Calling all Alfred Hitchcock fans: In her debut novel, British writer Lisa Thompson has brilliantly borrowed the director’s Rear Window plot, adapting it into a middle grade novel called The Goldfish Boy. Not only is this a riveting mystery filled with twists, turns and red herrings, it’s an emotionally complex tale centered on a 12-year-old narrator suffering from severe OCD.

Matthew Corbin feels safest in his home, where he constantly worries about germs and feels responsible for the death of his baby brother. He wears latex gloves and refuses to go to school, so his parents are in the process of lining up therapy. Meanwhile, Matthew watches his neighbors, taking notes about their comings and goings.

When a toddler goes missing, Matthew is the last to see him, and he knows what all the neighbors were doing at the time of the disappearance. He works diligently to solve the case, eventually joining forces with a lonely neighborhood girl, Melody, and a former friend, Jake, who’s been bullied so much that he’s become a bully himself.

Despite the severity of his problems, Matthew is an energetic, likable character whose adolescent voice and increasing self-awareness ring true. Rare is the book that manages to be an entertaining page-turner while also offering meaningful insight into a serious disorder. The Goldfish Boy manages to do both in a masterful way.

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

Chet is a big, mean bully who likes to spend his time harassing Virgil. Virgil is shy—painfully shy—but desperately wants to catch the attention of Valencia. Valencia is deaf, overprotective and plagued by a recurring nightmare, which she hopes to interpret with help from Kaori. Kaori is psychic and, along with her little sister Gen, knows that something is terribly, terribly wrong. In Hello, Universe by Erin Entrada Kelly, these four tweens—some friends, some enemies, some strangers—come together under unexpected circumstances.

On his way to visit Kaori for a psychic reading, Virgil has an unpleasant run-in with Chet, which results in his backpack, complete with guinea pig Gulliver, being thrown to the bottom of an abandoned well. After climbing down to reach Gulliver, Virgil realizes that he is trapped, and no one knows where he is. Through a series of coincidences, some new friendships and just a bit of luck, things in the universe come together to bring hope to the boy trapped in the well.

Folklore, fairy tales, astrology, mysticism and dreams all mingle together to create a wonderful, fantastical and unique world. It’s impossible to identify the perfect reader for this story, because there is so much for every reader contained within.

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

BookPage Children’s Top Pick, February 2017

Paul Mosier’s debut middle grade venture is luminous and heartrending, populated by poetry, sharp wit and wonderfully original characters with voices that sing from the pages and pierce your very bones.

Twelve-year-old Rydr boards an Amtrak train in California, the start of a three-day journey that will take her to her new home in Chicago, where she will live with a distant relative she’s never met. Rydr hopes this journey will help her forget about her past and erase the pain that comes with those memories. Little does she know that this trip will have the exact opposite effect, forcing her to confront those scars head-on. But she doesn’t have to brave this experience alone. Accompanied by a cast of eccentric, lovable characters, Rydr will learn how to come to terms with the events that have brought her to this point, how to let her guard down and let people in and, perhaps the most important lesson of all, how to let herself feel, whether those feelings are good or bad.

Though this book may be marketed for middle school readers, Train I Ride is steeped in such genuine feeling and depth that it can be enjoyed and related to by anyone, of any age. Mosier strikes the perfect key, never straying into territory too verbose or too spare, but finding the right balance between the two. This is an extremely well-written and thoughtful story from a stellar voice in middle grade literature and beyond.

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

The Someday Birds is a raw, funny road trip story that reminds us that even the most literal-minded people can occasionally be sucker-punched by a miracle.

Autistic 12-year-old Charlie struggles to connect with his older sister and younger twin brothers; facial cues never tell him enough to go on. His grandmother is caring for the children while their dad recovers from a traumatic brain injury sustained in Afghanistan. But when their grandmother must travel to Virginia with their father for treatment, the kids organize a cross-country road trip. On this trip, Charlie is inspired to seek out birds he and his dad hoped to see together.

