10 Lucky Things That Have Happened to Me Since I Nearly Got Hit by Lightning by Mary Hershey. In this sequel to My Big Sister Is So Bossy She Says You Can’t Read This Book, ten year old Effie’s happy with her two best friends, Nit and Aurora, and her mom, the coach, and her bossy sister even though Effie’s dad is in prison for embezzlement. But when Aurora leaves their private school to go to public school, and when Mom’s friend, Father Frank moves in to get himself sorted out, and when bossy Maxey starts acting like a saint to impress the priest, Effie feels she must figure out how to straighten them all out and make everything return to way it used to be.

Longhorns and Outlaws by Linda Aksomitis. Twelve year old Lucas Vogel’s parents died in the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, and now his older brother Gil wants him to go with him to Montana and become a cowboy. But Lucas wants to go to school and eventually become a Pinkerton agent who chases down outlaws like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. I’d recommend this one as a supplement to state history studies of Montana or of the turn of the century time period. Ms. Aksomitis has a website with free resources for teachers and links to free Old West movies. There’s a sequel in the works called Kidnapped by Outlaws.

A Thousand Never Evers by Shana Burg. In Kuckachoo, Mississippi, 1963, twelve year old Addie Ann Pickett sees injustice and the courage of those who fight against it as the Civil Rights movement begins to change life even in a small town in the Deep South.
Complete review at The Well Read Child.

Autumn Winifred Oliver Does Things Different by Kristin O’Donnell Tubb. Set on the edge of the Great Smoky Mountains during the Great Depression, this book is narrated by the eponymous Autumn who prides herself on doing things “different.” However, when she and her sister and her mama move in to Gramps cabin to take care of him instead of going to live with Pop in Knoxville, Autumn must deal with a great deal of “different” that she didn’t plan on at all.

Itch by Michele Kwasney. After the death of her beloved grandfather, Delores aka Itch moves with her grandmother from Florida to Ohio, under protest. She makes a new friend, Gwendolyn, but finds that the talented baton twirler has serious family problems (child abuse). Delores/Itch must learn to speak up and tell the truth even when it’s hard.
Full review from Bill at Literate Lives.

The Buddha’s Diamonds by Carolyn Marsden. A coming-of-age story set in present day Vietnam, this short book tells about Tinh and how he comes to understand his relationship to his father and his spiritual heritage of Buddhism.
Good review by cloudscome at a wrung sponge.

The Curse of Addy McMahon by Katie Davis. We’ve come full circle with a book in which a girl loses her best friend due to a misunderstanding, worries because her mother’s (boy)friend is moving in, and decides that she’s the victim of the McMahon family curse. Pair this one with 10 Lucky Things.
Cynsations interview with Katie Davis.

These are briefly mentioned because I’m reading furiously to complete as many of the 139 books on the Middle Grade fiction nominees list as I can before our panel must decide on the finalists. Stay tuned for more reviews and news about Cybils nominees.

A list of the Cybils Middle Grade Fiction nominees with links to panelists’ reviews of each book.

Semicolon reviews of Children’s and YA fiction of 2008, mostly Cybils nominees.

Julia Gillian has an unusual name, a loyal, healthy St. Bernard named Bigfoot, and a list of accomplishments that extends to the front and back of a piece of lined notebook paper. She’s the only child of two teacher parents, and I can only speculate that tendency toward prissiness and precocity stems from her family situation. I found it difficult to enjoy Julia Gillian at first, but by the end of the book I was used to her precise and somewhat prim voice. I was rooting for her to overcome her fears and get used to the things she cannot change about her essentially happy and secure life.

Julia Gillian is certainly not a madcap romp or a mysterious adventure, but it might suit the more sedate among the early elementary set. The story takes place over the course of a summer, and Julia Gillian matures and learns to venture into unknown territory and adds to her list of accomplishments. What more can one ask of a hot Minneapolis summer?

Book bloggers and Julia Gillian and author Alison McGhee:

Mary Lee at A Year of Reading: “Julia Gillian is a spunky as Clementine, with as unique a world view, but she’s a little older and a little more serious. I’ll be waiting just as anxiously for the next book in the series.”

Little Willow interviews Alison McGhee.

Alison McGhee’s website.

Being an Excursion to the Wilds of Scotland, Involving Many Marvels of Experimental Invention, Pirates, a Heroic Cat, a Mechanical Man and a Monkey in the series The Mad Misadventures of Emmaline and Rubberbone.

