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Minecraft: The Crash

Bianca doesn’t think before she acts because her best friend, Lonnie, has always been there to catch her when she falls. But when Bianca and Lonnie are in a horrific car crash, Bianca learns that thoughtless actions can lead to severe consequences for her and for others.

Bianca wakes up in the hospital with painful injuries. She is afraid to find out what has happened to Lonnie—did he survive or has Bianca lost her best friend? To avoid the painful truths of reality, Bianca jumps into the virtual reality world of Minecraft. When she meets a glitching avatar that might be Lonnie, Bianca vows to do everything she can to help Lonnie in the virtual world.

Bianca teams up with Esme and Anton, two other kids who are in the hospital. While in the Minecraft world, the kids must face dangerous mobs that are generated by their fears and insecurities. With the help of her new friends, can Bianca overcome her fears and return to reality?

Minecraft: The Crash begins with a graphic crash scene, which leaves Bianca wondering what happened to Lonnie. Bianca’s resulting fear and guilt conflict drive much of the story. Her time in the Minecraft world adds interest to those who play the game, but fans may not like that the story does not stay true to the actual Minecraft game. Instead, the author changed many of the game’s elements to fit the story’s plot. On the other hand, if someone is not familiar with the Minecraft game some events will be confusing.

Bianca, Esme, and Anton interact like typical teenagers—they argue and disagree, but they also work together (most of the time.) Esme and Anton show the importance of working together to solve a problem. They also encourage Bianca to face her issues. Esme and Anton are likeable characters who stick with Bianca through everything. However, Bianca is hard to relate to because she comes off as a self-centered person who is dishonest when it benefits her. Although Esme and Anton are doing everything they can to help her, Bianca does little to contribute to the group’s plan. Instead, she does what she wants even if it may cause harmful consequences to others. Although she feels guilty for causing the car accident, she has not learned from the event.

The length of the book, the complexity of the plot, and some difficult vocabulary combine to make Minecraft: The Crash more appropriate for middle-school readers than younger readers, as does the fact that the story deals with the difficult topic of death. Although Bianca recognizes that she is to blame for Lonnie’s death, the ending of the story does not acknowledge the long-term ramifications of the car crash or the pain Lonnie’s death caused others. Despite these drawbacks, this book will keep readers who want to jump into the Minecraft world entertained with battle after battle.

Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • Bianca and her friend are in a car crash. Bianca could see the driver of the other car; “his head lurched back as his green car collided with our blue one.” During the crash, “there was the smell of smoke. And the taste of blood. And the scrape of something against my body that felt like it had gutted me open somewhere in the middle. I wondered if I’d been halved.” Bianca is seriously injured. Her friend dies.
  • While in the Minecraft word, Bianca meets a zombie mob. She began “plowing through green guys with the sword like an Amazon warrior. . . I was screaming and chopping and generally having a great time until one of them hit me, and the energy bar at the top of my vision went down half a heart.” The battle takes place over three pages. During that time, Bianca kills zombies. When she kills one, “green slime burst in pixelated arcs that fell on the ground and disappeared in seconds.”
  • While in the Minecraft world, Bianca tries to go into another player’s house. She triggers an explosion and “blocks exploded, lava erupted, and a series of sparks bloomed in front of my eyes.
  • Spiders charge the three kids. Bianca “picked up my sword again and hacked at the charging spider. It broke into blue pieces and fell to the ground . . .” Then Anton “did a spin and swiped at another spider. It broke apart, but the river of spiders just kept pouring out of the house.”
  • A group of villagers attacks and “they all turned on us, mercilessly raining down blows. . . Anton got the brunt of the blows.”
  • While in a tunnel, zombies attack. Lonnie and Esme “started slashing through the mob. . .” Later, creepers appear. As Bianca tried to escape, “creepers pressing in. One on the far end popped and set off a chain reaction.”
  • Witches begin throwing potions at the group. As Bianca was fleeing, “a potion hit me and exploded. My movements instantly became slower. My heath bar over my head dipped. . . . Ashton kept on hitting until the witch died.”
  • A line of endermen appear and “this group seemed to be gunning for us, arms outstretched in attack mode. . . I swung my sword, just missing it, and giving it enough time to reach me. My health points took a big hit when it landed a blow. . . The endermen pounded me with its fists. I put my arms up, unable to do anything else. . .” The battle takes place over two pages.
  • Endermen attack the group again. Endermen “rained down on us like black hail. . . Esme fired arrow after arrow into the crowd of them. I hacked my way through at one side . . .”
  • When Bianca’s friends try to get her to leave the game, she “thought about the TNT I had in my inventory, and how I needed a distraction. It suddenly appeared and detonated instantly in front of us. We were blown back in different directions. My heath bar took a major hit.” Bianca’s friends were “thrown back into the exit portal.” They were forced out of the game.
  • A slime mob attacks a house. Bianca “charged in, giving my best warrior yell. I bashed through the little slimes that were at my feet while keeping the skeletons away from Lonnie.” The battle takes place over three pages.
  • Zombies come into a bobby-trapped house. When the zombies got to the door, “there was the click of a trigger, and the sound of a low whistle that got louder and louder, and then bam! Both of them got smashed by an anvil.” The battle takes place over two pages.
  • While in the bobby-trapped house, Bianca steps on a pressure plate. She runs, but “a series of flaming arrows flew towards us. Most stuck in the ground, burning in place, but a few of them hit us. The sharp stab of the arrow piercing me was bad enough, but the fire . . . I started to crawl away, but Lonnie sat where he was, pinned by three arrows that hit his legs and arm. . . d” No one is seriously injured.
  • Zombies attack again. Bianca “continued slashing with my sword while pushing Lonnie backward, away from danger. . . a zombie hit me, sending me sprawling. My body felt leaden as I hit the floor, and I didn’t know if I had the energy to escape the approaching zombie. . . “ Lonnie pulls her to safety.
  • Bianca and Esme get into an argument. Bianca “pushed her to the ground and started to hit her with my fist, but she was back up on her feet a moment later, punching back. . . I pulled my hands up to shield my face, hoping the blows would end soon, and a moment later she stopped.” Someone pulls Esme off Bianca.
  • A scarred enderman appears and Bianca “thrust upward with the sword. I caught the enderman’s arm. It staggered back a step, but then reached around with its other arm to strike me. . . the enderman’s arm flashed out, lightening quick, thwacking my face. The blow burned like fire. . .” Esme shoots the enderman, but others appear. Anton has TNT so he “lobbed the bombs over our heads as we kept firing. . .” The group is able to escape. The battle takes place over 2 ½ pages.
  • Witches ambush Bianca. “They pelted potions, and I warded them off with my sword as best I could. Then I charged the closet witch—the one on my right—slashing until it died, droppings ticks and glass bottles.” Someone saves Bianca.
  • Wither skeletons with swords attach the group. “Anton killed one at close range by sticking its torso, and one of Esme’s arrows found its target, destroying the third one.”
  • Ender pirates attack. Bianca tries to escape, but one “extended its hand and knocked me over. I fell to the floor, but I didn’t seem to have taken much damage. The fighting continued around and over me for a second before I regained my footing.” The battle continues for 3 ½ pages and ends when Anton detonates an explosion, “The yellow and orange of the bomb was bright against the sky. . . I (Bianca) jumped up onto the rail, and dove into the water as the pirate ship blew up behind me.”
  • Someone steps on a pressure plate and enemies appear. “The silverfish looked vicious, and they came straight toward us with their jaws unhinged, as if they meant to take a bite out of anyone who got close enough. . . They swarmed around us, unrelenting and hideous, but our armor kept us relatively safe. . .” They escape through a portal.
  • Bianca and her friends jump through a portal, but an enderman appears and grabs Bianca. “The enderman grabbed me by the hand, pulled me backwards, and threw me down on the ground. It kneeled over me, wrapped its hands around my neck, and squeezed. I choked for air. My legs and arms flailed as I tried to dislodge myself from the enderman’s grasp.” The game glitches and Bianca reappears somewhere else.
  • In a final battle, Bianca and her friends fight a dragon. “Its eyes blazed as it charged straight toward us. I could feel the heated air radiating from its flapping wings. . . The dragon dropped its wing and clipped Anton on his back. He lurched forward, landing at Lonnie’s feet and staring up at the sky.” The battle takes place over 10 pages.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • While in the hospital, doctors gave Bianca painkillers. When she woke up, she “considered that the drugs were making me loopy.” Later Bianca’s father is told that doctors have “administered the strongest painkillers we can under the circumstances. . .”

Language

  • Darn, jeez, heck, and crap are each used one time.
  • Pissed is used five times. For example, Bianca thinks that another player “looked pissed.”
  • Anton says that Esme is “a jerk sometimes.”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None

Attack at the Arena

Mr. Whittaker finds a mysterious letter inside the Imagination Station. The letter leads Patrick and Beth to fifth-century Rome on a quest to find a special cup that belongs to a monk. The cousins jump back in time and end up at the Roman Colosseum.

Before long, Beth and Patrick are separated. Patrick meets Telemachus, a monk, who believes fighting is wrong. Telemachus wants the emperor to end the gladiator battles. Telemachus guides Patrick as he looks for his cousin.

Meanwhile, Beth is mistaken as a slave and is sent to serve in the emperor’s palace. As the Emperor’s servant, Beth must attend Emperor Honorius’s gladiator battle. Patrick also attends as a monk’s apprentice but is captured and sent to fight in the arena. Will Patrick be able to survive?

History is incorporated into the story through Telemachus, Emperor Honorius, and the arena fighting. The story describes the horrors of the arena fighting in child-friendly terms and leaves out graphic violence. After reading the story, many may want to know more about ancient Rome.

Attack at the Arena has a fast-paced, action-packed plot with a strong message of faith. Since lessons in faith are delivered through the monk Telemachus, the lessons do not come across as preachy. Instead, readers will see how Telemachus lives his faith. Through Telemachus’s actions, the reader will learn that, “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for a friend.”

Readers who enjoy The Magic Tree House will want to add Attack at the Arena to their reading list. Both series have likable characters, mystery, and time travel. However, Attack at the Arena teaches how God can change people. This book is the second installment of The Imagination Station Series; as each book builds on the previous story, readers should read Voyage with the Vikings first. The interesting plot will keep readers turning the page until the very last page.

Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • When Patrick and Beth go back in time, they land in an arena with a tiger. The tiger “crouched down like a cat searching for a mouse. Its eyes burned bright. It ran straight toward Patrick.” Someone uses a whip to scare the tiger away.
  • A soldier sees Beth and “picked her up and threw her over his shoulder.” He takes her to the palace to work as a slave.
  • A soldier thinks Patrick is trying to help Beth escape. The soldiers “grabbed his arms. They roughly pulled him back.” One of the soldiers “pulled out a shiny sword. . . He pointed the sword at Patrick.”
  • A man hears soldiers coming to capture him. When the monk tells the man to hide, the man instead “pulled the knife out of his belt. He pointed it at Telemachus (the monk).” The man steals a chalice and then flees.
  • A soldier thinks Patrick is trying to help Beth escape again. He “picked him up and threw him into a wood cart. . . Patrick fell onto the bottom of the cart. His face was in the mud and straw.” Patrick is taken to the arena.
  • At the arena, “Slaves fought the wild creatures. The men screamed and ran when the animals attacked.”
  • Patrick and other prisoners are forced to fight in the arena. At the emperor’s signal, “prisoners began to fight each other. Each man battled for his life. An old prisoner quickly knocked Patrick’s knife out of his hand.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • Mr. Whittaker has an Imagination Station that allows Beth and Patrick to travel back in time. When they get into the Imagination Station, “the machine jerked forward. Patrick felt as if he were on the subway. . . The machine whirled. Suddenly, everything went black.”
  • Mr. Whittaker also has a ring that “you can only see it when my hand is in the machine.”

Spiritual Content

  • The monk tells a soldier, “All children belong to God.”
  • The monk tells Patrick, “God may let you find your friend later.”
  • The monk tells Patrick that he is in Rome because “God told me to come here.” The monk didn’t know why God wanted him in Rome, but “it is for me to obey and go.” Later, the monk goes to the arena for the same reason. The monk says that God told him to go, “in my prayers this morning.”
  • The monk tells Patrick, “there are no what ifs? with God. When He speaks, we’re to listen and obey.”
  • The emperor, Honorius, says he is Christian and that “by law the emperor must be a Christian.”
  • The monk tells the people watching the fighting, “In the name of Jesus who shed His blood for us. . . don’t take pleasure in the bloodshed! Stop—in the name of Christ—stop!”

 

Dinosaur Disaster

Ed and his friends are excited to see the robotic dinosaurs at Dinosaur Discovery. After going to see the dinosaurs, a real-life dinosaur follows Ed home. Ed’s sister, Libby, wants to keep the dinosaur as a pet. Ed needs to figure out how to use his powers for strangeness to send the dinosaur home. With the help of his friends, can they come up with a plan or will the dinosaur cause a disaster?

The same lovable characters from the first two Looniverse books appear in Dinosaur Disaster. A dinosaur that acts like a dog is the main conflict of the book. Readers will enjoy the playful dinosaur and Ed’s silly antics. The story doesn’t teach any dino facts or have as many of the fun play on words as the previous books.

Ed’s little sister, Libby, takes a starring role in the book. The brother-sister relationship is portrayed in a positive light, and Ed treats his sister with care. Ed’s mother briefly appears in the story and trying to keep the dinosaur in the backyard a secret helps create suspense.

Dinosaur Disaster will appeal to those who like dinosaurs and outrageous, silly events. The large black-and-white illustrations bring the story to life and show the range of emotions that the characters feel. The easy-to-read text and fun illustrations make the story a good choice for younger readers. Readers do not need to read the previous books to enjoy the third installment of the Looniverse Series.

Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • Ed saw a robotic T-rex “chomping Derwin’s butt.
  • Ed falls in a pile of dinosaur poop. “Bluebird had left me a present. A big, stinky one.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • Ed has a coin that allows him to do strange things. “Mouse could do strange things I suggested, like lifting himself up in the air, even if they seemed impossible. And Derwin could make sayings come true. My power as the Stranger worked on both of them, but in different ways.”
  • Ed sends the dinosaur back to where it came from. “The air around her (the dinosaur) shimmered. Then it changed. All around her, like a movie was being shown, I could see a world of giant plants. A huge insect flew past. A warm gust of air washed over my face.”

Spiritual Content

  • None

Dragon Pearl

Thirteen-year-old Min lives an ordinary life. No one knows that her family comes from a long line of fox spirits. Her family hides their powers, and Min’s mother doesn’t allow any of them to use fox-magic. Instead of shape-shifting and using Charm, Min always appears as a human.

