Archibald Lox and the Bridge Between Worlds by Darren Shan

Rating: WARTY!

I found the idea of this novel interesting because it was similar to an idea I'd had for a novel of my own and I was curious as to whether I'd have to ditch my own idea or whether I could still go ahead with it down the road. You can't copyright an idea of course, only a finished work, but nevertheless I wouldn't want to publish a novel that turned out to be quite similar to one someone else had already published. I wish the writers of YA trilogies would learn that lesson instead of endlessly trying to clone books like The Hunger Games, but I'm not that lucky!

Anyway, I decided to read this and see what's what. I didn't get very far. It's first person to begin with which is so unrealistic that it turned me off this novel, and the writing in general was not to my taste. It seemed rather amateur and Darren Shan, actually an Irish author by the name of Darren O'Shaughnessy, uses a lot of British expressions which may not be well understood by American readers. Plus the main character's age is difficult to guess. The book description claims he's young, but he seems to think and behave well beyond his years - more like, say, an author in this late forties?!

One day this "kid" is ditching school because he's depressed about his dead bother, and he sees a girl disappear into some paving stones on a bridge over the Thames in London. He finds that he can magically use the same escape route, so he ditches not only school, but his life and follows her down the rabbit hole so to speak. Archibald in Wonderland. Up until this point it had been quite interesting, if a little simplistic and maudlin, but from that time onward, it went downhill. Rather than find a magical or engrossing world, we found only boring tunnels and eventually an angry girl, who pulls a knife on the kid. His non-reaction to that is ridiculously not credible given what he's done so far. It's like we're dealing with a different boy altogether.

The author writes at this point, "I don't yelp or flinch, but I fall perfectly still," - given that the two people are elevated from the ground at this point, the choice to use 'fall' in place of 'become' or something like that, is a poor one! It's also silly given that this is in first person, and it makes no sense given that this is after this "kid" has voluntarily chosen to follow the girl down into the tunnels, has kept going into complete darkness despite not knowing if he'll ever get out, or if the tunnel will narrow down and trap or even strangle him. He's eventually tracked her down, and now he's terrified into paralysis? It made no sense, whatsoever. It was absurd given it was first person voice, and this is where I decided to ditch it at somewhat under 20% in. I can't commend this as a worthy read. Mine will be a better story! Trust me!

The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Rating: WARTY!

In which my sorry attempt to embrace the classics continues rather unsuccessfully.

This was published in 1851 and was based in small part on a real house of seven gables where lived Hawthorne's cousin Susanna Ingersoll. The story supposedly has some supernatural and witchery elements to it, but I never made it that far. The novel has its moments and offers some sweet turns of phrase here and there (or should I say hither and thither?), but for the most part it was tediously rambling and just when I thought it might get interesting, when a new broom in the form of the main character's younger cousin showed up, it almost immediately went back to rambling on and on, and it bored the pants off me. I never did find out what happened to those pants.

A somewhat old maid, Hepzibah Pyncheon lives in the house and decides to open a little store in one part of the building, but she really has no idea how to go about it. Her cousin Phoebe shows up unexpectedly from out of town, and starts turning things around in the store while falling for another cousin named Clifford. The rather sleazy Judge Pyncheon sticks his nose in where it's unwanted, and that's about it for the first portion of the book. It wasn't holding my attention at all, and so based on what I read I cannot commend it.

A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Joy McCullough

Rating: WORTHY!

This was a middle grade novel about two young kids with single parents who happen to be dating and getting serious about each other. I was first attracted by the title, which I thought was amusing, and when I started listening to the audiobook, I was drawn in by the characters. I had some issues with it, but overall I consider it a worthy read for the intended age group.

Sutton is the girl who is intellectual, and interested in science and in particular in programming a little robot to navigate a maze, at which she is experiencing some difficulties. Sutton's mom and dad are separated; her mom is currently in Antarctica studying penguins, and so misses Sutton's tenth birthday.

Luis is biracial and his father is dead. His mom is dating Sutton's dad and the parents are at a point where they decide to bring the kids together for a family-style outing to a museum. Sutton is not impressed. Luis finds her impossible to talk to because she seems uninterested in anything in which he's interested and, resentfully missing her mom, Sutton is uninterested in trying make much conversation. Luis has his own issues to deal with, being allergic to an assortment of items from pollen to peanuts to bee venom, and on and on.

Going on a hike is hardly a charmed idea for their second family get-together then, especially since Luis doesn't seem to have heard of an epipen and neither of them seem to understand that there's a technique to pulling out a bee stinger if you don't want to inject even more venom into the wound.

I think these two kids have been let down by their parents in several ways, but on this hike, it's all on the kids! The two of them decide to follow an alternate route to their parents and end up somewhere out of sight and out of audio range of mom and dad. How exactly that happens is a bit glossed over. Sutton is supposed to be the smart one, Luis the imaginative one who is working on writing his own adventure novel, yet neither one of these kids thinks to retrace their steps to get back to their parents! Instead, they set off on a trek through the woods, which of course bonds them and magically fixes all their issues.

