Topic: Good vs Evil

Not If I Save You First

When they were ten, Maddie and Logan were best friends. Maddie thought they’d be friends forever. Maddie never cared that Logan was the president’s son. But fate dealt their friendship a deadly blow. When her Secret Service Agent father almost dies trying to save the president’s son, everything changes.

After he almost dies, Maddie’s father exchanges the White House for a cabin in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness. Maddie had no phone. No internet. No friends. And no Logan. When she first moved to Alaska, Maddie wrote letter after letter to Logan, but he never replied.

Six years later, Logan appears outside of her cabin and Maddie wants to kill him. Before she can take action, an assailant appears, almost killing Maddie and dragging Logan off into the wilderness. Maddie could go back for help, but the weather is treacherous and getting worse. Maddie goes after Logan, but she’s not sure if she’s going to save him or kill him.

In typical Ally Carter style, Not If I Save You First begins with suspense and leaves the reader turning pages until the very end. Maddie is a strong heroine who doesn’t need to rely on a guy—not even the Secret Service men—to save the day. She hides her strength and smarts behind a girly persona, which makes her incredibly likable. Her conflicting emotions regarding Logan add interest and suspense to an action-packed story.

Unlike her other books, Not If I Save You First contains violence that is often described in bloody, but not gory, detail. The storyline revolves around a kidnapping, which is a more realistic storyline than Carter’s previous books. Because of this, readers can put themselves in the character’s situation. The story has several plot twists that will surprise readers and the ends with an epic fight between good and evil. When readers finish Not If I Save You First, they will feel as though Maddie is a new friend.

Sexual Content

  • When Maddie kisses Logan, he wishes he wasn’t in handcuffs because he “couldn’t hold her, touch her, pull her close and keep her near and never, ever let her go.” He’s disappointed when he discovers that she kissed him, so she could give him the keys to the cuffs.
  • Logan and Maddie kiss several times. One time, “he was growing closer and closer and then her lips were on his again, warmer now. She tasted like snow and berries and it was the sweetest thing that Logan and ever known.”
  • When Maddie and Logan are at school, Logan kisses her, “right there in front of their school and his Secret Service detail—right in front of the world. So she kissed him back again. And again. And again.”

Violence

  • Russian terrorists attempt to kidnap the president’s wife. In the process, one of the terrorists shoots at the president’s son. Maddie’s father jumps between the man and the president’s son and shoots at the terrorist. The terrorist, “looked down at his chest, at the place where blood was starting to ooze from beneath his ugly tie, and he dropped to his knees. Then the floor. He didn’t move again.”
  • While trying to protect the president’s wife and son, Maddie’s father is shot. Even though he is hurt, he tries to go help the first lady, and “he was still dragging himself toward the box. Blood trailed behind him. . .” During the altercation, the president’s son was shot too.
  • A man kidnaps Logan and in the process, hurts Maddie. “And Maddie spun just in time to see the butt of a gun slicing towards her. She actually felt the rush of air just before the sharp pain echoed through her face, reverberating down to her spine.” When she tries to get up, the man kicks her, “a sharp pain slammed into her stomach.” The man then pushes her off a cliff and leaves her to die.
  • Logan attempts to escape, knocking the man to the ground. “The two of them rolled, kicked and tangled together. Logan managed to strike the man in the stomach, but it was like he didn’t even feel it.” Logan stops fighting when the man has him pinned down.
  • Logan attempts to escape again. Even though his hands were cuffed, “he slammed them into the man’s gut, pounding like a hammer with both fists. . .” The man pulls a knife and begins “cutting into the soft flesh between his pinkie finger and its neighbor. . . then he saw the bright red drop of blood that bubbled up from his too-white skin.”
  • Logan tries to take a satellite phone from the man. “Logan elbowed him in the ribs, but a moment later he was pinned against the ground. . . Facedown in the mud, the cold seeped up from the ground and into Logan’s bones. . .” When Logan’s face is pushed into the mud, Maddie appears and the fight stops.
  • To prove that he doesn’t value Maddie’s life, the man, “pulled back his hand, and hit her hard across the face. Her head snapped and Logan actually heard the blow. . . His hand was around her throat, fingers not quite squeezing, but close.”
  • The man shoots a ranger. “He fired. Once. Twice. And the ranger fell.”
  • In a plot to escape, Maddie blows up a bridge. “. . . the old ropes and wood exploded in a wave of color and fire and heat. . .”
  • The man recaptures Maddie and, he “jerked Maddie against him, sliding the barrel of the gun along the smooth skin of her cheek like she needed a shave.” Logan tries to help her and the two men fight, so Maddie “kicked Stefan’s shin, right where the bear trap must have caught him, because he howled in pain, dropping the gun and bringing both hands to his legs.”
  • Another bad guy surprises Maddie by grabbing her and “the man pulled her back against him and squeezed her tight, his own gun suddenly pressed to her temple.” Later Maddie, “dropped to the icy ground and kicked at his legs, knocking him off balance. . .” She shoots at the trees causing limbs to break and fall on the man. “. . .When the ice-covered limb landed atop him, he didn’t move again.”
  • The climax takes place over several chapters in which punches are thrown, people are shot, and Maddie’s father has a knife held against his throat. In order to save a life, Maddie throws a knife at a man, and, “he looked from the knife in his own hand to the blade that was stuck hilt-deep in his chest, right where his heart would have been if he had one.” The man dies.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • Freaking is used twice.

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None

 

The Ember Stone

The powerful vulture, Thorn, is using dark magic to destroy Perodia. Tag, a small owl, and his best friend, Skyla, want to save their home. Tag hopes to join the Owls of Valor and become a brave warrior. Tag is small and inexperienced, but he is brave. When Tag and Skyla meet the last firehawk, the three begin a journey in search of the magical Ember Stone. Can the three friends find the stone and save Perodia?

Written for newly independent readers, The Ember Stone will appeal to adventure seekers. The story has many elements that will keep readers interested. The illustrations show emotion, and the tiger bats add danger and suspense to the story. Mystery is added when Tag and Skyla come across a magical golden egg. Onomatopoeias are scattered throughout the beginning of the story, which makes reading fun as well as adds to the threatening mood. Short sentence structure, dialogue, and simple vocabulary make The Ember Stone easy to read. Black-and-white illustrations appear on every page, which helps bring the story to life.

Tag is a brave little owl, who wants to help stop the dark magic from destroying his home. Although Tag is clearly the hero in the story, he finds the firehawk egg and a piece of the Ember stone by accident. Tag has the bravery to be a hero, but his actions lack intention. The hope that the newly hatched firehawk will learn to speak soon, and will then be able to “tell us what to do” is unrealistic.

The book begins with an introduction to help readers understand the conflict. A two-page map of Perodia gives a visual of the geography and location of important landmarks. The last page of the book contains four questions and an activity, which will reinforce important comprehension skills. Readers who love animals and a good adventure will enjoy The Ember Stone.

Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • Tiger bats attack Tag and Skyla, who hide in a hollow tree trunk. “Clack, clack, clack. Tag and Skyla held their breath as the tiger bats’ beaks snapped above them.”
  • Later in the story, the tiger bats attack again. “Skyla fired a pinecone at its head. ‘Stay back!’ she shouted, hitting it between the eyes.” The battle lasts for several pages. The tiger bats leave when the firehawk appears and “there was a flash of light and heat. . . He heard the whoosh of many winds, then all was quiet.”
  • Prickle ants attack Tag, Skyla, and Blaze. “The three friends hopped along, trying to escape. But the prickle ants crawled up their legs, biting and stinging.” The friends jump in the water to escape.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • Firehawks “were magical birds who protected the Ember stone—a stone that holds magic within.”
  • One of the owls, Grey, has yellow eyes that “sparkled with magic.” When Grey waves a wing, “an image appeared beside his head” showing Tag why going to the caves will be dangerous.
  • When a piece of the Ember Stone is placed on a map, “the map glowed, brighter and brighter. . . When Tag looked again, a small shining dot appeared on the map.” The magical map guides the friends to the next location to which they must travel.

Spiritual Content

  • None

 

Perfect Scoundrels

Katarina Bishop grew up in a family of criminal masterminds. Her family knows how to stay under the radar. They know how to steal. And Katarina knows that her family has her back. Although Kat’s family welcomes Hale into their lives, Kat was never meant to enter Hale’s ultra-rich world. When Hale’s grandmother dies leaving her billion-dollar corporation to Hale, everything begins to change.

With the death of Hale’s grandmother, Hale’s family gathers around to fight for the family fortune. In Hale’s family, when money is on the line, all bets are off. Everyone wants a piece of the family dynasty. As Hale becomes more entangled in the family drama, Kat realizes that there is no place for her in Hale’s world. When Kat learns that someone might have tampered with his grandmother’s will, she comes up with an elaborate plan to learn the truth. But first, she has to decide if learning the truth is more important than keeping her boyfriend.

Through Katarina’s eyes, Perfect Scoundrels brings Hale’s extremely wealthy world to life. From the outside, Hale’s life seems to be full of freedom that only money can buy, but in reality glamourous, greedy people surround him. Right from the start, the reader will be pulled into Kat’s struggle, as she keeps secrets from Hale in order to help him. As Kat and her family rally around each other to find the truth, their ambitious plot brings intrigue, suspense, and surprises around every corner.

The third installment in the Heist Society series will not disappoint readers. However, this is not a stand-alone novel. Those who have read the first two books in the series will be invested in the lives of the characters, which makes the conclusion even more surprising and satisfying. In typical Ally Carter style, Perfect Scoundrels is appropriate and will be enjoyed by both junior high and high school readers.

Sexual Content

  • After an argument, Kat and Hale are alone, and “Hale’s breath was warm on Kat’s skin. She could feel the rise and fall of his chest, and she wanted to kiss him, hold him, breathe him in . . . For a split second, he looked down at her, and she knew he was feeling that way too.” The moment is lost when Kat apologizes.
  • In order to hide, Kat and Hale go into a closet. While there, “Kat felt Hale’s mouth press against hers. His fingers wove into her hair, holding her close, gripping her tightly. It was the hungriest kiss she’d ever known, and Kat let herself get lost in it.” Hale then apologizes for kissing her.
  • Kat and Hale kiss several times, but the kisses are not described.

Violence

  • Hale’s family lawyer confronts Katarina, and he traps her against a wall. When he grabs her, Kat notices that “his breath was acrid and hot on her cheek. He brushed a finger down the side of her face until his hand rested on her throat. He squeezed gently at first. Then harder.” He then lets her go.
  • Kat and her Uncle Eddie meet up with the family lawyer to make a deal. When the deal goes wrong, Eddie ran at the lawyer and, “in a flash, Eddie was on the lawyer, the lawyer was spinning, striking the old man across the head with the metal briefcase. Blood rushed from Eddie’s mouth and he stumbled, disorient, too close to the edge. . .” Eddie falls over the barrier and a bystander says, “The man’s dead.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • While at a corporate event, Hale and another character “got into the liquor cabinet” and got drunk.

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None

Uncommon Criminals

Katarina Bishop and her crew robbed the greatest museum in the world, which is why someone has asked her to steal the Cleopatra Emerald. Despite the curse of the Emerald, Katarina decides to take the job and return the jewel to its rightful owner. But when Kat and her crew go after the Cleopatra Emerald, they soon learn that the emerald is connected to their family in unexpected ways. Is there any con that can help Kat steal a treasure that has cursed all those who have tried before her?

The second installment of the Heist Society series has the same suspense and thrill as the first book. The characters’ personalities are described in more depth, which makes the book more enjoyable. Kat’s family secrets keep readers is suspense. The story’s intriguing, fast-paced plot ends with a satisfying conclusion. With plenty of plot twists, surprises, and a little bit of romance, Ally Carter’s Uncommon Criminals will delight readers of all ages.

Sexual Content

  • After a heist, Kat falls into Hale’s lap. “She didn’t think twice about the way her arms feel around his neck. When her lips found his, she didn’t pull back, she just pressed against him, sinking into the kiss and the moment until . . .” She then realizes that “Hale didn’t kiss me back.”
  • Kat kisses Hale. “She kissed him, quick and feather soft.” She tells him she kissed him “for luck.”

