Lena is Trille’s best friend, but he’s not really sure if he is Lena’s best friend. Lena reminds me of The Cat in Miranda and The Cat; she’s independent and feisty, full of ideas, not so prone to intimate confidences and expressions of affection. Lena is also reminiscent of Pippi Longstocking; she’s a bit of a rebel. Of course, the Scandinavian setting recalls Pippi, too. (Adventures with Waffles is from a Norwegian author, while Pippi Longstocking is Swedish. But the setting is similar.)

This book is funny, and I think there is dearth of truly funny children’s books being published these days. Lots of great quests and problem novels and bathroom humor crowd the shelves, but to find a good, funny read-aloud-worthy story, you almost have to go back to Ramona Quimby or Homer Price or Sid Fleischman’s western adventure stories (By The Great Horn Spoon, The Ghost in the Noonday Sun). What all of these disparate books have in common is a sense of humor that depends on ordinary, everyday absurdities instead of shock value and silly talk.

The book also deals with sadness and loss. A favorite character in the book dies, and at a certain point in the story Trille thinks his friendship with Lena is over. Both losses are told about in a compassionate and realistic way that would help readers to identify with Trille, the protagonist, in his grief. And there’s lots of trouble as Lena’s ideas for fun and adventure are not devoid of ridiculous and even dangerous consequences. A picture of Jesus becomes a sort of talisman for remembering what has been lost in terms of family and friendship and for renewing the relationships that remain.

I have been told by more than one friend that Ms. Parr’s other middle grade fiction book, Astrid the Unstoppable is even better than Adventures with Waffles. So, I plan to check that one out as soon as possible. In the meantime, I recommend Adventures with Waffles to fans of Ramona Quimby and Pippi Longstocking and Anne of Green Gables and other spirited and slightly wacky fictional girl characters.

“In the spell-powered city of Tarreton, the wealthy have all the magic they desire, while the working class can hardly afford a simple spell to heat their homes. Twelve year old Isaveth is poor, but she’s also brave, loyal, and zealous in the pursuit of justice–which is lucky, because her father has just been wrongfully arrested for murder.” (From the blurb on the front inside cover)

I enjoyed A Pocket Full of Murder for several reasons. First, the book combines two of my favorite genres: magical fantasy and murder mystery. The fantasy world in A Pocket Full of Murder is well-imagined, with lots of rich detail. There are fun, made-up, Lewis Carroll-esque words like “neevils” and “Duesday” and “gobblewit” that are novel, but pretty much self-explanatory in context, and not so plenteous that they become annoying. The society and culture are described through the words and actions of the characters, Isaveth and her family and Isaveth’s mysterious friend with an eyepatch, Quiz. Isaveth belongs to a religious minority called the Moshites (think Jewish or other religious minority), and Quiz is a street urchin turned detective, also jack-of-all-trades, who volunteers to help Isaveth as she works to clear her father’s name and find the real murderer. The story includes trade unions and nobility and a partly democratic government and a manufacturing base and merchants and class divisions—all sorts of interesting elements to explore in a fully envisaged society.

As far as the murder mystery part of the book is concerned, I’m not really very good at guessing the murderer, even though I’ve read lots of Agatha Christie and Rex Stout and Dorothy Sayers, and sure enough, I didn’t guess the villain in this one until near the end. That said, it was fairly obvious when the solution presented itself, and you may be better at solving mysteries than I am. I would guess that middle grade readers are more like me and won’t see the twist and turns until just before they read about them. R.J. Anderson says in her author blurb that she’s a fan of the Golden Age detective novels of Dorothy Sayers and Margery Allingham, and the influence shows in the book, but in a children’s bookish sort of way. The similarity of Isaveth and Quiz to Harriet Vane and Lord Peter Wimsey was just a hint, but enough to add a whimsical air to the mystery.

I also liked the themes embedded in the books. Again, the themes are subtle, no preachiness at all. But Isaveth learns to value her heritage and her religious beliefs, even though the Moshites are shunned and sometimes persecuted by the larger society of Tarreton. Politicians are shown to be sometimes corrupt, even those who seem to be promising to work on behalf of the poor and the working class. (Any application to current U.S. politics is purely a function of the universal truth that politicians don’t always follow through on their promises–and sometimes have purely selfish motives for their seeming altruism.) And truth and justice are the primary values of the minority in a city that is filled with corruption and injustice. I like the idea of teaching , through story, that truth will out in the end and that even though evil may not be completely defeated in this world at this time, it can be battled and foiled for a particular time in a particular place.

