Guy Friday-- If We Survive

Klavan, Andrew. If We Survive
6 November 2012, Thomas Nelson

Will is in a small, South American country helping to rebuild a school through a combined school/church group. Just as he and his coworkers are getting ready to leave, Mendoza, head of the local rebel group, bursts into the cantina where the group has met, and shoots the owner dead. Pastor Ron advises praying, Palmer (a former Marine and local pilot) seems to be about to abandon the group, Nikki screams annoyingly, Jim thinks that Mendoza is in the right, and Meredith is oddly quiet and controlled. When Pastor Ron is taken off and killed, the group realizes they have to escape. Palmer does first, and, surprisingly, comes back with a van to rescue the others. They can only take the van so far, and when they realize that Palmer's plane has been destroyed, they take to the woods and attempt to reach the border to escape. This isn't easy, and it's necessary to do things to survive that Will would not normally consider. However, his faith and his desire to see his parents again keep him strong, and he tries to learn from the members of his group how to survive in tense situations.
Strengths: Klavan's The Last Thing I Remember (Homelanders) series is very popular in my library, and for good reason. There is nonstop action, lots of suspense, and a teenage boy who is determined to do what's right.  I appreciated that Will was excited at first, but once he kills a man, he feels remorse.
Weaknesses: Thomas Nelson is a religiously affiliated publisher, and sometimes this makes parts of their books a bit of a slog. Doesn't matter what a student's religion is-- when an action book stops to philosophize about religion, it makes the book less popular. To Klavan's credit, he has a much lighter philosophic touch with this than he did in the Homelanders series, which did get rather bogged down with agenda. Will's religion and actions related to it are much more organic in this book.

You Can't Come in Here

Night, P.J. (Teitlebaum, Michael) You Can't Come in Here (Creepover #2)
7 June 2011, Simon Spotlight
Copy loaned to me by Jaida T.

Emily likes her new neighbors Drew and Vicky even though her parents are not happy with the disheveled state of their house and the fact that they haven't met Drew and Vicky's parents. Emily spends a lot of time with the siblings, but since they are homeschooled, her good friends from school haven't met them. Emily plans a start-of-summer sleepover party, but creepy things keep happening, including a howling wolf that is frequently running about Emily's yard. When she tells her new friends about these things, they always seem to discover that they are caused by explainable phenomena-- an owl or a gust of wind. Eventually, though, Emily unearths the creepy secret of her neighbors, but not soon enough to escape her own undoing!
Strengths: I've been looking into getting this set in PermaBound, because students do like creepy things like Goosebumps and Poison Apple books. There are 12 so far, so I might not get all of them. This was pleasantly creepy and would be especially good in an elementary school for precocious girls who want to read Twilight. The student who loaned me this said it was her favorite book EVER!
Weaknesses: Definitely very cheesy, and I liked the writing in the Poison Apple books a bit better.

World Wednesday--Offside

Higgins, M.G. Offside (Counterattack)
28 January 2013, Darby Creek (Division of Lerner Publishing Group)

Faith Patel (people made fun of her name, Astha, so she has anglicized it) loves to play soccer and is good at it, but things are really tough at home. Her father passed away from cancer, so her mother works night shifts as a nurse and Faith has to watch her three young siblings. Money is tight as well, so she can't play club soccer or hang out after practice with her teammates. One of the other players, Caitlyn, is angry because Faith is moved to a different position without even asking, and tells Faith that it's because the coach has a crush on her. Faith thinks this is ridiculous... at first. But when the coach allows her to turn a paper in late and is the only adult around who shows concern for her, she starts to think that maybe there is something romantic going on. When her young brother becomes gravely ill and all of her hopes of going to college or even moving into an apartment of her own seem far away, Faith thinks that approaching the coach is a good plan, but luckily realizes in time that he is concerned only as a teacher.
Strengths: This is a short, easy-to-read book that really packs an emotional wallop. It will be great for busy 8th grade girls who would rather be playing soccer than reading about it! I will have to look into the other Counterattack novels because I think they will be really popular.
Weaknesses: While I really liked this, I was a bit concerned that the photo of the girl on the cover didn't align with how she was described in the book. After the brouhahas over the covers of Justine Larbalestier's Liar Liar and Jaclyn Dolamore's Magic Under Glass, I thought this needed to be addressed, but I was curious as to what the publisher's thoughts were. I e mailed Andrew Karre, the editorial Director of Carolrhoda Books, Carolrhoda Lab, and Darby Creek books, and he very kindly responded. 

I found his answers very interesting, and he was nice enough to agree to share them today. As a librarian, it's all too easy for me to forget that publishers are in business to make money, not to provide me with exactly the books I want. The other thing that I found interesting was how the publication process is different for a concern like Lerner (which sells mainly to schools and libraries) and other publishing houses that sell to individual readers as well as corporate ones.