Violence

  • As a distraction, Nick and Hale argue over a girl. Hale hits Nick. Hale’s “fist was suddenly flying through the air. It struck Nick on the jaw, and sent the smaller boy spinning, the sound echoing in the empty hallway.” Security guards break up the fight.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Someone offers Kat a drink, and then changes her mind because Kat is a “child.”

Language

  • None

 Spiritual Content

  • None

 

The Lizard War

Max loves everything about bugs, so his mother gives him an old book full of insect pictures. When Max peers into the book, he suddenly finds himself on Bug Island—and he’s the size of a bug. When he arrives on Bug Island, he finds out that the bugs are under attack. Lizards have found their way to Bug Island. The lizards are looking for yummy snacks: the bugs of the island. Max isn’t sure how he ended up on the island, but he knows he can help the bugs win the battle.

The Lizard War jumps into action in chapter two and leads the reader on a fun, imaginative journey through a bug’s life. The story teaches facts about bugs through an engaging storyline. The bug (and human) characters are well-developed and show unique personalities. Seeing a human through a bug’s eye gives the story interest and humor. The fighting between lizards and bugs adds suspense with kid-friendly descriptions.

Even though The Lizard War has some longer, descriptive paragraphs, the text is easy to read. Dialogue, Max’s thoughts, onomatopoeias, and full-page illustrations help keep readers engaged. Through the actions of the bugs, readers will learn about the importance of working together. Although the story focuses on bugs, any reader who enjoys reading about battles will enjoy The Lizard War.

Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • Max is riding a scorpion when a lizard begins bullying the scorpion. When the lizard is distracted, “the scorpion darted forward, taking the reptile by surprise. Before it could react, the scorpion snapped one of its pincers onto the lizard’s nose. The lizard gave a high-pitched hiss and backed away, twisting its head in pain.”
  • The lizards battle the other insects. During the battle, the scorpion “aimed his stinger straight for its nose. The reptile fell back, writhing on the ground in pain.” Later in the battle, “the giant hornet and other flying insects started dive bombing the lizards on the bridge, flying at them wherever they could.” The battle takes place over a chapter. None of the bugs or lizards are seriously injured.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • Max has a magic book that takes him to Bug Island. When he looks at the book through a magnifying glass, “the room started to swirl around him, making him dizzy. . . His stomach flipped over, and for a moment he felt like he was falling.” When he lands on Bug Island, he is the size of a bug.

Spiritual Content

  • None

The Wrath of Mulgarath

In the fifth and final installment of the Spiderwick Chronicles, the Grace children must battle Mulgarath’s goblin army to save their mother and reclaim the Field Guide. With the help of Thimbletack, Hogsqueal, and Byron, the Grace children attempt to sneak up on Mulgarath’s goblin army. Can the small group defeat a fierce army of goblins and Mulgarath? Are the children doomed to lose everything they hold dear?

All of the characters and creatures come together in a satisfying conclusion. The griffin, Thimbletack, and Hogsqueal unite to help the Grace children rescue their mother and defeat Mulgarath. Book five of the series is darker and has some potentially disturbing descriptions. Although the final battle ends with a satisfying surprise, reading descriptions of Mulgarath’s evil deeds may disturb younger readers. In an attempt to trick the children, Mulgarath shapeshifts to appear like their father. Jared is able to see through Mulgarath’s trick and, in the end, saves his family from Mulgarath’s wrath.

Like the previous books, the Grace Children work together and come to one another’s aid when needed. When Jared’s mother finally learns the truth about Jared’s strange behavior, there is a heartwarming apology. The ending doesn’t ignore the natural consequences of Jared’s bad behavior but ends with the hopeful possibility that life will be better. In the end, Aunt Lucinda moves in with the Grace family and there is peace between the children, Thimbletack, and the family cat. When the exciting series comes to an end, the readers will be left with a smile and characters that they will remember for a long time to come.

 Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • Mulgarath kidnaps the Grace children’s mother. When the children find her, she is in “one corner, bound, gagged, and unconscious.”
  • Goblins attacked Thimbletack. The fight is not described, but Jared finds Thimbletack, who “had a long, raw scratch on his shoulder and that his hat was missing.” He also had a black eye.
  • A griffin grabs a hobgoblin by the arm. “The griffin shook his head, whipping Hogsqueal back and forth.” Simon hit the griffin, “Hard on the beak with his hand,” hoping to get the griffin to let go of Hogsqueal.”
  • Thimbletack threatens a hobgoblin saying, “No. We’ll set rats to nibble off your toes, poke out your eyes, and put them up your nose. Your fingers we’ll remove with dull scissors, and we’ll wait until your confidence withers.”
  • Goblins attack the Grace children. The battle is described over three pages. During the fight, two goblins, “Grabbed hold of his (Jared’s) legs and toppled him into the dirt.” Mallory uses her swords to chase them away. One goblin “Jumped on her back, biting her shoulder.” The griffin appears and the children are able to escape.
  • While Simon is riding the griffin, a dragon attacks. “The dragon twisted, teeth sinking into Byron’s feathered and furred body. . .” Simon falls off the griffin, injuring his arm. In order to distract the dragon, Simon, “who had never killed anything. . . stepped on the head of one of the baby dragons, crushing in into a smear under his shoe. It squealed. Dragon blood stained the ground and melted the edge of Simon’s heel.” The fight ends with Byron, “Plunging his beak into the creature’s neck, he rent it wide. The dragon went limp in Byron’s claws.” The action is described over seven pages.
  • Mulgarath put fairies in honey. Simon tries to help, “but the honey was heavy and clung to their thick wings, tearing them. The sprites squealed as he set each one down on the table in a sticky, sodden heap. One was completely still and lay there limply, like a doll.”
  • Mulgarath kicks Thimbletack. “The ogre kicked the brownie, his giant foot tossing Thimbletack across the room, where Thimbletack landed like a crumpled glove beside Mrs. Grace.”
  • The story ends with an epic battle between the Grace children and Mulgarath, which is told over several chapters. At one point, Jared stabs Mulgarath in the foot with a sword. The battle ends with a funny surprise.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • When Simon hits the griffin, his sister yells, “Oh Crap, don’t do that!”
  • Hogsqueal calls the Grace names such as “beetle-guts”, “lump-meat,” and “chatter-basket.”
  • Jared says, “I want Dad to be less of a jerk . . .”
  • “Oh my god,” is used as an exclamation once.
  • Mallory calls Jared an “idiot.”

Supernatural

  • Goblins, Frey, griffins, and other creatures exist. These creatures have different magical abilities.
  • Mulgarath is raising dragons. The dragons have “hundreds of teeth, thin as needles.” When a person touches a dragon, their skin burns.”
  • Mulgarath is able to change shapes. In order to trick the children, he changes, making himself look like their father. “As Jared looked up into the familiar hazel eyes of his father, they started to turn pale yellow. His father’s body elongated, filling out, becoming a mammoth shape clad in the tattered remains of ancient finery. His hands became claws, and his dark hair twined together into branches.”
  • The children meet their great-great-uncle Arthur Spiderwick, who the elves kept captive. Arthur meets his aged daughter. When Arthur goes to hug his daughter, his “foot touched the ground, his body turned to dust and then smoke.”

Spiritual Content

  • None

The Ironwood Tree

The entire faerie world wants Spiderwick’s Guide. Even if the Grace Children wanted to give the book away, they couldn’t because Thimbletack has hidden the guide. When Mallory disappears, Simon and Jared go in search of their sister. When the boys search the old abandoned quarry, dwarves imprison them. Is there any way for them to escape and save their sister?

Thimbletack and the griffin do not appear in the story, but new creatures are added. Although the story is entertaining, and suspenseful, some readers may wish that the different faerie creatures were incorporated into all of the books. Humor is added when neither Jared nor Simon wish to enter the girls restroom to look for Mallory. The ending takes a dark turn, and the unexpected killing of dwarves may disturb younger readers.

In the fourth installment of The Spiderwick Chronicles, Jared continues to struggle with anger and his mother’s misperception of him. Although Jared is trying to protect his family, he often falls into trouble. Jared worries that his mother will try to send him to live with his father, but his father won’t want him.

One of the best aspects of the series is the relationship between Jared and his siblings. Their realistic sibling relationship shows how each one has unique talents that can be used to defeat the faerie creatures. Although readers will be entertained by the faerie creatures, they will continue to read because they want to know what happens to the Grace children. Is there any way they can survive when the next faerie creatures come after them? The only way to find out is to pick up the fifth and last installment of the series.

Sexual Content

  • Mallory has a crush on a boy. To tease her, Simon sings, “Chris and Mallory sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.”

Violence

  • A shape-shifting creature appears looking like Jared. When the creature confronts Jared, Jared “pointed a knife at his double.”
  • Dwarfs kidnap Mallory and put her in a magical box that makes her like Sleeping Beauty. A dwarf tells the boys, “Out of this case she would be doomed to age, death, and decay—the curse of all mortals.”
  • Mechanical dogs chase the children. The children climb up a tree to avoid the dogs, but one of the dog’s “teeth caught hold of the end of her white dress and ripped it. The other dogs swarmed close, tearing the cloth.” Simon comes up with a way to get away from the dogs.
  • When Mulgarath discovers that the goblins do not have Spiderwick’s Guide, he orders the death of the dwarves. “The goblins bit, clawed, and slashed until not a single dwarf was left standing. Jared felt sick and numb. He had never seen anything be killed before. Looking down, he felt like he might throw up.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • Mallory says, “Oh crap,” once.

Supernatural

  • A shape-shifting creature appears in the story. The creature makes himself look like Jared and other people. The creature’s body, “shrank, its dark hair paled into a sandy brown, and its now blue eyes went wide with terror.”
  • Dwarves live in an abandoned quarry. They have “skin as gray as stone.” The dwarves carve trees and animals out of metal. The animals are alive but must be wound up with a key.
  • A creature appears and helps the children escape. Jared thinks it is a “nodder or a banger.” The creature listens to the stones, which allows him to help the children.
  • Mulgarath is an ogre, “a massive monster with dead branches for hair.” The goblins are serving Mulgarath.

Spiritual Content

  • None

 

Lucinda’s Secret

The Grace children are surrounded by problems. Thimbletack wants revenge. A hungry griffin is hiding in the carriage house. Creatures will stop at nothing to get Arthur’s Field Guide. Giving up the Field Guide isn’t an option, so the children go to see their Aunt Lucinda. But the more they learn about the fantastical world around them, the more they are convinced that the only way to stay safe is to discover more about the creatures who want to silence them.

Lucinda’s Secret takes the reader into the past and begins to answer the question: Why do the fairies want the Field Guide? The third installment of The Spiderwick Chronicles has several scenes that may scare younger readers. The children go to visit their Aunt Lucinda in an asylum, and they see several patients in straight jackets and a man “in a bathrobe giggled over an upside-down book.” Lucinda’s story of monsters that attacked her at night may also frighten readers.

Readers will be able to relate to the realistic sibling relationships. Even though the children work together and care about each other, they still squabble, fight, and disagree. Because the siblings often have conflict, the scenes when they work together are even more enjoyable. The story shows how relationships are always changing and that people can love each other and still disagree.

The introduction of new characters and new creatures adds interest to Lucinda’s Secret. Book three focuses on advancing the plot and giving important background information. However, this book also has less action than the first two books and readers will miss Thimbletack and the griffin, who do not appear in the story. The introduction of elves and a glimpse into the elves’ world adds a new, interesting element. Readers will want to continue the series to find out how the elves and Lucinda’s secret are connected.

Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • When Aunt Lucinda was younger, monsters came looking for her father’s book. She shows the children her scars and says, “Late one night the monsters came. Little green things with horrible teeth held me down, while a giant one questioned me. I struggled, and their claws scraped my arms and legs . . . Before that night, my back was straight. Ever since, I have walked hunched over.”
  • When Mallory touches a unicorn, she sees a vision of people hunting. As the unicorn runs, “arrows fly, burying themselves in white flesh. The unicorn bellows and goes down in a cloud of leaves. Dog teeth rip skin. A man with a knife hacks the horn from the head while the unicorn is still moving.”
  • Elves capture Jared. With the wave of an elf hand, “dirty, hairy roots climbed Jared’s legs and held him.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • “Crappy” is used once. “Crap” is used three times.
  • When Jared talks about his dad leaving to take a new job, Mallory says, “You can’t really believe that load of crap.”
  • The Phooka tells the children he is “an ass or perhaps merely a sprite.”

