Stacked Shelves

I have a little wish: I would like novelists writing for children to stop making the kids sound older than they are. I read One for the Murphys by Lynda Mullaly Hunt last night and really like it. As I tweeted when I finished it, the book has a tough ending. It makes perfect sense and it's not a totally sad ending, but it's a bit heart-breaking to those of us who want a super-happy-ending, especially for this book's particular protagonist. It made me cry. Carley Connors is foster child -- her mom is recovering from severe abuse delivered by her husband (Carley's step-dad). She's never been in foster care before, but she has known hardship as she and her mother lived on next to nothing in Las Vegas. Now in Connecticut, Carley is taken in by a loving woman who has a husband and three sons. The Murphys aren't perfect by any means and not all of them want Carley in their family, but by the end of the book, something better than a mere co-existence has formed. T...

I read two new books recently that deal with the death of a child and how that death affects others in the family. If you haven't read See You at Harry’s , by Jo Knowles, sorry for the spoiler. But don’t let the fact that I’ve just told you someone dies keep you from reading it. It’s a great book. (Another to add to the list I’m keeping of possible Newbery contenders: Wonder , The One and Only Ivan , The Lions of Little Rock , Crow and The Mighty Miss Malone . I haven’t read the last two yet, but they look like good books.) The book jacket will tell you that the family suffers a tragedy and that perhaps our narrator is to blame. She’s not. Fern, 12, suffers early on in the book from being ignored and being a tween. Her father is too busy running the family ice cream shop, her mother is too busy taking care of 3-year-old Charlie and locking herself in her office when she needs to meditate, her older sister Sara is too busy trying to figure out what she should do now that she...

I believe I have found my Flavia de Luce for tweens. Sheila Turnage’s Three Times Lucky isn’t quite a mystery in the Nancy Drew sense -- it's better. Her heroine Mo LoBeau attempts to discover who murdered an ornery old neighbor, while also searching for lost pets and lost parents. She’s smart, industrious, and sassy. I loved that Turnage lets Mo experience real emotions (like getting sick with shock when she finds her guardian missing). And that her sidekick Dale doesn’t let Mo play the orphaned kid card all the time. As Dale, the child of a alcoholic father, tells her, they're all throwaways. It looks as though Turnage might revisit the town of Tupelo Landing, North Carolina, in the future – her website hints at it. But I hope murder doesn’t follow Mo around. She deserves to be more than Miss Marple.

Adam Rex is a creative genius. Cold Cereal , his latest tween novel rivals his first – The True Meaning of Smekday – in originality and humor. But I have some nits to pick. First, though, librarians, moms, dads, if you want to get your kids laughing at a sort of post-apocalyptic novel (rather than wondering when we'll all start shooting at one another), recommend and read The True Meaning of Smekday . On Smekday, we learn from narrator Gratuity Tucci (aka Tip), the Boov invaded Earth and corralled all Americans, including Tip’s mom, to a reservation in Florida. Eleven year old Tip decides to hop in the family car to rescue her. Helping her along the way are her cat Pig (who has a strange affection for Boovs) and a Boov named J.Lo who is an expert mechanic and on the run from his own kind. The three go on a funny cross-country road trip and, in the end, save the world (and maybe the universe). Yes, the book drags a bit in the second half. It’s as though Rex has too many...

I liked The Wizard of Dark Street by Shawn Thomas Odyssey, and I hope Odyssey plans to make it the first in a series (it already has a cool website ). Unfortunately, it could have used another edit. The problem lies with the uneven tone of the novel. At times the story is serious -- and some horrible things have happened (spoilers later). But the novel also has some quirks that seem to be attempts at humor, but miss. The heroine of the book is Oona Crate, a Natural Magician. She was born to do magic (other magicians must learn it), but after her father (The Wizard of Dark Street) was killed by the evil Red Martin and after she herself killed her mother and baby sister(!) with some uncontrolled magic, Oona wants to give up the family business and not be apprentice to her uncle (the new Wizard of Dark Street). Instead, she’d like to become a detective. In some ways, the book calls to mind the wonderful Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clark. Dark Street is the last of the...

You wouldn’t know from the covers of these two books that Phoebe Stone writes more than tween romances. And that’s a shame. Because despite the old adage, we do select books by their covers, among other things, and the jackets on these books could be turning away readers. The more egregious cover of the two is that for The Romeo and Juliet Code . This book takes place during World War II and, while I’m sure some kids did wear tennis shoes and jeans then, this cover has too much of a contemporary look. Also, there is no tween romance in this book. None. Nada. Felicity Bathburn Budwig, the 11-year-old heroine of the novel, has come from England to live with her father’s family in Maine. While there she learns more about her family and her place within it. She also discerns that her parents may be spies (hence the title). It’s a great novel about displaced children during wartime, family secrets, and finding one’s true home. The Boy on Cinnamon Street suffers from both a bad cover a...

After I read The Midnight Zoo by Sonya Hartnett (months ago), I wrote myself a note comparing it to Life of Pi by Yann Martel and, hurrah, I found the note earlier this week. So, here's my insightful thought: Like Life of Pi , The Midnight Zoo asks readers to decide what is real and what is imagined. Are the protagonists imagining what is happening to cope with the horrific external circumstances? Or has all of reality turned upside down because of those events? The Lying Carpet by David Lucas does that too, though in a much lighter way -- no man-eating tigers or Nazis.