Ivy Aberdeen's Letter to the World

Ivy Aberdeen has a secret.  She's not even sure what it means, but she has a notebook full of drawings of girls holding hands.  She isn't ready to show it to anyone yet, and she works on the drawings late at night when everyone else is sleeping. 

That's what she's doing the night her dad throws open her door to tell her a tornado is coming.  When the storm has passed, Ivy's house is gone.

The family is devastated.  Ivy only has the two things she grabbed on the way out--her notebook and pillow.  Her family spends the night in a temporary shelter where she feels isolated.  Since her twin brothers were born, Ivy has felt like she's not really important to the family anymore. 

When they get ready to leave in the morning, Ivy's notebook is missing.  She's angry and terrified at the thought of her private drawings out in the world.

On her first day back at school, one of the drawings appears in her locker with a note, "Maybe you should talk to someone about this."  Maybe she should, but she's just not ready.  The secret is making her distant from her best friend who only wants to talk about cute boys anymore, and her older sister who used to be so close isn't an option anymore.

The only person she's really connecting with is June.  June only moved to town a few months ago, and most kids think she's weird, but Ivy loves how enthusiastic and accepting June is.  Plus, she gets nervous and excited whenever June is around.  Could this be what a crush feels like?

Ashley Herring Blake's first middle grade novel is a beautiful and emotional story of a girl dealing with a tragedy while trying to find her place in her family and in the world.  This book is perfect for middle grade LGBTQ collections.  Blake handles what can be a sensitive issue for middle school audiences with gentleness and heart.  Highly recommended!

Saint Philomene's Infirmary for Magical Creatures

It all started when Chance decided to dig a hole in the backyard.  It's the deepest hole he's ever made, and he is intrigued when he hits something that turns out to be an underground mail delivery system.  He intercepts a letter that seems really important, so of course, he decides to follow the pipeline and deliver the letter in person. 

This lands him in a hospital where all creatures are welcome except humans, but there is already another human there, and he is threatening to kill everyone in the vast unground hospital unless he gets what he wants.  Chance has the cure, but everyone is on the lookout for him, too.

Back on the surface, his older sister Pauline who doesn't believe in anything she can't see or touch realizes Chance has disappeared in the hole.  Can the siblings find each other and save the hospital before it's too late?

W. Stone Cotter's first novel is a wild ride where things are resolved a little too easily at times.  This book does have incredibly rich vocabulary, so it's great for the kid who should be challenging himself but always picks the thinnest book on the shelf.  Struggling readers, however, may not get more than a couple of pages in. 

Granted

Everyone makes wishes, but what you may not know is that some wishes actually come true.  In Haven, there is a tree that collects all the wishes and determines which ones will be granted by the fairies who live there. 

Ophelia Delphinium Fidgets is a granter, one of the fairies chosen to make wishes come true.  But so few wishes are granted that she hasn't been out into the real world yet to make someone's wish come true.  Until now.

Her first wish is from a girl who wants a purple bike.  Ophelia sets out to fulfill her destiny, but everything goes wrong.  Off course and injured, her quest becomes even more difficult.  In her efforts to get back on track, she runs across some humans who have a wish that seems to be a bit more important than her goal, and she begins to question everything she's always believed about granting wishes.

John David Anderson's new novel is cute but a little tedious.  Ophelia is not my favorite character, and things don't really get interesting until she befriends a stray dog.  Cute, but not required reading. 

The Red Ribbon

Ella is desperate to get the job in the workshop.  She's only fourteen, but she's tall for her age, so she can pretend to be older.  In another life maybe she could have been friends with the other girls and women in the shop, but not at Birchwood.  At Birchwood, you have to be hard, you have to be strong, or you die.

It seems like a miracle when Ella gets the job in the sewing workshop.  The world outside the windows is brown, gray, and desolate.  Inside, there are silks and warm tweeds.  Thanks to her grandmother, Ella is not only a good seamstress, but she can also make patterns.  It's the additional designing skills that make her special.  One day she wants to own her own dress shop.  For now, she will work for the wives and officers at Birchwood.

Almost despite herself, she befriends Rose.  Rose is smart and fierce.  She tells stories to keep the women's minds off the cold, starvation, and cruelty that surrounds them.  Unlike Ella, Rose was arrested because her mother spoke out against the growing Nazi threat.  Ella was taken on her way home from school, just for being a Jew.

The Nazis have another name for Birchwood.  They call it Auschwitz.  Every day people arrive at the camp, and every day people die.  The workshop is salvation...if the girls can keep their jobs there. 

Lucy Adlington's book is a different perspective on the experience at Auschwitz, highlighting the real workshop where starving inmates worked to create beautiful clothes for their oppressors.  This is truly a story about Ella's own development.  Will she be like Marta, the boss of the workroom, who will do anything to survive no matter who is hurt in the process?  What about Carla, the Nazi officer who takes an interest in Ella because of her design work and sometimes treats Ella as a friend but always reminds her she is less than human?  Then there is Ella who chooses to live in another world in her mind and who always chooses selflessness no matter the personal cost. 

