Sharon Verbeten

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Keep on rolling

Review by Sharon Verbeten

Felix Knutsson has a lot to worry about. His mother, Astrid, can’t find or keep a job, and the duo have been living in a van for months after being evicted from their Vancouver apartment. It’s a tough life for young Felix, especially since he doesn’t feel like he can share his dire situation with any of his friends from school.

Still, life with no fixed address isn’t all bad. While Astrid struggles with occasional bouts of depression referred to as “slumps,” she is a loving mother who is trying her best to provide for her son. Felix has a beloved pet gerbil and a good-luck troll, does well in school, makes good friends and has a huge interest in trivia. He even manages to win a slot on the junior edition of his favorite game show, “Who What Where When.”

At almost every turn, however, the state of Felix’s “residence” comes into question by the Canadian Ministry of Children and Family Development. Felix’s luck soars after he wins the game show’s substantial cash prize, but his world soon threatens to implode when he finds himself in the police station with his mother shortly after. The good and bad intermingle at the end, leaving Felix to learn the true meaning of kindness and to discover that homelessness doesn’t have to mean hopelessness.

Author Susin Nielsen weaves humor and heart into No Fixed Address while highlighting struggles that are often swept under the rug. Through Felix, Nielsen shows readers what it takes to carry on.

 

This article was originally published in the September 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Felix Knutsson has a lot to worry about. His mother, Astrid, can’t find or keep a job, and the duo have been living in a van for months after being evicted from their Vancouver apartment. It’s a tough life for young Felix, especially since he doesn’t feel like he can share his dire situation with any of his friends from school.

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Making sense of preteen life

Review by Sharon Verbeten

Andromeda—just call her Annie, please!—is a preteen from Brooklyn who has a loyal best friend named Millie, an annoying big brother, freckles and an unusually good memory.

When Annie’s family is forced to move to the tiny burg of Clover Gap, she’s not thrilled about a lot of things. She has a lot of questions: Did she cause their move? Will she lose her best friend? Will she fit in at her new school?

Clover Gap is nothing like Brooklyn, and as Annie navigates her new house and new school, she details her thoughts, likes, dislikes, wishes, rumors, conversations, apologies and more in list form. Surprisingly, this makes for a very readable format for the stream-of-consciousness wonderings of a preteen brain.

Clover Gap turns out to be not so bad, but it’s truly a growth experience for Annie as she realizes that the more life changes, the more things stay the same.

For a story mostly written in list form, the reader learns surprisingly a lot about Annie. Kristin Mahoney utilizes a clever format that will draw in both reluctant readers as well as young girls like Annie, who are just trying to find their way in the world.

Andromeda—just call her Annie, please!—is a preteen from Brooklyn who has a loyal best friend named Millie, an annoying big brother, freckles and an unusually good memory.

YA FictionYAMystery

Dark descent

Review by Sharon Verbeten

Tim Wynne-Jones’ intense new book, The Ruinous Sweep, opens with a car crash, in which teenager Donovan Turner is tossed from a vehicle in the middle of nowhere. Then the narration fast-forwards to a hospital, where a near unconscious Donovan receives treatment following the hit-and-run and his girlfriend, Bee, holds watch and tries to decipher his urgent mumbles.

Shortly after Donovan’s car accident, police inform Bee that her boyfriend is also suspected of murdering his alcoholic father, whose badly beaten body was found lying next to Donovan’s baseball bat. The story’s timeline then begins to alternate between Donovan’s accident and the mystery of his father’s murder, which Bee sets out to investigate. Wynne-Jones introduces a bevy of dark characters and chilling scenarios designed to lead readers to piece together the two puzzles, but while the eerie paths may thrill some, the winding narrative may prove confusing at points.

The Ruinous Sweep is a trip into an underworld filled with drugs, murder and dysfunctional families. Fans of thrillers will find plenty of suspense in this story with vague echoes of Dante’s Inferno. The plot requires a fair amount of heavy lifting and focus, but fans of Wynne-Jones’ previous books and his talent for fabulism may find it worthwhile.

 

This article was originally published in the July 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Tim Wynne-Jones’ intense new book, The Ruinous Sweep, opens with a car crash, in which teenager Donovan Turner is tossed from a vehicle in the middle of nowhere. Then the narration fast-forwards to a hospital, where a near unconscious Donovan receives treatment following the hit-and-run and his girlfriend, Bee, holds watch and tries to decipher his urgent mumbles.