I appreciate the attempts by Darby Creek and Mr. Karre to portray ethnically diverse characters. Here is what Mr. Karre says about the challenges involved in this process:

First, I guess I don’t completely agree with you on the cover. I too was worried about that image, but I thought the girl’s race was unclear. (And, yes, I read her as having an Indian background too). My sense is probably based on seeing the same girl (I think) on the cover Under Pressure (#7 in red), where to me she is not at all clearly Caucasian. But in any case, I agree with you  that  she does not perfectly align with how a reader would naturally imagine Faith in the book. And that’s not ideal.   

Ideally, we would commission the books, get manuscripts, and then do a photo shoot so that the character on the cover matched perfectly the character on the book. Unfortunately, if we had to do that, we could never publish these books. The costs would be far, far too great.

  Here’s what we actually do: We dream up the series based on what we hear from librarians and teachers (and we heard a girls soccer series loud and clear). We commission authors to write stories based on a set of parameters and suggested plots. We tell them we want diverse and realistic characters. We want racial, economic, and sexual-orientation diversity. This is the easy part, actually. Writers are happy to do this. 

Meanwhile, designers and photo researchers scour stock photography libraries for a set of images that might conceivably work for covers for a six book set. It’s important to remember that a consistent look is critical for a series, and that amplifies the challenges. None of what I’m saying applies to a single title. For a series, ideally, we want the covers to come from the same shoot, so everything looks consistent. But we still need diversity, and that limits our options. The set we found for Counterattack was almost a miracle (we had a much harder time with our previous sports series, Travel Team). The images were modern and dynamic. They were racially diverse. We could generally reconcile the stories with the covers with minimal changes to the text (and this is the final step for any such series: making any changes to the story we can to make text match cover). And to give you a sense of the difference between stock photos and a photo shoot, to get these photos in a photo shoot would have cost many thousands of dollars and weeks of prep. All six of the stock photos we used cost a couple hundred, and one person could find them in a few hours. Economically speaking, it’s the difference between being able to make the books and not.

   So here’s the answer to your question. When we got to Off Side, I had to make a decision. I wanted very much to have Faith as she was in the book. And I wanted use the excellent, appealing set of photos we found (and could afford). In the end, I decided there was enough ambiguity in the photo and in the story that the image wouldn’t distract readers.  I don’t know if I made the right decision, but I hope I did. (And it should be clear that no one in sales or marketing had any input on this specific decision. And Barnes & Noble doesn’t affect our decision making on series like these. This was a call I made.)

   I know these are excuses, and I would certainly rather have a better match between words and picture on this title, but that wasn’t an option, given the rest of the series.  I do still believe the world is better off with the book as it is than if I had elected to take the other option, which was to turn Astha into Samantha and move her roots from India to Indiana. But that’s my take. What’s yours? I would genuinely appreciate your perspective. (And of course I’m happy to explain further if I’ve been unclear.)

  
Thanks again, and I hope you’ll continue to give Darby Creek series your attention. 

Andrew Karre 

Editorial Director
Carolrhoda Books, Carolrhoda Lab, and Darby Creek

World Wednesday Round Up

Thanks for joining us for World Wednesday. If you have a post about a middle grade book set in another part of the world or with great multicultural characters, please tell us about it in the comments. Here are some titles I found this past week:

Book Reviews:
Abirached, Zeina. A Game for Swallows at A Teaching Life 
Curtis, Christopher Paul. The Mighty Miss Malone at Not for Lunch.
Erdich, Louise. Chickadee at A Wrung Sponge.
Gratz, Alan. Prisoner B-3087 at Becky's Bookshelf
Grimes, Nikki. Barack Obama at A Wrung Sponge 
Hand in Hand at The Brown Bookshelf. 
Lake, Nick. In Darkness at We Sat Down
Lasky, Kathryn. Vision of Beauty at Teach.Mentor.Texts. and The Fourth Musketeer
Look, Lenore. Alvin Ho at Boys Rule Boys Read
Manzano, Sonia. Revolution of Evelyn Serrano at Next Best Book.
Myers, Walter Dean. Riot at A Foodie Bibliofile in Wanderlust
Nelson, Kadir. Various Titles at Portable Teacher 
Neri, G. Ghetto Cowboy at Middle Grade Ninja 
Nakhi Stories of China at The Saffron Tree
Pipe, Jim. Hoping for Peace in Sudan at Provo Library Children's Book 
Shelton, Paula Young. A Child of the Civil Rights Movement at A Teaching Life 
Sheth, Kashmira. Boys Without Names at Next Best Book

Lists 
Coretta Scott King Award and Pura Belpre Awards at Mrs. F-B's Book Blog
Coretta Scott King Awards at Great Kid Books.
Interviews 
 The Brown Bookshelf  has interviews with various authors every day this month, starting with Malaika Rose Stanley.

