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Sidekicked by John David Anderson

Feb13

Superheroes, from Gilgamesh and Enkidu to Samson and Gideon to Hercules to Beowulf to Superman and The Incredible Hulk—we weak mortals have always been fascinated with the adventures and exploits of men (sometimes women) with incredible talents, beyond human strength, and extraordinary intelligence. Superheroes are the stuff of legend and comic book—and nowadays middle grade speculative fiction.

John David Anderson’s Sidekicked takes one aspect of the superhero mythos, the Sidekick or assistant or superhero-in-training, and builds it into a snarky middle grade fictional essay on ethics. The moral of the story, however, is a little murky.

Andrew Bean, seventh grader and citizen of the city of Justicia, is a member of H.E.R.O., a secret organization of middle school students with exceptional gifts who are training, each under their own superhero mentor, to become Superhero Sidekicks. And there’s always the possibility that these junior heroes might even graduate to become Superheroes on their own someday. Meanwhile, Drew (aka the Sensationalist), his best friend Jenna (aka The Silver Lynx) and the other members of H.E.R.O. spend several hours a week training for their future as crime fighters in a secret room in the basement of Highview Middle School. Plus for everyone except Drew, there’s one-on-one training with their very Supers (special Superhero mentors). Drew has a Super, too, but unfortunately The Titan is a superhero of the washed-up variety, “going through a little identity thing”, and totally uninterested in mentoring, or rescuing, his erstwhile sidekick, Drew (aka The Sensationalist).

So, if you’ve got Superheroes, you also have to have Supervillains to match. And in Sidekicked the villains are coming out of the woodwork, and back from the dead, to attack and take over the city. Drew is committed to the Code, the Superhero Sidekick Code of Conduct, but things start to get complicated when the meaning of concepts like justice and honor and good and evil come into question. And when there’s a girl involved.

Like I said, this book is big on snarky, self-deprecating, middle grade humor (my favorite kind of funny) and confusing ethical discussions, but it’s a little short on answers. Which is OK. It’s the sort of book that entertains a lot while making kids think a little, and that’s the best kind, as far as I’m concerned.

Sidekicked is on the short list for the Cybils Awards in the category of Middle Grade Speculative Fiction. The winners of the Cybils Awards in the Middle Grade Speculative Fiction category and all the other categories will be announced tomorrow, Friday, February 14th.

Superhero books that riff off the basic superhero model abound in middle grade fiction these days. Here are a few favorites:

Failstate by John W. Otte, reviewed at Semicolon.
The Cloak Society by Jeramey Kraatz.
Hero by Mike Lupica.
Geeks, Girls and Secret Identities by Mike Jung.
Dangerous by Shannon Hale, due out in early March, 2014.
Of course, Flora and Ulysses by Kate DiCamillo, recent winner of the Newbery Award, is a different kind of superhero story (squirrel superhero), maybe for a little younger audience than the above-listed. However, I enjoyed it immensely.

Do you have a favorite kid superhero novel?

The Rithmatist by Brandon Sanderson

Feb13

Geometry and drawing and chalk duels and strategy games and kidnapping (or murder?) and boarding school and alternative fantastical history with a touch of steampunk. The Rithamtist, by the same author who finished Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time adult fantasy series, is an excellent conglomeration of all of the above plus a lovely set of characters who made the reading both interesting and fun.

Joel is a poor scholarship student, son of the cleaning woman, at a rich people’s school. And what’s more, he longs to be a Rithmatist, but knows he’s missed his opportunity. Rithmatists are an elite bunch, even within an already elite school. They are the specially chosen fighting force that holds off the chalklings on the frontier in Nebrask and keeps them from overrunning the island states of the United Isles. Rithmatists are chosen in a special ceremony when children are only eight years old, and only one in a thousand is picked to join the Rithmatists. Unfortunately Joel missed his “inception” ceremony, so he’s doomed to hangout on the periphery of The Rithmatists who study at Armedius Academy and pick up what he can about Rithmatics as he makes unauthorized visits to Rithmatic classes.

However, now Rithmatist students are disappearing in very suspicious circumstances, and only Joel and the brilliant but aging Rithmatics Professor Fitch can possibly figure out who is behind the disappearances and how to stop them. But Joel suspects that Professor Fitch’s rival, the brash young Professor Nalizar, might be involved in the kidnappings, and a Rithmatist student who’s taking remedial classes, Melody, is definitely involved in Joel’s life whether he wants her to be or not.

