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12 Favorite Middle Grade Fiction Books of 2014 (Excluding Speculative Fiction)

Dec30

I enjoyed all twelve of these middle grade realistic fiction books. My favorites are the two pictured to the right.

Absolutely Almost by Lisa Graff.

Upside Down in the Middle of Nowhere by Julie T. Lamana.

Curiosity by Gary L. Blackwood.

Rain Reign by Ann M. Martin.

I Kill the Mockingbird by Paul Acampora.

Under the Egg by Laura Marx Fitzgerald.

Circa Now by Amber McRee Turner.

Half a Chance by Cynthia Lord.

Zane and the Hurricane by Rodman Philbrick.

The Crossover by Kwame Alexander.

The Great Greene Heist by Varian Johnson.

Somebody on This Bus Is Going to Be Famous by J.B. Cheaney.

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12 Favorite Middle Grade Speculative Fiction Books of 2014

Dec29

This list is both difficult and easy. I read over 100 Middle Grade speculative fiction novels because of my role as a Cybils judge, so I have quite a few books to choose from. However choosing only the twelve best isn’t easy. These are my personal favorites and do not necessarily reflect the views of the other Cybils judges.

1. The Warden and the Wolf King by Andrew Peterson. This fourth book in the Wingfeather series is a saga, and it is a commitment, 519 pages worth of commitment. Obviously, I recommend starting at the beginning of the series with Book 1, At the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness, which makes it even more of a commitment. However, dare I say that it’s worth it? Definitely influenced by Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, this series is nevertheless no Tolkien imitation and no Lewis copycat. The entire series would be excellent for read aloud time.
2. The Orphan and the Mouse by Martha Freeman. When Mary Mouse, art thief, and Caro McKay, model orphan, meet, they immediately form a bond that transcends their inability to communicate completely. And when Caro helps Mary escape from the dreaded predator, Gallico the cat, then Mary knows that she must return the favor by helping Caro, even though Caro doesn’t understand the danger she faces.
3. The Night Gardener by Jonathan Auxier. Two Irish orphan children become entangled in an English family, the Windsors, and the curse that binds them to a crumbling house built around a spooky, twisted snare of a tree that captures the Windsors and their new Irish servants and threatens to carry them to their doom.
4. Nuts to You by Lynne Rae Perkins. Talking squirrels threatened by environmental disaster. If you liked last year’s The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp by Kathi Appelt or even last year’s Newbery Award winner, Flora and Ulysses: the Illuminated Adventures by Kate di Camillo, then Nuts to You should be just up your alley.
5. The Castle Behind Thorns by Merrie Haskell. A lovely parable about forgiveness and friendship and compromise and negotiation built upon the framework of the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale.
6. The Boundless by Kenneth Oppel. The Boundless, a luxury train in a steampunk alternate history world, has everything: 1st class accommodations, a library, dining cars, observation deck, a cinema, a billiard room, stores, second class passenger cars, freight cars, third class for the penny-pinching or poverty stricken traveler, and even a circus!
7. Almost Super by Marion Jensen. All of the Baileys receive their very own superpower on February 29th at 4:23 in the afternoon in the first leap year after their twelfth birthday. So now it’s time for Rafter Bailey, age thirteen, and his brother, Benny, age twelve to get their powers. It should be the best day of their young lives, but superpowers are unpredictable and Rafter and Benny are in for a big surprise.
8. The Hero’s Guide to Being an Outlaw by Chritopher Healy. The new League of Princes book, third in the series, does indeed have pirates, fearless female fighters, and grammar lessons, and all sorts of other hilarious shenanigans. Luxuriate in laughter.
9. The Children of the King When war refugees Cecily and May find two mysterious boys hiding in the nearby ruins of Snow Castle, they beg Uncle Peregrine to tell them the history of the castle. And he does, even though “its story is as hard as winter” and “cruel” and “scary” and “long” and “unfit for childish ears.”
10. Space Case by Stuart Gibbs. A classic murder mystery set on the moon and wrapped inside a bunch of details about life in space, space stations, and the possibilities of what might happen if and when humans begin to colonize the moon.
11. Lockwood & Co.: the Whispering Skull by Jonathan Stroud. The Lockwood & Co series of ghost fantasies aren’t for everyone. They’re probably too occult-related for some readers, even though the the protagonists—Lockwood, Lucy, and George—are the good guys as they fight against The Problem of evil ghostly manifestations that have become a common peril in this alternate history future.
12. Mark of the Dragonfly by Jaleigh Johnson. I would recommend this one to anyone who’s interested in trains, dystopia, futuristic sci-fi, or spunky female protagonists.