Supernatural

  • Sprites visit Aunt Lucinda. They are “creatures the size of walnuts, whirling in on iridescent wings. They alighted on the old woman, tangling in her white hair and crawling up the headboard.”
  • Sprites gave Aunt Lucinda fruit, and when she ate it, “it tasted better than any food I’d ever imagined. . . After that, human food—normal food—was like sawdust and ashes. I couldn’t make myself eat it.” She now must rely on the sprites to feed her.
  • The children learn that wearing their clothes inside out will allow them to find the elf world. The children meet the green-skinned elves.
  • The children meet a Phooka, who speaks in riddles. The Phooka “had the body of a monkey with short, blackish brown speckled fur and a long tail that curled around the branch on which it sat.” The Phooka has a face that looks like a rabbit “with long ears and whiskers.”
  • When Mallory touches a unicorn, she sees a vision.

Spiritual Content

  • None

 

The Seeing Stone

The mysterious field guide that their long-lost great-great-uncle Arthur Spiderwick wrote is wreaking havoc on the Grace children’s lives. In an attempt to get the book, goblins kidnap Simon and his cat.  It’s up to Jared and Mallory to track down the goblins, save Simon, and make it out of the woods alive. Can Jared and Mallory save Simon before it’s too late?

Full of suspense, The Seeing Stone is more intense than the first story in the series. At the beginning of the story, the goblins are invisible to the Grace children. The fact that invisible goblins are able to kidnap Simon, put him in a cage, and may possibly want to eat him may scare younger readers. Despite the danger, Jared and Mallory learn to work together as they search for their brother. They use creative problem-solving skills to rescue Simon.

In The Field Guide, Jared is angry and only concerned about himself, but in the second book, he shows growth and proves that he is more than a troublemaker. The children learn that they must trust and rely on each other in order to defeat the goblins. Readers will relate to the realistic siblings’ relationship and the children’s struggle to get along. Although the mother cares about her children, she clearly struggles in her new role as a single parent.

Even though the children realize danger still lurks outside their home, they choose to lie to their mother because they do not think she will believe that goblins, trolls, fairies, and other creatures exist. As the children learn more about the mythical world around them, they meet Hogsqueal, a hobgoblin, who has a hilarious vocabulary and proves that not every creature is evil. When readers finish The Seeing Stone, they will want to pick up the next book in the series. The fast-paced story will end all too quickly, so you will want to have Lucinda’s Secret waiting on the shelf.

Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • Goblins kidnap Simon and his cat; then the goblins attack Jared and Mallory. When a goblin grabs Jared by his shirt, “he went down on his stomach in the grass. . .” Mallory tries to help Jared and “he saw Mallory’s arm jerk and heard her cry out. Red lines appeared where nails scraped her.” Mallory is able to chase the goblins off when she hits them with her rapier. The attack scene takes place over six pages but is not told in gory detail.
  • A troll tries to grab Mallory, but he is burned by sunlight and she is able to escape.
  • The goblins attack a wounded griffin. When the goblins circle the griffin, “the animal couldn’t seem to raise itself very far off the ground, but it could snap at the goblins if they got too close. Then the creature’s hawk beak connected, scissoring off the goblin arm.” Simon and his siblings save the griffin.
  • When the goblins chase after the children, they make a deal with the troll to lead the goblins to him. The troll hides in the river, and when the goblins enter, “the troll grabbed them all, shaking and biting and dragging them down to his watery lair.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • A hobgoblin calls Jared a host of creative names. A few names he uses include candy butt, dribble-puss, and jinglebrains.

Supernatural

  • A brownie lives in the Grace house. When Jared grabs the brownie, “the little brownie squirmed in his grasp, abruptly changing shape into a lizard, a rat that bit Jared’s hand, then a slippery eel that flailed wetly.”
  • The Grace children encounter goblins, who eat small creatures such as cats. The goblins “are born without teeth and so find substitutes, such as the fangs of animals, sharp rocks, and pieces of glass.”
  • The Grace children put hobgoblin spit in their eyes so they will have “the Sight.”
  • A hobgoblin uses children’s teeth instead of glass and other items. When Jared asks if he steals children’s teeth, the hobgoblin replies, “Come on, Dumbellina, tell me you don’t believe in the tooth fairy!”

Spiritual Content

  • None

 

The Field Guide

Jared, his twin brother, Simon, and their older sister, Mallory, are not happy about moving to a new town and into their Aunt Lucy’s dilapidated mansion. When a series of pranks happen and strange bruises start appearing on Simon and Mallory, Jared is blamed.

Then Jared stumbles upon Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You. He believes the creatures in the book are real and that a boggart is the one causing all of the problems. No one else in the family believes the boggart is real. How can Jared prove that he isn’t responsible for destroying the house and hurting his siblings?

The story focuses on issues that children will be able to relate to including having problems with parents and difficulty expressing emotions. The plot focuses on Jared, who is having difficulty containing his anger. As Jared learns about the boggart, Jared is able to think about the boggart’s perspective. Jared doesn’t want to help the boggart, but “he knew what it was like to be mad, and he knew how easy it was to get into a fight, even if you were really mad at someone else. And he thought that just maybe that was how the boggart felt.”

The Spiderwick Chronicles: The Field Guide is a fantastical story that will engage even the most reluctant readers. The easy-to-read story has a fast-paced plot that deals with the difficult topic of divorce in a child-friendly manner. Black and white pictures and maps are scattered throughout the story, which will help readers picture the events in the story. When the story ends, readers will be reaching for the next book in the series.

 The Spiderwick Chronicles is an excellent series; however, parents should read the reviews for all of the books before beginning the reading journey. Younger readers may not be ready for scary events that the Grace children face before their adventure comes to an end.

Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • While Mallory was sleeping, someone tied her hair to the bed. “Long pieces of her hair had been knotted to the brass headboard. Her face was red, but the worst part was the strange pattern of bruises that decorated her arms.”
  • The boggart steals Simon’s mice and tadpoles. “Each of Simon’s tadpoles was frozen into a single cube in the tray.” Later, they discover the boggart is keeping the mice as pets.
  • The book refers to a fight at school that Jared got into. His mother says, “I was shocked to learn that you broke a boy’s nose.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • When Mallory’s mother says the house is just like she remembered, Mallory replies, “Only crappier.”
  • “Crud” is said once.

Supernatural

  • The children learn that there is a boggart living in the house. Boggarts are “malicious. Hateful. Hard to get rid of. In their brownie form, they were helpful and nice.” The boggart causes havoc for the family.
  • The children meet the boggart. When they see him, he is standing on a desk in “worn overalls and a wide brimmed hat, was a little man about the size of a pencil. His eyes were as black as beetles, his nose was large and red . . .”

Spiritual Content

  • None

 

Escape to the Above

Wily has spent the twelve years of his life underground learning how to be a trapsmith. Wily makes traps to keep invaders from the cavern mage’s treasure. Even though Wily wonders what life in the Above would be like, he knows he can never leave.

Then a group of treasure hunters appears—an elf, a moss giant, a warrior with a magic arm. They want the caver mage’s treasure, including Wily himself. With the help of Wily, the group can invade every other dungeon and flee the Infernal King’s realm. Wily is about to go on an adventure, which will lead to a battle against the Infernal King, who uses gearfolk to terrorize and imprison the innocent. But is there any way this diverse group can work together and escape the Infernal King’s gearfolk?

A fun fantasy, Snared: Escape to the Above starts strong from the start. Wily’s underground world comes alive. When Wily leaves the cave he has lived in, seeing Wily’s perception of everyday things, such as a butterfly, is interesting and brings humor. Although Wily and his group must flee from horrors, the violence is not graphically described. Through Wily’s experience, he learns that “a prison doesn’t need cages to make you feel trapped. If you take away a person’s choices, they could be in the most beautiful place in the world and still be caged.”

Advanced elementary and junior high readers will enjoy the quirky characters and the interesting traps that Wily encounters. Although the plot is a bit predictable and the Infernal King is defeated too easily, readers will enjoy the adventure along the way. Full of humor and lessons about friendship and doing what is right, Snared: Escape to the Above will please adventure-seeking readers.

Sexual Content

  • None.

Violence

  • When invaders go into an underground cavern looking for treasure, they must go through various traps. Hobgoblets attack a knight from behind, but “the furious hobgoblets were both knocked unconscious by the flat side of a sword . . . The third hobgoblet was struck in the back of the head by the blunt end of the weapon.”
  • When a group of treasure hunters meets the cavern mage, he tries to stop them from taking his trapsmith. The mage throws magical bolts, but they do not hit anyone. Then he “snatched a quill . . . and used it to scribble ancient hieroglyphs in the air. A small tornado formed around the symbols, sweeping them up and churning them like dirty undershirts in the laundry cauldron. The blast of air struck the moss giant—and did nothing at all.” There is a fight that takes place over three pages.
  • When guards try to stop the group from leaving the underground cavern, the moss giant, “swiftly grabbed the guards in his large earthen hands and smashed their heads together. They both slid to the ground, unconscious.”
  • The king sends snagglecarts to round up citizens and put them in prison, even though they have done nothing wrong. Wiley watches a “dragon-size snagglecarts was rolling toward the mother and children with its mechanical mouth open, hungry for more prisoners. . . the gearfolk prodded the mother and two daughters, forcing them to walk up the ramp and into the jaws of the snagglecart.” A person wrapped in a cloak attacks the snagglecarts and gearfolk and “the front of the snagglecart exploded into a twisted mess of metal.” The humans are able to escape.
  • When the gearfolk try to capture Wiley and his friends, they fight back. A bounty hunter “Grabbed a wooden billy club from his rob and charged the gearfolk. The gearfolk was about to scream again when his head was knocked off by a trident. Someone is hit in the chest with a “crackling black energy,” but was uninjured. The battle takes place over a chapter, but Wiley and his friends escape unharmed. A baby crab dragon grabs the knight, “a giant claw clamped down on his leg, squeezing so tightly it was bending the metal armor around the knight’s thigh . . . The baby crab dragon made a playful click before lifting Pryvyd up and smacking him against the ground again.” Wiley is able to talk to the crab dragon, who then lets the knight go.
  • Wiley and his friends try to sneak into the king’s dungeon, but they were captured in a never-scape that was “submerged into ankle-high water.” The never-scape was slowly being submerged in water, but one of Wiley’s friends is able to help them escape.
  • At the end of the story, there is a battle between Wiley’s friends and the gearfolk, mechanical soldiers, and the cavern mage. The battle is not described in gory detail, and no one is injured.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • When invaders go into the underground cavern looking for treasure, the “ale cellar reeked of stale mushrooms and alcohol. Gigantic wooden barrels lined the walls, each big enough to store ten thousand swigs of ale.”

Language

  • When a fairy is caught spying, someone said, “Damn rust fairies are all over the city.”

 Supernatural

  • A knight has an enchanted floating arm that helps him in battle.
  • When going into a destroyed forest, ghosts appear. “Out of the mist, a stampede of spectral elk burst forth, beating their hooves against the ground. Their twisted antlers and hooves glowing a pale green like a bat’s eye while their chests were a deep emerald like the moss on Moshul’s knuckles.” When the Elk struck Wiley, he feels pain but is physically uninjured.

Spiritual Content

  • None

The Stars Never Rise

Soul-consuming demons started a war and almost caused the end of the world. The Church protects the remaining vestiges of humanity, and keeps everyone safe by enforcing strict rules and penance. Nina and her sister chafe under this strict system, and when they discover a horrifying truth, they must decide if the Church is really the hero everyone believes.

The Stars Never Rise has an interesting premise and is well-written, with actions and questions that keep the pages turning. However, the plot follows a lot of Young Adult clichés that hinder the originality of this text. There is a lot of violence that makes this novel inappropriate for young readers. Also, the Church is demonized and religion is shown in an incredibly negative light.

