Larklight by Philip Reeve

In this crazy fantasy book you have to believe that space travel and exploration were commonplace in the 1800s, and that Great Britain "ruled the waves" of outer space as well as most of the world. Philip Reeve, himself a British author, makes this action-packed science fiction/fantasy book also a Victorian melodrama. The vocabulary is tough and I imagine kids will miss much of the Victorian humor, but some dauntless readers will be love the story of Art Mumby and his sister Myrtle who escape the giant spiders that attack their home and take off on a fantastic journey through space on a pirate ship ruled by a young pirate king and his motley band of intergalactic pirates. Recommended for smart kids who are good readers.

What the Moon Saw by Laura Resau

This book explores the mystical connection between Clara, an American girl, and her grandmother in Mexico that she has never met. Clara's father left his remote, poor village for the United States and he never returned. Twenty years later his parents invite their granddaughter Clara to spend the summer with them. Clara is restless and unhappy, and jumps at the chance for a change in her life. Although she speaks Spanish, Clara is unprepared for life in rural Mexico, and unaware of the economic and social forces that pull people away from their homes to earn money and a "good life" in the United States. Clara learns how her grandmother discovered her gift of healing, and finds out that she too has that gift. Clara also meets a local boy her age who challenges and befriends her. The writing is lyrical, especially when the grandmother tells her own life story. This book is not for everyone, but for someone interested in the culture of Mexico and the relationships that bind people together, it is a real gem. Many Spanish and Mixteco words are used, but all are defined either in the text or glossaries.

Snakehead by Anthony Horowitz

My guest blogger today is Tom, a 7th grader who read an advance copy of the newest Alex Rider book called Snakehead. The book doesn't come out until next fall, but if you're an OMS student and you want to read it, e-mail me!

Snakehead is another great Alex Rider book. This is book 7 in the series of Alex rider adventures. This starts out with the ending of the Ark Angel Project. Alex is back from space and is picked up by the Covert Action Division (CAD) of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS). He is then thrown into another mission with the Blue Royal bomb, the Snakeheads, and his godfather. The Snakeheads are worse than even SCORPIA. He has to gather intelligence, diffuse the bomb, and stay alive. Can he do it? Read Snakehead to find out!

Owen & Mzee: The Language of Friendship by Isabella Hatkoff, Craig Hatkoff, and Dr. Paula Kahumbu

This doesn't look like a middle school book, but I picked it up and couldn't stop reading it. It's a remarkable story of an unlikely friendship between Owen, an orphaned baby hippo, and Mzee, a 130-year-old tortoise. Owen was the only one of his hippo pod to survive the 2004 tsunami. The 600-pound baby was brought to Haller Park, a wildlife sanctuary in Kenya, Africa. There he immediately went toward Mzee, a grumpy old tortoise, and the next morning the pair was found snuggled up together. This book tells about the next year and a half of their lives, and how they have remained inseparable. With great photos and a touching story, this is an example of how children's nonfiction books can appeal to readers of all ages. It's not a book my students will necessarily seek out on the shelves, but I'm going to leave it on display by the bean bag chairs and I know they will pick it up and enjoy it.

7 Days at the Hot Corner by Terry Trueman

The most important thing in Scott's life is baseball. Or so he thinks until life throws him a curveball that makes him change the way he feels about his best friend, his parents, and his dreams for the future. The book opens with Scott nervously waiting at a clinic to be tested for AIDS. It will take a week for the results to come back, and in those seven days Scott must play in the championship baseball game as well as deal with the news that his best friend, Travis, is gay. As usual, Terry Trueman writes a gripping book for mature readers that is short but full of deep issues. Even Scott, whose whole world is baseball, can see that life has more complexity to it than he ever imagined. He sees his best friend threatened with violence, kicked out of his home, as well as accepted and admired by others. The question is, how will Scott treat Travis from now on? Recommended for mature readers (especially baseball fans).