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12 Favorite Young Adult Ficton Books I Read in 2014

Dec27

Not all of these YA fiction books were published in 2014, but several of them were.

The Winter Horses by Phillip Kerr. Historical fiction/magical realism set in the Ukraine, winter, 1941. If you like horses or World War II stories, check it out.

The Windy Hill by Cornelia Meigs. If this one were published now, it would be YA since it features teenaged protagonists. It’s not at all like contemporary YA, though.

Out of the Easy by Ruta Sepetys. 1950’s New Orleans, on the seamy side of town.

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart. This novel hit way too close to home for me to be able to write an objective, or even subjective, review. However, I found it quite haunting and memorable.

If You’re Reading This by Trent Reedy. As his senior year in high school begins, Mike receives a series of letters from his father who died in Afghanistan when Mike was eight years old.

Merlin’s Blade by Robert Treskillard. Good Arthurian fiction series, The Merlin Spiral also includes Merlin’s Shadow, and Merlin’s Nightmare.

Always Emily by Michaela McColl. An atmospheric mystery featuring Emily Bronte and her sister Charlotte as a mismatched but effective detective duo.

The Extra by Kathryn Lasky. A fictionalization of the true story of how Hitler’s pet film director, Leni Riefenstahl, enslaved Sinti and Roma gypsies to have them work as extras in her movies.

I Kill the Mockingbird by Paul Acampora. Borderline between middle grade and YA and lots of fun for bookish types.

The Screaming Staircase by Jonathan Stroud. Maybe middle grade, maybe YA, but good anyway.

The Whispering Skull by Jonathan Stroud. Book #2 in the Lockwood & Co. series about ghost-busting adolescents in an alternate history Victorian world.

Belzhar by Meg Wolitzer. I just read this one yesterday, but I liked it a lot despite some flaws. My review will be posted in 2015.

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12 2014 Books I Haven’t Read but I Really, Really Want To

Dec26


These were mostly taken from all those book lists that I’ve perused during the month of December.

Fierce Convictions by Karen Swallow Prior. About reformer, poet and Christian, Hannah More.

As Green as Grass: Growing Up Before, During & After the Second World War by Emma Smith. I have an excuse for not having read this one since it carries a publication date of December 30, 2014. But doesn’t the title sound lovely? From Dani’s list of books to read at A Work in Progress.

All Our Names by Dinaw Mengestu. About an Ethiopian emigrant, this one fits into my interest in all things African. “A young African man called Isaac has come to the Midwestern United States, where he embarks on a relationship with Helen, a social worker, who, for all her heart and intelligence, has trouble understanding him.”

The Children Act by Ian McEwan.. Mr. McEwan is always provocative–and evocative.

Lila by Marilynne Robinson. I already had this one on my list before it was even published.

An Unecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine. This book sounds so –bookish. “Sustained by her ‘blind lust for the written word’ and surrounded by piles of books, she [Aaliyah] anticipates beginning a new translation project each year until disaster appears to upend her life.”

Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War by Mark Harris. The story of five Hollywood film directors and their activities during and in relation to World War II: John Ford, William Wyler, John Huston, Frank Capra, and George Stevens, written by the same author who wrote Pictures at a Revolution.

Blood Will Out: The True Story of a Murder, a Mystery, and a Masquerade by Walter Kirn. Kirn tells “the highly personal story of his being hoodwinked, professionally and emotionally, by a man he knew as Clark Rockefeller, a member of of the famously wealthy industrial, political, and banking family.”