The subtitle just about says it all. This book made me laugh out loud and reminded me of M.T. Anderson’s series of Thrilling Tales (See my review of The Clue of the Linoleum Lederhosen) and of a Little Orphan Annie cartoon story and of the movie version of Jules Verne’s Around the World the World in Eighty Days, among other things. (It’s a book full of allusions and reminders.) The setting is Victorian England, or rather Scotland. The pace is frenetic. The characters are:

Emmaline Cayley, a thirteen year old pioneer of aviation,
Rubberbones aka Rab aka Errand Boy aka Robert Burns, a bouncing boy with “indestruckable” physique,
Aunt Lucy Butterworth, the Best Sort of (very large) Aunt,
Lal Singh, a mysterious and heroic butler,
Professor Ozymandias Bellbuckle, a mad scientist from Georgia, USA,
Princess Purnah, a royal personage, also thirteen years old, daughter of the late Mir of Chiligrit (somewhere in Central Asia),
The Collector, insane, obsessive yet organized kidnapper of eminent scientists,
Samuel Soap, a master of disguise,
Hrecules and Titch, little thug and Big Thug,
Angus, a Scottish automaton,
and several other assorted minor characters and cameo appearances including Sherlock Holmes, Queen Victoria, Harry the Hobo, Maisie the cat, and several mad scientists in various stages of madness.

With such a cast, the author could afford to throw them all into peril and have them chase each other all over the British isle and run into each other at such inopportune moments as fortune and a loose plot would allow. It all makes for a lot of fun, especially since Princess Purnah never learned to speak English properly and says things like, “Here is weapony for smitings, Auntilucy. I go now. Slay thee many policishes with mighty blows of umbrelly!” Meanwhile, Emmaline tries to keep Professor Bellbuckle from the inordinate use of explosives, while Rubberbones and Lal Singh settle in on the island of Urgghh, a haven for mad scientists off the northern coast of Scotland.

I gather that The Island of Mad Scientists is a sequel to The Strictest School in the World: Being the Tale of a Clever Girl, a Rubber Boy and a Collection of Flying Machines, Mostly Broken, the first misadventure of Emmaline and Rubberbones in which Emmaline and Princess Purnah escape from a school run by the infamous Mrs. Malvolia Wackett. The second in the series is called The Faceless Fiend: Being the Tale of a Criminal Mastermind, His Masked Minions and a Princess with a Butter Knife. And there is more than a hint toward the end of the book that this third tale might not be end of the mad misadventures of Emmaline and Rubberbones. Still this book stands on its own quite well and might just induce me to find a copy of books one and two in the series.

Recommended for fun and frivolity.

Other blogger reviews:

Melissa at Book Nut: ” . . . this book is a grand romp. Hilarious, milk-snorting-through-nose funny, I can’t remember when I’ve had so much fun reading. It’s full of grand asides, amusing language, silly situations… everything a comic novel should have.”

Educating Alice: “In the witty alternate history tradition of Joan Aiken, but with a distinct feel all of their own, these books are a delight to read.”

Mr. Whitehouse’s blog.

“Since opening in March 2000 The London Eye has become an iconic landmark and a symbol of modern Britain. The London Eye is the UK’s most popular paid for visitor attraction, visited by over 3.5 million people a year.

A breathtaking feat of design and engineering, passengers in the London Eye’s capsules can see up to 40 kilometres in all directions.

The London Eye is the vision of David Marks and Julia Barfield, a husband and wife architect team. The wheel design was used as a metaphor for the end of the 20th century, and time turning into the new millennium.” From The London Eye official website

When Ted’s cousin Salim disappears while riding in a sealed pod on the London Eye, Ted, whose “brain runs on a different operating system from other people’s,” has eight, or rather nine, theories about what might have happened to his cousin:

1. Salim hid in the pod and went around three or more times, getting out when we’d given up looking.
2. Ted’s watch went wrong. Salim got out of his pod when we weren’t there to meet him.
3. Salim got out of his pod but we missed him somehow by accident and he didn’t see us either.
4. Salim either deliberately avoided us or was suffering from amnesia.
5. Salim spontaneously combusted.
6. Salim emerged from the pod in disguise.
7. Salim went into a time-warp.
8. Salim emerged from the pod hiding beneath somebody else’s clothes.
9. Salim never got on the Eye in the first place.