You can’t go wrong with this Cybils-nominated fantasy adventure—unless you’re allergic to geometry or chalk dust. The winners of the Cybils Awards in the Middle Grade Speculative Fiction category and all the other categories will be announced on Friday, February 14th. The Rithmatist is definitely a contender.

Jinx by Sage Blackwood

Feb11

Jinx is your basic, orphaned in the forest, boy hero, who becomes a wizard’s apprentice. Jinx’s curiosity is, of course, sometimes too much for his capabilities. It all reminds me of this scene from Fantasia:

I really enjoyed Jinx. It’s a story with lots of questions–and elements from various old stories:
Who is Jinx? Why and how does he “see” people’s emotions and “hear” the language of the trees in the Urwald (forest)?

Is Simon Magus, the magician to whom Jinx becomes a servant, evil or good? What about his wife, Sophie? Who is she? What is the place she comes from, Samara?

Why can’t Jinx read Dame Glammer the Witch the way he reads others’ thoughts and feelings?

What is the Terror that the trees of the Urwald are afraid of?

What is the curse that binds Jinx’s new friends, Elfwyn and Reven? And how can their respective curses be removed?

Is Jinx also cursed? How?

Who is the Bonemaster? Will he help–or is he even more evil than Simon?

Lots of questions. If you read to the end of the book, you’ll get some answers—and be presented with a new set of puzzles, a perfect set-up for the second book in the planned trilogy, Jinx’s Magic.

Jinx is one of the books nominated for the Cybils Award in the category of Middle Grade Speculative Fiction. The winners of the Cybils will be announced on Friday the 14th, Valentine’s Day.

Listening for Lucca by Suzanne LaFleur

Nov6

This middle grade fiction book is an odd little ghost story about a girl who finds herself unexpectedly transported into the past and about her little brother Lucca, who’s three years old and doesn’t talk.

Siena’s family is moving from the city, Brooklyn, to coastal Maine in hope of jolting Lucca into talking again or somehow helping him. Lucca, when the story begins, hasn’t spoken a word for over a year.

I liked the story. Siena is a sympathetic character, fourteen years old, obsessed with abandoned things, a little prickly and stand-off-ish because her old friends in Brooklyn think she’s weird. As a matter of fact, she is weird: Siena sees visions of the past and know things about past events and places that she shouldn’t know. Since all of us feel a little awkward and weird at times, especially at fourteen, Siena’s visions and Lucca’s silence can be stand-ins for whatever is making the reader feel out-of-place and misunderstood. That aspect of the book worked really well.

I also liked that (minor spoiler!) we never do find out why Lucca quit talking. He simply tells Siena, eventually, that he just doesn’t want to speak. Sometimes, contrary to our psychologically fixated society, kids just do stuff and make decisions for reasons that make sense to them but to no one else. And if they make bad decisions or crazy decisions or even inexplicable decisions, it’s not always someone’s fault. I liked that Lucca just didn’t want to talk. Actually, I had a child who was not totally silent, but who didn’t want to talk to anyone outside our house for a long time, so she didn’t. She grew out of it.

One thing bothered me about the book: SIena, when she is in the past is able to talk to a young man named Joshua who is suffering from PTSD or depression or some combination thereof and get him to “come back” to his family who are suffering because of his illness and withdrawal. She says:

“What will happen if you don’t is what I told you: all the people you love are going to fall apart. Their lives will be full of the darkness you’ve brought home. They will remain faceless to you. But if you get up, if you try to let a little of it go, if you make new happy memories, you can have them back.”

So Joshua “comes back.” The same thing happened in another middle grade novel I read recently, The Absolute Value of Mike by Katherine Erskine. Mike gets mad at his great-uncle, an old man who is depressed and guilty because of the death of his adult son, and the words Mike says to his great uncle Poppy somehow snap him out of his lethargy and depression and bring him to full recovery.

It’s unrealistic and puts a lot of pressure on kids to imply that if they just talk to a loved one who is depressed or grieving and say the right words and tell the person to snap out of it, they can bring that loved one back from the brink. Yes, sometimes people who are experiencing a mild depression can bring themselves back and recover with the help of wise words from another person who loves them. But sometimes, often, it takes more than a good talking-to. It takes medication or time or therapy or many talks or prayer or?

