheerly divided by class. Settings that branch everywhere from a room full of mirrored worlds, the well-worn upholstery of a bright orange Camaro, and the Latin whispers of a forest called Cabeswater will transfix readers as they plunge into a narrative rich with intricately detailed plot twists.

However, the real magic in Stiefvater’s writing lies in her ability to present each character in The Raven Boys as realistic characters with their own, individual sense of what’s right and what’s necessary in the challenges they face. Each character holds their own trajectories: Blue struggles to reconcile how to define her own unique power and with the idea, she might someday kill Gansey. Gansey holds a desperate need to define himself beyond his family’s wealth through his hunt for Glendower. Ronan fiercely battles with his brother’s supervision following the death of their father. Adam strives to be self-sufficient with a free will that stands apart from his abusive father and Gansey’s money. Noah is cold because, as he says, “I’ve been dead for seven years.” All characters hold their own journey throughout the narrative, which influences the way they interact with each other in compelling ways. Readers will truly fall in love with The Raven Boys characters as they each find the balance between self-reliance and trust in others, the power in realizing self-worth, the beauty of remembering things often overlooked, and the peace of understanding that things aren’t always what they may seem. In evoking the magic of Henrietta, Virginia, Stiefvater shows every reader the complicated path towards finding the place you truly feel like you belong.

Sexual Content

When Gansey offers to pay Blue to talk to Adam, Blue says, “I am not a prostitute. . . clearly you pay most of your female companions by the hour and don’t know how it works with the real world.”

Violence

Aglionby Academy’s Latin teacher, Mr. Whelk, recalls a time when he was younger and a friend was, “on the ground. Not dead, but dying. His legs still pedaled on the uneven surface behind him. His face was just. . . done.” This describes the moment when Mr. Whelk kills his friend Czerny.
In the parking lot, Ronan and Declan meet and get into a fist fight. This fight lasts about four pages, in which Declan and Ronan exchange blows, and Gansey tries to grab Ronan’s arms and catches a punch from Declan instead. The physical fight ends when, “with a neat flick of his wrist, Ronan smacked Declan’s head off the driver’s side door of the Volvo. It made a sick, wet sound.”
After doing a reading for Mr. Whelk, Calla tells Blue that if she sees Mr. Whelk again, “Kick him in the nuts. Then run the other way.”
One day, Adam is absent from school, and the next time Gansey sees him, Adam has a bruise across his cheek. Speaking about Adam’s father, Gansey says, “So you won’t leave because of your pride? He’ll kill you . . . why don’t you let Ronan teach you to fight?” In response, Adam says, “Because then he will kill me . . . he has a gun.”
Mr. Whelk orders Gansey to show him to the forest Cabeswater. To get him to comply, Mr. Whelk holds a gun to Gansey’s head. Gansey escapes by punching Whelk.
One scene depicts Adam’s father, Robert Parrish, violently accusing Adam of lying to him about how much money he makes at his job. Robert Parrish takes Adam’s chin and then hits his face. Adam falls and hits the stair railing of his house. Right as Robert picks him up again, Adam’s friend Ronan—who had just dropped Adam off at his house— gets out of his car and smashes his fist into Robert’s face. Ronan and Robert fight. “The fight was dirty. At one point Ronan went down and Robert Parrish kicked, hard, at his face. Ronan’s forearms came up, all instinct, to protect himself. Parrish lunged in to rip them free. Ronan’s hand lashed out like a snake, dragging Parrish to the ground with him.” The scene of abuse, and the fight following, lasts about five pages.
Trying to wake the ley line herself, Neeve Tasers ties Mr. Whelk into the back of her car. She plans to take him to the forest Cabeswater in order to kill him as a sacrifice, but he manages to escape.
Adam has a vision of the trees in Cabeswater. In this dream, “There was blood everywhere. Are you happy now, Adam? Ronan snarled. He knelt beside Gansey, who convulsed in the dirt.”
When Mr. Whelk escapes Neeve, he “selected a fallen branch and crashed it down on [Neeve’s] head with as much force as he could muster . . . Neeve moaned and shook her head slowly, so Whelk gave her another blow for good measure.” Whelk then ties up Neeve and drags her into the center of the pentagram.
To convince Whelk to untie Neeve, Adam draws a gun on Mr. Whelk. Whelk stops him by threatening to “cut [Neeve’s] face off.” When Neeve disappears from the clearing, Whelk runs towards the pentagram but Ronan “hurled himself toward Whelk at the same moment that Whelk rose with the gun. Whelk smashed the side of it into Ronan’s jaw.” After this, the fight dies down as Whelk points the pistol at Gansey. This interaction lasts about four pages.
After Adam sacrifices himself to the forest, Mr. Whelk points his gun at Adam and pulls the trigger, but Adam remains unharmed. When “a tremendous rippling herd of white-horned beasts” erupts from the forest floor, Adam manages to take hold of the gun and keep Whelk away from the pentagram-marked circle, a space the beasts were avoiding. Mr. Whelk ends up trampled by the beasts.

Drugs and Alcohol

Gansey is seen drinking in the St. Agnes church one night.

Language

Profanity is used often throughout the book, mainly the words damn, fuck, goddamn, bitch, bastard, shit, and hell. These words are mainly used by Blue, Gansey, Ronan, and Adam, and are most often spoken to each other.
There are some instances where both Blue and Adam are referred to as “white trash” by peers at their school and at one point by Gansey’s sister.