Dead City and Son of Slappy

Ponti, James. Dead City.
2 October 2012, Simon and Schuster

Molly has a full life-- she fences, enjoys her school (MIST-- Metropolitan Institute of Science and Technology), and hangs out at the local morgue in an effort to feel closer to her mother, who worked there but has passed away from cancer. When an odd occurrence happens at the morgue, Molly finds out from school mate Natalie that Molly's mother was an Omega, or a zombie killer, and Molly is, too. This is why Molly's mother had her take martial arts classes and memorize the periodic table, which the Omegas use to construct codes. New York City has been plagued by zombies ever since 13 workers were killed while digging subway tunnels, since the city is build on a layer of schist that keeps the zombies fresh. After undergoing Omega training, Molly is ready to fight zombies if she needs to, and when the evil Marek shows up and puts the city in danger, all of her skills are handy. The ending leads me to believe that there might be a second book in the offing.
Strengths: Anything with zombies is popular right now. I should probably buy Zombiekins, but can't bring myself to! I love that Molly is capable and well trained, and fairly unflinching when it comes to killing zombies, although she does have enough humanity to question the need to kill them at first. The zombie mythology is well developed and makes sense. Nice twist at the end.
Weaknesses: I don't have any girls asking for zombie books, so the scene at the beginning where Molly does a zombie in with her flat iron, and the one where she and her sister bond over make up, are not going to go over well with the zombie target demographic. While I love strong female characters, I would definitely have gone with a boy as the main character of this one. Maybe that's just my school, though, and there is a crying need for zombie books with girls as the main character. In that case, this is an awesome addition to the zombie genre.

Stine, R.L. Son of Slappy (Goosebumps: Most Wanted #2)
1 January 2013, Scholastic
Copy provided by Young Adult Books Central and reviewed there

Jackson is a good kid-- he really believes that it's easier to do nice things than to get in trouble all the time. It's his sister, Rachel, who is a problem child. When the two go visit their wacky grandfather at his spooky house, they are both kind of creeped out by their grandfather's weird collections. Historical nooses are pretty calm, but the collection of ventriloquist dummies are frightening. Jackson mentions that he might want to do a show with one at the Youth Center to his grandfather, but he's still surprised that the dummy is in his suitcase when he gets home. Supposedly the doll is just a copy of the evil Slappy, but when Rachel says the nonsense words on a piece of paper, Slappy comes to life. Not only that, but he starts to control Jackson and make him do bad things all the time! All Jackson has to hear is a "click" and without being able to control himself, he's ruining paintings, covering neighbors kitchens with cake batter... and even worse. Can he manage to break free from Slappy's hold on him before something truly terrible happens?
Strengths: Stine is a master of juvenile horror-- creepy things that happen that could never happen in real life. It's fun to be scared by the thought of an evil doll possessing someone and making him do bad things. I'm starting to get the appeal of these more and more!
Weaknesses: Cheesy goodness, not great literature. From a library standpoint, I was hoping that this series would continue to be published in hardcover, since the first one was, but it looks like they only come in paperback now.

Nonfiction Monday-- Miles to Go For Freedom

Osborne, Linda Barrett. Miles to Go for Freedom: Segregation and Civil Rights in the Jim Crow Years.
1 January 2012,  Abrams Books for Young Readers

This well illustrated and researched book (published in association with The Library of Congress)is a fantastic overview of the changes in African American rights from the 1800s up through Brown vs. Board of Education. It is especially interesting to find out that before the Civil War, African Americans were making some group in integrating into society, but after this time period their freedoms were greatly curtailed. Separate by Equal is discussed at length, as is the topic of African Americans fighting during the wars. The accompanying photographs, and copies of documents and other ephemera are especially interesting. This would be great to read aloud during Black History Month.

Holm, Jennifer and Castaldi, Elicia. Eighth Grade is Making Me Sick.
7 August 2012, Random House

I read this, I understood it, and it's hard to write a review. This and the first book in the series, Middle School is Worse than Meatloaf, are great fun.There is a plot to this-- Ginny's mother has remarried and is pregnant, the family has moved into a big new home, but then the step father loses his job, Ginny's brother is born prematurely, and all of the changes stress Ginny out so much that she doesn't eat and becomes ill. I was never a fan of wordless picture books, and these have a similar effect, although there are words in the memos, cartoons, etc. It's still a very impressionistic way to get a story. By big beef-- Ginny's brother is named Ballou. Ballou is not a good name for a child. But don't Google it! The Disney bear is spelled Baloo, and the other spellings is apparently for a gentleman who models... somewhat scanty things. Oops.

