In Bookstores Next Week - Witchlings by Caribel A. Ortega

 

I did not expect this package, an advance reader's copy of Witchlings by Claribel A. Ortega. I approached it warily. Would I like it? Would I not? Was it about an elderly or quirky sleuth? NO! Is it about bookstores, booksellers, authors or librarians? Not really.

Welll????? 

The pandemic has made me ultra fussy about trying new things. It takes me so much longer to dive into a book these days. I read a few pages and then, sigh, I put the book down. During the next read I go further, and then further into the plot. On my third attempt, I have to force myself to put the book down - IF the book is good enough.

Witchlings IS good enough!  YAY!

Seven Salazar enters the Black Moon Ceremony to find what coven will be hers. The one thing she does not want - or expect - is to become a Spare, one of three 12-year-old witches who are NOT chosen for a coven.

Right there, you know what is going to happen, right? That Seven's fate is shared by her worst enemy, Valley Pepperhorn and the new girl, Thorn LaRoux, does not make this terrible fate any better. Spares never become witches. If they are lucky, they get jobs that don't require magic. If they are NOT lucky, they are little better than slaves. Oof!

UNLESS!!! There is always an "unless". If I tell you what the "unless" is, I may be telling you too much. The book checks off a lot of boxes; transforming friendships; suspending judgment; accepting differences; learning to trust. Then, there are the adventures, the forays into extreme danger, the endangered family members and the unfair treatment of Spares. Plus a seriously creepy mystery derails the Spare coven's attempts at earning their witchdom. Just when you think you see the light at the end of the tunnel, everything changes.  Make NO assumptions, readers. This is a kaleidoscope ride.

But the story is NOT finished. Seven, Valley, and Thorn may have prevailed but evil is still out there...waiting. 

                                                                (Mwahahahahaha!)

(On sale on February 1, 2022.)

Food! Glorious FOOD!

In High School, I became enamored with the soundtrack from Oliver! (Singing softly, "Whe-e-ere is LOVE? Does if fall from stars above? Will I ever know that sweet hello...? etc.) Of course, my favorite song to belt along with was "FOOD! Glorious Food!"

Why not? We need food. Some food tastes heavenly. Creating deliciousness from not necessarily delicious ingredients is clever, challenging and fun.

Authors know this and they add food elements to their books for kids. I just re-read "Listen, Slowly" by Thanhhà Lai and the foods of Viet Nam are touted on almost every single page.

The books that allow their characters to bake, cook, fry, broil their own recipes are especially engaging. (Hot book review word alert - 'engaging'.)

Pie in the Sky by Remy Lai   After Jingwen's and Yanghao's father dies, their mother moves them to an English-speaking country. (I think it's Australia but it may be New Zealand.) Yanghao, being younger, makes headway in learning English by Jingwen has a lot of trouble. He is angry that his mother "left" their father behind and followed through on the family's plans to move and open a special bakery.  Jingwen decides that he has to bake every single one of his father's cakes to make things better for his family. BUT his mother, who must work, has forbidden the use of the oven. And Jingwen speaks so little English that he bribes Yangwao to help him.

I can't remember recipes in this book but the descriptions of the baking process, the ingredients, the temperature, the sneakiness make a recipe of sadness. The cakes sound delicious. The memories are bittersweet.

Roll With It by Jamie Sumner.  Ellie's CP and wheelchair don't keep her from trying to win baking competitions. After she and her mother move in with her grandfather to help watch over him, she is suddenly the only disabled kid and the new kid in a small public school. It does not help that she lives in a trailer park - hey! I lived in a trailer park for awhile. Stop with the judging! - across town. Her new neighborhood nets her a real friend with a can-do attitude.

Once again, no actual recipes that I remember. Where are the recipes?

 

The Doughnut King (The Doughnut Fix #2) by Jessie Janowitz.  Well, I never read the first book so I don't know how Tris's family moved from NYC to the nowhere town of Petersville, BUT in this book, Tris already has a doughnut stand selling the most delicious chocolate cream doughnuts ever. Problems abound. As people move out of Petersville, he has trouble creating demand. When he solves that problem, he can't keep up with demand. A spot on a cutthroat kids' cooking show creates even MORE demand. 

I want a doughnut, now. 