Supernatural

Blue, her mother Maura, and her aunt Neeve go to an abandoned church in Henrietta on St. Mark’s Eve in order to talk to the spirits that will die that year. The spirits walk along the ley line as Maura and Neeve ask for their names. This is also when Blue sees an apparition of a future Gansey about to die.
Blue is known to amplify the power of spirits and her family’s psychic powers “like a walking battery.”
Blue feels tired after St. Mark’s Eve because, as Maura says to her, “you let fifteen spirits walk through your body while you chatted with a dead boy.”
Gansey and a professor named Malory talk about ley lines as if they are underground spirit roads, charged with energy.
Mr. Whelk recalls the time he tried to search for signs of supernatural activity along the ley line, and performed a ritual with his friend, Czerny, as a way to give sacrifice to the ley line. This ritual results in Mr. Whelk killing Czerny.
Finding a slanting, green-carpeted field outlined in a pale fracture of lines that look like a raven, Gansey, Ronan, Blue, and Adam find the forest Cabeswater, a mystical forest that performs fantastical things including: speaking in Latin, changing the color of fish in its streams, warping time, and giving each of the kids a vision when they step into the cavity of one of its trees.
When searching Neeve’s room, Calla and Persephone tell Blue not to step between the pair of mirrors set there. When asked why, Calla says, “Who knows what she’s doing with them. I don’t want my soul put in a bottle in some other dimension or something.”
Because Blue’s family are all psychics, the women tell fortunes. Blue “had her fingers spread wide, her palm examined, her cards plucked from velvet-edged decks . . . thumbs were pressed to the invisible, third eye that was said to lie between everyone’s eyebrows. Runes were cast and dreams interpreted, tea leaves scrutinized and séances conducted.”
Maura, Calla, and Persephone do a Tarot reading for Gansey, Adam, and Ronan.
Neeve tries to figure out more about Gansey by scrying—this process involves attempting to foretell the future or understand the future through a reflective surface (Neeve uses a bowl of cran-grape juice). This process is described as dangerous because the person scrying can often lose their way and end up lost in this other reality they are scrying to.
Blue notices that Neeve is doing a ritual of deep scrying. She describes the setting as “a five-pointed star marked around the beech tree. One point was the candle, and another the pool of dark water. An unlit candle marked the third point and an empty bowl the fourth… Neeve was the final point.” Neeve’s voice is described as distant and far away. Neeve says she is “on the corpse road.” Blue sees something rising out of the water before she breaks Neeve from her trance.
Neeve makes a pentagram in Cabeswater in order to sacrifice Mr. Whelk.
Neeve is said to disappear from the pentagram in Cabeswater right as Gansey, Blue and Ronan arrive to face Whelk.
Adam ends up waking up the ley line by digging his fingers into the soft mossy turf in the center of the pentagram on the forest floor and saying, “I sacrifice myself . . . I will be your hands . . . I will be your eyes.” At this moment, the ground begins to roll, and “a tremendous rippling herd of white-horned beasts” erupts from the forest.

Spiritual Content

Ronan and his brothers are all known as regular churchgoers, as it is well known that, “all of the Lynch brothers went to St. Agnes every Sunday.”
One night, Neeve advises Blue, “Watch for the devil. When there’s a god, there’s always a legion of devils.”
Blue, Ronan, and Gansey bury the bones of Czerny at the old ruined church. Blue says at this time, “No one will bother them here . . . and we know it’s on the ley line. And it’s holy ground.”

by Hannah Olsson

After the Shot Drops

After the Shot Drops follows the story of a friendship between two high school sophomores, Bunny and Nasir. Although they have been best friends since childhood, their friendship begins to deteriorate after Bunny transfers from Whitman High to a private, affluent, less-diverse school. Bunny, a rising star in high school basketball, has a dream for making it to the NBA. He is noticed for his athletic prowess, but the path to making his basketball dream may lead him to losing Nasir as both a friend and confidante.

Besieged with problems of his own, Nasir must prevent his impoverished cousin, Wallace, from becoming homeless. Wallace is in debt and on the verge of homelessness. In order to make money quickly, Wallace bets against Bunny’s team in the upcoming basketball state championships. However, thanks to Bunny’s amazing basketball skills, this plan quickly falls apart with terrible consequences for Wallace, Nasir, and ultimately Bunny.

After the Shot Drops is told in an alternating pattern of first-person accounts, thus weaving together a narrative about the lives of both main characters, Bunny and Nasir. Each chapter shifts between both characters, which allows the audience to create a sympathetic connection to each of them. Each character must find themselves amidst their drama making their struggles highly relatable. Although Bunny and Nasir become increasingly distant, the audience is treated to both the joys and sorrows from each of their perspectives.

Through the lens of basketball, Ribay demonstrates the awesome, yet sometimes divisive power of competitive ambition. In this touching story of friendship, readers will learn about the difficulties facing people of color in America. While the book does not directly address racism, certain instances and scenes poke holes in prevailing stereotypes in order to defy them. While there are a few violent scenes and swear words, Ribay strategically uses these devices to intensify the story’s drama.

After the Shot Drops is a face-paced, intense, and often empathetic story that highlights the difficulties of balancing friendships. Ribay’s exciting descriptions of basketball games and character building lead the audience towards forging a real and very moving connection with each character.

Sexual Content

Bunny and his girlfriend, Keyona, exchange intimate kisses while standing next to traffic. “Some passing car beeps its horn, and then another car honks at us, and then another like it’s become a thing everyone’s doing. We start laughing even as we’re still kissing”
While at the victory party, Bunny fantasizes in a direct, suggestive manner about his new friend Brooke. “To be honest, I try to not look at her butt, but it’s right there and it’s looking real nice in those jeans”

Violence

In an act of revenge against Bunny’s betrayal, Wallace convinces a hesitant Nasir to paint the front of Bunny’s house with a smattering of eggs. Wallace “cocks his arm back and chucks the egg. It hits the brick of the Thompsons’ row house with a small but oddly satisfying ”
After making a few bad bets on local sports, Wallace is punched in the face at a party by one of the gamblers as a warning. “[The stranger’s] fist cracks into the side of Wallace’s jaw, and Wallace drops to the ground like a sack of bricks”
To sublimate his guilt, Nasir plays a shooting video game in which he kills Nazi zombies. “I pull the trigger the moment the Nazi zombie shambles out of the darkness and into my crosshairs. Head shot. Blood, brain matter, and skill fragments spray the wall.”
After falling further in debt with the gamblers, Wallace tells Nasir that he faces pretty fatal consequences unless he is able to pony up the money. Specifically, Wallace reflects on the story of a former late classmate as he says, “Word on the street is that the bullet he caught by accident was meant for someone who fucked with these guys.”
During the heat of the third quarter in the state championship game, Bunny takes an elbow directly to the face. The opponent “looks to the outside like he’s going to pass but then pivots, swinging his elbows—clocks me right in the nose.” He was knocked unconscious with a nearly broken, bleeding nose.
A heated shouting and punching match begins between Bunny and Wallace. Bunny sees “Wallace standing there, holding something and pointing it at me – he shifts, and it glints, catching the light from one of the faraway streetlamps. It’s a gun.” Wallace aims and shoots Bunny straight in the chest. Bunny is quickly rushed to the hospital after massive blood loss but eventually makes a full recovery.