It's Marvelous Middle Grade Monday at Ramblings of a Wannabe Scribe and What Are You Reading? day at Teach Mentor Texts. Both sites have lots of links to reviews about books that are great for the 4th through 8th grader. It's also Nonfiction Monday, hosted this week at Apples With Many Seeds.

Super Secret Evil Plan, Year 4!

In February of 2010, hard up for entertainment, I decided to encourage boys to read books with girls as the main character. The next year, I did this again, creating a logo. Last year, we had Charlie Joe Jackson as our "celebrity sponsor". This has become a yearly tradition in our school, and the boys seem to enjoy the fact that they "have" to read books about girls. There's some middle school psyche at work there that I'm not getting, but don't ask me to explain. The highlight of this initiative was getting mentioned by Geek Dad, but I'd love to hear of more libraries trying to get guys to read "girl" books and vice versa-- the more we do that, the closer we are to not having "guy" and "girl" books.

This year, Sneed Collard, the author of Governor's Dog is Missing, Double Eagle and Cartwheel, as well as a ton of nonfiction books, agreed to step up as our celebrity endorser. He's a great person to pitch this, because his books, while popular with guys, have great girl characters as well, and are enjoyed by both genders. He also has middle grade children of his own.


What books with girls as main characters do you remember reading? Does your son have any favorites?

Growing up, I recall reading almost NO books with female lead characters--except perhaps Charlotte's Web. Then again, other than the Hardy Boys and books by Roald Dahl, very few middle-grade/YA books existed for readers like me. As soon as I read The Lord of the Rings in fourth grade, that was it. Adult books for the rest of my teenage years--and almost all with male leads. Think The Godfather, Battle Cry, Hiroshima, etc…

In the past 15 years, however, I've been fortunate to read quite a few middle-grade and YA books with great female leads. The Hunger Games stick out strongly, of course, but so do books by Adrian Fogelin, Margaret Peterson Haddix, Richard Peck, and Donna Jo Napoli.

I asked my son which books he liked with strong girl characters, and the first thing he thought of were The Seekers series by Erin Hunter (which I also enjoyed). He also mentioned Annabeth in the Percy Jackson books, Annie in the Magic Tree House series, Ella and Meghan in The Secret Zoo, and Hermione in Harry Potter. It's interesting that he doesn't have a strong preference for boy characters. He'll read anything that's a good book!

Do you feel it's important for your books to have interesting female characters?

Some stories demand interesting female characters and some do not. In my book Dog Sense, the mother is a vital character in the story, but she's much less important than the two main characters, Guy and Luke, and really, there's no need for any other major female characters in the story. In my mysteries The Governor's Dog is Missing and Hangman's Gold, however, I wanted to create a female "co-star" that is just as important as the narrator. I had several reasons for this:

1) Girls are just great and should be in the story unless there's a reason to omit them.

2) The girls I've known have strengths that boys don't have, and it makes a much more effective "detective squad" to have both male and female elements solving a case.

3) There's always that romance thing!

4) Again, girls are great.

Boys and girls also have a great capacity to learn from each other, and because characters need to grow throughout a story, having both genders often helps facilitate this character growth.

Do you feel that nonfiction has any gender bias?
Not nearly as much as fiction. Books about science, history, and to a lesser extent, sports, are filled with wonderful female characters. The best middle-grade science series, the Scientists in the Field series (Houghton Mifflin), features inspiring female scientists who serve as wonderful role models for ALL readers. In fact, I've more often written about women scientists than about men. 

What are some of your best Super Secret Evil Plans? 

I'm very interested in dystopic novels, and have already worked on one for several years. I have a new Top Secret plot in mind, however, that is brewing as I write this. Another of my Super Secret Evil Plans is to get people interested in plants! (Insert evil laugh). Although we'd all be dead in a week without plants, it is VERY difficult to get people interested in these amazing organisms. I've just finished a really cool mystery about a teenager who is obsessed with orchids. One day, while waiting to see the world's rarest orchid at the United States Botanical Gardens, a giant crane comes crashing through the glass roof and crushes the woman in front of him. in the ensuing chaos, the rare orchid gets stolen. Will the main character find it? Will I be able to sell this book to a publisher? Stay tuned!

Another of my Super Secret Evil Plans is to visit schools in ALL FIFTY states. I'm up to about 40, but Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Delaware, Mississippi, Kentucky, Indiana, Oklahoma, South Dakota, New Mexico, and Arkansas have really fallen down on the job. If you have Top Secret connections or can sneak me across the borders of these states, email me at collard@bigsky.net! 