I probably mentioned THIS book back in 2017 when I read it. The Apple Tart of Hope by Sarah Moore Fitzgerald wins the Best Food-Related Title to Date.  Oscar has gone missing. His bike is found at sea. Everyone, but Meg, assumes that this is an accidental death or a suicide.  Meg doesn't believe Oscar is dead at all. But, she has been away for several months. Maybe something happened to Oscar to make him depressed enough. No! Meg can't believe that the baker of the best apple tart in the world is dead.  

NO RECIPE!! So disappointed!

Blast from the past! Touch-Luck Karen by Johanna Hurwitz is an entry in Hurwitz's Sossi family series. Karen, 13, would rather baby-sit or cook than do schoolwork. Her grades are so bad that her parents refuse to let her continue babysitting.  She MUST bring her science grades up by doing a project.  Karen uses her other enthusiasm to demonstrate chemical reactions. Cooking to the rescue.

This book was published in 1982 and I read it during the next decade. I remembered that science demonstration and LOVED it and remembered it all these years. Was there a recipe? Now THAT, I can't remember.

 

Princess and Caveman - Heroes!

I have a new favorite princess, Harriet the Invincible.  She is sturdy.  She is stalwart.  She is strong!  She is small and slow-ish.  She is a HAMSTER!! And she rides a battle quail.  I'm in awe.

I just read Ratpunzel, which is the third book in the series. Now I have to get the first two and find out why Harriet was working at a slight disadvantage in Book 3. 

The reading level is about grade 4 but the interest level is higher, through grade 7.  Harriet will appeal to kids who like a lot of action of the more-fun-than-fierce kind.  The dialogue is clever and punny and sometimes appears in speech bubbles.  That's important.  Those little illustrations move the action forward so don't just skip them.

In Ratpunzel,  Harriet's friend Wilbur, needs help in rescuing his pet hydra's kidnapped egg.  The plot gets a bit scrambled but, not to worry.  Harriet's excellent sword wielding skills and warrior instincts keep things moving along.  There's a tower, a princess-to-be-rescued, a witch, hidden passages and spells and slapstick swordplay until the satisfying conclusion.  

Then there's Lug.  He is a prehistoric hero, saving his clan from imprisonment and destruction, one ice age worry at a time.  In the second book in the series, Lug: Blast from the North by David Zeltser, Lug and his friends rescue a stranger who lives on a quickly moving glacier.  He seems soooo friendly.  Lug doesn't warm up to Blast as quickly as his friends do.  (See what I did there?) And Lug is right!  BTW, Lug has a sword, too, but his is made of ice! 

This series will appeal to the same set of readers.  The abundance of black and white illustrations, silly dialogue, middle school age insecurities and jealousies, and treachery cleverly deflected should keep young adventure seekers happy.

The Secret Destiny of Pixie Piper

 
Pixie Piper lives in a house that looks like an acorn.  Rhymes pop into her head unbidden.  Things that used to feel cozy and fun, like her Mom's job planning fun events at the senior residence, or her father's job as caretaker for a toilet museum, have become embarrassing and awkward.

Then a series of odd things happen;
1.  Her Mom tells her a secret about her family history.
2.  She hurts her very best friend's feelings, because a classmate thinks they are a "couple".
3.  She meets a most annoying fortune-teller
4.  She finds a goose egg in the woods.

Now, Pixie Piper has an enemy, a secret, and worse, someone is trying to hurt her pet goose!

The Secret Destiny of Pixie Piper by Annabelle Fisher is a fun, fantastic read for kids in grades 4 and up.

The Executioner's Daughter

In  The Excutioner's Daughter  by Jane Hardstaff, Moss is almost 12.  She has lived her whole life in the Tower of London where her father is King Henry VIII's executioner.  Moss's father told her that they must stay in the Tower as punishment for a crime he committed years ago. 

Moss is the basket girl.  She carries the newly chopped off heads from the block to the gates of the Tower where they will be on display.  When she is pressed into service in the kitchen ,she makes friends with the King's latest enemy, an abbot.  The day of the abbot's death, Moss runs away.

