🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 One of my very favorites when young, this middle-grade series deserves a re-read, and this reader is certainly up for the challenge. A twenty-six book series, begun in 1946 by author Walter R Brooks (and marvelously illustrated by Kurt Wiese), most of these books are currently out of print,…
🌟🌟🌟🌟💫A funny and touching middle-grade read about being twelve years old, struggling with the indelicate symptoms of a chronic and life-altering illness, and falling for your first crush, at precisely the age where “everything about being a human feels overwhelmingly embarrassing”. Our first person narrator, Alison (Al), lives with her…
🌟🌟🌟🌟 Written by a former school-teacher, this lovely children’s book is a gentle look at the sometimes frightening, always expectant, world of the young, - a world where change-without-explanation can be as bewildering and it is distressing. Chloe is a smart, self-sufficient and curious eleven-year-old, living with a mysterious mother…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 A pure delight from start to finish, this lovely children’s book cannot help but light up your day. Leo, our main protagonist, is a ten-year-old boy with puffy orange hair that has earned him the nickname of Lion (short for Dandelion). Leo, a solitary and troubled boy, suffers from…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟+ By Jove, this is one terrific book! Jacob Jollimore is thirteen years old, an adopted Vietnamese boy who is something of a science geek (self-proclaimed), at an awkward age and time in his life. As his parents, facing financial collapse, harness all their remaining resources to renovate the crumbling…
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ What child (or adult for that matter) hasn’t wished they could fly? This wonderful middle-grade book takes that delightful universal wish, and runs with it - turning out a somewhat dark and dangerous fable about a twelve year old girl, a sailor and a shipwreck, an eagle, an Icelandic…
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1/2 What a charming book! Targeted for children aged seven and up; bursting with reproductions of classic art, captured with color and energy breathing life onto every page - this visually spectacular and lovely little book teaches children about the artist Cézanne, helping set the stage for a life-long…
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ “Baking bread is a serious business”. When the year is 911 and you are Lily, nine years old, the child of Sicilian immigrant parents, eking out an existence in the tenements of NYC, life itself is a serious business. Everyone is expected to contribute - from assistance with the…
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ A hold-on-to-the-edge-of-your seat childrens’ adventure book for salty dogs and their sea-mates everywhere. Robert and Michael, twelve and fourteen years old, respectively, are runaways - each of them seeking escape from the harshness of a young world that seems to have no place for them. “Robert had had enough.…
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Middle-school mayhem magic. Austin Davenport, grade six, is an everyman (or an everymiddle-schooler, at least). Slightly nerdy, awkward, insecure and trying desperately to fit in with the “cool” kids, Austin and his struggles are immediately relatable and universally compelling. Where he differs though, is in that Austin is both…
