middle grade

Book Review: Ms. Pennypickle’s Remarkable Road Race

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Ms. Pennypickle’s Remarkable Road Race
Ms. Pennypickle’s Puzzlers #2
by Chris Grabenstein

My rating: 3.5 / 5
Genre: Middle grade adventure

After information about Ms. Pennypickle’s puzzle quest was leaked online, Ms. Pennypickle is worried about negative PR from all of the fans who want their shot at a mega prize. So Jack, the head of advertising for the company, sets up an Amazing Race-type game down Route 66. Seven teams of 2 are selected, except that one is missing a partner. Jack’s son Jackson is pushed into being her partner, even though he can’t win the grand prize, since his dad works for the company. But that doesn’t keep him from giving the race his all!

I read the first Ms. Pennypickle book when it first came out around this same time last year. I was really surprised to see that Grabenstein had decided to expand on that story, and now that I’ve read the second one…I’m still surprised. Here’s the thing, though—my bad memory made this second installment more enjoyable than it probably would have been if I had remembered details about the first one. So before I get into this book as its own story, I have to say that if you read the first and remember how it ended, I don’t really know if it’s worth reading this second one. Or I guess you could still read it and just be able to see things working out before secrets are revealed.

Now taking this from the angle of reading it without remembering the first book very well, it was a lot of fun to read. Like a lot of Grabenstein’s books, it seems like characters know way more than normal people do, even with the caveat that they would have studied up on Route 66 before taking on this challenge. There’s a twist to this book that I didn’t see coming (though, as I said above, I probably would have if I’d remembered the first book better). And like with the first book, there are aspects that felt unrealistic but that made sense in the end.

So should you read this book? If you are new to the Pennypickle world, I’d suggest the first book, Ms. Pennypickle’s Puzzle Quest, over this one in general; I really liked the characters and twist more there. Whether you’ve read the first book or not, this book is good overall. Just not terribly unique.

I received an advanced review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

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Book Review: Ferris

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Ferris
by Kate DiCamillo
read by Cherry Jones

My rating: 2.5 / 5
Genre: Middle grade fiction

Ferris’s life is…unusual. Her little sister has decided to be an outlaw. Her uncle has moved into the basement to fulfill his destiny and paint a history of the world. Her best friend incessantly plays only one song on the piano. And her grandmother has recently started to see a ghost that makes an unusual request.

At first, this story felt whimsical, which I’m sure was helped along by the narration of Cherry Jones (I loved her narration of the Little House books). But certain parts of it became repetitive while other parts were just strange. Billy Jackson playing “Mysterious Barricades” over and over makes me think that he’d drive me crazy in real life. Vocabulary words that Ferris and Billy Jackson learned in school are dropped throughout the book at unnatural times and are defined for the reader in ways that felt jarring to me. Uncle Ted clearly needs therapy; the whole thing about painting the history of the world was completely bizarre and inexplicable. And Pinky (the little sister) seemed like a slightly more extreme version of Beverly Cleary’s Ramona, especially in her younger days—she clearly needs some actual discipline in her life.

Then there are the supernatural elements. Aside from Charisse (Ferris’s grandmother, who is referred to by her name by everyone) and her ghost, Ferris is apparently a bit psychic or something, considering that she starts to have out-of-body-type experiences. None of this is explained, either, or given satisfactory resolutions. In the end, I didn’t really understand the purpose of the book, nor was I able to see any real plot. The story has a certain kind of charm, but it isn’t anything I’d really recommend to anyone of any age.

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Book Review: The Ghost at Dawn’s House

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The Ghost at Dawn’s House
The Baby-Sitters Club #9
by Ann M. Martin

My rating: 4 / 5
Genre: Children’s classic

For complete transparency, I’ll say up front that I read a lot of this series when I was a kid/pre-teen. And at the time, my name was the same as the founder of the BSC (with the first name spelled slightly differently). Nostalgia will hugely affect my reviews for this series, and I have no plans to try to be objective.

In this book, Dawn reads some ghost stories, hears some strange noises in the wall, and convinces herself that a guy that disappeared in the area a long time ago is probably now a ghost in the secret passage she found in her house. I mean…why the ghost would be leaving food in the passageway, I don’t know. I still don’t feel any connection to Dawn, but letting her imagination run wild in this story isn’t exactly that surprising for a girl her age, especially in the time period this is from. The Pike family is baffling to me—they have a ton of kids and let them do whatever they want…except when they need to impose rules after all. I just do not get how this is a good way to raise kids.

I was surprised at the mystery in this book being left somewhat open. Kids who are fans of spooky stories might enjoy being able to come up with their own explanation to some of the happenings that aren’t explained (and apparently, it never is). Overall, this is a good addition to the series. Whether or not this book will translate well to kids and pre-teens now, I couldn’t say. I wish I had thought to start reading this series to/with my daughter when she was around 8-10, because I think she would have enjoyed it, and we could have discussed the good and the bad of the books.

