The Year the Swallows Came Early by Kathryn Fitzmaurice.

The Beef Princess of Practical County by Michelle Houts.

Other than a female narrator and the fact that both are written by a first time author, these two books don’t really have much in common. Oh, also the setting in each book provides a nice hook for the story.

The Year the Swallows Came Early is set in San Juan Capistrano. I remember reading about the old mission town where the swallows return each spring to make their home until they migrate in the fall. Groovy, aka Eleanor, the eleven year old narrator tells the story of how her own father betrayed her trust and went to jail. Groovy is a likable young lady with ambition to become a fine chef someday, and Ms. Fitzmaurice, the author, gets her voice just right. Groovy is growing up, dealing with issues of deception and forgiveness, and yet she’s still a child. She talks and thinks like an eleven year old, with a refreshing innocence that is often missing in these days of precocious, sometimes jaded, child book characters. And I loved the ending to this book. It had hope and realism and lessons learned and growth for all of the characters in the book, without being saccharine-sweet.

More reviews of The Year the Swallows Came Early
Natasha at Maw Books: “Kathryn Fitzmaurice develops these characters so well and so early that I just had to see where this story was going to go. In addition to Groovy and her parents, we meet other wonderful characters who each have a story of their own.”
Into the Wardrobe: “I also enjoyed the novel because of the simple food descriptions that realistically captured the fun, wonder, and passion of a foodie who is only eleven years old.”

My favorite part of The Beef Princess of Practical County was the setting; it takes place on a modern-day beef farm in Practical County, Indiana. I’ve read several books about farm life, but I can’t think of another book that focuses on the farm itself and on what it’s like to be a part of a family farming operation in the twenty-first century. Most farm books I can think of are either about historical farm life or about escaping farm life. The Beef Princess celebrates the beef industry while also showing how difficult it can be to raise and eventually sell animals that are destined for the dinner table. I was a bit disappointed to find an instance or two of bad editing in the book, and some of the minor characters are a bit stereotypical (a set of snooty, bad girl sisters, the Darling sisters). However, the setting and the gentle story of a girl growing up on the farm save the book from being too formulaic and make it a good choice for rural readers looking for a book about “someone like me” and city dwellers looking to see what it’s like to live on a farm.

Other opinions on The Beef Princess of Practical County:
Bookworm Readers: “There’s not much to say about The Beef Princess of Practical County except that it was a simple, clean, and sweet book about growing up and letting go. The narration was excellent–Libby had a real voice and actually sounded like a 12 year old girl.”
Amanda at A Patchwork of Books: “Libby and those calves are just going to pull at your heart strings and seriously make becoming a vegetarian a possibility in your life. Such a creative plot concept with true-to-life characters, great emotion, and just enough funny moments to really melt your heart.”

These two good solid stories are harbingers, I hope, of more to come from both of these debut authors. Both of these books were nominated for the Cybils Middle Grade Fiction Award.

Wow! I just read two books for my “job” as a panelist for the Middle Grade Fiction Cybils, and they were both fantastic. Only it turns out that we’re not allowed any, or not much, magic in our category. Both of the books I read were nominated in the Middle Grade Fiction category but got moved to Science FIction/Fantasy. Heads up to that other judging panel: the following two books are absolutely wonderful. Read them first. (Yes, I am openly trying to influence the judges and all you readers out there. What’s the FTC going to do about it? I got these books from the library.)

First I read When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead. I was already pre-disposed to like Ms. Stead’s novel because Madeleine L’Engle is one of my very favorite authors. And I had already read a lot buzz about When You Reach Me, and one of things I’d read was that the girl protagonist in the book is a great fan of A Wrinkle in Time. Any friend of Madeleine L’Engle is a friend of mine.

However, as I began reading the book, I began to think that maybe my expectations were too high. I stayed confused about three-fourths of the way through the book, but I was willing to hang on because of Madeleine and and because it looked as if there might be some light at the end of the tunnel. I could sort of, kind of, see where the book was going, but on the other hand, it was really confusing. Of course, as you might have guessed, there’s time travel involved. And where there is time travel there is bound to be mind-bending confusion. What you need to know going into When You Reach Me is that:
a) it’s not as good as A Wrinkle in Time, but it’s pretty good. Definitely worth your time.
b) you need to keep reading even if you don’t understand what’s going or exactly when you are. All will become clear.

Any Which Wall by Laurel Snyder is also about magical time travel, and it’s also fan fiction of the very best kind. Only this time it’s Edward Eager, author of Knight’s Castle and Half Magic and other wonderful, magical books, that is the focus of the the author’s tribute. In Any Which Wall, Eager’s books are barely mentioned, but the flavor of his writing and of his joy in magic, is right there. Four children find a magic wall that can take them anywhere, anytime. And there’s a bit of an allusion to the Problem of Susan in the Narnia books: there’s a Susan here who has been too eager to grow up in all the wrong ways and who learns a lesson about what it really means, and doesn’t, to become mature.

As the author says in her “Brief Note on the Existence and True Nature of Magic”: “There are many kinds of magic in the world, and not all of it starts with a sound track of thunderous music to alert unsuspecting explorers to fabulous adventures ahead.” So, just in case you’re not alerted yet, I’m telling you very plainly that When You Reach Me and Any Which Wall are a couple of magical books.