Drugs and Alcohol

While skipping out on class, Bunny’s peers at St. Sebastian’s attempt to get him to smoke weed for his first time.
After going to the movies with Nasir, Wallace lights up a joint. Wallace “fishes a blunt from his pocket and lights up right there in front of the theater.”
Nasir and Wallace attend a house party in which many guests are using drugs and alcohol. “Most [people here] look like they’re college age, and most have a drink in one hand and a cigarette or blunt in the other.”
After winning a game without Bunny playing, the St. Sebastian’s team celebrates by throwing a classic high school party laden with cheap alcohol and drugs. “There are red cups arranged in a triangle at either end. Two guys are trying to toss a Ping-Pong ball into the cups on the opposite end.”
After winning the state championship, Nasir and Bunny catch up in their neighborhood but are approached by a drunk Wallace, who is brandishing a gun. Nasir notices Wallace approaching “… as soon as I see his tall figure making its way toward us, kicking up the snow like a playground bully kicking over some kid’s block city, I know something’s not right. He’s swaying, clutching a bottle in a paper bag in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other.”

Language

While Nasir and Wallace are at the cinema, they encounter Bunny and his girlfriend Keyona, whom Nasir had a crush on. Wallace finds Bunny, Nasir and Keyona and says “There you are, Nas. Shit, I thought you abandoned my ass.”
After coating Bunny’s house with eggs, Wallace tells Nasir to “[g]et this shit out of your system, or I’ll empty the rest of this carton on his house myself.”
Inside the Thompsons’ row house, Bunny and Keyona are studying while they hear the muted thumping of eggs against the side of the house. Keyona says, “I’m sorry that people can’t let it go. That you have to deal with this ignorant shit.”
Wallace rebukes Bunny in an attempt to further ingratiate himself with Nasir. “Wallace spits. ‘Man, fuck Bunny.’ And even though he’s expressed similar sentiments before, his words feel laced with a new level of malice.”
While driving Nasir to a party in their neighborhood, Wallace colorfully expresses his frustration with the lack of available parking. “Wallace slams his fists on the steering wheel. ‘Goddammit, motherfucking, bitch-ass, motherfucker,’ he mutters around the cigarette.”
Wallace tries to convince Nasir to befriend Bunny again in order to make him lose an upcoming game as he says “I know this isn’t easy for you, Nas, and I know I can be a dickhead some of the time – okay, a lot of the time – but I appreciate you trying to help out me and G[randma].”
With words flitting through his anxious mind, Nasir reflects on his plan to force Bunny to sit out for the rest of the season. “ Fearful. Friendless. Fucked.”
After a string of seemingly unfair calls made by a basketball referee, one of Bunny’s teammates exclaims loudly, “Bullshit!”
In the state championship game, Bunny believes the referee is making unfair calls and cries, “Bullshit!”
At the park, an inebriated Wallace confronts Bunny saying, “Fuck you.”

Supernatural

None

Spiritual Content

To renew their friendship, Bunny takes Nasir to St. Sebastian’s and to the school’s library, which is large. Nasir says, “What’s up there. . . God?”

by Daniel Klein

American Panda

Mei Lu is a 17-year old freshman at MIT and a first-generation Taiwanese-American. She skipped fourth grade because of her parents’ master plan for her: Go to a prestigious school. Get into med school and become a doctor. Marry a parent-approved Taiwanese man. Have children with said man, and be the obedient, submissive wife she was always meant to be. Mei, however, has a secret. Well, multiple secrets: She can’t stand germs. She’s falling asleep during her biology lectures. She loves dance, and she develops a crush on a Japanese peer named Darren Takahashi. Because her mother tends to be overbearing and her father is stuck to the traditional Chinese customs, Mei feels suffocated. She doesn’t know how to cope with her parents and the traditions that keep her chained down.

Despite her challenges, Mei decides to take a leap of faith and teach dance classes. Plus, she gets into a relationship with Darren, and reunites with her estranged brother Xing, who was disowned because he dated a woman his parents did not approve of. Mei begins a web of lies to keep up the facade of medical school, but ultimately she learns that there is no one way to be an Asian-American. She defies her parents’ expectations and strays from their planned path. Mei also brings her mother along in the journey, helping her learn to break free from the traditions that bind both of them.

American Panda is written from the perspective of Mei, who takes the readers through the ups and downs of being a freshman college student. Every chapter ends with a voice mail, usually from Mei’s mother, or a text message thread with Darren, which allows the reader to hear Mei’s inner monologue and listen to her thoughts on being a doctor, her distaste for germs, and her crush on Darren. This allows the reader to feel more empathy for her when her parents eventually disown her. The story unlocks a new perspective through Mei and teaches about Chinese culture. For example, a Chinese tradition is to eat with the family and order large dishes for the family to share. “We ordered so much another table had to be dragged over. After dishing food to Nǎinai, Yilong stacked her plate five layers high. A few bāos and pork balls tumbled off and she hurried to scoop them back on top.”

American Panda also exposes the American audience to the Chinese-American experience, such as Mei knowing specific proverbs and words in Chinese. Mei does not speak Chinese fluently but some objects come to her in Chinese. For insance, instead of calling her mom her mother, she calls her mǔqīn. The dialect is also very specific, as the author states she based it on her family’s own dialect. Mei calls her paternal grandparents Nǎinai (grandma) and Yéye (grandpa), her mother is called mǔqīn. The book even features Mei creating her own Chinglish (Chinese and English) words, something many Chinese-Americans may have done in their youth. “For the first eight years of my life, I was not Mei, only bǎobèi to my father, his treasure. And for those same years, he was my bábǐ, the Chinglish word I made up for ‘daddy.’”