This is a beautiful and heartbreaking book.  Recommended for grades 8 and up.

The Way You Make Me Feel

Clara Shin is infamous for being the prankster who doesn't really care what anyone thinks, but when she goes too far and ends up in a physical fight at the prom, her dad decides enough is enough. 

Her punishment is to spend the summer working on his Korean/Brazilian food truck.  Her dad has always taken a relaxed approach to parenting, so Clara doesn't take him seriously at first.  But he's not backing down.  No summer loafing with her friends.  No trip to a resort in Tulum with her mom. 

As if that weren't enough, Clara will be working with Rose, her arch nemesis and the reason she's in this mess to start with.  But it doesn't take long for her to realize Rose isn't quite the demon Clara thought she was.  Maybe they could actually become friends.  Is that even possible?

Plus, there's this cute guy named Hamlet, yep, Hamlet who works at the coffee kiosk near one of their stops.  He isn't Clara's usual type, too nerdy, but somehow she always finds herself flirting with him. 

As the summer progresses and she spends more time with Rose and Hamlet, Clara begins to change.  She actually cares about things, like the food truck and other people's feelings, and it's more and more difficult to hang out with her old prankster friends.

Maurene Goo's new book has a bit of an identity crisis.  It seems to want to be a romance, at least superficially, but it's really about Clara's internal struggle.  Don't get me wrong, it does have romance.  That's just not really the central focus of the book.  This one was not my favorite because Clara is so obnoxious.  She keeps making decisions that hurt other people, and everyone forgives her so easily, especially after her major climactic mistake.  But, bonus points for character/author diversity, and it is a nice light read.  The characters are older, but this one is fine for middle school.

Orphan, Monster, Spy

When Sarah's mother is killed at a checkpoint, she is left alone in Nazi Germany.  She has blond hair, blue eyes, and is small for her age, but she is Jewish.  In her blundering attempts to escape Germany, he meets a strange man who she quickly realizes is not what he seems.  She helps save his life and instantly feels a connection to him.

It's clear to Sarah the Captain is some sort of spy, and it doesn't take long before he realizes she can help with his current mission.  Her mission is to infiltrate a brutal girls boarding school, befriend, Elsa, the daughter of a high ranking scientist, get invited to her house, and steal the plans for a bomb. 

Sarah is confident she can pull it off since her actress mother has been training her since childhood, but this school is a breeding ground for monsters.  Students and teachers alike prey on the weak to gain power, and Elsa is part of the elite. 

In her attempts to complete her mission, Sarah begins to doubt her own morality.  Is she becoming just like the monsters she despises?

Matt Killeen's book is riveting, disturbing, and violent.  I could not stop reading even though each chapter was more disturbing than the last.  I will definitely recommend this to older readers, especially those who are interested in WWII and the Holocaust, but I would steer sensitive readers away from this one.  Trigger warning, this book deals with attempted sexual assault and hints at an ongoing pattern of assault.  Recommended for grades 8 and up.

Geekerella

Elle loves Starfield, the classic sci-fi series she grew up watching with her father.  It's one of the few things she has left to help her feel close to him.  She barely remembers her mother, but when her father died, she was left with her stepmother and bratty twin stepsisters. They are all about appearances and treat Ella like an unwanted servant.

When Ella hears about a cosplay contest at ExcelsiCon, she decides to enter. Her father was one of the founders of the can, but she hasn't been back since his death.  First prize is a ticket to the ExcelsiCon Ball, a meet and greet with the lead actor in the new Starfield movie, and tickets to the premiere in LA.  It's the airplane tickets she really wants.  This could be Ella's chance to leave her horrible stepfamily behind for good.

Starfield is Darien's first big movie role, and the teen soap that propelled him to stardom has many Starfield fans enraged.  They think he doesn't have the acting ability or the geek cred to play their beloved Carmindor, but what they don't know is that Darien is a closet geek himself.  Before he got famous, he attended cons for fun.  Now, that isn't part of the image his manager/father wants to portray.  The last thing he wants to do is show up to ExcelsiCon as Carmindor and be rejected by the fans.  He texts a number on the ExcelsiCon website hoping to get out the meet and greet, but the person who answers can't help him.  She does have a good sense of humor and a serious addiction to Starfield, so he continues to text her even though he's pretty sure it's not a good idea.

When Ella gets the wrong number, she isn't surprised.  She sometimes gets people looking for her dad since she has his old phone.  What does surprise her is how quickly she begins to trust her anonymous "Carmindor".  They've never met in real life, bu she feels more comfortable talking to him than anyone else.

Ashley Poston's Cinderella for the ComiCon crowd is a fun take on the story with plenty of allusions to real sci-fi classics to keep geeks interested.  The love story is sweet, and Ella and Darien are both well-rounded characters.  My issue is the stepmother who is completely one-dimensional.  Every time I thought she was going to get some depth, the story veered in another direction.  Despite that, this will be a perfect fit for the sci-fi crowd.