Category Archives: Children’s Books

Welcome to Normal by Erin Soderburg

11 Tuesday Feb 2014

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Molly and Penelope Quirk are twins; they also have a bratty little brother named Finn. The children live with their mother and their grandfather.  That sounds normal, but the family is anything but normal.  Their grandmother  lives with them, but in a little birdhouse outside of their home. She is a fairy godmother.  Their grandfather can make time go in reverse.  Their mother has the power of mind control, except that it exhausts her to use it.

Penelope can create, in reality, whatever her mind is imagining at the time.  Finn can become totally invisible.  He can be felt and heard by others, but Molly is the only one who can see him.  Molly is normal, except for the ability of seeing Finn, but she spends most of her time trying to conceal her family’s quirks from normal people.

The family has a pet of sorts, Niblet, a furry creature conceived one day from Penelope’s imagination that refused to leave the family. Trying to keep all the strange happenings around their home from the townspeople, the residents of Normal, is very trying to all the family members.

This is a very funny story. I believe it is a good introduction to fantasy for the younger reader. It will also get the reader thinking about what is and what is not normal.  I recommend it for grades three through five.

The Secret Prophecy by Herbie Brennan

05 Wednesday Feb 2014

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I read this last year, but I have been thinking about it lately, so I thought I would share. Edward Michael Groverton, or Em, as he is known is devastated when his father suddenly dies. At the funeral he sees a man with a gun. Things begin to really get strange when their house is broken into and only his father’s study is ransacked. His mother encourages him to go to France with a friend of his father and his daughter, Charlotte. What he discovered about his father and Nostradamus leads the three of them on a dangerous journey through London and eventually to Arizona.  This fascinating tale, a mixture of fantasy, science, and politics will keep the reader engaged right to the end. The end itself seems a little contrived, and there is no doubt that this is the first of a series. Still, I recommend it for middle school readers. Watch for the second book!

 

The Hero’s Guide to Storming the Castle

14 Tuesday Jan 2014

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Take everything you have ever thought you knew about fairy tales and their prince and princesses and chuck it out the window.  This sequel to The Hero’s Guide to Saving Your Kingdom gives all the fairy tale prince and princesses different personalities and abilities.  The princes have to band together to fight an evil power that wants to run the world.  The princesses have to help them, because, in spite of the idea that men are the best in battle, it runs out that they really can’t do anything without the women.

I found the story irritatingly inane – just the thing to appeal to elementary boys. I did get a good laugh out of the titles of the chapters: A Hero Makes It Up as He Goes Along, A Hero Has No Sense of Direction, and A Hero Knows How to Count, to name a few.

The person who wants to rule the world is a sloppy, immature, obnoxious eleven-year-old boy named Deeb Rauber. This unlikely villain is a ruler of a group of bandits and miscreants, who for some reason, give Deeb everything he wants. Evidentally Deeb had appeared in the first book, but I figured out who he was very quickly.

Deeb has an object, a piece of orange jade, that can give its holder incredible power, but he is not even aware that he has it.  The princes and princesses , of course, know what it can do  – so they set out to get it away from Deeb.  Of course, they sort of win and sort of lose, thus setting the stage for yet another book in the series.

I think it might have been a good idea to have the author edit the pictures.  For example, there is a sword fight in which Ella (that’s Cinderella for most readers) slides across a polished marble floor on her knees.  Then she gets up and says, “Thank the pants.” However, the picture opposite the scene is very clearly of a girl in a skirt.  In the same scene, she jumps up and grabs a chandelier, but the picture shows a hanging tapestry – not a chandelier.

If you have the first book, and it is circulating, I would suggest that you buy this one.  If this would be your first book in the series, you need to get ready to buy the first one also.

 

Courage Has No Color; The True Story of the Triple Nickles

06 Monday Jan 2014

Posted by in Children's Books, Non-Fiction

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Scan0025  Tanya Lee Stone has done a fantastic job writing the history of America’s first black paratroopers.  Many of us have already learned about the Tuskegee Airmen, but I dare say that few even knew that the 555th airborne division existed during World War II.

Stone starts with a discussion of the racial discrimination that was prevalent in the military at the time.  She takes the reader through the steps toward getting the all black paratroopers ready to jump. Although they never served overseas during the war, they did provide necessary service to the country here at home in the battle with forest fires.

As it turns out, military service was actually needed in the area where the forest fires were occurring.  While none of the fires that the 555th actually worked with were clearly of enemy origin, what the American public did not know was that the Japanese had actually launched balloon bombs to the U.S. One of those bombs killed a woman and five teenagers in Blye, Oregon in 1945.

The government managed to keep the news that a Japanese bomb had made it to the U.S.  out of the news, but they sent the 555th to the Northwest in case others made it to shore and were exploded. This was one of the best kept secrets of the war.  The U.S. did not want Japan to know that they had succeed.  When no news of any bomb attacks made it to Japan, they assumed that the mission was a failure, and they gave up on it.  Imagine what would have happened had they known that they really had succeeded!

The story  of the 555th continues clear up until the actual integration of the military in 1953. It is fascinating, and very easy to read. The book is well researched, fully documented and excellently illustrated with photos, drawings and maps. It is written for middle school to high school students, but I think any history buff will thoroughly enjoy reading it.

I really don’t know how much more I can say about it. The only problem I had with it was that it felt unwieldy to me.  I wanted to read the story in its entirety, which I did.  But, in doing so I had to hold the book in both hands while reading.  It is too wide and heavy to be held in one hand, even if one switches hands in the process.

For those of you who are interested, this has an A.R.of 8  With 5 pts.

The Shadowhand Covenant

20 Friday Dec 2013

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??????????     If you have The Vengekeep Prophecies by Brian Farrey, you most definitely will want to add this to your fantasy collection. This is the second book of the series, but it could be read as a stand-alone.  In this tale, Jaxter Grimjinx, of the infamous Grimjinx family of thieves, must find out why a notorious group of thieves, known as Shadowhands are disappearing.  He also wants to know why the High Laird has begun imprisoning a peaceful group of people known as the Sarosans. Of course, nothing is ever easy, not what it seems to be in Vengekeep.

In the course of his adventure he makes new friends and allies – one of them was a former enemy of his.  At the end of the book, although things are somewhat resolved, the reader will know that more of the story is yet to come. This is a delightful, suspense-filled fantasy for the 10 -12 year old reader.

Any story about children who manage to best adults with their skills or powers is always fascinating to younger readers.  One must suspend concrete knowledge in order the get into the story.  For instance, Jaxter carries with him a few pouches of herbs.  He never runs out of them, although he is constantly using them; and, he always seems to have just what he needs in those pouches.  Once, they are taken away from him, but the stupid adults who took the pouches leave them where he can get his hands on them again. Still, it is a good story, and I feel I can recommend it for upper elementary and possibly the middle-school student.