American Panda tackles the challenge of keeping traditions alive while also attempting to follow your dreams and passions. Mei struggles to appease both herself, a first-gen Taiwanese-American, and her parents, who are both immigrants. American Panda gives Mei the space to explore her creativity and love for the arts, and to break away from the harmful Model Minority Myth that often stereotypes Asians into being emotionless, backwards thinking, and only into STEM. The story shows a diverse cast of Asian characters. Darren, for example, is in STEM but expresses a desire to go into research or academia. Ying-Na, the cautionary tale of Mei’s local Chinese community, becomes a comedian. Nicolette, her roommate, is sexually active and confident in her sexuality but isn’t submissive like the Lotus Flower stereotype.

While American Panda allows for diversity within the Asian culture, it does not accurately capture the Chinese-American experience. It leaves out the reality of being in a country that has a history of anti-Asian racism and also focuses solely on East Asians. Despite this, the story validates Mei’s feelings of suffocation by her culture and ultimately gives her an ending where she can meet in the middle while getting everything she wants. Readers who want a cute love story, a story about college antics, and/or want to learn more about the Chinese-American experience should read American Panda.

Sexual Content

Reproductive health is mentioned many times, such as Mei’s sister-in-law suffering from endometriosis, Mei’s bully getting chlamydia, and Mei getting herpes from her unwashed jeans. One of the characters, Dr. Tina Chang, is also a gynecologist and Mei shadows her. There is also a large emphasis on women’s reproductive health due to Chinese traditions emphasizing on bearing a son to pass on the family name.
Mei refers to Darren as being yummy because he’s attractive. “Being at MIT Medical post-rash-investigation was the one situation in which I didn’t want to see the spiky outline I was constantly searching for. . . so of course there he was, in all his six-foot-something glory. And when I say glory, I mean yumminess.”
Mei sees one of Darren’s dimples and says, “I wanted to touch it. Kiss it. Memorize it.”
On the way back from her date with Darren, Mei says “we had held hands the entire way [back to the dorm].”
Mei and Darren make out. After their make out session, Darren kisses Mei again. “His hands pressed the small of my back, pulling my lips to his.” This scene lasts for two pages.
On their way to a wedding, Mei and Darren kiss. “He gently lifted my chin with his finger, then closed the distance between us and kissed me where the whipped cream had been.”
Mei says she wants to kiss Darren’s pouted lips. “I wanted to kiss it so bad.”
Before meeting with Mei’s mother, her and Darren kiss. “He wrapped his hand around the small of my back and pulled me to his lips. . . And then it was just us. I sank into him. Melted into his kiss.”

Violence

After meeting Darren for the first time, Mei’s mom comments on the fact that he is Japanese. “He’s Japanese, Mei. . . They murdered our family. Orphaned my mother.” This is a direct reference to the Japanese occupation of China, which resulted in thousands of deaths.
When Mei meets her roommate Nicolette, who is also Taiwanese, Nicolette says, “Your family came to Taiwan in 1949, during the Communist Revolution. Your family killed my family.” There were already Chinese people who fled to Taiwan in the 1800s, before the Communist Revolution.

Drugs and Alcohol

In many of Ying-Na’s rumors, it’s mentioned that she “had one sip of alcohol and flunked out of college.” This rumor is later proven to be false. At Ying-Na’s stand-up comedy show, she says she tried alcohol one time.
Ying-Na makes jokes about the rumors she’s heard about her being a failure. “Did you know that I was giving head in the public-school bathroom yesterday at the same time I was peddling heroin on the other side of town?”

Language

Fuck, and all of its variations, are used frequently. For example, Mei screams, “No fucking way!” when asked if she wants to look through the leg muscles of a cadaver. In addition, Nicolette told Mei, “You look hot as fuck.”
Shit is also used multiple times. For example, when Mei uses Nicolette’s soap, Nicolette says, “That shit’s expensive!”
When Mei learns about someone’s coming out story and the negative reception she got from her family. Mei says, “That’s bullshit.”
During a movie screening, someone says, “C’mon projector guy! Get your shit together.” According to Darren, it’s part of tradition though.
Nicolette calls a guy she hooked up with an asshole. “What the fuck Arthur! You made my roommate hit her head. You’re such an asshole!” The guy, Arthur, responds by saying, “You’re the asshole!”
During her stand-up show, Ying-Na makes a joke about the Chinese Farmer’s Calendar and wishing it would tell her “when [her] period would actually come, and which cycles would be an uber-bitch.”
Ying-Na jokes about how she became the Chinese community’s cautionary tale. “I turned into the local Chinese community’s cautionary tale: whore, spinster, homeless, whatever Asian parent’s biggest fear was.”

Supernatural

None

Spiritual

Mei and her family are Buddhist and Mei refers to many Buddhist traditions, such as making an altar for her family’s deceased members, praying at the altar, and letting the door open so her Nainai’s spirit can come into the funeral parlor.
Mei’s brother, Xing, and his fiancée Esther have a Christian wedding.

by Emma Hua

Scorpion Mountain

Hal, his Brotherband crew, and the Ranger Gilan have freed the twelve Araluens sold into slavery. Returning to Araluen, Gilan is given a new mission by King Duncan: protect his daughter’s life. Princess Cassandra has survived one attempt on her life already, and now whispers of a second attempt have reached the kingdom. A deadly sect known as the Scorpion Cult is thought to be behind the assassination threat. Not waiting to see if the knife will strike true, the Brotherband again teams up with Gilan to track down the would-be killers.

Like the other books in the Brotherband series, Scorpion Mountain has nonstop action as Hal and the other Herons travel to a new location. Several characters from the Ranger’s Apprentice Series make an appearance and assist the Herons. The Herons fight in several bloody battles, which are described in more gruesome detail than in the previous books. One member of the brotherband, Ulf, is seriously injured and must be left behind. However, Ulf eventually heals from his wounds and is reunited with the Herons. While much of Ulf and his brother’s bickering was entertaining, many readers will find that they do not miss the brothers’ constant arguing.

As the fifth installment of the series, Scorpion Mountain continues to show the different qualities of the Brotherband Series, however, none of the characters show personal growth. Even though the Herons visit several new locations, the story is predictable and contains few surprises. Like the other books in the series, the crew travel somewhere new, Hal comes up with a brilliant invention, they fight an epic battle and then return home to a celebration. While the interaction between the characters is entertaining, some readers may find the story’s plot tedious rather than exciting.