The ending is sufficiently satisfying to call it a happy ending, but also leaves an opening for a sequel. I would certainly like to revisit Isaveth and Quiz, and I think you might be in the same camp after reading A Pocket Full of Murder. And sure enough, the second book in the “Uncommon Magic” series, A Little Taste of Poison, is due out in September, 2016. I recommend the first volume to mystery and fantasy lovers everywhere.

Set in 1972, this novel for middle grade readers tells the story of Peter Lee, a Chinese-American boy who loves baseball, and his very traditional Taiwanese father, Chen Lee. These two are the characters around whom the narrative revolves as Peter and his “Ba” (what Peter calls his dad) come to understand and even appreciate one another through the medium and backdrop of baseball.

At the beginning of the story, Peter describes his dad as a “man of science and great believer in cleanliness and order.” Peter’s dad doesn’t seem to be very interested in baseball, nor does he take much interest in Peter’s ideas or feelings. Peter’s school work is the only thing that Ba notices about his son, and mostly he notices when Peter is not doing well in school. Peter’s mother, who has been the emotional glue that held this family together in the past, has reacted to a tragedy in the family by retreating into a world of watching television and sleeping. Whereas she and Peter used to share an interest in baseball, particularly the Pittsburgh Pirates, now “Mom” is cold and unresponsive. And Ba simply allows her to continue to sit and do nothing.

The book is a fascinating account of a family dealing with the depressive illness of one of its members, even though the words “clinical depression” are never used. Perhaps in this traditional Chinese family, in the early 1970’s, there is no concept of depression as a treatable mental illness. Nevertheless, at the end of the book Ba says something very wise and insightful about dealing with an ongoing family crisis or illness, any such calamity:

“I don’t know what to do next,” I say (Peter).

Ba lowers his head and clears his throat. “What you do is keep moving. Some days you will only do small things all day. You get up in the morning and you get dressed and you wash your face. You go to school. I go to work. We have baseball.”

So wise. There are other issues and conflicts and wise (and foolish) decisions in the book: girls playing Little League baseball, bullying, fathers and sons and over-zealous coaches, the meaning of playing baseball. But the growing relationship between Peter and Ba was what made the book come alive for me. The Way Home Looks Now is a good story, full of baseball metaphors (and I really like me some baseball metaphors), and it paints a fine picture of a boy coming to understand and appreciate his father’s love and concern that is expressed in a way that doesn’t look exactly the way an eleven or twelve year old boy might recognize or want it to look.

Recommended for lovers of baseball and for boys and girls with fathers, which should include most everyone.

A post-apocalyptic (Hunger Games) sort of adventure story pitched for younger readers, maybe 9 to 12 years old. The nanites that were supposed to combat the air pollution of a long-ago civilization have instead taken over the entire surface of the earth, creating a deadly fog that brings sickness to anyone who spends time in it. The ruthless Lord Kodoc is out to get Chess, the fog diver or tether boy for a group of scavengers from the slums who use their air raft to search for salvage in the fog. Unfortunately for Chess, he’s a freak, born in a cage, down in the fog, with one fog-filled eye to betray his origins. As Chess and his scavenger buddies–Hazel, Bea and Swedish—try to escape the notice of Lord Kodoc, they also need to earn enough money to leave the slums and go to Port Oro where their mentor, Mrs. E, might be able to find a cure for her life-threatening fog-sickness.

The book moves along at a steady clip with lots of peril and near-death experiences. It also has lots of Star Wars references, which are fun to catch, and the plot itself is very Star Wars-y. There are humorous references to various pop culture artifacts and ephemera as Chess consults his father’s old scrapbook for an understanding of history but misunderstands many of the references. So the children think that Burger King and Dairy Queen were real monarchs from long ago, and they tell each other stories about Skywalker Trek and the X-wing Enterprise.

I though the ending was adequate, not really a cliff-hanger, although it’s obvious that a sequel is in the works. Fog Diver is one of the books on the shortlist for Cybils in the Middle Grade Fiction category. That’s why I read it, and I’m glad I did. I’m definitely looking forward to that sequel, The Lost Compass (May, 2016).

“My name is Chess, and I was born inside a cage.

Imagine a wooden platform jutting from a mountain cliff. Now picture a chain falling from that platform and vanishing into the Fog, a deadly white mist that covers the entire Earth.

That’s where I was born: locked in a cage, at the end of a chain, inside the fog.

And I would have died there, too, if Mrs. E hadn’t saved me.”