Nevertheless, I liked Listening for Lucca, and I recommend it with the above caveat. It was a sweet book. (I liked The Absolute Value of Mike, too, but I never managed to get a review posted. Great book, quirky misfit characters, good story-telling, even though a bit unbelievable.)

The Runaway King by Jennifer Nielsen

Nov5

Book 2 of the Ascendancy Trilogy. I’m about to make a rule for myself: no more trilogies, series, or maybe even sequels. I’m tired of half-finished stories. However, if I made that rule I’d have to make an exception for Jennifer Nielsen’s Ascendancy trilogy.

The Runaway King is just as good as (or better than) the first book in the Ascendancy Trilogy, The False Prince, which was the Cybils award winner last year in the Middle Grade Speculative Fiction category. In Book Two, Prince Jaren has become King Jaron, but his grip on the throne is none too secure. Both the neighboring kingdom of Avenia and the cutthroat Pirates are ready to attack Jaron’s rather weak little country of Carthya, and these two enemies may actually be in league with one another. Not only does Jaron doubt himself and his ability to be a good king, but the most of the Council also want to replace Jaron with a regent. And Jaron’s not sure whom he can trust, and there’s the unresolved quandary of a princess he’s required to marry versus a commoner friend he loves and wants to protect.

When Jaron’s past catches up with him in the form of an assassination attempt, he does the only thing he can: he disguises himself, runs away, and goes to confront Carthya’s enemies. Self-sacrifice is a big theme in this volume of the story, and Jaron is growing and learning as he tries to balance his responsibilities, his desire for justice, and his commitments to friends. It’s not an easy balance to maintain, and he has a kingdom to save while he’s at it.

The third book in the trilogy, The Shadow Throne, is due out in February, 2014. I may go back and read all three books together when I get my hands on all three. And I may just try to establish a policy of waiting until all three books in a trilogy are published and available before I start reading, instead of banning series altogether. If I have the patience for such a policy . . .

Cybils 2013 Young Adult Speculative Fiction

Oct10

Some possible nominees for the Cybils awards in the Young Adult Speculative Fiction (Fantasy and Science Fiction) category:

A Matter of Days by Amber Kizer, reviewed at Semicolon.

Failstate: Legends by John W. Otte.

Anomaly by Krista McGee. Reviewed by Becky at Operation Actually Read Bible.

Captives by Jill Williamson. Reviewed at Redeemed Reader.

Aquifer by Jonathan Friesen. Reviewed at Redeemed Reader.

Merlin’s Blade by Robert Treskillard. Reviewed at Redeemed Reader.

Merlin’s Shadow by Robert Treskillard.

Cybils 2013 Middle Grade Speculative Fiction

Oct7

Here are a few ideas for nominees for the Cybils category, Middle Grade Speculative Fiction (Science Fiction and Fantasy):

The Spies of Gerander by Frances Watts. Book Two in the series, The Song of the Winns. I just read this sequel and liked it even better than I did the first in the series, Song of the Winns. The pace is picking up, and I’m starting to fall for the mice characters. In fact, it’s been a good year for talking mice characters.

Darkbeast Rebellion by Morgan Keyes. Reviewed at Charlotte’s Library.

The Quirks: Welcome to Normal by Erin Soderberg. Reviewed at Charlotte’s Library.

Cake: Love, Chickens and a Taste of Peculiar by Joyce Magnin, reviewed at Semicolon.

A Whole Lot of Lucky by Danette Haworth. Reviewed at Redeemed Reader.

Risked by Margaret Peterson Haddix. One of my favorite middle grade/YA authors.

Listening for Lucca by Suzanne LaFleur. Reviewed at A Garden Carried in the Pocket.

The Incredible Charlotte Sycamore by Kate Maddison. Reviewed at Charlotte’s Library.

There are lots more ideas/reminders in this post at Charlotte’s Library. And here’s yet another list from the lovely Charlotte. Surely, you have a favorite from one of these lists. If so, nominate before October 15th at the Cybils website.

The Mouse with the Question Mark Tail by Richard Peck

Sep9

Do you know the Great Truth and the Central Secret of the British Empire? Probably not, if you’re human like me, so here it is:

FOR EVERY JOB A HUMAN HOLDS, THERE IS A MOUSE WITH THE SAME JOB, AND DOING IT BETTER.