Without You, There Is No Us: My Time With the Sons of North Korea’s Elite by Suki Kim. A haunting memoir of teaching English to the sons of North Korea’s ruling class during the last six months of Kim Jong-il’s reign–sounds like the sad-but-true category.

“Every day, three times a day, the students march in two straight lines, singing praises to Kim Jong-il and North Korea: ‘Without you, there is no motherland. Without you, there is no us.'”

Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China by Evan Osnos. National Book Award winner.

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson. National Book Award winner.

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Ambassador by William Alexander

Dec22


“Gabe has some alien problems.”

National Book Award-winning author William Alexander is writing in a completely different genre from his fantasy novel and award winner, Goblin Secrets, a book I didn’t care for all that much. Ambassador is science fiction, close encounters of the third kind, and I did enjoy it.

Gabriel Sandro Fuentes is an eleven year old middle child, with an older sister and twin toddler brother and sister. Gabe is what my mom would fondly call “a lover, not a fighter.” He’s plenty courageous, but he’s learned in his eleven years to be a peacemaker. His mother calls him “the most sensible member of this whole family” and “the only one who knows how to keep your head down.”

When The Envoy asks Gabe to become Earth’s Ambassdor to the Galaxy and to avert an impending crisis in the universe using his skills in diplomacy and playground negotiation, Gabe feels it is his duty to take up the challenge. But while Gabe is dealing with a destructive alien force headed for Earth and an assassination attempt, his family on Earth is in danger of being deported from the U.S. because of their undocumented status. How can Gabe save Earth and be there for his family?

Ambassador is lots of fun. It doesn’t tie all the loose ends up neatly at the end of the book. Readers will want to know more about what happens to Gabe’s family as well as the motivations and intentions of the enigmatic Outlast Omegan. Maybe there’s a sequel planned.

Nevertheless, it’s not an unsatisfying ending. Gabe is an engaging character, and he does do what he needs to do in a well-planned and plucky way. Whovians and Trekkies and fans of classic sci-fi in general will enjoy the ride.

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This book is also nominated for a Cybil Award, but the views expressed here are strictly my own and do not reflect or determine the judging panel’s opinions.

The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place: Book 4, The Interrupted Tale by Maryrose Wood

Dec21

I read the first book in this series a couple of years ago, and here’s a recap of my very brief review:

The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place: The Mysterious Howling by Maryrose Wood is the first in a series about three children who were raised by wolves. The story, which features governess Penelope Lumley, a fifteen year old graduate of the Swanburne Academy for Poor Bright Females, is rather cute and fun, but it ends practically in mid-sentence with most of its questions unanswered. The next book in the series, The Hidden Gallery, will be in stores Feb 22, 2011. You may want to wait for it and then sneak a peek at the ending to see if the words “to be continued” are again the (non)ending, if that sort of thing bothers you as it does me. These books look to be similar in tone and attitude to Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events.

I must give a disclaimer here and tell you that many questions are still, in this fourth book, largely unanswered. However, since I went into this fourth book with the expectation that it would be interrupted and incomplete, I was not disappointed. There was a happy ending and a defeat for the villains of this episode in the lives of the three Incorrigibles, even though the larger questions about where they came from, where Miss Lumley came from, and how they will all find their place in the world were left hanging.

Running jokes, taken quite seriously in a Victorian sort of way, about iambic pentameter and poetics in general, the art of rhetoric, the care of orphans, wolves and chickens, and other timely topics were the main source of entertainment in reading this story. The Incorrigible children are incorrigible, wolfish, and quite intelligent. Miss Lumley is resourceful and brave. And the villain of the piece, Judge Quinzy, is perfectly villainous. Sprinkled throughout the book are references to the founder of the Swanburne Academy for Poor Bright Females, Agatha Swanburne, who is regrettably deceased, but who left to the school and its students and teachers a huge store of wise and pithy sayings, proverbs and bits of wisdom that serve them all well as they navigate the vicissitudes of life and education.

The series is worth starting and continuing, if you like Snicket-like stories and if you’re willing to be patient with the unanswered questions. I believe the books are getting better as the series goes along, and I’ve come to terms with the incompleteness of the plot.

