Into the Bloodred Woods by Martha Brockenbrough

Information

Goodreads: Into the Bloodred Woods
Series: None
Age Category: Young Adult
Source: Library
Published: November 2, 2021

Official Summary

This is Martha Brockenbrough’s feminist twisting of the Brother Grimms’ stories, Game of Thrones-style.

Once upon a time there was a kingdom and a forest that liked to eat men and a girl who would change everything, but not alone . . .

Except-

There’s no such thing as once upon a time.

In a far away land, populated by were beasts and surrounded by a powerful forest, lies a kingdom about to be sent into chaos. On his deathbed, King Tyran divides his land, leaving half to each of his two children-so they’ll rule together. However, his son, Albrecht, is not satisfied with half a kingdom. And even though his sister, Ursula, is the first born, he decides that as a girl and were bear, she is unfit to rule. So he invades her land, slaughtering her people and most of the were beasts, and claims it for himself. As King Albrecht builds his iron rule and an army of beasts to defend his reign, Ursula is gathering the survivors and making plans to take back the kingdom. Not just her half-the whole thing. Because Albrecht should have never been allowed to sit on the throne, and Ursula is going to take his crown. And if he’s not careful, he might not get to keep his head either.

Review

Into the Bloodred Woods is likely to be a polarizing book. It’s original and gripping, but it’s also extremely gruesome. Readers who aren’t looking for a story with sexual assault and explicitly described bloody violence aren’t likely to rate the book high, but readers looking for something as dark as the Brothers Grimm tales the book is based are will be intrigued.

I personally, was NOT in the mood to read a book where terrible things happen to the characters left and right and the reading experience is almost more stressful than enjoyable, but I tried to look past that while I was reading and while I was reflecting on the book. I don’t WANT to read about people being tortured and bad guys getting away with things, but I have to admit that the book is technically well written. Martha Brockenbrough takes fairy tale stories readers are generally familiar with (Snow White, Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood, etc.), mixes them up, and creates something new. Wild, ugly things happen, but it’s hard to look away.

One potential issue is that there is such a large cast of characters that at times it’s difficult to be invested in each one as an individual, and it takes time to see how all their stories are going to fit together. However, this also gives the book something of an authentic fairy tale vibe. Traditional stories aren’t really about characterization and introspection, but more about plot and potential lessons, so having the characters not be 100% fully fleshed out here is not necessarily an issue.

I also have questions about whether this “kingdom” is simply the size of a large town and some surrounding farms but, again, complex geography and world building isn’t really the point here. It’s fairy tale vibes and intersecting stories of woman being abused while trying to wrest the power they deserve from men.

If you like the dark, mature bent YA has been taking in recent years, this book is for you. If you’re looking for something lighter, pass.

Speak for Yourself by Lana Wood Johnson (ARC Review)

Information

Goodreads: Speak for Yourself
Series: None
Source: Giveaway
Publication Date: June 1, 2021

Official Summary

Girl meets boy. Girl likes boy.
Girl gets friend to help win boy.
Friend ends up with crush on boy…

Skylar’s got ambitious #goals. And if she wants them to come true, she has to get to work now. (At least she thinks so…) Step one in her epic plan is showing everyone that her latest app is brilliant. To do that, she’s going to use it win State at the Scholastic Exposition, the nerdiest academic competition around.

First, she’ll need a team, and Skylar’s not always so good with people. But she’ll do whatever it takes to put one together … even if it means playing Cupid for her teammates Joey and Zane, at Joey’s request. When things get off to an awkward start for them, Skylar finds herself stepping in to help Joey. Anything to keep her on the team. Only, Skylar seems to be making everything more complicated. Especially when she realizes she might be falling for Zane, which was not a #goal. Can Skylar figure out her feelings, prove her app’s potential to the world, and win State without losing her friends–or is her path to greatness over before it begins?

Review

Speak for Yourself is a gripping novel that combines academic competition, app creation, and a hint of romance to create a story that will have readers cheering on Skylar page after page.

I found the opening of the book slightly confusing, as I didn’t understand the Scholastic Exposition Skylar wants to compete in (and, honestly, still don’t understand the point of a quiz part that relies solely on participants memorizing information given to them by the competition organizers), and I wasn’t sure what Skylar was talking about in reference to her app development all the time. Additionally, there wasn’t a lot of exposition about some of the characters; I felt thrown into the narrative rather than as if the author were introducing people to me so I could understand them and their relation to Skylar. After these initial hiccups, however, the story takes off, and everything comes into place, and I couldn’t put the book down– no mean feat, as I don’t often find contemporary novels to be page turners.

