Reviews written by Karen Yingling, Staff Reviewer

Sonnenblick always does such a fantastic job of writing young adult books that also speak to middle grade sensibilities, and is one of the few authors writing realistic, sometimes humorous fiction for adolescent males. I think that adults forget how all encompassing the desire for romantic entanglements is in high...

Trey and his sister Arianna have had a nomadic life, changing schools and moving to new places frequently, with "vacations" in exotic locales in between, because their father, Junior, is a con artist. They change names frequently, but always included the generational markers so they can be called the...

Jen's parents send her to her Aunt Liv for the summer while they're busy working. Liv designs realistic art dolls and also runs a doll hospital in a small island town in Maine. On the ferry over, Jen meets Joe, who lives on the mainland, but visits his uncle, who...

At the end of 6th grade, Ain't hopes that she can spend the summer helping out at her mother's dress shop, Naseerah's Almari (closet). She would love to design clothing and maybe even work on sewing, but instead gets stuck with helping customers and dealing with paperwork. When she finds...

Nick Chase, who struggles in school, is spending his Saturday at the Cape Courage, New Jersey shore on a Friends of the Wild Tour so that he can put together a podcast for school. The docent is a girl his age, Jess, who wants to be a big animal...

Evan Dunn has a decent life; his friend Calder and Kellan sit with him on the bus and dilute the attention of bully Adam, and his home life is calm. His father, a former lawyer, now carves exquisite wooden dragons, and his mother is very set in her ways, leaving...

Simon and his family have moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico in an attempt to get away from his sister Rachael, who burned down the family home. Simon has nightmares about it, and his other sister, Aly, spends hours trying to figure out where her sister is. Simon has the ability...

A tiny white rabbit (with shiny silver ear linings!) has lots of books, and has different ones that take him to different places. His yellow book travels to the desert, blue to the ocean, and the green to the rainforest. Red goes to the top of an apple tree, and...

Sylvie Stroud lives in an old industrial building in Soho in New York City in 1977. Her parents have created a loft to live in, as well as a studio, in an old button factory, even though the surrounding neighborhood isn't great. Her older brother Gray is at college, and...

Summer lives in Arizona to be near her father's family, who are Apache, but goes to visit her mother's parents every summer at their Cree reservation in Northern Alberta, Canada with her younger brother Sage in tow. She loves spending time with her cousin Autumn, riding the horse her uncle...

There is a lot of great information in this book that would have been really helpful to me in 1971, when Miss Gordon had up create stories. Of course, back in the day, we created covers by wrapping cereal box cardboard in wallpaper samples, so my book was resplendent...

A child sets out to thank various things in his life for specific reasons, like the sun for the day and the tree for the shade. Some of these are very direct, but others, like his boots for knowing the way or his hat from stopping his thoughts from floating...

Don't pick this book up expecting to learn much about about the history of the dictionary, along the lines of Bryant and Sweet's The Right Word: Roget and Thesaurus. There is some information here, but the real draw is the innovative book design. I ended up having to read this...

This is a unique collection of poems , since it is also a lift-the-flap Advent calendar. Each page has two beautifully illustrated poems, each accompanied by a numbered flap. Sometimes these flaps are harder to find, disguised in trees or rushes, and sometimes they are logs or rocks. Most of...

This How To Be series from Nosy Crow (which also includes How to Be a Vet and Other Animal Jobs, as well as the upcoming How to Be a Doctor and Other Life-Saving Jobs) has a lot of great information for elementary and middle grade students who want to start...