Sexual Content

  • Mel tells her sister, “You’re gonna need some way to work off all that sexual frustration.”
  • Nina thinks, “I didn’t know a single boy who’d ever worn a purity ring. Evidently, their virginity was worth even less than the stolen band of steel around my finger.”
  • Girls are examined by the Church, to determine if they are fit to bear children. “At fifteen years old, I was disqualified for procreation based on a history of allergies, my flat feet, and mild myopia–conditions it wouldn’t be fair to pass along to the next generation . . . Nearly a third of the girls in my class were declared unfit. We were sterilized that afternoon.”
  • Nina’s fifteen-year-old sister gets pregnant with her secret boyfriend. She says, “We tried to stop. We knew it was wrong, but it didn’t feel wrong.” Her mother tells her that, “We’ll fix it. I know someone who can do it safely, but it’s a drive. . .”
  • When Nina is caught shoplifting, the shop owner demands a sexual favor in exchange for keeping quiet. “My teeth ground together as I unbuttoned my blouse. I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t have to see him, but I couldn’t avoid hearing the way his breathing changed. The way his inhalations hitched, his exhalations growing heavier and wetter with each button that slid through its hole . . . A second later, his fingers were there, greedy and eager. They pushed at the remaining material, shoving my bra up, squeezing, pinching.”
  • Finn assures Nina that he won’t rape her. ” ‘ If I were planning to . . . you know . . . ‘ He waved one hand at my entire body. ‘I wouldn’t have given you a slab of wood with nails sticking out of it.’ He pointed to the two-by-four still lying next to me within easy reach. ‘I’m as protective of my parts as the next guy’ “
  • Nina and Finn kiss a few times. “His mouth met mine, and I almost choked on surprise . . . I committed to that kiss like I’d committed to little else in life. My fingers brushed over short stubble at the back of his jaw on their way into his hair. He sucked my lower lip into his mouth and I let him have it.”
  • Nina thinks about her “carnal rebellion following [her] sterilization,” when she had a slew of one-night stands.
  • Dale accuses Nina of prostitution. “I caught her several times, here in the store, and she always tried to buy her way out of trouble, if you know what I mean. You know, with the only kind of payment a girl like that understands.”

Violence

  • Nina and her sister avoid their mother as much as possible because their mother angers easily and can get violent.
  • When a seventeen-year-old refused to kneel for worship, “They forced her to her knees on the dais, closed the steel cuffs about her calves, then burned her alive in front of the entire school.”
  • Mel realizes her mother plans to sell her. Her mother says, “You can’t imagine what a young, healthy body is worth to the right people.”
  • Nina discovers she is an exorcist. “The moment my fingers touched her chest, something exploded between us. . . The monster tried to back away but couldn’t disconnect from the fierce light still shining between us . . . the tingling beneath my skin had become the roar of a blaze that should have devoured my fingers but consumed the demon instead.”
  • Nina exorcizes several demons. “We crashed to the ground and I sat on his stomach, then pressed my glowing left hand against his chest. The demon screamed like a wounded cat, and my hand burned and burned and burned.” “He tried to scramble off me, but the fire in my hand had captured him, and the demon was stuck there, convulsing in the throes of death as his rotting flesh fried.”
  • Adam is burned alive. “Fire consumed Adam . . . could not mute his screams or the crackle of his crisping skin, captured by multiple microphones and broadcast all over the country. He hunched forward . . . I choked on the scent of burning flesh and hair.”
  • A demon kills several people. “He lay dead on the ground, blood still pouring through the gaping hole in his throat.” “Blood and liquefied brains exploded into the lobby from the hallway, and I caught a brief glimpse of the carnage already laid out inside.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Nina suspects her mother is doing drugs. “There was a spot of blood on her pillow, and more of it crusted on her upper lip. Another nosebleed. She was killing herself. Slowly. Painfully, from the looks of it.”
  • Finn emerged from the kitchen with a bottle of water in one hand and a clear, unlabeled bottle of amber liquid in the other.”

Language

  • Hell is said often, both in referring to the place and as profanity.
  • Shit and bullshit are said several times. “Oh shit,” Nina thinks. “Oh shitshitshit.”
  • Damn is said often. Nina’s sister says, “If you’re determined to damn yourself to a life of servitude, communal living and celibacy wouldn’t you rather be slaying demons?”
  • The word bitch is used several times. Mel’s mother calls her a “little bitch!”
  • Ass and badass are said a few times. Devi tells Finn, “I swear I’ll exorcise your ass right out of him.”

Supernatural

  • When a demon inhabits a human body for too long, that body turns into a degenerate. “It was bald, with cheekbones so sharp they should have sliced through skin, and ears pointy on both the tops and the lobes. And most–disturbing of all–it was female. Sagging, grayish breasts swung beneath torn scraps of cloth that were once a dress.”
  • Exorcists are the only ones who can send demons back to hell. “his hand against her bony sternum, both glowing with the last of that strange light . . . An exorcist in a hoodie. Where was his long black cassock, his cross, and his holy water?”
  • There is a shortage of souls because the demons ate so many during the war. Therefore there are many stillbirths. Children who do live are usually given a soul by an elder family member. Those that are lucky get a soul from the public registry when someone dies.
  • Some exorcists have extra abilities, like heightened hearing and enhanced strength.
  • The group Nina is rescued by is a group of people who were denounced by the church because they are supposedly suspected of possession.

Spiritual Content

  • Nina’s sister says, “Everything worth doing is a sin.”
  • Nina breaks many Church rules. “So what if deception was a sin? You can’t get convicted if you don’t get caught.”
  • As punishment for blasphemy, “Sister Camilla dragged Matthew onto the stone dais in the center of the courtyard, then forced him to kneel . . . she flipped a curved piece of metal over each of his legs, just above his calves, then snapped the locks into place, confining the five-year-old to his knees in the freezing rain. The posture of penitence.”
  • Finn is a soul without a body, who is able to inhabit other people’s bodies.

 

Landry Park

Madeline has lived a life of comfort and luxury; however, she has been given little control over her life. Life in the United States is ruled by the rich gentry, and the seventeen-year-old is expected to find a rich husband and run the family estate. Only Madeline has no desire to marry. Her one desire is to attend university.

When one of Madeline’s friends is attacked at a party, Madeline is determined to discover the truth behind it. As Madeline leaves the family estate, she discovers that people are not always what they seem, and the life of the servant class, the Rootless, is not what she envisioned.

As Madeline tries to secretly help the Rootless, she accidently discovers that gentry boy David Dana has secrets of his own. Although she is attracted to him, he is promised to another—but that doesn’t stop Madeline’s heart from wanting.

Soon rumors of war and rebellion break out, and Madeline finds herself in a dangerous web of secrets and lies—and David may be the only person who can help.

Landry Park takes the reader into a world where slavery still exists. The gentry want to keep the Rootless under their control, and anyone who tries to help the Rootless have a better life is seen as a threat to the Gentry. Madeline is trapped between her desire for a comfortable life and her desire to help the Rootless. As the reader enters the world of the Rootless, there are some graphic scenes of sickness and death.

Although the story is interesting, Madeline’s desire to have her comfortable life and her unwillingness to take necessary risks make her less likable. The ending has a few surprises that will delight the reader.  However, because of the disturbing themes of death, slavery, and marriage, this book is not suitable for younger audiences.

Sexual Content

  • When Madeline and her mother are discussing marriage, her mother tells her she can’t marry Jamie because he’s too poor. Madeline thinks, “Jamie wasn’t interested in marriage. At least, not with me or any other girl.”
  • Madeline reflects on a childhood friend who, “dared a servant boy to kiss her on the mouth and then watched without emotion when the boy and his family were removed to a distant farm.”
  • Madeline explains that “gentry boys and girls dated—and often did more than just that—before their debuts, but strictly speaking, both parties were expected to arrive at the marriage bed untainted and untouched.”
  • Madeline’s father has a mistress. Madeline’s mother and father fight and the mother yells, “How dare you skulk around with Christine when it was my family’s money that kept your precious estate alive? My money is the reason you didn’t marry that whore and then you went and wasted it all away.”
  • Madeline has a crush on David and when he looks at her she thinks, “I felt the ghost of his kiss on my lips, felt the ghost of all the kisses I had craved and desired, and all the kisses I had yet to dream of, and then his mouth parted slightly and I wondered if he was dreaming of those phantom kisses, too.”
  • At her debut, Madeline kisses her date, Jude. “He took my whole face in his hands, so gently that his fingertips tickled my jaw, and kissed me harder, his mouth firm and warm. It felt nice, in a distant, premeditated sort of way. I wished I was kissing David.” Later as they are dancing, Jude kisses her again.
  • Madeline discovers her friend, “pressed against the wall, kissing someone with ferocious intensity.”
  • A character describes how, “no matter how many women I bedded or how much I drank, I felt as if this life were tenuous.”

Violence

  • In the beginning of the book, a girl was attacked and the girl’s screams are heard. Madeline tries to discover the truth behind the “attack.” Later in the story, Madeline discovers that Cara was attacked by her mother. “She hit me and I fell into the brambles nearby. She hit me again and again.”
  • A character talks about when he realized the servant class, the Rootless, had terrible lives.  He talks about how the penalty for stealing gentry trash is death. “And the bodies strung up on the estates numbered in the hundreds.”
  • There is a battle between the military and the Rootless. David describes his experience. “. . . I’ll tell you what it’s like to watch the man next to you blown to bits and to see your friend’s hand shot off by an armor-piercing round and to have a mouth so full of char and dirt that you can’t taste food for weeks.”
  • In a later scene, David describes the battle with the Rootless. “There was one man, good as dead, holding his innards and trying to crawl to safety. I thought he was an Easterner, so I left him behind. But when we collected the bodies, I recognized him. He was one of ours and I had left him there to dies like a beast in the mud.”
  • When Madeline’s father threatens to make a child swallow “gibbet food,” a radioactive tablet that will kill him, the Rootless attack. Madeline’s father is attacked and, “they [the rootless] pinned him down and forced the gibbet food inside his mouth for several minutes. Not enough to kill him, but enough to burn his mouth. Enough to give him severe radiation poisoning and probably cancer. . . the lower half of his face was unrecognizable—dark brown with blisters covering his lips and tongue. Bloody ulcers were beginning to form at the corners of his mouth. . .”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Throughout the book, the characters are seen smoking opium. In one scene, Madeline talks about how the Gentry boys, “spent most of their days playing golf or tennis while working their way through hundreds of dollars of whisky and opium.”
  • When a girl is attacked, a doctor gives her sedatives.
  • At parties, the characters drink whisky and spiced wine.

Language

  • Cara says she feels “like shit.”
  • Hell is used several times. For example, when Madeline accuses a boy of hurting Cara, he asks, “Why the hell do you think I would do something like that?”

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None

Visitors

Two Riggs means twice the adventures—and twice the trouble. Now that Rigg has a copy, they have decided to diverge. One will attempt to get to Earth and stop the invasion. The other will explore the wallfolds of Garden and decide if the walls should stay up or come down.

The Rigg that goes to Earth is willing to destroy his parent planet if that is the only option for protecting Garden. He quickly discovers that the situation is not that simple. Earth may be in as much danger as Garden from an enemy that cannot be fought or reasoned with.

Meanwhile, the original Rigg explores his own world. He encounters slavery and murder, and is faced with the dilemma of how to use his powers. As a time traveler, he can change anything he wants, but should he? If he allows people to die, is he complicit in their murders? He cannot save everyone…or can he?

The final installment of the Pathfinder series has everything from Neanderthals to alien races. The brain-tickling problems that come with time travel continue, this time compounded with moral questions. Just because Rigg can save a life doesn’t mean he should, but how can he let people die horrific deaths when he has the power to change the outcome? At what point does free will become an illusion? Visitors again expands Rigg’s world from a few wallfolds to several populated worlds, and provides readers with an extremely satisfying ending.

 Sexual Content

  • Umbo and Param kiss several times. Years later, when they are married, Param is irritated that her husband never asks for intimacy or “even wait[s] around as if hoping.”
  • Leaky wonders if she is infertile or if her husband is.
  • Leaky admits she had a botched C-section and was so, “torn up inside the midwife said [she’d] never be able to bear.”
  • Ram plays matchmaker with Noxon and Deborah, to which Deborah says, “We didn’t agree to mate and make babies.”
  • When speaking of Neanderthals and Erectids (extinct species), a man describes their mating as “being kidnapped and sequestered” while his daughter insists it is “rape.”
  • Square, one of the first people to grow up with a facemask, discusses the need for him to mate with Umbo. “And when you take a mate and we find the best way to get facemasks on your babies.”
  • Noxon is copied, and both copies are in love with Deborah. The Noxon who was not exposed to radiation decides he will be Deborah’s husband because his gametes are likely superior to the Noxon who was exposed to radiation.
  • Noxon kisses Deborah. “Whereupon Noxon sprang from his chair, took her into his arms, and kissed her . . . She responded with as much enthusiasm as was appropriate with her father present. Which was to say that, upon repetition, in private, the whole business seemed to work much better.”