Min dreams of leaving her dust-ridden planet and joining her brother Jun in the Space Forces. When Min gets older, they hope to see more of the Thousand Worlds together. Then an investigator appears and informs the family that Jun has deserted. The investigator thinks Jun is searching for the mythical Dragon Pearl that is rumored to have tremendous power.

After reading a strange message from Jun, Min knows that something is wrong. Min runs away to search for her brother. During her journey, she will meet gamblers, pirates, and ghosts. She will have to use deception, sabotage, and magic. Min will need all of her courage to complete her journey. Will she be able to find the answers she needs to find her brother?

Sci-fi enthusiasts will enter an imaginative world that includes Korean mythology. The Korean mythology is seamlessly integrated into Min’s story and helps create an interesting world. The story is a perfect blend of mystery, action, and space travel. Although most of the story is fast-paced, parts of the story are difficult to read because of long descriptions.

Dragon Pearl is told from Min’s point of view, which allows the reader to understand her thought process as she searches for her brother. Middle school readers will enjoy reading about Min because of her daring actions and can-do attitude.

Although Min has spent her life hiding her magical abilities, once she leaves her house, she consistently relies on Charm. Readers may question how she can be so skilled using her Charm when she has had no practice. Another bothersome inconsistency is that Min notices when other supernaturals use their powers, but no one notices when Min uses her Charm. Even though Min uses her Charm to deceive others, she is still a likable character. At the end of the book, Min realizes that she should rely less on magic, but it would have been nice to see Min use her brain to solve some problems throughout the story, instead of always using Charm.

The ending is a little predictable, but there are enough surprises to satisfy readers. Middle school readers who are interested in mythology may want to begin with the Percy Jackson Series or Aru Shah and the End of Time, which have better character development as well as humor. Overall, Dragon Pearl creates an interesting world filled with magic. The danger, magic, and mystery will draw readers into the story and keep them engaged. However, some readers may struggle with the long descriptions and difficult vocabulary.

Sexual Content

  • Some people wear “a small symbol next to the name that let me know they should be addressed neutrally, as neither female or male.” One of the characters, a goblin, is gender neutral and referred to as they.

Violence

  • When an investigator finds out that Min is a fox, he “snatched me up by the throat. I scrabbled for air, my fingernails lengthening into claws, and tore desperately at his fingers.” Min turns into a block of metal and fell on the man’s foot. When he lets her go, “I snatched a saucepan and brought it crashing down against his head. He fell without a sound.”
  • Mercenaries attack the ship that Min is on. Min “cried as a burst of violet fire hit us in the side.” The scene takes place over nine pages. Someone pulls Min “behind the copilot’s seat. Great timing: A bolt sizzled over me, where my head had been just a second earlier. . . Two more bolts flew over my head. I peeked around the side of the seat and fired once at the first shadowy figure I saw. I heard a yelp.” Min is hit and “slid out of consciousness.” Later, Min discovers that one cadet died.
  • A person accidently crashed into Min, who is appearing as a boy. Min “emitted a strange yell when the person’s knee accidently connected with my crotch. I was going to have to be more careful about guarding that part of my body!”
  • A space ship is attacked, and the Goblin is injured. “Sunjin jumped back from their workstation, clutching their side. An enormous burning line of light had seared the goblin from the neck all the way to their waist, as though someone had slashed them with a whip of fire. . .”
  • Min discovers that the colonist, “stopped making offerings to the pox spirits, and the spirits took their vengeance by wiping out the colony.”
  • Min helps two mercenaries escape. They get on a ship and the pilot, “blew open the hatch with a missile at short range. . . Acceleration slammed us sideways as our ship veered hard to starboard, then rolled.”
  • Min turns into a bird, and someone shoots at her. “Fire pierced my right wing. . . I plummeted, struggling. . . The pain made me light headed.”
  • A man grabs Min. “I stifled a gasp as his fingers dug into my flesh and he yanked me toward him, wrenching my injured shoulder.” The ghost helps Min escape.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • When Min knocks the investigator unconscious, her family discusses using a “subtle poison” to kill him.
  • Min questions a guard, who tells her that he got his information from a “drunk spacer who was spilling secrets last night.”
  • Min meets a guard who had, “the flushed skin of someone who had been drinking too much cheap wine, and he reeked of the stuff.”
  • For a few hours, Min works in a gambling hall where she serves wine and uses “Charm to encourage customers to relax.” While working, she gives wine to customers.
  • When Min is injured, she is given a dose of painkiller.

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • The main character is a fox spirit, who lives as a human. A fox spirit can, “shape-shift into whatever she wants: human, animal, even a dining room table.” Fox spirits can choose to be female or male. Fox spirits can also use Charm “to manipulate human emotions and make people see things that aren’t there.”
  • Besides fox spirits, there are other supernatural creatures, “such as dragons, who can control weather, and goblins, who can conjure things out of thin air.”
  • Shamans can communicate with ancestors and spirits.
  • Throughout the story, Min uses Charm to disguise herself. The first time, she made, “myself plainer, drabber, harder to see.” She also uses Charm to turn into an inanimate object several times. The majority of the story, she disguises herself as a cadet who had been killed. The cadet is a ghost and gave Min permission to pretend to be him.
  • The story revolves around the Fourth Colony, “whose entire population had perished when they’d angered disease spirits a few centuries ago.” The ghosts of the colonists haunt the planet.
  • A ghost is one of the supporting characters. “Ghosts weren’t necessarily unfriendly, but many of them became vengeful over time, especially if the unfinished business that bound them to the world of the living went unresolved.” Later in the story, the reader learns that “most ghosts were bound near the site of whatever had felled them.”
  • Ghosts can be dangerous because, “wrongful death warped people’s souls and made them vengeful toward the living.”
  • Several times, the goblin uses his magical sport to create food. The first time the goblin uses the magic, “Sunjin waved the sport, and a box of chocolate-dipped cookies magically appeared.”
  • People are looking for the Dragon Pearl, which could, “transform an entire barren world, give it forests and seas and make it suitable for habitation, it could just as easily destroy a world, turn it into a lifeless desert.”
  • Both people and space ships have an energy flow, which affects luck. “Just like you could have flows of good or back luck in a room, depending on how furniture and ornaments were arranged, there could be flows of good or bad luck across star systems and beyond.”
  • Min meets her brother’s ghost. “Through the disheveled locks I recognized the face—what remained of it, anyway. Half of it flickered with ghostly flames, as though he were on fire. Between that, and the hair, I could barely see his surviving eye.”
  • A shaman was “going to rid the Fourth Colony of its ghosts by singing us into the underworld.” The ghosts stop her.
  • Min uses the Dragon Pearl to give the ghosts a proper burial. “The ghosts shimmered, and I could sense their joy.”

Spiritual Content

  • A pilot whispers a “spacer’s prayer that heaven would see us safely through the gate.”
  • When Min’s escape pod crashes, she “prayed to every ancestor I knew to watch over us.”
  • Min sees that the dead colonist “didn’t have gruesome lesions of smallpox, the disease that gods had once wielded to teach humankind respect. . .”

Turtles All the Way Down

Aza and Davis haven’t spoken in years. Their childhood bond fizzled as the distance of adolescence separated their lives. Then Davis’s father, multi-billionaire Russell Pickett, goes missing the night before the police raid his house. Aza doesn’t plan to pursue the mystery of Russell Pickett’s whereabouts.  But there is a one-hundred-thousand-dollar reward, and, as Aza’s best friend Daisy likes to point out, shouldn’t they take advantage of a childhood friendship?

Meanwhile, Aza is grappling with an ever-tightening mental spiral of her own thoughts. Every day she must fight to regain control and stop her fears from consuming her. This story of first love, mystery, and mental health blends effortlessly to create one of John Green’s finest works to date.

Many sensitive topics are discussed and analyzed in this novel, making it a teen must-read. Aza’s difficulties coping with depression and OCD are beautifully articulated, giving the reader a greater understanding of these issues. Aza battles mental health challenges while navigating the complications of everyday life, making this a relatable story for readers who may feel overwhelmed by the weight that life can carry.

However, this story is not for the faint of heart. Younger readers may be disturbed by the sensitive issues the story explores, including the loss of a parent, intense mental health issues, burgeoning teen sexuality, and abandonment. There is also a fair amount of unnecessary profanity that may not be appropriate for younger readers.

The importance of parental figures in the novel highlights an aspect of teen life that is often overlooked in young adult fiction. The parents are presented in the wake of traumatic events as multi-dimensional characters, a contrast to how they are often depicted in other young adult novels.

Fans of John Green’s previous works will not be disappointed as Turtles All the Way Down carries his familiar style and packs the emotional punch that readers have grown to expect from his work. Although the story drags in places, Turtles All the Way Down will delight, inspire, and captivate readers through the masterful use of words, emotions, and thorough development of characters.

Sexual Content

  • Daisy writes fanfiction about Chewbacca’s love life. “In my fic, Chewbacca and Rey were in love. He’s saying it is—and I am quoting—‘criminal’ because it’s interspecies romance. Not sex, even—I keep it rated Teen for the kids out there—just love.” She later defends her argument against human males in the Star Wars universe. “Nobody complains about male humans hooking up with female Twi’leks! Because of course men can choose whatever they want to bone.”
  • Daisy tells David that Aza had a crush on him when they were children. Daisy says, “Holmsey here told me she had a crush on you when you were kids . . . And I was, like, let’s go see him, I bet it’s true love.”
  • The idea of being in a romantic relationship makes Aza feel anxious. “I definitely felt attracted to some people, and I liked the idea of being with someone, but the actual mechanics of it didn’t much suit my talents. Like, parts of typical romantic relationships that made me anxious included 1. Kissing. . .”
  • During a dinner conversation, Daisy asks Aza if “you ever gotten a dick pic? . . . I mean have you ever received an unsolicited, no-context dick pic. Like, a dick pic as a form of introduction.” Daisy then hands Aza a picture that she received on her phone, to which Aza replies, “Yeah, that’s a penis.”
  • Russell Pickett had been sued several times for sexual harassment allegations in the past. These incidents are not described.
  • When Daisy is nervous about going on a date with Mychal, she confides in Aza. “I have not actually made out with a human being in ”
  • Aza has a forearm fetish. “I’m not sure why, but I’ve always been pretty keen on the male forearm.”
  • Aza wants to kiss Davis, despite her anxiety towards germs. “I wondered why I wanted him to kiss me, and how to know why you want to be with someone, how to disentangle the messy knots of wanting.”
  • Aza accidentally walks into a room where “Daisy and Mychal were kissing in a large four-poster bed.”
  • After her first date with Mychal, Daisy weighs the possibility of their future relationship when she has a conversation with Aza. “I actually think upon close examination he is hot. And in general, quite charming and very sexually open and comfortable, although we didn’t do it or anything.”
  • When Aza asks Davis to read his poetry to her, he says, “Reading someone’s poetry is like seeing them naked.” Aza responds to this by saying, “So I’m basically saying I want to see you naked.”
  • After a few times hanging out, Aza and Davis make out. Aza “liked feeling his body against mine, one of his hands tracing my spine . . . I felt my chest tighten, his cold lips and warm mouth, his hands pulling me closer to him through the layers of our coats.” The scene lasts about two pages.
  • When Davis drops Aza off at her house, he “kissed me chastely on my sweaty lips.”
  • Due to her anxiety and the constant spiral in her mind, Aza finds kissing terrifying. She always starts making out with Davis, but once the overwhelming fear of shared microbes takes over, she must pull away. Her therapist says that her anxiety is causing intimacy issues.
  • When Daisy greets Mychal at school, she “threw her arms around him, and kissed him dramatically on the lips, one leg raised at the knee like she was in a movie or something.”
  • There is a brief make-out scene near the climax of the novel. Aza “liked the warmth of his mouth. I wanted more of it. . . I wanted to feel the brain-fuzzing intimacy I’d felt when I kissed him, and I liked kissing him. He was a good kisser.” This scene lasts about half a page.
  • In his blog, Davis writes about E. E. Cummings, saying, “He wrote of love and longing. That often got him laid I’m sure.”
  • Daisy wants to have a tombstone next to Aza that will say, “Holmsey and Daisy: They did everything together, except the nasty.”
  • Daisy feels that her virginity is inescapable, which is a problem she had with her relationship with Mychal. Daisy is upset that “he doesn’t want to have sex unless he’s in love, and yes, I know that virginity is a misogynistic and oppressive social construct, but I still want to lose it.”

Violence

  • Aza and Daisy get into a car crash in which Aza is hospitalized because she sustains serious injuries. Following the crash, Aza “lifted myself up, and the pain blinded me for a minute, but the black dots scattered so I could see the damage.”
  • Aza and Daisy smell Pickett’s body rotting. They aren’t sure and do not look, but they tell Davis who later notifies the authorities. The news reports that “Pickett likely died of exposure.” The dead body is not described.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Aza takes medication for her anxiety. “I’d had a bit of a crack-up my freshman year, after which I was prescribed a circular white pill to be taken once daily. I took it, on average, maybe thrice weekly.” She also takes supplemental medication when she is feeling panicky.
  • When Aza and her mom discuss how to pay for college, she says, “I’ve got plenty of time to win the lottery. And if that doesn’t work out, I’ll just pay for school by selling meth.”
  • When having dinner at Applebee’s, Aza jokingly asks the server for a glass of red wine.
  • When her mom asks her about her thoughts on taking medication for her mental health, Aza thinks, “I wasn’t convinced the circular white pill was doing anything when I did take it, and for another, I was not taking it quite as often as I was technically supposed to.” Later, when talking to her therapist, she says, “Who’s deciding what me means—me or the employees of the factory that makes Lexapro? It’s like I have this demon inside of me, and I want it gone, but the idea of removing it via pills is. . . weird.”
  • Davis describes his father as hiding “cash like alcoholics hide vodka bottles.”
  • Davis’s little brother gets caught with pot at school. This scene is not described.
  • Aza begins ingesting hand sanitizer after kissing Davis in an attempt to kill the bacteria. “I pulled the hand sanitizer out of my jacket and squeezed a glob of it into my mouth. I gagged a little as I swished the burning slime of it around my mouth, then swallowed.”
  • When Aza has a rough night devoid of sleep, Daisy says, “You look like you just got off work from your job playing a ghoul at a haunted house, and now you’re in a parking lot trying to score some meth.”
  • After the car accident, Aza has to take large doses of pain medication.
  • While in the hospital, Aza says, “Even though I was pretty high on morphine or whatever, I couldn’t sleep.”
  • After Aza attempts to drink hand sanitizer in the hospital, the staff, “figured me for an alcoholic—that I’d gone to the sanitizer because I was desperate for a drink.”
  • Davis’s younger brother Noah sinks into depression after their father’s disappearance. Davis remarks, “It’s like Noah’s two people almost: There’s the miniature dude bro who drinks bad vodka and is the king of his little gang of eighth-grade pseudo-badasses. And then the kid who crawls into bed with me some nights and cries.”
  • Daisy, Aza, and Mychal go to an art show where they see an image of “a portly rat drinking a bottle of wine.” During the art show, wine is passed around.

