middle grade

Book Review: Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer

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Kid Lawyer
Theodore Boone #1
by John Grisham
read by Richard Thomas


My rating: 4 / 5
Genre: Middle grade fiction

Thirteen-year-old Theodore Boone’s parents are both lawyers, which gives him unique insight into the law system in his small town. He spends a lot of time at the courthouse and dreams of being a great trial lawyer someday. When his small town is rocked by a murder, he hates that he has to miss the trial to attend school. Then a classmate brings him some unknown evidence about the murder case, and Theo isn’t sure what to do with the info.

For the most part, this book was absolutely great and I really enjoyed it, though there are some things that I feel could have been done better. I really liked the trial side of the story. It reminded me a lot of David Rosenfelt’s Andy Carpenter series, which I also enjoy. I also liked Theo as a character and the relationship he’s built with various people at the courthouse. And there were a few moments that made me chuckle, especially early in the book. I was listening to the audiobook, and my 15-year-old daughter was nearby when I first started it, and she heard enough at the beginning (including those humorous moments) to decide to add it to her TBR as well. Another thing I appreciated is that Theo realizes the point when he’s in over his head and needs to consider taking what he knows to an adult. The way that all played out, too, I thought was pretty good.

I wish the story had gone a different direction than it did, though. I kept expecting even just a small twist in the plot by the end, but it never happened—maybe in an attempt to be more realistic than thrilling. And it certainly did seem realistic, but maybe throwing in a little more excitement would be good too. I also noted that the narrator (Theo) basically says near the beginning of the book that he doesn’t think of girls romantically at his age, yet he certainly is attracted to one of the women who works at the courthouse, and then there’s the girl in school that he thinks could become his girlfriend…so I guess all he really means is that he doesn’t think of that one girl at the beginning of the book romantically. Either way, it seemed like an unnecessary overall addition to a book with a 13-year-old protagonist.

I happened on this book when I was looking for something quick to listen to while waiting for some holds to come through, and the synopsis sounded interesting. If I had taken the time to read reviews first and see the 3.8 average rating right now on Goodreads, I probably would have passed, but I’m really glad I just dove in, because overall, I really enjoyed it and plan to keep going with the series. Richard Thomas does a great job with the narration, too. Overall, I’d say whether or not a teenager will be interested in this book will depend on what kind of fiction they like—if fast-paced action is important, this probably won’t suit them. If they’re interested in realistic fiction about crime and law and trials, this could be fascinating for them.

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Book Review: How to Train Your Dragon

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How to Train Your Dragon
Book #1
by Cressida Cowell
read by David Tennant

My rating: 4 / 5
Genre: Middle grade fantasy

Though he’s the son of the clan’s chief, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III leaves a lot to be desired as a Viking. When he and the other boys his age are tasked with capturing a young dragon to raise and train, he’s just hoping he doesn’t screw up by not getting any dragon at all.

I’ve actually struggled a lot as I’ve tried to write this review. It’s often difficult to base a book on its own merits if I read a book after watching and enjoying the movie (and in this case, I didn’t even know the book existed when the movie came out), but that has never been more difficult than in this case. The movie is so good and the book is so different, I’ve struggled so much to not compare them and let the book stand on its own. Really, the only similarities are the names of people and places, the inclusion of both Vikings and dragons, Hiccup’s overall character, and the main “antagonist.”

Comparisons aside, I did enjoy the book. I was surprised that dragons in the book are thinking, reasoning creatures, with a language of their own, yet the Vikings capture and tame them like beasts, not bothering to pay any attention to their speech. It’s not something you’d probably want to think too hard about, though I did like the way it plays out in the book. I kept expecting the story to go different ways than it did (which could have been because of the movie, but I also think it’s because I’m used to how books, especially for this age group, tend to go), but it’s a charming story in the end, and Toothless grew on me too.

If you love the movie and are looking for a book like that, I don’t recommend you read this book. If you love David Tennant (or even if you don’t) and want to hear him do a brilliant job narrating a fun kids’ book, definitely consider listening to the audiobook. Overall, I’d say don’t let hearing that it’s not like the movie keep you from reading it, if you’re interested.

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Book Review: Al Capone Throws Me a Curve

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Al Capone Throws Me a Curve
Tales from Alcatraz #4
by Gennifer Choldenko

My rating: 4.5 / 5
Genre: Middle grade historical fiction

Thirteen-year-old Moose Flanagan’s dad is the assistant-warden on the island of Alcatraz, but even living amongst some of the most infamous criminals in the world isn’t enough to get Moose and his friend Scout onto the high school baseball team as freshmen. He has all summer to try to figure out how to please the team’s captain, but it won’t be easy. Meanwhile, there are rumors that the convicts are going to strike and that Moose’s father might become even more of a target.

The series finishes strong, with another compelling story and the title coming into play in a way I didn’t expect. I was glad that the awkward teen-romance triangle between Moose, Piper, and Annie was non-existent in this book, because Annie was gone for the summer. Though on the other hand, Scout was a bit annoying to me this time with his insistence on Moose pandering to the captain of the baseball team in ways that would be dangerous at best. There was one particular aspect in this book involving a signed baseball that felt a little weak—the baseball was a factual item, but its use in the story didn’t really work for me.