The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon

This is the best graphic novel I have ever read. Jacobson and Colon took a complicated topic and put it into words and pictures to make it come alive and make sense in a way that just words could never achieve. It begins with the four airplanes that were hijacked and shows a timeline of the events of that day. Then it shows what the President and other officials were doing and how they handled the disaster. Then it goes back in time and shows how Osama bin Laden became the leader of Al Quaeda and how the 19 hijackers came to be chosen and trained. In the end it tells what the 9/11 Commission things the U.S.A. should be doing to fight terrorism. Unfortunately, our country has not been doing a good job of following the commission's recommendations. It's a really great comic book that is easy to read. If you want to understand September 11 and you don't want to read a thousand page book, this is the perfect book for you.

Elvis Up Close by Wilborn Hampton

Can you imagine a time when rock and roll didn't exist? When there was no such thing as popular music just for teenagers? This book makes it easy to understand how poor, small-town Elvis developed a new kind of music and was catapulted into unbelievable fame. Elvis started out as a shy kid who played guitar and liked gospel and hillbilly music. He had a pleasant voice that could be sweet or edgy, and he could make girls scream just by moving his hips. Find out fame changed Elvis into a different person and eventually led to addiction and an early death. This book is compact and to the point, and also easy to read and understand. This is a great new series of biographies for middle schoolers (we also have Johnny Cash and Rachel Carson and Oprah Winfrey in this series).

Tracking Trash: Flotsam, Jetsam, and the Science of Ocean Motion by Loree Griffin Burns

In 1990, 80,000 pairs of Nike shoes were accidently dumped in the ocean during a storm. That's five semi truck containers worth of sneakers. Those shoes drifted in the ocean and came ashore on the west coast of North America, and this discovery gave ocean scientists a lot of knowledge about ocean currrents. This is a book about those ocean currents and how they work, but the most interesting part to me was the incredible amount of trash that is floating in the ocean. In 1992, 28,800 bathtub toys were spilled, and those also gave scientists data about how ocean water moves. This book has beautiful photos, easy-to-understand information about the science of ocean currents, and fascinating facts about how our ocean is polluted with plastic. Read it and find out The Garbage Patch and ghost nets, and learn what you can do to help save our oceans. Recommended to readers of all ages and anyone who uses plastic of any kind.

The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp by Rick Yancy

I wasn't expecting to like this book, but I was surprised by how good it was. If you like action, suspense, and stories about bumbling kids who save the world, you will want to read about Alfred Kropp. If you like the legend of King Arthur, you will definitely have to read it. Alfred, a miserable teenager with no real talents, skills, or parents, gets roped into helping his uncle steal something valuable. It turns out to be the sword Excalibur, and in the process his uncle is murdered and Alfred is revealed to have some special connection to the sword. Along comes a knight named Bennacio who whisks Alfred along in an attempt to recover the sword from Mogart, an evil knight bent on taking over the world. There is blood and gore and no one is safe from the action, but in the end Alfred finds out his real identity and his real place in the story. Fans of action books (Alex Rider) or horror books (Cirque du Freak) or even The Davinci Code, will like this book. It has a cool new red cover, shown here, and it looks like a sequel it coming out soon.

Ask Me No Questions by Maina Budhos

Nadira and Aisha are sisters. They are Muslim and their family came to the U.S. from Bangladesh. Their parents are in the country illegally, and the family lives in fear of being caught and sent back to their home country. Life is tough for the teenage girls because they know that they have to hide their family secret and they also know that they may not be able to go to college or be able to work like their friends will be able to do when they graduate from high school. In desperation the family tries to enter Canada, but the father is "detained," which means he is put in jail and questioned. Nadira, the younger sister must rise up and try to help her family through this difficult time. I thought this was a good book for someone learning about immigration and what life is like for Muslim teens. Unfortunately, it had the feeling of being written to make a point about how U.S. immigration policy is harming families, rather than being a well-paced story with a gripping plot. It's definitely worth reading, but it might not capture the interest of some teen readers who want more exciting story lines.

