MG Review: The Dark Lady (Sherlock, Lupin & Me #1)

Title: The Dark Lady (Sherlock, Lupin & Me #1)

Author: Irene Adler

# of Pages: 240

Publisher: Capstone Young Readers

Publication Date: February 1st 2014

Source: NetGalley

Level: Middle Grade

Rating: 2 Hearts

Synopsis

While on summer vacation, little Irene Adler meets a young William Sherlock Holmes. The two share stories of pirates and have battles of wit while running wild on the sunny streets and rooftops. When Sherlock’s friend, Lupin, joins in on the fun, they all become fast friends. But the good times end abruptly when a dead body floats ashore on the nearby beach. The young detective trio will have to put all three of their heads together to solve this mystery.

My Verdict

I stumbled across this book when searching through NetGalley's available titles looking for something quite different. I've recently become obsessed with the BBC drama Sherlock and was very interested in this middle-grade mystery about a young Sherlock Holmes.

While this book is just being released in the US this February, it was originally an Italian title and part of a series that already has four books. The book is told from Irene Adler's point of view as she looks back at her childhood and the time her and Sherlock first met, one summer in the beach-side town of Saint-Malo. Unfortunately, the book lost my interest very early on. The "big" mystery was very slow paced which took away any potential suspense.

I wasn't impressed by the writing, it felt narrated rather than seen through the eyes of our protagonist, Irene. There was also an extreme over use of exclamation marks. It was as if everything that came out of Irene's mouth was super important! I began imaging that she didn't just speak, but rather yelled everything.

For a book about Sherlock Holmes I felt we hardly got to know him at all. He was quiet and mysterious, which I know are some of his famous character traits. I just wish he wasn't such a stranger to the reader.

Hopefully the target audience enjoys this book better than I did. As for me, I won't be carrying on with the series. 

MG Review: This Journal Belongs to Ratchet by Nancy J. Cavanaugh

Title: This Journal Belongs to Ratchet

Author: Nancy J. Cavanaugh

# of Pages: 320

Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky

Publication Date: April 2nd 2013

Source: Borrowed

Level: Middle Grade

Rating: 5 Hearts

Synopsis

If only getting a new life were as easy as getting a new notebook.

But it's not.

It's the first day of school for all the kids in the neighborhood. But not for me. I'm homeschooled. That means nothing new. No new book bag, no new clothes, and no friends – old or new. The best I've got is this notebook. I'm supposed to use it for my writing assignments, but my dad never checks. Here's what I'm really going to use it for:

Ratchet's Top Secret Plan

Project Goal: turn my old, recycled, freakish, friendless, motherless life into something shiny and new.

This year, I'm going make something change.

My Verdict

I was immediately put off by this book within the first few pages when it talked about homeschoolers having no friends and getting an A+ on a paper when she just wrote the same sentence over and over. As someone who was homeschooled k – 12^th grade, I always get angry when people assume we sit around doing nothing all day and are some kind of friendless hermits. I had plenty of friends growing up and worked super hard on my schoolwork. Now that I’ve gotten that little rant out of the way...

I loved the unique structure in which this story was written. Not only is it through Ratchets journal but it’s her social studies journal, which is formatted into different writing assignments like poetry, letter, fairytale, review, etc… I found this to be a very unique and interesting structure. At first I thought the fact that the whole book is in a funky, handwritten font would drive me up a wall, but your eyes adjust after awhile. 

Once I was able to get past the stereotypical view of homeschoolers and the awful handwritten font, I really did fall in love with the story. Ratchet is a very likable main character who is learning how to deal with her embarrassing father, finding out about her absent mother and what it really means to be a friend. This is one of those middle grade stories that will be enjoyed by all ages. I highly recommend it!

MG Review: Love That Dog & Hate That Cat by Sharon Creech

Title: Love That Dog / Hate That Cat

Author: Sharon Creech

# Of Pages: 128/148

Publisher: HarperCollins

Publication Date: April 8, 2008/ September 23, 2008

Source: Library

Level: Middle Grade

Rating: 2 Hearts / 3 Hearts

Synopsis

(From Amazon)

Love That Dog-

Jack

Room 105 - -Miss Stretchberry

September 13

I don't want to

because boys

don't write poetry.

Girls do

But before he knows it Jack is creating his own poetry and a wonderful story emerges as he becomes interested in this thing that 'girls do'! Not only is Jack inspired to write to his favourite poet, but the poet agrees to visit, and Jack discovers how much more there is to poetry behind the words on the page. A lovely, loving and very impressive novel that defies definition.

Hate That Cat-

Jack

Room 204—Miss Stretchberry

February 25

Today the fat black cat


up in the tree by the bus stop


dropped a nut on my head


thunk


and when I yelled at it

that fat black cat said


Murr-mee-urrr


in a 


nasty


spiteful


way.

I hate that cat.

This is the story of 
Jack
words
sounds
silence
teacher
and cat.

My Verdict

There are two types of middle grade books; those specifically geared for middle graders, and those with enough depth for all ages. These books fell into the first category.