The trouble is that not one of the theories works; Salim seems to have vanished into thin air, a thing that Salim’s mother Aunt Gloria says is impossible. As the police work to find Salim and the press is called in to publicize the disappearance and everyone works to comfort and reassure Aunt Glo, Ted puts his special brain to work to discover the truth. In the process, Ted doubles his number of friends from three to six and learns to work with his older sister, Kat-astrophe, who provides the energy to match Ted’s brains. And Ted also tells his first three lies of a lifetime. But will it all be enough to find Salim and save his life?

Although the word “autistic” is never used in the book, Ted is obviously a high-functioning, but autistic, child. He is obsessed with weather. He talks incessantly about rain, snow, storms, barometric pressure, fronts, and global warming. He converses and understands conversation in very literal terms, and he has trouble interpreting visual cues, facial expressions, and body language. Sometimes his hand flaps uncontrollably.

The book, told in first person from Ted’s point of view, reminds me of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night, for kids, with a child-size mystery thrown in. Because Salim does disappear, and his parents and relatives imagine the worst, it’s possibly too intense for the younger elementary age group, but it’s just right for mature fourth graders on up. The British slang gets a bit thick at times, but it’s fun to wade though and figure out what the heck these Brits are talking about when they discuss moshers and queues and serviettes. And trying to get into Ted’s brain and think as he does is fascinating.

I have an attraction to books about differently wired brains anyway; if you do, too, you might want to check out the following reviews:

The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon.
the curious incident of the dog in the night-time by Mark Haddon.
Rules by Cynthia Lord.
Twilight Chldren by Torey Hayden.

If you or your child has an interest in this subject treated from a fictional point of view, I recommend The London Eye Mystery. Good story, intriguing thought process, kind of like seeing London from the Eye.

My One Hundred Adventures by Polly Horvath.

From Alice to Zen and Everyone in Between by Elizabeth Atkinson.

In fiction and in life, odd and quirky either works or it doesn’t. In From Alice to Zen and Everyone in Between, it works even though I had to push through a little discomfort with the seemingly stereotypical characters at first. In Polly Horvath’s My One Hundred Adventures, the quirkiness falls flat, and I was left wondering whether the author meant for the characters to be believable or not.

From Alice to Zen is a tale mostly about Alice, an only child who just moved with her parents from Boston to Major Suburbia. The cliches start coming fast and furious from the beginning of the book: a suburban cul-de-sac filled with snooty suburbanites, an old tree that almost got cut down by the builders of Hemlock Estates, role-reversal in which the boy that Alice meets loves fashion magazines and decorating ideas while Alice herself prefers soccer and go-carts, the popular clique at school, a crazy grandma. But somehow just when I thought “Oh, this is a how to be popular and why it’s not worth it book” or “Yeah, this is a misfit somehow learns to fit in” book or this is a “boys and girls break out of stereotypical roles” book or even “this is a be true to yourself” book, the story would transcend all of those formulas while incorporating them at the same time.

Back up a step. Alice goes looking for a friend in her new suburban neighborhood, and she happens to meet Zen, Zenithal Stevie Wonder Malinowski. If Zen is anything, he’s strange, quirky, weird, odd. He’s overweight. He loves lemonade and fashion and teen magazines. He’s allergic to the sun. He crimps his hair. He wants to give Alice a makeover so that she’ll be ready to enter middle school. His ambition is to open a total body salon in California. He’d be weird even in California.

Zen made me a little uncomfortable at first. There’s an obvious role reversal thing going on in the book, and sometimes it’s a little over the top. It’s hard to believe that any intelligent twelve year old wouldn’t realize that acting the way Zen acts is a recipe for social ostracism. And it’s hard to believe that Zen wouldn’t at least try to mitigate his behavior to fit in at school. Still, in the book he doesn’t, and by the end of the story he’s able to demonstrate for the entire school his “one true voice.”

Zen’s “church” Seacoast Spiritual Center (hosted by Elder Brightstar) also made me a little uneasy. It’s obvious from the description in the book that Zen goes to a New Age, leftover hippie, spiritually anything goes gathering for social misfits and crystal gazers. It’s not my idea of real spiritual sustenance. But the people at Seacoast are a loving and accepting community who take Zen as he is and help him to develop his own gifts, not a bad pattern for the true church of Jesus Christ to emulate. It really is possible to accept people with all their eccentricities while maintaining a set of core beliefs that are non-negotiable.