Amazon Affiliate. If you click on a book cover here to go to Amazon and buy something, I receive a very small percentage of the purchase price.
This book is also nominated for a Cybil Award, but the views expressed here are strictly my own and do not reflect or determine the judging panel’s opinions.

Oh, the Thinks You Can Think, or Strange Creatures of the Imagination in Speculative Fiction

Dec20

Your assignment: Draw a world that contains many or all of these creatures as imagined by you. You get extra points if you can name the 2014 speculative fiction Cybils nominees that feature each one of these weird and fantastical creatures. You get even more credit for naming a qualifying imaginary being from 2014 middle grade speculative fiction that I neglected to add to the list.


Albino Ackaway.
Albino witch.
Alien Tremist.
Ashari haldani.
Augmented actualizers.
Aviars (bird people).
Ax-wielding Feuerkumpel.
Bad-tempered great grey hippokamp.
Black-eyed terragogg.
Bog Noblins (semi-aquatic lowland Nobificus).
Bombinating beast.
Carnag the Monster Semblance.
Dreaded toothy cows.
Drill sergeant fairy.
Egyptian demigod.
Extraterrestrial from Bosco in the constellation Draco.
Fangs of Dang.
Flesh-eating valravens.
Furry raccoon-shaped Dome Meks.
General Cockroach.
Giant carnivorous weeds.
Gigantic redback vole petling.
Hoppernots.
Icewing dragons.
Incorrigible howling wolf children.
Jabberwock.
Jupiter pirates.
Kampii (fishy mermaid people).
Little green or gray spacemen.
Luck Uglies.
Mangleborn.
Manglespawn.
Masked Venetian magicians.
Medieval pilgrim squirrels.
Mudwing dragons.
Neptunian blorkbeast.
Nightgaunts.
Nightmare scorpipede.
Nightwing dragons.
Ninja librarians.
Phantom fox familiar.
Pink gargoyle dudes.
Platypus police squad.
Plug-Ugly, the disappearing cat.
Rainwing dragons.
Reptilian Exorians.
Rhinebra.
Sandwing dragons.
Seawigs.
Seawing dragons.
Self-assembled artificial intelligence SmartBots.
Serpentii (snake people).
Seven-headed hydra.
Shark whisperer.
Skander-winged puck.
Skirrits.
Skywing dragons.
Soul jumpers.
Sparkers.
Spirit duppies.
Spying blue butterflies.
Sunflower skeleton eraser.
Vain vitrina.
Xanite kasiri.
Zombie hamster.

I wish I could draw.

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12 Book Lists from 2014

Dec16

I will round up the bloggers’ book lists at my Saturday Review of Books on December 27th, the day after Christmas, giving everyone plenty of time to post their lists. Also, on the day after Christmas I’ll start posting my several lists of favorites and books I’m looking forward to reading in 2015.

In the meantime, the other end of the year book lists are already starting to multiply. I have a love/hate relationship with lists of “best books” or “favorites”, mostly love. But it is frustrating to see how many books there are that I would love to read and how little time I have to read them all.

On the other hand, what a blessing to have so many books to choose from! What an embarrassment of riches!

14 Best Books of 2014 (with runners-up) by Tony Reinke at Desiring God. These are Christian nonfiction, and there are at least a couple that I want to read, including John Piper’s book on authors George Herbert, George Whitfield, and C.S. Lewis and Karen Swallow Prior’s biography Fierce Convictions, about poet and reformer Hannah More.

Christian Science Monitor’s 10 best fiction books of 2014. Almost all ten of these sound intriguing, and I added most of them to my TBR list at Goodreads.

Speaking of Goodreads, Goodreads Selects Best Books of 2014. Some of these were already on my radar; others are new to me.

Mary DeMuth’s Best Ever Gift Guide for Book Lovers. I added four books to my TBR list from Mary’s gift guide, and I could have added more:
Rush of Heaven by Ema McKinley and Cheryl Ricker.
The Invisibile Girls by Sarah Thebarge.
Living Without Jim by Sue Keddy.
Calling Me Home by Julie Kibler.