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Book Review: Running Out of Time

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Running Out of Time
Out of Time #1
by Margaret Peterson Haddix
Read by Kimberly Schraf

My rating: 4 / 5
Genre: Middle grade fiction

Jessie lives a simple life with her parents and siblings in a small town in 1840…or so she thinks. When a diphtheria outbreak threatens the kids in the village, Jessie’s mom sends her on an important mission: leave Clifton and get help. But leaving Clifton means stepping into a completely different world.

I enjoyed this story, which is like a time travel story without any time travel. The little clues dropped early in the book, when Jessie is still living a normal life in pioneer times, provide intrigue that I can see being even more so for kids/teens in the book’s target audience. When Jessie’s mom sends her on her mission, she gives her just enough info to get Jessie close to what she needs to do, and then Jessie has to use her own wits to fill in the gaps. The pressure is real, as the diphtheria outbreak is threatening the lives of several of the kids, and Jessie is constantly worried that she’s being tracked by henchmen of the founder of Clifton. The main thing that detracted from this story for me is that the motive behind everything that’s happening seemed really weak and squeezed in at the end, maybe because the author wanted to emphasize the premise and plot more than the “why” behind it all. Overall, though, I enjoyed my time listening to the audiobook. I think preteens through mid-teens would enjoy the book.

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Book Review: The Worst

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The Worst
by Mark Binder

My rating: 2.5 / 5
Genre: Middle grade fiction

This series of vignettes about life in middle school in the 90s follows a group of 7 friends who refer to themselves as “Team Bomb Shelter,” because they hang out in a basement bomb shelter at the house of one of the friends. Starting in the summer before eighth grade and going all the way to the end of school, the book actually ends with a novella about a school shooting. If that sounds like a strange combination to you, it felt that way to me, as well. Before the vignettes start, the protagonist/first-person narrator (whose name I don’t recall ever being told) tells us that the school year ended with a school shooting. But first, he takes us back almost a year and tells us mostly fun, whimsical, completely unrelated stories about normal life for him and his friends. The stories range from outlandish to realistic, fun to serious. One story involves the protagonist developing a super-fast but also super-minor attraction to a new kid, whose gender he doesn’t know, so that makes him question what he’s always assumed about himself. The author seems to remember the 90s differently than I do, because he indicates that “crises of identity” were common back then, and I sure don’t remember that whole thing being even a fraction of what it is today.

Regarding the school shooting novella in particular, I think authors need to be really careful about how they handle something that is still a subject of such terror today. It’s strange to me that this story was put after a series of mostly light, jovial vignettes. I wouldn’t go as far as saying that Binder treated the subject lightly, but I do have a difficult time believing that any eighth-graders would have acted the way the kids in this book do. This makes it seem more like a story written specifically so the kids can be the heroes, and it just seems strange for a school shooting story to be written that way. I’m not sure if I can adequately explain what I mean, so I’ll leave it at that. I also didn’t particularly enjoy the way the author slips from a first-person narrative, even one where it’s clear the narrator is looking back on his childhood at a much later time and giving minute-by-minute details of the event, only to interrupt himself with a chapter from the shooter’s POV or an explanation of what they learned from the police report after the incident. It was jarring.

The first half of the book, the vignettes, could be enjoyable for the right reader—either adults who enjoy nostalgic views of the time they grew up or possibly middle schoolers now who like to read about what life was like before cell phones (which we’re reminded of many times during this book). The novella in the second half is a very serious subject matter, but some may enjoy that as well. This wasn’t a stand-out read for me, but if you’re interested, please check out other reviews at the link below.

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Book Review: Mandie and the Abandoned Mine

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Mandie and the Abandoned Mine
Mandie #8
by Lois Gladys Leppard

My rating: 4 / 5
Genre: Children’s Christian historical fiction

I read a lot of this series when I was a kid/pre-teen, and I read some of them to my now-teen daughter when she was younger. Nostalgia definitely affects my reviews for this series, and I’m okay with that.

This book is one of the best in the season so far. Mandie does disobey once, but not nearly as much or as terribly as she does in other books. The mystery isn’t complex and twisty, but at least it isn’t super obvious this time. Mandie and some combination of her friends do tend to get kidnapped a lot, but this one turns out differently in that regard, at least. And while the “forgive those who trespass against you” aspect of Christianity is pushed to perhaps an unrealistic level in this book, I didn’t mind it too much. There was something kind of nice about the resolution in this book. These books have their ups and downs, but they can still be good for younger people to read, especially if you’re looking for something with Christian content. Though overall, I recommend discussing what’s good and bad in them with your kid(s) after/while they read it.

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Book Review: The Order of Time

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The Order of Time
Book #1
by Scott P. Southall

My rating: 2 / 5
Genre: Middle grade fantasy

Eleven-year-old twins Anastasia and Edward Upston enjoy spending time at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History and learning from the curator, Dr. Gregorian. They never expected to discover that the doctor is a member of a secret order that goes back in time to protect history from another group that seeks to change it for their own benefit. When Dr. Gregorian is injured, it falls to Anastasia and Edward to go back to ancient Egypt and stop the bad guys from changing the past.