Author Sally Pla puts readers directly inside Charlie’s mind: His inability to understand jokes that rely on wordplay, his tendency to jump and flap his arms when he’s nervous and his need for ritualized hand-washing lose their strangeness as readers recognize his good heart. If Charlie’s siblings roll their eyes at his need to stop and look for birds, they also love him and share in the victories when Charlie steps outside his comfort zone. He bonds easily with animals, for instance, and his low-key demeanor may help Ludmila, their road-trip chaperone, open up about her past and why she was visiting his dad in the hospital.

Moments that border on magic realism and the emotional toll of two different wars would seem to indicate heavy reading, but The Someday Birds leavens things with a three-legged dog who’s along for the ride, as well as Charlie’s Zagat-like reviews of the chicken nuggets at every stop across the United States. Hop in the RV with this ragtag group and enjoy the ride.

All it took was one terrible moment, and 12-year-old Ethan’s life was irrevocably split into a Before and an After. In the Before, he lived in Boston, just a few doors away from his best friend, Kacey. In the After, Kacey is gone forever. To keep Ethan from bolting out at night to stare obsessively at Kacey’s bedroom window, his family moves to the tiny town of Palm Knot, Georgia. But life in the After is unbearable. Ethan, his parents and his older brother are crammed into a house with an unwelcoming grandfather, so tension at home is high. At school, Ethan makes a tentative friendship with a girl named Coralee, who shares his penchant for adventure. But the sorrow of his past will not be vanquished.

Debut author Ali Standish creates a convincing world of menace surrounding Ethan by introducing a mysterious stranger in an abandoned house, inexplicable phone calls from Kacey’s father, suspicions about Coralee’s truthfulness and secrets surrounding Ethan’s grandfather. Through the development of these plotlines, Ethan gradually becomes more involved in the present than the past. Observing some of the adults around him, Ethan begins to understand the ultimate futility of a life destroyed by grief.

This novel compares well with other middle grade novels that deal with guilt in the aftermath of tragedy, such as Lisa Graff’s Lost in the Sun or Elana K. Arnold’s The Question of Miracles.

Diane Colson is the Library Director at City College in Gainesville, Florida.

Three-time National Book Award finalist Steve Sheinkin’s Undefeated charts the rise of Jim Thorpe, Olympic gold medalist in the decathlon and All-American fullback for the Carlisle Indians, one of the most innovative football teams ever to take the field. Despite its focus, readers need not be sports fans to enjoy this book.

As a Native American man born in 1888, racism was a constant in Thorpe’s life, but it’s because of this daily prejudice that Thorpe first set foot on a football field. At the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, a boarding school that was created to “kill the Indian, and save the man,” Thorpe encountered the game that he and his Carlisle teammates would come to redefine.

In those days, football was a hybrid of rugby and bare-knuckle boxing. Guided by Coach Pop Warner—inventor of the reverse, the single wing and a multitude of other plays and formations—Carlisle did more than any team to move football away from its brutal origins. Warner ran a “whirlwind offense” that pitted the Carlisle players’ speed and agility against the bone-crushing brawn of America’s sporting elites: Harvard, Penn, Princeton and Yale.

Along with redefining how the game was played, Carlisle’s emergence as a football powerhouse forced the nation to face what was then an uncomfortable and controversial truth: Given a level playing field, Native Americans could compete with anyone—America’s most privileged sons included.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a Q&A with Steve Sheinkin about Undefeated.

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

Dystopian stories about how Earth’s environment will be unlivable in the future are plentiful. Chapter books for young people about what we can do now are few. Carl Hiaasen and Louis Sachar have successfully broached the topic, and now Amy Sarig King’s latest book, Me and Marvin Gardens, joins the list.