The climax of this book is full of excitement. As I’ve said before, one of the things I love about this series is that it doesn’t pander to the young audience for which it’s intended. The stakes are high, the danger is real (not just physical danger, but the danger of Moose’s dad losing his job during the Great Depression), and Moose has to make some truly impossible choices. He is a true hero in many ways in this book, and I really liked how everything came out in the end. I also found it interesting that Al Capone, who has been sort of idolized by most of the kids throughout the series, is brought down off his pedestal, at least for Moose, in this book. And I again enjoyed reading the author’s notes at the end of this book. I applaud Choldenko’s research and inclusion of history in this series. I recommend the whole series (but start at the beginning!) for pre-teens and young teens, as well as any adults who enjoy younger-audience books.

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Book Review: Mystery Ranch

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Mystery Ranch
The Boxcar Children #4
by Gertrude Chandler Warner
Read by Aimee Lilly

My rating: 2 / 5
Genre: Children’s classic

This one really left me scratching my head. The mean, old aunt is instantly won over by the too-perfect kids, and apparently minors were able to own property in the time this was written, without needing an adult to be the trustee or anything like that. When the aunt talked about some men trying to get her to sell her ranch to them, it started to feel like a Nancy Drew story, but it resolved far too quickly and easily. In fact, though I didn’t compare the length of this to the previous stories, it felt super short in general. Also, the narrator for this book was even less enjoyable than the previous, who I already didn’t care for. Maybe if I had a young child to read these with and discuss the good and bad, it would be worth continuing with the series, but I don’t really have any motivation to do so.

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Book Review: The Yellow House Mystery

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The Yellow House Mystery
The Boxcar Children #3
by Gertrude Chandler Warner
Read by Tim Gregory

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

I really think Warner needs to branch out from missing people being re-discovered in this series. Three books, and that’s been a theme in all of them. That and the repetition of the kids “roughing it” in one way or another. Overall, I did like the story here better than the previous book, but I had some issues with the plot. For example, if it’s important for a letter to not be seen by anyone but the recipient, why instruct the recipient to hide it? Wouldn’t destroying it be better? But of course, destroying it would have meant that no one could discover it decades later and start off an adventure. I know this was written for kids and written in a very different time, and I really can’t know what I would have thought of the story if I’d read it as a kid. I suppose most kids, even nowadays, wouldn’t take issue with the things I did, but that doesn’t make some of what happens in this book okay.

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Book Review: Surprise Island

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Surprise Island
The Boxcar Children #2
by Gertrude Chandler Warner
Read by Tim Gregory

My rating: 2 / 5
Genre: Children’s classic

I don’t have nostalgia to fall back on with this book (if I read more than the first book in the series as a kid, I don’t remember any of them), so I’m sure that plays a big part in my review. Maybe as a kid I would have enjoyed this story, but as an adult, I was too distracted by some strange choices by the author. First, the grandfather, who searched for a while for his grandkids after their parents’ death and finally found them and took them in, sends them off to an island (basically) by themselves for the summer. I don’t know how long it’s been since the boxcar days, but I’d think he’d want to spend the summer with them. Then, there is a strange man living on the island, which the grandfather owns, that he doesn’t even attempt to meet before he leaves his grandkids there, where they’ll live in a leaky barn. The island is apparently in the ocean, which I would think would make the shoreline dangerous, but these kids are basically left on their own. And even though I enjoyed the ingenuity the kids showed setting up their home in the first book, it seems less fun in this book, I think partly because it’s repeated so quickly after the first and partly because the lack of necessity somehow makes it less special. I also can’t help but wonder how many missing family members one old man can have…

I was not a fan of this narrator, which didn’t help. His way of voicing the younger kids grated on me. I don’t know how far into the series I’ll go, but I’m hoping the narrator changes soon. Maybe this book would be enjoyable by younger kids even today, but I am definitely too old for it.

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Book Review: Moonleapers

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Moonleapers
Book #1
by Margaret Peterson Haddix

My rating: 4 / 5
Genre: Middle grade science fiction

The good news is that 12-year-old Maisie is finally getting a phone like everyone at school. The bad news is that her family is going to spend the summer in Maryland so her mom can be with her great-aunt who is dying. A mysterious text on the phone that actually used to belong to Great-Aunt Hazel, a blank book, and a brief phone call from a dying woman launch Maisie into the world of moonleaping.

The official synopsis gives as little clue about what moonleaping is and what angle this sci-fi book takes as I did above, so it sort of feels like a spoiler to explain. But the info is available in the genre sections on both Goodreads and Amazon, and I really don’t think I can write this review very well without stating it, but I’ll still try to be vague. This book is an interesting take on time travel, especially since there’s technically no travel involved. It’s all about communicating with other times, not traveling there. I’m the kind of person who really appreciates a time travel story that is well done, where connections to the past or the future are made well and flow in the way that would make the most sense if time travel were real. And though there are definitely some liberties taken here that are somewhat common in this genre, they really worked for me. I can’t explain further, but I actually got really excited by a sort of twist that the author brought out later in the book to make the time travel angle work in a fresh way.