I want to add a few words about strong girl characters. In GENERAL, it is very difficult for a person of one gender to write effectively about the opposite sex. Some writers pull this off beautifully (Richard Peck and Lois Lowry pop to mind). Others, however, end up writing very annoying characters when they cross gender lines. As an author, it helps to know what your limitations are. For instance, one reason I am able to create strong female characters in my Slate Stephens mysteries is that I am viewing Daphne through Slate's eyes. I probably would never attempt to get inside Daphne's head and write her in First Person. This is also true for my novel Cartwheel, which features Annie, a strong, independent 13 year-old. 

Other authors get around this by casting their characters as animals. Others create an ensemble of male and female characters. Both of these methods work pretty well.

I do wish, however, that most authors would quit trying to write in First Person from the opposite sex perspective, because it usually doesn't work. Several times, I've finished 3 or 4 chapters of a book thinking that the narrator is a girl--only to find that the author has made him a boy! I know why authors do this. Women writers especially think they will attract more boy readers if they write about boys--and maybe they're correct. Still, I like to think boy readers will enjoy a well-written girl character more than a poorly-written boy character. I hope that more boys out there will give girl characters a chance. If you don't, you'll be missing out on a lot of incredible books!

Lemonade Mouth Puckers Up

Hughes, Mark Peter. Lemonade Mouth Puckers Up.
13 November 2012, Delacorte
Copy received from Young Adult Books Central and reviewed there.

This sequel to Lemonade Mouth (book, 2007; movie, 2011) finds the quirky band still doing local gigs and enjoying themselves. Told from multiple view points, we reconnect with Olivia, Wen, Stella, Charlie and Mo as they plan on a rather boring summer, only to have their lives become very complicated when legendary agent Earl Decker wants to sign them. He has a vision for the band, and they are happy enough to be made over with funky new clothes, and thrilled to be given more exposure, even though they decline to continue in a talent competition because they declare publicly that the judges are mean. They are less thrilled with shilling for a brand of chapstick, especially when the ad airbrushes all of their flaws. When the band complains to Decker, he says that in order to get publicity, they need to fully embrace his vision. They don't, however, and contact a talk show host to air their song about the phony ad. While this gets them in trouble with Decker, it makes them an overnight YouTube sensation, and they feel that they have been true to their own vision of the band. There are lots of other things going on with families and friends that add interest to this book.
Strengths: I liked the main idea of this-- the band had its own vision and wasn't willing to give it up even in order to be famous. There are very few books about rock bands, and it is something that middle grade readers are interested in. Even though the characters are high schoolers, this would be fine for middle school. A lot of clever turns of phrase, and the songs are so much fun I almost want to check out the videos.
Weaknesses: I had a lot of trouble following the multiple view points, and there was a lot of information to process.Also, the first book in the series seems to be out of print. Must investigate. This could stand alone.

Thought Provoking Novels

Green, John. The Fault in Our Stars
10 January 2012, Dutton Juvenile

Hazel has struggled with cancer for three years, first undergoing surgery for thyroid cancer, which then spread to her lungs. She is no longer in high school, but taking some college courses, and is tired and wants to disconnect from everything. Her parents make her go to a cancer support group, and it is there that she meets Augustus. He was a basketball player who lost a leg to cancer but is doing well, and the two become friends. Hazel's favorite book is the avant garde An Imperial Affliction, and August reads it as well. The two decide that they have to contact the author, Peter Van Houton, who lives in Sweden, to find out what the rest of the story is. Augustus still has a "Make a Wish" he hasn't used, and plans to take Hazel and her mother to Amsterdam to meet the author. The trip goes well in some ways, but the author is a drunken, difficult man who frustrates them both. When they return from the trip, things take a turn for the worse.
Strengths: Green knows his core audience. Hazel and Augustus are really smart kids who love books and are able to grasp the reality of their situations without being sentimental or maudlin. The new kid-with-cancer stereotype seems to be the kid who complains occasionally but is grateful to be alive, and who makes fun of the perception that kids with cancer are noble and brave. The love for this book is unending-- I have heard from several high schoolers who have enjoyed this.
Weaknesses: Aside from An Abundance of Katherines, I've never been fond of Green's work, which is weird, because as a teen I would have been his target demographic-- smart, quirky, outspoken. This was certainly clever, had its moments, was well-written, but didn't knock my socks off. Since this is not a middle grade book due to sex, occasional language, and polysyllabic introspection, it doesn't really matter.