Violence

  • Umbo realizes Param will have to marry him or kill him because he could become a political threat to her. “It should be clear that in order to keep you from being a divisive force in the kingdom, she either has to marry [me]…Or kill me.” Param decides to marry him.
  • To explain Rigg’s face, Ram Odin lies and says Rigg’s face melted in a fire.
  • Umbo’s father hits Umbo and breaks his son’s skull. “Father began striking him with the flat of the blade, hitting him on the shoulders and the side of his head, until young Umbo hung limp and unconscious . . .‘”I think the skull is broken here. Look how it’s swelling, but it looks dented anyways.’”
  • Rigg visits a tiny town where a young girl was raped and murdered. “He tried to kiss her and she was still too young and small to put up much of a fight. When he was done with the rape, she was crying and her clothing was torn . . . he dragged her to her feet and strangled her. It was brutal. He held her up and she flailed and kicked, but her arms weren’t long enough to reach his eyes and her kicking him did no good.”
  • When exposed, a murderer commits suicide.
  • In one version of the future, Loaf’s throat is slit, his wife is run through with a sword, and their baby is thrown out of a second-story window. Umbo is told that this is what happened as he does not witness any of it.
  • A man kills Deborah. “He had a fist-sized stone in his hand and he was bringing back his arm and before Noxon could come out of sliced time to shout at Deborah the stone was already in the air . . . It struck Deborah on the side of the head . . . and dropped her instantly.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • Shut up is said several times.
  • Son-of-a-bitch is said once.
  • Ram asks the expendable if he has an anus and if it works.

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • Rigg and Ram discuss the morality of going back in time and preventing a young girl from being raped and murdered. Ram says, “You can’t just go killing people because you know they’re going to do something terrible…because until he does the murder, he doesn’t deserve to die.”
  • Rigg comes to the conclusion that while he has, “this godlike power to force other people not to do evil…choos[ing] not to use it doesn’t make [Rigg] evil.” He decides on a course of minimal change.
  • Umbo wonders if the replication of genes is all there is to life, since “we evolved so that our greatest pleasure comes from sex.”

by Morgan Lynn

Ruins

Rigg and Umbo have started to hone their time traveling skills—and just in time. They discover that in the not-so-far future Earth visits Garden with the intent to completely destroy Garden. Now the two boys race to figure out why their parent planet would destroy a colony they created. Something the Earthlings found on Garden horrified them, but what?

Garden cannot fend off these attackers, so Rigg will have to find the motive behind the attack and change the past to stop it from ever happening. As Rigg searches for answers, he travels through different wallfolds. One is extinct of all human life, another seemingly populated by poop-throwing yahoos and sentient mice, and in a third, the people have evolved to live in the sea. But wherever he goes, Rigg finds people who want to manipulate him. With no one willing to tell him the whole truth, how can Rigg decide which path to take?

The second installation in the Pathfinder series takes the story up a notch. By expanding Rigg’s world from one wallfold to four, the reader is shown several different paths the human race could have taken. The what if’s are tantalizing. The world Rigg explores is as interesting and exciting as the actions he takes. Ruins is in no way linear. Now that Rigg and Umbo are skilled time travelers, their paths jump forward, go backwards, and sometimes cease to exist entirely. While these time jumps may cause one to stop and ponder for a while, they are written in a way that is relatively easy to follow.

Sexual Content

  • When discussing a parasite, it is said that “the only part of the earthborn brain it could control was the wild, competitive beast, bent on reproduction at any cost . . . That sounds like soldiers on leave.”
  • Rigg notes that some mice are mating. Later, when starting a colony, Loaf says the mice are “mating their little brains out.”
  • The humans that live under the ocean are naked. Larex comments on how Rigg is staring, to which Rigg replies, “I’m fifteen years old, I think . . . my eye goes to naked women.”
  • Umbo explains that when they change something in time, children will be born, but the “mix of genes . . . will be different. Perhaps conception will happen on a different day. Or a different sperm will win through.”

Violence

  • Yahoos, creatures that appear to be similar to humans with little intelligence, throw poop at Umbo and Loaf. “The watcher flung something out of his lofty perch. It splatted against Umbo’s cheek and shoulder. It stank. It clung . . . it was nightsoil. Presumably the watcher’s own.”
  • Param is murdered. When she is skipping time, the mice move a metal rod into the space she is about to occupy. When she and the rod collide, “Param felt a searing agony in her throat, the heat of billions of molecules being torn about . . . she lived just long enough to feel the heat pulse through her entire body, every nerve screaming with the pain of burning to death in a searing moment.”
  • To keep the mice in line, Olivenko points out that the humans “can break their little skulls under our feet.”
  • Rigg and Loaf discuss the morality of preemptive killing.
  • When Ram Odin tries to stab Rigg, Rigg jumps into the past and kills Ram with a knife. “He was also completely aware of the knife in Ram Odin’s hand, the hand that was darting forward to plunge it into Rigg’s kidney . . . In the very moment he caught Ram Odin’s knife, Rigg shifted half an hour back in time . . . the knife easily passed between the ribs of Ram Odin’s back and pierced his heart. A little flicking motion and both ventricles of Ram Odin’s heart were split open. The blood of his arteries ceased to pulse. He slumped over and, without time even to utter a sound, he died.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • The words “pissed” and “butt-ugly” are used once.

Supernatural

  • Symbiotic creatures evolve so they can live in conjunction with humans. They attach to the human body and, depending on the breed, can provide benefits such as breathing underwater and increasing a person’s speed, eyesight, etc.

Spiritual Content

  • Rigg discovers the Odinfolders have meddled in genetic alteration, and selectively bred themselves for traits they considered desirable.
  • Humans are defined as any creature, no matter how diverse, that is descended from what we consider a homo sapien.
  • Mice were bred for intelligence, to the point that Rigg says their souls look very similar to human souls.
  • Param briefly wonders if death is better than life.
  • Rigg accidentally copies himself by time traveling. Vadesh warns him to be careful or he will “run out of souls to populate these bodies that you accidentally make.”

by Morgan Lynn

Pathfinder

Rigg is as unimportant as a young boy can be. He lives in almost complete seclusion in the far northern woods of his wallfold. He and his father are trappers, coming down from the mountains only to sell their furs. But Rigg has a talent. He can see the path left by every living being that has traversed Garden. This skill comes in handy when tracking animals, but it is not until his father dies that Rigg beings to realize the full extent of his powers.

With his dying breath, Rigg’s father tells him a secret—he is not Rigg’s father. Shocked and hurt, Rigg must travel into the heart of civilization to find his family. He explores his terrifyingly powerful talent on the way, using it to get out of trouble time and time again. But when he arrives at his wallfold’s capital, he realizes that his talent may be most useful in protecting himself from his very own family.

Orson Scott Card creates a fascinatingly unique world. His detailed understanding of physics and his elaborate exploration of time travel puzzle and delight. Rigg’s story is wonderful to follow. It is exciting, dangerous, and enthralling. The skill in which Orson Scott Card builds this world will quickly suck readers into a wonderful trilogy. There are adult conversations regarding sex and violence, but the adult content is not described in detail.

Sexual Content

  • Loaf tells Rigg that he threw out this first wife when he came home from a lengthy trip and discovered she had three children from three different men. Loaf says she was lucky he didn’t kill her, as was his right.
  • Rigg hangs a purse of jewels under his clothes, around his waist. Loaf says, “I think you carry in your crotch most of the wealth of this wallfold . . . but that’s how all young men feel, isn’t it!”

Violence

  • Rigg’s father dies when a tree falls on him and he is impaled. His father calls out to him, “I have been pierced by two branches, completely through my belly.” Rigg does not see this directly, and his father makes Rigg promise, “You will not come look at me, now while I’m alive or later after I’m dead. I don’t want you to have this terrible image in your memory.”
  • Rigg tries to save a boy from falling off a waterfall. In the process, he nearly knocks a man over the falls. “The weight of Rigg’s head and shoulder striking the man caused his leg to buckle, and the man twisted, started to topple forward. I came to save a boy and now I’m killing a man.”
  • Umbo thinks his brother was pushed over the waterfall by Rigg. Umbo throws rocks at Rigg, nearly knocking him over the falls. Later a mob, stirred up by Umbo, comes for Rigg. Nox talks the mob down. “Why do you want to believe the worst? Why are you hungry to do a killing here today?”
  • Umbo runs away because his father beats him, and after his little brother dies he was scared his father would kill him. “Perhaps Umbo was afraid . . . Everyone knew how Tegay beat him when he was angry.”
  • Loaf met his wife after a battle. He was on the ground with a gash across his stomach. His wife found him, stitched him up and took him home. “By scavenger law I’m her slave,” Loaf says.
  • When captured, a general threatens to torture and kill Rigg’s friends.
  • A man talks about his great-grandfather, who was given, “a slow and gruesome public death . . . with his body parts fed to the royal hunting dogs.”
  • Rigg hits a man on the forehead and pees on the same man during an attempt to escape his own assassination.
  • Ram Odins’ neck is broken by expendables, machines that look human. “The expendable reached out with both hands, gave Ram’s head a twist, and broke his neck.”
  • Peasants broke into the house the former princess was living in, and forced her to surrender all her clothing.
  • Loaf injures a drunkard who was close to hurting his wife. He does this before his wife would have killed the drunk to save herself from harm.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Rigg is attacked by soldiers who are drugged to the point of being unable to recognize when they received, “orders [that] would lead directly to their deaths.”

Language

  • Bastard is said once.

Supernatural

  • Rigg and several others have the ability to manipulate time to different extents. These abilities are genetic.
  • Some people in Rigg’s wallfold have genetically induced powers such as projecting a wall with their minds.

Spiritual Content

  • The people of Rigg’s wallfold pray to many deities such as the Wandering Saint.
  • Rigg briefly wonders if he is a demon, since he has strange abilities.
  • Rigg and his friends take a pilgrimage to the Tower of O, a strange structure of unknown origins that is the oldest structure in the Wallfold.

by Morgan Lynn

Alex Rider: Never Say Die

Alex is now living in San Francisco, trying to recover from the tragic death of his caregiver, Jack Starbright. Alex was forced to watch Jack’s murder at the hands of terrorists working for SCORPIA.  With Jack gone, Alex struggles to find his place. When he gets an unexpected and cryptic email, he’s sure it’s from Jack. In an attempt to prove that Jack is alive, Alex boards a flight to Egypt and begins searching for clues to Jack’s whereabouts.

Alex’s story jumps from Egypt to France to Wales. As Alex searches for Jack, he comes face to face with twin brothers, who plan to kidnap the children of the wealthiest citizens of the world. Soon Alex is caught up in a tangle of intrigue that may lead to his death.

Packed with action, unexpected twists, and a mystery, Never Say Die will catch readers’ interest from the very first page. Alex is a strong character, who uses his brains to get out of difficult situations. The story descriptions will carry the reader into Alex’s world—a world that is often filled with fear. The evil twins and the people who help them are vicious criminals who have no problem murdering anyone that is perceived as a threat. Their willingness to kill and the violent descriptions of the creative ways they murder may cause some readers to have nightmares. Anthony Horowitz tells an engaging story that deals with terrorists, murder, and kidnapping.

Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • A woman kills two pilots by using tetrodotoxin. It “is extremely fast-acting, shutting down a person’s nervous system in minutes. Brad struggled to his feet but died before he was halfway there . . . Sergeant Brad Perkins stared up at her with empty eyes.”
  • Later in the story, the same woman tries to poison Alex. “The deadly poison, tetrodotoxin, shot silently across the room and penetrated his jacket. Alex jerked backward, his shoulders slamming into the door. . . Slowly, he slid down to the floor and lay still.” Luckily, the poisonous dart only hits his wallet. Alex and the woman scuffle. “She was strangling him. The pupils were dancing in her eyes, and her lips were stretched in a smile as she used her weight to press him down, her hands gripping tighter and tighter.” Alex is able to grab a bedside light. “With the very last of his strength, he swung it into the side of the woman’s head. He felt metal connect with bone . . . Dragana keeled over and lay still.”
  • Alex has nightmares about his past when two men tied him to a chair and force him watch a video of “the person he most loves” die. “The car drove out of the fort and into the desert. And then, as it had done the night before and every night after . . .it blew up.”
  • Alex stops two boys from harassing a young boy. The boys retaliate. “Colin swung the knife, aiming for Alex’s chest . . . Alex took hold of his wrist with one hand and his elbow with the other . . . Colin’s hand with the knife rushed past him.” The knife accidentally “sliced across Clayton’s arm.” Colin then tries to hit Alex, who avoids the punch. “Alex was standing next to a lamppost. Colin’s fist slammed into the metal. Alex actually heard his fingers break.”
  • A man tries to capture Alex. The man with a gun tries to get out of a car when “Alex kicked out, slamming the door. The man shouted and fell back . . .” Alex is able to escape.
  • A group of men try to kill Alex. During the scene, which takes place over approximately six pages, Alex is forced to defend himself. One man is knocked unconscious when Alex drops a cannonball “on the side of his head.” Alex makes a cactus bomb and throws it at a man, hitting him in the face.  “It didn’t bounce off. . . Instead it stuck there, with at least a dozen spikes piercing his lips, his cheeks, the side of his nose and one of his eyes, each barb injecting its poison into his nervous system.” One of the men tries to stab Alex, but the man is shot. “. . . His hand became a splash of red and the knife spun away. A second shot, and he was thrown onto his back. Alex knew at once that he wouldn’t be getting up again.”
  • In order to escape from bad men, Alex makes a trap that causes an explosion. The men “both screamed and reeled backwards, crashing into each other. The whole of the bald man’s head seemed to catch fire for a few seconds . . . The other man had thrown himself down. He was rolling over and over on the carpet, his clothes blazing.” As Alex tries to escape, one of the men shoots a woman.
  • Two brothers have their father killed. “. . . Carlo was gunned down in his Jacuzzi by his own bodyguard . . . With Carlo gone, the brothers took control of the family, and the next few years were bloodier and more violent than any that had gone before.”
  • The two brothers go to the hospital to kill a woman by using a trick. “It was one of their favorite tricks, and they would take turns—one watching, one doing the actual work. The wire went straight up her nose and into the medulla oblongata, the nerve mass located at the lower base of the brain . . . she was dead before she knew what had happened.”
  • Two brothers catch Alex spying and tie him to a chair, “his hands tied behind him, the rope so tight that it was cutting into his flesh.” The brothers intend to kill him by using “cement shoes.” A man padlocks a cement block around Alex’s ankle and throws him into the ocean. Alex is saved by a scuba diver.
  • In an attempt to escape, Alex attacks a man with a nail. Alex “smiled with satisfaction as the point drove into Stallone’s neck. Stallone howled and fell back, blood spurting out between his fingers.”
  • The two brothers give a woman cyanide. “She had suddenly become very still. In fact she was staring at the ceiling with empty eyes. Her tongue was sticking out of the corner of her mouth. Her face had gone mauve.”
  • The two brothers kidnap a van full of children and hold them for ransom. When the parents try to negotiate, the brothers discuss killing one of the children. “The important thing is to make sure it’s one of the poorer children. We don’t want to upset any of the billionaires.”
  • When attempting to save the children, a woman takes out one of the bad guys. She hits him with a chisel. “But it was the wooden handle that slammed into his skull, and with a grunt, he fell to one side . . . He was out cold.”
  • As Alex and his friend lead the children to safety, the bad guys try to recapture them. The scene takes place over about a chapter and a half. A security guard dies saving Alex’s life. “Alex saw spatters of blood appear across Philby’s back, forming hideous red stains that spread through his shirt.” During the escape, Alex sets fire to a structure. “Several of the guards had been caught in the blaze. He had heard them screaming.”
  • During the escape scene, Alex puts a thermos in a train’s chimney causing an explosion. The brothers “didn’t even know it had happened. They simply felt a jolt as if some gigantic gust of wind, coming out of nowhere, had hit the Midnight Flyer on its side.” They crash into the face of a mountain. One of the men on the train knows he is going to die. “His face, already badly burned, distorted one last time in sheer terror as the steam locomotive smashed into a solid wall of rock.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • One of the character’s “career had ended following a drunken fight with another pilot. She was twice his size, but even so, she had put him into the hospital. In fact, he was still there.”
  • A character had “drunk too much wine. The third bottle was definitely a mistake, and she had felt quite giddy as she had climbed into the taxi. . .”
  • Two of the characters help in their father’s business. “Even as teenagers, they loved the idea of becoming gangsters and had actually helped their father on occasion—for example, carry drugs inside their teddy bears on international flights.”

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • None

Spiritual Content

  • None

 

Have Sword, Will Travel

Odo never dreamed of leaving his small town. His best friend, Eleanor, longs for adventure. Everything changes for the two of them when Odo pulls an enchanted sword, Biter, from the river.

Even though Odo doesn’t want adventure, Biter knights him and demands that Odo go on a quest to discover why the town’s river has dried up. Eleanor goes along, excited for the chance to explore the unknown. Along the way, Odo and Eleanor discover that life outside of their village is full of both good and evil and that danger often lurks in unexpected places.

A fast-paced story full of interesting characters—human and non-human— Have Sword, Will Travel takes the reader on an epic adventure. Eleanor is a feisty heroine and Odo is a reluctant hero that children will love. Written with humor, the story teaches lessons such as not bending the truth, fighting for what is right, and defending those in need.

Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • When two boys make fun of Odo, the sword attempts to attack them. The sword slices “a figure-eight through the air despite Odo’s efforts to keep him grounded.” Odo manages to stop the sword, and the boys run off.
  • Odo must fight Fyrennian, a cruel smith. When Biter attempts to kill Fyrennian, Odo “managed to pull back on the sword at the last moment, deflecting the sword from a killing thrust.”
  • Eleanor is corned by a huge dog. She flings hot coals on the floor, trapping the dog.
  • Someone hits Fyrennian on the head, and “the smith toppled forward like a stone.”
  • A refugee tells a story about “corpses drifting down the river, the bodies of people cooked to death in boiling water.”
  • Sir Saskia challenges Odo to a duel to keep the citizens entertained. The battle is described over several pages. Odo is outmatched, and Sir Saskia strikes Odo’s shoulder twice. “His shoulder felt like it was swelling up inside the armor.” She hits Odo in the same spot a third time, “on his shoulder again, jarring it so much he lost feeling all the way down his arm. His nerveless fingers could no longer hold the sword, and the grip on his left hand was too weak.” Odo is forced to yield.
  • A dragon attacks Odo and Eleanor. Odo strikes the dragon. “The blade scored a vivid line in the blackened hide, exposing softer bone-white flesh beneath . . . he stabbed forward and pierced one wing right up to the cross-guard.” An older woman comes and helps the children escape.
  • A group of Sir Saskia’s troops attacks Eleanor. A person trips and “impaled himself” on the sword. In the end, there is, “one wounded, one dying . . . maybe . . . and one surrendered.”
  • Odo and Eleanor blow up a dam that has been built to stop the river from flowing. When they do, Odo almost drowns. “Odo lay weakly on his stomach, coughing up dirty water while Eleanor pounded his back.”
  • Odo and Eleanor get into a battle with bandits. The battle lasts over several pages. “Biter came down point-first on Mannix’s shoulder, shearing through his armor as if it were no more than river mud. Mannix screamed and swore and clutched at the wound with his left hand, his right arm now useless.” During the fight, Eleanor is kicked with steel-clad boots, and “the pain was like fire.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • At home, Eleanor drinks weak ale because water isn’t always clean.
  • Odo and Eleanor find a group of men passing around mugs. One of the men is telling a story. In the middle of the story he stops, and they see his “eyes suddenly rolling back into his head and his falling backward, unconscious. Fortunately, the arms of his friends were ready to catch him . . .”

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • Biter, an enchanted sword, is able to talk and control his own movements. He teaches Odo how to wield a sword and act like a knight. Later in the story, the children find Biter’s sister, who believes she is cursed and will bring death to those who wield her.
  • A smith has a firestarter that came from a dragon. He uses it to terrorize others into working for him.
  • A dragon appears to judge several of the characters in the book. The dragon looks at Odo, “really looked at him. He felt her ancient, knowing gaze penetrate into the very depths of his being.” Mannix is found guilty and the “dragon’s tail moved again, whipping around like a scorpion’s, the long spike on the end stabbing Mannix right through the middle and then flipping him back into the dragon’s mouth. It happened so quickly he didn’t even have time to scream.” Another person is cursed and forced to do as the dragon commands.
  • Urthkin, “pale-skinned, reed-slender demi-humans” that have “paws like a mole’s, with digging claws,” only come out at night because light hurts their eyes. They believe that “wisdom comes from closer to the ground.”

Spiritual Content

  • None

 

The Hypnotists

Jax’s eyes have always changed colors. And when people begin doing exactly what Jax tells them, he wonders if there is more to his color-changing eyes than he knows. Soon, Jax finds himself invited to meet Dr. Mako. Dr. Mako promises to teach Jax to harness the power to hypnotize people.

Excited by the prospect of learning more about his powers, Jax falls under Dr. Mako’s spell. However, Jax begins to wonder why Dr. Mako is so interested in his powers. Jax isn’t sure if Dr. Mako can be trusted. Soon Jax is tangled in a web of deception. Jax must figure out how to save his best friend, his parents, and the United States from Dr. Mako’s evil plan.

Jax’s newly emerging power adds humor and suspense to The Hypnotist. Younger readers will enjoy watching Jax learn to use his power and struggle with the responsibility of being able to hypnotize others. Jax works through many of his problems by talking to his best friend Tommy. This allows the reader to understand Jax’s emotions. The relationship between Jax and Tommy adds to the story’s plot and helps keep the story’s tone kid friendly. Even though much of the conflict revolves around Dr. Mako, who turns out to be an evil villain, the violence is age appropriate for children because it is not described in detail or in a scary manner.

Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • A man is hypnotized and ordered to jump off a bridge. Jax, “could hear the sound of someone in terrible distress, sobbing as if the end of the world were at hand . . . they watched in horror as the young man hoisted himself over the barrier and stood poised, trembling, on the narrow ledge.” Jax re-hypnotizes the man and saves his life.
  • Dr. Mako puts a post-hypnotic suggestion on Jax’s parents. If Jax doesn’t do what Dr. Mako wants, he will tell Jax’s parents to kill themselves. Dr. Mako tells Jax, “I won’t mention the trigger word yet. It’s too dangerous. When they hear it, both your parents will proceed to the nearest subway station and throw themselves in front of an uptown train.”
  • Jax parents throw themselves in front of a train. No one is injured.
  • Dr. Mako hypnotizes Jax and has him jump off a building. A mob of people hold up curtains and catch Jax, which prevents him from being killed.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • Many of the characters in the book can hypnotize others. One of the character’s specialties is, “A series of post-hypnotic suggestions that could be activated later.”
  • Throughout the story, many characters are hypnotized without their knowledge.
  • When Jax is learning to hypnotize others, he learns that, “the mesmeric connection is a powerful coupling of two minds. . . When you ‘see’ through your subject’s eyes, you’ve admitted a stranger’s consciousness into your head.”

Spiritual Content

  • None

 

Podkin One-Ear

The legend of Podkin One-Ear has been passed down through traveling bards. On Midwinter Night, a traveling bard arrives at Thornwood Warren. He tells the exciting story of how Podkin One-Ear overcame the Gorm, a fierce, cruel, evil enemy. The legend of the greatest warrior their land has ever known will entertain and surprise readers.

Through the bard’s storytelling, Podkin and his siblings come to life. Podkin, the lazy son of a chieftain, never dreamed of becoming a great warrior. When the Gorm appear in their warren, kill their father, and capture their mother, Podkin and his siblings run for their lives. With the help of a magic dagger, a witch, and a blind mercenary, Podkin and his siblings might be able to defeat the Gorm. As Podkin One-Ear and his siblings flee for their lives, they discover the history of their land and the terrible truth behind how the Gorm came to be.