Told in a series of journal entries, Jack communicates to his teacher Miss Stretchberry about his thoughts on poetry. Every time his class learns about a new type of poem or famous poet, Jack writes a poem inspired by them about events in his own life.

Out of the two, I enjoyed Hate That Cat a lot more than the first. I think Jack’s personality came through a lot more than in the first. I liked his sense of humor, he definitely had me smiling =)

He also used the word tintinnabulation is a sentence, which was one of my Wordlover Wednesday Words!

As a 22 year-old, I didn’t particularly get a lot from these stories but I do think they would be good books for their specific age bracket. They both touch on different types of poetry, being embarrassed to put your name on something you’ve created, and most importantly it turns a boy who’s reluctant to write poetry into a boy who loves poetry.

Book Review: The Wild Book by Margarita Engle

Title: The Wild Book

Author: Margarita Engle

# Of Pages: 144

Publisher: Harcourt Children’s Books

Publication Date: March 20, 2012

Source: Library

Level: Middle Grade

Rating: 3 Hearts

Synopsis

(From Amazon.com)

Fefa struggles with words. She has word blindness, or dyslexia, and the doctor says she will never read or write. Every time she tries, the letters jumble and spill off the page, leaping and hopping away like bullfrogs. How will she ever understand them?

But her mother has an idea. She gives Fefa a blank book filled with clean white pages. "Think of it as a garden," she says. Soon Fefa starts to sprinkle words across the pages of her wild book. She lets her words sprout like seedlings, shaky at first, then growing stronger and surer with each new day. And when her family is threatened, it is what Fefa has learned from her wild book that saves them.

My Verdict

I just have to express my absolute LOVE of this cover! The illustrations are just so colorful and beautiful. Now for the actual story: this is the third book I’ve read by Margarita Engle and unfortunately none of them have lived up to the first.

The Wild Book is about eleven-year old Fefa, who at the beginning of the book finds out she has “word-blindness” or what we now know as common day dyslexia. The book is about Fefa’s struggle and how she works to overcome it. It’s set in the Cuban countryside of 1912, and is a work of historical fiction loosely based on stories the author’s grandmother used to tell her.

I found it unbelievable how cruel Fefa’s own brothers and sisters treated her, making fun or her reading and writing, calling her ugly. Maybe it’s because I had a great relationship with my sister growing up, but I just couldn’t fathom them being so downright nasty to her.

As always the authors beautiful writing had me jotting down quotes as I went along. Here is my favorite:

“Words seem to float

and drift, changing

their strange shapes,

like storms clouds,

always ready to explode.”

Overall it wasn’t a personal favorite, but I think it serves as a great example for kids of perseverance and never giving up, because while Fefa got frustrated a lot near the beginning, she kept working to overcome her dyslexia.

Book Review: All the Broken Pieces

Title: All The Broken Pieces

Author: Ann E. Burg

# Of Pages: 240

Publisher: Scholastic

Publication Date: April 1, 2009

Source: Library

Level: Middle Grade

Rating: 4 Hearts

Synopsis 

(From Amazon.com)

Two years after being airlifted out of war-torn Vietnam, Matt Pin is haunted: by bombs that fell like dead crows, by the family -- and the terrible secret -- he left behind. Now, inside a caring adoptive home in the United States, a series of profound events force him to choose between silence and candor, blame and forgiveness, fear and freedom.

My Verdict

All The Broken Pieces gives us a beautifully written look into the after effects of war, through the eyes of a seventh-grade boy named Matt Pin.

Matt was rescued from the Vietnam War and taken to America where he was adopted into a loving American family.

Now two years later, Matt is still carrying around the broken pieces of his past life. Knowing that Matt might need an outlet to talk about what he has been through, he and his father start attending group sessions for war veterans who served in the same war that Matt escaped. It is then that Matt must decide whether he is going to carry those broken pieces forever, or if he will open up and share his past with others.

While I enjoyed the issues addressed and the main story behind this book the one thing I was disappointed in was the character development. Besides his past, or the fact that he plays both baseball and piano we really don’t know anything about Matt. Who is he aside from these aspects of his life? What does he do when he’s not practicing baseball or piano? Who are his friends? What is he like when hanging out with friends? These are some of the questions I asked myself while reading.

To sum it up, All The Broken Pieces is a beautifully written, touching story that deals with heavy topics such as the after effects of war, survivor’s guilt, and adoption. The plot was deep, I just wish the characters were too.

Book Review: Hidden by Helen Frost

Title: Hidden

Author: Helen Frost

# Of Pages: 160

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Publication Date: May 10, 2011

Level: Middle Grade

Rating: 4 Hearts

Synopsis

(From Amazon.com)

When Wren Abbott and Darra Monson are eight years old, Darra's father steals a minivan. He doesn't know that Wren is hiding in the back. The hours and days that follow change the lives of both girls. Darra is left with a question that only Wren can answer. Wren has questions, too.

Years later, in a chance encounter at camp, the girls face each other for the first time. They can finally learn the truth—that is, if they’re willing to reveal to each other the stories that they’ve hidden for so long. Told from alternating viewpoints, this novel-in-poems reveals the complexities of memory and the strength of a friendship that can overcome pain.

