Book #261 of 2020: Tristan Strong Destroys The World by Kwame Mbalia (Tristan Strong #2) I still love the concept of a middle-grade fantasy series populated by African gods and black folk heroes, but I’m not quite as charmed by this sequel. I feel like it retreads a lot of the same material from the …
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Book #231 of 2020: The Magnificent Monsters of Cedar Street by Lauren Oliver This middle-grade adventure story has a nice anti-bigotry message, objecting to prejudice both against marginalized human groups and against the misunderstood creatures in the heroine’s care, but that’s somewhat muddled when the ultimate villain is revealed to be a monster himself. I …
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Book #215 of 2020: Diana and the Island of No Return by Aisha Saeed (Wonder Woman Adventures #1) I suppose I’d recommend this new middle-grade series to tweens who love the Wonder Woman character already and are excited to see more of her childhood, but I haven’t gotten much out of the first volume myself. …
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Book #193 of 2020: File Under: 13 Suspicious Incidents by Lemony Snicket (All the Wrong Questions #2.5) This is a fun little diversion, albeit one wholly unnecessary to the series in which it takes place. The book is structured like an Encyclopedia Brown title, with short mysteries solved by the protagonist but not explained until …
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Book #180 of 2020: Last Day on Mars by Kevin Emerson (Chronicle of the Dark Star #1) I’ll give a charitable three stars to this middle-grade sci-fi adventure, which hasn’t quite gripped me but may prove more exciting for younger readers. I do like that it’s basically a junior version of The Martian, with a …
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Book #165 of 2020: Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson I remember liking this historical fiction title when I first encountered it as assigned reading back in middle school, so when my library acquired the digital audiobook in the midst of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, I figured it might be worth revisiting. And overall, I’d …
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Book #157 of 2020: The Dragon Egg Princess by Ellen Oh I appreciate the #ownvoices Korean mythology that informs this fantasy setting, but even for a middle-grade novel, it all feels disappointingly underdeveloped. The humor is broad, the characters are flat, and the plot never really settles down into any specific stakes threatening the heroes. …
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Book #153 of 2020: Ghost Squad by Claribel A. Ortega I simply adore the Dominican-American family at the heart of this fantasy novel, most of whom are spirits of the dead that only twelve-year-old Lucely can see. To everyone else they appear as fireflies, as per the #ownvoices folklore that author Claribel A. Ortega is …
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Book #133 of 2020: Bounce by Megan Shull This middle-grade body-swap / time loop novel really doesn’t work for me, unfortunately. I don’t necessarily need to know the mechanism behind why our tween heroine keeps waking back up on Christmas morning as a different girl — it can be a Yuletide miracle, or even just …
Book #130 of 2020: Click Here to Start by Denis Markell I like how this middle-grade adventure novel manages to educate readers about America’s Japanese internment camps while maintaining its lightweight tone, but the characters make a few too many lucky guesses that happen to pan out, especially for a treasure hunt that’s supposed to …
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