Violet Diamond has always hated the way people look at her—like she doesn’t belong in her family. Her mother and older half sister are white, but Violet herself is biracial; her father, whom she never met, was African-American. Growing up in a small town outside Seattle, Violet only knows a handful of other people of color. But the summer after she finishes elementary school, Violet asks to meet her paternal grandmother, from whom her mother has been estranged since the car accident that killed Violet’s father.

Violet’s “Bibi” (Swahili for grandmother), a professional artist, lives in a primarily black neighborhood of Los Angeles. As Bibi and Violet build a relationship for the first time, Violet learns to appreciate their shared value of personal prayer, her family’s difficult history and her own racial identity, all while dancing to old records, cooking special-ingredient recipes and touring the city’s landmarks.

Brenda Woods, author of the Coretta Scott Honor book The Red Rose Box, was inspired to write Violet’s story by the circumstances of a biracial daughter of a friend. Although her friend’s daughter was unable to trace the African-American side of her family, Woods wanted to explore how a similar girl might feel in different circumstances.

Violet’s voice is delightfully perfect for a precocious, attentive 11-year-old. She loves learning new words (which she records in her word and wish journal), likes to ice skate and entertains potential career plans ranging from commercial pilot to gourmet chef. A cast of supporting characters, including Violet’s maternal grandparents, her sister’s French-speaking boyfriend, her friends and their families, a newfound (and annoying!) boy cousin and even a newly adopted kitten add texture to the story.

A book about a biracial preteen is as welcome as ever, especially at a time when breakfast cereal commercials featuring interracial families can still spark racist ire. The Blossoming Universe of Violet Diamond is overall funny, poignant and an important contribution to the diversity of middle grade literature.

In The Sittin’ Up, author Shelia P. Moses returns to Rich Square, North Carolina, made famous by her National Book Award finalist and Coretta Scott King Honor book, The Legend of Buddy Bush. In Moses’ charming, ever-thoughtful new novel, one death in the summer of 1940 has the power to transform an entire town.

Twelve-year-old Bean (nicknamed for his close friendship with skinny-as-a-pole Martha Rose) narrates the events that occur after his adopted grandfather, 100-year-old Mr. Bro. Wiley, the last of the region’s former slaves, takes his final breath.

Wiley, a gentle, loving man who offered guidance to his community, was respected by both blacks and whites alike and surely deserves a “sittin’ up,” or wake, like no other. Although the Depression has hit Bean’s sharecropping family and neighbors hard, the boy’s folksy vernacular describes the rich foods, colorful characters and revered traditions that still shape the Low Meadows. Just as the tears fall, so does the rain, bringing with it a threat of flood that could destroy Bean’s entire town. The boy strives to prove that he’s old enough not only to participate in the sittin’ up, but also to step up as a man and help save his family.

While most African-American children’s literature focuses on either slavery or the Civil Rights movement, Moses gives middle grade readers a glimpse of a time when slavery was recent enough to weigh heavily on the minds and hearts of African Americans, yet a more equitable future was also imaginable. Bean sees how many whites still mistreat the black townsfolk and how sharecropping is a looser form of slavery; nevertheless, he knows that an education will help him achieve his dream of becoming a doctor. Moses’ masterful storytelling shows how Wiley’s death could be the key that helps unite this community.

During school vacation, Nell is sent to stay with her aunt Liv and her two little cousins (along with some chickens, ducks and Maggie the pig) at Lemon Cottage. On the day Nell arrives, a mysterious girl on a magnificent black and white horse nearly runs her down. The mystery girl also steals Nell’s prized possession: a mechanical music box with a carousel and 16 horses, made by her dad before he abandoned the family and ran off to the lights of Las Vegas.

According to Aunt Liv, the horse must be one of the 99 horses that used to live next door. But those horses are boarded elsewhere now and soon will be sold at auction.

Nell begins to form a tenuous friendship with the mystery girl, a runaway named Angel, and Belle, the beautiful horse Angel tries to keep and protect. While riding together on Belle in the moonlight, Angel tells Nell a magical tale of 100 horses. Is Angel spinning a fable or trying to reach out for help?

In A Hundred Horses, a lyrical story of friendship and community, author Sarah Lean has crafted a perfect story for young readers who love horses and magic.

It all started with an email—an email that Wade and Darrell, stepbrothers and best friends who are as different as possible, were never meant to read. It was a coded email addressed to Wade’s father, written by Wade’s Uncle Henry shortly before he died under very mysterious circumstances. In The Forbidden Stone, the first book in Tony Abbott’s Copernicus Legacy series, Wade and Darrell—along with Wade’s father, Darrell’s cousin Lily and Lily’s friend Becca—travel to Germany to attend Henry’s funeral. However, once they arrive, they are drawn into a frantic race to uncover secrets guarded for hundreds of years.