For me this was a bit trite, clichéd and simplistic, but for the intended age group, it will probably do. I felt it could have been better, but for the audience it's aimed at, I consider it a worthy read. I just felt it could have been a lot more educational had the author put in a little effort, but it'll do as is, I guess.

The Adventures of Rockford T Honeypot by Josh Gottsegen

Rating: WORTHY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This middle grade chapter book was a little long and involved for my taste, with two voices and two tenses, so it's not your common or garden simple story, but for the avid young reader, it should provide a wealth of adventurous pursuit and engrossing reading.

Rockford T Honeypot is your usual reserved and retiring chipmunk, albeit with a healthy respect for germs and hygiene, but circumstances are about to throw him into an unwilling and unwitting adventure that will change him all-around and make a ground squirrel out of him! Until he ruins the family business and is abandoned by his strict father and ne'er-do-well brothers, the only adventure he has is reading of his favorite fictional hero. Little does he know he's about to personify that spirit he so admires and make a story all of his own.

Framed by an older Rockford looking back on his life, and told over the course of many chapters, with occasional interruptions, Rockford learns to fly (sort of), learns to fight, learns to be fearless, and to face problems head on. He learns to spot business opportunities and to supply a need when he sees one, as well as mastering exercising his brain in solving problems. He travels and has adventures, makes friends and meets the girl of his dreams. And he creates the perfect roasted hazelnut recipe.

The adventure has thrills and chills, danger and amusement, and tells a whopping great story about the little guy winning through. I commend it as a worthy read.

The Time of Green Magic by Hilary McKay

Rating: WARTY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This is a middle-grade novel set in Britain. I'm normally a bit biased toward such novels, and this one started out for me in great style, with Abi from one family, and Louis and Max from another being brought together into one big family when Abi's father Theo marries the boys' mother Polly. They move into a larger house, which has a lot of character and Abi finds that her immersion in novels becomes a little too literal. She'd be reading Kon-Tiki and the book would end up wet, with the water tasting of salt. She'd be reading about an Arctic adventure and almost get frostbite.

That would have been adventure enough, but there was also other stuff going on that seemed unconnected with Abi's experiences - like the large cat that young Louis encounters, or the paranoia that Max experiences, alongside his interest in this French art student who occasionally babysits. On top of that, Polly's work calls her away from home for a couple of weeks (I'm not sure why the author wanted her out of the way), and Theo it seems is hardly home, so the kids are left to their own devices a lot. At once there seemed to be both too much going on and not enough.

The story was going in so many different directions that things were becoming confused, and also being skipped: like how these kids were getting along given that one of them was entirely unrelated to the other two, and how little information is imparted about the books they're reading. The kids seemed to have no inner life, and the novel reached a stagnation point about halfway in. I began quickly to lose interest in it. It did not improve and I gave up on it at seventy percent out of sheer boredom.

Again, it wasn't written for me, and middle-graders might get more out of it than did I, but I've read and enjoyed many middle-grade level books and found them highly entertaining. This one wasn't in that category, and while I wish the author all the best in her career, I can't commend this particular novel as a worthy read.

The Candy Mafia by Lavie Tidhar, Daniel Duncan

Rating: WORTHY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This was a middle-grade book that amused the heck out of me just from the description. Written highly tongue-in-cheek by Tidhar, and with spot-illustrations by Duncan, this tale of a city in the grip of prohibition - of candy - had me smirking so much that it was painful to the face. Things have gone sour, with no chocolate, no licorice, no chewy toffee to be had! The new mayor banned it all three years ago and so of course, an elaborate smuggling operation has sprung up, with all the attendant bribery and corruption.

Not that any of this affects the main character, the honest and upstanding Nelle Faulker, a 12-year-old private detective who is out of work now school is out for the summer and no cases have been coming her way lately. She's a smartie and is sitting in her office (a shed in her back yard) when who should stop by, but Eddie de Menthe, one of the biggest candy-smugglers in town. Eddie has a serious problem - he's lost his teddy-bear.

Nelle takes the case, and even though she smells a rat - or is it a chocolate bunny? - in her sweet innocence, she has no idea what she's getting herself into. Has Nelle been taken for an all-day sucker? No! Trust me when I say she's no marshmallow. She has encounters with the other two big candy smugglers in town: The Sweetie Pies, and Waffles Mackenzie. She also learns of the Big Five Families, and becomes concerned when Eddie disappears like sherbet dip from a punctured bag!

What's going on here? What's the secret of the shut-down chocolate factory and where did the owner Mr Farnsworth vanish to? Why was Nelle's office turned over? What were they looking for? Who is behind all this? Can the cops even be trusted? Will Mayor Thornton get re-elected and continue the candy ban? Just in passing, Thornton's is a brand of particularly delicious toffee in Britain. And most important of all: just what does it mean to be a gum shoe in a candy-apple world?!