Language

  • Profanity is used frequently throughout the book. This includes holy shit, hell, shit, dumbass, fuck, bullshit, and asshole.
  • Oh my God, Christ, God, thank God, and oh God are used frequently as exclamations.
  • Daisy bemoans the ugliness of her Chuck E. Cheese uniform and calls it, “Fucking systematic oppression.”
  • Davis calls his dad, “a huge shitbag.”
  • After saying something a little rude to Aza, Davis says, “That probably sounded dickish.”
  • Russell Pickett is described as being, “skeezy as hell.”
  • Daisy pretends to be someone’s boss and says, “He went to the fucking office and emailed me scans of the fucking police report.”
  • Davis says that he is “just so goddamned lonely” and that he had a “shitty day.”
  • Aza talks about the parasites that she fears and says, “The parasite breeds there, and then baby parasites get crapped into the water by birds.”
  • When asking Noah what he is doing in his video game, he says, “kickin’ ass and takin’ names.”
  • After going on a date with Mychal, Daisy says, “Do not think I am becoming the best friend who falls in love and ditches her bitches.”
  • In text messages, Davis repeatedly says that he likes Aza’s ass.
  • When trapped in her mental spiral, Aza repeatedly thinks, “oh for fuck’s sake.”
  • Daisy created a character in her Star Wars fan fiction that was based on Aza, and doing so was regarded as a “dick move.”

 Supernatural

  • Aza personifies her mental illness as a demon that is trapped within her body.

Spiritual Content

  • Davis says, “Star Wars is the American religion.” Mychal responds by saying, “I think religion is the American religion.”
  • Daisy laments about how adults, particularly her parents, don’t seem to care. She says, “You watch them try to fill themselves up with booze or money or God or fame or whatever they worship, and it all rots them from the inside until nothing is left but the money or booze or God they thought would save them.”
  • Aza thinks about what it is to be like within her spiral or within love and she says, “I knew what it was like to be in a feeling, to be not just surrounded by it but also permeated by it, the way my grandmother talked about God being everywhere.”

by Morgan Filgas

Sparkly New Friends

Unicorn has a horn. Yeti is big and furry. But both like sparkly new things and become unlikely friends who discover that their differences make their friendship even more sparkly.

Yeti loves snow. Unicorn does not. As Yeti tries to teach Unicorn about snowball fights, the reader will learn important lessons about friendship. When Yeti throws a snowball at Unicorn, Unicorn says, “Throwing things at your friends is not nice.” As Yeti is trying to explain what a snowball fight is, Unicorn says, “Friends should not fight. Friends should talk about their problems.” At the end of the snowball fight, Unicorn realizes “friends could fight and still be friends.” This silly, humorous approach to learning about friendship will delight readers.

Designed for children who are learning to read, Sparkly New Friends contains easy-to-read text. The book will engage beginning readers as well as teach about friendship. Younger readers will be drawn to the book because it has a unicorn, a yeti, and sparkly things. Cute, colorful full-page illustrations bring the characters to life. Readers will giggle as Unicorn uses her magic to make Yeti “fancy.”

When each character talks, their words appear in different colored quote boxes. Each page contains four or fewer sentences. Sparkly New Friends will build confidence, fluency, and a love of reading.

Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • None

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • When Yeti wants to be fancy, Unicorn uses her magic to decorate Yeti’s fur.

Spiritual Content

  • None

 

The Penderwicks at Last

The Penderwicks are back for the final installment of Jeanne Birdsall’s beloved series about family, friendship, and adventure. The entire family is coming together once again for a wedding, and it just so happens to be at their favorite place in the world, the Arundel estate. Lydia, the youngest Penderwick sister, is now eleven years old and is a boundless ball of dancing energy, excited to experience the wonderful place that she has heard so many stories about. New surprises await as the charming family returns to the estate where it all began.

Following the same simple, yet charming style of the first four books, The Penderwicks at Last is a delightful read. However, it is the least interesting of the series. Although it has the trademark humor and wonder that captivated readers from the beginning, this book tends to drag and lose momentum. Curious readers excited to discover the fate of the family that they have grown to love may find that part of the magic has faded.

The best elements of the book include when Lydia interacts with her family, rather than what the majority of the book focuses on–her relationship with her new friend Alice. As Lydia becomes a better person over the course of her stay at the enormous estate, she learns important lessons about kindness, friendship, and familial bonds.

The story revolves around Lydia as she navigates and discovers Arundel for the first time. She begins to understand the secrets of what makes the Berkshire estate so magical to her family, from the gardens to the rolling fields, allowing the reader to feel the wonder and excitement along with her. Since Lydia was only in the last two books of the series, she is less fascinating than her siblings are. Readers willing to overlook this will find it an enjoyable tale of weddings, space alien movies, and new friendships.

Although The Penderwicks at Last can be read as a stand-alone novel, readers will find the story more amusing if they have read the previous books. Younger readers may find the diction difficult and may not be interested in the older characters and their adult problems.

Despite disappointments for long-time fans of the series, Birdsall uses her trademark style to create a story that is still pleasant to read. Mimicking the mood and story arc of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, The Penderwicks at Last is a feel-good story for readers of all ages.

Sexual Content

  • Batty has a boyfriend from college named Wesley who is a dedicated art student. “Lydia liked him more than any of Batty’s boyfriends from high school. Indeed, he was among her top four or five picks of all her sisters’ boyfriends put together.”
  • Jane has distinctive views about love in her life. “She cared only about becoming a great novelist. Everything else was secondary, including love and romance. Those she’d sworn off after a few heartbreaks had used too much of her writing time.”
  • When they were young, Enam promised to marry Lydia when they grew up. When Enam gets a girlfriend when he is older, Lydia “wasn’t awfully upset, but was also comforted when Aunt Claire told her that boys–even her own two sons–can be dopes when it comes to love, and then took Lydia out for ice cream and a movie.”
  • Tifton perpetually is getting married, divorced, and remarried.
  • Alice tells Lydia the story of how her parents fell in love. “Dad met her when they both started teaching . . . and fell in love with her because of how talented she was, but then he had to beat out the math teacher, the gym teacher, and also Mom’s boyfriend from college before he could win her heart.”
  • When Lydia is trying to stage a procession rehearsal for the wedding, Rosalind, “sneaked off with Tommy to hide behind the pavilion, where they thought they couldn’t be seen.” Alice laments that they are kissing again.

Violence

  • Lydia dislikes a girl in her dance class. Lydia wishes that she could, “do something dramatic about her dislike–shout it to the world or kick Deborah in the shins.”
  • Alice has a conspiracy theory about Mrs. Tifton murdering her husbands in her giant mansion. “She could have poisoned them and used the ax to chop them into pieces. Look right there….I bet that’s blood.”
  • In a tragic scene of Ben’s sci-fi movie, Alice acts out the part of a dying alien who gets murdered. They shoot this scene several times and Alice is regarded as being very good at it.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • Jeffrey comes back home to Arundel. “He spotted me at the tunnel and thought, What the heck is that, and do I need to protect my friends from it–”

Supernatural

  • Arundel is described as a magical place. “Jane had said that the stone pillars were a magical boundary that kept out the real world.”
  • Alice believes that all of Mrs. Tifton’s husbands became ghosts after she allegedly killed them. “The husbands could now be ghosts, waiting for their revenge.” These ghosts make Lydia reluctant to sleep alone in the mansion.

Spiritual Content

  • None

by Morgan Filgas

 

 

Tales from a NOT-SO-Perfect Pet Sitter

Nikki is excited that mean girl MacKenzie is no longer going to her school. She thinks MacKenzie is out of her life for good, but she is wrong. By accident, Nikki finds out that MacKenzie is telling her new friends all kinds of lies. Should Nikki tell MacKenzie’s friends the truth?

Then Nikki and Brandon find Holly and her seven puppies outside of Fuzzy Friends, a dog shelter where Brandon volunteers. The shelter is full, and Brandon is worried because “Not all places in the city have a no-kill policy like we do.” The friends think about hiding the dogs in the shelter even though it’s “a serious violation that could get us shut down.” When MacKenzie overhears Nikki and Brandon’s plot, they decide to take care of the dogs themselves.

Nikki lies to her mother, telling her that, “due to a family emergency, a good friend of mine needs a pet sitter for his dog.” Since Nikki’s mother said she didn’t want a dog in the house, Nikki decides to hide Holly and her puppies. Nikki’s friends help her come up with a plot to keep Nikki’s parents out of the house. When her mom unexpectedly stays home, Nikki and her friends try to hide the dog at the school, which requires more lies and plotting. When Nikki involves her friends and another girl in her schemes, she says, “I felt like a snake. A dishonest, manipulative, and very desperate snake!” That is an accurate description of Nikki’s character.

The conflict of hiding Holly and her puppies would be sufficient to keep readers entertained. Adding the character MacKenzie simply brings out the worst in Nikki and turns her into a mean girl. At one point, Nikki thinks the mean girl MacKenzie is like a disposable baby diaper because, “they’re both plastic, totally self-absorbed, and full of poop!!” However much like MacKenzie, Nikki’s treatment of MacKenzie and her sister makes Nikki come across as self-absorbed and snotty.

Dork Diaries is written in the form of a diary, which contains lists, quote bubbles, emoji’s and text talk such as “BFF and OMG.” The cute black-and-white illustrations show Nikki and the others in stylish clothes. Since the story is written in diary format, most paragraphs consist of one to two sentences and much of the text is stereotypical preteen talk.

The fun story will entertain readers. However, Tales from a Not-So-Perfect Pet Sitter shows Nikki being dishonest and still being rewarded. In the end, Nikki’s parents never learn of her deception, and her parents decide to bring home the exact puppy that Nikki had wanted. Tales from a Not-So-Perfect Pet Sitter is an easy-to-read, fun story, but the main character has many qualities that parents will not want their child to emulate.

Sexual Content

  • Nikki has a crush on Brandon. They go to a cupcake shop and “then we just stared at each other and blushed. All this staring, gushing, and blushing went on like, FOREVER!” While there, “dozens of butterflies started fluttering in my stomach. It made me feel very giggly and a little queasy. All at the same time. Like I wanted to. . .vomit. . . rainbow-colored. . . CUPCAKE SPRINKLES!”
  • MacKenzie interrupts an almost kiss between Nikki and Brandon.
  • MacKenzie flirts with Brandon. When talking to him, she was “batting her eyelashes all flirtylike as she twirled her hair around and around her finger in a blatant attempt to hypnotize him to do her evil bidding.”
  • Makenzie starts a rumor that Brandon, “had kissed her on a bet just to get free pizza.”

 Violence

  • None

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • OMG is used often.
  • Brandon tells MacKenzie that, “I don’t hang out with sociopaths!”
  • “Oh crud” is used once.
  • MacKenzie calls a group of kids “idiots.”
  • Nikki uses the phrase “I threw up in my mouth” several times.
  • Nikki thinks that her little sister is “bratty.”
  • When Nikki meets her friend’s uncle, she thinks, “I’d much rather spend the weekend with a pack of wild dogs than her whiny, slightly nutty, germophobic Uncle Carlos.”
  • When MacKenzie sees her sister talking to Nikki’s sister, MacKenzie yells, “I told you never to talk to that little BRAT or her PATHETIC sister again!”

 

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None

The Last Kids on Earth and the Cosmic Beyond

Jack and his friends are looking forward to their first Christmas celebration since the monster apocalypse. Jack wants to show the monsters the joy of sledding, snowball battles, and gift giving. But their winter plans are put on hold when an evil human villainess begins hunting them.

The villainess hopes to create a portal to bring Ghazt, the general of the undead, to Earth. But first she needs Jack’s monster-slaying tool, the Louisville Slicer. When his prized weapon is stolen, will Jack and his friends be able to get it back? Will they be able to stop the villainess’s evil plan?

The Last Kids on Earth and the Cosmic Beyond takes a step back from monster fighting and focuses more on the kids’ winter activities. In order to show the monsters that snow is fun, the kids do a series of snow activities including ice fishing and snowball fights. But the activities make the “monsters extra freaked out. They’ve become afraid of snow in both flake form and ball form.” Readers will laugh as Jack and his friends try to show the monsters their traditions. Through these humorous scenes, readers will learn the importance of understanding different cultures. The story shows that some people may find different traditions strange because they have never heard of them.

Like the previous books, the story will keep readers entertained with its fast pace, funny scenes, and epic battles. The easy-to-read text contains dialogue bubbles, alliteration, and onomatopoeias that make reading the story a joy. The black and white illustrations that appear on almost every page bring the kids’ world to life as well as add humor.

At first, The Last Kids on Earth and the Cosmic Beyond may look like just another graphic novel. But the characters are surprisingly well developed and readers will come away with a valuable lesson about the importance of community. When Jack and the kids seek out a Warg, Jack realizes that “maybe she was watching because she felt that feeling, that’s the worst of all feelings. That feeling of being, like, left out?”

This story can be understood without reading the previous books in the series, but for maximum enjoyment readers should read the books in order. Readers will enjoy The Last Kids on Earth and the Cosmic Beyond. The story keeps the same humorous, non-frightening format as the previous books.

Sexual Content

  • Jack has a crush on June. At one point, June “looks deep into my (Jack’s) eyes. I’m wondering if this might be sort of a romantic moment or something. . .” It’s not.
  • When Dirk is bitten by a zombie, he is “stretched out on the poker table. . . I expected it to be like a scene from one of those TB shows with doctors running around emergency rooms. You know the ones, where they spend like half their time saving lives and the other half making out in the hospital closets?”
  • Meathook grabs Jack, and his “gray-purple tongue snaps and smacks me across the face. I half expect it to follow that with a French kiss of death.” Meathook grabs Jack’s weapon and then lets him go.