Cracker by Cynthia Kadohata

Books about war have been popular this year in our library. Cracker is both a dog story and a Vietnam War story, and readers who like either kind of book will like this one. A boy is forced to give up his beloved dog, Cracker, because it's not allowed in his family's apartment. The best place they find to send Cracker is to the U.S. Army, where she will be trained to sniff out explosives, hiding enemy soldiers, and other dangerous things, and be sent to Vietnam. Rick is the young soldier who becomes Cracker's "handler." Together they face some frightening and life-changing things in Vietnam, and their experiences with finding booby traps, tunnels, and other deadly traps make for interesting reading. We get inside Cracker's head and find out what she is thinking sometimes, which sounds corny, but really isn't. Rick is a believable young man who survives the horrors of Vietnam thanks to Cracker, who is a really great dog. The problem is that back then, when the U.S. Army was done with a dog, they usually had it put to sleep. Recommended especially for 6th and 7th graders.

Reaching for Sun by Tracie Vaughn Zimmer

This brand new book written in free verse tells about the growing and blossoming of a seventh grade girl named Josie. Living with a grandmother and mother who love gardening and growing things, Josie has learned many of their secrets and skills. She herself needs special care because, even though she is smart and capable of many things, her cerebral palsy makes speaking and movement difficult. Her best friend is really her grandma because classmates rarely talk to her or take time to get to know her. When "rich kids" start moving into new houses near her family farm, a new boy comes along who becomes her first true friend. Justin is a science geek, and he doesn't seem to care what other kids think about who he is friends with. Justin and Josie do science experiments and grow plants and their friendship grows as the spring turns to summer. This book will appeal to readers who like poetry and who like to read about characters who overcome challenges and grow into their true selves.

Monkey Town: The Summer of the Scopes Trial by Ronald Kidd

As a person interested in history, I was enthralled with this book. I guess I had heard of the Scopes Trial in some high school history class, but I didn't really know anything about it. In Monkey Town, Ronald Kidd has managed to tell a good story while at the same time giving detailed and accurate descriptions of the summer of the Scopes Trial. Frances is a 15-year-old girl, and the daughter of one of the people who made the whole trial happen. She has a crush on her teacher, Johnny Scopes, and great admiration for her father, the head of the school board and owner of the local drug store. She has a front-row seat (literally) for the trial and all the action behind the scenes that caused it to happen in the first place. I was aware the whole time I was reading this book that the author was meticulously providing factual historical background, including actual transcripts from the trial, but that never made me lose interest. Sort of like Code Talker by Joseph Bruchac, it's definitely a vehicle for learning about history, but fortunately it's well done. Recommended for middle school students on up to adults.

American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang

I will admit that I don't read a lot of graphic novels, but I had to read this one since it won all kinds of awards this year, including the Printz Award and it was a National Book Award Finalist. I was surprised at how easy this was to read, because I have not found manga or some other kinds of comics easy to follow. The art is simple and expressive and perfectly matches the tone of the stories. I say stories because the book is made up of three story lines—one about a monkey king that doesn't want to be a monkey, one about an immigrant boy who has trouble fitting in at his school in the U.S., and one about an American boy with a Chinese cousin who embodies every stereotype imaginable and humiliates him year after year. Anyway, the stories come together at the end, and ultimately it's a story of how to take what life gives you and make something of it. It will be appreciated by anyone who struggles to be true to themselves.

A Small White Scar by K.A. Nuzum

I have never read a book about rodeos before. It didn't sound great to me, but I thought maybe it would be one that guys would be interested in. I was expecting some kind of cowboy story with lots of action. Surprisingly, this is much more of an introspective book about a 15-year-old boy trying to become a man and move away from his father's ranch. Will's mother died years ago, and rather than working alongside his father on the ranch, he has spent the last eight years taking care of Denny, his mentally challenged twin brother. Will has mixed feelings toward his twin. He loves him, but fiercely resents how his own life has been sacrificed for Denny's well-being. Against his father's command, Will rides away to compete in a rodeo, and then he plans to find work on another ranch and start his adult life. When Denny follows and is bitten by a snake, Will's plans are forced to change. There is wilderness survival and a rodeo at the end, but overall, this is an inward-looking book. Unfortunately, I'm afraid that there won't be much audience for it because even I, an introspective female, thought it was pretty slow. I would be very curious to hear if middle school boys relate to this book or if they just put it down because they want more action.