Billie B. Little

The storyline of Leigh Hodgkinson’s Troll Swap is familiar, but her playful language and hilarious illustrations bring freshness to a simple story of children who don’t quite fit in with their families.

We meet colorful, hairy Timothy Limpet, who is unlike other trolls. Despite his pointy teeth, he is polite and tidy, and his cave is “not at all damp, dark, or squelchy—thank you very much.” The other trolls think he is a particularly lousy troll. Perched alone on a pile of boulders with a big frown on his face, Timothy feels quite terrible.

A lousy troll and a naughty little girl switch places—with hilarious results.

Next enters Tabitha Lumpit with a giant “Hello!” She seems ordinary in her bright green polka-dot dress. But, unlike most boys and girls who are nice, polite and tidy, Tabitha is “Loud, Loopy and Messy.” Notably, she would “rather pick her nose than a flower any day of the week.” Her parents’ frowns make it clear that they would prefer her to be nice and polite and tidy, just like them.

Tabitha thinks being like other boys and girls is impossible, and Timothy knows being a disgusting troll doesn’t come easily. One day the two accidentally clonk heads, meet each other and come up with a “swappingly” good idea. Things go well until Timothy gets a little bit “thumb-twiddly” and Tabitha begins to feel ordinary among the trolls. In time, the trolls enjoy a very civilized tea with Timothy, and Tabitha is back bouncing on the sofa with her parents.

The zany illustrations and slightly irreverent language ensure that parents will enjoy reading Troll Swap often. Hodgkinson clearly understands the serious nature of fun.

Billie B. Little is the Founding Director of Discovery Center at Murfree Spring, a hands-on museum in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. When she's not making handmade books or writing articles and book reviews, she enjoys "extreme cooking" with family and friends.

Children's & YA, Middle Grade

Children's & YA Middle Grade

Spunky heroine sets out on an Alaskan adventure

Review by Billie B. Little

by Billie B. Little

Fourteen-year-old Victoria Secord loves nothing more than her 16 Alaskan huskies. Like her dad, she loves racing, and she races to win. But after her father’s untimely death, Vicky and her mom are at odds. Vicky could never leave Alaska, but her mom keeps talking about moving back to Seattle.

Vicky is convincingly portrayed as a strong and spunky heroine who never flinches at taking responsibility for herself. When she takes off, hooking up her dogsled team without telling anyone, the routine outing takes a perilous turn, and a four-hour trek becomes a harrowing six-day battle for survival.

When she comes upon a snowmobile twisted around a tree, she uses everything her dad taught her to save the life of its only occupant, Chris, a “citified” boy who Vicky decides has no right to be out in the woods at all.

Vicky and Chris’ relationship evolves as they face hunger, hypothermia, wild animals and icy waters. As the story deftly skirts the line between teenage awkwardness and a looming closeness, they huddle together for warmth, snare rabbits for food and eventually find a trapper’s cabin that provides comfort and a brief respite from the snow.

Readers will feel empowered by Vicky’s boldness and will sympathize with her sadness over the loss of her father, her determination to make him proud and her first inklings of romance with her newfound friend.

Children's & YA, Middle Grade

Children's & YA Middle Grade

A threatening visitor to the farm

Review by Billie B. Little

by Billie B. Little

In Valerie Hobbs' new novel, Wolf, Jack the border collie has landed in the perfect place. Loved by his teenage boy, Luke, he’s the top dog and responsible for safeguarding a small flock of sheep on the family farm. Jack has only one nagging concern. He’s growing old.

Soon, an unwanted visitor changes everything. A lone wolf, banished from his pack, lurks in the woods near Jack’s farm, and his constant, harrowing presence—stalking the sheep and hoping to mate with Jack’s granddaughter, Callie—gives a frightening edge to the book that compels the reader’s rapt attention.

This dramatic sequel to Hobbs’ popular novel, Sheep, alternates between Jack’s and the wolf’s points of view. In an unsettling voice, the wolf counts his journey in moons and his narrow gaze sees the world as rock-strewn hills, grassy slopes and woods for hunting. His reactions are visceral, his life an ongoing battle for survival. He is acutely lonely, “a feeling so unfamiliar that at first he confused it with hunger.” He’s drawn to the family farm by the slow-moving sheep that look like easy prey—far easier targets than the rodent that bit him, causing a wound that will not heal. Wolf’s austere existence is contrasted with Jack’s loving family and the day-to-day concerns of Luke and his friends.