The Best Books of 2014, according to Slate staff. Some of these are a bit too risqué or my tastes, but others sound intriguing:
Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War by Mark Harris.
Blood Will Out: The True Story of a Murder, a Mystery, and a Masquerade by Walter Kirn.
Lock In by John Scalzi.
Without You, There Is No Us: My Time With the Sons of North Korea’s Elite by Suki Kim.

And another Slate list: 27 Books you shouldn’t have overlooked in 2014. I think I’ll not overlook at least one of these:
Like No Other by Una LaMarche. YA fiction, “featuring Jaxon, who is black, and Devorah, a Hasidic girl who isn’t even allowed a phone.”(!) They meet in a stranded hospital elevator during an electrical outage. Color me curious.

Newsweek: Our Favorite Books of 2014. Not my favorites, but maybe you will find something here?

Washington Post: The Top 50 Fiction Books for 2014. Many interesting pick here:
All Our Names by Dinaw Mengestu. About an Ethiopian emigrant, this one fits into my interest in all things African.
The Children Act by Ian McEwan. Mr. McEwan is always provocative–and evocative.
Lila by Marilynne Robinson. I already had this one on my list before it was even published.
An Unecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine.

Washington Post: 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction.
Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China by Evan Osnos. National Book Award winner.
Congo: The Epic History of a People by David van Reybrouck, translated by Sam Garrett. If it’s readable.
Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World’s First Digital Weapon by Kim Zetter.
John Quincy Adams: American Visionary by Fred Kaplan. For my U.S. presidents project.
A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal by Ben MacIntyre.

Hornbook presents its Fanfare! The best books of 2014. I’ll need to read the following, all of which I’ve seen recommended on numerous lists and in numerous reviews:
Sam & Dave Dig a Hole by Mac Barnett
The Family Romanov: Murder, Rebellion, and the Fall of Imperial Russia by Candace Fleming.
The Right Word: Roget and His Thesaurus by Jen Bryant.
Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson. National Book Award winner.

Entertainment Weekly: 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2014. The usual suspects, plus a few more.
The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison is starting to sound interesting. Also, maybe I’ll buy What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe as a gift for Engineer Husband.

NPR’s Book Concierge: Our Guide to 2014’s Great Reads.

As she does every year, Susan Thomsen at Chicken Spaghetti has lots more 2014 book lists, specifically those that include children’s and YA books.

Space Case by Stuart Gibbs

Dec5


A middle grade murder mystery set on the moon. What more need be said? You either think it’s a genius idea for a middle grade author to write a mystery novel for kids set in a moon colony, Moon Base Alpha, in the year 2041, or you’re not interested in astronauts and NASA and science fiction stuff. If you are a person who’s “thrilled by space travel”, as the author says he is, you would probably enjoy this book. It’s a classic murder mystery wrapped inside a bunch of details about life in space, space stations, and the possibilities of what might happen if and when humans begin to colonize the moon. It’s fun, well-researched, and well-plotted. I didn’t like the reveal of who the murderer was and why he “done it”, but that’s personal preference.

That said, I’m going to discuss a very minor aspect of Mr. Gibbs’ vision of the future: his depiction of race and race relations. In describing some nasty characters who are residents of Moon Base Alpha, the narrator goes off on a tangent about the state of racial categories in the future:

“You see, Patton and Lily are virtually the only pure white people my age I’ve ever met. Everyone else I know is a blend. Me and Violet, for example (black mom, white dad). Or the Brahmaputra-Marquez family (Indian mom, Latino dad). Or Kira (Asian mom, black dad). Or Riley Bock, back on earth (Korean-Italian mom, Irish-Sri Lankan-Peruvian-Choctaw dad). The Sjobergs, however, are pure northern European Caucasian stock, with blond hair and blue eyes and skin so pale it looks like the belly of a fish. Mom and Dad have some friends like that from their generation, and my grandparents say it was pretty common when they were young, and I’ve been told that back when my great-grandparents were kids, people of different races couldn’t even marry each other in America. I know that’s true, but it still seems impossible.
Every kid I’d ever known was some shade of brown.”

