Good vs Evil – Page 7 – Sneak Peek Books

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

Chill of the Ice Dragon

A terrible Ice Giant has turned Mina’s kingdom and all the people in the castle to ice. She leaves the Far North Lands to find help. Mina arrives at the castle and asks Drake and his friends for help. Only a fire dragon can defeat the Ice Giant, but Rori and Vulcan are no longer at the castle. Will the Dragon Masters be able to find Rori and help defeat the Ice Giant?

The ninth book in the Dragon Masters series has the same black and white illustrations that help the readers visualize the characters and the action of the story. Easy vocabulary and simple sentence structure will allow beginning readers to enjoy the story. For those who have not read the previous books, Chill of the Ice Dragon may be confusing because of the many characters in the story. The end of the story is exciting and action-packed, but the beginning is choppy and doesn’t transition to different scenes smoothly.

Sexual Content

None

Violence

Dragons fight. “Neru began to glow with energy. But before the purple dragon could attack, green beams of light shot from Worm’s eyes! They’d zapped Neru, sending him jolting backward.”
A character uses a magic crystal to control a dragon.
Over several chapters, the dragon masters and their dragons fight Vasty, who has frozen the kingdom. “Green energy beams shot from Worm’s eyes, aimed at the crystal. But Frost was fast. He shot his icy breath at Worm.”
Vasty is defeated when Frost “shot his icy breath at the staff, knocking it out of Vasty’s hands. Hulda blasted magic from her fingertips. The giant staggered backward.” Eventually Vasty is shrunken and Frost creates “a swirling tunnel of ice” that sucks up the tiny giant.

Drugs and Alcohol

None

Language

None

Supernatural

A character uses a “gazing ball” to show Mina the other dragon masters.
Each dragon has special powers. For example, when people touch Worm, he transports them to different places. Another dragon sprays poisonous mist.

Spiritual Content

None

Dino-Mike and the Lunar Showdown

After being defeated before, Mr. Bones is on the run, but Mike and Shannon are determined to find him, even when the search takes them to the moon. The friends are determined to stop Mr. Bones from creating more dinosaurs. However, when Mr. Bones finds a way to control the dinosaurs, Mike and Shannon must come up with a creative way to protect themselves.

Dino-Mike the Lunar Showdown is full of fun illustrations, a jacket with surprising gadgets, dinosaurs in space suits, and an evil villain. Written with imagination and action, Dino-Mike has young characters who bravely face evil and care about the well being of dinosaurs. This is not the book to pick up if you want factual information about dinosaurs. The story is easy to read and is a good series to pick up to interest beginning readers.

Sexual Content

None

Violence

A dinosaur tries to eat Shannon but Dino-Mike is able to trap it.
An ankylosaurus tries to strike the kids with his tale. With the help of his Dino jacket, Dino-Mike grabs the ankylosaurus’s tale and takes him into the air. “He released the claw, and the ankylosaurus smashed back to the lunar surface with a thud.”
Mr. Bones tries to capture the kids by having a giant bird and other dinosaurs attack them. Dino-Mike uses his jacket and the kids are able to defeat Mr. Bones.

Drugs and Alcohol