middle grade

Book Review: The Grim Grotto

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The Grim Grotto
A Series of Unfortunate Events #11
by Lemony Snicket
read by Tim Curry

My rating: 3.5 / 5
Genre: Children’s fiction

Spoiler notice: The following review will contain some spoilers for the previous books in the series, starting with The Bad Beginning.

We find the 3 Baudelaire orphans where we left them—in a toboggan, rushing down a stream, helpless to save themselves. As they try to unravel the mystery of V.F.D. and stay out of the clutches of Count Olaf, they’ll have to navigate dark waters and even darker intentions.

There were some things I actually enjoyed about this book, starting with Tim Curry’s portrayal of Captain Widdershins. I’m pretty sure I would have rolled my eyes at his particular way of speaking, especially when first introduced, if I was reading it for myself, so that’s all the more reason I’m glad I’m listening to this series instead. On the other hand, if I’d been reading instead of listening, I could have skipped entire pages of repetition that I guess Snicket thought would be clever, but only made me question my own sanity. Sunny’s dialog continues to be the only source of humor in the entire series, and I did appreciate a Chekov’s “gum” moment.

I’m a little baffled by the way Snicket is hammering us with this whole, “nobody is completely evil or completely noble; everyone is shades of both” or whatever he’s trying to say, yet one character in this book is practically vilified by the main characters because of a very difficult decision that didn’t go the way the main characters thought it should, even while that character still showed shades of nobility. There were a couple of surprises near the end, though one of them left me scratching my head. Maybe we’ll learn more about that in the next two books…though the way people talk about the end of this series, I kind of doubt it. Guess I’ll find out for myself soon enough.

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Book Review: The Windy City

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The Windy City
I, Q #5
by Roland Smith & Michael P. Spradlin

My rating: 4 / 5
Genre: Children’s spy thriller

Spoiler notice: The following review will contain some spoilers for the previous books in the series, starting with Independence Hall.

New step-siblings Q (short for Quest) and Angela continue to trail a ghost terrorist cell along with SOS, a team made up mostly of retired operatives from the CIA and other organizations. Angela’s mother is climbing her way toward the top of the ghost cell, but the danger is getting higher all the time. Meanwhile, Boone may not be the only one with a mysterious ability, and there seems to be a mole on the SOS team or amongst their allies.

Here we have part 5 of the series-long story, the kind of series that you really need to start from the beginning. A lot more happened in this book than in the previous, which I’m glad for, because the previous wasn’t as interesting as the earlier books in the series had been. I was concerned the second half of the series would end up being a let-down compared to the first half. I can’t say that we get much in the way of answers in this book, but there were certainly some revelations. And the story really moved forward, with action comparable to what we see in the rest of the series.

One thing I’ve begun to notice in this book is that Q, as the main character, isn’t the stereotype we might expect in a book like this—an action-loving kid who has taken to all of this adventure and danger. He’s anxious and jumpy and will probably need some therapy in the future. It makes for a much more realistic story, even while there are some unrealistic things happening as well. I do wish the author had had the foresight to realize he might want to include some scenes from the POV of someone other than Q later in the series, though, and not started it in 1st person. I’m not a fan of changing between 1st and 3rd. Overall, though, I’m really interested to see how this series ends.

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Book Review: The Giver

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The Giver
Book #1
by Lois Lowry

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

When 12-year-old Jonas is given his life assignment as Receiver of Memory for his entire community, he doesn’t know what to expect, or even what that means. But the more the Giver reveals to him, the more Jonas knows that he can’t continue to live in the emotionless, colorless world of conformity and blandness.

This book had me hooked from the start. The way Lowry builds the world slowly, while showing everyday life in the lead-up to Jonas’s assignment ceremony, is well done. Though I could guess at some of the revelations, others were definitely a surprise to me. And while, from our perspective in real life, it seems impossible for someone to go through what Jonas does and not want to make changes, it’s clear that these people are just that brainwashed, as they go along with the way life has been presented to them.

Unlike so many who read this book for a school assignment, this is my first time reading it. I’ve heard of it over the years, but it really wasn’t on my radar until my sister gave it to me for Christmas (along with the blu-ray of the movie, so I can compare them, which I’ll do soon). Not for the first time, I am so thankful for her recommendation, and while I can see that the next book isn’t exactly a continuation of this one, I’m very curious to see what else Lowry wrote about this world. It’s a great young-audience dystopian novel written before that became a trend.

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Book Review: Danger Down the Nile

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Danger Down the Nile
Treasure Hunters Book #2
by James Patterson & Chris Grabenstein
read by Brian Kennedy

My rating: 3.5 / 5
Genre: Children’s adventure

The Kidd kids are still alone after the separate but equally mysterious disappearances of both of their parents. Then the family boat is taken away too, leaving the Kidds to search for treasure and hunt for their parents on dry land. With the help of some contacts of their parents, they embark on a journey that might see their mom safely returned.

