Book #74 of 2017: The Crossover by Kwame Alexander (The Crossover #1) I’m generally not big on either novels in verse or stories that center around sports, but Kwame Alexander’s The Crossover won me over despite being both. It helps that this is a shorter book for middle-grade readers, but also the author’s characters feel …
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Book #95 of 2016: Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians by Brandon Sanderson (Alcatraz #1) Brandon Sanderson’s Alcatraz series starts out with a bang, combining one of his trademark creative magic systems with a narrator as snarky as Peter David’s Sir Apropos of Nothing in this fun novel for junior readers. We only get the first …
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Book #76 of 2016: The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate A short but charming novel for young readers, Katherine Applegate’s The One and Only Ivan is as much an educational piece about great apes and animal captivity as it is a story. Any primatologist will recognize the emotional and cognitive complexity in the …
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Book #69 of 2016: The Dreamer by Pam Muñoz Ryan and Peter Sís I rather liked this novel for junior readers about the boy who would grow up to be Pablo Neruda. It’s below the level that I usually read, but the magical realism of the boy’s daydreams mixing with reality certainly made it memorable. …
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Book #64 of 2016: Crenshaw by Katherine Applegate This novel about a giant talking cat that only the protagonist can see really ended up being more about the boy’s family falling on hard times, and how his imaginary friend was something of a coping mechanism for that. It was honestly a very stressful read for …
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Book #6 of 2016: The Witch’s Boy by Kelly Barnhill The Witch’s Boy was a swing and a miss for me. This middle-grade fantasy had some interesting ideas, but they just weren’t well developed enough to cohere into a satisfying story. The whole book needed some major rewrites, and apparently it wasn’t even the author’s …
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