In her debut novel, Jane Hardstaff paints a realistic picture of the Tower and the river that flows by it during King Henry VIII's reign. The jacket blurb hints at a touch of fantasy in this otherwise historically accurate book.  The touch of fantasy adds suspense and terror to the sotry of Moss's coming of age.

Moss learns about the flawed nature of people who must struggle to survive.  She also learns about acceptance, love and forgiveness.

The Executioner's Daughter by Jane Hardstaff is a fine book. 

Evil Wizards

   The Evil Wizard Smallbone has some competition in the evil department in this book by Delia Sherman.  But Nick, the runaway who takes refuge with the old, smelly, grumpy and wicked wizard, has to do some heavy duty sleuthing - and endless chores - to get to the bottom of Smallbone's dastardly behavior.

The setting is backwoods Maine where the coyotes are numerous and the wolves rule the forest - some on motorcycle.  The small village of Smallbone Cove depends on the evil wizard for their protection against, what, exactly?  Here is part of the mystery.  Another part is why so many of Smallbone Cove's residents look so similar and how some of the residents can be as old as they say they are. 

An odd mix of werepeople, selkie legends, the reversing of spells, and ancient badness come together in a delightful fantasy.  I loved the ending.  And I thoroughly enjoyed the ride there.  I also liked the smart alecky books that plague Nick as he searches for answers.  That boy is too curious.

Changes.

Tomorrow, the little girl starts kindergarten.  This will reduce our little girl time to 2 or 3 hours a day.  Am I happy?  Actually, um, no.  She has a lot of playing left.  And I am not all that enamored of our public education system.  

Still, she is ready.  But who will play with me during those extra hours? 

Everybody else keeps growing up!!!

In The Secret of Goldenrod, Trina is almost 11 and entering fifth grade and her father is so embarrassing.  They are off to refurbish Goldenrod, a stately home in the middle of nowhere, that has been empty for almost a century.  Unlike their other jobs that kept them busy for a month or two, Goldenrod will take a whole year and Trina will have finally time to make friends.  She hopes her mother will stop gallivanting around the world and finally return to the family. 

Then she sees the old house in a field of yellow weeds, and the house doesn't want them there.

A hidden room, a forgotten dollhouse and its tiny doll, a nasty schoolmate and a small town with secrets add up to a great story.

Author Jane O'Reilly sets this up as a convincing haunted house story, but with the discovery of the dollhouse things begin to change.   The last few chapters are the best as they pull everything together and give a happy ending that is also unexpected.

In 1900....

Jacqueline Kelly very kindly wrote another book about Calpurnis Tate. In The Curious World of Calpurnia Tate, Callie Vee, as her six brothers and parents call her, is disappointed to find that life in the year 1900 goes on pretty much like always.  She goes on rambles with her scientist grandfather.  She makes meticulous notes in her notebook.  She is by turns bedeviled and beguiled by her brothers.  And she disappoints her mother and baffles her father almost weekly.

Almost every other chapter tells of her struggles with Travers, her wild animal loving younger brother, and his latest "find".  The armadillo is a bust.  The raccoon is fated for failure, but the coy-dog??  Really???

Then there is the hurricane of 1900 that wiped Galveston, TX, off the map.  The barometer and Callie's chance sighting of a strange bird sends Callie's grandfather to the telegraph office to send wires to the coast.  Callie has to give up her bed to a cousin she barely knows - a greedy, penny-pinching cousin who has no appreciation of nature.  That and the disappearance of Callie's gold piece add up to a recipe for high drama.

In between, Callie runs errands for the new veterinarian, learns how to type, gets even with a conniving brother and deals as well as she can with her parents' expectations for her future.

This feels like a bridge book.  I am eager to see if Callie prevails.

MEANWHILE, in San Francisco, Lizzie Kennedy hates her school, Miss Barstow's.  She'd much prefer going out on doctor's calls with her father.  She loves science but, just like Callie Vee, her obsession is considered unseemly for a young woman. 

In Chasing Secrets by Gennifer Choldenko, there are rumors that plague has broken out in Chinatown.  Lizzie's uncle, the owner of one of the biggest newspapers in town, refuses to believe the rumors without proof.  But Chinatown is quarantined and trapped inside is Lizzie's cook and friend, Jing.  Jing leaves behind a secret - a real LIVE secret.  And that secret teaches Lizzie to look at her world in a whole new way.