Told in the style of old legends, Podkin One-Ear contains suspense, monsters, and a bit of magic. The author’s descriptions bring the rabbit world to life.  Readers will cheer for Podkin and his siblings as they run from the Gorm and battle their way to save their mother. The Gorm and several of the battles are described in vivid detail and may frighten children. Through Podkin One-Ear’s tale, the reader will see how “you don’t have to be brave or strong or powerful to do incredible things.”

Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • The Gorm and rats that were changed chase Podkin. “At the front, where their heads should have been, were fanged, drooling mouths, and glaring out of holes in their armor were blank, rust-red eyes . . . the things were now beasts. Iron beasts. Monsters.” Podkin escapes.
  • The Gorm have Paz, Podkin’s sister, corned. In order to save her, Podkin cuts a tree down. The tree falls on the Gorm, who have “surprised clouds of breath gushing from behind their iron masks, and then the tree hit with an explosion of snow crystals and a roar that echoed through the forest . . . the riders, nothing could be seen except a twisted shard of armor and a splash of rusty crimson blood on the snow.”
  • As Podkin tries to escape from rabbits, who are trying to capture him and turn him over to the Gorm, his ear is pinned to the ground by a prong of a portcullis. “Her brother’s eyes were bulging and his teeth were gnashing in pain.” In order to set her free, Paz has to cut the ear off. “It was funny to be running off into the woods, leaving a part of his body behind. But the funniest thing of all was that even after his ear had been sliced off, he could still feel the burning pain of the portcullis piercing it.”
  • A rabbit throws a rock at one of the Gorm’s birds. “. . . When it suddenly exploded with a clang and a puff of iron feathers . . . the crow had been knocked to the ground, stone dead.”
  • Podkin hires a mercenary, Crom, to help him free his kidnapped siblings. There is a fight over the course of several pages. “Crom strode right up and cracked him between the ears with Starclaw’s hilt. There was a hollow clinging sound, and Quince folded up into a senseless heap on the floor . . . The huge rabbit went flying backwards crashing into the earthen wall of the burrow, smashing a hole right through it, and bringing half the ceiling cascading down to bury him.”
  • When the head Gorm is looking for Podkin and his siblings, “The Gorm Lord grabbed the guard rabbit and threw him across the chamber. He sailed through the air like a broken doll, crashing into a candle stall, and sending sparks flying and hot wax showing everywhere.” The destruction of the market and the children’s escape is described over several pages. Someone throws “little black balls of something” at a warrior. “The balls exploded, filled with black sticky goo that smoked and burned. The warrior roared, dropped his sword and clawing at his face.”
  • Crom tells about how he and Podkin’s father learned to battle. During a battle, Crom “was positioned, and he (the enemy) was about to bring his stone ax down on my head. I just stood there, staring up at him in surprise.” Podkin’s father saves Crom.
  • Crom describes the battle that caused him to lose his sight. While fighting the Gorm, they went into battle but were unprepared. There was a witch rabbit. “She rode a black rat and called down lightning from the sky . . . her magic took my sight, and for days I lay under a pile of bodies in some kind of trance.” Some rabbits that were fleeing healed his wounds.
  • Podkin and his crew sneak into a Gorm camp to free other rabbits (including Podkin’s mother). The battle scene takes place over a chapter. Podkin slashes Scramashank’s ankle. “. . . He slung the dagger sideways, aiming for the spot above Scramashank’s ankle. Starclaw switched through, as if it were nothing more than a blade of grass.” Then a bank of mist appears, and the Gorm “fell to the ground, choking, gasping, and clutching at their throats. Their already terrified beast toppled over, trampling and crushing them in the snow.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • The chief has a cup of “frothy honey mead.”
  • One of the kidnappers is described as “clutching a half-drunk bottle of mead.”

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • A warren of rabbits were turned into the Gorm, evil and unnatural beings. No one knows what exactly happened; “some say they tunneled too far down and came across something cursed and poisonous. Others say it was the work of witches.”
  • The Gorm are not rabbits anymore. One of them is described as “a walking slab of metal and meat, pierced through with rusty thorns and nails. Its armor overlapped in sheets of jagged, dented iron, mottled with rust and splashes of dried crimson that looked very much like blood . . . Skulls hung from its belt. Rabbit skulls, painted all over with evil-looking runes.”
  • Podkin has a magical dagger that came from the Goddess. The dagger can cut anything that is not metal.
  • A rabbit, who is a witch, uses bones to tell the future. Her warren is safe because “there’s enough glamours and enchantments about this place that Hern himself, god though he be, couldn’t find it if I didn’t want him to.”

Spiritual Content

  • During Midwinter, a holiday much like Christmas, the Midwinter Rabbit visits the warrens bringing gifts.
  • The story often contains the phrase, “thank the Goddess,” and Podkin prays to the Goddess. The Goddess made the twelve tribes of rabbits.
  • Podkin hides from the Gorm and “gave a small prayer to the Goddess.”
  • As a warren of rabbits was digging a new longburrow, they found jutting metal, pulsing metal. Because they thought the metal thing was evil, “our priestess sealed off the tunnel with magic charms.”
  • A bard tells a group of children that there is a god of bards and storytellers. “His name is Clarion, and he has been known to whisper the art of stories into the ears of a chosen few rabbits while they sleep.”
  • Twin sisters Estra and Nixha, Goddesses of life and death, came to “our world and decided it was the place for them.” However, they had to get rid of Gormalech. They played a game that no one really won, but they came to an agreement. “The goddesses would rule the surface of the world, bringing life (and death) back to it, as before. Gormalech would go deep underground, where iron and all the other metals come from, and between them they would share the place.” Now Gormalech is creating the Gorm and “the Balance is broken.”
  • When talking about Podkin gambling, the bard said, “I’m sure lots of people have won lots of things, including the Goddess herself. But for everything they won, I bet . . . I mean, I’m sure . . . they lost even more. Pook won because he had a touch of magic about him when it came to casting bones. Not many other rabbits have that blessing. Whatever tales of glory heard, gambling is for idiots.”
  • The forest rabbits worship the god of the forest. When Crom declines leading his warren, the warren moved on. “Maybe the tribe had never been happy at Darkhollow in the first place. Or, more likely, losing their chieftain had been seen as some kind of sign from the gods. Religion made rabbits do some very strange things sometimes.”

 

Timeless: Diego and the Rangers of the Vastlantic

Time collided. Now dinosaurs roam with robots. Humans from three different time periods now live on Earth. Diego’s parents come from two different time periods and hope to make their home, New Chicago, a better place.

In Diego’s world, conflict is ever-present. Not everyone believes that kids from different eras of history and from different cultures should interact. Some still wish for the world that they came from before time collided.

When Diego’s father, a New Chicago’s top engineer, is taken by rebels, Diego vows to help free his father. Diego thinks the key is to build bigger, stronger weapons. However, when he and three others accidentally end up on a pirate ship, Diego’s beliefs are challenged.

Diego and the Rangers of the Vastlantic gives the reader a glimpse of the struggles others faced during different eras, which gives the story interest. The story doesn’t just focus on how boys and girls often do not understand each other, but also how people from different cultures can also have conflict.

Although the story is full of action and has an epic battle scene, the violence is not described in great detail. Instead, sights and sounds are left to the reader’s imagination. Stunning illustrations enhance the story and help bring the new world to life. Diego and the Rangers of the Vastlantic is a story about friendship, family, and seeing others in a new way. In the end, Diego learns that powerful weapons are not the key to keeping his world safe.

Sexual Content

  • Two boys have a sparring match and the winner gets a kiss from Paige. One of the boys says, “Sadly for you, only one lovely lady will get to know the thrill of these lips.” Later the winner describes the kiss, “But it wasn’t exactly a kiss. More like an attack on my face. Her lips were, like, strong.”

Violence

  • Diego and a group are cornered by a bully and his gang. Diego “Slammed Fish across the face with it (skateboard) and a girl ‘judo flipped’ a boy to the floor.”
  • A rebel group attacks a power plant and kidnap about a dozen engineers. “A marine lay on the floor nearby, unmoving . . . Shots. More gunshots. Fists colliding, the thump of bodies hitting the floor.” During the attack, a man holds a sword against Diego’s father’s throat.
  • Rebels attack a boat carrying some of the engineers’ families. “More pops. Splintering cracks. . . The gunfire seemed to come from everywhere . . . Bullets zinged past Diego’s head.” Diego’s mother shoots the rebel’s boat and it explodes.
  • When trying to escape from dinosaurs, Diego crashes his gravity board on a cliff. “The beast began to throw their massive bodies against the wall, trying to dislodge him.” Diego is rescued.
  • The rebels attack the pirate ship and the battle plays out over an entire chapter. The battle is not described in graphic detail.
  • The pirates, trying to save the engineers, attack the rebel’s base. The attack happens over several chapters. Diego shoots at one of the bad guys. When someone is injured, the description jumps in time, which allows the reader to imagine what happened. One of the characters is killed, but his death is not described.
  • When someone calls Diego a “clock mongrel,” Diego’s father hits him. “George spun and crumpled to the floor.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • A boy “sucked on his cigarette, the end glowing. . .”
  • The pirate captain is seen asleep with a half-empty bottle of vodka and Diego assumes he is drunk.

Language

  • Profanity is used rarely, but includes bastards, crap, crud, damn, hell, holy crap, and pisses.
  • When Lucy is saved from a dinosaur, she said, “Oh my God, I thought I was done for!” She uses this phrase twice.
  • When Diego finds out that pirates have been hired to find his father and the other engineers, Diego said, “Hell, I should be allowed to go before some hired guns.”
  • When Diego tells his friend about the pirates, his friend replies, “bloody hell!”
  • The rebel group is referred to as “bastards.”
  • When Paige makes a meal, the available food is referred to as “nasty crap.”
  • According to Diego, one of the girls acts like “everything I do pisses her off.”

Supernatural

  • Diego and his father have “the Maker’s Sight,” which allows them to see how different machine parts work together. “It shows me a series of images that allow me to make or fix anything.”
  • Diego wills baby turtles to surround Lucy. He explains how he did it. “It’s more like I can send them a thought, feeling, or image, and they seem to . . . act on it. It’s like hypnosis, I think.”
  • When describing “the Maker’s Sight,” Diego’s friend said, “You sound like one of those spiritual mediums we have back in London, communicating with the dead through their crystal balls.”

Spiritual Content

  • During a battle, the pirate captain said, “A prayer to your god of choice might also be helpful.”

Sisters of Glass

Halan, the heir to the Magi Kingdom, is different. Unlike every royal before her, she has no magical powers. Her parents fear that without magical powers, she will be unable to protect herself against a dangerous rebellion that is festering. Halan, on the other hand, is certain that she has nothing to fear and that her father will be able to reunite the Magi Kingdom in peace.

Nalah, a glassblower’s daughter, is an outcast among her peers. In New Hadar, she must hide her magical powers because magic is outlawed. Despite her efforts, her power is growing, and she is fighting the battle to control it. When an old family friend appears, Nalah begins to wonder if using magic is the only way to improve her and her father’s lives.

Two girls’ lives come crashing together when Nalah steps through a magical mirror that takes her to the Magi Kingdom. Each girl must overcome their fears and learn to trust each other before both of their worlds are shattered.

Full of magic and suspense, Sisters of Glass is a new series that is best suited for more advanced readers.  At the beginning of the book, the plot is complicated and confusing. The chapters begin with a history of each girl’s world and alternate between each girl’s point of view. Changing between points of view may be difficult for younger or struggling readers. The story also has graphic violence and the king kills several people in an effort to gain their magical powers. The death scenes may be disturbing, especially when Nalah watches her father die and then is stuck in the dungeon with his dead body.

Unlike most stories, Sisters of Glass, does not have a romantic interest. The platonic relationship between Nalah and her friend Marcus is refreshing and endearing. Readers will be able to connect to Nalah as she struggles with being obedient to her father. Nalah’s strong personality and her loyalty make her a character that readers can look up to. Unlike Nalah, Halan comes off as a bratty princess who thinks that she knows best. Even when her actions endanger others, her remorse is almost nonexistent. The contrast between the two girls is interesting, but Nalah is the character that readers will come to love.

There are several messages in the story. One message is treating everyone—no matter his or her station—with respect. This message ties in with the message of bringing peace to a kingdom. Only with justice, understanding, and cooperation can peace ever be realized.

