Courtney's Book Nook

I am still stubbornly refusing to say good-bye to the middle grade sci-fi/fantasy books of 2019.  Though I did read around 200 of them, when I went through the Goodreads list of 2019 MG fiction, I found some that I had overlooked.   If I'd started focusing on 2020 back when it started, I don't know when I'd have gotten around to reading those books, and I'm very glad to have read them, so here I am. I'm really surprised that The Twelve , by Cindy Lin (HarperCollins, July 2019), didn't get more buzz (or at least, more buzz that trickled down to me).  This is a debut East Asian zodiac fantasy that is a really fun adventure, with tons of kid appeal and fascinating magical powers! Usagi's island home was supposed to be kept safe from invasion by the powers of the 12 zodiac warriors, trained in the use of the magical gifts of their signs on Jade Mountain, home to not just the warriors and their heirs, but to 12 wonderfully magical treasures.  But the Dragon warri...

It hasn't actually been particularly snowy or cold here in southern New England yet this winter, but if you are looking for chills, and lots of snow, try The Forgotten Girl , by India  Hill Brown (Scholastic, November 2019), a middle- grade story of friendship in the present, and remembering the past. Iris is feeling a bit fed up at her school in small town North Carolina.  She's having trouble getting her Step Team, and herself, the recognition they deserve (part of nasty pattern of racism at the school).   She has her best friend Daniel, though; they have been inseparable for years, in and out of each other's houses, having each other's backs. One cold winter night, Iris can't resist the lure of the freshly fallen snow, and signals to Daniel (they can see each other's windows) to convince him to sneak outside with her. Daniel's superstitions grandmother is terrified of snow, and its spirits who can capture children, so snow play is forbidden to him, and th...

In Dragons in a Bag (link to my review), Zetta Elliott introduced a  young boy named Jaxon, who was given a job to do by a magical old woman, Ma.  He had to return three baby dragons to the world of magic.  It didn't go as planned, not that Jaxon knew enough about what was going on to really "plan" anything, but he did his best.  It wasn't enough.  One of the babies was stolen by Kavita, the little sister of his best friend, Vik. The Dragon Thief   (Random House, Oct 22 1019) picks up the story right where we left it.  Jaxon is worried about Ma, who has fallen into a strange sleep, and he's desperate to get the baby dragon to the magical world.  Kavita is worried about the baby dragon, which grows at an alarming rate when it gets fed.  When she realizes she can't keep it safe, her old aunty who lives with her family decides to help her get it home. So on the one hand we have Jaxon and Vik, racing to find Kavita while figuring out how they ca...

I just read, and wrote about, Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky , by Kwame Mbalia, for a Barnes and Noble Kids Blog post, so I'm not going to do a full review here.  But I want to talk about it here a bit too, since this is my more personal record of book reading. Wow!  This is so powerful, and sad, and important, and funny (in places), and the sort of book one wants to give to kids Right Now. Tristan's grief over his best friend's death, and the way he blames himself for it, and his sense of failure for loosing his first boxing match (I was cross at his dad and grandfather for being so clearly disappointed in him) set the stage for his journey into a world of magic and mayhem.  He's carrying a lot of emotional weight with him when he punches the titular hole in the sky, and once he goes through, a whole heap more is piled on him. And it's not just personal weight, but the weight of sad and terrible history. There's the fact that the primary attacking mon...

The Battle , by Karuna Riazi (middle grade, Salaam Reads / Simon & Schuster, August, 2019) has just as much exciting fun as its predecessor, The Gauntlet! It's four years after Ahmad Mirza, his big sister Farah and two of her friends were sucked into a game that came to life, and Farah led the group to defeat the game's architect (as told in The Gauntlet ).  Four years in which Ahmed has gotten into trouble, made no friends, and obsessively drawn the game's city setting, Paheli.  And now Ahmed is sitting in the principle's office, in trouble for sneaking the package his sister mailed to him at school from the school office.  Then Winnie, a "good kid," shows up to explain she was the one who snuck the package out.  And when Ahmed sets off home that day, she follows him. He doesn't understand why, but can't help but hope that Winnie might be a friend....And so the two of them look at the high-tech video game that was in the package-- The Battle -- a...

The Moon Over Crete , by Jyotsna Sreenivasan (1996, Smooth Stone Press), is a slightly older children's time travel story, interesting for several reasons. It's the story of a modern girl, 11-year-old Lily, whose mom is Indian American, and whose dad is European American.  Lily is finding it difficult being a girl--her best friend is interested in dressing to impress boys, a boy in her class is sexually harassing her and no one is doing anything about it, her mother isn't letting her do things (like go exploring off in the woods) that she'd be allowed to do if she were a boy.  Lily's flute teacher, Mrs. Zinn, is the only one who seems to understand Lily's growing resentment. And happily for Lily, Mrs. Zinn is a time-traveler, fond of visiting ancient Crete, where (in this fictional world) there is almost utopian gender equality.  Mrs. Zinn offers Lily the chance to go to ancient Crete with her for a few weeks,  and Lily accepts.  Having an experienced adult guid...

Young fans of ancient Egypt will find much to enjoy in Jagger Jones and the Mummy's Ankh , by Malayna Evans (Month9Books, May, 2019), although it didn't quite work for me. Jagger Jones is a biracial kid from Chicago who loves learning about the past, preferably from the comfort of his own home.  Unfortunately for Jagger, his mother and little sister, Aria, are both passionate about adventuring, and he's dragged around the world in their wake.  In Egypt, Jagger wakes one night to hear a voice calling out to him, and he follows it outside, followed in turn  by Aria, though she can't hear the voice.  Jagger digs into the ground to find its source, and the two kids find themselves in an undisturbed ancient Egyptian burial chamber, with a golden ankh, the source of the voice, resting on a mummy.  When Aria grabs hold of the ankh, they find themselves back in the time of Akhenaten, the pharaoh who rejected the Egyptian pantheon and set up his own religion. Akhenaten's...