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

A tween reckons with life, love and loss

Review by Sharon Verbeten

After the sudden death of her beloved father, 13-year-old Briana has more than just her grief to contend with. Her mother has shut down—closing herself off and not wanting to get up or leave her bedroom. Her younger brother, Aaron, is on the autism spectrum and now needs much more of her time. And then there’s the issue of her second heart.

As Briana navigates life without her father, she believes she hears him speaking to her through what she thinks is a second heart inside of her. But she’s not always clear about what her father’s messages mean.

It’s hard enough trying to find her way through owning a second heart, but now Briana must pick up the slack where her mother and Grandpa Ben can’t fill in. And in the process, she’s trying to succeed at school and, hopefully, impress that guy she has her eye on.

Throughout The Girl with More Than One Heart, Briana reflects on happier days with her late father—and to be honest, before her brother was born—and those memories propel her to find her own way, to “be her own” (as her second heart tells her) and embrace her new life.

After the sudden death of her beloved father, 13-year-old Briana has more than just her grief to contend with. Her mother has shut down—closing herself off and not wanting to get up or leave her bedroom. Her younger brother, Aaron, is on the autism spectrum and now needs much more of her time. And then there’s the issue of her second heart.

YA FictionYA

No matter what, she’s still your mom

Review by Sharon Verbeten

Tennis is Dara’s life—she’s been playing for as long as she can remember, so she’s stoked to have the chance to compete internationally. She’s eager to get a passport, but she’s a bit nervous to ask her mom, Mellie, for her birth certificate; Mellie has always been reticent about the identity of Dara’s father.

Dara secretly uncovers the document, only to realize she doesn’t recognize the names of her father or her mother. Her mind reels—has she been kidnapped? Adopted? What she knows for sure is that she’s been lied to. When Dara confronts Mellie, she learns the shocking and initially disconcerting truth—Mellie is transgender and was actually Dara’s biological father. Feeling betrayed, lost and uncertain of her past and future, Dara takes off with her best friend, Sam, to find her biological mother’s parents and learn more. When Dara meets them, she immediately feels loved and accepted. But as she learns more—from her grandparents and also from the simultaneous stream of constant and honest emails from Mellie—Dara comes to the crux of the matter as she posits, “Could it be possible that where I come from and who I am are two different things?”

And She Was is a stunning and timely novel that presents a raw story of what it means to be transgender. This is an important and conversation-sparking addition to any YA collection.

 

This article was originally published in the April 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Tennis is Dara’s life—she’s been playing for as long as she can remember, so she’s stoked to have the chance to compete internationally. She’s eager to get a passport, but she’s a bit nervous to ask her mom, Mellie, for her birth certificate; Mellie has always been reticent about the identity of Dara’s father.

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Beauty in the smallest details

Review by Sharon Verbeten

A 17th-century German girl with a passion for caterpillars and butterflies may seem like an obscure topic for a children’s book, yet Newbery Honor winner Joyce Sidman has painted a stunningly beautiful and accessible portrait of the relatively unknown scientific illustrator and ecologist Maria Sibylla Merian.

Merian was born to a family of printers, but life wasn’t a world of opportunity for a young girl in her day. Still, she managed to absorb her father’s business knowledge and paired it with her passion for nature and drawing. She studied caterpillars and butterflies incessantly, with a fervor many thought odd. Seeking to understand each insect’s life cycle, she sketched and recorded their stages of development and the plants they ate. Her passion eventually took her to the Dutch colony of Surinam, where her observations led to her grandest accomplishment: publishing her own volume on the insects of the South American country.

The Girl Who Drew Butterflies: How Maria Merian’s Art Changed Science is filled with Merian’s stunningly detailed and colorful botanical drawings created more than 300 years ago. Sidman’s arrangement of the story and its chapter titles (as well as one of Sidman’s original poetic stanzas) smartly draw a parallel between Merian’s growth as an artist and the stages of a butterfly’s life.

 

This article was originally published in the March 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

A 17th-century German girl with a passion for caterpillars and butterflies may seem like an obscure topic for a children’s book, yet Newbery Honor winner Joyce Sidman has painted a stunningly beautiful and accessible portrait of the relatively unknown scientific illustrator and ecologist Maria Sibylla Merian.

Children's & YAPicture Book

Celebrate your favorite words

Review by Sharon Verbeten

Young Jerome loves words. How much? He loves them so much, he collects them—in the same way someone might collect bugs or baseball cards.

