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.

————

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.

Abigail (don’t call her “Abby”) is so excited about starting sixth grade, she has to make lists just to calm herself down. She’s ready to rule the school with best friends Alli and Cami and their wicked pom pom choreography when disaster strikes three times over: Abigail ends up in a different homeroom than her friends; she doesn’t make the pom squad; and her homeroom teacher pairs her with wildly unpopular Gabby Marco for a year-long letter writing assignment. Always, Abigail is a story of friendship found in unexpected places, and the cost of kindness versus popularity.

Author Nancy Cavanaugh (This Journal Belongs to Ratchet) tells much of the story through lists, which capture Abigail's essential goodness along with the ways she fails Gabby as a friend. As she realizes her elite clique of friends aren’t such nice people, she lists “Something I Was Starting To Be Thankful For: That AlliCam weren’t in my homeroom.” When she finally overcomes her fear of unpopularity by proxy and sticks up for Gabby, it’s a personal victory and a blow to the bullying impulse.

The story is never preachy. Readers who empathize with Abigail’s desire to do the right thing while holding onto her privileged status can see for themselves the consequences of failing. For kids on the cusp of young adulthood and ready to advance as quickly as possible, Always, Abigail makes a compelling case for being kind and enjoying a little more of childhood while it lasts.

Heather Seggel reads too much and writes all about it in Northern California.

Kimberley Griffiths Little’s new book brings all the eeriness of the Louisiana bayou into an engaging story about a girl, her family and the secrets of the past.

Preteen Larissa Renaud didn’t exactly want to travel through time, but she does want to find out who the strange caller is on the disconnected phone in her family’s antique store. The caller can’t tell Larissa more than that she needs to “follow the fireflies.” When Larissa does, she finds herself observing a scene from the 1800s and learning more about her family history than her mother ever told her. As she starts to put all the pieces of the past together, the pieces of the present start to fall apart.

Full of adventure, The Time of the Fireflies takes Larissa on a wild ride with just enough—but not too much—scariness for a younger reader. Little’s prose is accessible and lyrical, making her new book an enjoyable read.

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

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

In 12-year-old Mysti Murphy’s imagination, she wears a beret and rides a bicycle by the Eiffel Tower. In the real world, she’s counting cans of dog food and rolls of toilet paper to help her family “hold on” until her dad comes home from the hospital. Mysti also keeps a secret: Her mother never leaves the house. To make matters worse, Mysti’s best friend, Anibal, has abandoned her to join the hipster crowd.

Anyone who attended junior high will find familiarity in author Karen Harrington’s depictions of bouncing cheerleaders and kids who are your best friend one day and consider you chopped liver the next. All the young characters struggle with self-determination and are stuck navigating day-to-day obstacles largely by themselves. Like Mysti, they aren’t getting much help from the adults in their lives.

Much of Courage for Beginners rings true. Mysti’s mother, crippled by agoraphobia, can’t shelter her daughter from the changes and challenges that life will invariably throw her way. Mysti learns that courage can begin by taking just a few steps outside her own door.

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

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

When antimatter combines with matter, it creates an explosion of energy. That’s an accurate formula for what Jon Scieszka has created with this excellent first book in his new middle grade series.

Incorporating Isaac Asimov’s Three Rules of Robotics, Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity and a bevy of scientific principles, Frank Einstein and the Antimatter Motor presents science in a subtle but hilarious way. Kid genius Frank Einstein toils away with piles of junk, hoping to create artificial intelligence robots. Not long after, Frank, his sidekick Watson and the goofball robots Klink and Klank are working together to create an antimatter motor for the science fair. But what’s a good tween read without a villain? Soon their mission is foiled by nefarious classmate T. Edison.

Brian Biggs’ cartoon-tastic two-color illustrations add the perfect punch to the “diary” look so many young readers have come to embrace. Scieszka clearly knows his audience and plays right into their hands, as this series promises entertainment but supports it with real science. There are plenty of explosions and experiments to inspire reluctant readers to don the lab coats and start inventing!

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

Also in BookPage: Scieszka and Biggs choose their favorite scenes from Frank Einstein and the Antimatter Motor.