Courtney's Book Nook

For the past 10 years I've been posting reviews of kids and YA time travel and time slip books on (most) Tuesdays ( 413 of them to date ), and I thought it would be fun on this last Tuesday of 2019 that is also the decade's last day do go through the c 250 time travel books I've reviewed in these past 10 years and pick ten favorites published between Jan.1 2010 and today. It was indeed fun to remember all the books, and it was fun in a nostalgic way to be reminded of the close-knit blogisphere I was part of back in the day (we all linked to each other's reviews, for instance...), but boy is it excruciating to be confronted with my poorly edited prose!  I dash off my posts and hit send before I can change my mind, and it shows.  I am sorry.   It was hard to choose just ten, and I really wanted to include one from 2009 too ( The Hotel Under the Sand , by Kage Baker), but I managed...The links are to my reviews.  I will try to come back tomorrow morning to add pictures ...

Not surprisingly, I didn't find many reviews from this past week (there was nothing from me, for instance, because I was too busy playing reindeer games and eating cookies....).  But since I'm back home, and ready to commit to blogging more regularly, I didn't want this Sunday to pass without a round-up...As ever, let me know if I missed your post! The Reviews The 12th Candle, by Kim Tomsic, at Ms. Yingling Reads The Casket of Time, by Andri Snaer Magnason, at Bookworm for Kids The Forbidden Expediction (Polar Bear Explorers Club #2), by Alex Bell, at Pages Unbound The Girl Who Speaks Bear, by Sophie Anderson, at The Anxious Bookworm If We Were Giants, by Dave Matthews, at Say What? Minecraft: the End, by Catherynne M. Valente, at SFF Book Reviews Scary Stories for Young Foxes, by Christian McKay Heidicker, at Jean Little Library The Storm Keeper's Island, by Catherine Doyle, at A Kids Book a Day Tunnel of Bones, by Victoria Schwab, at Bookishly Brittknee (audiobook ...

Merry Christmas to all who are celebrating today!  I hope you have lots of books waiting for you under the tree (many of our presents are enticingly book shaped) and lots of cookies (or whatever you like to eat) to go with them (but carefully; I was already careless with a book I'm giving and wanted to read first, and left it next to a cup of tea, which a kitten investigated, and now that book has a sort of blurry kitten tea paw print on it...fortunatly not a valuable first edition!)

I often find it annoying when people say they'd have loved a book when they were a kid themselves, mostly because they don't explain why and are just saying it as shorthand for "this book didn't work for me as an adult" which is fine, but why not just say that?   That being said, Weird Little Robots , by Carolyn Crimi (Candlewick, October 2019), is one I'd have really related to as a kid! Penny Rose is new in town, and has no friends yet.  In the shed behind her house, she starts making little robots out of bits and pieces of salvaged stuff (trash to those with no vision), and to her delight, they come alive!  They can move and communicate of their own volition! Then, after initial uncertainty, Penny Rose becomes friends with Lark, a neighbor girl.  Lark is an unusual girl, not just because she's an avid birdwatcher and birds bring her little gifts, and she too had no friends.  Penny Rose introduces Lark to the robots, and together the girls work to turn t...

An Encyclopedia of Tolkien: the History and Mythology that Inspired Tolkien's World , by David Day (Canterbury Classics, October 2019), is the latest in the author's guides to Middle Earth.  If you have a young bibliophile, who has just read Lord of the Rings and fallen hard for it, this is a perfect gift.  It is a tremendously attractive book, bound in soft leather with a green silk bookmark, the sort of book 12 year old me would have died to own, and one that would have inspired me to head down wonderful rabbit holes exploring myth and history. Day produced an earlier encyclopedia, Tolkien: the  Illustrated Encyclopedia , back in 1991.  However, the focus of this particular effort sets it apart.  It is not meant as a guide just to the people, places, and events of Tolkien's world, but as a guide to the bits of history and legend that (maybe) Tolkien had in mind (unconsciously or not) when he created them.  (Day tends to ignore the "maybe" part of this, la...

Welcome to another gathering of the middle grade fantasy and sci fi postings I found online!  Please let me know if I missed yours! The Reviews All the Colors of Magic, by Valija Zinck , at Charlotte's Library Cog, by Greg van Eekhout, at Ms. Yingling Reads The Fowl Twins, by Eoin Colfer, at Redeemed Reader The Hotel Between, by Sean Easley, at Say What? Lalani of the Distant Sea, by Erin Entrada Kelly, at A Kids Book a Day Lintang and the Pirate Queen, by Tamara Moss, at Hidden in Pages The Maelstrom (The Tapestry #4), by Henry H. Neff, at Say What? Master of the Phantom Isle (Dragonwatch #3), by Brandon Mull, at The Obsessive Bookseller The Miraculous, by Jess Redman, at Always in the Middle The Missing Barbegazi, by H.S. Norup, at BiteIntoBooks Nevermore: the Trials of Morrigan Crow, by Jessica Townsend, at Meg Bradley Over the Moon, by Natalie Lloyd, at Imaginary Friends The Princess Who Flew with Dragons, by Stephanie Burgis, at Charlotte's Library Secrets of the Black F...