Violence

  • While catapulting in a sled, the kids jump out of the sled before they slam into a monster. “There’s a gulp—and the great beast’s belly rumbles. The sled has been swallowed.”
  • An “above ground-like octopus” attacks Jack. Before the monster can hurt him, “a rolling library cart slams into the monster. There’s a wet SPLAT and the monster is suddenly airborne, sailing across the library.”
  • A zombie tries to bite Jack, but June stops the zombie by putting her gum in its mouth.
  • An evil human villainess captures the kids. In order to escape, Jack throws “a handful of dry, shredded gum into her face.”
  • Meathook tries to smash the kids, but they use a string of lights to try to trip him. Jack “sees the string of lights snapping in the air and then—THWACK!—the harpoon slams into Meathook’s scaly hide.” The trick does not work, but “the string of lights circle around me (Jack). My butt’s jerked from the seat.” During this battle, a zombie bites Dirk. Evie grabs Jack, but then, “a pair of zombies soars past our heads. Like, airborne undead. . .Another zombie sails past us. Its pinwheeling arms nearly take Evie’s head off. . . ” The scene is described over seven pages.
  • Meathook grabs Dirk. Jack sees Dirk, “sagging, spinning, hanging from the monster’s tongue.” The two disappear.
  • In an epic battle that takes place over several chapters, Meathook tries to stop Jack and the others from helping Dirk. “His one massive paw swipes, slashing the air, engulfing me. . . Quint cries. He’s scooped up, too. Our heads clonk tougher and my world spins.” Meathook captures all three kids.
  • Jack escapes Meathook and jumps on Evie’s back. “It’s a whole hero-villainess piggyback situation. My hands grasp her cloak.”
  • Jack and his friends have been “overrun by the undead. . . the zombies are on us! Quint’s robes are shredded! Teeth sink into June’s shoulder pads! A dripping mouth on Quint’s wrist. Hands tearing open my big white puffy pants. . . The zombies are flung backward on the heels. It’s like they’re being yanked by invisible strings.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • Crud is used twice. When a monster goes to hit Quint, Jack yells “crud.”
  • Dirk calls Jack a dork. Later he calls the evil villainess’s zombies “her dork collection.”
  • Freaking is used once.
  • Ghazt tells Evie she is a fool twice.
  • Evie calls Jack an “idiot boy.”

Supernatural

  • A new monster appears called Meathook. His characteristics include, “Big fist! Powerful Paw! Action Arm!”
  • Monsters that look like eyeballs appear. When Jack sees the “goo-ball things” he thinks, “It’s a reminder of just how bizarre the world is now that the sight of a rolling, gooey, eyeball creature only medium weirds us out.”
  • Warg has “spiny bone tentacles, and an outer eyeball layer. When the monster stomps on the floor, “at once the eyeballs roll toward her. They leap up, veering at her like some coat of peeping pupils.”
  • Ghazt is the general of the undead.
  • Dirk begins turning into a zombie. When Dirk moans, “it’s an awful combo cry: a howling human and a groaning zombie, mushed into one awful noise.”
  • Something happens to the Louisville Slicer that makes it “different. It has some new power because of what happened.”

Spiritual Content

  • Evie, an evil human villainess, is a worshiper of the Destructor of Worlds. While trying to understand the villainess, the kids find a book that explains that the worshipers want to build a portal. Quint explains, “Apparently, these worshipers had some success. They called themselves the Cabal of the Cosmic. . . Any creature can be a Servant—they need not be from a specific dimension.”
  • The evil human villainess plans to use a three-step ritual to bring an evil being from another dimension. Part of the ritual is to “capture an undead human being. . . place the artifact in the zombified human’s hands to open a portal, allowing Ghazt to enter the zombified body. Ghazt will then take control of that person’s body. Forever.”

Amber House

Sarah had never seen Amber House, the family estate until her family traveled to Maryland in order to sell it. The house has been in the family for three hundred years, but Sarah doesn’t care – that is, until she starts seeing visions of its past. It turns out the women of Amber House have the gift of seeing the home’s echoes, and not all of them are moments for which the family would like to be remembered.

Despite her fear, the lure of hidden diamonds keeps Sarah at Amber House, digging to uncover its secrets. As her family gets closer to selling the estate, Sarah becomes more attached, desperate to save her family’s heritage. But when her little brother gets trapped in the in-between world of spirits and memories, Sarah realizes her family heritage is darker than she had ever imagined.

Filled with beautiful imagery, Amber House is a delight from beginning to end. The constant unraveling of numerous mysteries is complemented by the troubles of a normal teenage girl—parental discord, family drama, and a sprinkle of romance that complements the story while not becoming overbearing. In a surprising feat, the main and supporting cast of characters are all well-developed, creating a story full of people to root and long for.

While this story has a fair amount of violence, it is not graphically described. For a young adult novel, the sexual content and language are also refreshingly mild. The book is a must-read because of the well-developed cast, beautiful imagery, and a delectably unique storyline. Also, the main character, Sarah, is extremely likable. Overall, Amber House is a joy to read and it leaves readers desperately hoping the sequel can live up to its predecessor’s impressive feat.

Sexual Content

  • Sarah’s dad cheated on her mother before the start of the book. “He’d gotten a little too close to Sammy’s overly friendly pediatrician back in Seattle.”
  • It’s mentioned in passing that the founder of John Hopkins Hospital “fell in love with his first cousin, Elizabeth” and that neither one “of this tragic pair ever got married.”
  • Sarah idly flips through a magazine and sees a Cosmo article titled, “Ten Spicy Ways to Do It in the Summer!”
  • At a party, Sarah follows Kathryn “up the carpeted steps, her nearly naked bottom exactly two steps up and directly in front of my face. No cellulite, I noted.”
  • Sarah and Richard kiss several times. “He leaned over, put his finger under my chin. He hesitated a moment, then gave me the softest kiss. I liked it. I liked it a lot.”
  • Richard’s friends go swimming in their underwear. Sarah sits on the side and watches. “Chad stopped undressing when he got down to his boxers. He took a running jump and cannonballed into the pool. Kathryn—now in nothing but a matching bra and panty set—followed.”
  • Sarah’s mom thinks the senator wants something from her. “He may be looking for a – companion. . . Or maybe he’s more ambitious. He’s single, I’m newly wealthy, and he doesn’t seem to like it much when your father is around.”
  • Sarah sees a man and woman kissing in a vision, but the woman seems to see Sarah too. “‘You’re watching, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘What, honey?’ the man said, not stopping, slipping the shoulder of Fiona’s dress down to reveal bare skin. ‘It’s all right,’ she said to the door—to me. ‘Sometimes I watch too.’”
  • Sarah sends her best friend an email. “You will not believe where I am. . .in the bedroom of the Abercrombie model…and no, we’re not doing anything except picking up some party clothes, you filthy-minded hussy.”
  • Sarah and Richard kiss in the garden. “He kissed me again, harder, more urgently, his hands folding my face, and I found myself kissing him hungrily, my fingers in his hair.”

Violence

  • Jackson tells the story of a “car accident when I was three. Burned me pretty bad all over my left side. . . got a head injury and a few broken ribs, but I survived. My parents didn’t.”
  • Sarah sees a young girl trying to drown a baby in a vision. “Oh, God. Two little fists flailing; the dark curls on the top of a small head submerged under roiling water. A black woman ran up, shoved the girl back, and snatched the baby from the tub.” The girl tells the woman, “You can’t save it, you know. The gypsy told Papa it has to die.”
  • Later Sarah sees the same black woman being whipped. “He stopped in front of a black woman, stripped naked to the waist, bound by her wrists to a low branch of the tree. ‘Where’s the child, you damned witch?’ She did not answer. . . and bleeding welts crisscrossed the white stripes of old scars on both sides of her spine. Dark drops sprayed from the blow, and I could see that the crop’s leather was stained wet brown.”
  • A woman and her husband get in a fight. The woman “screamed, turning and swinging the thing in her hand down in an arc. He saw her at the last second and parried the thing with his forearm. Then he swore, reaching for the gem-set handle suddenly protruding from his shoulder…’Lock her in the nursery,’ he said. ‘I never want to see her again.’”
  • Richard punches Jackson when he catches him dancing with Sarah. “I could smell the sour notes of champagne, and I could hear it in his voice…Richard turned and struck him in the face. ‘Shut up!’ Blood beaded on Jackson’s lip, purple-red in the half light.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Sarah overhears someone talking about her deceased grandmother. “I heard her liver failed, but with all poor Ida suffered, it was no wonder she drank.”
  • Sarah’s mother finds “a stash of medical supplies in a narrow cupboard that contained mostly liquor.” She then “came out with a bottle of vodka and poured herself an inch over ice.”
  • Sarah almost falls down after riding a horse for an hour. Richard says, “Woah, Parsons, you look like you’ve been hitting the sauce.”
  • Richard drinks at Sarah’s party. “I noticed a nearly empty champagne flute at his elbow and wondered if it was his. The dealer didn’t seem to question it.”

Language

  • God, hell, and Jesus are used as exclamations.
  • When Sarah bruises her forehead, her mother says, “Oh my God, what the Hell did you do to your face?”
  • Sarah’s mother says, “Jesus, I can’t take this today.”
  • Sarah says that “spending an evening with a hundred strangers is her idea of hell.”
  • A kid says Amber House has “got a damn cemetery right on the property.”
  • When Richard loses a race, Sarah hears him “choking out a few choice four-letter words.”
  • A friend says Sarah made “an ass out of Richard in front of all his friends. . . It was about time someone took him down a peg.”
  • Sarah’s mom says, “You think I’m some kind of conniving bitch because I want to use the senator’s connections?”

Supernatural

  • Sarah sees visions of Amber House’s pasts when she touches certain objects. Some are harmless and fun, but some are frightening. “A woman stood in the shaft of moonlight. . . She might have been carved of stone. A spider ran down a lock of her hair, and air escaped me in the smallest gasp. . . The voice rose almost to a scream. ‘You think you are safe? You think I can’t hurt you? I can. I can get you. I can find you in your dreams.’”
  • Sarah’s visions of Amber House are passed down among the woman of the family. Jackson says, “Ida saw things too. She called them echoes. When she touched certain things, little bits of the past came to life for her. She said they were the house’s memory.”
  • An old woman named Nanga can see visions of the future, allowing her and Sarah to interact on several occasions. “She can see the future. And because I can see the past, we could talk to each other.”
  • A woman in Sarah’s vision tries to stop her husband from burying their dead son. “’He’s not dead,’ she said, horror in her voice. ‘He’s sleeping. I’ve seen him in my dreams. His spirit comes to me. I won’t let you put him in the ground.”
  • Sarah gets her fortune told at her birthday party. She is told, “I have never seen a board that spoke so powerfully of change as this one.”
  • When Sammy goes into a coma, Sarah sees her brother’s face in a mirror. Jackson says, “There’s an old superstition that spirits can be trapped in mirrors.”

Spiritual Content

  • At her grandmother’s funeral, the housekeeper covers all mirrors with black cloths. The housekeeper says it is “just a southern superstition. . . to help the departed’s soul cross over and not get trapped in the looking-glass world. . . People used to believe you could see through to the other side in a mirror. To the place where souls go after death before they move on to their final destination.”
  • Sarah and her mother go to church to socialize. “It had been years since I’d been inside a church. My mother liked religion about as much as she liked anything else supernatural. But she led the way up the steps the next morning.”
  • “I fell asleep still thinking about people watching me, thinking that the eyes in Amber House were kind of like the eyes of God, knowing every failing. Except God could forgive.”

by Morgan Lynn

Shark Wars

Gray is bigger than the other sharks in his clan and when his stomach rumbles, Gray follows the food and gets into trouble. Gray is banished from his reef and is forced to journey into the Big Blue. Luckily, his best friend Barkley goes with him. As they hunt for food, they enter an ocean world where the battle for hunting grounds is fierce. Gray and Barkley must find out which sharks are friends and which sharks are foes. How will the two friends keep from becoming someone else’s dinner?

The action-packed story follows Gray, who struggles with his large size and his hunger. Because the story is written in the third person point of view, the reader knows that sharks are keeping secrets from Gray. The reader knows that Gray should not be so trusting, adding suspense to the story.

Shark Wars creates a believable world where sharks rule the underwater realm. As the shark clans fight for food, Gray struggles to learn fighting skills, as well as to determine which sharks are trustworthy. Gray learns that even though he doesn’t like a fellow shark, that doesn’t mean they cannot work together for the good of the group.

As Gray meets other fish, he wonders if he is “swimming a good current.” In the end, he discovers the importance of loyalty and standing up for his friends. Shark Wars teaches the importance of doing what is right. The author tells Gray’s struggle for survival in an interesting way. Altbacker includes shark language such as landsharks, shiver, chop chop, and greenie. The cover of the book has a picture of each shark, which allows readers to understand the size and physical differences of characters. With 248 pages and no pictures, Shark Wars is a good choice for fluent readers. For those wanting a story that combines sharks, friendship, and fighting, Shark Wars will keep you entertained. But be warned, once you read Gray and Barkley’s story, you will be hooked and want to have the next book of the series waiting on the shelf!

Sexual Content

  • Valenka rubs up against the male sharks when she is trying to convince them to do something. For example, when trying to convince Goblin to do something, Valenka, “rubbed against him and whispered in his ear.”

Violence

  • A tiger shark attacks Gray and Barkley. “Gray heard a satisfying ‘Whufff!’ as he rammed the shark in the soft underbelly by his liver. The tiger tried to turn but was momentarily paralyzed. Barkley hammered the dazed attacker next. Or he tried. Because of his small size, he bounced off like a sea horse against hard coral.”
  • Gray’s clan is attacked and many of them are sent to the Sparkle Blue. The attack is not described, but Gray is upset. “A reddish haze descended over his eyes as he thought of someone eating sharks from his shiver family.”
  • Goblin and other sharks attack Gray and his friends. “Gray swam towards Goblin, who taunted the sawfish by nipping at his tail as his other shiver sharks laughed. Gray picked up his pace by ferociously whipping his tail back and forth. . . Gray hit the great white in the side, doing no real damage but forcing him from Snork.
  • The sharks play a game where they try to eat wahoo, which are really fast fish.
  • A shark, Thrash, taunts a mother turtle and threatens to eat her babies. The shark “lazily slid with the current so he was now facing the turtles and blocking them from the safety of the greenie. He gnashed his teeth together. “ ‘Just swim inside! You won’t feel a thing’ . . . Thrash laughed and then opened his mouth to bite the momma turtle in half with his jagged teeth. She screeched in fear. . .” Another shark appears and stops Thrash.
  • Thrash taunts a beta fish, then gets beat up by it. “Then the little fish caught Thrash by the tip of his tail with its frilly fins and somehow swung him in circles! And fast. . . The little fish threw Thrash into the distance, several body lengths away.”
  • Two shark clans battle. “The cries of bloody victory and death receded until he only heard his heartbeat and the water whisking past his gills. Gray rammed one attacking bull hard, sending it spinning away just before it could bite Thrash. . . Goblin battered a blue shark away from Churn, then bit a dorsal fin off another.” Several sharks die. The battle takes place over four pages.
  • A group of Goblin’s shiver sharks set a trap and attack others. “Ripper barreled into Shell, knocking him senseless. . . Barkley didn’t even feel the tiger’s impact on his side. Suddenly he felt the water cool and sweet, and he was floating by the Coral Shiver reef.” The sharks are put into a cage.
  • In a fit of anger, Gray “whirled and gave Striker a tremendous tail slap to the face. Gray actually felt it all the way up to his spine.”
  • When Gray tries to free his friends, other sharks try to stop him. Thrash “launched himself at Gray, who barely missed losing his left fin. He jammed Thrash as he passed flank side with his dorsal fin, raking the tiger.” The battle is described over three pages.
  • There is an epic multipage fight between Goblin’s clan and another clan. “Everything was flashing teeth, blood, confusion, and above all, the thunderous fin of the Bluefin siege flashing by, a relentless, speeding, silvery mass. . . He [Gray] butted two attacking bulls off the safe area, and both were sucked into the Run as if jerked away by a giant octopus tentacle. . . Striker smashed into Shell’s pursuer, biting him in the gills and forcing the dying shark into the current.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • Gray gets stuck. When his friend teases him, Gray yells, “Shut your cod hole and push!”
  • A fish calls other fish “morons.”
  • Heck is used three times. For example, Goblin asks, “Who the heck are you?”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • Sharks that die go to the “Sparkle Blue.”