The initial premise of this book was intriguing, but it ultimately fell flat for me in several ways. For starters, Anastasia and Edward, at 11, are somehow both super skilled or talented in different ways. Edward is a great artist and highly intelligent, spouting off facts about ancient Egypt that he read about right before they traveled back and memorized well enough to share in detail. Anastasia is skilled in MMA, able to take down several grown men trained to fight, make amazing plays in a soccer-type game, and generally do many amazing athletic things. The story itself takes a weird turn partway through, becoming complete fantasy (as opposed to sci-fi, which time travel is more inclined to be). This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I definitely wasn’t expecting it.

I was also bothered by the level of violence and gore in a book meant for kids and pre-teens. During different fight scenes, there’s a mention of a guy’s head being separated from his body, teeth shredding flesh, and a dagger going through someone’s eye and embedding “itself to the hilt with a wet thunk.” Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but that’s quite a bit more than I’d want my 10-12-year-old reading. In the end, the book was okay, but it didn’t really engage me. I don’t know that I’d really recommend it to anyone, but if you or your pre-teens are interested in ancient Egypt and like the idea of modern kids traveling back to that time and aren’t bothered by anything I mentioned, you can find positive reviews at the link below.

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Book Review: The Ginghams

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The Ginghams
by T.C. Kemper

My rating: 2.5 / 5
Genre: Middle grade sci-fi

Best friends Joni and Tyler return home from summer camp to discover that the third member of their trio, May, is acting a little differently. Soon enough they realize that May is not the only one acting differently, and it all seems to stem from the mysterious Thursday night book clubs at the home of the newest family in town, the Ginghams. As the behavior of more and more of their schoolmates, neighbors, and others in the town begins to conform to that of the Ginghams, Joni and Tyler wonder if they can keep their own originality.

Because the book is labeled as horror and mystery, I expected something more thrilling from this book. But the villain is obvious, even if their methods aren’t, and the book seemed to be trying to make a point but missed its mark, at least for me. Although the methods involved are villainous and even horrifying, the ideals espoused by the Gingham family are not all “bad,” so mostly it seems like the author/MCs are trying to convince us that it’s bad to want kids to behave or obey their parents. Individuality/non-conformity seems to be the main theme here, but at the same time, I couldn’t escape the feeling that there was something more that the author was trying to instill in the young readers of this book.

Beyond whatever message the author may or may not have been attempting to put into this book, I found it somewhat boring. Joni and Tyler seem more bothered by the idea of losing their individuality than losing control of themselves in general. I was just never very engaged. The climax involves a disproportionately gruesome action (that I might have misunderstood, because in the end, it didn’t seem nearly as damaging as I imagined), and then there’s the way the villain is dispatched. It all felt a little dark and harsh for middle grade, at least for my preference as well as for the tone of the book up to that point. Though I didn’t enjoy the book, there are many others who did, so if you’re interested in the book, please check out other reviews at the link below.

I received an advanced review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

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Book Review: So You Want To Be An Architect

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So You Want to Be an Architect
by Linda Soules

My rating: 5 / 5
Genre: Middle grade nonfiction

So You Want to Be an Architect takes what could be a complicated subject and makes it accessible to kids and teens. But it also doesn’t talk down to them—there are areas younger kids may not be able to follow, but there’s enough context to get the point across well enough, I think. I also think that if something is a little over a kid’s head and sends them to asking someone about it or looking it up, that’s not a bad thing at all. The book goes beyond explaining what architects do and what they need to learn to be able to do it; it also talks about what kinds of interests, innate skills, and even indefinable ways of seeing the world around them that might lend themselves to a potential future architect. There are segments on famous architects and fun facts as well and beautiful, colorful illustrations throughout. (The illustrations are done with AI assistance, as Soules explains at the back of the book.)

I really like how the book talks about both the good and the bad (or at least the difficult) sides of being an architect, as well as the glamorous and more-common “normal” aspects. The book is intended for pre-teens through teens aged 10-14, and I definitely could see it being a great one for anyone in or near that age range, on either side of it.

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Book Review: Mandie and the Charleston Phantom

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Mandie and the Charleston Phantom
Mandie #7
by Lois Gladys Leppard

My rating: 3 / 5
Genre: Children’s Christian historical fiction

I read a lot of this series when I was a kid/pre-teen, and I read some of them to my now-teen daughter when she was younger. Nostalgia definitely affects my reviews for this series, and I’m okay with that.

Most of my issues with the previous books in the series have to do with Mandie’s attitude or actions and sketchy theology (there was a bit of that here too). This time, my biggest issue is just the super weak plot. It’s obvious the entire time who’s behind the “ghost,” and the reasoning for it ends up being so flimsy, it’s easier to believe that the culprit only agreed with the suggested reason because it was at least a little better than just the real motive—plain mean-heartedness. There’s also too much focus on boys liking Mandie, thinking she’s pretty, even wanting to marry her someday, for a book about a 12-year-old girl. I’m sure I thought it was sweet or even romantic when I was a pre-teen, but it could definitely have at least been toned down. While I think these books can still be good for younger people to read, especially if you’re looking for something with Christian content, I strongly recommend discussing what’s good and bad in them with your kid(s) after they read it.

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