Jane, the protagonist and narrator of My One Hundred Adventures, also has a weird church and a weird family. Jane herself is boringly conventional, but she and her mom live a bohemian life in a beach house along with Jane’s three younger siblings. And over the course of the summer a succession of men come along, one of whom may or may not be Jane’s dad. Jane also becomes enslaved to a Bible-toting healer/preacher/fortune teller and to the wife of a violent alcoholic who needs a babysitter for her unruly kids. Jane’s “adventures” (not nearly 100, which bothered me) consist of being blackmailed into babysitting and being coerced into dropping Bibles on unsuspecting victims. The writing is good, but the story is just too odd to be believable or enjoyable.

So, in the final analysis I’m saying yes to the quirky unconventional characters, but no to a plot that’s too quirky or creaky to sustain my interest.

Other reviews of these books:

Diane Chen at Practically Paradise on From Alice to Zen: I love the realistic questioning and searching for one’s self that occurs in this book. Alice doesn’t need excessive drama to realize she can make choices and be herself in middle school. She finds a way to accept herself, make her own choices of friends, and help others gain acceptance.

Tanya at Children’s Books on My One Hundred Adventures: “I was overwhelmed with admiration for Polly Horvath’s skill at writing a virtual minefield of spirit crushing adults for her main character to navigate, coming out scathed, but whole and, in Jane’s case, with a budding sense of compassion, acceptance and appreciation for the world around her.”

Melissa at Book Nut says this book, while good, made her anxious. It is a little scary, not in a roller coaster sort of way or a thriller sort of way, but rather in the what-will-the-author-do-with-this-plot-set-up-and-how-will-it-all-end way. And will my peeps, the characters I’ve grown to love over the course of the book, be OK?

Bernetta Wallflower (named after her deceased Uncle Bernie) is the daughter of a magician, a stage magician, that is, not a fantasy one. She’s also the victim of a frame-up: her best friend Ashley has framed her for a crime she didn’t commit and caused her to be grounded for life (or maybe just for the summer) and to lose her scholarship to Mt. Olive School, the only place she’s ever been to school. A year’s tuition at Mt. Olive is about $9000, and Bernetta wants to get that tuition money somehow even though she’s only twelve years old, can’t get a job, and (see above) grounded for the summer.

Enter Gabe, a movie-loving, chocolate-eyed, persistently friendly, bundle of ideas who helps Bernetta come up with a plan for obtaining the money. Unfortunately, the plan isn’t exactly honest or lawful, a fact which could be discerned by mature readers from the title and plot of one of Gabe’s favorite movies, The Sting. (I like The Sting, too, but I’m not tempted to emulate the characters. Honest.) However, if everyone thinks Bernetta is dishonest anyway, why shouldn’t she become what they think she is? The Life and Crimes of Bernetta Wallflower is the story of how one girl transforms herself into a different person, like magic, over the course of a summer —and how she ends up up not much liking the person she’s become.

I’ll have to agree with Melissa that the book had me worried, or maybe anxious. Bernetta, a likeable person, keeps getting into deeper and deeper trouble, and I wondered how the author was going to pull her out. And I wondered if Gabe was really Bernetta’s friend, or if he had ulterior motives for his help and advice. And I wondered whether Bernetta was ever going to tell the truth —and what would happen when she did. The ending is satisfactory in all respects, and Bernetta does survive. It’s a cautionary tale. but the medicine goes down easily, wrapped in a story that is suspenseful and fun and somewhat nerve-racking, in a good way.

I’m recommending this one for eleven or twelve year olds on up, both those who lack discernment and those who have the honesty thing down. The book would be good for parents or teachers to read along with the children and then have a good discussion about honesty and peer pressure and responding to false accusations and distinguishing pretend from dishonest and choosing friends.

Bernetta’s other fans and detractors (Ok, just fans):

Melissa at Book Nut: “In spite of my anxiousness, I really liked this book. It was very funny — never talking down, always smart — and the while the plot is way over-the-top (I mean really, is this even plausible? Really?), I was happy to go along for the ride. Bernetta is a charming character.”

MotherReader: “The Life and Crimes of Bernetta Wallflower would be great for a book club because there is so much left open for discussion in the character and the plot.”

Miss Erin: “Oh boy was this book fun! The writing is tight and the fast-paced plotting forces you to keep turning the pages. It’s chock-full of humor; I was laughing about every other page.”