All of this and more is answered as this sly romp takes us through the gangster world where the author treats the story just seriously enough to make it even more amusing, and where Nelle proves herself to be one tough cookie. She's as sticky as salt-water taffy when it comes to a case, and she's definitely one of my strong female heroes. I can't say it was a sweet read without getting into trouble with Mayor Thornton, but I will say this book gives a reader lots to chew on, and I commend it highly.

The Campaign by Laurie Friedman

Rating: WARTY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

Errata:
“never-a-hair-outof-place” is missing a hyphen.
"555 feet 51/8” five and one eighth looks like 51 eights!
“Mom spears a chunk of kung pao chicken” followed by, only one page later, “They’re both eating mu shu chicken with chopsticks”
My shu pork is Northern Chinese dish. Kung Pao chicken is a Sichuan dish from southern central China! Not really the same thing.

This book felt like it wasn't sure where to go and so took the safest, most predictable path from start to finish. It felt like a heavy-handed lesson on the Mount Rushmore presidents, but the face it offered was just as cold and stony as that edifice to presidents who were certainly not the best examples of humanity we could have chiseled into a rock face.

Amanda Adams (yes, that's her name) decides that she wants to run for class president, all without discussing it with her best friend who she expects to run as her VP; then she irrationally gets miffed when she discovers that her best friend is also running for the same office. Once again the book description was apparently written by someone who seems to have little clue what's going on in the book and is just trying to make it sound sensational, which it really isn't. We're told that "Politics is in her DNA" but she clearly does not have any such DNA, and she makes one gaff after another in a poorly-conceived campaign despite having grown up with a Congress person as a mom and a political strategist as a dad. Nor do we ever get any sense that Amanda has a real clue what she's doing. Quite the opposite.

All of this really undermines her credentials and make me wonder why she was running at all. She seemed to have no motivation or plan. The book might have been more engaging had Amanda been a rebel who was, for example, determinedly resisting her parents' efforts to push her into running for this office, but finds herself motivated to do it anyway because of some cause which stirs her. This book wasn't written for me, but it didn't seem like it would appeal very much even to its target audience as it stands. It was obvious from the start which running mate Amanda would end up with, but the real problem with it was that she'd had this idea of running for president for some time but had given zero thought to lining-up her running mate. And this is the girl who has politics in her DNA? Na-uh! Not even close.

We got an Amanda who ran into trouble getting the support of her soccer team because they all irrationally felt that she'd spend all her time campaigning and neglect soccer games and practice, but we're given no reason why they would think that of her. Didn't they know her better than that? It's no spoiler to reveal that her team loses an important game, because it's that kind of a color-by-numbers novel.

What's shameful is the approach to the game, treating it like it was a major 'take no prisoners and slaughter the enemy' battle in an ongoing war rather than with any kind of sportsmanship. I found these rallying cries offensive. Clearly they were taking their cue from the USWNT in the last soccer World Cup when, in their first game, they were lording it over a clearly inferior team instead of being professional about their scoring bonanza. Amanda is given the baseless perspective of a goalkeeper who thinks she and only she is entirely and solely responsible for keeping the ball out of the goal. I guess her team has no players on defense, with every other member of the team is playing on the forward line. It was entirely unrealistic and unbelievable.

Now you can argue that this girl is in seventh grade and may well think like she does because of that, but Amanda is supposed to be the hero of the story with politics in her DNA, and who takes life lessons from the Mount Rushmore community. The problem is that she never seems to learn anything from these mini-bios of the presidents that she bores the reader with, and the story becomes nothing more than jingoism, repeating the tedious and clichéd mythology without actually examining it at all.

Rather than break new ground and find presidents who led exemplary lives which would merit examination and emulation, the author took the road most trampled and trotted out Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and the Roosevelts. The book was just starting in on the womanizing John Kennedy when I quit.

Why take this trite and easy route? Why not dig a little and find presidents who were not land cheats, as Washington was; not slave abusers, as Jefferson was; not overseeing one of the biggest land-grabs from the Navajos and Mescalero Apaches in New Mexico as Lincoln did; not supporting waterboarding as Teddy Roosevelt did, or dishonorably discharging African American men of the 25th infantry Battalion (the Buffalo Soldiers) on unfounded charges as he did; and finally, not sanctioning the unjust imprisonment of Japanese Americans in World War Two as Franklin Roosevelt did.

There have been 45 presidents in the US, and while the present one is a dangerous, racist, homophobic, misogynistic, and scientifically ignorant clown, not all of them have been like that. Some - like Clinton and Kennedy - have been reprehensible womanizers, but others, like Obama, have been a beacon. Could the author not have found some like that? Apparently not.

I can't commend a book like this at all.

The Witches of Willow Cove by Josh Roberts

Rating: WARTY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This book was a bit too much like the trope clones that came predictably rolling in post Harry Potter. Unless the author is really going to make an effort to bring something new to the table - something different, something original - then really, what's the point? I know this is aimed at middle grade (and read like it was) and I'm certainly not the intended audience, but to have witches waving sticks and chanting in Latin or worse, chanting in rhyming English, is so old and trite now that it's really not worth reading. Making your protagonist a female Harry Potter and doing the same thing with your villain isn't changing it up enough to get close to an original story.