I still am busily reading elementary/middle grade speculative fiction a in my roles as a judge for the Cybils Awards (mainly going back to re-read things I read early last year), but I am in good enough shape that I treated myself one dreary day last week to a shiny and new and much anticipated book-- The Princess Who Flew with Dragons , by Stephanie Burgis (Bloomsbury, November 2019). This is the third in the series that began with The Dragon with a Chocolate Heart (link to my review), and it's possibly the one I enjoyed most.  I certainly think it was the fastest read; it was a (more or less) single-sitting of about an hour read for me (when I like a book and need to know what's going to happen next, I read faster, and it was relatively short-- 216 pages). Princess Sophia, who we met in Book 2, The Girl with a Dragon Heart , is the main character here, and when her story begins, she's being sent by her older sister, the ruling princess, to a distant city to attend a Worl...

If you are looking for a fun, comfy middle grade fantasy full of color and quirky details, try  All the Colors of Magic , by Valija Zinck (Chicken House, December 3, 2019).  I enjoyed it lots. 10-year-old Penelope lives a mostly ordinary life with her mom and grandma.  The ordinary part is being looked after, going to school, and sometimes thinking about her dad, who vanished long ago.  There are less ordinary parts to her life though.  Her hair is gray, she has a whiff of fire smell around her, and it always rains on her birthday.  And she has a knack for hearing things in her head before her ears hear them. When her mother has a bad traffic accident, leaving Penelope and her grandma on her own for several weeks while she's in the hospital, Penelope finds to her surprise that her hair isn't naturally gray--it's fiery red.  And she discovers her father is still alive, and still in (sporadic) touch with her mother.  With her hair red instead of gra...

Back with middle grad sci/fi fantasy round-uping; please let me know if I missed your post from this past week!  Thanks. The Reviews The Box of Delights, by John Masefield, at Semicolon Charlie Hernandez and the League of Shadows, by Ryan Calejo, at Savings in Seconds (with giveaway), and books 1 and 2 of the series at Middle Grade Minded (with giveaway of both books) The Dark Lord Clementine, by Sarah Jean Horwitz, at Imaginary Friends Deeplight, by Frances Hardinge, at Magic Fiction Since Potter The Diamond of Aether, by Scott L. Collins, at BigAl's Books and Pals The Fear Zone, by K.R. Alexander, at Ms. Yingling Reads The Fiend and the Forge (The Tapestry #3), by Henry H. Neff, at Say What? Geeks and the Holy Grail (The Camelot Code #2), by Mari Mancusi, at Say What? Hilda and the Hidden People, by Luke Pearson, at Twirling Book Princess Legacy, by Shannon Messenger, at Pages Unbound Legends of the Sky: Dragon Daughter, by Liz Flannagan, at Say What? Malamander, by Thomas ...

I am still busily reading elementary/middle grade science fiction and fantasy for the Cybils Awards (the shortlists will be announced January 1, 2020, so the clock is ticking...), and although I do my darndest every year to read all the books in a timely fashion, there are still some that I didn't get to when they first came out. A recent read I enjoyed lots is A Wolf Called Wander , by Roseanne Perry (Greenwillow, May 2019).  It's a story told from the point of view of a young wolf, Swift, whose happy pub-hood in the mountains tumbling around with his litter-mates comes to a horrible end when his pack is attacked by other wolves.  Injured and separated from his family, he sets out on his own to find a new place to call home. It is a long and hungry journey.  A raven, working with him to find water and prey (this is something ravens really do, apparently), gives him some company, but Swift's longing for a pack is a constant ache.  Happily, after many hardships, he fi...

Gee.  The past few weeks have been the longest I've ever gone without reviewing anything since my blog started over a decade ago.  But I got the pre-Thanksgiving home renovations that needed finishing finished (mostly), got the house clean (mostly) and had a lovely time with my dear extended family!  And now I'm back, easing myself in gently with a picture book review... The Trouble with Time Travel, by Stephen W. Martin, illustrated by Cornelia Li (Owlkids, October 15, 2019), is a charming (though stressful) story of Max and her dog Boomer, and a too-enthusiastically thrown Frisbee that shatters a family heirloom, the one thing saved from the mysterious sinking of her many-times great-grandmother's houseboat.  Max decides that the only thing to do about the shattered vase is to build a time machine, and go back in time to smash the vase before it ended up in her living room. Happily, building a time machine is but the work of minutes (a nice bit of girl engineering ...