My Verdict

Hidden is told from two alternating points-of-views, Wren and Darra. Wren’s sections are told in free verse, while Darra’s sections are told in a unique form created by the author specifically for this book.

This idea of an unintentional kidnapping was very intriguing to me. Wren is in the backseat of her mom’s minivan when it gets stolen. Too afraid to say anything, Wren stays hidden until the car comes to a stop where she finds herself closed in a garage. While hidden in the garage Wren learns about the man who took her and his family, which includes a daughter the same age as herself. The two girls never speak, they never even see each other, but it is with her help that Wren is able to stay hidden long enough to come up with a plan and make her escape.

Years later the two girls end up in the same cabin at summer camp. At first they both try to ignore each other and the past, but the past soon becomes too big a burden that neither of them can ignore anymore.

Wren and Darra were both likable main characters who were easy to sympathize with. Both girls had been affected by this event in their pasts, but it had changed their lives in different ways. The main focus of the story was definitely character growth as we see these two girls overcome their painful past and start to forge a strong friendship that will continue into the future.

The thing I really liked was how creative the author was with this unique form of storytelling. The poems told from Darra’s view were created in a way that when you read the last word of all the long lines straight down the page from top to bottom it tells you more of the story. I thought this was a really unique and fun way to bring more depth to the story. Once I had finished the book, I saw the authors note on this and really enjoyed flipping back through the book to read these little bits on Darra’s life that give us a bit of a deeper look into her side of things, and how life changed for her as well as Wren.

Overall, this was a unique and enjoyable read. It’s the first of Helen Frost’s books that I’ve read but it certainly won’t be my last.

Book Review: Reaching for Sun by Tracie Vaughn Zimmer

Title: Reaching for Sun

Author: Tracie Vaughn Zimmer

# Of Pages: 144

Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Children’s Books

Publication Date: March 6, 2007

Level: Middle Grade

Rating: 5 Hearts

Synopsis

(From inside flap)

Josie Wyatt knows what it means to be different. Her family’s small farmhouse seems to shrink each time another new mansion goes up behind it. Her mom is demanding, her gran is opinionated, and her father- well, she’s never known him. Then there’s her cerebral palsy: even if Josie wants to forget that she was born with a disability, her mom can’t seem to let it go. Yet when a strange new boy- Jordan- moves into one of the houses nearby, he seems oblivious to all the things that make Josie different. And before long, Josie finds her herself reaching for something she’s never really known: a friend… and possibly more.

Interlinked free-verse poems tell the beautiful, heartfelt story of a girl, a proud family farm reduced to a garden, and a year of unforgettable growth.

My Verdict

Reaching for Sun was a great lazy-day read that took me only about an hour from start to finish. It is written in a series of free-verse poems, which I love.

I’ve come to find out that formatting is a big deal when it comes to novels in verse. All of my favorite books in verse share a common thread, the format, which is short and sweet. The lines are all short and to the point, each poem containing its own heading, kind off like a chapter title, that ties in with what is being said. This book was also broken into seasons, which I really liked. I thought it worked really well with the book because the story has so much to do with gardens and plants, which all change due to the season.

The author made it easy to get into Josie’s head. Her thoughts were so true, so pure, so real. This was an uplifting, heartfelt story of a young girl finding her place and her voice in life. 

Book Review: Umbrella Summer by Lisa Graff

Title: Umbrella Summer

Author: Lisa Graff

# Of Pages: 240

Publisher: Harper Collins

Publication Date: March 29, 2011
Level: Middle Grade

Rating: 4 Hearts

Synopsis

(From Amazon.com)

Annie Richards knows there are a million things to look out for- bicycle accidents, chicken pox, and runaway zoo animals. That’s why being careful is so important, even if it does mean giving up some of her favorite things, like bike races with her best friend and hot dogs on the Fourth of July. Everyone keeps telling Annie not to worry so much, that she’s just fine. But they thought her brother, Jared, was just fine too, and Jared died.

It takes a new neighbor to make Annie realize that her plans for being careful aren’t working out as well as she’d hoped. And with a lot of help from those around her, Annie just may find a way to close her umbrella of sadness and step back into the sunshine.

My Verdict

 I have to start out by saying how much I love this cover! My favorite color is pink and I have a whole polka dotted wall in my bedroom, so when I saw this cover I just had to read it.

   
I love reading middle grade books because the characters are always so quirky and lovable.  In this book the main character Annie is afraid of everything ever since her brother Jared dies unexpectedly. Annie’s parents haven’t been the same since her brother’s death, but they refuse to talk about it, leaving Annie to deal with things in her own way.  She wears a helmet when walking down the street, goes through more boxes of band-aids than a family of 12, and knows more about diseases than any 10 year old should (thanks to Mrs. Harper’s giant green copy of The Everyday Guide to Preventing Illness.) Friends and family all tell her that she needs to stop worrying so much. Like it’s that easy.

   
It takes a new neighbor who can relate to Annie to show her that you can’t spend your life afraid of everything that could happen because if you do you’ll loose out on all the good things life has to offer.

   
I thoroughly enjoyed myself while reading this book. I liked the characters, I liked the storyline, and I liked the message it sent.