Singer, Nicky. Under Shifting Glass. 
19 February 2013, Chronicle Books
Copy Received from the Publisher

Jess is still struggling with the death of a beloved great aunt with whom she shared a love of piano playing when she has to deal with another family hardship-- her mother gives birth to a set of conjoined twins. Jess' supportive family pulls together to deal with this, but it is still difficult. It doesn't help that her best friend, Zoe, is kind of grossed out by the twins and increasingly interested in things that Jess isn't. When Jess finds an odd glass bottle in a desk left to her by her great aunt, she feels that it is somehow imbued with special powers. For a school project, Jess and Zoe interview a woman at a Buddhist temple about her beliefs, and Jess becomes more and more convinced that the bottle somehow holds the fate of the twins. Clem and Richie are scheduled for surgery to separate them, but share a liver, and have numerous health crises before the surgery can occur. Jess employs a lot of magical thinking to help the twins (making snowmen in their likeness, playing the "sidewalk crack game"), and discovers secrets about her great aunt that she didn't know. Will the bottle really help the twins survive?
Strengths: This is a beautiful book (Chronicle uses the best paper around) and is written in very lovely, lyrical prose. Jess' emotional state is realistically and painfully portrayed, and I can't think of another middle grade book that includes conjoined twins.
Weaknesses: Very British and rather odd. I can't for the life of me think of a single student in my school who would want to read this, so I'm sending it on to the public library. I found the Buddhist philosophy interesting, but students will probably just be baffled at the discussion of what happens to spirits when they die. (They hang out until a man and woman have sex, and then go into new babies.)

Boyne, John. The Terrible Thing That Happened to Barnaby Brocket.
2 August 2012, Random House
Book from Young Adult Books Central and reviewed there

Eleanor and Alistair Brocket are perfectly normal, as are their children, Henry and Melanie. When Barnaby is born, however, he upsets their perfect life because he does not obey gravity-- he floats. This poses many problems, especially as Barnaby grows older. He is sent to a school with very low expectations-- Graveling Academy-- where he doesn't learn much but at least makes a friend before the school burns to the ground. Barnaby's parents make him wear heavy sandbags so he doesn't float away, but after he inadvertently calls attention to the family, his parents decide that dealing with him for eight years is enough, and his mother takes him on a walk and cuts holes in his sandbags. Floating away, he runs into two friends who are in a hot air balloon. They think that being different is a fine thing, and take Barnaby back to their coffee plantation in Brazil before putting him on a plane back to Australia. Instead of going there, Barnaby goes to New York City, where he has several adventures while trying to locate a friend of the coffee plantation owners. Barnaby continues his travels, meeting all sorts of eccentric people who embrace their own differences, but eventually comes to the attention of an evil man who runs a "Freak circus". In escaping that, he ends up being rescued by a space shuttle. When the astronauts bring him home and reunite him with his parents, doctors examining him after his adventure tell his parents that his antigravity condition could be fixed. While his parents are ecstatic, Barnaby is sure that he doesn't want to change who he is, and decides to set off on his own yet again.
Strengths: This book would be good for fans of Roald Dahl who enjoy reading about really horrible adults. This also struck me as a bit like The Little Prince. Barnaby is able to travel all around the world and meet people who have very large differences, but can still celebrate those differences.
Weaknesses:  This was a rather odd book. While fans of British children's fiction will adore this, it might be a hard sell to the average US young reader. I will probably be sending my copy on to another school library.

Guy Friday-- Cartwheel

Collard, Sneed. Cartwheel: A Sequel to Double Eagle
13 December 2013, Bucking Horse Books
Copy received from author.

Mike is trying to settle in for the summer with his father, stepmother, and baby brother, but he'd rather be home than spending time in Florida. When Kyle shows up at his door in a beat up Bel Air, he's certainly up for a road trip and to renew the friendship the two formed in Double Eagle.  While Mike's father is a little reluctant to let him go, it's 1975, and young people were allowed a lot more freedom then! Kyle is now an emancipated minor after the death of his mother and desertion of his stepfather, and is determined to go to Alabama to pick up his sister, Annie. Annie is staying with an aunt and uncle, but claims that the uncle is abusive and she can't stay with them. Once the trio is assembled, they decide to investigate another coin related mystery, this time concerning the "cartwheel" a silver dollar manufactured by the government but supposedly destroyed before they could be distributed. If one of these existed, stolen from the mint somehow, it would be worth a huge amount. The best place to locate one of these, the group decides, is to head to the mint in Denver. Unfortunately, Mike's parents aren't thrilled about this trip, and the group spends a lot of time avoiding the police as well as buying and selling coins to get enough money for gas and food. When they make it to Denver, they connect with a coin dealer named Dan who was working at the mint at the time the cartwheels were produced, and who thinks that if the group can locate the original presses, some coins might have been stuck in them. Time is running short, however, and if coins are to be found, the group needs to hurry before the authorities catch up with them.
Strengths: Ah, the open road out west in a Bel Air. Could anything be better? Yes! Searching for long lost coins that could be worth huge amounts of money! I do like the fact that for Mike, the search is really more important than actually finding the coins. Readers today will have a hard time grasping that Mike was not connected to both his mother and father by cell phone every step of the journey, but that's the beauty of the story. All of the details of place are vivid-- I could just see the coin shops they visited and feel the heat and dust wafting through the windows of the Bel Air as they cruised down the back roads.
Weaknesses: Both Mike and Annie's lines are written in a slight dialect, and dialect always drives me a bit batty. I think that's just me, though.