The Sword of Summer

Magnus Chase isn’t your average 16-year-old kid. After a terrible incident that killed his mother, Magnus was forced to survive on the harsh streets of Boston for two years. Then everything changes, and not necessarily for the better when Magnus discovers the truth about his parentage. This knowledge is dangerous, and after attempting to outmaneuver his suspicious Uncle Randolph, Magnus lands in more trouble than he ever has before.

Escaping who he believes to be evil, Magnus falls into the hands of his worst enemy, a fire giant named Surt. Magnus dies and his soul is sent to Valhalla, the hall of warriors who will fight with Odin during Ragnarok (the end of the world). This is the beginning of an unlikely story of emotional growth, the development of strength, and the family found in friendship.

Fans of Rick Riordan’s previous works will be pleased as they travel into a fascinating world of Norse mythology. A character from the beloved Percy Jackson and the Olympians series even makes a cameo, making a fun crossover between magical worlds.

This family-friendly adventure is an exciting ride throughout. The characters are well developed and believable, but the sheer amount of characters may become confusing for less attentive readers. Nevertheless, even the timidest readers will enjoy this story as it is filled with well-placed humor. The plot is action-packed, leaving readers excited to turn the next page.

Although this book is entertaining and amusing, there are battles with monsters throughout the book that may upset some readers. The battles are not told in gory detail, but characters are injured and must deal with the consequences of their battles. Ultimately, Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard: The Sword of Summer is a delightful read full of humor, action, and magic.

Sexual Content

  • Samirah has an arranged marriage to Amir Fadlan. When Magnus questions her feelings on the matter, Sam responds, “Ugh! You don’t get it. I’ve been in love with Amir since I was twelve.”
  • Every time a giant comes to barter or make a deal with Freya, the goddess of love, sex, beauty, fertility, and gold, they always ask for her hand in marriage.
  • Magnus’s father Frey lost the Sword of Summer because he fell madly in love with a frost giantess. The only way that he could heal his heart was by offering the Sword of Summer to Skirnir.
  • Freya has lots of dwarven children. Every time she wants jewelry made by dwarves, she goes to Nidavellir and marries a dwarf in exchange for their craftsmanship. These one-day marriages each end with a child. This interaction is not described beyond this, but it is acknowledged that Blitzen is a child of Freya and a dwarf.
  • Magnus describes his first kiss when he is involuntarily given mouth-to-mouth by a goat. “My only previous experience with kissing had been with Jackie Molotov in seventh grade, behind the bleachers at a school dance…. Anyway, with apologies to Jackie, getting mouth-to-mouth from a goat reminded me of her.”
  • In the past, a son of Loki was sent to Valhalla and fell in love with the lead Valkyrie, Gunilla, but he “betrayed her. Turned out she was a spy for [Loki]. Broke her heart.”
  • After Halfborn nearly sacrifices his life for Mallory in battle, they are on good terms, and it appears that there may be romance in the future for them. “As my hallmates headed back home, I was happy to see Halfborn Gunderson slip his arm around Mallory Keen’s waist. She didn’t even cut his hand off for doing so.”

Violence

  • Magnus engages in a battle with the fire giant, Surt. “I smacked Surt in the head with my rusty sword. . . The blade didn’t seem to hurt him, but the swirling flames died. . . Then he punched me in the gut.” Later in the battle, “Surt kicked me in the ribs and sent me sprawling. . . Surt must have kicked me hard enough to trigger a near-death hallucination.” After a brief time period, Magnus’s sword begins to act on its own and guides Magnus’s actions. “It spun in an arc, dragging my arm along with it, and hacked into Surt’s right leg. The Black One screamed. The wound in his thigh smoldered, setting his pants on fire . . . Before he could recover, my sword leaped upward and slashed his face. With a howl, Surt stumbled back, cupping his hands over his nose. . . Just as he reached me, my sword leaped up and ran him through.”
  • Magnus describes his death. “I actually died. One hundred percent: guts impaled, vital organs burned, head smacked into a frozen river from forty feet up, every bone in my body broken, lungs filled with ice water…. It hurt. A lot.”
  • When getting a tour of Hotel Valhalla, Magnus is “pushed down as a spear flew past. It impaled a guy sitting on the nearest sofa, killing him instantly.” The guy is already dead, so this is just a temporary “death” as he will regenerate in a few hours.
  • Magnus and all those who inhabit Hotel Valhalla observe how newly inducted einherjar (inhabitants of Hotel Valhalla) died. In one video, a warrior “saved a bunch of kids at her village school when a warlord’s soldiers had tried to kidnap them. She’d flirted with one of the soldiers, tricked him into letting her hold his assault rifle, then turned it on the warlord’s men . . . The video was pretty violent.”
  • Mallory is excited to “see the new boy get dismembered.”
  • The einherjar participate in practice battle exercises to prepare for Ragnarok, when the nine worlds will fall. One of these “battles” is comically described, but each “death” is also shown. Many characters get shot, punched, or stabbed to “death” in the heat of battle.
  • In a dream, Surt threatens Magnus by saying, “When we meet again, you will burn, son of Frey. You and your friends will be my tinder. You will start the fire that burns the nine worlds.”
  • Samirah attacks Magnus after he leaves Valhalla. “She charged from behind the concession building and kicked me in the chest, propelling me backwards into a tree. My lungs imploded like paper sacks.”
  • An eagle drags Magnus away from his friends to convince him to do something for him. “The eagle veered, slamming me into the fire escape. I felt my ribs crack, like vials of acid breaking inside my chest. My empty stomach tried unsuccessfully to hurl.”
  • When Blitzen competes in a dwarf craftsmanship competition, Magnus acts as his bodyguard. “A random dwarf charged me from the side-lines, swinging an axe and screaming, ‘BLOOD!’ I hit him in the head with the hilt of my sword. He collapsed.”
  • Otis, a goat who belongs to Thor, marvels at Magnus’s talking sword. Otis exclaims, “I’ve never been killed by a talking sword before. That’s fine. If you could just make a clean cut right across the throat-”
  • For Odin to learn the secrets of the runes, he sacrificed an eye and “fashioned a noose and hanged himself from a branch of the World Tree for nine days.”
  • Magnus attacks and kills two giantess sisters. Magnus threw a knife and, “The spinning steak knife hit her in the chest. It didn’t impale her . . .She lowered hands, grabbing instinctively for her chest, which allowed Jack full access to her nose. A second later, Gjalp was lying dead on the floor next to her sister.”
  • The book concludes with a giant final battle in which warriors of Valhalla fight fire giants and attempt to rebind Fenris’ wolf. Within this battle, several warriors get hurt and three Valkyries die, including Gunilla. “Blitzen was so angry—between the Wolf gloating about his dad’s death and Surt stealing his fashion ideas—that he howled like Crazy Alice in Chinatown and rammed his harpoon right through the giant’s gut. The fire giant stumbled off, belching flames and taking the harpoon with him.” “Halfborn Gunderson buried his axe in the breastplate of a giant. X picked up another fire-breather and tossed him off the side of the ridge. Mallory and T.J. fought back-to-back, jabbing and slashing and dodging blasts of flame.”
  • Magnus’s Uncle Randolph is poisoned by Loki. “Randolph smelled the poison before he felt it. Acrid steam curled into his nostrils. The side of his face erupted in white-hot pain. He fell to his knees, his throat seizing up in shock.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Magnus thinks, “Random police and park rangers I could deal with. Truant officers, community service volunteers, drunken college kids, addicts looking to roll somebody small and weak—all those would’ve been as easy to wake up to as pancakes and orange juice.”
  • The mead of Valhalla doesn’t contain alcohol as it is magical goat milk that tastes like a mixture of delicious flavors. However, this topic makes Magnus share his own experience with alcohol. Magnus says, “Yes, I’ve tried alcohol, thrown up, tried alcohol again, thrown up.”
  • The god Aegir is a brewer who “spends all his time at the hops shop, or going on brewery tours with his buddies…. He’s always talking about microbrews. He has a cauldron a mile wide!”
  • Magnus and his friends go to Nabbi’s tavern and the dwarves that he travels with order mead (not the Valhalla kind).
  • Thor, the thunder god, “loved drinking mead.”
  • When the group comes across giantess sisters, the enormous monsters are drunk. Magnus thinks, “They’d obviously been hitting the mead pretty hard.”

 Language

  • Profanity is used a few times throughout the book. Profanity includes ass, dammit, crap, and idiot.
  • Many characters exclaim, “Gods of Asgard” and “gods” as a form of profanity.
  • When Gunilla introduces a new video system that shows how einherjar die, “the warriors cheered and banged their mugs, drowning out the sound of Sam cursing next to me.”
  • Magnus is angry towards a Valkyrie that he dislikes and thinks, “No, but your dad was apparently a jackass!”
  • While trying to escape Valhalla, “Mallory cursed in what was maybe Gaelic. Our little hallway group was a veritable United Nations of Cussing.”
  • When attempting to arrange his dead body, Magnus’s “hands had come unclasped so I appeared to be giving everybody the finger.”
  • When Blitzen talks about his mother’s requests, he says, “She wants her damnable earrings.”
  • Thor could “cuss like a drunken, creative sailor. ‘Mother-grubbing scum bucket!’ he yelled (or something along those lines. My brain may have filtered the actual language, as it would’ve made my ears bleed.)”
  • Magnus wants to comfort Hearthstone. “I wanted to hug the poor guy, bake him a batch of cookies, and tell him how sorry I was about his crappy childhood, but I knew he wouldn’t want pity.”

Supernatural

  • The story exists in a world where Norse mythology is real, including all of the gods, heroes, and monsters. For example, Magnus is the son of Frey, the god of peace, fertility, rain, sunshine, and summer.
  • In the beginning of the book, Magnus doesn’t understand why Blitzen hates daylight. He says, “Maybe he was the world’s shortest, stoutest homeless vampire.”
  • Two magical, evil wolves broke into Magnus’s apartment and killed his mom when he was fourteen. “From the hallway, two beasts emerged, their pelts the color of dirty snow, their eyes glowing blue.”
  • Surt is a fire god and has powers. “Around Surt, flames began to swirl. The firestorm spiraled outward, melting cars to slag heaps, liquefying the pavement, popping rivets from the bridge like champagne corks.”
  • Due to Magnus being a demigod, he has magical abilities. He doesn’t have a problem in extreme temperatures, can walk through fire, can heal others, and mentally communicates with horses.
  • There is a vala who is a “seer. She can cast spells, read the future, and… other stuff.” She can also read/use the runes, which is a form of non-inherited Norse magic.
  • Hearthstone is an elf, and Blitzen is a dwarf. Their identity gives them special abilities like fashion sense, craftsmanship, and rune magic.
  • As an einherjar, Magus acquires super strength, has more muscles, and has accelerated healing.
  • Heartstone uses rune stones and eventually becomes a runemaster. These stones allow him to perform magic, usually to help his friends on their quest.
  • The group encounters Mimir, a disembodied head who floats in water and knows the secrets of the nine worlds.
  • The Sword of Summer is a magical weapon that Magnus wields. It can speak and fight on its own. Magnus transforms it into a stone on a chain that he wears around his neck. Magnus “could easily pull it off the chain. As soon as I did, the stone grew into a sword. If I wanted it back in pendant form, all I had to do was picture that. The sword shrank into a stone, and I could re-attach it to the necklace.”
  • Valkyries can fly, camouflage magically, and teleport back to Valhalla in a poof of light.

Spiritual Content

  • Norse gods are real, but they are not worshipped. They are treated more like characters than all-knowing deities.
  • Magnus describes the place where his funeral occurs. “It was set up like a chapel: three stained glass windows on the back wall, rows of folding chairs facing an open coffin on a dais. I hated this already. I’d been raised non-religious. I’d always considered myself an atheist.”
  • Magnus says, “If there is an Almighty God up there, a head honcho of the universe, He was totally laughing at me right now.”
  • Samirah is Muslim and wears a hijab. When arguing with Magnus she says, “A good Muslim girl is not supposed to hang out on her own with strange guys.”
  • Thor is described as watching television religiously. Then Magnus says, “Can I say a god did something religiously?”

by Morgan Filgas

Refugee

Three kids. Three different time periods. Three refugee families flee their countries. Each family faces unimaginable dangers. But they have no choice but to press on and hope for a better tomorrow. Although decades separate them, they discover that they are all connected in the end.

Joseph is a Jewish boy living in 1930’s Nazi Germany. His family boards a ship set for Cuba. They hope to avoid the concentration camps and certain death. But will a country on the other side of the world take them in, or will they be sent away?

Isabel is a Cuban girl in 1994. Her family faces hunger, violence, and an uncertain future. But when her father is threatened with jail, the family sets out on a homemade raft. They hope to make it to Miami. Can they make it to America and keep their family together?

Mahmoud is a Syrian boy in 2015. His country is being torn apart by war. Violence, death, and destruction are everyday occurrences. When his family’s neighborhood is destroyed by bombs, they head towards Europe. Can they safely make it to a country that welcomes refugees?

Refugee sheds light on the historical and political aspects of each time period. Readers will learn about Kristallnacht, The Night of the Broken Glass, as well as the history of how the war in Syria began with Assad bombing his own people. Isabel’s story also explains the U.S. policy of “Wet Foot, Dry Foot.” The end of the book has historical information as well as a section on what readers can do to help.

Each section of the story is told from a young person’s point of view. This gives the book a tragic feeling because none of the young people have any control over the events that lead to their need to flee. The harrowing story of each family does not shy away from the harsh realities of the time period. Each family has stories of cruelty, violence, and death, which are often described in graphic and frightening detail.

The goodness of random strangers is seldom. However, in Josef’s story, a Hitler Youth protects Joseph, and the captain and most of the crew of the ship treat the Jews with respect. The story shows how small deeds can make a huge impact. Even though the story shows the kindness of a few, cruelty and violence overshadow the kindness in the book.

