In this standalone companion to the Newbery Honor and Coretta Scott King Award-winning Elijah of Buxton, author Christopher Paul Curtis returns to the Canadian town founded in the 1860s by former African-American slaves. Although few of the original settlers still live in Buxton in 1901, one of their descendants, Benji Alston, stands out. An aspiring newspaper reporter, Benji understands the power of the written word and enters an apprenticeship with Miss Cary, the daughter of real-life Mary Ann Camberton Shadd, an abolitionist and journalist in neighboring Chatham. Also residing in Chatham is Alvin “Red” Stockard, who is often mistreated by his bitter and racist grandmother, who suffered during the Irish immigration to Canada during “The Great Hunger.”

Benji and Red alternate as narrators, incorporating historical details and fun antics from the first book. As they become fast friends, they realize they’ve both heard tales of the Madman of Piney Woods, who is rumored to be an escaped slave from the U.S. and may even be a potential murderer. When the boys face a shocking encounter with the Madman, each begins in his own way to understand the nature of fear and heroism. Countering heartbreak with humor, Curtis gives middle-grade readers another fine novel to ponder the wonders of humanity.

This article was originally published in the October 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

BookPage Children's Top Pick, October 2014

Most people don’t think much about homonyms or prime numbers. But most people aren’t 12-year-old Rose Howard, whose every waking moment is spent thinking about just those things. So it’s especially good luck that both her name (Rose/rows) and her dog’s (Rain/reign) are homonyms.

Few people understand Rose, whose OCD and Asperger syndrome make her the odd girl out at school and at home. Her mother left when she was young, so Rose lives with her father, an angry man who can’t deal with her eccentricities. Fortunately, her caring Uncle Weldon is her saving grace throughout the entire story. When Rain goes missing after a storm, Rose’s life changes dramatically. Her routine is disrupted, and her focus must shift to finding him.

Rain Reign is a triumph reminiscent of Sharon Draper’s Out of My Mind, another excellent novel that illustrates what it’s like to live with special needs. Rose’s first-person narration is spot-on, relaying the repetition of her thoughts, her mind and the rules that guide her life. Readers should note the use of the word “retard” by Rose’s fellow students, but the context is appropriate and accurate.

It’s hard to imagine a more concise depiction of Rose’s Asperger syndrome, a more powerful portrayal of her father or a more heart–tugging story of love, loss and triumph. This poignant novel may very well bring Ann M. Martin her second Newbery Honor (after A Corner of the Universe in 2003) or, better yet, the Newbery Medal.

This article was originally published in the October 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

It may be hard to imagine growing up as a young girl in Sudan, raking cow plop, but with gentle restraint, award-winning author Andrea Davis Pinkney brings readers into the heart and mind of Amira, whose life is forever changed by the Janjaweed’s attacks in Darfur.

Pinkney chose an unusual format for The Red Pencil, calling it “a novel of poems, pictures and possibilities.” The cadence of the language and evocative line drawings by Shane W. Evans draw the reader into the warmth, traditions and superstitions of village life in Sudan and foreshadow a time when the “evil men on horseback” will appear.

Readers meet Dando; Muma; Amira’s disabled sister, Leila; her friend Halima, who’s lucky enough to go to school; and their family friend, Old Anwar. Amira is 12 and wears a colorful toob like her Muma, but she thinks Muma’s traditions are backward. Amira longs to attend school, and Old Anwar teaches her to read. When the Janjaweed kill her father and the villagers flee, Amira survives a treacherous journey to a refugee camp and loses her voice. An aide worker’s gift of a red pencil and tablet allow Amira to heal and to follow her dreams.

Although Pinkney’s form is untraditional in this important book, her poetry, merged with Evans’ vibrant drawings, takes hold and successfully transports the reader to Darfur.

Billie B. Little is the Founding Director of Discovery Center at Murfree Spring, a hands-on museum in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

There’s something about cats. In 2010, Benno and the Night of Broken Glass by Meg Wiviott and Josée Bisaillon showed the Nazi Kristallnacht riots from the point of view of an alley cat. Before that, The Cats in Krasinski Square by Karen Hesse and Wendy Watson told how stray cats distracted Nazi dogs, allowing food to be smuggled into the Warsaw ghetto. And now there’s Clare, a cat who sees the contemporary Israeli/Palestinian conflict from a unique point of view.