The worst thing about this novel was the Salem angle. The Salem witch nonsense has been done to death and really, does it show any respect for the poor women who were murdered back then on the blatant religious lie that they were witches? No, it does not. It's shameful to keep dragging that out of the closet. For goodness sake let those poor women rest in peace. Even if the story had been brilliant, it would have tedious to read yet another witch story that tries to set its roots in Salem, but the story wasn't that interesting.

I didn't finish this, but the idea seemed to be that of a long-standing grudge, and so the question became: why was it so long-standing? Why didn't this evil witch carry out her revenge three or four hundred years ago? Why now? There seemed to be no answer to that, unless one popped-up in the very latter part of the story, and even if it did, what was the point of this revenge? It occurred to me that unless this person intended to reincarnate those victims from centuries ago in the bodies of her juvenile witch recruits, this revenge really offered her nothing, and even if she was planning on some reincarnation routine, the question of why now - at this time rather than a few hundred years ago still lacked a good answer.

So for these and other reasons, I quickly grew tired of a story that felt like one I'd read many times already, but under different covers and by different authors, so I did not finish it. I can't commend it based on what I read. There were too may tropes and too many clichés.

Peak Plague Mystery by SA Fearn

Rating: WORTHY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This story appealed to me because it's one of the very, very few set in my home county (not one of the home counties!) in England. I'm not talking about books that mention Derbyshire. Jane Austen seemed to have a fondness for it, and Chatsworth House, in central Derbyshire, is often used as an outdoor reference for a country manor in those period films. The only other novel I can ever recall reading was one I read years ago about vampires. This one is nothing like that, although it deals with something quite deadly, and very real: something that's popularly known as Bubonic plague - although it can surface in two other forms , or simply, The Black Death!

Contrary to popular perception, this plague did not die out in Medieval times. It's still very much alive and well. Over a thousand people get the plague every year. Just last year (2019 as this is written) two people died of Pneumonic plague in Mongolia. At least since the year 2000, there have been cases every year in the USA. Derbyshire had its very own outbreak at a place called Eyam (pronounced 'eem' which is located in the Derbyshire Dales, close to the area where this novel is set.

To my knowledge it's not been since in Britain since then, but in 1665, Bubonic plague was transported from London on a roll of cloth that was infested by the vector of the disease: fleas. It began to wreak havoc on Eyam. Untreated with antibiotics, plague can have a 60% mortality rate and Eyam wasn't a very large village. It still isn't, with a population of around a thousand. The saddest case I think, is that of Elizabeth Hancock. She somehow managed to remain uninfected. Perhaps she had a natural immunity, but her entire family: six children and her husband, died in the space of a week. I've visited their graves.

This novel is set in the Peak District, a beautiful area in the northwest bulge of Derbyshire. Four young friends take an interest in the strange death of a girl who was at the time of their own age, but from a few years before. The death was ruled a suicide, but Adam, his sister Chloe, and their friends Adele and Jonathan start to realize that Rebecca Johnson did not kill herself. She was murdered in a cover-up. Now the four of them are at risk because of what they know!

Call me biased if you like, but I enjoyed this story. It's adventurous, original, educational, engrossing, and I commend it as a worthy read.

Transmission by Morgan Rice

Rating: WARTY!

This was a middle-grade novel about a terminally ill thirteen-year-old who discovers he can receive messages from a dead alien culture. At first he thinks it's just hallucinations, but it becomes more and more persistent and finally he talks his mom into taking him to the SETI institute where it gets confirmed that he's really receiving genuine messages. The people who are studying the transmissions had been unable to understand them until this kid got involved and made sense of them simultaneously making sense of his visions.

It sounded like an interesting and definitely 'off the beaten track' premise, which is what attracted me, but the story was a little bit too juvenile and simplistic for my taste. I gave up on it about halfway through when the kid learned that the aliens had sent a sort of a time-capsule to Earth. The coordinates that the aliens gave were in Columbia, in South America, but the US people went there - with armed soldiers, yet - to pick the thing up apparently without saying a word to the Columbians, leading to a stand-off with the Columbian army.

This was exactly the sort of Trumpian bullshit that's lost the USA a lot of international friends - this sense of self-entitlement and USA über alles. I wasn't exactly brimming with enthusiasm over this story to begin with, but that was far too much to allow: sending troops uninvited was tantamount to a declaration of war and to present this in a children's novel as thought it was perfectly acceptable behavior, and then get aggressive when the locals showed-up and objected, was entirely wrong-headed and seriously poor writing.

This novel could have been written much more wisely than this, and for me it was the last straw. I can't commend this as a worthy read and I'm certainly not about to read a whole series like this. I should have stuck with my instinct which is to reject out of hand any novel that has 'saga' or 'chronicles' anywhere on the cover!

The Akhenaten Adventure by PB Kerr

Rating: WARTY!

