This middle grade debut is so much fun and it’s perfect for the entire family. In this society vampires exist and walk among humans. They have families, they get married, they have most of the same rights humans do. This includes the right to adopt. Sophie was adopted at a young age by her Mama and the Duke. She remembers life going from foster care to foster care and she loves her permanent home and her mothers. However, her family gets lots of visits from CPS (child protective services) after all the government needs to make sure that the vampires aren’t snacking on their child. However, there’s something affecting some vampires and it’s making them go: “rogue”.  This is an almost a feral state, and unfortunately this happens to Mama. And it’s up to the Duke and Sophie to not only save Mama but find a cure for all the vampires. Adding to the fun of this book, even children are vampires. Unlike other vampire lore, if you’re a 12-year-old vampire you are 12 years old for life; both physically, mentally, and psychologically. That means one has to have parents and Sophie‘s best friend just happens to be a vampire who was adopted to human family. These two get into some of the best trouble together. They both know that they have to save not only Sophie‘s family but her best friends lifeline. They must save their families and their way of life because love is love even if one of you is a vampire. 

 

I didn’t read up on this book before I started it. I saw the girl with the skeleton chest and the flowers and thought this book was right up my alley. I had no idea going in that I would see portions of my own life. In this book we follow the main character Val as she comes to term with her disordered eating and how her family, particularly her mom affected this. Valerie is bulimic, she throws up almost everything she eats. She has been doing it for years because her mother insists she’s not thin enough and that she needs to watch what she eats and never become fat. Wow! Her best friend is on the larger side and Val’s mom is constantly “she’s so ugly, she’s not pretty, why would anybody like the fat girl”. I was the fat girl, so this book really does speak to me. My parents were wonderful but my extended family not so much. I would constantly get told “you’d be so pretty if you were thinner”. “You could be a model if you were thinner”. So, this book has left me with emotions. This book simplifies a very hard and complicated topic, but it makes it approachable for people who don’t live with these types of things in their life. This book is well written, true to form and very heartfelt. The title is a misnomer, but at the same time you can see how Val is living as a ghost of who she should be. It’s for those reasons that I give this an over astounding good read. There needs to be more books like this for kids and teens who live or have friends living in similar situations. 

 

This book was nothing like I was expecting based solely on the cover. This book is about a witch academy that’s hidden from society Yorrwitch. Yorrwitch Academy is surrounded by woods with some nefarious entity inside that is dangerous to the people who inhabit the school. Our main character, Abigail is an orphan student. Her only family is the family, she makes at school. One day when her mentee Noreen goes missing, she can’t help but get in on the search. She’s not supposed to searching as it is only for teachers, but she knows there’s no one else there for an orphan.  And the school has a history of another student that went missing and was never found. This book has an interesting flow, and I did find the book wrapped up too quickly and too nicely. I did enjoy the twist at the end, but it seemed rushed compared to how drawn out the first 3/4 of the book felt. Overall, this was a fun and timely read for the season and I did enjoy it. if there’s a sequel, I would be interesting to read it, but it would not be a must buy. 

 

Wait till Helen comes is a modern classic that came out when I was still in middle school. I can remember us handing it around going “You have to read this” and read it I did. I was excited to see that these books are being made into graphic novels and enticing a whole new batch of kids into the dark and stormy world of Mary Downing Hahn. This story works much better than her novel “Took” in graphic novel. I’m not the biggest fan of the artwork. It seems a bit old-fashioned but overall, it works. While the graphic novel is wordy and heavy on the dialogue, the story is conveyed in such a way that you want to keep turning the pages I think the graphic novel is good, but the original book is better. 

 

This is like a child’s first self-help book. It’s written like the ones for adults with more pictures and things that are easier to understand. This first book is all about social power. How to have it how to weld it how to use it to make sure that you have an awesome middle grade or high school year. This is about self-confidence and that social power isn’t about being a bully or about being tread upon, but about being an equal to those around you. Overall, I really did like this book except there’s one breakout point where it talks about 7500 people were studied and they were talking about your inner locus, your central locus, and in the study people who had this central locus, were most likely not to be overweight at the age of 30. They had some other statistics but the fact that that was the first one said there may be a correlation this study but it’s completely out of place for this book and what they’re talking about and I wish the author had used a different statistic rather than that one because it could leave some kids to think that hey if I do this, this book says I will lose all this weight.  This could lead to an unhealthy mental situation for some kids. 

 

I love when a picture of a teaches you about a real-life person you might not otherwise know. In this case, that person is Jeanne Mannford. Jeanne Mannford was the woman who started PFLAG. When her son told her he was gay she didn’t shy away, she didn’t ignore him. She stood by his side and helped other people realize that LGLGBTQ people deserve love respect, and everything else everyone else deserves. She started an organization to help those who had questions and needed answers. Her legacy still lives on in the PFLAG organization. 

 

This book has an omniscient narrator. It starts out with a sheep that becomes a cat and the cat wants a horse. But our omniscient narrator says they can’t draw a horse, but they could draw a fill in the blank. The story goes on from there. It is a round robin story like “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie”, which makes for a really fun ride. The illustrations are fun and childlike but in the best possible way. It helps move the story forward as well as keep it entertaining. While it’s great on the pages, it could also be great for a whiteboard story time or even made that way for a flannel story time. Overall, the story just works, and kids are going to love it. 

 

This book is a great way to update “Mary had a Little Lamb”. In this book Mary plans to make a garden. There’s an abandoned lot that’s full of weeds.  Mary’s going to clean it up and make it a great place for everyone. What really makes this book work is it is it keeps the rhyming pattern and sing song cadence of the original, while making references to other nursery tales, such as Jack and Jill, and Little Bo Peep. The illustrations are fantastic, and the book is fully inclusive. Overall, this will be nice in any library collection. 

 

This book doesn’t do enough.  As a child of a veteran myself, I see very few books about the children of military members, and this is the first about children of veterans.  It basically asks why these children don’t get recognized like children of those currently serving.  It never proposes a solution or way to recognize these children.  My father was a “lifer”.  He retired out of military service.  We moved may times and lived many places.  There were no books to explain this to the kids who didn’t grow up this way.  To me this book tries, but asks more questions than it ever answers, so I am left feeling disappointed, and no closer to getting a book to explain my childhood experiences to others.