Category: Book Review

By Lynda Mullaly Hunt

Book Source: bought by parents

Book Status: available

I wasn’t sure about this book at first but my grandmother thought it sounded like something I should read. She is not usually wrong so I did. Here are my five reasons why kids should read it.

1. The girl is dealing with real social issues, like a friend dumping you for the mean girl.

2. She is dealing with living without her parents and is raised by her grandmother. More kids are being raised by their grandparents and it isn’t the same as your parent.

3. It was very fun to read and we’ll written for middle graders.

4. Not everything is wrapped up in a pretty bow at the end just like life.

5. These quotes on the back are perfect lessons for middle graders

By Debbie Gonzales

Illustrated by Rebecca Gibbon

Book Source: bought at book event

Book Status: Available

I liked doing my review of Nikki Tesla as a list. I am going to try doing my reviews as at least the 5 reasons why kids might like the book. This should also keep me from revealing too many spoilers!

Today’s book was suggested to me in a recent author interview. When I looked it up, I found the author was having an event that weekend near me. Road trip!

Five reasons why kids will like Girls with Guts

1. It shows girls doing athletics when men said they couldn’t

2. It is all about real women and girls so you could go read more about a specific person.

3. If you had to find an interesting woman to write about for school, this would be a good source for unique subjects

4. If you read like I do, you might see connections from these real world events to stories we have read. Like I think if Althea Gibson has never won her match, I don’t think Parker Inheritance would have happened.

5. Even boys will be interested in the sports accomplishments of these women

This is an upper grade picture book so not really for littles. You could read them a chapter at a time.

By Jess Keating

Book Source: ARC provided by Scholastics for review

Book Status: Available July 9, 2019

Hello everybody! It was exciting to get this ARC before my long weekend even if I had forgotten I had requested. End of the school year brain. This book is amazing. I didn’t put it down. I literally stayed up all night reading ! (Mom was out of town and my dad didn’t notice)

I am not going to tell you what the book is about because you can find that out online. I want to share why kids will like this book.

1. The character mix – their names Are based on real geniuses and important science people like Grace O’Malley or Albert Einstein. The kids are super smart in areas similar to that of their name twin’s area.

2. There is a ferret who likes French fries with gravy and could be an evil villain in training. Or it could be clumsy

3. There really are no grownups. The kids are in charge and solve international mysteries and can get whatever they want.

4. They go to school and there are only 7 of them

5. Science and math are woven through out the book. It is shared in a way that is interesting and not scary. Even super hard math seems fascinating and something I might want to learn more on. Like the Fibonacci Sequence

6. The book deals with social issues which is something kids really really have a problem with. (An awful lot of the books I am reading right now are about social issues of middle grades. So does that mean even the grownups had the same problems at this age and no one has figured out how to stop middle graders from being mean?)

7. This is only book one and I am not happy about waiting for book 2. I hate when books end in a cliffhanger and the next book isn’t available for a long time

So if you teach the middle grades, have a middle grader, like spy adventures, like math and science, you might want to pre-order this.

Jess Keating – you are amazing! I hope to see you at NerdCampMi

By Jonathan Stutzman

Illustrated by Heather Fox

Book Source: bought by my parents

Book Status: available

This book is about how Llama destroys the world. So on Monday Llama finds not one, not two, not three,….. not three thousand, not ninety million, but 1 billion pieces of cake ( maybe I miscounted) but still, it’s a lot of cake!! He eats so much that on the day of dancing, his pants rip, and the riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiip of his pants opens a black hole. Llama doesn’t even say oh no! Then the hole of blackness swallows earth and Llama proclaims ” Dat.” Then every thing comes out just fine. ( Yes it’s all fine at the end. ) Then Llama finds pie not one, not two, not three,…. not three thousand, not ninety million, but one billion pieces of pie. What will we do now…….

This is the most perfect book for cause and effect because he eats too much cake ( cause ) and his pants rip ( effect ). I also recommend this to school and classroom libraries.

By Emma Lazell

Book Source: provided in exchange for a review

Book Status: Available July 30, 2019 in US

Dad likes to tell us the story about my grandmother letting an opossum in the house when he was younger. She thought it was their cat. So when I was offered the chance to review a book about a grandmother mistaking a tiger for her cat, I had to say yes!

This book is about a grandma who mistakes a tiger for a cat. They try to return it to their neighbors but it doesn’t belong to any of them. Then some —– SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!!!!!! Grandmother’s new cat is a really a lost tiger! Oops 😬

I recommend this to anyone who needs a laugh!

Oh and my grandmother never got to have a tea party with her opossum

By Howard Wong

Illustrated by Adrian Alphona

Book Source: bought at TCAF

Book Status: Available (limited printing)

This book is about an unhappy little pig who tries to be each different animals on the Chinese Zodiac. It doesn’t make him happy. He eventually settles for… spoiler alert… spoiler 🚨…. being himself.

This is a story about being happy with yourself or what you do and what you have. This is something kids struggle with – we feel like we need to be better, cooler, popular. We will still struggle with being happy with ourselves but books like this help.

This book was limited printed for the Hong Kong International Young Readers Festival. Mine is copy 197/200 (Howard brings a stack and you can pick your number). I don’t know how many he has left but I hope this gets reprinted so more people can have it!

BTW I think his dedication is funny!