Similar to the first book in the series, with this book, I enjoy the wide view, but struggle with the details. These kids are shown to be very smart, collectively, in a lot of areas, good at being on their own, yet continuously get themselves caught by people they’re trying to avoid—probably because they stop and talk or debate amongst themselves so much. Even when the rest of the kids seem to be on board with their parents being missing, rather than dead—and even when they have had numerous hints that their mom is being held captive, not dead—Storm, the book-smart older sister, is doggedly determined to believe their parents dead. I just do not get it. I’m still not a fan of the twin tirades, though they were toned down a little in this book compared to the first. Maybe they’ll just be phased out as the series continues.

I am not against things happening in a book like this that likely would not happen in real life, and this definitely requires a little more suspension of disbelief than normal, though overall, it doesn’t bother me much. However, having a shark be distracted from its prey by red liquid in the water, making it think there was blood, was a bit too much for me, since sharks smell blood; the color wouldn’t make a difference. I liked this book a little more than the first, but I’m starting to wonder if I should switch to reading the books, rather than listening to the audiobooks. The narrator does a good job sounding like the pre-teen Bick who tells the story and then sounding like an adult when needed, too, but I do think his tendency to sound too much like a petulant child is what makes the twin tirades all the more annoying to me. I know it’ll take me longer to get through the series if I read, rather than listen, though, and I want to get caught up quickly, since I have an ARC of the newest book and don’t want to jump ahead to it. For now, I’m reserving my recommendation for or against this book or series until I see where it goes.

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Book Review: Legend of the Desert Bigfoot

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Legend of the Desert Bigfoot
Last Chance Detectives #2
by Jake Thoene & Luke Thoene

My rating: 4 / 5
Genre: Children’s Christian mystery, adventure

Is there a legendary monster wreaking havoc in the desert of Ambrosia? Mike, Spence, Winnie, and Ben, who call themselves the Last Chance Detectives, are on the case!

This was another solid addition to the short-lived series from the 90s. I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as the ones before and after it in the series, but that may have been as much due to the fact that the mystery seemed pretty obvious to me the whole time. I blame the book cover, which has a huge spoiler on it. There was an element I didn’t see coming, and the fast-paced excitement of the climax was classic Last Chance Detectives. I’d recommend this book, along with the rest of the series, for kids around 10-14.

For whatever reason, they’ve started putting out new books in this series, over 20 years after the series was first created, and while my childhood memories of the franchise are from one of the movies from the 90s, I like that there will be new stories added to it. I have now read all of the books from the original print series (out of order, but it doesn’t really make a difference), as well as 1 new one that came out last year, and look forward to seeing how the series continues and if Mike ever gets any answers about his dad.

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Book Review: The Slippery Slope

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The Slippery Slope
A Series of Unfortunate Events #10
by Lemony Snicket
read by Tim Curry

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

Spoiler notice: The following review may contain some spoilers for the previous book in the series, The Carnivorous Carnival (and possibly others before it).

The three Baudelaire orphans are separated but must find a way to work together to save one of them from the clutches of Count Olaf and his troop. As they close in on some answers, other questions only grow more mysterious.

I don’t want to repeat myself in regards to what I don’t care for about this series, so if you’re interested, feel free to check out my reviews of the previous books. I’ll instead mention a few things that led me to give this book a higher rating than the previous one. I appreciate that the repetitiveness of the formula in the earlier books in the series is a thing of the past. No more new guardian every book, though that does lead me to wonder if Mr. Poe is doing anything to try to find these lost orphans at this point. Yes, he’s gullible enough that he probably believes the newspaper reports that they killed someone, but they were still his responsibility. I hope to see something more from him before the end of the series.

There was a twist in this book that I didn’t expect and something else unexpected happened too. Both bright spots in an otherwise un-surprising plot. I like that Sunny is growing (probably not physically, though), yet the other two siblings don’t change much. “VFD” is becoming my least-favorite acronym, considering how much Snicket forces it into the story. Three books ’til the end, and I’ll probably never re-visit this series.

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Book Review: Number the Stars

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Number the Stars
by Lois Lowry

My rating: 5 / 5
Genre: Classic children’s historical fiction

Annemarie Johansen doesn’t really understand why she has to pretend that her friend Ellen is her sister. Or why Ellen’s parents have to leave without her. But when Annemarie’s parents and uncle try to help Ellen’s family and some other Jewish people in Denmark flee to a safer country, Annemarie knows it’s important and will do anything she can to help, even if it’s dangerous.

I really appreciate that in so few pages and in language kids can understand and get into, Lowry not only paints a vivid picture of the danger and fear that those who lived in Nazi-occupied countries dealt with, but also touches on the resistance offered by non-Jews living in Denmark. I also liked seeing the love and loyalty the Danes had for their king, which is something most American’s can fully understand, and the way the scientific community pulled together to help save lives.

Many of us remember reading this book for school, though I didn’t remember it nearly as well as I thought (or maybe I was thinking about a different book the whole time, though if so, I can’t pin down what it was). Required reading or not, this is a good book to introduce young readers to the darkness that many in Europe faced during WWII.