Clare wasn’t always a cat: Once she was an American eighth grader, busily avoiding detentions and making fun of her new teacher. After she’s killed in an accident, Clare finds herself transformed into a cat living in occupied territory on Israel’s West Bank. Running from a hissing tom one day, Clare flees to a seemingly abandoned Palestinian house where two Israeli soldiers have set up a temporary spy headquarters. But a scared, possibly autistic boy is hiding in the house . . . and violence outside seems imminent.

Deborah Ellis, author of Breadwinner and other middle grade books set in the world’s most contentious battle zones, alternates between Clare’s current situation and her past reflections. Clare can’t go back and be a better sister and student—or solve the Middle East’s deeply entrenched problems—but maybe she can help fix just one moment.

Don’t be put off by this book’s unusual premise. The Cat at the Wall is a sensitive, deceptively simple tale of war, bullying and tempered hope.

Jill Ratzan reviews for School Library Journal and works as a school librarian at a small independent school in New Jersey.

Most children’s stories that feature animals as main characters tend to be highly anthropomorphic. From “The Three Little Pigs” to The Incredible Journey, animals stand in for humans, right down to living in houses and sitting in chairs. Not so in Nuts to You, the latest from Newbery-winning author Lynne Rae Perkins. The squirrels in this story behave as squirrels, and their story is very interesting.

The main protagonist, Jed, begins his tale on the day he was snatched by a hawk. Luckily, he manages to escape, and more luckily, his friends see where he lands. They race off to help him find his way back. They are far from home when they discover that humans are cutting branches from trees around the “buzz-paths” (power lines) and the squirrels must hurry back to warn their community.

Perkins describes squirrel life and squirrel thought so perfectly, you can easily imagine what the squirrels in your yard are doing after you have read this book. Even many of their names are what you would expect them to be: Tsts, Chebby, Tchke, etc. There are footnotes for some needed explanation of squirrel-ness, which are funny and delightful. The whole book, including the author’s illustrations, is charming and entertaining,

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

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August 27, 2014: A previous version of this article included criticism of the book's footnotes, which were located at the end of each chapter in the Advance Review Copy.

Jaden is sure that his parents aren’t satisfied with him. And why would they be? They adopted a kid who lights things on fire, hides food in his closet, steals tip money from restaurants, and has to be sent from one therapist to another. In Half a World Away, written by Newbery Award-winner Cynthia Kadohata, Jaden knows that his mother in Romania didn’t want him, and now his parents in America, Penni and Steve, are trying to replace him. That’s right; he’s so disappointing that his adoptive parents are going to adopt another child.

Jaden will be traveling with his parents to Kazakhstan to pick up Bahytzhan, his new baby brother. Preparations for an international adoption are taxing and scary even in the best conditions, but Jaden and his parents are dealing with Jaden’s struggles, Penni’s overbearing sister and the surprise closing of their adoption agency. The trip is overwhelming before they even leave, and once they arrive, things do not go exactly to plan.

Half a World Away is a staggeringly realistic portrayal of both the arduous process of international adoption and the struggles faced by children once the adoption takes place. Told from Jaden’s point of view, Kadohata’s newest takes readers to Kazakhstan with the family and introduces a variety of unique characters, including many who are completely unexpected. Expertly written and beautifully told, Half a World Away opens places and experiences to readers that they may have never encountered before.

Hearing aids aren’t what they used to be. When author-illustrator Cece Bell was a child, it was the Phonic Ear, a bulky one partly strapped to her chest (not the smaller, unobtrusive ones of today), which served as the best option for amplifying her hearing and enabling her to better lip-read the world around her. In her new graphic novel memoir for children, Bell brings this childhood experience to life with humor and style.

She captures specifics with ease—the childhood of the ‘70s ("The Waltons," anyone?), as well as her own particular experience with hearing loss. Yet the book touches upon universal themes, as any good memoir does. (To be clear, Bell notes at the book’s close that she was more interested in capturing childhood feelings than “being 100 percent accurate with the details,” so perhaps this goes into the category of “fictionalized memoir.”) The young Bell struggled to fit in, to find true friends and to determine her own unique gifts and self-worth, like many adolescents do. Many of these challenges are laugh-out-loud funny (with her hearing aid, for one, Bell could hear her teachers as they wandered around the building), making this an enjoyable, accessible read.

