I read the following three books because they were nominated for the Cybil Award for Middle Grade Fiction. As my mom would say, if these books come in parts, you can leave mine out.

Runaround by Helen Hemphill.
From the inside cover blurb: “Everything eleven year old Sassy knows about love comes from romance magazines. But now that she has her eye on her handsome neighbor, Boon, she wants more details.”
Yuck. I will admit to reading my grandmother’s copies of True Romance in secret when I was a kid of a girl, and like Sassy, I had lots of questions about what went on in those magazines. But in Runaround Sassy has no other source of information. Her mother is gone, and her dad is uncommunicative. Her sister, Lula, is only thirteeen and already has boyfriends galore. And Sassy flirts outrageously with Boon who’s a year older than Lula, until Sassy finally gets Boon to kiss her. Again, yuck. They might as well be reading True Romance magazine, not a practice I would recommend for eleven year olds or twelve year olds or teens or even adults.

Other views:
Kidslit: “This is a well-crafted novel that is perfect for tween readers. It has just the right amount of romance, including french kissing, but doesn’t go so far that it would make it more appropriate for older readers.”
Camille at BookMoot: “There are some wonderfully funny and painful moments as Sassy and Lula learn about guys and life. You do not want to get into a haircut fight with these sisters.”

Penina Levine Is a Hard-Boiled Egg by Rebecca O’Connell.
“I’m Jewish, and I shouldn’t have to write a pretend letter from the Easter bunny because the word “Easter” offends me. And my teacher is a jerk because she gives me a zero for not completing the assignment. Oh, and by the way, I’m jealous of my little sister because she gets more attention than I do.”
That’s my summary of the book. I think Penina is a brat, and the teacher really is a jerk or at least unbelievably dense. Any teacher I know of would have given an alternate assignment when Penina started yelping, even though I agree with the teacher that her complaints were unjustified and overblown. (A bid for attention?) There are an interesting couple of chapters about the celebration of Seder in a large Jewish family. That part might be worth reading aloud to kids, but the rest of the story is forgettable.

Other views:
JessMonster at BookPyramid: “At any rate, while part of me sympathized with Penina for being the religious outsider (rebelling against attending mass in honor of the Immaculate Conception, anyone?) I also found her profoundly irritating on some level.”
Behind the Stove: “Penina herself is a winner – I liked the kind and intelligent way in which she ultimately makes her point to her teacher, and I loved Penina’s stubbornness, her enthusiasm for her heritage, and her refusal to be untrue to her nature. I found Penina downright endearing, the sort of little girl I would have liked to be friends with.”

Bird Springs by Carolyn Marsden.
Ten year old Gregory and his mother and baby sister have to move from their Navajo reservation home in Bird Springs to a homeless shelter in Tucson when Gregory’s father skips out and the rains don’t come. The blurb says the story has a “sense of hope,” but I thought it mostly had a dearth of action. Gregory wanders around the shelter, worries, makes a new friend, worries some more, gets a haircut, worries, and goes into a sewer tunnel with his new friend Matt. And Gregory talks like a six year old: “My dad is a warrior. He gots a horse called Blackie, and one day when he gets Blackie back he’s gonna ride on down and get me.”

I couldn’t find any other blog reviews of Bird Springs. If you’ve read the book and have a second opinion, please leave a comment and a link.