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Book Review: The Alamo

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The Alamo
I, Q #4
by Roland Smith & Michael P. Spradlin

My rating: 3.5 / 5
Genre: Children’s spy thriller

Spoiler notice: The following review will contain some spoilers for the previous books in the series, starting with Independence Hall.

New step-siblings Q (short for Quest) and Angela continue to trail a ghost terrorist cell along with SOS, a team made up mostly of retired operatives from the CIA and other organizations. Angela’s mother is climbing her way toward the top of the ghost cell, but the danger is getting higher all the time. Meanwhile, something strange is going on with Boone, and is Q’s dad friend or foe?

Here we have part 4 of the series-long story, the kind of series that you really need to start from the beginning. This is the first book that is co-written by another author, but it’s not super noticeable to me. Though I will say that this is the first book that starts with a list of all of the characters and a recap of past events, which my aging memory appreciated. Overall, though, it doesn’t feel particularly new. None of the questions from the last book are answered and are really only muddied more. The characters gain a very small amount of ground, and some of the plot points feel like a rehash.

There’s still a lot of action, and I like the way that the series moves around the country to different major locations. I think there are some discrepancies regarding the relative placements of the Alamo Plaza and the San Fernando Cathedral, an area I’ve studied recently for my job (https://www.getbeyondthewalls.com/), so that brought me out of the story a little. However, I’m still really interested in seeing where the rest of this series goes.

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Book Review: Treasure Hunters

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Treasure Hunters
Book #1
by James Patterson & Chris Grabenstein
read by Brian Kennedy

My rating: 3 / 5
Genre: Children’s adventure

The Kidds are a family of treasure hunters. They live on a boat, traveling the world, recovering various kinds of items from shipwrecks. But after the separate but equally mysterious disappearances of both of their parents, the Kidd children are left on their own to deal with a band of pirates who want their treasure and local authorities who don’t want them to be left on their own. Then some clues surface that point at evidence to what really happened to their parents, and the adventure really begins.

I’m a bit torn on this book. The overall story was fun and adventurous and ends with a promise of more of the same. The main cast consists of 4 kids: the oldest is Tommy, then Storm, and twins Bick and Beck (short for Bickford and Rebecca). Bick is the narrator of the book, and Beck draws the illustrations along the way. I had to borrow the ebook to be able to see the illustrations, and I liked them, even one part when they were drawn by a different character.

However, I wrote more notes while listening, of things I wanted to remember for later, than I have for any book I’ve ever read. Not all of these notes were of issues I had with the story. For example, there was a gang of pirates that were basically surfer dudes, and the way they were voiced by the narrator gave that part of the story a major 3 Ninjas vibe, which I quite enjoyed. The narrator did a good job of sounding like a 12-year-old boy most of the time, but sounding like older characters when needed, too. Now and then, he seemed to put the emphasis in the wrong place, but overall, I liked the narrator.

What most of my notes boil down to are things I didn’t like about the way characters are presented or written. Tommy was probably my favorite of the Kidds. He’s uncomplicated and smarter than he seems. Storm is a fairly stereotypical, way-too-smart-to-be-believable character, even to the point of being overweight and socially awkward. It seems a little too much like the author(s) enjoys shaming fat people, not just because of this character (and it had to be pretty deliberate to make her this way, since it’s unlikely to me that someone living the way this family does would become so overweight), but because there are two other characters in the book that are described as ridiculously obese, and the narrator, who knows how much his sister hates to be teased about her weight, is not remotely kind in his descriptions of those characters.

Then we have Bick and Beck and their “twin tirades,” which are quick argument “squalls.” After a few of these, I realized that they’re really just a way for them to discuss opposing views, but they start out already angry. They mostly feel forced, and frankly, their parents should have put a stop to them a long time ago, insisting instead that they find a calmer and more healthy way to communicate. Also, all three of the kids were far too cavalier about the perceived deaths of their parents. They moved on so fast, it was as if they weren’t very attached to them.

This is the first of anything by James Patterson that I’ve read, but I have enjoyed books by Chris Grabenstein before. I’d really like to see where this story goes and hope that some of what I didn’t like about this book will be lessened in the future, as the series continues.

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Book Review: The Silver Chair

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The Silver Chair
The Chronicles of Narnia #4 (original order)
by C.S. Lewis

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

Not only is this the first book without any Pevensies, but it sure does delve into new depths (pun intended). Jill and Eustace are an interesting combination of characters—they’re the first to go to Narnia who aren’t related to each other in any way, not that being unrelated kept them from bickering. While parts of the story were quite predictable, I still enjoyed the way it played out.

Puddleglum, though, now he’s my kind of character. He expects the worst, yet never gives up. He has 100% faith in and devotion to Aslan, and I absolutely love his words and actions when facing the evil witch of this story. I really appreciate the way C.S. Lewis brings out truths about following God in the midst of these fantastical stories.

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