Words are tangible things that catch his attention and draw him in; he starts recording all the amazing words he hears or reads—words as small as “dream,” as big as “kaleidoscope” or as random as “smudge.” Jerome discovers that words have power in their syllables, their rhythm, their meaning. He keeps his many delightful, marvelous and poetic words in a scrapbook, and his journey takes a charming turn when he drops these scrapbooks, sending his strips of collected words flying. As they land next to each other, Jerome realizes the true power of words strung together—their power to help and heal. Thrilled, Jerome takes his discovery one step further by sharing his words with the world.

With illustrations featuring whimsical (and multicultural) faces and distinctive font lettering, master author-illustrator Peter H. Reynolds’ The Word Collector is a thing of beauty and an inspirational story about why words are wonderful. Big or small, we need them all. Lucky Jerome!

Young Jerome loves words. How much? He loves them so much, he collects them—in the same way someone might collect bugs or baseball cards.

YA FictionYAThriller

Collision course

Review by Sharon Verbeten

With chapters that alternate between two troubled, seemingly unconnected girls, Amanda Searcy’s debut novel packs an intense punch.

Sixteen-year-old Kayla wants to get far away from her life, which includes her unstable mother, government housing and a lifeless job at a grocery store. Falling in love could change everything—or so she believes. Betsy is on the run as well, but it’s from the voice on the other end of the burner phone that keeps ringing in her room. She has no choice but to answer it immediately, or she won’t live to see another day. The alternating first-person chapters gradually introduce the girls, and although their individual tragedies take a while to unfold, the urgent pace and danger around every corner make for riveting reading—especially when the girls’ lives finally intersect.

Searcy weaves an intricate and twisty-turny thriller in The Truth Beneath the Lies. Teens will be gripped, but they’ll have to be prepared for some harsh realizations and situations. This is page-turning intensity at its best, but ultimately—no spoiler here—only one girl will survive.

 

This article was originally published in the January 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

With chapters that alternate between two troubled, seemingly unconnected girls, Amanda Searcy’s debut novel packs an intense punch.

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

A tricky new series

Review by Sharon Verbeten

Real magic does exist . . . you just have to know where to look. That’s the lesson that young Carter, a runaway street magician, learns in Neil Patrick Harris’ debut middle grade novel.

American actor and singer Harris has a background in magic, which shines through in this tale of Carter and five other magically gifted kids. The trick-filled tale moves quickly, as the gang tries to outsmart a crooked carnival boss and his cronies, sideshow freaks and the ill-intentioned Pock Pickets. Aided by master illusionist and kindred soul Mr. Vernon, the kids band together in their altruistic goal of saving the citizens of the city from its villains and thieves.

Harris intersperses the book’s chapters with several clever “intermissions,” which directly address the reader to offer instructions for easy tricks to impress their friends. Harris knows his magic and has crafted an impressive group of kids that readers will happily follow on their magical journey of stopping the bad guys, as well as finding their own way. All these characters are misfits for various reasons, but when they band together, they truly belong, as each discovers friendship—possibly for the first time.

Real magic does exist . . . you just have to know where to look. That’s the lesson that young Carter, a runaway street magician, learns in Neil Patrick Harris’ debut middle grade novel.

YA FictionYA

A heartbreaking, necessary read for teens

Review by Sharon Verbeten

Seventeen-year-old Hadley appears to have everything—a wealthy dad who donates to the school, a mother who is president of the PTA, a beautiful home and a promising college future. But the secret of her life-shattering abuse is well kept. As she believes, “We’re a rich white family. No one is going to believe me.”

Hadley continues to take her father’s tyrannical physical and mental abuse—and endure her mother’s drinking—in order to protect her younger sister Lila, who still can't quite grasp what's wrong. But when Hadley begins to see Charlie—even though dating is strictly against her father’s edicts—her life begins to change in many ways. Her father’s rage escalates, her future (and Lila’s) looks more uncertain, and eventually, Charlie discovers her secret and calls Child Protective Services.

Things quickly spiral out of control. Afraid to admit the abuse, Hadley dreams up a solution in her head—one that leads to the book’s shocking climax.

Told in alternating chapters titled “Then” and “Now,” Hadley’s chilling present and uncertain future come together by the end of this heartbreaking, powerful debut novel. Author Amy Giles’ honest and vivid portrayals of abuse, a suicide attempt and alcoholism are balanced by Hadley’s protective love for her sister and her longing to be loved. A painful, powerful and necessary read that is tinged with hope.