A Dog and His Girl Mysteries #1: Play Dead

Mason, Jane B. and Sarah Hines Stephens. Play Dead: A Dog and His Girl Mysteries #1
1 February 2013, Scholastic
Copy received from YABC and reviewed there.

Cassie's mother is the town's chief of police, and Cassie's dog, Dodge, is a former police dog who is very well trained. When the town's richest man, Verdel Ward, disappears, a lot of people have a vested interest in what has happened. The mayor thinks he has left property to the town. A fiance comes to claim her share. The faithful housekeeper is just irritated that people keep trespassing on the estate. Frequent trespassers include Cassie and Dodge, who are trying to solve the mystery. Narrated alternately by the two, we get a dog's eye view of what was going on at the estate, and Cassie gets a lot of valuable clues from Dodge's sleuthing. Will Cassie's prodding get her in trouble with her mother, or will it actually put her in danger?
Strengths: This was a great mystery for middle grade students. First of all, the main mystery was one where someone is suspected of being murdered, and that's what students are constantly asking for! The chapters narrated by Dodge included details a dog would notice, but were not annoying. Cassie's relationship with her police chief mother was realistic. A subplot involving a stray dog that Cassie was trying to save at Pet Rescue came into the mystery nicely. I'll be interested to read the others in this series.
Weaknesses: I wish that this were available in hard cover! So many good mystery series come out in paperback, and those last so poorly in a school library.

Lorimer, Janet. Tuesday Raven.
1 September 2009, Saddleback

Jenn is a CIA agent who has been called to London to work with British operative Rob, who was involved in a previous case with her that result in her being shot by a terrorist called the Raven. Another agent has been shot, and the only words he said before going to the hospital are "Tuesday Raven". Jenn and Rob follow various clues, but are stalked by two dangerous characters. Will they be able to figure out what the cryptic words mean before something horrible occurs?
Strengths: I just had a 7th grade boy who really wanted Tom Clancy books; this wouldn't be good for him, because it's a really short, hi/lo title, but I can enthusiastically recommend this to some of my struggling readers. Lots of good descriptions of London!
Weaknesses: Tiny bit cheesy and pat, but Lorimer thankfully doesn't slip into the hi/lo trap of cutting sentences in half. So that they are easier to read. I hate that

World Wednesday--Lovetorn

Daswani, Kavita. Lovetorn
17 January 2012, HarperCollins

Shalini's father has a great business opportunity that takes her family to Los Angeles. Shalini isn't thrilled about moving away from her large extended family in Bangalore, but her sister Sangita is thrilled. Her mother, on the other hand, is very upset. Shalini tries her best to fit in to high school life, but learning a new way of dressing and acting is difficult, especially when some of her classmates make fun of her. Even more difficult is being away from her finance, Vikram. Even though their marriage was arranged when Shalini was three, she has always adored Vikram, and Skyping is just not the same as seeing him in person. When she meets Toby and is attracted to him, she's very confused. Her friendship with Renuka, who was born in the US, helps a lot, especially when Shalini's mother becomes clinically depressed and requires medical attention. When Vikram comes to the US to visit, Shalini begins to realize that even though she is still not completely acculturated to the ways of the US, she is no longer the girl she was in Bangalore, either.
Strengths: This was a fascinating look at an immigrant experience and its impact on the personal identity of a teenager. Even better, it has a great romance story, which will encourage girls to pick it up. The idea that Shalini is engaged at such a young age and okay with it is fascinating. I also liked that fitting in was much easier for her younger sister. Definitely purchasing this one.
Weaknesses: The cover is a bit odd. Could have been so much better. Other than that, this was pitch perfect for me.