Skylar is such a well-rounded protagonist that I felt as if I could know her, or someone like her, even as she accomplishes things in the book that certainly no one at my high school ever did. She has big dreams about going to Stanford, starting her own company, becoming rich young, etc., and it seems likely she’ll be able to do it with her coding expertise (and well-to-do parents), but she’s not perfect. She’s not even academically perfect, as readers get to see from her Scholastic Exposition performance.

And the celebration of different strengths is another lovely part of this book. The Scholastic Exposition requires teams to have members with a GPA above a certain level and members with a lower GPA, and when another character questions this, Skylar spouts a talking point line about smart people not all being academic achievers. And it sounds cheesy and a bit like a throwaway line, except the book shows this is true over and over again. Each character has their strengths and weaknesses, whether it’s art, literature, math, public speaking, etc. Really, considering ScholEx is an academic competition, it’s almost surprising there’s no one on the team who seems like the typical well-rounded academic individual who would sign up for that type of extracurricular (for example, someone in line to be valedictorian of the class). It’s really a nice, subtle representation of the fact you don’t need to be good at everything to succeed in life.

I also like the romance aspect of the book. And while I have to say I was personally wary of another book about a romance-related app after reading the mess that was The Boyfriend App, Johnson handles the app and questions of romance vs. creepiness thoughtfully and ultimately writes romances I was really invested in. While the app and Skylar’s goals do seem like the “main” point of the book, perhaps not least because she herself considers them to be the most important things, the romance really shines through, and it made me smile.

Speak for Yourself is such a fun and thoughtful book that I can’t help but look forward to seeing what Johnson will write next.

Hope by Alyssa Milano and Debbie Rigaud (ARC Review)

Information

Goodreads: Hope
Series: Untitled #1
Source: BookCon
Publication Date: October 1, 2019

Official Summary

Meet Hope Roberts. She’s 11 years old, and she wants to be an astrophysicist. She loves swimming, Galaxy Girl comic books, and her two rescue dogs.

Hope believes it’s always a good day to champion a cause, defend an underdog, and save the future. And most of all, she believes in dreaming big. That’s why she’s enrolled in all of the advanced classes at her new middle school. She’s smart and confident in her abilities. But though Hope seems super strong on the outside, there’s another side of her, too. She’s just a regular girl trying to survive middle school.

This first book starts with the beginning of sixth grade, and Hope’s BFF Sam made some new friends over the summer. Hope doesn’t know how to handle it. She and Sam have always been inseparable! Then Hope meets her new lab partner, Camila, and they get off on the wrong foot. And even though Camila is great at science, she doesn’t want to join the science club. The club is all boys, and she doesn’t feel welcome.

When Hope hears that, she’s determined to recruit more girls into the science club, including Camila. Hope knows that sometimes changing the world starts small. So now Hope has a mission! Can she turn the science club into a place that’s welcoming for everyone — and make some new friends along the way?

Hope’s relatability, kindness, empathy, and can-do attitude will inspire a generation of do-gooders. This new series is a response to the very palpable feeling that not only can young people save the world — they will!

Review

Hope is a quick, feel good middle grade story about a budding scientist and activist (Hope) starting her first year of middle school.  The general idea is very on trend (girls in STEM!, dealing with bullies!), but the actual writing was not to my personal taste.  The narration and dialogue are both casual and approachable, but the kids all sounded like adults to me, and the message(s) of the book frequently overshadow the story.

Frankly, the book feels preachy. Hope encounters a number of social issues she has to find ways to work through, such as committing microaggressions against her classmates and having to deal with the girls in the science club being interrupted and talked over by the boys.  There are lengthy speeches about many of these issues, and there is even a several page argument about the invalidity of astrology, which the book seems to have a vested interest in debunking for reasons I don’t entirely understand.  (I agree astrology is fake; I just didn’t see how inserting a lesson on this was integral to the story in any way.)  Basically, Hope teaches readers to be sensitive to racial issues, feminist issues, real science vs. fake science, and more, which is all good; it just does it in a way I found heavy-handed.  I think young readers, as well, can tell when they’re trying to be taught a lesson by a book, so this might not hit the mark with all of its target audience either.

That said, the preachiness is somewhat mitigated by the fact that Hope is herself a fairly flawed character.  She doesn’t just witness microaggressions; she commits them.  She doesn’t just show everyone girls can be as good as boys at science; she gets so caught up in her own messages that she messes it up.  She also struggles with other run-of-the-mill middle school problems like learning to share her BFF with new friends and dealing with bullies.  This part is fine; it just feels like a lot of other middle grade books that deal with the exact same themes, and it’s here where I get cynical and think about how any celebrity can walk up to a publisher and say, “Hey! I’d like to write a perfectly average middle grade story about *gasp* friendship and bullying; isn’t that just a great idea for kids!” and they get a book deal as if it’s a novel idea.