The story and journey along the way to Maisie discovering what she can do and what she’s supposed to do with it are maybe a little on the slower side, but I was never bored. As the set-up for more to come now that Maisie knows about her moonleaping abilities, the book did what it needed to do and gave plenty of intrigue along the way. Some things are left unexplained—maybe they’ll be explained in a future book, but to be honest, they didn’t feel to me like loose enough threads to be certain they’ll ever be explained. Though that doesn’t make me want an explanation any less. Then there were other aspects that I wish had simply been fleshed out more in the plot, especially some details related to the climax. Also, Maisie’s younger siblings at times acted or talked older than their ages, especially her brother, which threw me off now and then.

Overall, though, I enjoyed this book and am already looking forward to the next one, even though this one won’t be released for over a month! I do recommend this book for anyone who likes mystery and intrigue and light time travel elements. It is middle grade fiction, but I don’t think the younger audience makes the story any less readable for adults.

Thank you to Netgalley and HarperCollins Children’s Books for providing me a copy of this book to review.
Publication date: September 16, 2025

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Book Review: Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

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Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians
Book #1
by Brandon Sanderson
read by Ramón de Ocampo


My rating: 3.5 / 5
Genre: Middle grade fantasy

When Alcatraz Smedry turns 13, he receives an inheritance in the mail—a bag of sand. Then he sets fire to his current foster parents’ kitchen and is about to be removed from the home when an old man claiming to be his grandfather shows up and whisks him off to help fight the evil librarians. Somehow that bag of sand, which was stolen soon after Alcatraz received it, is related to an entire world that Alcatraz doesn’t know he’s a part of.

I listened to this book on a whim while waiting for other audiobooks I had on hold to be ready for me. I’ve never read any Brandon Sanderson and always found the idea of it a bit daunting, but I thought a middle grade book could be a good place to start. And it is a simple enough story for being fantasy. The world building is inventive and a bit complex, while the plot is tropey and not hard to follow. Alcatraz narrates the story and often interrupts it to talk about the art of storytelling or to remind the reader that he’s actually a terrible person, no matter how brave and selfless he might seem. Sometimes these interruptions were interesting or amusing, other times they were obnoxious and felt a little overdone.

There are some elements in the story that I particularly enjoyed, like when we begin to understand just how useful Grandpa Smedry’s talent actually is. And another character’s talent having its moment to shine. At least a little of the world building left me scratching my head—I didn’t fully understand or believe how some of the evil librarians’ tactics worked, and if I had a difficult time with it, I’m sure younger readers would as well. Overall, I mostly enjoyed the book, but it’s kind of weird—when I was around 1/3 to 1/2 of the way through, I told my husband that it was kind of boring, or at least not particularly engaging so far. Yet I remember also feeling happy to be able to get back into listening when I had the chance. So I guess part of me was more engaged than I realized? I don’t know if I’ll continue the series. Probably not right away, which means that if I decide to come back to it again someday, I’ll probably need to re-read this one to remember it well enough to continue. Maybe having a better understanding of what I’m getting into from the beginning will  help me like it more. In the meantime, I do think that kids around 12-14 who like fantasy worlds, antiheros, and polite dinosaurs could enjoy this book.

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Book Review: Beauty in the Least

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Beauty in the Least
McGee and Me! #12
by Bill Myers & Robert West

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

This was my least favorite book in the series, which is a shame, since it’s also the last, leaving me on a not-so-high note. It just doesn’t have the same feel as the rest of the series. The entire family is so put out by these visiting foreigners, and I’m not really sure anyone learns much of a lesson in the end. The father and son duo provide the only real heart in the story, and it’s overall pretty brief. Considering all of the growing Nicholas has done throughout these books, I just think he should be beyond the petty, immature behavior he displays here—or at least that he should get past it a little more quickly. So sadly, I wouldn’t recommend this book on its own, but the rest of the series is still great. These books may not be easy to find anymore, but if you do have the chance to read any of them or procure them for an 8-10-year-old child, I recommend it.

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Book Review: Mary Anne Saves the Day

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Mary Anne Saves the Day
The Baby-Sitters Club #4
by Ann M. Martin

My rating: 5 / 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 different). Nostalgia will hugely affect my reviews for this series, and I have no plans to try to be objective.

Mary Anne was the character I most identified with in this series. She’s quiet, shy, and doesn’t like conflict. And she makes a new friend by sort of falling into it, which is about the only way I ever made new friends in school too. Her character grows a lot in this one book, as she confronts not only her fighting friends but also her over-protective dad. The fight between the members of the BSC is unfortunately very realistic for the age they are. Of course, as an adult, I wanted to sit them all down and make them stop being stupid, but I’m sure when I read it originally, I sided with one or another of the characters. Also as an adult, I feel like it’s a bit of an overreaction to take a kid with a fever and no other symptoms to the emergency room unless the kid had some kind of pre-existing medical condition. Overall, though, this was a fun book to re-visit.

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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