Told from 11-year-old Obe Devlin’s point of view, the story is immediately accessible as readers are drawn into his world. We understand Obe’s anguish as he watches the fields he played in become new housing developments. We sympathize with his efforts to keep the trash out of the little creek that still runs through his family’s property. When Obe discovers a strange new creature that eats plastic (he names him Marvin Gardens), we know that he and his best friend, Annie Bell, will find a way to share the secret, even if they are not sure of that themselves.

King (who writes award-winning young adult books as A.S. King) captures the heart of a young boy without making the prose too simplistic. Obe is a sophisticated storyteller but still a believable sixth-grader. Readers will find many interesting themes in this story—some subtle and some not so much—to discuss and wonder about for many years to come.

Jennifer Bruer Kitchel is the librarian for a Pre-K through 8th level Catholic school.

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

Richard Loving and Mildred Jeter just want to hold hands without drawing stares, be married and raise their children in their home state of Virginia. “What is so difficult about that?” Richard asks in Loving vs. Virginia, Patricia Hruby Powell’s novel about the real-life couple’s groundbreaking civil rights case. Told in free verse, it alternates between the voices of Mildred, who is black and Native American, and Richard, who is white.

Their story opens in 1952, when the two youths and their families shared meals in Central Point, a rural town that was more integrated than the rest of the state of Virginia, where miscegenation laws still ruled. While Mildred and Richard’s affection for one another came easily, their courtship met with racism. And when pregnancy prompted the pair to marry in 1958, they were forced to drive to Washington, D.C., where they could be legally wed.

After returning to Virginia, the newlyweds were arrested and sentenced to expulsion from Virginia for 25 years. The heartfelt novel describes the sadness, fear and prejudice that invaded their lives until their case went before the Supreme Court and was overturned unanimously in 1967.

Interspersed period photographs, quotes and historical facts add greater impact to the Lovings’ personal story and legal challenges, which paved the way for interracial marriage throughout the country. Above all, the Lovings live up to their name as Powell describes their romance and dedication as much as their role in history.

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

In the Second World, Kinchen and her brother, Pip, live with their adopted grandfather, Old Ren, on the islands. Pip has the gift of talking to fish, but he cannot recognize faces and has trouble in social situations, so Kinchen is constantly shielding him. The Raft King, leader of the traveling nation of Raftworld, needs Pip’s talents to help with a mysterious plan. He tricks Kinchen and takes Pip to sea, leaving behind a Raftworld girl named Caesar. While Kinchen and Caesar make a plan to follow Raftworld and retrieve Pip, Pip finds he enjoys his new independence and the opportunity for adventure. Meanwhile, in the First World, a small group—including young Thanh and his sister, Sang—make the risky decision to escape war-torn South Vietnam in a small boat. And two centuries in the past, a pair of twins named Venus and Swimmer lead their people from danger to safety using their watery gifts.

H.M. Bouwman’s second novel is a magical journey through three tales of separation and reunion, family and friendship. Bouncing between the three main stories, A Crack in the Sea maintains momentum thanks to a consistent narrative voice and beautiful ink illustrations by Yuko Shimizu. With a whimsical but sage narrator, vulnerable but courageous characters and a remarkable conclusion, A Crack in the Sea is constantly engaging and enlightening. The extremely serious story at the heart of the novel, along with its sophisticated world-building, make this the rare middle grade book that could also appeal to higher age groups, including teens.

Sally Christie’s middle grade debut is a fantastic and relatable novel of loneliness, unlikely friendships and the catastrophic effects of bullying.

Alex, like so many adolescents, goes to school every day plagued by the fear of being tormented by his peers. In order to deal with this fear, Alex has devised a simple strategy that he believes will minimize the effects of the bullying: Don’t react. Don’t let them get a rise out of you, don’t let them see the hurt and anger they cause, and you just might get away unscathed. This is Alex’s strategy, and he believes it’s foolproof. However, one of his classmates, David, holds the opposite strategy and suffers the consequences that Alex fears. Because of this, David is the last person that Alex wants to get involved with. However, there are variables at play that are out of Alex’s control, and when a mysterious message about a flying boy starts to travel through the school, Alex sets out on a journey to unmask the culprit, and along the way he will have to break out of his comfort zone in ways that he never thought possible.