This scenario for the future is quite plausible, and I used to think that such a state of affairs, where every one was so “mixed race” that no one could tell who was what anyway would be the solution for all the divisions and prejudices that exist in our country. If what we call “race” becomes so intermingled and interbred that we can no longer tell black from brown from white because almost everyone is sort of brownish, which is by rights what should happen in a world where communication and transportation are so accessible, then racism as we know it would cease to exist, right?

Or maybe not. Now I’m not so sure. I’m a bit more pessimistic about the future of peace on earth (or the moon) among all mankind. We are by nature sinful people who are full of fear and hatred and pride and who are prone to violence. If we can’t divide people up by skin color, we’ll find something else. Look at the Tutsis and the Hutus of south central Africa:

“The antagonism between Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda and Burundi is not a tribal conflict. It is not, properly speaking, an ethnic conflict. By all the most common definitions, Hutus and Tutsis are the same people, which makes their violent history even more tragically incomprehensible to outsiders. . . . Despite the stereotypical variation in appearance – tall Tutsis, squat Hutus – anthropologists say they are ethnically indistinguishable. The oft- quoted difference in height is roughly the same as the difference between wealthy and poor Europeans in the last century (an average of 12cm).” The Independent, November 1996

Anyway, that’s not what the book Space Case is about. But it is one thing it made me think about. Read Space Case for fun and entertainment. Pray for Ferguson and for New York City and for all the places that are filled with division and hatred and all the people in the world who are experiencing fear and injustice and persecution and violence. Pray for peace on earth, goodwill to men, through the only Solution who has ever brought true healing to our broken planet.

Amazon Affiliate. If you click on a book cover here to go to Amazon and buy something, I receive a very small percentage of the purchase price.
This book is also nominated for a Cybil Award, but the views expressed here are strictly my own and do not reflect or determine the judging panel’s opinions.

The Last Wild by Piers Torday

Nov24

“Wild” is a noun, not an adjective in this novel, and it means a group of animals who live together in a sort of ecosystem. Kester Jaynes is a boy, the son of a former veterinarian, who lives in a home for troubled children in a society that has become somewhat troubled, perhaps insane, itself.

The animals have all been destroyed because of the the “disease worse than a nuclear bomb” called red-eye. The animals were carriers, and now most of them are gone, except for insects and a few species of birds. However, one night Kester discovers that even though he is unable to speak even a word to humans, he can communicate with animals. A flock of pigeons and a cockroach rescue Kester from lockdown in the children’s home and take him to where the Last Wild is meeting in a desperate attempt to save themselves from becoming the last victims of red-eye.

Kester, through a series of odd events, becomes the leader of this Last Wild, and they set out together to find Kester’s father, who may hold the clue to a cure for the disease. Or Mr. Jaynes may be working with the evil Selwyn Stone Enterprise, makers of “formul-A”, the only food source for human beings now that the animals (and most all of the farms) are all gone. Kester is not sure what’s going on with his dad, but he journeys in faith that somehow his father will help the animals of the Last Wild.

So, this book is a post-apocolyptic father-quest with an evil corporation as antagonist, and the plot involves a weak but honorable boy traveling across country in the company of his animal friends and protectors. It sounds like a lot of other stories of its kind, and the formul-A and the cockroach friendship didn’t help my enjoyment of the novel. However, the sequel to this book, The Dark Wild, just won the Guardian Prize for for Children’s Fiction in Great Britain, a place where they may like their children’s books a little darker than I do and where they may not be as familiar with actual, Houston-size cockroaches. I can imagine those Britishers thinking that a cockroach would make a nice little pet, but they are wrong. Mice, yes, maybe, cockroaches, no way.

Anyway, if your toleration for roaches and pink slime (which is how I imagined the formul-A) is better than mine, and if the premise sounds interesting, you might want to check out The Last Wild. The roach friend and the nasty food are about the worst of the details of the novel. Oh, there are the dying stag and the crazy white pigeon.

Amazon Affiliate. If you click on a book cover here to go to Amazon and buy something, I receive a very small percentage of the purchase price.
This book is also nominated for a Cybil Award, but the views expressed here are strictly my own and do not reflect or determine the judging panel’s opinions.