But they are not running this race alone. A dangerous organization will stop at nothing to uncover the mysterious relics first. Wade, Darrell, Lily and Becca must stay one step ahead, solving mysteries, cracking codes and piecing together puzzles, many of which date back more than 500 years. They must travel throughout Europe and then the world, into places well known and forgotten, and follow the path that Nicholas Copernicus set for them, in order to gain the first of 12 artifacts.

Intricately written, meticulously researched and full of wit and humor, The Forbidden Stone is a thrilling start to what will surely become a must-read series.

Anyone who has read Catherynne M. Valente’s first book for young readers, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, and marveled at the author’s fantastic prose and vivid imagination, was pleased to find that Valente had not lost her touch in the second book, The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There. But her characters are so fantastical, her descriptions so alluring and her philosophies so poignant that surely Valente couldn’t do it again, could she? She has. The third book in the series, The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two, is as brilliantly written as the first two and an absolute thrill to read.

The protagonist, a girl named September who lives in Nebraska, first went to Fairyland when she was 12 years old—still a child, still easily borne into an alternate world. But now she is 14 and practically grown and not sure that she isn’t too old to get back in, even though it is her only heart’s desire. She needn’t have worried, for Fairyland needs her as much as she needs it. September rescued Fairyland from an evil Marquess in the first book, set things in order in Fairyland-Below in the second, and now she must travel to the Moon in Fairyland and save it as well. Luckily for her, her best friends Saturday (a boy born from the sea) and A-Through-L the Wyverary (part wyvern, part library) are waiting for her and ready to go adventuring.

As with any book, we could sketch out the plot, relay a few details and tell you of the self-discoveries that September makes, but it almost doesn’t matter with Valente’s books. It’s in the telling of the story itself that the magic happens. Reading this author transports you—her prose is magnificent, her narrative voice more than compelling. I cannot stop dog-earing pages for passages I want to remember and share. Like Oz and Wonderland, Valente’s Fairyland will draw you in, but unlike Dorothy and Alice (but much like September), you will not want to leave. The only thing I missed this time around are Ana Juan’s fantastic illustrations, but only because they weren’t included in my review copy.

In Valerie Hobbs' new novel, Wolf, Jack the border collie has landed in the perfect place. Loved by his teenage boy, Luke, he’s the top dog and responsible for safeguarding a small flock of sheep on the family farm. Jack has only one nagging concern. He’s growing old.

Soon, an unwanted visitor changes everything. A lone wolf, banished from his pack, lurks in the woods near Jack’s farm, and his constant, harrowing presence—stalking the sheep and hoping to mate with Jack’s granddaughter, Callie—gives a frightening edge to the book that compels the reader’s rapt attention.

This dramatic sequel to Hobbs’ popular novel, Sheep, alternates between Jack’s and the wolf’s points of view. In an unsettling voice, the wolf counts his journey in moons and his narrow gaze sees the world as rock-strewn hills, grassy slopes and woods for hunting. His reactions are visceral, his life an ongoing battle for survival. He is acutely lonely, “a feeling so unfamiliar that at first he confused it with hunger.” He’s drawn to the family farm by the slow-moving sheep that look like easy prey—far easier targets than the rodent that bit him, causing a wound that will not heal. Wolf’s austere existence is contrasted with Jack’s loving family and the day-to-day concerns of Luke and his friends.

Jack isn’t as quick as he used to be, and Wolf could have become another tired story of an aging dog’s quest for a blue ribbon at the state fair. But Hobbs foreshadows the drama to come with restraint, saying of Jack, “He would rather die than disappoint Luke.” As the fast-moving plot progresses, the tension is tightened like a string, with each incident, each phrase, increasing it slightly.

The contrast in tone between the two animals and the transparency of each canine’s thoughts and desires is gripping. Raised by humans, loving Jack wins our hearts, but it is the wolf, wild and terrifying, who ultimately wins our respect and our pity.

Born in Mendeland, known today as Sierra Leone, 9-year-old Margu enjoys the lush green of her homeland until drought causes her to be pawned for rice and later forced into slavery. Monica Edinger’s illustrated tale of historical fiction, told in a longer picture book format, follows the girl’s fears as she makes the seven-week voyage across the Atlantic aboard the Spanish slave ship, the Amistad. Although most children’s literature about the Middle Passage focuses on the hopelessness of entering a life of slavery, this narration describes Margu’s unusual situation.

