Book #2 of 2022: Tristan Strong Keeps Punching by Kwame Mbalia (Tristan Strong #3) Certain scenes in this final Tristan Strong novel are terrific, but overall I would say that the middle-grade #ownvoices fantasy trilogy has never managed to recapture the magic of its first volume for me. As engaging as it remains to see …
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Book #359 of 2021: Six Crimson Cranes by Elizabeth Lim (Six Crimson Cranes #1) This is an #ownvoices East Asian retelling of the Wild Swans fairy tale, wherein a princess’s brothers are transformed into birds by their wicked stepmother while the girl herself is cursed to be unrecognizable and warned that each new word from …
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Book #311 of 2021: Kiki Kallira Breaks a Kingdom by Sangu Mandanna Another title in the popular recent mini-genre of Percy Jackson-inspired #ownvoices fantasy stories involving a middle-grade protagonist coming face-to-face with certain mythological beings drawn from the writer’s cultural heritage. In this novel, the Hindu gods and demons are joined by a fun Inkheart …
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Book #287 of 2021: Scary Stories for Young Foxes by Christian McKay Heidicker (Scary Stories for Young Foxes #1) Middle-grade horror can be a tricky genre to pull off, with an atmosphere that’s spookily disquieting yet not full-on terrifying, but this Newbery-winning title from 2019 navigates that threshold nicely. Structured as a series of connected …
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Book #270 of 2021: D (A Tale of Two Worlds) by Michel Faber Not bad, but a pretty typical novel of the child-goes-to-another-world-to-have-a-series-of-strange-encounters variety, a la The Phantom Tollbooth, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and so forth. The most distinctive part of this book is also its most frustrating, as there’s no consistent and coherent explanation …
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Book #207 of 2021: The Double Life of Danny Day by Mike Thayer This middle-grade novel goes far on the strength of its high-concept premise, which is that the ten-year-old protagonist lives every day twice. He treats the original go-round as a bit of a practice session, either goofing off or scribbling notes on quiz …
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Book #168 of 2021: Long Lost by Jacqueline West This middle-grade ghost story is not particularly spooky, perhaps because the overtly paranormal stuff doesn’t really start until midway through. Mostly, the eleven-year-old protagonist is chafing at her family’s recent move (to benefit her older sister’s prospective Olympic skating career) and getting hooked on a mysterious …
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Book #159 of 2021: The In-Between by Rebecca K. S. Ansari Too many under-explained elements in the magical side of this middle-grade story, about a young teen who becomes convinced that his next-door neighbor is a harbinger of disaster. Why do the pencils on her desk vanish? What’s ultimately up with that distinctive yet fake …
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Book #151 of 2021: The Visitor by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #2) This first Animorphs sequel continues the thrilling fun of the debut, while simultaneously deepening the darker themes of the series. Turning into an animal and back is now described in a way that emphasizes the unnatural body horror of the experience, and the …
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Book #94 of 2021: The Mysterious Disappearance of Aidan S. (as told to his brother) by David Levithan I love a nice postmodern portal fantasy, and this middle-grade novel spins a premise I don’t think I’ve seen before, where the focus is not on a child who vanishes into another world, but on a sibling …
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