Overall, the book is average.  It had just enough interest and unique characterization to keep me going, in spite of the fact I felt constantly preached at.  The sequel is set up to be about Hope and her family doing good deeds to save an animal shelter, which sounds fun if you’re into animals but, well, also has a lot of potential for insertions of Good Morals and Lessons for Kids.  I won’t be continuing with the series.

(Also a shout-out to the illustrator, Eric S. Keyes, for really fun and emotive illustrations, though I did find it hilarious the characters seem to wear the same clothes in every scene, like cartoon characters rather than book characters!)

Rated by Melissa Grey (ARC Review)

Information

Goodreads: Rated
Series: None (Yet)
Source: BookCon
Publication Date: September 3, 2019

Official Summary

Societies thrive on order, and the Rating System is the ultimate symbol of organized social mobility.

The higher it soars, the more valued you are. The lower it plummets, the harder you must work to improve yourself. For the students at the prestigious Maplethorpe Academy, every single thing they do is reflected in their ratings, updated daily and available for all to see.

But when an act of vandalism sullies the front doors of the school, it sets off a chain reaction that will shake the lives of six special students — and the world beyond.

Review

Even though it’s been 11 years since the publication of the first Hunger Games book, avid YA readers might have mixed feelings about dystopian novels.  Is it time for them to come back (like the vampire revival)? Or do dystopians still feel like “jumping on a fad?”  Interestingly, Rated by Melissa Grey somewhat skirts the question.  It’s a dystopian, presumably inspired by the Chinese social credit system that has been making headlines, but the focus in many ways is not actually on the world building; rather, the book shines through its characterization.

The book has six protagonists, six teenagers who attend the same elite prep school in a world where everyone has a rating.  (If the book isjumping on a fad, perhaps it’s the multiple POV heist novel fad begun by Leigh Bardugo’s Six of Crows.)  The point, of course, is that rating people is bad.  It leads to anxiety over scoring the perfect rating.  It leads to segregation in society, as some places like hospitals, grocery stores, etc. are only open to those with high ratings.  It leads to corruption as people try to game the rating system.  And, of course, the protagonists begin to realize there is something wrong with their world and start to come together to do something about it.  That’s just how YA dystopian novels work.

Yet, even though technically the plot is focused on the dystopian element of the rating system and how to bring it down, that part of the novel always seemed to be in the background to me.  This is partially because the world building is haphazard and under-developed.  For instance, it’s impossible to say when the book takes place.  One would guess decently into the future, based on the fact a lot of things have happened, from the implementation of the rating system itself to the banning of a number of classics, etc.  That stuff takes time, particularly to be accepted as normal.  However, one of the teen’s parents has videos of his own old high school games on VHS.  That implies this book takes place about a decade into the future, max, which feels off to me.

The rating system itself is also not well-explained, a major whole in a book that takes the system as its premise.  How the system actually works is revealed in bits and pieces, and I’m still not clear on it.  What can you be rated for?  Who can do the rating? (I thought only authority figures could rate for a long time, until it was revealed peer-to-peer rating is a thing, which is treated as “less than” a rating from a teacher, yet affects your rating in exactly the same way.)  And if people you don’t know personally can rate you from seeing you online or watching you skate in a competition, why do the characters only experience rating drops of a point here and there?  If 1000 people are watching you run an online video game, why would only two of them rate you?  After reading the whole book, I still have a lot of questions.

To some extent, however, I found this did not really matter.  The book’s true strength lies in the characters.  Grey wonderfully balances her six POVs to create a varied cast of characters who each have their own private struggles and character arcs.  Sure, the rating system is a problem, but I was much more invested in Noah’s family life and Hana’s figure skating career, and Bex’s quest to become valedictorian.  The beauty of the book is in the individuals, not in the system they’re struggling against.

For the small dramas of each character and how they deal with them, I would recommend this book.  I don’t think it excels as a dystopian because it didn’t really make me think.  I didn’t get a sense this is a direction our world would actually go and, beyond the obvious, I didn’t get a sense of why readers should care.  Sure, rating people is bad.  I get that, but the book didn’t do anything interesting with that premise.  I just liked the characters, and I think a lot of other readers will to, as long as they know to approach the book almost more as a contemporary about the ordinary struggles of high school students, rather than a dystopian novel.

This is my Review of the Month for the review collection on LovelyAudiobooks.info

City of Ghosts by Victoria Schwab

Information

Goodreads: City of Ghosts
Series: Cassidy Blake #1
Source: Library
Published: August 28, 2018

Official Summary

Cassidy Blake’s parents are The Inspectres, a (somewhat inept) ghost-hunting team. But Cass herself can REALLY see ghosts. In fact, her best friend, Jacob, just happens to be one.