This is a classic story that adults will recognize as part of their past, and that kids will find comforting as they enter into the stage of their lives when fear and bullying are often a daily reality. Heartbreaking in its honest and unflinching depiction of the pain that often accompanies the adolescent years, The Icarus Show ultimately offers the most encouraging message of all: You are not alone.

Readers will enjoy a rapid ride through history in Death on the River of Doubt as Theodore Roosevelt, his son Kermit, explorer Colonel Cândido Rondon and a jungle-hardened crew explore an uncharted river in Brazil’s Amazonian rainforest. In 1913-14, these explorers spent nearly four months surveying the river, during which time Roosevelt also planned to collect wildlife specimens for the American Museum of Natural History.

The expedition started with severe losses, as the team was forced to ditch supplies as mules and oxen died of starvation. This was just the beginning of travails for the crew. In one gripping moment, two canoes became pinned between river rocks, and Roosevelt rushed into piranha-infested waters to help free the boats, gouging his leg in the process. As Roosevelt’s leg wound and a malarial infection brought him near death, he begged Rondon to leave him behind. 

Author Samantha Seiple adds realism to the story through explorers’ journal entries and photographs. In his darkest moments, Roosevelt may have doubted his expedition and his own survival, but there is no doubt that this middle grade read earns high marks for historical accuracy and adventure.

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

“We live in a time when life is hard for many people. Yet there is reason to hope and to dig deep for the strength hidden inside of us.” From award-winning poet Nikki Grimes comes this prophetic statement, which introduces One Last Word, a collection that combines Harlem Renaissance poetry with clever, thought-provoking and intricately formed poems of her own. 

Grimes begins her book with reflections on the notable poets of the early 20th-century Harlem Renaissance, which includes Countee Cullen, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes and other lesser-known poets, especially emerging women writers. They wrote about race, humanity’s role in the universe, anger, beauty and more. Grimes’ collection couldn’t come at a better time, as she notes: “These literary lights, writing at a time when the lynching of black men filled the news, were more than familiar with racial profiling, racial violence and every variety of injustice imaginable. Yet they ascended to great heights in spite of it all.”

In addition to their words ringing true, the real forte of this book are Grimes’ “golden shovel” poems, a challenging form in which she takes a line (or in some cases, a whole poem) and pens a new creation using the words from the original. Her poems are freshly made while echoing her predecessors.

Interspersed with colorful artwork from Sean Qualls, Christopher Myers, Javaka Steptoe and other lauded African-American illustrators, this is an important and timely poetry collection.

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

Life has been challenging for 10-year-old Cadence Mariah Jolly ever since her mother disappeared to pursue her musical dreams. As Cadence desperately yearns for her missing mom, she nurses her own musical and literary dreams in Sherri Winston’s heartfelt novel.

In a book brimming with musical allusions, Cadence lives in Harmony, Pennsylvania, and plans to become a “No.1 Bestselling Author of Amazing Stories.” Meanwhile, not even her family or best friends realize that she’s a gifted singer like her mom. Cadence—so shy that people call her Mouse—is trying hard to summon the gumption to change that.

Opportunity presents itself through youth choir auditions at Cadence’s lively, bustling church. Winston weaves occasional biblical references throughout the novel but still manages to create a story for all creeds and colors—a rare feat indeed. Too timid to audition in person, Cadence posts an anonymous video that soon goes viral, with news outlets vying frantically to identify the mysterious “Gospel Girl.” Ultimately, Cadence faces the agonizing choice of being true to herself or betraying one of her best friends.

Winston has a superb knack for creating intriguing middle school relationships, natural dialogue and an entire village of believable, multicultural characters. The Sweetest Sound is a deftly written saga that reads like a small symphony.

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