Geo Librarian

COUNTING BY 7S by Holly Goldberg Sloan Dial Books for Young Readers, 2013 ISBN: 978-0-8037-3855-3 Middle Grade Contemporary Grades 5-8 Reviewed from library copy. All opinions expressed are solely my own. ABOUT THE BOOK In the tradition of  Out of My Mind ,  Wonder,  and  Mockingbird,  this is an intensely moving middle grade novel about being an outsider, coping with loss, and discovering the true meaning of family.  Willow Chance is a twelve-year-old genius, obsessed with nature and diagnosing medical conditions, who finds it comforting to count by 7s. It has never been easy for her to connect with anyone other than her adoptive parents, but that hasn’t kept her from leading a quietly happy life . . . until now.   Suddenly Willow’s world is tragically changed when her parents both die in a car crash, leaving her alone in a baffling world. The triumph of this book is that it is  not  a tragedy. This extraordinarily odd, bu...

EVERY DAY AFTER by Laura Golden Delacorte Press, 2013 ISBN: 978-0-385-74326-6 Middle Grade Historical Fiction Grades 4-8 Reviewed from purchased copy. All opinions expressed are solely my own. ABOUT THE BOOK It's been two months since Lizzie's daddy disappeared due to the awful Depression. Lizzie's praying he'll return to Bittersweet, Alabama, for her birthday. It won't feel special without him, what with Lizzie's Mama being so sad she won't even talk and the bank nipping at their heels for a mortgage payment. Daddy expected her to be the best at any cost. But Lizzie claims "that cost me my top grades and my best friend. It's dumped 'em both square into Erin's hands. She's gone batty if she thinks she's gonna get me carted off to the orphanage." While Lizzie waits, she gets comfort writing in her journal. As time passes, she can only picture her daddy's face by opening her locket. If others can get by, why...

NAVIGATING EARLY by Clare Vanderpool Delacorte Press, 2013 ISBN: 978-0-385-74209-2 Middle Grade Historical Fiction Grades 4-8 Reviewed from purchased copy. All opinions expressed are solely my own. ABOUT THE BOOK At the end of World War II, Jack Baker, a landlocked Kansas boy, is suddenly uprooted after his mother’s death and placed in a boy’s boarding school in Maine. There, Jack encounters Early Auden, the strangest of boys, who reads the number pi as a story and collects clippings about the sightings of a great black bear in the nearby mountains. Newcomer Jack feels lost yet can’t help being drawn to Early, who won’t believe what everyone accepts to be the truth about the Great Appalachian Bear, Timber Rattlesnakes, and the legendary school hero known as The Fish, who never returned from the war. When the boys find themselves unexpectedly alone at school, they embark on a quest on the Appalachian Trail in search of the great black bear. But what they are searc...

CANARY IN THE COAL MINE by Madelyn Rosenberg Holiday House, 2013 ISBN13: 9780823426003 Middle Grade Animal Fantasy/Historical Fiction Grades 3-6 Reviewed from purchased copy. ABOUT THE BOOK Tired of his twelve-hour shifts and facing danger daily, Bitty, a canary whose courage more than makes up for his small size, treks to the state capital to try to improve working conditions in coal mines. REVIEW Bitty is a mine canary.  He spends his days deep inside a mine waiting to be hit with unseen gas, which warns the miners that they need to get out. Unfortunately, many canaries die in the process. Bitty wants to change this so he comes up with a plan to escape the cage where he has spent his entire life and fly off in hopes of convincing someone to bring improvements to the mine. But the world has some surprises in store for him. Hawks, trains, inventors, and lazy pigeons teach Bitty a lot about the world and he realizes just how big a task he has set for himsel...

THE CENTER OF EVERYTHING by Linda Urban Harcourt Children's Books, 2013 ISBN: 978-0-547-76348-4 Middle Grade Contemporary Grades 3-6 Reviewed from purchased copy. ABOUT THE BOOK For Ruby Pepperdine, the “center of everything” is on the rooftop of Pepperdine Motors in her donut-obsessed town of Bunning, New Hampshire, stargazing from the circle of her grandmother Gigi’s hug.  That’s how everything is supposed to be—until Ruby messes up and things spin out of control. But she has one last hope. It all depends on what happens on Bunning Day, when the entire town will hear Ruby read her winning essay. And it depends on her twelfth birthday wish—unless she messes that up too. Can Ruby’s wish set everything straight in her topsy-turvy world? REVIEW  I think one of the most fascinating things about this book is how the author slipped back and forth between the past and present so easily.  She shows us how Ruby is feeling in the present and then slowly goes ...