This book, a part of the 'Children of the Lamp' series, did not agree with me, which perhaps is no surprise since it's not aimed at me! The thing is though that I've read many middle-grade novels and enjoyed a lot of them. This one, not so much. I finally got around to it after it had been sitting quietly on my print book shelves forever. Maybe that should have been a tip-off! But the story - some 350 pages long - took an almost forever to get moving, and it made little sense.

It tells you right up front - or rather right in back, in the book description - that the non-identical twins in the story, Phillipa and John (John Gaunt believe it or not - at least the author left of the O'), are djinni, aka genies. Why then drag the story pointlessly on for fully a third of its length before this is revealed to the twins? In Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Rowling had it revealed to him that he was a wizard before page 60, and that book was shorter than this one. So why the delay? I have no idea. It seemed ridiculous to me since it was already known what they were.

The problem, and this is only a theory, but the problem as I see it is that writers get lethargic when creating a series and drag everything out to fill lots of volumes so they can stick it to the reader for the cost of yet another novel in the series. It's not about entertaining the reader and giving value for money; it's about putting in the least effort for the maximum reward, and Big Publishing™ encourages this big time, of course.

Shame on such writers. Shame on such publishers. This is one of many reasons, and with few exceptions, that I detest series and why I self-publish. Writing is what's important to me - not milking money from people, especially in times like this with ten million people - and disproportionately minorities, teens, and women - out of work.

The kids meet their uncle Nimrod (yeah, really!) in a dream they have while having their wisdom teeth extracted, and they persuade their parents to let them fly to London to visit him. Why London? I don't know: a Harry Potter 'Brits are cool' diversion? It was pointless.

Why not have their Uncle living in Egypt, which is where they went next? Arab-phobia? It felt rather bigoted to me to have the story be about a race of people whose name is of Middle east origin, and then deny that derivation by starting it in the US and then moving it to London with the Middle East coming in third. But this is another problem with novels and too many movies. If it ain't USA, who cares? How small-minded. And how mercenary.

So the story was slow. Worse, it was not particularly interesting or original, or adventurous, and it didn't draw me in, make me like or even respect any of the characters, or make me want to read beyond about half way, which is more than I ought to have read, for sure. I can't commend this based on what I read of it.

Please don't tell My Parents I'm a Super Villain! by Richard Roberts

Rating: WORTHY!

I'm not much for series, but once in a while one comes along that makes me want to follow it, and if this series (this is book one of three as of this writing) is as good as its opener, then it will definitely be one I follow. Note that this novel is in no way representative of the real world and to judge it by real world standards is wrong. It's an off-kilter fantasy world, and it's in that context that I review it here since it's neither wilder nor more sensible than your average super hero graphic novel!

In the version of LA where she lives, Penelope Akk lives in a superhero world and has superhero parents. Mom was once a super villain, and dad is a tech genius, so it's hardly surprising their daughter turns out to be a mad scientist. Penny's skills start coming in far more aggressively than most do, but they also come spasmodically. That's nothing unusual, but the nature of Penny's skills deceive her parents, who pay her nowhere near the attention she deserves because they're supers themselves and always too busy. They may regret that.

Penny's real problem though, is that she creates things that typically work weirdly, and she has no idea how they work, and often no memory of the actual creative process at all. In the back of her mind they make sense, but she's never able to grasp that and pull it up front into the light. She invents some cool gadgets though, and what better way to test them out than with some good, old-fashioned villainy? I really liked Penny because she's a smart, strong young woman who never gives up and is always learning.

Teaming up with her friend Claire, and her other friend Ray, the trio becomes "The Inscrutable Machine" - talented and super-coordinated villains, whose success goes way beyond what their age would suggest they were capable of, and once Penny - now known as Bad Penny - has invented a few cool gadgets for her friends as well as a serum that brings on their powers too, they really take off. Claire becomes the extra-charming 'e-Claire' and Ray becomes the super-strong, super-fast 'Reviled'.

Their capers, beginning quite accidentally, become almost legendary, and bring them to the attention of Spider, the biggest villain of all, who is apparently an actual spider (although I had my doubts). It becomes ever more difficult for them to withdraw from their super villain life (it was so much fun!) and retreat to a life of super-heroing which is what Penny really wants. Or is it?

When Spider blackmails them into pulling a couple of jobs, Penny finds herself having to come down firmly on one side or the other. But how can she do that, save the city, beat Spider, and preserve her anonymity? Because the last thing she wants is for her parents to learn that she's a super villain! Yes, sometimes their thinking can be whack, and their motives a bit obscure, but they're so engaging that you can't stop wanting to know what scrape they'll get themselves into next - or how they'll get out of it. This is where Penny's unmatched, but totally not understood genius comes into play. Some of her inventions have a mind of their own - literally.