I liked When You Reach Me, and I loved Any Which Wall. Anyone who enjoyed L’Engle and Eager and C.S. Lewis’s Narnia when he was a child (and who hasn’t lost his ability to experience magic in the world) should check out both of these new fantasy/scifi titles. And any child who loves magic books and has already read all of the above should also try these.

Other bloggers on When You Reach Me:
Welcome to My Tweendom: “Refreshingly different and filled with insight, Rebecca Stead’s When You Reach Me is part mystery, part slice-of-life, and part science fiction. It has the feel of the kind of book that is going to stand the test of time.”
The Book Muncher: “When You Reach Me is a truly delightful and remarkably unique story that incorporates themes as simple as friendship and love to concepts as complex as the scientific possibility of time travel. Readers will be drawn into Miranda’s story from the first page with the exciting air of mystery Stead creates.”
The Reading Zone: “In 6th grade I have a lot students who enjoy the tv show LOST (as do I). I would call When You Reach Me LOST for the middle school set. The strands of the story all start weaving themselves together, leaving you breathless at the end, much as I imagine I will be at the end of the final season of LOST.”

Other book bloggers on Any Which Wall:
Charlotte’s Library: “a splendiferously fun journey through time and space in the best Edward Eager tradition of great characterization, brisk writing, and snappy dialogue among the children.”
Never Jam Today: “Strangers to Edward Eager will still love Any Which Wall, and will hopefully be led back to the master of us all. But devotees will have even more fun. They’ll spot brilliant strokes, like Henry and Emma playing Parcheesi … a game played by the children in Eager’s novels.”
Jen Robinson: “Any Which Wall is about remaining childlike. It’s about keeping your eyes open to glimpse potential moments of magic. it’s about paying attention to how other people feel, doing the right thing, and displaying initiative and bravery. It is a return to Eager’s golden age of children’s literature.”

Mudville by Kurtis Scaletta.

The Girl Who Threw Butterflies by Mick Cochrane.

I’m not really a sports fan, but if I were going to be a sports fan, I’d probably pick baseball. There’s something special about baseball books. They get all metaphorical and philosophical on you, and yet they’re still tied to a physical game. It’s fun, and it’s poetic, and it’s baseball details —all at the same time.

In The Girl Who Threw Butterflies the conceit is that life and relationships are like a knuckleball pitch, aka a butterfly pitch or a floater.

“The knuckleball wasn’t just a pitch. It was an attitude toward life. It was a way of being in the world. It was a philosophy. “You don’t aim a butterfly,” her father used to say. “You release it.” Each pitch had a life of its own. It wasn’t about control, it wasn’t about muscle. Each floating and fluttering pitch was a little miracle. It was all about surprise. To her, though she would never say so, every knuckleball she threw seemed like a living thing, each of them full of impish high spirits.”

Molly, the central character in this novel, is dealing with the recent death of her father and with the growing pains associated with being thirteen and the only child of a grieving mother. Molly’s relationship with her mother is sort of like pitching in a baseball game; Molly releases bits of information to her mother, and sometimes the pitch is perfectly controlled and other times it goes wild and starts a huge argument. Molly is quite interested in communication, in the sign language that coaches use to signal their players, in the codes that scorekeepers use to score a baseball game, in the nonverbal cues that define her relationship with her mom and with friends. The book is full of these analogies and metaphors, and if I had time I would go back and re-read it just to enjoy the richness of the story and the parallelsbetween the game of baseball and the game of life.

Mudville, the other baseball book that I read, has its own baseball magic going on. As Molly is missing her father, Roy the protagonist and narrator in Mudville is missing his mother. She left five years and hasn’t returned to Moundville, the town where Roy lives with his dad. And Sturgis, Roy’s foster brother and the other central character in the book, is missing father and mother. However, the real tragedy in Moundville, nicknamed Mudville for good reason, is that it’s been raining for twenty-two years, every day, ever since the Moundville baseball team had its game with arch-rival Sinister Bend called because rain in the final inning. Twenty-two years ago when Roy’s dad was a player on the Moundville team. Now Roy’s father rainproofs house for a living, and SInister Bend has been swept away by a flood. And Roy dreams of becoming a Major League catcher.

Mudville is more of a boys’ book, a little less philosophical but no less poetic and atmospheric than The Girl Who Threw Butterflies. It’s less about communication and more about possibilities, about “what-if”. What if it rained every day for twenty-two years? What if the rain suddenly stopped? What if there were a curse on the town that caused the rain? What if there wasn’t? What if the Cubs won the World Series? What if Moundville were able to put a baseball team together and win against the Sinister Bend, against all odds? What if the best pitcher on the Moundville team deserted to the opposing team?

Both of these books will appeal to baseball fans, but also to anyone who enjoys sports metaphors and a touch of magical realism. They would be best for seventh and eighth graders, the upper end of the Middle Grade Fiction category for the Cybils competition. If I were a librarian and I managed to sell one of these two to a reader who enjoyed it, I’d immediately put the other book in that reader’s hands, along with James Preller’s Six Innings and perhaps Keeping Score by Linda Sue Park, both from last year.