Fans of the Brotherband Series will find that Scorpion Mountain uses the same formula as the other books in the series. Gilan and the other characters from the Ranger’s Apprentice add interest to the story; however, the characters are not well developed. Despite the story’s predictability, the action and adventure will keep devoted readers interested.

Sexual Content

None

Violence

When an assassin tries to kill the princess, Lydia throws a blunt dart at him, knocking him out. He is then tied to a chair and questioned.
In order to free a town from raiders, the Herons attack one of their ships. When they get close to the ship, “Lydia’s first dart hit the helmsmen, killing him instantly. He reeled back across the deck, releasing the tiller, then crashing to the planks.”
The Herons use the Mangler to throw huge projectiles at the ship. One enemy tried to throw a spear at the Herons but, “He never managed it. An arrow suddenly thudded into his chest.”
During the battle, the slave master peeked out of the port and “was caught across the jaw by one of the leaping oar butts. He fell senseless to the deck. Two of the rowers, seeing their chance, leapt on him, drawing the long knife from his scabbard.” The slaves kill the man.
The Herons board the ship and Stig uses his ax to kill an enemy. “The man stumbled before falling on his side, a shocked look on his features.” The Herons kill every crew member. The battle is described over 11 pages.
The Herons enter a harbor and attack an invading force. “Philip was drawing back the second arrow when he felt a massive impact against his chest. . . The impact was like a hard punch but the area was numb. Then the pain came. Huge waves of it. . . he collapsed to the wharf like a rag doll.”
As the Herons enter the town, they are greeted by Invaders. “Thorn’s terrible club-hand rose and fell and swept from side to side, breaking bones, cracking ribs, sending enemies flying.”
During the battle, a “man went down, his horse somersaulting beneath him and sending him flying headlong into the rocky ground.” A lot of the enemies are killed and Ulf is seriously injured. The battle is described over 40 pages.
A group of cult members attacks the Herons. One man “begun to swing down from the saddle when Lydia’s first dart arrived. It went into his upper arm, slightly above the small circular shield that he wore there, and penetrated through to his body.” The man’s horse spooks and the man is “dragged behind it, one foot still firmly trapped in the stirrup.”
A man gets caught in a “ditch concealed by the thornbush.” Thorn “leaned forward and brought a huge, iron-studded war club down on his skull with crushing effect. The attacker’s hoarse war cry was cut short and he fell face-down, suspended on the clinging thornbush.”
During the battle, Ingvar hits a man. “The Ishti warrior felt as if a galloping horse had slammed onto his shield. He was hurled back several paces.” The warriors retreat. The battle is described over five pages.
The Shurmel, a cult leader, and Gilan fight one-on-one. The Shurmel thrusts his sword and “meeting no solid resistance, the Shurmel staggered forward, off balance, and felt the razor-sharp point of Gilan’s sword as it flicked up to touch his throat. A small runnel of blood came from the spot where it touched.”
During the fight, “Gilan went on the attack.” The Shurmel “staggered back clumsily, only just managing to avoid the stroke.” Eventually, Gilan “stepped forward and slammed his axe into the Shurmel’s unprotected ribs, driving the weapon to the hilt. . . The Shurmel’s eyes mirrored shock, then disbelief, then pain, in quick succession. Then his knees gave way under him and his eyes went completely blank as he collapsed to the stone floor.” The fight is described over 5 pages.
A group of cult members attempts to attack the Herons’ ship. As a warrior tries to get onto the ship, Thorn’s “heavy club-hand swept down and smashed the man aside. He fell awkwardly, half in the water. . .” The man tries to get back onto the raft causing one of his comrades to stagger. “Thorn’s sword caught him in the middle of the chest and he fell into the sea without another word.”
As the enemy tries to board the Heron, “Ingvar let out a bellow of fighting rage and lunged with his voulge over the side. The blade stabbed in and out like a striking cobra, and three of the Ishti fell back from the ship in terror.” Another raft gets close to the Heron and two men board the ship. “One of them went no farther. A heavy dart flashed across along the deck and thudded into his chest.” The scene is described over several chapters.
Reinforcements begin boarding a raft. Someone shoots the Mangler, which is a huge crossbow. “It hit the raft at an angle, but the impact was enough to shatter the pottery warhead and send shards of hard clay whirling through the crew. . . the water around the raft turned red with their blood.”
Hal sees the warriors and his “land sailor plowed at full speed into the three men, hurling them to either side like so many ninepins.” At the end of the fight, “a third of the Ishti fighters had been killed or wounded . . . The others wasted no time in surrendering.”

Drugs and Alcohol

When a king meets with the Herons, he offers them ale or wine. They decline.
Thorn is a recovering alcoholic. He thinks back to a time when “he saw most things over the rim of a brandy tankard.”
An assassin shoots a poisoned arrow at the princess.
Philip the Bloodyhand is captain of an invading force. When he is woken up, he has a hangover, and “several empty wine flasks and jars [were] scattered around the room.” Phillip orders a man to “get me wine.”
A small group of the Herons go to negotiate with a cult leader. When they arrive, the members were chewing something that Gilan assumes is “some kind of drug. Possibly a hallucinogenic or relaxant.”
When the Herons return home, the town throws a huge party where ale is served.

Language

Occasionally, characters use a name of a Skandian god as an exclamation. For example, “Gorlog’s earwax,” “Hern’s breath,” and “Gorlog’s eyebrows.”

Supernatural

None

Spiritual Content

The assassin said he is protected by Imrika, the goddess of death.
When Gilan kills the cult leader, the Shurmel “realized that this ridiculous foreigner offered him a wonderful opportunity. Truly, he thought, he has a gift from the goddess Imrika. He raised his eyes to the heaven and uttered a silent word of thanks for this gift.”
When Gilan runs into an acquaintance, the man says, “It is you! May the almighty one be praised”

Behold the Beautiful Dung Beetle

Simple science text and dramatic illustrations give a close-up view of the fascinating world of the dung beetle. When an animal lightens its load, dung beetles race to the scene. They battle over, devour, hoard, and lay their eggs in the precious poop. Dung is food, drink, and fuel for new life – as crucial to these beetles as the beetles are to many habitats, including our own.