As Mahmoud and his family try to escape the violence, he realizes that it was easy for people to forget about the refugees until “refugees did something they didn’t want them to do—when they tried to cross the border into their country, or slept on the front stoops of their shops, or jumped in front of their cars, or prayed on the decks of their ferries—that’s when people couldn’t ignore them any longer.” Mahmoud struggles with wanting to stay invisible but wondering if he needs to be visible. “If you were invisible, the bad people couldn’t hurt you, either. If you stayed invisible here, did everything you were supposed to, and never made waves, you would disappear from the eyes and minds of all the good people out there who could help you get your life back.”

The publisher recommends Refugee for readers as young as nine, but younger readers may be upset by the horrors of war and the tragic decisions the families must make in order to survive. Younger readers who are interested in World War II may want to begin with the books Lifeboat 12 or Resistance, which also tell compelling stories without the graphic violence.

Refugee is an engaging story that brings the suffering of refugees to light. The situations that the characters face are emotional, but the characters could be better developed. Since each chapter focuses on a different family, the story was often disjointed. Some readers may have a difficult time following a story that changes characters every chapter. The book shows the reasons the family left but doesn’t mention the difficulties that countries face when dealing with thousands of refugees coming into their country.

Although the story is easy to read, the book’s emotional impact is hard-hitting. Refugee takes the reader on a harrowing journey where each family must deal with a tragic loss of life and cruelty from others. Refugee shows how families have been impacted in past and current times. The story gives voice to the current refugee crises and shows the desperation of people who want to live without fear of death.

Sexual Content

  • While in Havana, Isabel sees “couples kissing under palm trees.”
  • Isabel’s grandfather flirts with a young girl. He tells her, “Your face must be Summer, because you’re making me sweat!” Isabel knew that “Lito was giving her piropos, the flirtatious compliments Cuban men said to women on the street.”

Violence

  • During WWII, Nazis break into Josef’s home and “threw him to the floor. Another shadow picked up Ruth by the hair and slapped her. ‘Be quiet!” the shadow yelled, and it tossed Ruth down on the floor beside Joseph.” The strangers trash the house, gather his family into the living room, and arrest his father.
  • A group of Hitler Youth attack Josef after school. The group “fell on him, hitting and kicking him for being a Jew, and calling him all kinds of names.”
  • During a medical check, Josef’s father becomes agitated and starts mumbling. Josef “slapped his father across the face. Hard.” Josef tells his father that the medical examiner is “a Nazi in disguise. He decides who goes back to Dachau. He decides who lives or dies. . . .” Josef’s father is scared into silence.
  • Crew members ransack the room of Josef’s family. “They swept Mama’s makeup and perfume off the vanity and smashed the mirror . . . they tore the head off Ruthie’s stuffed bunny.”
  • While in a concentration camp, Josef’s father says how the Nazis choose one man to drown every night. “They would tie his ankles together and his hands behind his back and tie a gag around his mouth, and then they would hang him upside down, with his head in a barrel. Like a fight. . . They would fill the barrel with water. Slowly. So they could enjoy the panic. So they could laugh. . . He would thrash around and breathe water until he drowned. Drowned upside down.
  • Josef’s father jumps into the ocean and when a policeman tries to help him, Josef’s father yells, “Let me die! Let me die!” Josef’s father survives.
  • A group of men tries to take over the ship. One of the passengers slam “the helmsman and sends him tumbling to the floor. The mutineers quickly surrounded the other sailors, threatening them with their makeshift clubs.”
  • When Cuba sends the ship away, a policeman “swept the gun back and forth, and the other policemen drew their pistols and did the same.” The captain is able to convince the passengers not to attack the police.
  • While he is running from Nazis, soldiers shoot at Josef. “A pistol cracked, and a bullet blew the bark off a tree less than a meter away. Josef stumbled again in panic, righted himself, and kept running.” Josef and his mother are caught and taken to a concentration camp.
  • Boys attack Mahmoud’s friend because he is a Shia Muslim. “. . . Khalid had been curled into a ball on the ground, his hands around his head while the other boys kicked him. . . With a battle cry that would have made Wolverine proud, Mahmoud had launched himself at Khalid’s attacker. And he had been beaten up as badly as Khalid.”
  • Mahmoud’s mother was a nurse who came home “every day with horror stories about people she’d helped put back together. Not soldiers—regular people. . . Children with missing limbs.”
  • Mahmoud’s entire neighborhood is bombed. “The walls of his apartment exploded, blasting broken bits of concrete and glass through the room. . . His breath left him all at once and he fell to the floor with a heavy thud in a heap of metal and mortar.” No one in his family is seriously injured.
  • While trying to escape, Syrian armed soldiers stop the car at gunpoint and then pile in the backseat. As they are traveling, “gunfire erupted. .. and bullets pinged into the car.” One of the soldiers is killed. “Mahmoud screamed again and pushed the man away . . .” The scene is described over four pages. The family hides in a ditch until they can escape.
  • The rubber dinghy that Mahmoud and other refugees are in pops. “The cold water was like a slap in Mahmoud’s face. . . He tumbled backward, head down in the murky water, his arms and feet thrashing, trying to right himself. Something else—someone else—fell on top of him, pushing him deeper down into the water.” Later Mahmoud takes a life jacket off of a dead man so that he and his mother do not die.
  • As Mahmoud and his mother tread water, they grab onto a dinghy. A man “reached down and tried to pry Mahmoud’s hand from the dinghy. . . He sobbed with the effort of fighting off the man’s fingers and hanging onto the dinghy.” A woman takes Mahmoud’s baby sister but leaves Mahmoud and his mother behind. They survive.
  • A taxi driver pulls a gun on Mahmoud’s family and demands money.
  • When a group of refugees swarm the Hungarian border, soldiers “hurried to stop them, firing tear gas canisters into the crowd. . . Mahmoud’s eyes burned like someone had sprayed hot pepper juice in them, and mucus poured from his nose. He choked on the gas, his lungs seized up. He couldn’t breathe. . .”  Many of the refugees are arrested and taken to a detention center.
  • While being taken to a detention center, Mahmoud’s dad yells at a soldier, who then “whacked him in the back with his nightstick, and Mahmoud’s father collapsed to the ground. . . He kicked Mahmoud’s father in the back, and another soldier hit Mahmoud’s father again and again with his stick.”
  • While in town in Cuba, people riot in the streets. People “yelled and chanted. They threw rocks and bottles.” Isabel sees her father “just as he reared back and threw a bottle that smashed into the line of police along the seawall.” When the police catch her father, a policeman beats him. The scene plays out over four pages.
  • As a group tries to flee Cuba, “a pistol rang out again over the waves. . . The police were shooting at them.” The boat is hit, but no one is injured.
  • While Iván is cooling off in the ocean, a shark bites him. “The water around Ivan became a dark red cloud, and Isabel screamed. . . Iván’s right leg was a bloody mess. There were small bites all over it, as though a gang of sharks had attacked all at once. Raw, red, gaping wounds exposed the muscle underneath his skin.” Iván dies.
  • Before Iván’s body is pushed into the ocean, someone shoots a shark. “The shark died in a bloody, thrashing spasm, and the other sharks that had been following the boat fell on it in a frenzy.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Joseph sees a man, who “staggered a little, bumping into things as he tried to move through the tight little room. Joseph had seen drunk people leaving pubs in Berlin the same way.”
  • When Josef’s mother goes to the doctor to get a sleeping draught for her husband, she “told the doctor the sleeping draught was for me. . . and he made me—made me take it right there.”

Language

  • When the Nazis break into Josef’s house, one of the men laughs because “the boy’s pissed himself.”
  • A group of kids are called “Jewish rats.”
  • At a funeral, Josef’s father says, “At least he didn’t have to be burning in the hell of the Third Reich.”
  • “Oh, God” is used an exclamation once. “Oh, my God” is also used as an exclamation once.

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • Mahmoud and his family practice the Muslim faith. The prayer ritual is described through Mahmoud’s actions.
  • Mahmoud’s father says, “God will guide us.”
  • After taking a lifejacket off a dead man, Mahmoud says a prayer. “Oh God, forgive this man, and have mercy on him and give him strength and pardon him. Be generous to him and cause his entrance to be wide and wash him with water and snow and hail. Cleanse him of his transgressions. . .Take him into Paradise, and protect him from the punishment of the grave and from the punishment of hellfire.”
  • Mahmoud’s family and other refugees pray. Mahmoud “recited the first chapter of the Qur’an, Mahmoud thought about the words. Thee alone we worship, and thee alone we ask for help. Show us the straight path.”
  • After Joseph’s apartment is bombed, his mother cries, “Thank God you’re alive!”
  • During a funeral, a rabbi says a prayer, and “the mourners said together, ‘Remember, God, that we are of dust.’”
  • When Iván dies, his mother wants “to say something. A prayer. Something. I want God to know Iván is coming.”

Mousetronaut Goes to Mars

Meteor has been training to go to Mars on the Galaxy Rocket. He’s just a little mouse, but he has studied, exercised, and prepared just like the human astronauts. He is ready to fly thirty-five million miles away from Earth. However, when the names are called, Meteor isn’t on the list.

Determined to go to the red planet, Meteor stows away on the ship. Throughout the trip, he plans to stay hidden. But when there is an unexpected mission malfunction, can Meteor save the day?

Meteor is a small, but mighty mouse that will inspire readers to learn more about space. Author and astronaut, Mark Kelly incorporates space facts into the story. The facts are integrated well and never feel like a science lesson. The plot is fast-paced, action-packed, and at times humorous.

Fun, full-colored illustrations capture the many expressions of Meteor. Besides being adorably cute, the illustrations show the hard work and dedication of astronauts. The astronauts and other NASA workers include both men and women of different races. Both the story and illustrations will captivate younger readers until the very end. At the end of the story, the author gives information about the space program, Mars, and other interesting facts.

Even though Mousetronaut Goes to Mars is a picture book, the story is intended to be read aloud to a child, rather than for a child to read it for the first time independently. Most pages contain 2-4 sentences, which makes the story a quick read and an excellent bedtime story. Younger readers will want to read Mousetronaut Goes to Mars over and over again because of the inspiring message that even small people (or mice) can make a big difference. Readers will fall in love with Meteor, who will inspire them to have big dreams.

If your little reader enjoys reading about space, Mars Needs Moms would be another excellent book to add to your child’s reading list.

Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • None

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None

Lifeboat 12

Life for thirteen-year-old Ken is difficult. His father is out of work. He thinks his step-mum dislikes him. He often gets into trouble, and the Nazis are bombing his city. But when he is given the chance to be evacuated with ninety other boys and girls, Ken isn’t excited. He wants to stay home. However, Ken’s father says he’s lucky to be chosen to go to Canada aboard the SS City of Benares.

When the children board the luxury ship, Ken can’t believe his good luck. He’s making new friends, eating delicious food, and doesn’t have to endure his stepmom’s glares. When the ship is 600 miles from shore, everyone thinks they’re safe. They’re wrong.

Five days after they leave port, an explosion rocks the ship. They’ve been torpedoed. With the

Baranes sinking quickly, Ken rushes to Lifeboat 12. Ken, five other boys, one woman, and 39 men are all crammed onto one lifeboat. Will Lifeboat 12 be rescued? If not, how will they survive lost in the ocean?

Lifeboat 12 is a gripping story that will keep readers turning pages until the very end. Beautifully written in free verse, every word develops the characters and advances the plot. The author uses alliteration, onomatopoeia, and sense words to give a clear, sharp picture of World War II. Hood describes the events of World War II without showing the gory details of death while keeping the intensity of danger at the forefront.

The story is told from Ken’s point of view and is divided into three sections—Escape, Afloat, and Rescue. Each section describes Ken’s day-by-day experiences. Since the story is told from a thirteen-year-old’s perspective, the descriptions remain appropriate for even younger readers. Ken’s thoughts and emotions add to the intensity of the story and allow the reader to understand his conflicting emotions. The conflict will keep readers engaged; they will want to know if Ken survives his harrowing experience.

Although Ken’s story is fictionalized, the events and many of the character’s words are based on Hood’s research. Even though the story is filled with historical information, the book never sounds like a history book. Instead, Ken’s experiences and observations bring history to life in an engaging story that is difficult to put down.

Hood’s research, which appears at the end of the story, includes more information about Lifeboat 12, photos of the children, and a list of survivors. The research also includes information about the Lascars. Seeing the pictures and reading Hood’s interview notes has an emotional impact on the reader as it is impossible to deny the horrors and the kindness of people. For readers who would like more information about the topic, the book contains a list of interesting websites and videos.

Even though the devastation of World War II is clear, Lifeboat 12 shows the courage and kindness of others. Ken said, “I survived thanks to the kindness of people I didn’t know, people who were all different, people who wanted to help.” Lifeboat 12 is a suspenseful, gripping story that everyone should read, not only for the historical value but because it is a captivating story that will leave you gripping the edge of your seat. Ken’s story will remain with readers for a long time to come.

Sexual Content

  • While hiding, Ken hears a woman say, “Sweetheart, of course I love you! But don’t kiss me here! It’s not proper.”

Violence

  • The Nazis bomb England several times; however, the bombing is not described in detail. The first time the bombs drop, Ken hears “Boom!” He knows the bombs are close because “blasts shatter the air. The earth shudders. Margaret wails.” The families “huddle under the table. Blasts flash in the dark, momentarily exposing the fear on our faces as the table jumps and the cutlery rattles.”
  • During one air-raid Ken’s family goes to a shelter. The shelter is “damp and dark inside, lit only by a candle stuck in a flowerpot, casting eerie shadows on the wall. . . My family and I hunker down, listen to the drone of the planes, the ack ack ack of the antiaircraft guns, then the high-pitched whistle and BAM! Of the bombs.”
  • The ship that Ken is on is torpedoed. “BAM! I jolt awake, jumping up in the dark. The floor shudders, the night split with sounds of splintering wood, creaking metal, clattering glass. Then nothing.” As the boat is being evacuated, “two more explosions flash in the night, the light exposing a horror show—people clinging to overturned lifeboats, swimming to overloaded rafts, grabbing at floating deck chairs with flailing arms beseeching hands.” The boat eventually sinks.
  • One of the chaperones tells a story about a fictional character, the hero sees a prisoner who “was bent over in pain, a torture device called a thumbscrew beside the coded papers on the table.” The hero “crashes through the window and knocked over the candle. Bulldog landed a punch; Peterson went down. . . Bulldog slung the prisoner over his shoulder. . . and ran through the door. . .”
  • One of the men jumps into the ocean even though he can’t swim. Some men try to reach him, “but the waves whisk him away. He surfaces again, coughing and calling, but he’s too far gone. . . with a one-two punch from the sea, he goes down, for the last time.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • One of the chaperones tells a story about a fictional character whose drink had been drugged, causing him to pass out.

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • When someone tries to catch a seagull to eat, a man says, “harming a seabird is bad luck, is what it is. . . They carry the souls of dead sailors. Kill one and it’ll be an albatross around all of our necks.”