Communicating a refreshing self-awareness, Bell includes her most bumbling, awkward moments (as well as those of well-meaning kids and adults around her) without crippling self-consciousness, which is part of what makes this such a poignant, honest read. You almost forget the characters have rabbit ears; they’re living, breathing, complex personalities, and readers feel as if they’re right there with the young Bell.

In a thoughtful closing author’s note, she makes clear that her childhood experience is not meant to be indicative of the experiences of hard-of-hearing or deaf people everywhere, noting that some people choose to use American Sign Language and do not consider their deafness a disability. “I am an expert on no one’s deafness but my own,” she writes.

And we readers are lucky she shared that experience with us. Utterly charming and sweet without ever being saccharine, this is like no other book you’ll read this year.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a Q&A with Cece Bell for El Deafo.

Julie Danielson features authors and illustrators at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, a children’s literature blog.

Twelve-year-old Candice Phee figures that her life needs fixing. Her father and her uncle need to end their longtime feud, and her mother needs to find a way out of her depression. Also, her pen pal Denille needs to finally write back, and her new friend Douglas needs to return to the real home he claims is in Another Dimension. Candice knows she can solve these problems, big and small, because she’s daring, determined and bursting with creative ideas.

Like Maggie in The Meaning of Maggie, Candice reports on the world exactly as she sees it, even if that’s sometimes different from the perspectives of those around her. (Although she shows some signs of autism, she insists that she’s not autistic. She’s just being herself.) But what stands out about Candice’s unique and well-developed voice is the way she navigates between serious subjects like the death of her baby sister and light topics like Douglas’ pan-universal travel plans. Like the lives of her readers, Candice’s life is sometimes messy, sometimes difficult, sometimes funny, but always hopeful.

This article was originally published in the September 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Lots of scientists—Newton, Salk, Galileo—changed the world. Now Ellie’s grandfather Melvin might be on the same track. But is that a good thing?

When 11-year-old Ellie meets the new, somewhat odd, boy in town, she soon learns it’s really her Grandpa Melvin, a scientist who discovered the secret to eternal youth. Masquerading as Ellie’s cousin, Melvin embarks on a secret mission to prove his scientific methods are valid. But amid the adventure of it all, something just doesn’t seem right.

Despite her growing interest in science, Ellie begins to understand that all science has consequences, positive or negative. She considers Oppenheimer’s atomic bomb, for example. Just because something works doesn’t mean we should use it, right? Maybe Grandpa Melvin’s eternal youth solution isn’t the answer to everything. 

Science is powerful stuff, and it can be heady. But in the hands of capable Newbery Honor author Jennifer L. Holm, it can be truly funny and touching as well. Holm seamlessly brings a science theme to a quirky book that middle grade readers will actually want to read because, after all, who doesn’t want to know what is really possible in the world? As Holm deftly shows, nothing is impossible.

This article was originally published in the September 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Eight-year-old Aref loves nature, making lists, his family, his grandfather Sidi and his home in Muscat, Oman. When his parents decide to finish their doctorates in Michigan, Aref refuses to embrace the move. The important things—school, friends, his grandfather, the sea turtle beach—do not fit in Aref’s suitcase, and he finds himself getting in his mother’s way while sinking into sadness. Underneath his sadness is fear: Will Sidi be here in three years when Aref returns? Will Aref remember Muscat?

Gently and tenderly, Sidi pulls his grandson away from the packing and takes him out into the world they love. They visit beloved, familiar places and have adventures in new ones. They spend a night in the desert where they see the night sky free from light pollution. They meet a falconer, and Aref watches as the falcon flies away and then returns. They sleep on Sidi’s rooftop and take a boat ride into the harbor to do some fishing. They save important stones and memories along the way.

In a world of speed and instant information, it is a blessing to slow down with Aref and his grandfather and to think about what we love and what we would miss if we had to leave it. Nye’s poetic prose is so filled with tenderness that I found myself slowing down and rereading long passages just to enjoy the feel of the words on my tongue. It’s been a long time since I have read a book that has brought me that special kind of pleasure, and I look forward to sharing this with children and adults.