Young readers may get squeamish when they think of a beetle eating dung, but right from the start Behold the Beautiful Dung Beetle explains dung in a neutral tone. “Somewhere in the world right now an animal is lightening its load.” Most of the time, animal waste is called dung, but it is also called poop or feces. While humans would never consider eating dung, for a dung beetle, “one animal’s waste is the dung beetle’s treasure.”

Readers may think a picture book that illustrates poop would be gross, but at times the illustrations make it seem surprisingly spectacular. Most of the time, the dung piles look like brown balls. The watercolor illustrations use hues of nature and most of the illustrations are done in shades of brown and gold. The illustrations give a close look at the beetle’s home and body parts. While the focus is on the different types of beetles, the pictures also show the other animals that live near dung beetles. Readers will have fun looking at the elephants, giraffes, and other animals that appear in the background.

Even though Behold the Beautiful Dung Beetle is a picture book, the story is intended to be read aloud to a child, rather than for the child to read it for the first time independently. Each page has 1 to 6 sentences. Because some of the text is written in complex sentences with advanced vocabulary, young readers may need help. The book ends with more beetle facts, a diagram, a glossary, and a bibliography.

Behold the Beautiful Dung Beetle is packed full of interesting facts and shows how beetles help the environment. By the time readers get to the last page, they will realize that dung beetles aren’t gross at all. Instead, readers will discover that beetles are amazing. “Clad in splendor, dung beetles ascend into our world. They are ancient symbols of life and renewal.”

Sexual Content

The book explains the mating of beetles. For example, “Tunnelers mate and stash their eggs deep inside underground vaults.”

Violence

Sometimes dung beetles fight for their food. “Rollers engage in head-to-head combat to defend their dung—and for the promise of finding a mate.”
Different types of dung beetles fight in different ways. “Tunnelers push and pry and twist and turn in underground battles . . . The bigger beetles with larger horns usually force smaller beetles out of the nest and away from dung supplies.”

Drugs and Alcohol

None

Language

None

Supernatural

None

Spiritual Content

None

Bridge of Souls

Where there are ghosts, Cassidy Blake follows . . . Unless it’s the other way around?

Cassidy thinks she might have this ghost-hunting thing down. After all, she and her ghost best friend, Jacob, have survived two haunted cities while traveling for her parents’ TV show. But nothing can prepare Cassidy for New Orleans, a city bursting with old magic, secret societies, and scary seances. And the biggest surprise? An enemy Cass never expected to face: a messenger of death itself. Is Cassidy up to the challenge—and what will she have to lose in order to win?

Readers of City of Ghost and Tunnel of Bones will be eager to follow Cassidy on her new and suspenseful adventure. The Bridge of Souls takes on a more dangerous tone because Cassidy is being hunted by the Emissary, the messenger of death. Plus, Cassidy’s parents talk about historical ghosts who were serial killers. While the story never goes into gory details, the content may give some readers nightmares.

Since each book in the series takes place in a new city, new characters are introduced that help keep the story interesting. Jacob and Lara are central figures that reappear in each book; this allows readers to connect with them. The high-stakes action makes the danger more intense because the Emissary is looking for those who have cheated death—such as Jacob, Lara, and Cassidy. The growing friendship between Cassidy, Jacob, and Lara is one of the best parts of the book and the interplay between the three friends is at times humorous and endearing, which balances out the spooky-scary suspense.

Bridge of Souls will delight readers who love a good ghost story full of adventure, danger, and plot twists. The easy-to-read story will keep readers up late into the night because they will not be able to put the book down. Full of new characters, faithful friends, and paranormal experiences, Bridge of Souls takes readers on a spectacularly spooky trip through New Orleans. Readers who want more ghostly action should add the Shadow School Series by J.A. White to their reading list.

Sexual Content

None

Violence

Cassidy’s parents are filming a show about famous ghosts. While filming, Cassidy’s Mom talks about “the Axeman of New Orleans, who went around chopping people up. . . terrorized the city. He was a serial killer.”
Cassidy’s mom says, “a man named Pierre Jourdan bought this property and erected the mansion of his dreams, only to lose the estate in a poker game. Devastated, Jourdan took his own life. . .”
When Cassidy goes into the Veil, Pierre Jourdan “reaches for my life, and he might have gotten there first if a bucket of poker chips hadn’t hit him in the side of the head. Jacob has excellent aim.”
Cassidy learns about LaLaurie, who “stands out for the sheer scope of her cruelty.” When her house caught on fire, everyone got out “or so they thought. And yet, there were voices coming from the burning house. . . LaLaurie had kept slaves locked in the attic. . . They had no way to escape.”
When the Emissary finds Cassidy, “Thick black ropes shoot up from the ground, reaching for us, wrapping around our ankles and wrist. . .I [Cassidy] stumble and fall, hitting the bridge hard. . . [Lara] is on the ground, too, fighting as half a dozen ropes try to pin her down. . . .”
Jacob tries to help his friends and “lets out a primal shout and flings himself forward at the Emissary. . . He slams into the skull-faced figure, pushing him back. . . Jacob slams his hands against the Emissary’s chest, but this time, instead of stepping back, the Emissary holds its ground, and Jacob’s fist sinks into its front, like quicksand.”
When the Emissary has Jacob, Cassidy swings her camera “right at the Emissary’s head. It hits the bone mask with a sound like metal on stone, like breaking pottery. The Emissary loses its hold on Jacob.” Eventually, the Emissary is pushed over the edge of a bridge. The scene is described over 11 pages.

Drugs and Alcohol

While in the Veil, a ghost tells Cassidy that another ghost, Sam, is “probably drinking gin and listening to jazz in the square.”

Language

After Cassidy’s mom tells a ghost story, someone says, “Oh my god!”

