Jennifer Bruer Kitchel

Author Polly Horvath has brought back her lovable character Primrose Squarp from the Newbery Honor book Everything on a Waffle for another year of life in Coal Harbor, a fishing village in British Columbia. Having survived the earlier time when her parents were missing at sea, Primrose now finds herself at loose ends. In lieu of any better project, she makes it her mission to bring together her Uncle Jack and the lovely Miss Bowzer, even if it seems to be against their own intentions. In addition, Primrose decides she herself is in desperate need of a best friend.

Fortunately, her grown-up friends Bert and Evie become foster parents to a teenage boy named Ked who is also in need of a friend. Together they plan the next cookbook for the Fisherman’s Aid fundraiser and bike up to Mendolay Mountain to enjoy the scenery and the quiet. Just as everything in Primrose’s life seems to be settling in to an enjoyable routine, several upsetting things happen at once: Miss Bowzer’s old boyfriend returns to town loggers come to clearcut the mountain, and Ked is accused of stealing. Things go from bad to worse and Primrose is sure nothing will be right again.

As the heroine struggles, the reader is privileged to listen in on her first-person thoughts. Primrose’s observations about people and life in general are worth the reading on their own, and her inclusion of the recipes she gathers adds its own flavor to the tale. Horvath creates a world in which we can truly feel all that a smart 12-year-old girl can feel and leaves us wiser for having done so. You need not have read Everything on a Waffle to enjoy this book, but everything about One Year in Coal Harbor will make you want to.

Now that Cassie is in middle school, she faces all the attendant problems any eighth-grade girl might encounter: losing friends, finding new ones, dancing around the inevitable cliques, dealing with crushes on boys and problems at home. The difference between Cassie and most girls her age is that her problems at home began when her older brother enlisted in the military. Sef is going to Iraq, an act admired by his father and reviled by his mother, feared by Cassie and her older sister Van, and not understood by younger brother Jack, who has Down syndrome.

Cassie’s own anxiety about Sef is drowned by her mother’s almost catatonic dread, forcing Cassie to feel as if she must step in and save everybody, and leaving her with no outlet for her emotions. When an assignment in Social Studies class leads her to correspond with an Iraqi girl her own age (who calls herself Blue Sky), Cassie finds someone who will listen to her fears. In the process, Cassie also learns that, in comparison to Blue Sky’s encounters with daily bombs and missing family members, her life is not so unmanageable.

While everyone in Cassie’s family seems to hold their breath waiting for Sef’s return, the conclusion of the book is not the Hollywood welcome home we all hope for, but rather the peace they find in the waiting.

Award-winning author Mary Sullivan has written a novel for young readers that is both timely and timeless. Though the story is set during the Iraq war, the struggles that Cassie goes through are applicable to any era. Sullivan’s prose allows us to feel the bittersweet acceptance and love each family member has for the others, and we leave feeling the same for Cassie as she must feel for her brother: hope for her future well-being and the joy of living in the present.

It comes as no surprise that award-winning author Andrew Clements has written another great story. Clements has an ability to get right to the heart of his young characters, tapping into their feelings as they figure out who they are, and Jordan Johnson in About Average is no exception.

In fact, Jordan doesn’t feel she is exceptional at all—at anything. She has average grades, is a mediocre violin player, and is better at assisting the coach of the soccer team than she is playing on it. With only one week before the end of sixth grade, Jordan feels she has not accomplished anything worth notice and is doomed to be “average” her whole life.

Clements does a beautiful job of drawing the reader completely into Jordan’s world in just one day of school. As we go through her day, class by class, we are able to not only see the world as Jordan does, but to feel it intensely as well. Jordan struggles to be nice to the mean girl because she doesn’t want to be the kind of person whose emotions are controlled by bullies. Jordan daydreams in class—pulling up memories of the past year of small personal discoveries—and slowly pieces together that she is more than the lists she makes or the goals she thinks she ought to achieve.

About Average is a small book, and a brief look at a young girl, but Clements has packed it full of heart-rending and heart-warming vignettes that let us know Jordan almost as well as she knows herself. At the end of the day, a truly devastating disaster is averted by her own remarkable abilities, but by then Jordan already knows she is unique and wonderful and well above average.

Almost-11-year-old Libby Thump is told by her teacher at the end of fourth grade that she needs “to live up to her potential.” Libby is encouraged by this since it must mean she has potential, but worries what that is exactly. After she discovers the High Hopes Horse Farm, she believes her potential lies in her desire to be the world’s best horse rider.

A string of disappointments and obstacles keep Libby from becoming who she thinks she should be, and the reader will feel her pain every step of the way. The frustrations of adult expectations and of being the little sister are real and palpable. Gloriously, Libby eventually discovers that who you are is just as important as you will be.

Elise Primavera expertly draws us into Libby’s life, creating her world in simple prose that perfectly echoes the mind of a 10-year-old girl. Primavera also illustrates the book with pen and ink drawings that are a wonderful complement to the story. Her knowledge of horses and horse riding is evident—a major plus for all the horse-crazy girls who read this book.

There are only seven chapters in this little book by Andrew Norriss, one for each day of the week. On Monday, Archie witnesses—and becomes involved in—an extraordinary chain of events that is truly hard to believe. A piano rolling down a street trapping a girl inside a car is only the beginning, but none of it seems to phase Archie one bit. As he tells the girl, Cyd, once she is freed, this kind of thing happens to him every day.

Curious, Cyd asks to tag along the next day and see what other crazy things will happen. This is fortunate for Archie because it turns out that Cyd is very helpful in sorting out the mess these wild events engender. After six days of getting in and out of scrapes together, Archie and Cyd must wrestle with one final nutty Sunday.

I Don’t Believe It, Archie! is full of illustrator Hannah Shaw’s funny pictures. The whole story reads like an extra-long comic and is just as quick and fun. Young people who cannot quite read the book themselves will appreciate this one being read to them.

Jennifer Bruer Kitchel is the librarian for a pre-K through 8th grade Catholic school in Nashville.