There are a lot of secrets in this book; secrets that endanger a whole city; secrets that hide the way people really feel; secrets about how to fit in.  Lizzie has to find Jing, learn how to be friends with people her own age, survive her first ball, and prove her worth as a nurse. 

It all happened in 1900!

Liars! 3 books

The books I have read in the past few days all revolve around lying - lying to survive, lying to hide hard facts from oneself, lying to avoid confrontation - lots of untruth telling going on.

In The False Prince, by Jennifer A. Nielsen,  Sage's survival depends on how well he can lie.   In an attempt to save the kingdom of Carthya, (or so they are told), Sage, Tobias and Roden are being groomed to impersonate the lost prince, Jaron.  Their training is a fight to the death.  The boys not chosen as Prince will meet an awful fate.  Trickery, dishonesty, secret passages, dungeons are followed by a jaw-dropping master stroke.  This is the first in a trilogy.

In Crenshaw, by Katherine Applegate,  Jackson has been homeless before and he knows that his parents are struggling, again.  The return of his imaginary friend, Crenshaw, a six foot tall cat, does nothing to calm his fears.  The lying in this book is the "everything is all right" kind, harmless on the surface but nasty and dangerous, nonetheless.

Dear Hank Williams by Kimberley Willis Holt, is a novel in letters.  Tate P. Ellerbee decides that the rising star, Hank Williams, will be her penpal for her class penpal project.  She is more than faithful in writing to Mr. Williams, and in return she receives three signed photographs.  And the reader learns just how Tate spins tales to make herself feel better about her absent parents and other difficulties.  All is revealed in the end, in this clever and emotionally satisfying book.  Set between 1948 and 1949, this is also a well-researched look at rural America in the aftermath of WWII.

Unexceptional?

The League of Unexceptional Children by Gitty Daneshvari is a welcome change.  No magical, undiscovered world-changing super-talented children here!  No half human, half immortal orphans!
Nope, this book revolves around two children so bland, so mediocre, so unremarkable as to be almost invisible to the world around them.

And that makes them PERFECT for the secret work that The League of Unexceptional Children does.

When the Vice-President is kidnapped in the middle of the night, Jonathan and Shelly are recruited to go undercover to find him before the VP can disclose the nation's most valuable nuclear codes.   Jonathan and Shelly don't actually need to go undercover.  They are so unremarkable that Jonathan's teacher thinks he's a new student almost every day.  No one even hears Shelly when she talks.

After a slow start involving an incompetent security guard and a short villain, the book turns into a spy thriller heavy on spycraft-ish talk and trappings and with more comic escapades than thrills.

To say much more will tell you almost all.  This is a quick fun read in which two ordinary kids fumble through saving the country.  They even compete with two superspy kids from Europe.

The best thing about this book - for me, anyway - is the way the characters of our heroes develop.  They may look and act boring to the world at large but, given a task that challenges them, they show some spunk, if not much talent.  Hmmmm, could there actually be a redeeming message in this silly book?  ....... Nope, probably not.

Key words:  Quick, Funny, Slapstick, Spies! 

The Luck Uglies by Paul Durham

I finished The Luck Uglies last night and I was satisfied to see that it promises a sequel.

When the (evil, disgusting, arrogant, cruel, etc.) Earl of Longchance captures a young Bog Noblin, he invites doom and terror to the village of Drowning.  Rye, her friends, Folly and Quinn, her mother, Abby and the mysterious tattooed man, known as Harmless, must save the village.  Spells, magical beasts, potions, and incredible escape acts, most occurring in the dark of night, keep the pages turning.

I admit I skimmed.  I often skim through battles because reading about swordplay and how the characters avoid decapitation or mangling makes me itchy.  (I am not an 11-year-old boy.)  I took the time to read one such scene and it was cinematically presented - the type of action/adventure sequence that the target readership will LOVE.

I love the cover and chapter illustrations.   I thought that one or two scenes were dragged out for suspense and action's sake.    Even the villains - except for the Earl, who is beyond the pale - have their not-so-awful moments.  So, yes, I think fantasy and adventure fans, boys and girls alike, will enjoy this book.