Supernatural

Cassidy goes into the Veil and sees ghosts who have not moved on. In order to help ghosts move on, Cassidy shows them their reflection in a mirror and says, “Look and listen. See and know. This is what you are.” Then she pulls out their thread of life.
Jacob is Cassidy’s “best friend, resident ghost, and constant eavesdropper.” Jacob can hear Cassidy’s thoughts.
One of the characters has tattoos such as “the Christian cross on his bicep, the Egyptian eye on his forearm, the pentacle near his elbow. . .” He has these tattoos for “protection” against ghosts.
An Emissary is looking for Cassidy. Emissaries are messengers of death. “They’re sent out into the world to hunt for people beyond the Veil. They’re sent out into the world to hunt for people who’ve crossed the line, and come back.”
During a séance, a messenger of death takes over a man’s body and gives Cassidy a warning: “We have seen you, little thief. . . But now you cannot hide. We have seen you. And we will find you.”
A fortune teller reads a tarot card and uses it to predict Cassidy’s future. While picking a card Cassidy felt, “a pull, right under my fingers. And then my hand stops. There’s a pull, right under my palm, a steady draw, like the Veil rising to meet my fingers.”
Cassidy wants to know if voodoo is real. She is told, “Voodoo isn’t just about lighting a candle, or buying a trinket. It’s a trade. A matter of give and take. Nothing gained without something sacrificed.”
The Emissary finds Cassidy, and Jacob tries to save her. Jacob flings “himself at the Emissary. But Jacob goes straight through and hits the ground on the other side. He collapses, shivering as if doused in old water.” Another friend pushes over an old crypt. “It doesn’t crush the Emissary, exactly. . .But the fall kicks up a lot of dust and debris, a thin gray cover.” Everyone is able to escape.
Philippa is a medium who can see ghosts.
In order to break the thread connecting Cassidy to the Emissary, Cassidy and her friends perform a ritual. The supplies include: “A handful of stones, to anchor the circle. A ball of white string, to tether me to the living. A bottle of center oil, to purify, and to burn. And a box of long wooden matches, to strike the flame.” The ritual does not work.
Cassidy is given “an evil eye. It won’t do much to stop an emissary, but it might buy you some time. The charm’s designed to break when someone wishes you ill. It should break when danger is near.”

Spiritual Content

None

8+ 320 5.0 5 worms AR

Everything I Know About You

Thirteen-year-old Talia “Tally” Martin, along with her class and her friends Sonnet and Caleb “Spider,” is going to Washington, D.C. for a class trip. Only there’s one catch: the teachers are assigning rooms, and Tally, Sonnet, and Spider end up rooming with their least favorite classmates. This means that Tally and popular girl Ava are roommates, and neither is happy about the situation.

As Ava and Tally are forced to spend time together, Tally notices Ava’s strange habits—working out all the time and at weird hours of the night, rarely eating, and her scribbling in a notebook. When Tally confronts Ava about her odd behavior, Ava threatens to blackmail Tally. Tally struggles to decide if being a good friend means telling a secret she promised to keep.

Everything I Know About You deals with topics such as body image, eating disorders, and what it means to be a good friend. Tally is unflinchingly honest, and her straightforward view of the world sometimes clashes with the people around her. Although Tally is a deeply loyal friend, she is also jealous when Sonnet and Spider befriend their roommates, who they once hated. Despite her flaws, Tally grows as a person, and through her experiences and interactions with her roommate, Ava, Tally gains a more nuanced understanding of the people around her and her deepening friendships.

The main event hovering around the edges of the book is Ava’s eating disorder, although Tally doesn’t articulate it as such in the beginning. However, Ava’s struggles are present throughout, and Barbara Dee does a good job presenting the issue through Tally’s eyes as well as the eyes of the other students and Ava’s mom. Although Tally doesn’t make any connections between Ava’s eating disorder and Ava’s mother’s obsession with public image and weight, Dee added these elements to give more context to Ava’s life. In addition, the supporting characters—Ava’s mom, Spider, Sonnet, and Ava herself—are interesting and complex. The strengths of Everything I Know About You are the subtle details that Tally glosses over but that the reader can still recognize, like the details about Ava’s mom, or the fact that another boy on the trip, Marco, clearly has a crush on Tally, even if Tally herself doesn’t notice it initially.

Everything I Know About You is an intelligent book that addresses eating disorders. Tally and her classmates have other struggles and strengths, which make the discussions about eating disorders and body image more nuanced. Everything I Know About You captures a multi-faceted slice of the middle school experience, and young preteens and teens will learn the importance of loving yourself, including your flaws.

Sexual Content

According to Tally, “some dumb relative told [Spider’s mom] that if [Spider] kept hanging around with me, he’d ‘turn gay,’ like you could catch it from being friends with girls.”
Sonnet thinks that another student, Marco, likes Tally. Tally responds with, “Don’t be preposterous.”
Sonnet later asks Tally if Tally thinks Marco is cute. Tally responds with, “Maybe a little,” but she is still angry that Marco bullied Spider so badly the previous year. It is also clear from her constantly asking that Sonnet might also think that Marco is cute.
Marco seems to like Tally, though Tally has no idea. He often blushes when speaking to her, and one time she “saw Marco staring at [her] hair, as if bun-making were a complicated math problem he wanted to watch me solve.”
Tally starts to have a crush on Marco. Now, like Marco, her “cheeks flush” when she sees him. She admits that he’s “preposterously cute.”

Violence

Sonnet passes cookies to Trey and Marco, two bullies sitting in the bus seats behind Sonnet and Tally. Tally “kicked [Sonnet] in the shin” as a response.
The previous school year, Tally’s friend Spider “was bullied so much he had panic attacks.”
Spider and Tally have been friends since childhood, and other kids would often bully Spider and take his toys. Tally recounts that “I’d have to get [Spider’s things] back for him. Even if it meant punching the kid.”
Tally spends half of a chapter describing the harassment that Spider endured. For instance, two of the bullies often left Spider “gifts” of dead spiders, causing Spider to have panic attacks, and he’d “start gasping and wheezing.”
One day, Tally “punched Trey in the mouth” because she caught him and Marco bullying Spider. Tally received a two-day suspension, but she “didn’t care. The bullying had stopped, and Marco even apologized, for Trey and for himself.”
At the buffet, Trey says that he’s going to eat until it’s “coming out of [his] eyeballs.” Another student then slaps his arm and tells him not to be disgusting.
Trey suggests that they leave Spider at the hotel. Then Marco “punched [Trey’s] arm and told him to shut up.”