Seventeen-year-old Hadley appears to have everything—a wealthy dad who donates to the school, a mother who is president of the PTA, a beautiful home and a promising college future. But the secret of her life-shattering abuse is well kept. As she believes, “We’re a rich white family. No one is going to believe me.”

Children's & YAPicture Book

A hero’s journey

Review by Sharon Verbeten

Children may be familiar with the name Harriet Tubman, and they may even know some of the story of the Underground Railroad. But they probably don’t know Harriet the person—from her days before she led slaves to freedom.

In a clever and poetic take on the life of this famed figure, the dynamic team of Lesa Cline-Ransome and her husband, James E. Ransome, goes backward in time. The book opens with a powerful portrait of a wizened Tubman, tired and worn from her decades of fighting for freedom. With every page turn, short verse takes readers further back, to when Tubman was a suffragist, a nurse, a Union spy, an aunt, a slave known as Minty . . . and a little girl known as Araminta.

It’s important to remember Tubman’s contributions, but it’s even more important to realize that she once was a young girl, full of strength, courage and the will to do something. This is a powerful and poetic biographical sketch ideal for elementary school readers.

 

This article was originally published in the November 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Children may be familiar with the name Harriet Tubman, and they may even know some of the story of the Underground Railroad. But they probably don’t know Harriet the person—from her days before she led slaves to freedom.

Children's & YAPicture Book

A charming poetry primer

Review by Sharon Verbeten

The joy of reading—from letters to books to maps and even cereal boxes—is celebrated in this slim collection designed for budding bibliophiles. Published by a poetry-focused division of Highlights for Children, this book features joyful and easily accessible poems about reading, ones that easily could fit in the pages of Highlights magazine itself.

Often rhyming, the poems explore the many ways of using reading: joyfully losing oneself in a story, sharing a bedtime story, exploring foreign lands in books, treasuring Grandpa’s handwritten birthday card and even doing research on that new guinea pig by using Google. But while these poems are fine and fun (and make a very quick, easy entrée to poetry), they are far from fresh. Clichés abound—such as “an open book will help you find an open heart, an open mind” and “a book will always be a friend.”

Still, despite the tired phrases and cartoony illustrations, Read! Read! Read!—like all poetry collections geared toward the in-between audience of 5- to 10-year-olds—is welcome for its ability to help students learn more about the genre. While it’s great to use reading as a theme, perhaps the author—who has won several poetry awards—could have refreshed her metaphors and imagery a bit. Recommended only as needed to fill poetry gaps in a collection.

The joy of reading—from letters to books to maps and even cereal boxes—is celebrated in this slim collection designed for budding bibliophiles. Published by a poetry-focused division of Highlights for Children, this book features joyful and easily accessible poems about reading, ones that easily could fit in the pages of Highlights magazine itself.

Children's & YAPicture Book

A charming romp through the alphabet

Review by Sharon Verbeten

In the world of children’s literature, alphabet books abound—is there really room for another? Patrick McDonnell’s latest picture book answers with an emphatic YES! Because his anthropomorphic animals are so expressive and playful, McDonnell, a Caldecott Honor-winning artist, makes this abecedarian book fast paced and high energy—even without using text.

Out for an innocent walk, the little red cat encounters first—surprise!—a chomping Alligator, prompting our hero to run for his life. Along the way, hilarity ensues when he meets Bear, Chicken and—what else?—a fire-breathing Dragon, prompting the now-frightened group to all don Glasses, run fast and dream about returning Home.

Wordless double-page spreads enhance the action of the chase, which leads to some perilous page-turning moments of suspense. As with many McDonnell treasures, there is subtle humor (R stands for “restroom”) and surprises sure to delight adults as well as kids who will be guessing along the way—what will the next letter represent? And more importantly, will the little red cat make it home safely? The last three pages hold the answer to that question.

While the letters and what they represent are pretty obvious for most readers, the last page does include a legend.

A wordless ABCs book? Sure, it’s been done, but probably never in such fast, fun fashion.

 

This article was originally published in the September 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

In the world of children’s literature, alphabet books abound—is there really room for another? Patrick McDonnell’s latest picture book answers with an emphatic YES! Because his anthropomorphic animals are so expressive and playful, McDonnell, a Caldecott Honor-winning artist, makes this abecedarian book fast paced and high energy—even without using text.

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