ASIDE:  Is there a running around the rooftops meme circulating through kids' fiction right now?  This is not the first, or even the second, book that I've read this year in which city rooftops are used as escape routes or roadways.  Just wondering.

Kutztown Children's Literature Conference

Time to rave about children's literature, the people who produce it and the people who love it-(that would be ME!)

Beth Krommes, Pat Mora, Linda Sue Park and Jerry Pinkney all presented to an enthusiastic crowd of teachers, librarians and kids book afficianados  at Kutztown University yesterday for their thirteenth annual Children's Literature Conference.

Here are some highlights:  Beth passed around her Caldecott medal so all of us could hold it, turn it over and see the reverse side.  We all see Caldecott's famous illustration of a man riding a horse on the gold seals on picture book covers.  I never knew another Caldecott illustration decorated the reverse.  I was thrilled to hold it.

Sitting next to Pat Mora at lunch.  She's delightful!  Her presentation was wonderful as well and she reminded us how very important it is to welcome diversity in our classrooms and libraries.

Linda Sue Park's Top Ten Things that Happen When you Win the Newbery Award was hilarious.  Bring this woman into your schools whenever you can.  She is a lively speaker and will keep your audience captivated.

The rain pounding on the roof as Jerry Pinkney showed his slides for Noah's Ark.  He couldn't have planned that to happen.  What a nice, nice man, Jerry Pinkney is! and what a huge talent.  Meeting him was a thrill.

I also enjoyed presenting book reviews to a nice crowd of teachers and librarians.  (I've posted the booklist on my Scribd account and someday I will learn how to link to that.)

Many, many thanks to the committee that made the conference possible especially Dr. Sycherz and, of course, Dr. Robert Dorney, the guiding light for the conference. 

So what did I do when I came home?  I picked up an ARC of Shimmer by Alyson Noel.  It was a good quick read.  I'm not going to say it was "fun", because it dealt with souls trapped on earth by their own anger and pain.  There's not much fun about that.  I liked the character of the ghost, Riley Bloom.  I liked her feistiness and her stubborn streak.  I also appreciated that she was willing to learn once she calmed down to listen.  There's an historical link in this story of slaves and slave owners and their ghosts on the island of St. John Virgin Island.  Noel keeps the story moving and leaves a great opening for the next installment in this series. 

So, now, I feel like I am truly retired but my brain is spinning with ideas of what I want to do next.  Podcasts?  Write and publish my own books?  Story programs for the Summer Reading Program theme?  There is just NOT enough time to fit everything in.  The world is full of possibilities!

Familiars

Stop me if you've heard this one!  An alley cat, a bluejay and a tree frog walk into a bar...  Nope, it's not a joke and although the three do walk into an inn, they don't actually walk into a bar.   These three are the main characters of a new book, and quite probably a new series, titled The Familiars, written by screenwriting partners, Adam Jay Epstein and Andrew Jacobson.

Aldwyn is a black and white alley cat who hides from a bounty hunter in a pet shop that sells magical animals to wizards.  Before he has a chance to get out of the cage he has hidden in, Aldwyn is chosen by a boy named Jack.  Ahhhh, another boy and pet story - so cute.  Not so fast.

Soon after Aldwyn makes his home with Jack, two other young students and the old wizard Kalstaff, the humans are captured by evil forces.  The three familiars; Aldwyn, who has no magical powers to speak of, Skylar, who is a know-it-all bluejay and Gilbert, a tree frog,whose brain is always on food; are forced to go on a quest to find and save their humans.

There are a lot of formulaic elements here.  The three friends fall into the three most often used categories for buddy stories - one bright, one scrappy, one distracted by the here and now.  Aldwyn's lack of special qualities and his need to lie about it are a major part of the plot.  And that's a plot device that is used often in middle grade fiction - accepting oneself and finding value in oneself.

However, the writing flows so easily and the jokes are clever without being mean.  Aldwyn proves his mettle over and over again, even if he can't see the future or cast illusions.  Just who the evil master-mind behind the plot to kill the young human wizards turns out to be makes a very nice twist.

The ending leaves the door open for more adventures for these three heroes.  Readers of Erin Hunter's novels just might enjoy this mix of fantasy and animal adventure.  The book is slated to become a 3-D animated film, according to the jacket flap.  This one is fun to read and will be a popular movie.