I first had the pleasure of meeting Ronald L. Smith at Kidlitcon back in 2015 (PSA--come to Kidlitcon 2020 in Ann Arbor next March!).  His first middle grade book, Hoodoo, a tale of supernatural horror in the south, had just been published, and I enjoyed it very much ( my review ).  I likewise enjoyed The Mesmerist (2017), about kids fighting evil in 19th century London ( my review ).  I never reviewed Black Panther: the Young Prince (2018)….someday I will.  So in any event, I was very excited about his most recent book, The Owls Have Come to Take Us Away (Clarion Books, February 2019). This is the story of an air force kid, Simon, son of a black mom and a white dad, who's obsessed with aliens.  He's convinced owl-like aliens have arrived, watching and experimenting on humans.  His family has no time or patience for aliens, so Simon is alone with his fears of the Grays, as he calls them.  When something very strange happens on a camping trip with hi...

The Opposite of Always , by Justin A. Reynolds (Katherine Tegan Books, March 2019), is a sweet, funny, poignant time travel YA with a lot going on in its briskly turning pages. Jack, a high school senior, and Kate, a college freshman, meet and fall hard for each other.  Their chemistry is immediate, and their enjoyment of each other's company seems to Jack to promise the possibility to love.  Jack's two best friends, Franny, the boy he's been best buddies with forever, and Jillian, the best friend he was in love with before she started going out with Frannie, hit it off with Kate when they finally get to meet her, and all seems golden when she agrees to go to prom with Jack.  B ut then Kate doesn't show up on prom night, and Jack is only just able to find her in the hospital to say good-bye before she dies from complications of sickle cell anemia. That isn't the end of the story.  Jack loops back in time to meet her all over again.  Over and over, trying to save...

A recent article, YA Twitter Can Be Toxic, But It Also Points Out Real Problems" by Molly Templeton on Buzzfeed , took me back in time: "In the late 2000s, the science fiction and fantasy (SFF) community — which overlaps greatly with YA — had something of a reckoning. Eventually known as RaceFail ’09 , it was, as author N.K. Jemisin wrote in a blog post a year later, “a several-months-long conversation about race in the context of science fiction and fantasy that sprawled across the blogosphere. It involved several thousand participants and spawned several hundred essays — and it hasn’t really ended yet, just slowed down." RaceFail started as MammothFail, when Patricia Wrede's Thirteenth Child was widely called out for its erasure of Native Americans (there were lots of mammoths, but no indigenous people).  I was part of that conversation, and it was a watershed moment for me as a reader, a reviewer, and a purveyor of books for my own kids. Here's my review of ...

Midsummer's Mayhem , by Rajani LaRocca (middle grade, Yellow Jacket, June2019), is a delightful charmer of a book, mixing magic and the real world beautiful in a Midsummer Dream inspired story of family, friends, and baked goods! Mimi suffers from youngest child syndrome--one big sister is a wonderful dancer (modern dance fused with classical Indian dance), one a wildly talented soccer player, and her big brother is great at acting.  Mimi's a talented baker, inspired by her Indian-American mother's own cooking, but that seems like small beans compared to the rest of the family talents.  The rather depressing summer ahead, with her best friend gone off to Australia, brightens when a new café opens in town, and announces a baking contest for kids, Mimi sets out to win it and show everyone she matters too.  But it is a most unusual café, in which there is magic afoot... The café is not the only odd thing about this summer.  Mimi follows snatches of music into the woods ...

I just gave Alice Payne Arrives , by Kate Heartfield (Tor, November 2018), a four star rating over at Goodreads, despite the fact that this is the sort of time travel that makes my head hurt. I can say with conviction that if you are looking for a book about a lesbian couple in the 18th century, one of whom is biracial (the Alice of the title) and the other is a mechanical genius inventor (Jane) who get caught up in a time travel war being waged centuries in the future, this is the book you want!  Alice is peacefully maintaining her father's home by moonlighting as a highwayman, carefully preying only on men who have assaulted/molested women and girls.  Jane, who came to live in Alice's home as a companion a while back, is a whiz at mechanics, and has made a handy automaton that serves as Alice's highway robbery assistant.  They make a good team, and love each other lots. But then things get screwy when the coach Alice holds ups disappears into a strange glimmer-ness,....

It's such a lovely thing to enjoy the first book of a series lots (here's my review of Love Sugar Magic: A Dash of Trouble) and then to read the second book and not just enjoy it but love it!  A Sprinkle of Sprits (Walden Pond, Feb. 5 2019) continues the story of Leo, a girl whose family runs a magical bakery in a small Texas town, who longs to learn all she can about magic, even though her family thinks she's too young.  The oldest two of her four big sisters are also unencouraging about her friend Caroline; they don't think that magical folk should share too much with ordinary people.  Leo feels pressured to chose between friendship and magic, and she's knows she has responsibilities to the bakery...and now Caroline's feelings are badly hurt. When Leo wakes up to find her abuela, dead for years, visiting her in very corporal form, she's sure that this time it isn't her fault.  Other spirits are popping up around town as well, and if it isn't Leo...