Drugs and Alcohol

None

Language

In lieu of swearing, Tally prefers to say, “Oh, bleep” as a stand-in phrase.
Tally refers to a group of popular girls in her grade as “clonegirls.”
Ava tells Tally that the rest of the grade cares about spirit day, to which Tally responds, “The rest of you can stuff it.”
Mean language is used often. Language includes suck, dumb, weird, omigod, stupid, idiot, jerk, ignorant, and freak.
Tally calls a rom-com that her classmates want to watch “ultra-insipid.”
Tally says that “this whole ‘class unity’ thing is a pile of dog poop.”
Tally is unusually tall for her age, recalling how she stood at “five foot eight” in sixth grade. As there is intense discussion of body image and eating disorders in this book, it is important to note that even Tally acknowledges her tall size often and that Ava makes fun of her for it. Tally notes that “Mom told me I was ‘big-boned,’ but I was muscly, too, with a squishy belly and a big butt.”
Ava tells Tally that she doesn’t eat sweets because there are too many carbs, and Tally laughs and calls her a “stick.”
Spider’s mom, Mrs. Nevins, makes comments about Tally’s body to Tally’s mom when they think Tally isn’t in the room. Mrs. Nevins says, “Some of the cute styles the girls are wearing must look so wrong on her. You know, with her body type.” This comment infuriates both Tally’s mom and Tally.
While at dinner, the clonegirls spend the majority of dinner talking about how “fat” they’ll get eventually and the food that they’re eating. For instance, Haley says, “Seriously, you guys, I’m just squish. My arms are balloons, my hips bulge out, and my belly is, like, disgusting. This summer I had to throw out all my favorite skinny pants.” This conversation lasts for several pages.
Ava tells Tally that Nadia is “pre-fat” This term is never clarified, but it seems to refer to Nadia as not being fat yet.
Ava has an eating disorder. This is detailed throughout the book, with her eating very little at dinner one night, working out compulsively, and Tally even describes Ava as “emaciated.” Tally doesn’t have the vocabulary initially to describe what she and her classmates are seeing, but Ava’s eating disorder is clearly lined out in the book’s details.
Tally says that she’s not feeling well enough to go to a baseball game, and Trey says, “What’s wrong with you, Tally? You got your period?” Marco then tells Trey to “shut up.”
Tally calls Trey a “microbe” because of his period joke.

Supernatural

None

Spiritual Content

None

by Alli Kestler

Ghosts

When Jack and Annie got back from their adventure in Magic Tree House Merlin Mission #14: A Good Night for Ghosts, they had lots of questions. What are some of the most famous ghost stories? Why do people believe in ghosts? Do most cultures have ghost stories? What are ghost hunters? Readers discover the answers to these questions and more as Jack and Annie track the facts.

Included in the book are haunted places, different cultures’ beliefs in ghosts, and famous ghost stories. Each chapter is broken into small sections that give historical information. Almost every page has a picture or illustration. The book includes historical pictures of the people and places discussed in the text. Black and white illustrations, which are sometimes comical, show the ghosts that haunt famous places. On the side of the text, additional historical information and definitions are given. For example, “The name yurei comes from two words: yu, which means ‘dim,’ and rei, which means ‘soul.'”

At the end of the book, Jack and Annie give a list of things they would do “if we were ghosts” such as “walk through walls, glow like candles, never take a bath,” etc. The book also includes a list of natural events that could cause ghostly fears, as well as ways to research.

Each ghost story is told in a conversational tone that explains who the ghost is and how they haunt. Even though the book is all about ghosts, none of the information is told in a dramatic or scary way. The text never tries to prove or disprove the hauntings. Instead, the book keeps to the facts and lets the reader decide if they believe in ghosts or not. Even if a reader doesn’t believe in ghosts, the book gives plenty of historical information which is presented in an entertaining manner.

Whether you’re a history buff or just interested in the supernatural, Ghost presents nonfiction information in a way that will engage young readers. Readers will learn about ghosts that appear in New Orleans, the White House, Great Britain, and other famous sites. Ghost is packed full of historical information that is fun to read; it also gives information that connects to A Good Night for Ghosts, a Magic Tree House Book. Even though the content is appropriate for younger readers, they may need help with the advanced vocabulary. If you’re researching ghosts or just want a fun book to read, Ghost will allow you to explore the world of ghosts without any frightening surprises.

Sexual Content

None

Violence

In the mid-1800s, Joe Baldwin worked for the railroad. “Part of his job was to walk the tracks at night with a lantern to make sure the train had stopped at the right place. Joe’s head was cut off in an accident.”
According to one man, the ghost of Marie Laveau “hit him in the nose when he was in a drug store. The victim said that her ghost asked him who she was. When he said he did not know, she gave him a good, hard punch!”
In the 1800s, a sultan and his family were killed. “One dark and stormy night, intruders slipped in and murdered everyone. The murderers buried the sultan in a shallow grave underneath a tree in the courtyard. He is said to haunt the house where he died.”
President Abraham Lincoln and his wife went to the theater to watch a play. “A man crept up behind him and fired a bullet into his head. Lincoln died the following day.”
John McCullough haunts the National Theatre. “John was killed in a fight with another actor. His body was buried beneath the dirt floor in the cellar.”
King George III and others haunt Windsor castle. “King Charles I, whose head was cut off, shows up in the library and in one of the other houses on the grounds.”
The London Tower is haunted. “Whenever kings or queens suspected people of plotting against them, they put them in the tower. Some unlucky prisoners were hanged or had their heads chopped off.” Ann Boleyn was imprisoned in the tower. Henry VIII “ordered that her head be chopped off.”

Drugs and Alcohol

None

Language

None

Supernatural

Ghost is all about different ghost citings and haunted places. Below is a list of just a few examples.
The ancient Greeks and Romans “believed that ghosts were spirits of people who had not had a proper burial after they had died.”
In African, “children often hear stories about friendly ghosts who are the spirits of their ancestors.”
In India, people believe that “their bodies are haunted by ghosts.” They travel to see ghostbusters “who claim to be able to cure them of their problems.”
Marie Laveau lived during the 1800s. She practiced voodoo and “people said she could summon up spirits and even make magic potions. . . Legend has it that Marie’s ghost appears as either a cow or a big black dog that runs through the cemetery.”

Spiritual Content