Thanks for joining us for World Wednesday. If you have a post about a middle grade book set in another part of the world or with great multicultural characters, please tell us about it in the comments. Taking a hint from Charlotte's Library's great fantasy round up, here are some titles I found this past week:

Book Reviews:
Africa for Kids at A Wrung Sponge
A Beautiful Lie at  Next Best Book 
Diego River: His World and Ours. at Literacious
Dumpling Days at One Great Book
Eleanor and Park at Second Book Shelf on the Right 
The Friday Society at Charlotte's Library
Geeks, Girls and Secret Identities at Ramblings of a Wannabe Scribe and The Brain Lair
Ghetto Cowboy at Next Best Book 
Girl Meets Boy at The American Indian in Children's Literature
Jacob Wonderbar and the Cosmic Space Kapow at Guys Read
Love, Amalia at Provo Library Children's Book Reviews 
On the Run at Jean Little Library
The Price of Freedom at Provo Library Children's Book Reviews
The Revolution of Evelyn Serrano at  Provo Library Children's Book Reviews
Senshi at Geo Librarian  
A Splash of Red at A Patchwork of Books 
The Starry River of Sky at Sal's Fiction Addiction
The Wild Book at Provo Library Children's Book Reviews

Lists
Urban Fiction Book Lists at The Nerdy Book Club

Announcements:
Diversity in Children’s Literature Conference at I’m Here. I’m Queer. What the Hell Do I Read

Interviews:
With Sayoni Basu at The Saffron Tree 

This is just what I could find-- I imagine there are a lot more I missed!

The Snowstorm-- Time Slip Tuesday

Nethercliff, Beryl. The Snowstorm.
1967, Alfred A. Knopf

Caroline, Kit and Richard are sent rather hurriedly to their great aunt Amethyst's when their parents must go out of town for several months. Farthingdales is a huge but run down English manor house, and their aunt is having trouble keeping it from falling to bits. The children are intrigued by the house, especially when they find a snow globe with a replica of the house inside it-- a snow globe which is a portal into other times. They meet Michael, a boy from the early 1800s, as well as other people who lived in the house, and try to ask them about where treasures might be hidden so that their aunt can get some much needing funding to keep the house from ruin. Some of the people from the past are a bit shady, but when the children are stranded alone in the house when their aunt is caught up in a snowstorm, the ghosts of the past come through to save their aunt as well as Farthingdales.
Strengths: **SIGH** A teacher found a copy of this book in her classroom-- we have no idea where it came from. When she handed it to me, I knew that I had seen it reviewed at Charlotte's Library,  and it was all I could do to not sit down right in the middle of the school day and read it! I ended up waiting until a Friday evening, when I curled up in my favorite chair with a cup of tea and some biscuits and just wallowed in the old timey world of this one. For some reason, I adore snowbound books, and this had the added attraction of an English country house, lots of food, and "delicious" feather beds. I was so happy with those things that I was completely oblivious to the writing quirks Charlotte mentioned.
 Weaknesses: So much of what goes on would be completely incomprehensible to students today-- parents go off for three months because sea air is good for the father's health? Parents don't really tell aunt children are coming? House is falling to bits? There would be no point in putting this book in the library-- I guess I will just have to suffer and keep it for myself, in case I come down with a horrible case of flu and need some comfort reading!

Pilkey, Dav. Captain Underpants and the Revolting Revenge of the Radioactive Robo-Boxers (#10)
15 January 2013, Scholastic.  
E ARC from Netgalley.com

Okay. While I have decided that my reading tastes are that of a 12 year old boy, they are not that of an 8 year old boy. Still, because of my children's undying devotion to Captain Underpants, I did read the newest book, greatly motivated by the impression that it was the last one. Although I don't have a publication date, there is an 11th book in the works with the title The Tyrannical Retaliation of the Turbo Toilet 2000. This was time travel at its goofiest and most confusing!

Oh, I give up. From the Publisher:
"When we last saw our heroes, George and Harold, they had been turned into evil zombie nerds doomed to roam a devastated, postapocalyptic planet for all eternity. But why, you might ask, didn't the amazing Captain Underpants save the boys from this frightening fate? Because Tippy Tinkletrousers and his time-traveling hijinks prevented George and Harold from creating Captain Underpants in the first place! Now, having changed the course of human history forever, they'll have to figure out a way to CHANGE IT BACK."

A note-- flip-o-rama does NOT work in e Books, although the Captain Underpants series is now available in that format. Just not the same! 

Here's a good list of the Youth Media Awards from ALA Midwinter in Seattle at the Sacramento Bee. My one story-- over a year ago, Katherine Applegate e mailed me and asked if I wanted to review The One and Only Ivan! (Review here.) It's been my number one pick to win the Newbery! Do I have the lovely copy Ms. Applegate sent me? No. I always feel funny about having ARCs and feel I should help the publishers get their money's worth by passing them along. I am SO glad that this book won. Well deserved, and given to a very lovely person as well!