While aboard the Amistad, a slave named Cinque picks the chain locks and leads a mutiny that results in the murder of most of the ship’s crew. When the ship is finally captured and the slaves are taken to New Haven, Connecticut, Margu and three other children live with the jailer’s family as the trial against Cinque and his fellow slaves goes all the way to the Supreme Court and drags out over several years. Accompanied by archival reproductions, news accounts of the time period and Byrd’s colorful and detailed artwork, Margu’s story relates her curiosity about the strange smells, sounds, clothing, animals and buildings she encounters, as well as her unyielding dream to return to Africa.

When the Supreme Court deems Margu and the Amistad passengers free, her dream becomes a reality and her return trip, with a pleasant cabin, plenty of food and walks along deck, is completely different than her initial voyage. For readers wondering about the real Margu, Edinger offers more information in a concluding author’s note. Finding beauty amid tragedy, Africa Is My Home offers middle grade readers a remarkable glimpse of this overlooked yet significant moment in American history.

We’ve all found things under our couch cushions—coins, toys, the television remote, crumbs. Oh, the crumbs. But what if you found something important, something that could even save the world? That’s definitely not what River, Freak and Fiona thought they had found. In Henry Clark’s endearingly wacky debut novel, What We Found in the Sofa and How It Saved the World, the three friends dig through the cushions of a strange couch at their bus stop and find nothing more than a crayon. A zucchini-colored crayon, to be exact. And it’s this crayon that sets them on their path to saving the world—with a little help from some unusual sources.

It turns out that zucchini-colored crayons are quite rare. So rare, in fact, that when the three friends put the crayon up for sale on the Internet, people start offering them thousands of dollars! However, they are soon contacted by the mysterious person who owns the home next to their bus stop, asking them not to sell the crayon because it belongs to him, and it could be the key to saving their town, and the world. River, Freak and Fiona agree to talk to Alf, and they soon find themselves in the middle of a scheme to capture an invader who wants to enslave the entire town, and eventually, the entire world. All they need is a little help from a talking painting, a teleporting sofa, an artificially-intelligent domino and a cat named Mucus.

What We Found in the Sofa and How It Saved the World is fast-paced, witty and full of surprises. Clark creates three very likable characters, each with his or her own strengths and weaknesses, who all need each other to succeed. There is action, adventure, mystery and lots of humor—a mix that makes the book difficult to put down. The reader begins to hope, toward the end of the book, that River, Freak and Fiona save the world, but maybe only temporarily. You know, so we can read about them saving it from danger once again in another new adventure!

Historical fiction and mysteries hold high appeal for middle grade readers. The Great Trouble combines elements from both these genres in a story of one boy's efforts to stop the deadly 1854 Broad Street London cholera epidemic.

Ever since his parents' deaths, Eel's been making his own way with a combination of odd jobs, including cleaning animal cages for well-respected medical man Dr. John Snow.  When cholera strikes Eel's tenement-like neighborhood, most residents assume that poisonous air is to blame. But Dr. Snow believes the culprit is tainted water, and enlists Eel's help in proving his theory. Together with his friend Florrie, Eel must use the tools of scientific inquiry—including drawing maps, combing death records and interviewing residents—to demonstrate the accuracy of Dr. Snow's hypothesis and convince a local committee to close the Broad Street water pump before more victims sicken and die.

Even in the middle of this desperate race against time, Eel's personal troubles demand his attention too. Author (and BookPage reviewer) Deborah Hopkinson fills her tale with relatable characters, lots of suspense and plenty of details on the everyday life of an orphan living in Victorian London. Best of all, observant readers will notice that they have all the clues they need to find the solution . . . if, like Eel, they know the right questions to ask.

In a style that's increasingly becoming the gold standard for historical fiction for young readers, Hopkinson includes an extensive reader's guide at the back of The Great Trouble. In this guide, she outlines which parts of her tale are true and which are fictional, adding a timeline, three separate bibliographies, information about the book's characters and setting and finally a note about public health and the emerging field of epidemiology.

If you enjoy black humor, then you will adore the opening lines of The Nine Lives of Alexander Baddenfield:

"A grave should be a sad thing, and the grave of a child the saddest thing of all.
The tombstone reads:
Here Lies Alexander Baddenfield,
Who Departed This Mortal Coil after a Dozen Years.
He was the Last of the Baddenfields?Thank God!"

Imagine, if you will, an Edward Gorey-like tale written for middle schoolers. This darkly hilarious novel is about a nasty boy from an unimaginably horrible family. Alexander is the last of his line, and because his family members tend to die young, he visits a mad scientist who implants him with the "novavium" of a cat, an organ that is said to give cats nine lives. Alexander's first life ends on the operating table, because successful implantation of the organ requires the death of the patient?but his second life immediately kicks in.

At this point, the book warns readers to stop, because "You are about to embark on a tale that recounts the sometimes gruesome deaths of a young boy, and his not always pleasant rebirths."