This book is one of the best I've ever read, despite it being aimed seemingly at a middle-grade audience. It's inventive and funny, and completely believable even as the fantastical world the author creates is outrageous - and beautifully put together with a cast of amazing and creative characters. There are some classic super heroes (my favorite is Marvelous) and super villains (my favorite is Lucy Farr). Note that these names are taken from an audiobook so the spellings may be off! I thought this was a fun world and a great book, and I commend it as a worthy read.

The Storybook of Legends by Shannon Hale

Rating: WORTHY!

Errata:
On one page I read, "She treaded water" - the past tense of 'to tread' is 'trod' (and also 'trodden'). It's not 'treaded' - not unless she put a tire tread on the water, which I guess is entirely possible if you can do magic....
Later I read, "But it's not like I can just look up in a phone book..." In context, this should have read, 'look her up in a phone book', or depending on what precisely the author meant, 'look in a phone book'. Either way something was wrong here!
Past tenses seemed to be a problem for Shannon Hale because later I also read, "Apple reached out and pet the dragon's tail...." This should have read 'petted'. While language is dynamic and changes over time, perhaps now faster than ever in history, some authors don't seem to get that there's actually a difference between reported speech and narration. Reported speech can be completely informal. Narration and description need to give at least a nod to grammar and correct tense!

Quite frankly, this book was an embarrassment to me and has been kept hidden away on my shelf like some sort of family black sheep. Finally I decided to take it out and read it and damn the torpedoes, and it has turned out to be highly entertaining, inventive, amusing, and fully-engaging. It's one of the best books I've ever read. Note that it's the Storybook of Legends, not leg ends, which would be quite effete....

I should not have been surprised, I guess, because I've had a positive history with its author Shannon Hale. This is, I think, the fourth or fifth thing of hers I've read and liked, but strictly speaking, it's not wholly original with her. The story has its roots in Mattel's monster dolls line. From that they created a fairy-tale doll line, and from that came a web series, a movie, and these books. Shannon Hale was, I guess, commissioned to write this one, and she did an amazing job with it. This was definitely my kind of novel even though it's not my kind of age range!

I can't promise to follow the whole series (I'm not a series sort of a guy), and especially since other volumes are written by other authors, but it was a highly enjoyable read, surprisingly. I came to admire the author both for her inventiveness and her winning sense of humor.

It's a sort of middle-grade fairy-tale fantasy in a series, no less! The series is called 'Ever After High', and it's about these children of famous fairy-tale characters returning to school after the holidays. Raven Queen is the daughter of the Evil Queen from "Snow White". Apple White is the daughter of Snow White. Cedar Wood is the daughter of Pinocchio, and Madeleine Hatter is the daughter of the Mad Hatter. Cerise Hood is the troubled daughter of red Riding Hood.

I think Maddie is my favorite character because she is so unapologetically nuts, and at several points actually has exchanges with the narrator of the novel, which I loved. Raven runs a close second as my favorite, and is an outstandingly intelligent and strong young woman. She's balking at being an evil queen like her mother was. She's supposed to feed the poisoned apple to Apple, but she doesn't want to be evil, and this makes people nervous because they think if she doesn't fulfill her role, then others' stories might fail and the whole of fairyland might collapse, so the plot is engaging, too.

The book ain't cheap! It was priced at fifteen dollars, but I recall picking it up at bargain discount at Costco several years ago. It intrigued me, but it seemed so juvenile that I hid it away until now. It's a hardcover which was printed in all these pastel shades, with the edges of the paper colored, and the pages having a colored border. After several years of looking at it and turning away, I decided to take the plunge and it proved so entertaining that I wished I had not let it sit for so long! It was a breath of fresh air and I enjoyed it for its irreverence and endless diversion - never boring, always...entrancing! I commend it fully.

Dalya and the Magic Ink Bottle by JM Evenson

Rating: WARTY!

This is aimed at middle-grade readers and so is not for me. Despite not warming to it myself, I tried to see how it might appeal to a younger reader, but even then it felt like it wasn't up to snuff.

For me it felt confused and cluttered, and the main character went from being put in peril here, to being put in a different peril there, and then yet another one everywhere. It felt like it was far too much, with barely time to take a breather. I know that when you want to entertain young children, there has to be danger, but this felt like it was all danger all the time with no respite, no downtime, and little humor to buoy-up the main participants.

Dalya is of Turkish ancestry and when she gets a chance to travel there with her father (mom is predictably out of the picture), she jumps at the chance to 'reconnect' with him, but he proves just as unreachable there as he is at home. They stay at a largely derelict and old family mansion in Istanbul, which is badly-neglected and unsafe in many regards. Naturally, Dalya disobeys her father's strict instructions to remain on the first floor of the house because upstairs is unsafe, and in chasing a cat she espies, she discovers a bottle of magic ink hidden under a floorboard.

The ink is supplied by a djin, and grants only one wish to each user. Dalya wishes to go home, but instead ends up being sent back in time and turned into a cat - the very cat she was chasing upstairs in the first place. How this happened was never explained, given that her explicitly stated wish was to return home. The cat she becomes is apparently a magical cat, although throughout the story the cat never actually does any magic, which struck me as very curious, and a waste of a good cat to boot. Why give it all the appearance of being magical if it serves no purpose?