Sexual Content

  • When Nalah meets a boy, her friend says, “He likes you,” and then makes a kissy noise.
  • Each world contains a person who is a tawam. Nalah is Halan’s tawam; however, they have different fathers. They discuss which of the two has a biological father that they don’t know about. Nalah wonders, “Could it be true? Could Zachary Tam have been my real father?”
  • Halan sees her mother kiss a man who is not her father. “ . . . He was leaning into her mother, his lips pressed to hers.” Later she discovers that this man is her biological father.

Violence

  • A metalworker makes a magic circlet. To demonstrate its power, the metalworker puts the circlet on a servant, which causes “the servant to cry out in unbearable pain and crumple to the floor, clutching at the metal around his head.”
  • Nalah’s father is attacked. “Mr. Bardak doubled over and Tam turned and brought his fist up in a swing that caught Nalah’s father across the temple, making him stagger. His knees bent and he fell to the floor.”
  • A man uses a mirror to travel to another world and kill another man. “He silently unclasped the sheath, raised the blade above his head, and brought it down into the back of the old Tam’s neck. . . The rumpled man didn’t make a sound. He spasmed once and fell forward off the chair onto the wooden floor, the papers by his feet scattering like a flock of started doves.”
  • Halan is kidnapped. When she is kidnapped, a cloak is thrown over her head. Later, she is tied up. She tricks a boy into untying her binds, and then “she brought her arm around in a wild swing, and her balled fist struck him hard on the side of the head. He reeled, and she reached up and grabbed his shirt, pulling him down to the floor so his head hit the stone with a horrifying thunk. He lay still.”
  • Nalah goes to the dungeon. “There were sounds coming from the murk. Crying sounds, wails of pain and distress, the low chatter of angry voices, the odd rattle of chains or clang of metal against metal.”
  • A guard throws Marcus to the ground and draws his sword. Nalah grabs the sword, and “suddenly the sword bent under her hand like it was made of clay.” Nalah’s glass bird swoops down and attacks the soldier; Marcus and Nalah get away.
  • In order to return to the palace, Halan must get away from her captors, so she “scooped up a chunk of sandstone, and clunked him on the back of the head . . . Marcus slumped to the ground with a groan.”
  • The king goes to Nalah’s world and kills several people’s tawams so that the tawams in his world will gain more power. Their deaths are not described.
  • The king kills Nalah’s father. “The king struck like a snake. . . A metal ball, about the size of a plum, flew from inside his flowing sleeve and struck Nalah’s father in the forehead. It stuck there, and immediately crackled with tiny fingers of white lightning, sending them climbing all across his body. Amir Bardak’s eyes grew wide with surprise, and his arms and legs spasmed uncontrollably . . . Nalah’s father went limp and fell forward, lifeless in the dirty straw.”
  • The king attempts to hang Nalah. An old man throws an orb at the executioner, “sending out a plume of blue smoke that curled around his foot like the tentacle of a sea monster, dragging him off stage and engulfing him in a pulsating cocoon of smoke.”
  • There is a battle between the common people and the king’s soldiers. The action takes place over a chapter but is not described in detail. When a guard attacks Nalah with a sword, a glass bird, “raked them [his talons] across the guard’s face,” saving her. The king grabs his daughter and threatens to kill her, but Nalah saves her.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • Halan goes to a bazaar where two men walk by “drunkenly.” At the end of the night, very few people are still outside, but there are a “few, argumentative drunks.”

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • Thaumas have magical powers that allow them to make things with one element—glass, metal, tapestry, wood, etc.
  • Several of the characters use a mirror to travel to another world. When Nalah goes through the mirror, “it felt like she didn’t have hands—or any physical body at all. She felt herself hanging, suspended in an in-between place, wonderstruck and trembling with fear.”
  • Nalah has several magical powers. She can make metal bend. When she touches a tapestry, she has a vision of the events depicted in the tapestry. “. . . The tapestry in front of her was coming to life, as if every individual thread had a mind of its own.”
  • Nalah’s captors put a Veil of Strangers on her.  The veil changes her appearance. When she tries to remove the veil, “it squeezed tight around her temples, her head filling with throbbing pain.”
  • “Some people exist in both worlds, like twins—except they call them ‘tawams.’ . . . there’s a mirror version of me living here.”

Spiritual Content

  • None

 

Dragonborn

Sam lived a quiet life as a wizard’s apprentice. Sam’s only friend was a dragon named Starback. When Sam’s master dies, other wizards come to help bury the man. When the group argues over Sam’s fate, he runs. Sam is unsure of where to go, but he knows he wants to finish his education in magic.

Sam and Starback set off on a journey. They know Sam must avoid the wizards, but there are hidden threats as well. There is someone who wants Sam’s power, and she’ll use deceit and magic to capture Sam. Will Sam be able to find his path without being trapped in her snare?

A book about a boy and a dragon should be amazing, but Dragonborn lacks action. For most of the story, the dragon is off trying to protect Sam, but he isn’t an integral part of the plot. As Sam travels he meets some interesting people and learns about himself, but the story often lacks suspense.

Dragonborn was written for readers as young as eight, but the plot is difficult to follow. The beginning of the story goes back and forth between Sam’s stories and the apprentice’s notebook, which gives information about Sam’s world. Although the transitions between these two are clear, Sam’s story is more complicated because there are flashbacks that may be confusing for some readers. The point of view of the story changes between characters, which adds to the confusing nature of the story. There are so many characters introduced in the beginning chapters that it is difficult to keep track of all of them.

One aspect that may upset younger readers are the scenes that deal with death. The story begins with death, and the final preparations of the body are performed. Later in the story, Sam stumbles into a house where a man has just died and Sam must perform the burial rites, including taking the man to the Finished World. Although the book does not address what happens after one dies, the story may lead to questions about the afterlife.

Although the story has plenty of magic—both good and bad—the story does not explain how spells are made. The apprentice’s notebook reads, “Now, whenever it is worked, it does more than was meant, and it lives a life of its own. So never, never make magic just to make life easier, or to do something quicker. Always keep your magic for something that matters.”

Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • A girl attending wizard school often gets into trouble. One day she loses her temper and floods the classroom. The teacher is unable to stop the flood. “The other pupils were thrashing about, trying to stay above the surface as the water filled the room. They made magic lifejackets and dinghies, they flailed about the swell. . . Just as they were about to lose the battle and drown, Tamrin released the spell.”
  • Ash has her creature kill a prisoner. “Bakkmann hurled itself at the dazed prisoner and stabbed into his heart, once, twice, then started to suck and bite noisily at the body.”
  • When Sam performs a burial ritual and opens the door to the Finished World, Ash tries to pull Sam into the Finished World. “Sam could sense that she was using the wild magic of the mines to keep hold of him.”
  • Ash reads a note on a moth, then kills it. She “held the moth over the flame, watching its wings scorch then flame for a moment before turning to ash. The fat, black body bubbled, dripped, and dissolved.”
  • Ash creates a spell. “The boy was on fire. Flames flowed over him. His hair was a fiery torch, his finger ends, candles. He rolled over and over in his frenzy to put the flames out. Nothing made any difference. . . Smedge shrieked in pain. Then, as though it had never been, the fire disappeared.” Later in the story, Ash again uses a spell to set Smedge on fire, so he feels pain but is unharmed.
  • Ash has a “clacking creature” that listens to her orders. One of the creatures, “pounced on Khazib, and jabbed a long, sharp tongue into his shoulder, drawing blood. Khazib screamed in pain and surprise. . . Khazib looked at the blood flowing from his wound. He panted with pain.”
  • A wizard causes beetles to attack Sam. “The huge beetle dived and flew straight into Sam’s face. The others followed, swarming all over him. Into his ears, his nose. . . he could feel them probing with their sharp legs. . . He was drowning in beetles, being eaten alive by them.” In order to save Sam, a dragon kills the wizard. “Its jaws seized on Caleb’s head and jerked it to one side. The boy heard bones snap. The dragon shook Caleb as a terrier shakes a rat. Caleb’s head lolled to the left, one side of his face burned away.”

Drugs and Alcohol

  • The weavers “do not weave when twilight comes, but sit and drink beer and tell stories.”
  • While traveling with a roffle, Sam and the roffle sit down to eat. “There was lemonade for Sam and beer for the roffle as well.”
  • After a character is taken to the Finished World, the crowd has food and drink. The men and women “stood in small knots of friendship with mugs of beer and cider, beakers of wine.”

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • The story revolves around wizards who cast spells.
  • Ash is a creature whose limbs fall off and grow back, her eyes bleed, and she eats beetles. She picks up a beetle and “put it to her lips without thinking. She crunched it, sucked the soft pulp from inside, licked it clean, then dropped the empty husk into the remains of the fire.”
  • When Ash attempts to escape her prison, she goes to the doorway. “Her foot snapped off at the ankle and hung in the air outside. . . Her arms had gone through as far as the elbows, then stopped. Her weight sagged. She fell to her knees and her forearms snapped off. . .”
  • Sam looks at a book and concentrates on the letters when “green and blue smoke hovered for a second and then contracted, gathered together over the plate; and, in a moment, it formed itself into a tiny Green and Blue Dragon.”
  • Sam looks toward the stars for messages. “Sam tried to read them. They whispered to him, many voices, many words, many thoughts. He could not make out what they were saying.”
  • Hungry and dehydrated, Sam leaves his body. “. . . He was high above the crowd, looking down at them. He was a dragon again. Hunger gone, thirst forgotten, he soared above it all, rejoicing in the splendor of the air . . . Thinking of himself send him back not himself. . .”
  • One of the characters has a connection to a wolf. “When I need to see with the wolf’s eyes, I disappear into the wolf. I stop being Axestone until it’s over.”
  • Sam discovers that he is a dragon and a boy. “Being a dragon and a boy at the same time was like learning to swim . . . but soon enough he knew the difference between one and the other.”

Spiritual Content

  • When a person dies, someone must prepare the body. Then, someone must accompany the body and open the door to the Finished World. When the door is opened, the person moves into the Finished World.

 

 

Dino-Mike and The Dinosaur Doomsday

When Dino-Mike’s father goes on an expedition to Antarctica, Dino-Mike doesn’t expect much to happen. But when the Bones siblings unexpectedly arrive, they bring danger with them. The Bones siblings wake up a Doomsday Dinosaur who could easily crush Dino-Mike, Shannon, and Jurassic Jeff.  The three think that the Doomsday Dinosaur is their worst nightmare, but there is more danger lurking beneath the Antarctic ice.

Dino-Mike and The Dinosaur Doomsday is an action-packed story that has Dino-Mike and his friends battling both the Bones siblings and ancient dinosaurs that come to life. Although the majority of the story is fictional, the story contains some facts about Antarctica and the dinosaurs that roamed. However, readers should not pick up the Dino-Mike series if their sole intention is to learn factual information about dinosaurs.

The series will appeal to younger readers because it is written with imagination and action. Scattered throughout the text are onomatopoeias that help create suspense. The story is easy to read and is a good series to pick up to interest beginning readers. Although Dino-Mike and the Dinosaur Doomsday is the seventh book in the series, the plot can be understood without reading the previous books.

Sexual Content

  • None

Violence

  • The Bones siblings cause an avalanche that “poured down on the base, covering it completely.” Dino-Mike’s father is trapped inside.
  • The Bones siblings wake up a Doomsday Dinosaur that breaks through the ice. “The ground beneath their feet opens up. CRUNNNCH! A geyser of ice thrust them thirty feet into the air.” Shannon almost falls into the crack in the ice, but Dino-Mike is able to save her.
  • The Bones siblings wake up burrowing dinosaurs that attack a group of people. “Jeff leaped backward just as one of the burrowing dinos burst through the ice, snapping its jaws. It was a narrow miss!” Dino-Mike is able to anticipate where the dinosaurs will pop out of the ice and keep the group safe.
  • A giant water dinosaur “chomped down on Dino-Mike” and “leaped into the air, and then arched its long body and dove back toward the water below.” The dinosaur tries to eat Dino-Mike, but he gets stuck in the dino’s throat and is sneezed out.

Drugs and Alcohol

  • None

Language

  • None

Supernatural

  • The Bones siblings have a device that allows them to wake-up dinosaur fossils and control the dinosaurs. They also have a controller that allows them to open an “interdimensional portal.”

Spiritual Content

  • None

 

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