Treehouse series

This is NOT Mary Pope Osborne's Treehouse.  You will see what I mean when you visit this site.
This series is so BOY that I - not being a BOY - had trouble reading the first book.  Andy and Terry started with a 13-story treehouse.  Then they added 13 more stories in the second book, The 26-Story Treehouse.  Can you guess the title of the forthcoming book?*

This treehouse does not have magic time-traveling powers.  It DOES have the scariest roller coaster in the world and a baby dinosaur petting zoo, 2 or more swimming pools, and an anti-gravity chamber.  Among other things.

Check them out.  Click here.

* Here's a hint:

BoB Battle Plan

It distresses me that the books I have read already in this year's SLJ's Battle of the Kids' Books are toward the end of the battle.  No fair!  I DID read Brown Girl Dreaming.  But not another title until The Madman of Piney Woods in Round 5.  And then, I skip to Round 8, where I read both titles, We Were Liars  and  West of the Moon. I had better start reading aggressively.  There are trips to my local libraries and bookstores in my future.

Mister Max!

 

I told my mother - age, 80 plus - about all the books I read while away and she asked, "Have you read any more books about that boy who starts a detective business?"  Um?  I honestly could not remember the series she was referring to.  It had to be a book I lent to her but...

Then she added, "His parents were in the theater.  And he called himself something like a solver."

Bing!  YES!  Mister Max by Cynthia Voigt.  And, no, I had not read the second book in the series.  But, now I have!!!  I am so lucky my mother has a good memory.

Mister Max : The Book of Secrets  continues the story of Max Starling, or Mister Max, Solutioneer.  The problems Max must solve range from a schoolboy's concerns about the boy's father, to the mayor's problems with arson in the Old City.  There is a possible romance, a coded letter from Max's missing parents, and some spatting with his self-proclaimed assistant, Pia Bendiff. 

Max's grandmother has some secrets of her own that Max has to unravel as well. 

Voigt travels into dangerous territory here, as in, Max finds himself in peril, tied up and blindfolded.  And, the coded letter makes his parents' plight all too real.  Max and his grandmother have to do something to bring Max's parents home.

Max is an astonishingly perspicacious 12-year-old.  He is able to phrase questions and offer solutions in the most convincing and subtle ways.  When it comes to his personal life and the people closest to him, he does not see things that clearly.  Whew!  I was afraid he was going to be a super-teen.  I enjoy his stubborn streak and I want to shake him all at the same time. His insistence on being independent, even though he found the money his father hid in their house, is a little maddening. He's lucky his grandmother is so understanding!

 I think I will pre-order Mister Max : The Book of Kings so my mother doesn't have to remind me of the books I want to read.

Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms

Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms by Katherine Rundell

I loved Rundell's book, Rooftoppers. Cartwheeling has a much different setting.   Rooftoppers began and ended with the scent of magic realism.  Cartwheeling, on the other hand, hints at an all too concrete tragedy even while the heroine is enjoying her wonderful life.

The villainess in this book is smarmy and manipulative. (Do those two words mean the same thing?)  So, I skipped a few pages and got into the meat of the story.  Wilhelmina Silver has been a wild girl on the farm her father manages in Zimbabwe.  She rides, runs and fights as well as the boys, if not better.  Her life is one long adventure.  And everyone loves her - her father, Captain Browne who owns the farm, all the workers and their families and especially her best friend, Simon.

Then disaster strikes in the form of a new, pretty wife for Captain Browne.  In a trice, Will is orphaned - (these are the pages I skipped so I can only guess that Mrs. Browne did not do her best to nurse Will's father back to health) - and shipped off to Boarding School in England.

Much catty bullying and impotent glaring and despair follow and then Will runs off into a brand new wilderness, London. 



One of the best things about this book is the balance in the characters.  The bullies end up having good points - well, ok, reluctant remorse.  The teachers are not all bad.  And the boy who befriends Will has his limitations.  People are people - spotty and real.

Yep.  The ending is quite satisfying.  Rundell's writing does not disappoint.