Fawn Creek, LA is a very small town–so small that the school has only 12 kids in the seventh grade class, and those kids have known each other pretty much all their lives. So, when a new kid comes to town, and she’s mysterious and stylish, with the name “Orchid”, everyone is immediately paying attention. Orchid Mason comes to Fawn Creek direct from Paris, or maybe New York City, and she has the most interesting stories to tell. And Orchid wants to be friends with Grayson and Dorothy, who feel like the misfits in Fawn Creek’s seventh class and in their own families.

This book was decently written, but it left a bad taste in my brain. The author, who grew up in Louisiana, seemed to have an axe to grind about small towns and small town life. The kids all call their little town “Yawn Creek”, and Grayson is ostracized and ridiculed because he is more interested in style, clothing, and fabric than he is in going hunting. Grayson’s own brother calls him “little sister” and worse names. Grayson’s father denigrates him and doesn’t understand him, even though the dad does sort of come through in a good scene towards the end of the book. Grayson’s best friend, Dorothy, is an only child who feels invisible, and her parents are uncommunicative and just odd. In fact, none of the parents in the book are very kind or helpful or in touch with their children’s needs or concerns, except maybe Grayson’s mom who grows some as a character.

I guess the gist of the story is that small towns are ugly and full of bullies and weird religious fanatics. There’s a group of three seventh graders who call themselves the “God Squad”, so poorly characterized that I never could remember which girl was which. There are also a couple of “mean girls” and some jock boys. It was all rather dingy and unpleasant, and I was glad to close the book and escape from Fawn Creek. If I lived in a small town, like Fawn Creek, I wouldn’t choose this book to help me see the good aspects of community. But it might make me even more anxious to get out.

“Fished from the river as an infant and raised by a roving band of street urchins who call themselves the Crowns, eight-year-old Duck keeps her head down and he mouth shut. It’s a rollicking life, always thieving, always on the run—until the ragtag Crowns infiltrate an abandoned cathedral in the the city of Odierne and decide to set down roots.”

Now the leader of the Crowns, the fearless Gnat, wants Duck to apprentice with the local baker, Master Griselde, and use her position of trust to steal both bread and coin for the Crowns. As Griselde becomes a friend and a mentor, even getting a tutor to teach Duck to read, the choices become more and more difficult for Duck. Will she remain loyal to the Crowns, the only family she’s ever known, or will she become someone new, a respectable and honest apprentice baker? Can she start a new life, or will the old one pull her back into the gang?

I really enjoyed this story and felt as if it had a lot say about loyalty and forgiveness and the possibility of change. However, in some chapters that alternate with the ones that tell Duck’s story, the voice and narrative are that of a frustrated gargoyle who lives on the roof of the unfinished cathedral, unable to fulfill his destiny of being a rescuer and a protector. The stories do intertwine and come together in the end, but I never cared or wanted to read about the gargoyles. And I don’t think I can put the book in my library, even though it’s a good story, because the chapters told from the viewpoint of the gargoyles portray them as profane and prone to insults and salacious gossip. Also the gargoyles are just ugly, mean, and sad. I wish Ms. Eagar had left out the gargoyle chapters.I sort of get what she was going for–a parallel story of identity and redemption–but it just didn’t work.

Lindsay Eagar also wrote Race to the Bottom of the Sea, which I added to my list of 50 Best Middle Grade Novels of the Twenty-first Century. She’s a good writer, but The Patron Thief of Bread could have done without the gargoyles or with better gargoyles or something.

This book tells a great story, but adapting it for young readers, which is all the rage right now, was a bad call. Sang Ly lives with her husband and baby at Stung Meanchey, the largest garbage dump in all of Cambodia. Ki Lim, the husband, picks recyclables out of the garbage to make a living for the family. Sang Ly does some trash-picking, too, but mostly she takes care of baby Nisay, who is sickly and small with chronic diarrhea.

The story develops as Sang Ly becomes friends with the grumpy Rent Collector, Sopeap, and Sopeap teaches Sang Ly to read and to appreciate literature. There are some lovely moments in this story as Sopeap’s character and mysterious past are revealed and as she shares her love of literature with the illiterate Sang Ly. However, I feel as if most of those moments and insights would pass right over the head of the middle grade readers to whom this book is being marketed. Instead, they would remember the dump and the poverty and the dangers of trash-picking and the death and disease. The picture on the cover (supposed to be Sang Ly?) is misleading. There are a couple of minor characters in the book who are children, but mostly this book is about adults with adult concerns and problems. I would possibly give this book to young adults, high school and up, but it’s just not a middle grade novel.

The original adult novel was based on a true story, a film documentary called River of Victory. I wouldn’t mind watching the documentary, and I also wouldn’t mind reading the full, adult novel. The writing is good, and the story itself is inspiring. I just don’t think it should have been adapted for middle grade readers.

I feel a little sorry for books published in 2020 or 2021. The opportunities for publicity and recognition and even borrowing from libraries was, well, restricted, as were all things by the Big C. Dayna Lorentz’s middle grade novel about a boy and a coyote is worth a look, even when most reviewers have moved on to the new books of 2022.

Wayward Creatures is about two wayward creatures: twelve year old Gabe and a coyote named Rill. Gabe is entering seventh grade with a family distracted by economic problems and friends who spend all their time on competitive soccer and have no time for him. Gabe, trying desperately to impress his erstwhile friends, does something very stupid and destructive and ends up having to pay the consequences.

Rill, a somewhat anthropomorphized coyote, does something stupid, too. She leaves her pack–father mother, younger sisters and brothers–because she doesn’t feel appreciated. Gabe’s life and Rill’s intersect when Gabe is cleaning up the forest as a part of the restorative justice process. The book is steeped in the ideas of restorative justice, and there’s an author’s note at the end that explains what that is and how it works. Nevertheless, the ideas of animal control and habitat preservation and anger management and restorative justice, while they are a major part of the novel, never get in the way of the story, but rather become a natural part of the tale of one boy and one coyote.

I tend to still think that coyotes are mostly pests, but I’m at least willing now to give them the benefit of the doubt. And I think the ideas of restorative justice, which I first encountered in the writings of Chuck Colson, are certainly a much-needed tool that can be used to improve our criminal justice system and should be more widely implemented. That said, this book is a good story, not propaganda, and I did like the Gabe parts better than I liked the Rill the coyote parts of the book. My attitude towards coyotes may have worked itself up to tolerance: if they don’t bother me, I’ll try not to bother them.