A Benefit SALE! and Three Middle Grade Books to Read this Summer!

That TBR pile never gets any shorter.  Here are three books to take off the pile but I received two in the mail this week. Will it ever end???  I hope not.

The Adventures of a Girl Called Bicycle by Christine Uss.  A foundling, an order of Mostly Silent Monks, a bike, a cycling hero, a "parenting" dilemma - and a girl who knows her own mind.  This is a lighthearted cross country adventure with a ghost, wonderful food, a mysterious woman in black and lots of fine friends on the way. I read the ARC. 💕

The Orphan Band of Springdale by Anne Nesbet. Gusta's father puts her on a bus to Springdale, ME, where Gusta's grandmother runs a home for orphans.  With Europe at war, and the USA considering joining in, Gusta's German last name causes some strife.  Her French horn, her love of music, and her habit of righting what she sees as wrong, result in a quick middle grade read.

Like Vanessa by Tami Charles.  In 1983, Vanessa, her PopPop and her cousin, watch as the Miss America crown goes to an African American for the very first time - Vanessa Williams.  13-year-old Vanessa dreams of singing on a stage.  The music teacher at school decides to start a pageant for the students.  While preparing for it, Vanessa finds her voice, her confidence, her courage and the answers to her father's pain and family secrets.
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CHILES' PLAY NEWS!!!
Dan and I are rehearsing for our second ever Skype show at a local library.  If it goes well, we may try to do something Skype-ish at a more public venue.  The library program is just for Summer Readers at that library.  (The program is at 10:30 am here, which is 11:30 pm in Japan! The world is round.)

Buy a CD!  Help immigrants!  Win a frankenbunny??? It could happen.

ALSO, if you haven't purchased the CD or a song from the CD, know this.  10% of every sale from Bandcamp or Amazon from now until August 15,  will go to ASAP, the Asylum Seekers Advocacy Project.   We hope this small effort will get families back together.  ASAP is a team of lawyers and social workers who help people seeking asylum in the US.  Since many of the families separated at our southern border are people LEGALLY seeking asylum, Dan and I hope that ASAP can help them stay together or be reunited.  That's 10% of the PURCHASE PRICE, not our "net proceeds".  Spread the word. 

Wrinkles and abandoned buildings

I finished You Were Here by Cori McCarthy the other night and it was so satisfying!  Told in alternating voices, this is a story of grief and stubbornness and the need to put the past to rest.  Serious stuff!  McCarthy's mix of characters, words and graphics spins this book right along. 
          I worried at first that this would just be another "dead family member" book.  Then it morphed into a book about meeting unrealistic expectations and then it turned into a graphic novel and the whole time this group of five teens are fighting, musing, obsessing, and engaging in risky behavior - lots and lots of risky, perilous, dare-devil behavior.  (Definitely Teen Readers!)

So read it.  It is emotionally manipulating, but most good books are.  And the resolution is realistic and, as I mentioned before, satisfying.

The Wrinkled Crown by Anne Nesbet is a wrinkled book.  Linny lives in Lourka where no trail is a straight line - or even the same from trip to trip.  Here stories can change reality.   When Linny breaks the most sacred taboo in the hills, her best friend and tether-twin, Sayra, is the one who pays the price.
Linny takes her forbidden lourka - a stringed musical instrument - and runs away to the Plains to find a cure for Sayra's fading away illness. 
Linny and her friend, Edmund, are caught up in a civil struggle between a faction that believes everything should be mapped, straight, smooth and mechanical - and a faction that honors magic and wrinkles of all sorts.
 I ended up skimming and, alas, skipping.  If I had more time I may have enjoyed the arguments and adventures and authoritarian quasi-villains.  The book is as wrinkled as its title.  But it is a solid beginning of a new magical trilogy(?) or series.  (Grades 5 through 7, though younger readers with skills and stamina will enjoy this book.)