Spiritual Content

  • “As the ship is being evacuated, people pray. Some pray to God. Others pray to Allah.”
  • One of the children’s chaperones is Father O’Sullivan. He tells someone “God be with you.”
  • Father O’Sullivan and the children, “say grace before and after our meal.”
  • One of the men says, “Allah the Compassionate will save us if He so wishes. Or He will send storms if He thinks it best. God is wise.”
  • While on the lifeboat, “my friend prays to Allah, and like many of his fellow crewmen, bows to the east five times a day.” Ken sees “other crewmen crossing themselves as Father does.”
  • When a ship is near, Father O’Sullivan tells the boys to pray. He says, “Come now, we must help the Lord lead that ship this way.”
  • When Ken sees an airplane, he “prayed like I’ve never prayed before.” Others pray as well.

Mousetronaut

A group of astronauts and a group of mice have all been working hard to prepare for a space mission. Since he is the smallest mouse, Meteor doesn’t think he’ll be chosen to go on the mission, but the shuttle commander has noticed Meteor’s hard work and chooses him to go. Meteor is one of six mice to lift off into space. When the astronauts have a problem, can Meteor help save the day?

Younger readers will love the story of a little mouse. The story reinforces the idea that hard work pays off. The astronauts recognize Meteor’s hard work and positive attitude. In the end, the smallest mouse is able to save the day. Throughout the story, readers will learn about life on a space shuttle.

The realistic colored illustrations show the day-to-day life of an astronaut. Meteor’s facial expressions are adorable and will help readers recognize emotion. The illustrations also show a diverse group of people. Two of the astronauts are Caucasian, one is Asian, and one is a woman. There are several group scenes where characters of different races are included.

Even though Mousetronaut is a picture book, the story is intended to be read aloud to a child, rather than for a child to read it for the first time independently. Most pages contain 2-4 sentences, which makes the story a quick read and an excellent bedtime story. The story will inspire readers to learn more about space. The second story in the series Mousetronaut Goes to Mars is even better than the first book. Astronauts + space + a little mouse = an out-of-this-world story.

 Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • None

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None

Mars Needs Moms

Milo isn’t sure that mothers are special. His mother makes him eat broccoli and take out the trash. After Milo gets sent to bed without dinner, he yells at his mother. That night, Martian raiders kidnap his mother. He’s not sure why, but he chases after her. Will Milo be able to save his mother from the Martians? Will he learn what’s so special about mothers?

Mars Needs Moms is a beautiful story about a mother’s love for her son. The fast-paced plot focuses on Milo and his mother’s relationship. Younger children will relate to Milo, who just does not understand his mother.

The full-page pictures are beautiful and humorous. In the beginning, when Milo is upset with his mother, the illustrations portray her as unfriendly. For example, when Milo thinks mothers are “giant, summer-stealing, child-working, perfume garden goblins,” the illustration shows his mother clad in an overly large hat that hides her face, and she is holding garden tools.

Even though Mars Needs Moms 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. The alliterations and descriptions make the story fun to read aloud. Since there is little text on each page, the story is a quick read making it an excellent bedtime story.

Younger readers will want to read Mars Needs Moms over and over not only because it is an excellent story, but also because the fun illustrations do a wonderful job of bringing Milo’s struggle to life. The Martians trying to kidnap a mother are adorably funny, and the conclusion explains why moms are “the most marvelous treasure.” Mars Needs Moms blends illustrations and text into a beautiful story that shows the importance of mothers. If your little reader enjoys reading about space, Mousetronaut Goes to Mars would be another excellent book to add to your child’s reading list.

Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • Milo’s mother is kidnapped by Martians. Milo “peeked around the door to see his mother being carried past the bathroom by three Martians the color of jelly beans.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None

 

 

Third Grade Mermaid and the Narwhals

Cora wrote a story about narwhals and reads it in class. Vivian Shimmermore makes fun of Cora’s story, saying that narwhals are fake. To prove Vivian wrong, Cora and her friends travel across the open ocean to find a pod of narwhals before they migrate. Cora wants to show Vivian that narwhals are not just mythical creatures but really exist. Will Cora and her friends be able to find the narwhals before they migrate?

Third Grade Mermaid and the Narwhals has many elements that will appeal to younger readers. Readers will enjoy meeting Cora’s friends—a sea cucumber and a shrimp. Delightful cartoon illustrations appear on every page; this allows the reader to visualize the sea creatures and the characters’ emotions. Some of the conversations appears in speech bubbles, which helps break up the text into smaller parts.

As Cora travels to see the narwhals, she learns the importance of stepping out of her comfort zone. Through Cora’s interaction with Vivian, Cora was encouraged to go find the narwhals—a feat that Cora did not think she could accomplish. Cora clearly doesn’t like Vivian Shimmermore; however, when Vivian is afraid of the dark, Cora helps her overcome her fear. The story also teaches the importance of friends helping each other.

The story is told from Cora’s point of view, which allows her personality to shine. Nevertheless, Cora has several qualities that are not worth emulating. When her teacher asks Cora to enter a writing contest, Cora only agrees to participate so she can “put Vivian in her place for once.” Cora’s interactions with others, even her friends, are at times slightly mean and snippy. When Cora asks for permission to go find the narwhals, she nags her mother. “The ‘Yes Game’ went on for some time before Mother actually said yes for real. But the point is she did.”

The book also has several negative aspects. Even though Cora looks like a third-grader, the other two girls from her class look more like teenagers. The plot also doesn’t enforce the importance of hard work. When it is time for Cora to write her story, she falls asleep and decides to turn in her diary entry. Even though Cora did not have time to write her story, she still receives first place.

With short sentences, dialogue, and definitions of difficult words, Third Grade Mermaid and the Narwhals is an engaging, easy-to-read book. The plot revolves around Cora’s trip to see the narwhals; however, at the beginning of the story, the plot jumps around which may make it confusing for beginning readers. The story ends with facts about narwhals and narwhal vocabulary. Younger readers will enjoy Cora’s adventure, the illustrations, and the sea life, but hopefully readers will not imitate Cora’s negative personality traits.

Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • None

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None

Shark Lady: The True Story of How Eugenie Clark Became the Ocean’s Most Fearless Scientist

Most people think sharks are scary monsters. But when Eugenie saw a shark, she thought they were beautiful. She dreamed of growing up and studying sharks. She wanted to show others how amazing sharks are. Discover how Eugenie became known as the Shark Lady.

Shark Lady follows Eugenie’s progress from a small child dreaming of sharks to a grown woman who made fantastic discoveries. Each page contains beautifully colored illustrations that bring the underwater world of sharks to life. Several of the pages have pictures of fish, with both their scientific name and their common name.

Even though some people believed Eugenie should be a secretary or a housewife, Eugenie never gave up on her dream. The story does not overlook the years of study and the hard work that Eugenie put into getting an education before she “finally dove into the open ocean.” Through Eugenie’s life experiences, readers will learn that “we must never let the world tell us what we can and can’t do. It especially can’t tell us how brave we will choose to be.”

At the conclusion of the story, there are fun facts about sharks and an illustrated timeline of Eugenie Clark’s life. The picture book Shark Lady will appeal to any reader who wants to learn about sea life. The many illustrations and short sentences make Shark Lady the perfect book to read aloud. The positive, true-life story of Eugenie will inspire children to never give up on their dreams.

Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • None

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None

Team BFF: Race to the Finish!

Sophia and her friends are BFFs. Together they work on coding projects, eat cookies, and have impromptu dance parties. They are excited to participate in their first robot hackathon, where they hope to show off their coding skills. But when Sophia’s parents need her to babysit instead of attending the hackathon, everything may change. Without Sophia, the team will be disqualified. When Sofia tells her friends, will they have her back or will it destroy their friendship?

The second installment of the Girls Who Code Series focuses on Sophia’s struggle with balancing home responsibilities with her coding club responsibilities. Readers will be able to relate to Sophia’s struggle to tell her friends bad news—she won’t be able to participate in the hackathon. The friends in the story not only brainstorm how to build a robot, they also show the importance of helping each other. The diverse cast of characters are young girls who have a variety of interests (cooking, drama, and fashion), but come together because of their love of coding.

Team BFF, Race to the Finish is told from Sophia’s point of view, which allows the reader to understand Sophia’s feelings of not being noticed by her family. The reader will get a small glimpse into the life of a large, Hispanic family. Sophia’s family not only makes traditional Spanish food but also uses Spanish in their everyday interactions.

Sophia is also struggling to understand her feelings for a boy. She has a crush, but is tongue-tied every time she sees the boy. As Sophia and the boy interact, she wonders how to navigate a boy-girl relationship. Team BFF, Race to the Finish is an easy-to-read story that shows smart girls in everyday situations. Sophia’s struggle is an interesting story that is highly relatable and will capture many readers’ interest.

Sexual Content

  • Sophia has a crush on a boy and when they talk, Sophia talked even though “butterflies in my stomach were zooming around like crazy. . . It was silly to feel weird around him.”
  • While walking with Sophia, Sammy “reached for my hand. I let him take it, even though it was a sweaty mess—but his was too.”

Violence

  • None

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None

 

 

Ada Twist, Scientist

Ada Twist loves asking questions. Her curiosity is never satisfied. When she tries to figure out just what is causing the stinking smell, Ada takes her fact-finding a little too far. Her parents are frustrated and frazzled, so they send Ada to the thinking chair. Can Ada figure out how to complete her scientific experiment without causing chaos?

Ada Twist uses rhyme, questions, and scientific vocabulary to show that questioning and curiosity are part of the scientific process. Ada loves asking questions. Why? What? How? When? As Ada tries to figure out the world around her, Ada’s parents try to figure out how to best deal with her inquisitive spirit. The story ends with Ada using her curiosity in an appropriate way instead of writing her hypotheses on the walls.

Short text and large illustrations appear on every page, which makes Ada Twist, Scientist an excellent choice for beginning readers. The adorable full-color illustration brings the action to life as well as shows an African-American family in a positive light. The parents wear professional clothing, Ada’s brother appears in sports apparel, and Ada wears a cute dress. Readers will also enjoy finding the picture of the family’s cat that appears on most of the pages.

Ada Twist, Scientist uses a creative and entertaining story to teach the fun of the scientific process and the importance of questioning skills. The two-parent family is portrayed in a positive manner. Ada, although different from other children, is never portrayed as weird or strange. Ada’s classroom has students from different races and the children appear in a variety of colorful clothing and styles, which helps enhance the message that being different is a wonderful thing.

Ada Twist, Scientist is intended to be read aloud to a child, rather than for the child to read it for the first time independently. The vocabulary may be difficult and some of the scientific language will need to be defined for the reader. However, Ada Twist, Scientist should be on every child’s bookshelf because of the story, illustrations, and lessons that will entertain readers time and time again.

Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • None

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None

The Impossible Crime

Mac is an ordinary kid who likes to play video games. While at the arcade, the Queen of England’s corgi appears with a note stating, “pick up the phone.” The Queen of England needs Mac’s help. Someone is planning on stealing the Crown Jewels. With the help of beefeater Holcroft, Max tries to keep the Crown Jewels safe. But when they disappear from a locked room, Mac must use all of his knowledge to discover not only who did it, but why.

The Impossible Crime uses humor, riddles, and corgis to teach readers about English history. The fast-paced plot has several of the same interesting characters as Mac Undercover, but isn’t as outrageously funny as Mac Undercover. However, readers will enjoy the silliness of the story, the dialogue between Mac and the Queen, and the surprise ending. As the story unfolds, readers will learn historical facts, geography, and different meanings of words. Each new fact is integrated into the story in a seamless manner, which makes learning fun.

Mac tells his own story with humor and uses lists and reputation to help readers follow the mystery. The Impossible Crime will entertain even the most reluctant readers for many reasons. Short sentences and simple vocabulary will help readers build confidence. Every page contains large black, green, and orange illustrations that add to the humor of the story. The illustrations and text work together to provide clues, create humor, and keep the reader interested to the very end. The Impossible Crime is a fun, easy-to-read book that is a great choice for any reader. It is also a perfect book for parents to read aloud to their children; the short dialogue is a great opportunity to use different voices for the characters.

Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • In 1671, Colonel Blood tried to steal England’s crown jewels. When Edward took Colonel Blood to see the jewels, “Colonel Blood threw the cloak over Edwards’s head! The men tied up the god Keeper like a sheep in a sack. Then they hit him with mallets. . . Then they stabbed him.’”
  • Holcroft goes after Mac with an axe. “He turned to me and brandished his axe. . . I backed into a corner of the library as Holcroft slowly came towards me.” Mac orders Holcroft to put the axe down and he does.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • Mac asks a man, “what the heck are you doing?”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None

 

A Royal Guide to Monster Slaying

Twelve-year-old Rowan is destined to be Queen and her twin brother, Rhydd, is to be Royal Monster Hunter. Rowan would give anything to switch places, but the oldest child is always next in line, even if she is only older by two minutes. She resigns herself to admiring her monster-hunting aunt’s glorious sword and joining her queen mother for boring diplomatic teas. But tragedy shatters the longstanding rule, and Rowan finds herself hunting the most dangerous monster of all: a gryphon.

Accompanied by a feisty baby jackalope and a giant wolf that barely tolerates her, Rowan sets off on a journey that will see her join other unlikely allies: a boy with monster-hunting ambitions of his own, and a girl hiding dangerous motives. It will take all of Rowan’s skills, both physical and diplomatic, to keep this adventure on track. The future of her kingdom depends on it.

Rowan and her brother Rhydd follow their aunt on a hunt that ends in a bloody battle and death. The heart-stopping battle is not for the faint of heart. Armstrong uses detailed descriptions of the battle between beast and man. Even though many of the monsters in the story are deadly, Rowan respects the monsters because she has been taught to only kill monsters if there is no other choice.

The story is told from Rowan’s point of view, which allows the reader to understand her concern for others. Rowan often acts overconfident; however, in the end she learns the importance of listening to others and working as a team. The know-it-all princess befriends a baby jackalope and their relationship will make readers long for a jackalope of their own. Through her journeys, Rowan learns that no man or beast should be forced to follow another. People should only follow a leader by choice, not by force.

The cute book cover may give readers a false impression. A Royal Guide to Monster Slaying hits on some heavy themes: the importance of family, duty, conservation, indentured servitude, and political ambition. Rowan is kidnapped, almost killed multiple times, and has a face-to-face encounter with a giant spider and a deadly gryphon. The frightening encounters may leave some readers with nightmares. A Royal Guide to Monster Slaying is full of action, danger, and monsters who aren’t afraid to kill humans. The imaginative world is unique, fascinating, and will keep readers turning the pages. Readers who want an excellent adventure will want to follow Rowan as she learns how to become the next Royal Monster Hunter.