A story like this, of course, will not strike everyone's funnybone, but for many young readers, it offers an exciting, refreshing take on mortality. Imagine what risks a boy with nine lives might take: Alexander tries to fly like Icarus off the observation deck of the Empire State Building; he travels to Spain to fight bulls; he kayaks down a river, forgetting that he can't swim.

Alexander's daredevil antics come to an abrupt end, however, when he reaches his eighth life and suddenly begins to face mortality. At one point, a happy ending seems to be looming. Never fear: As readers are reminded early on, this is by no means "a Hollywood movie, or a fairy tale, or a run-of-the-mill chapter book."

Author John Bemelmans Marciano Bemelmans, the grandson of Madeline creator Ludwig Bemelmans, teams with illustrator Sophie Blackall for this delightfully dark romp—a wickedly good choice for Halloween reading.

Many people believe God is everywhere, and He/She certainly is in this captivating book of verse. In a series of 16 poems, Cynthia Rylant imagines God wondering what it’s like to be human. To find out, God pursues a variety of very human endeavors, such as becoming a beautician, making spaghetti on a lonely night, going to the doctor and watching cable TV.

Of course, an irreverent book like this won’t be for everyone, and may offend some. That said, I found it a lovely and thought-provoking look at what it means to be human, and what it means to be godlike. There are many wonderful moments of humor, such as when God goes to the doctor: “And the doctor said, ‘You don’t need me, you’re God.’ And God said, ‘Well, you’re pretty good at playing me, I figured you’d know what the problem was.’”

Such interplay between reverence and comedy forms the heart and soul of this unique little volume. When God gets a desk job, She resorts to eating Snickers bars (37!) to get through the day: “She thought that if She had to pick up that phone one more time, She’d just start the whole Armageddon thing people keep talking about.”

Only a supremely talented team could pull off a book like this (which includes 26 poems from a collection first published in 2003). Rylant is the Newbery Award-winning author of more than 100 children’s books, including the Henry and Mudge series. Marla Frazee’s illustrations capture the humanity of each poem, along with just the right amount of godlike wonder. This gem of a book is sure to spark spirited discussions.

If you’re lucky, you’ve met sleuth Precious Ramotswe in Alexander McCall Smith’s best-selling No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency mysteries for adults. Now in The Mystery of Meerkat Hill, second in Smith’s series for children, young readers get a chance to follow her adventures.

Precious, a girl from Botswana, has a mystery on her hands. Her new friends, Teb and Pontsho, walk shoeless all the way home from school, burning their feet on the hot ground. When Precious learns they have never even tasted an apple, she concludes they must be very poor. Then, her friends’ most valuable possession, the family cow, goes missing. Has it been stolen? Precious is determined to find a way to help. This time she calls on their pet meerkat, Kosi, for assistance, and he nearly steals the show!

The mystery is peppered with family and friends’ tales about hiding from lions and tricking ostriches. All these stories will engage young readers, as will the author’s asides. For example, when Precious visits Teb and Pontsho’s modest home, she tells them it’s a nice house. “That was not a lie,” the author notes. “It is not a lie to say something nice to somebody.” In some stories, this might come across as moralizing, but here, McCall Smith’s light touch makes it palatable.

The action is set against the backdrop of Bot­swana, with endless skies where at night “the stars appear—great silver fields of them.” The book is written with the ease of a consummate storyteller, while Iain McInstosh’s woodcuts enliven the text and handsomely depict the terrain, people and animal life of Botswana.

How do Newbery Medalists follow their award-winning novels? If they’re Jack Gantos, they do it with more over-the-top humor and even crazier adventures. Picking up where Dead End in Norvelt left off, the war hysteria of the Cuban Missile Crisis becomes a big threat to a small town in From Norvelt to Nowhere. Although no longer grounded, young Jack Gantos (yes, still named after the author) remains Miss Volker’s assistant in writing obituaries.

Both mystery and history endure—and occasionally combine—when Miss Volker becomes the last original Norvelter. The town’s other original inhabitant was poisoned in the same fashion as in the first novel, and the town’s namesake, Eleanor Roosevelt, also passes away. When Jack accompanies Miss Volker to Eleanor’s gravesite to aid in writing a fitting obituary, their trip turns to hijinks. Soon the pair is on a course to Florida, hoping to catch Norvelt’s now infamous old-lady killer.

As Jack tries to avoid another one of his nose bleeds and keep Miss Volker from wielding her silver pistol, the latter continues to give the boy history lessons and creates plenty of red herrings along the way.

While the mystery drives the plot, the heart of the story is the intergenerational friendship between Jack and Miss Volker. Only Miss Volker would soak her hands in split-pea soup to restore their sensitivity, and only Jack would understand enough to help her. Hold on tight for another wild ride through the mind of Jack Gantos—both of them.