In order to return to her human self, and to return to her own time, Dalya must embark upon an adventure through the mythology of Istanbul in quest of the djin who owns the bottle, in order to have her wish revoked. This is all well and good, but these folk tales and animal stories don't resonate well with people who have never heard them before, and it felt like the author was trying to toss in everything but the kitchen sink (although that also appeared in the story, I believe).

I can understand that these things might well appeal to the author and be very meaningful to her, but to me they really felt like a jumble of unrelated ideas that didn't really gel together, and which left me unsatisfied and a bit lost at times, too. I felt it could have been done better. The ending was too predictable. For the intended audience, maybe that's not such a bad thing; indeed, they may well get much more out of this that I did, but I've read many middle-grade stories and really enjoyed a lot of them. This one didn't get there for me and I can't commend it as a worthy read.

The Tethering by Megan O'Russell

Rating: WARTY!

This novel aimed at middle-graders, read like a direct and unimaginative rip-off of Harry Potter. If that's what you want, then this is for you, but be warned that there's literally nothing new here.

There's the almost statutory impoverished orphan boy who has no idea he's a magician, and who accidentally exhibits magical powers. Here he's named Jacob, not Harry, and he learns that he's a wizard, so of course, he's spirited away to a special academy for witches and wizards, where there's a supercilious bully by the name of Malfoy - no, wait, in this version, it's Dexter. He's probably secretly a serial-killer-killer who darkly dreams.

There's the trope magic wand, except here it's called a talisman, and it doesn't have to be a wand. That's about the only real difference I noticed. Jacob has a special relationship with a tree(!) - in this case not a Whomping Willow, but a tree he heals and which then dispenses a twig to him that he uses as a wand. There's a group called the Magi (read Ministry of Magic), and there's a group called the Dragons (read: Death Eaters). Actually I got the impression that Jacob would probably end up joining them - either that or Hermione would - sorry, not Hermione! Here she's named Emilia and she is no doubt the finest witch of her age.

The novel is pretty sad: uninventive, unimaginative, offering nothing new. In it, magic affects electronic devices badly, just like in Harry Potter, but unlike in the Harry Potter stories, nobody seems intent on actually teaching Jacob to do magic. He's pretty much left to self-study, which seems to me to completely undermine the idea of an academy.

Maybe Potter-by-rote was the author's intention, but reading poor clones of existing books does nothing for me. especially since after two days at the academy no one has taught him a damned thing about how to do any magic. Despite this faux air of desperation that's created (that he must learn!), no-one seems interested in actually teaching him. He's sent off by himself to study a book containing magic spells, which are of course actuated by saying words in Latin. Seriously?

I never liked this garbage in the Potter novels. A lot of Rowling's writing made little sense if you began to analyze it, but at least she held it together and told a decently engaging story. This thing with the Latin though, was nonsensical throughout because it essentially said that there could have been no witches or wizards before Latin was invented as a language, even as we're supposed to believe that magic was ancient. Latin is certainly not world's earliest language, so how did witches and wizards (yes, this book insists on the same gender discrimination that Rowling did - but then Rowling thinks there are only two genders). Before Latin there was Etruscan and Greek. Before that was Phoenician. Before that was Egyptian, and before that Sumerian.

Although the terms 'witch', 'wizard' (both of which may derive from the same root) and 'sorcerer' are relatively new, dating back perhaps to the middle ages, the idea of wizardry dates back millennia - to ancient Egypt and beyond. The thing is: how did they ever cast their spells back then without access to the magic of speaking Latin? LOL! And if ordinary Latin words could cast spells even without a wand, how come the ancient Romans weren't known for their magical prowess? None of that makes any freaking sense.

This is why I can't commend this book as a worthy read. Middle-graders deserve better.

Sophie Washington the Snitch by Tonya Duncan Ellis

Rating: WARTY!

This is a really short book (seventy screens on my phone) and even then I could not finish it. I read only the first chapter. It was in first person which I can't usually stand, and worse than that, it was about bullying and the lack of a response to it. That's where the snitch comes in - apparently no one wants to be tarred by that brush, so when the school bully, a girl named Lanie, robs school-friends Sophie and Chloe of their money right after they arrive at school, nothing gets done.

Now you can argue "well isn't that the point of the story?" - revealing how something will change and something will get done? But I don't buy that, because this story has been done so many times before and this one offers nothing new, nothing different. A better story would have been to have a school where snitching isn't a crime - because it should not be. You report crimes. You report bullying. You report robbery. It's bad to have children feel they should not, and it doesn't matter if the story eventually gets there. The problem is that it's not there to begin with. A better story-teller would have started from that point and found some other issue to address, or some other way to tell her story instead of stamping a 'wrong' firmly onto the brains of juvenile and impressionable readers right from the off.

Because this story was going nowhere new and started from very tired trope, I can't commend it as a worthy read. I couldn't stand to read it. Maybe the readers it's aimed at might find it more readable, but that still wouldn't make it right.