So, there are needlemice and coachmice and guard mice–all sorts of mice, each with his or her own job, mirroring that of the humans who live in the houses, and palaces, of England. Unfortunately for the protagonist of this story, although he is a mouse, he is a very small mouse with no job and no name. Some of the other mice call him Mouse Minor because he is so small, but that’s not really a name. And our narrator has something of an identity crisis: he’s full of questions and gets very few answers from his aunty, Head Needlemouse Marigold.

I loved that fact that this book is full of repetitive motifs and running gags and just gentle humor. The mouse world itself is delightful to explore. Set down in the secret, hidden pockets of Victorian England where Queen Victoria is about to celebrate her Diamond Jubilee: Sixty Years Upon the Throne, the mice study in schools, sew costumes and uniforms, pledge service to the Queen, and generally keep themselves hidden from but indispensable to humans. When Mouse Minor asks about his name, he is told several times that “Nameless is Blameless”, as if that settles the question. His tail, shaped like a question mark, emphasizes all of the questions that Mouse Minor entertains and asks incessantly of himself and of everyone else. Not that he gets any answers–until the end of the story.

Illustrator Kelly Murphy is the same artist who illustrated Elise Broach’s Masterpiece, another book about a tiny creature in a human-sized world, and her illustrations are detailed, vivid, and uite a complement to the story. Note particularly page 121, “a fall from this height would do me in”: Mouse Minor is in the foreground of the picture, being dangled by some unknown flying creature from a great height above a human ballroom where tiny human dancers are bowing and dancing in courtly fashion. Then on page 140, we get to view an illustration of Queen Victoria herself, in all her (faded) glory.

I definitely recommend this book for a Cybils nomination.

Cybils category for nomination in October: Middle Grade Speculative Fiction.

The Hero’s Guide to Storming the Castle by Christopher Healy

Jun3

Prince Liam, Prince Frederic, Prince Duncan, and Prince Gustav are back, and they’re just as klutzy and heroic as they were in the first book in this series, The Hero’s Guide to Saving Your Kingdom. And the ending to this book, which I will not reveal even if you torture me, promises more adventures to come for The League of Princes.

I find these books and the princes and their princesses to be silly, hare-brained, ludicrous, comical, foolish, crackpot, preposterous, and absurd. In short, I used a thesaurus, and the books made me laugh. If you want to go on a Hero’s Guide blog tour and get introduced to all of the heroes and heroines, and even the villains, you can find those links here. Or you could just read the books.

A few choice quotes to whet your appetite:
Prince Gustav: “Today’s lesson is brawling. Everybody start beating up your neighbor.”

Prince Duncan (from his work-in-progress, The Hero’s Guide to Being a Hero): “The element of surprise can offer a hero great advantage in battle. The element of oxygen—also important.”

Prince Frederic: “No one is defined by a single act, whether it was years ago or weeks ago. We’re all given chances to change, to make up for things we’ve done wrong. It’s how we handle those opportunities that really matters. For most of my life, I ran and hid from anything remotely dangerous. Does that make me a coward now? No.”

Prince Liam: “I’m Liam of Erinthia! Getting out of tough situations is what I do best!”

Failstate by John W. Otte

Apr21

“John W. Otte leads a double life. By day he’s a Lutheran minister. By night, he writes weird stories.”

Failstate is kind of weird. Robin Laughlin aka Failstate and Robin’s brother Ben aka Gauntlet are both unlicensed superheroes. Failstate is a “cognit” who can mess with the power grid. The theory is that Failstate’s super-power can create “a potential failstate within covalent bonds at a molecular level.” Gauntlet is a “strapper”, a hero with lots of muscle.

Both of the brothers are competing in a reality TV show. The winner gets a real superhero license if he or she is voted best superhero in the show. Unfortunately, Robin/Failstate is pretty sure that the winner is not going to be him.

Soon, real life and real crime collide with the fantasy crime competition on TV, and Failstate must decide how to avenge his friend’s death, whom to trust, and how much protecting his secret identity is worth. Is it worth more lives? What if he has to lose the competition and his secrets to gain his ultimate goal, the protection of innocent citizens?

Failstate was just nominated as a finalist for the Christy Awards in the category of Young Adult Books, along with Child of the Mountains by Marilyn Sue Shank and Interrupted: A Life Beyond Words by Rachel Coker. I think Failstate is a worthy competitor, both the character in the book and the novel in the Christy Awards.