Robin Smith lives in Nashville, where she teaches second grade, knits and reads, sometimes all at the same time.

This article was originally published in the September 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

When I was younger, I was a huge fan of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s novels A Little Princess and The Secret Garden, in which a girl is whisked from darkest India to a very different environment in England, usually in the wake of a family tragedy. As captivating as those novels were to my preteen self, what was always missing was a real portrait, not just a glimpse, of what the heroine’s life was like in the exotic place from which she came. Katherine Rundell’s Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms does exactly that. Instead of making Zimbabwe some mysterious “other” place, she imbues it with color, love and vibrancy. Her heroine, Will, is born to English parents who have made Zimbabwe their true home, and Will seems utterly suited to the country’s wild landscape, fascinating wildlife and friendly people.

Rundell’s third-person narration stays just on this side of sentimentality, as she clearly idealizes Will’s fearlessness, independence and joie de vivre. But her affection for her heroine is contagious, and when, after a series of personal tragedies, Will is sent to an English boarding school full of students more concerned with perfecting their nail polish than with exploring the world around them, readers will experience along with her a sense of disorientation, exclusion and profound homesickness. Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms offers readers a sympathetic and enticing portrait of a part of the world they might not have heard of before reading this book, but will certainly be intrigued by ever after.

This article was originally published in the September 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

BookPage Children's Top Pick, September 2014

Award-winning author Jacqueline Woodson was born in Columbus, Ohio, in 1963, in a “country caught between Black and White.” John F. Kennedy was president, Martin Luther King Jr. was planning the March on Washington, and Malcolm X talked of revolution. But, like her picture book Show Way (2005), Woodson’s new memoir-in-verse, Brown Girl Dreaming, is of the ages—an African-American family’s story traced across the generations to Thomas Jefferson Woodson, perhaps the first son of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, and William J. Woodson, who fought for the Union in the Civil War. Her story is “history coming down through time,” narrated as if she is standing right next to us, pointing out family pictures on the wall of her childhood home.

Woodson’s father always said that “there’s never gonna be a Woodson that sits in the back of the bus,” but her mother yearned to move home to Greenville, South Carolina. In beautifully drawn family and community scenes, Woodson shows the warmth of life in the South, even while she learns to sit in the back of the bus, to step off the curb for white people, and not to look white people in the eye. When they move again, Woodson feels a sense of loss and sees New York City as “treeless as a bad dream. Who could love / this place—where / no pine trees grow, no porch swings move / with the weight of / your grandmother on them.” Readers may well find this one of the best books they have ever read, rich with a sense of time and place and glowing with the author’s passion for words.

This article was originally published in the September 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Benjamin Epstein loves “sweeping,” or applying to sweepstakes. He’s especially excited about the competition to write a new slogan for Royal-T Bathroom Tissue. Winning the contest would provide enough money for Benjamin and his mother to avoid eviction from their small Philadelphia apartment without giving up on the Grand Plan his father designed before dying of lung cancer: Benjamin’s mother will finish her accounting degree, get a good job, and she and Benjamin will have a better life.

But saving for accounting exam fees is difficult when the rent is due, and the unexpected arrival of Benjamin’s Zeyde (Yiddish for grandfather), who suffers from memory problems, complicates matters further. Benjamin hatches a moneymaking scheme to help his family, but it’ll take all his creativity and energy—along with his best friend Toothpick’s skill at crafting horror movie-style special effects—to keep the Grand Plan on track.

As its title suggests, Death by Toilet Paper balances this serious content with a light tone. Unusual facts about toilet paper open each chapter, and Yiddish words sprinkled throughout the text add interest (although because Yiddish is a declining language, the vocabulary sounds more authentic when spoken by Zeyde and the Epsteins’ elderly neighbor than by seventh-grader Benjamin).

With the contemporary economy placing many families into circumstances like Benjamin and his mother’s, Donna Gephart’s latest middle grade offering provides an important perspective on how love, humor and, most of all, hope can make a difference during tough times.

Jill Ratzan reviews for School Library Journal and works as a school librarian at a small independent school in New Jersey.