Jack isn’t as quick as he used to be, and Wolf could have become another tired story of an aging dog’s quest for a blue ribbon at the state fair. But Hobbs foreshadows the drama to come with restraint, saying of Jack, “He would rather die than disappoint Luke.” As the fast-moving plot progresses, the tension is tightened like a string, with each incident, each phrase, increasing it slightly.

The contrast in tone between the two animals and the transparency of each canine’s thoughts and desires is gripping. Raised by humans, loving Jack wins our hearts, but it is the wolf, wild and terrifying, who ultimately wins our respect and our pity.

Children's & YA, Middle Grade

Children's & YA Middle Grade

A pint-sized detective and her meerkat

Review by Billie B. Little

by Billie B. Little

If you’re lucky, you’ve met sleuth Precious Ramotswe in Alexander McCall Smith’s best-selling No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency mysteries for adults. Now in The Mystery of Meerkat Hill, second in Smith’s series for children, young readers get a chance to follow her adventures.

Precious, a girl from Botswana, has a mystery on her hands. Her new friends, Teb and Pontsho, walk shoeless all the way home from school, burning their feet on the hot ground. When Precious learns they have never even tasted an apple, she concludes they must be very poor. Then, her friends’ most valuable possession, the family cow, goes missing. Has it been stolen? Precious is determined to find a way to help. This time she calls on their pet meerkat, Kosi, for assistance, and he nearly steals the show!

The mystery is peppered with family and friends’ tales about hiding from lions and tricking ostriches. All these stories will engage young readers, as will the author’s asides. For example, when Precious visits Teb and Pontsho’s modest home, she tells them it’s a nice house. “That was not a lie,” the author notes. “It is not a lie to say something nice to somebody.” In some stories, this might come across as moralizing, but here, McCall Smith’s light touch makes it palatable.

The action is set against the backdrop of Botswana, with endless skies where at night “the stars appear—great silver fields of them.” The book is written with the ease of a consummate storyteller, while Iain McInstosh’s woodcuts enliven the text and handsomely depict the terrain, people and animal life of Botswana.

Precious, a girl…

Children's & YA, Middle Grade

Children's & YA Middle Grade

Finding her place in the woods

Review by Billie B. Little

by Billie B. Little

Carly Bean Bitters has a serious problem. Pale and small for her age, the 11-year-old can’t sleep at night, finding rest only during the day. Leading a lonely life, she sits up in an old chair in the attic of her aunt’s house, orphaned and friendless, waiting for the sun to rise so she can sleep. Young readers will empathize with Carly as she longs for a life beyond the attic but would settle for a friend. The moon is her only companion until she meets Lewis, a fiddling rat, who appears on her roof and asks her to join his little band.

Lewis explains that the number of rat musicians is dwindling. The owls, no longer distracted by the rats’ music, have started hunting them. Soon an owl swoops in, grabbing Carly from her rooftop and dropping her in the Whistle Root woods, and the adventure begins. When Carly meets Breeza Meezy, Queen of the rats, and visits their wondrous village, she learns the rats are in trouble and need her help. Carly finds a cryptic note warning “the Moon Child is in danger,” and begins to wonder if the Moon Child is, in fact, her. More questions than answers arise when Carly is befriended by Green, a classmate who hides out beneath the library. Together they search the stories of Whistle Root for clues.

First-time author Christopher Pennell blends the natural world seamlessly with fantasy in this lively debut novel. Young readers will cheer as Carly struggles to untangle an elaborate mystery, outwit a flesh-eating Griddlebeast and take her proper place in the woods.

The Mysterious Woods of Whistle Root successfully bounces between run-ins at school, where Carly is teased and taunted for sleeping all day, and fantastical moments when she flies high above the woods as Lewis has taught her. Rebecca Bond’s whimsical pen-and-ink drawings make the book especially engaging to read aloud to younger children and ensures a captivating experience for middle graders. When the mystery comes to a satisfying resolution, readers will want to linger a little longer in Whistle Root.