Sexual Content

  • Rowan is sneaking through the castle when she hides from a guard and a maid. Rowan listens to their conversation and learns that “she caught him flirting with the maid of a visiting lady. She’s upset, and he’s trying to tell her it meant nothing, and I’m stuck in a window alcove, wishing they’d just kiss and make up. . . Then the guard and maid do make up. And they do kiss. They don’t stop kissing. I don’t watch them, of course. That’s gross. But I can tell they’re kissing by the noises, which are also gross. They kiss and whisper, and whisper and kiss.”

Violence

  • Even though monster fights are illegal, “people still poach jackalopes for their antlers, which they think can be ground up as a cure for infertility.” Rowan finds a baby jackalope, and finds the dead mother. “The mother jackalope lies on the ground, her body riddled with arrow piercings. The killer took only her antlers.”
  • While in the forest at night, Rowan comes across four older kids. Rowan pulls her sword, and one boy “snorts. One of the other boys takes a slingshot form his pocket. The girl draws a knife.” When Rowan doesn’t flee, “a stone strikes my temple. I spin on the boy with the slingshot, and my sword spins, too. The tip of it catches his sleeve, and he yelps as if I’ve stabbed him.” When the kids realize that Rowan is the princess, they run off.
  • When Rowan gets too close to a unicorn, “the beast bites my butt. . .and the jackalope leaps from my head onto Courtois’s neck and sinks his teeth in right below the unicorn’s horn.”
  • The Royal Monster Hunter and her group find a manticore. As they track the monster, Rowan smells “a coppery one that makes me flinch. I can’t be a monster hunter and not recognize the scent of blood.” They find the manticore in a barn and Rowan “can hear it, making horrible ripping and gulping noises as it devours its prey. I can smell it, too, its dank must overpowering the smell of the livestock.”
  • In order to kill the manticore, Rowan’s aunt Jannah jumps on its back. In order to tire the beast, “she rides the manticore until the beast stops bucking and rearing. . . Jannah didn’t hop on the beast’s back for fun. The position just lets her sink in her dagger in exactly the right spot. One hard thrust and the manticore stiffens. Then before it has time to feel more than a flash of pain, it slumps to the ground.” In order to teach others about the beast, Jannah “opens the beast up… notice the size of the heart, the placement of the internal organs.”
  • While inspecting the manticore, a gryphon grabs Rowan in its talons. Rowan’s brother, Rhydd, tries to help, but “the beast holding me strikes at him. Blood flies. The beast lets out another ear-piercing shriek and slams me into the barn floor, talons pinning me there. . . The beak seizes Rhydd and flips him into the air, then lets go. As he falls, the beak grabs him again, this time by one leg. There’s a sickening crunch. . . The beast drops my brother’s leg. Rhydd falls to the floor.” The gryphon takes flight with Rowan in its beak and hunters shoot arrows at it. “An arrow buries into the underside of the beast. Then another and another. . . An arrow slices the fabric of my trousers, and I let out a cry. . . I grit my teeth and wrench it [the arrow] free. Then I stare at the sharp arrowhead, dripping blood.” Rowan keeps slashing at the gryphon, and then she slashes “the foreleg as hard as I can.” The beast drops Rowan and she hits “the ground. Pain slams through me and then. . . Darkness.” The scene takes place over four pages, but the battle continues.
  • When the gryphon lands, “a figure runs from nowhere. She [Jannah] leaps. Her sword slashes at the beast’s rear flank. . .The gryphon wheels on her. Its beak swings her way. . . she swings the sword, but the gryphon’s beak closes around her sword arm. . . The powerful beak closes with the same sickening crunch I heard when it seized Rhydd. Then it throws Jannah. Before it hits the ground, it grabs her again, this time by the leg, just like it did with Rhydd. . . The gryphon has Jannah by the leg. It lashes back and swings her. . . Swings her at a rock. Jannah’s head hits that rock. There is a crunch. . . She’s on the ground, blood streaming from her arm and her leg and her scalp.” Jannah dies. The battle scene is described over eight pages.
  • As Rowan tries to chase a monster away, “something hits my arm and knocks me off balance. As I stumble, I see an arrow lodged in my sleeve.” Rowan drops to the ground, and “I’m leaping up when another arrow whizzes past. It hits the warakin in the shoulder. The beast squeals in rage.” Rowan is able to drive off the warakin before anyone gets hurt.
  • As a pegasus attacks Rowan, the jackalope jumps on her back. The pegasus “flies up with great flaps of her wings, and Jacko clings to her, squealing. She dives, and he tumbles, and I scream. Then he’s dangling from her mane, his claws tangled in it. The pegasus tosses her head, and Jacko goes flying.”
  • Rowan’s companion Warg is a giant wolf. He hunts at night and “when he returns, the blood on his muzzle tells me he’s eaten.”
  • When Rowan tries to give a pegasus a sedative, the pegasus “wheels and rears. One hoof hits that sore shoulder again. I stumble, and I see another hoof coming straight for my head. My arm flies up. Her foreleg is delicate enough that I knock it off course. As I scramble out of the way, she comes at me again. This time, she grabs my tunic in her teeth and whips me off my feet.” Rowan gives the pegasus the sedative and then “she lies there, legs splayed and bent, her head drooping.” Rowan realizes that giving the sedative to the pegasus was wrong. The scene is described over five pages.
  • Rowan comes across an overturned wagon. A couple says their baby is stuck underneath the wagon. When Rowan crawls under the wagon to help, a man “wrenches me by the hair. I try to swing at his face, but there isn’t enough room. I yank out my dagger and slice his arm instead. He snarls. I slash the blade as I back out. Someone grabs my legs. Hands grapple at me from the wagon wreck. . . The young man shoves a sack over my head. I scream under it. Scream and kick and punch. As he hauls me away, my feet tangle, and I fall. He keeps dragging me, the sack cutting into my throat.” Rowan is captured and put in a cage.
  • After Rowan escapes, she watches a boy talk to Alianor. Rowan thinks that the two worked together to capture her, so Rowan hits “him square in the back, and he lands face-first with an oomph. I try to pin him, but he’s twisting, and he manages to get onto his back and throw me aside. That’s when Jacko attacks. He jumps onto Dain’s face and digs his claws in, legs wrapped around Dain’s head. . . Jacko sails from nowhere. He lands on Dain’s lap and sinks his teeth into the boy’s stomach. Dain yelps. . .”
  • While climbing a tree, Rowan disturbs a spider’s nest. Spiders begin dropping onto Rowan and Dain. A spider gets under Dain’s tunic and Rowan tries to “reach up under the fabric and pull out the spider. As I do, he yelps and bats at the back of his tunic. Another lump scuttles underneath. Then Dain yelps louder, in pain now. . .” Rowan discovers that the spiders are jba-fofi. “According to legend, only baby jba-fofi live in trees. The adults are too big for that. They’re the size of dogs, and they build trapdoors on their burrows. When any unsuspecting prey passes, they jump out and drag it in.” Rowan and Dain are able to get out of the tree.
  • As Alianor walks in the forest, “the ground opens, and a giant spider grabs her leg. . . She falls face-first as the spider drags her into its lair. The ground closes and they’re gone.”
  • In order to save Alianor, Rowan crawls into the spider’s lair. She finds “a fawn wrapped in black spider silk. The corpse is desiccated—drained of blood. I shiver as I shift the carcass aside. . . I  continue along. . . This time when I reach down I’m touching a soft-and-hard bundle that I know is wrapped prey. I try to keep going, crawling over the bundles, flinching as the dried bodies crackle within.” Rowan finds the spider, but before she can do anything, the jba-fofi springs. “It’s on me before I can even free my blade. . . The spider’s two front legs wrap around my chest. It pulls me toward its jaws, and Jacko shrieks, leaping on the beast. . . Jacko jumps onto the spider, sinking his fangs onto its back.” To get away from the spider, Rowan starts a fire and “shoves more mummies into the fire, stretching them in a line between us and the jba-fofi.”
  • Rowan searches for Alianor. “Then I see her head, completely wrapped in black webbing. I grab the webbing and pull. It sticks to my fingers and holds fast, refusing to break. With my trembling hand, I pick up my dropped dagger. I feel for her mouth, find it and slice the webbing as carefully as I can. . . I open her mouth. There’s more webbing in there. I yank it out and then press my hands against her chest and . . . Alianor coughs.”
  • As Rowan and Alianor try to escape, “something wraps around my [Rowan’s] leg. As I fight, it pulls hard, and I’m flipped onto my back. . . I kick as hard as I can. The spider squeals. I crawl back on my elbows and knees. I’m flipping over when powerful fangs grip my leg. . .” Dain is able to pull Rowan out of the spider’s lair and the pegasus attacks the spider. The spider scene is described over sixteen pages.
  • Lanslet, a teenager, attacks Rowan hoping to kill her. “He lunges at me. I leap forward to counter, and that isn’t what he expects. Our swords clang. . . My sword strikes his arm. He never even flinches, just draws his sword back and— An arrow hits his shoulder.” One of Rowan’s companions shoots arrows at Lanslet and “Malric hits Lanslet square in the back. The young man goes down with the Warg on top of him. Malric’s teeth sink into Lanslet’s collarbone, ripping away the leather. Lanslet screeches, and running footsteps sound as someone shouts an alarm.” Rowan is able to escape. The fight is described over three pages.
  • A gryphon comes after Rowan and her companions. “Malric charges. The gryphon rears like a horse, its talons flashing, but Malric feints to the side. When the gryphon twists to parry, Malric leaps, teeth sinking into the beast’s foreleg.” Malric pretends to be injured so the gryphon will attack him and the kids are able to hide in a cave.
  • Malric tries to sneak past the gryphon. Malric is “crouching to jump when the gryphon grabs him around his neck. . . The gryphon throws Malric. Warg hits the cavern wall, and that crunch rings out. That terrible crunch I will never forget—the one I heard when the gryphon pitched my aunt head-first into a rock.” Malric is injured. “Inside the cavern, the gryphon stomps about, shrieking in rage. That’s all I see. The gryphon. . . and a blood-smeared wall.”
  • Dain soaks arrowheads in a sedative and shoots them at the gryphon. “The gryphon lunged. Dain dives to the side. The gryphon’s beak snaps. It catches Dain’s bare foot. He drops the arrow as he falls clear of the beast and rolls across the cavern floor. . . As the beast turns, I see the angry red scabs on the foreleg I injured a week ago. I swing my sword right at the same spot. The blade slices in. The beast lets out a terrible screech of pain and rage.” The beast succumbs to the sedative and goes unconscious. The scene with the gryphon is described on and off for thirty-six pages. No one is seriously injured.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Someone has to taste the queen’s food and drink to make sure it is not poisoned.
  • Rowan gets angry that the pegasus isn’t friendly, so she gives her a sedative.
  • In order to capture Rowan, her captors drugged Warg.

Language

  • Rowan thinks unicorns are “jerks.”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • Rowan’s father wrote an inscription on the inside of a book that he gave her as a gift. As she reads the message, Rowan misses her father, but thinks, “he’s watching from the others side, and he’s there every time I add a new page or a new fact or a new sketch.”

The Basque Dragon

As members of the Unicorn Rescue Society, Elliot and Uchenna know that mythical creatures exist. But Elliot’s unprepared for the strange events he encounters. As he leaves for school, Elliot finds a mysterious package on his front step. He opens the package and finds a book called The Country of Basque. When Elliot gets to school, he meets up with Uchenna. Professor Fauna approaches them—he needs their help.

Soon, the two friends are whisked away in Professor Fauna’s plane and heading across the ocean to the mountains of the Basque Country. The members of the Unicorn Rescue Society must find and save a missing dragon. Can the group track down the kidnapped dragon? And if they find the dragon, how will they stay alive long enough to save it?

An action-packed fantasy, The Basque Dragon is full of adventure, mystery, and humor. Elliot and Uchenna show how two people who are completely different can still be friends. Elliot would rather read about mythical animals than meet them. His fearful nature is a fun contrast to Uchenna’s adventurous, courageous spirit. Uchenna is not portrayed as a stereotypical girl; she is capable, strong, and smart.

The Basque Dragon gives some history of the Basque people and uses some Basque words. The story explains how to pronounce the Basque language by giving pronunciation guides. For example, the Basque people are called, the Euskaldunak—AY-oo-SKAL-doo-nak.

In order to enjoy the story, readers will have to suspend their disbelief. There are several events that are unrealistic. For example, the professor parks his beat-up single-prop plane in the school parking lot. The group flies across the Atlantic in the beat-up plane, which the professor does not know how to land. Despite the professor’s lack of skills, the group still makes it safely to the desired location. Another unrealistic event is that even though the group leaves New Jersey after school, Elliot and Uchenna are still able to make it home in time for dinner.

One disturbing aspect of the story is that Elliot and Uchenna go to Europe with Professor Fauna, even though they don’t trust him. To make matters worse, they lie to their parents and say they were at school participating in a club—the Worm Nutrition Club.

The second installment of The Unicorn Rescue Society can be read as a stand-alone book; however, readers will enjoy the book more if they read The Creature of the Pines first. The Basque Dragon will keep younger readers entertained with its rapid pace, humorous tone, and diverse characters. Black-and-white illustrations are scattered throughout the book; the illustrations add humor as well as help readers visualize the characters. Most of the text is easy to read because it uses short paragraphs, simple vocabulary, and dialogue. However, adding the Basque language makes reading parts of the story laborious. Even though the evil villain is predictable and some of the events are unrealistic, The Basque Dragon will entertain readers while exploring the difference between independence and isolation.

Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • When the group lands in Basque, someone shoots at them. “Pop! Pop! Pop. . . They threw themselves to the ground.” The shooting stops when the professor stands up and says, “You have succeeded, whoever you are! We are afraid!”
  • The kids are told an old story. A dragon killed a knight and captured a noblewoman. When the Knight’s squire tells the swordsmith that the blade he made broke, the swordsmith goes to free the woman. When the swordsmith finds the dragon, “A roar of flame enveloped Teodosio. He fell to the ground, fire covering his body. . .” The swordsmith and the noblewoman are able to escape.
  • During World War II, Nazis dropped bombs on the dragon. “. . . Another wave of bombs fell. The ground trembled. The great herensuge fell to the ground.” A man led the dragon to a safe cave.
  • In a fit of anger, Professor Fauna smashes the plastic membership cards for The Unicorn Rescue Society. Professor Fauna “brought the rock down again and again, breaking the plastic cards to pieces, not seeming to notice that he was also smashing the buttons and switches. Dials started going crazy, whirring and spinning. . . A groaning came from the walls of the cavern and then the sound of an explosion. . .” The cave begins to crash around the group, but no one is injured.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • One of the characters says “darn it.”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • In the Basque Country, there are stories of a “dragon with seven heads: Sugaar, the god of the storms.”
  • A dragon’s saliva is “marvelously powerful” and will heal wounds.

 

 

 

 

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