The Secret Notebook by DA D’Aurelio

Rating: WORTHY!

This book had some minor issues, but the power of the message overwhelmed those in my opinion. Also it’s aimed at middle grade, so that audience may very well not view it as I did!

It's nice to see a female engineer portrayed in a book aimed at middle-grade students, but I have to confess some issues with having kids do the things this kid was shown doing. Naturally, the best advice is for kids to trust reliable adults and authority figures to resolve issues like these, but writing a story about that would be boring for kids who want to see themselves taking center stage, so of course you have to give them some free rein and put them into some danger.

There are wise ways and foolish ways of doing this, just as there are similar ways of making your main character look smart or dumb, and this book walked a fine line between them. I think on balance it succeeded, but I would liked to have seen a stronger message about wise conduct threaded lightly through the text.

Riley Green is an inventor who has created a lie-detector pen, and is ready to proudly show it off at her school's science fair, hoping it will prove that she belongs there despite being in a lower income group than the rest of the kids. The problem is that the school's privileged troublemaker has stolen her idea, and worse: her favorite teacher has had her office trashed and has disappeared! What is going on? Was the office simply vandalized, or did the intruders expect to find something important there? And who put this ragged old book about birds in Riley's backpack? Or is it about birds? And who is leaving those 'cease and desist' notes for Riley and her teacher?

This isn't just a thriller of a novel, with a strong female character and some fun problem-solving, it’s also a history lesson with some nice back-story concerning Nikola Tesla. Personally I feel Tesla is often elevated to a higher pedestal than he deserves, but there is no denying his contributions to knowledge and his abilities as an engineer. He deserved a lot better than he got out of life and certainly more than the overrated patina that Edison uncritically gets! So on balance I commend this as a worthy read.

Weird Little Robots by Carolyn Crimi, Corinna Luyken

Rating: WORTHY!

Written delightfully by Crimi, and illustrated by Luyken, this was a middle-grade book that I had access to only in the audiobook format, so I cannot comment on the illustrations. It was quite amusing despite being not aimed at me as an audience. I got interested in it because of the amusing title, so I bought it and listened and it was an easy listen, a fun story, and an empowerment inspiration for young girls. Women are tragically under-represented in many traditional male fields and engineering is one of the most glaring. It was encouraging to find a book aimed at middle-graders and which showed girls interested in sciences and in particular this one girl who made her own little robots out of bits and pieces she put together herself.

The robots could move around, but something happened and they took on a life of their own and began interacting with the other robots and with their creator, Penny Rose, with intelligence and motive. Penny is new in town and has no friends to begin with so the robots are special to her, but soon she makes friends with Lark who, true to her name likes to study birds. Penny gets the chance to join a secret science club, but this invitation, extended only to Penny and not to Lark, causes a rift between her and her new-found friend. Also, what the heck is going on with the robots and will the troublesome Jeremy wreck them with his less than respectful play?

I loved this book and commend it highly.

The Princess in Black by Shannon Hale, Dean Hale, LeYuen Pham

Rating: WORTHY!

Written by the Hales and illustrated exquisitely by Pham, this short, large print chapter book tells the story of a cute little princess who fights monsters under the guise of The Princess in Black! Definitely empowering, especially for female readers, I felt this was an inspired story designed to quell fears of monsters under the bed and at the same time tell a story to entertain - and it's not all about the princess! There's something in there for boys, too. It was well-worth the reading.

Mia Marcotte and the Robot by Jeanne Wald, Saliha Çalışkan

Rating: WORTHY!

This is a middle-grade story which isn't exactly my cup of tea, but it's entertaining enough that it passes muster for me. What I liked about it was that it stars a female protagonist who is self-motivated, imaginative, and a strong character, and who is deeply interested in science. All of that is a big plus. What I didn't like about it was that the 'rather dumb, pedantic, literal robot' has been done to death. It was already tiresome when Star Trek Next Generation introduced the ridiculous Commander Data and it could only go downhill from there. I think the science could have been a bit stronger and more prominent, too. Those gripes aside, I liked Mia and her attitude and the story was a short, fast read illustrated nicely by Turkish illustrator Saliha Calıskan.

One annoying thing to me was Mia's father's habit of referring to Mia as 'louloute', which is a diminutive endearment (purportedly!) for a young female child. I felt giving her a pet name and using it so often rather diminished poor Mia, who already had enough to deal with. Plus it felt so out of place. Maybe this family lived in Louisiana, but there was no mention of that state in the novel. The family name is suggestive of French origins, but there was nothing in the story to indicate why her dad would use this term since not a word of French was spoken in the entire story to indicate any such origin or tradition.

Mia really wants to be an astronaut, but in order to get one small step closer, she needs to do well in the science fair, but she needs a project! Can her visiting aunt's robot Aizek help her or will he get her into trouble? And can she help him learn to be a better robot? Those are the questions explored and answered here and despite some issues with it, I consider it a worthy read for a young female - and male - audience.