When The Inspectres head to ultra-haunted Edinburgh, Scotland, for their new TV show, Cass—and Jacob—come along. In Scotland, Cass is surrounded by ghosts, not all of them friendly. Then she meets Lara, a girl who can also see the dead. But Lara tells Cassidy that as an In-betweener, their job is to send ghosts permanently beyond the Veil. Cass isn’t sure about her new mission, but she does know the sinister Red Raven haunting the city doesn’t belong in her world. Cassidy’s powers will draw her into an epic fight that stretches through the worlds of the living and the dead, in order to save herself.

Review

I picked up City of Ghosts after hearing fabulous things about Victoria Schwab but never having  read anything by her.  I figured that I like middle grade, and it’s short, so City of Ghosts might be a good place to start.  It always has tons of rave reviews on Goodreads, many of them from adults who admit they don’t normally even read middle-grade.  My own experience, however was…underwhelming.  I finished the book thinking that it was fine, competent.  But I wasn’t that excited about it.

I have family members who are interested in exactly the types of things the book is based on–ghost stories, ghost tours in historical cities, ghost hunting shows–so I thought I would probably be able to relate.  However, I just never found the ghost stories in City of Ghosts that compelling.  I imagine they’re actually all real Scottish legends, but I guess you lose some of the atmosphere when you’re reading them in a book instead of walking around cemeteries and visiting creepy basements with a old-timey dressed tour guide carrying a lantern.  I, a genuine scaredy-cat, was not really feeling the eeriness of the book, but that could be a plus for a middle-grade novel.  You want to appeal to kids who are into creepy stories without completely scaring them out of their wits.

I did like the exploration of what it means to be dead/alive and the take on the spirit world.  I also enjoyed the relationship between Cassidy and her best friend, who is a ghost (and doesn’t like to be called a ghost; he’s a bit touchy about it).  But…still.  Whenever I think of the book, words like “competent,” “capable,” and “well-structured” come to mind.  It’s fine middle grade, truly.  It’s just not exceptional, so this may be a case where the hype ruined the book for me.

This is clearly meant to be a series where the protagonist goes to different haunted cities and hunts ghosts, but I can’t express how much I simply don’t care.  Reading this book was enough for me; I don’t want to see variations of the same plot play out in different settings as Cass episodically hunts a different bad ghost each time. (Admittedly, I’m just assuming that’s what will happen; I don’t actually know.)  It’s a solid read, but I really wanted more, and I won’t be continuing with the series.

 

Dactyl Hill Squad by Daniel José Older (ARC Review)

Information

Goodreads: Dactyl Hill Squad
Series: None (but the ending sets up a sequel…)
Source: Giveaway
Publication Date: September 11, 2018

Official Summary

It’s 1863 and dinosaurs roam the streets of New York as the Civil War rages between raptor-mounted armies down South. Magdalys Roca and her friends from the Colored Orphan Asylum are on a field trip when the Draft Riots break out, and a number of their fellow orphans are kidnapped by an evil magistrate, Richard Riker.

Magdalys and her friends flee to Brooklyn and settle in the Dactyl Hill neighborhood, where black and brown New Yorkers have set up an independent community–a safe haven from the threats of Manhattan. Together with the Vigilance Committee, they train to fly on dactylback, discover new friends and amazing dinosaurs, and plot to take down Riker. Can Magdalys and the squad rescue the rest of their friends before it’s too late?

Review

Count Dactyl Hill Squad among the books I really, really wanted to like but didn’t.  The idea of dinosaurs during the American Civil War is fabulous (though one should note the book is set with the war as a backdrop but doesn’t really feature the war), but the writing and plot don’t live up to the premise, and the characters weren’t always developed well enough for me to be invested in them.

While I did read an ARC and the final version might be different, there were several places in the narrative where the transition to an event in the plot felt so choppy that I was sure I must have missed a paragraph or two that set the action up.  After this happened multiple times, I decided the pacing was really just that uneven.  This flaw in in the writing also hurt the character development, as characters just have unusual, “cool” abilities that are never explained (or, occasionally, explained briefly and realistically).

Because this is middle grade, it’s possible the target audience will just buy into the idea that one orphan is secretly a well-trained warrior and strategist, another is the world’s greatest cartographer, and some side characters are randomly great sharpshooters.  As an adult, I was kind of perplexed.  I’m okay with the protagonist having rare magic dinosaur powers that are thought to exist only in legend because this is fantasy, but why is a twelve-year-old girl in the 1860’s acting like Katniss (but also hidden away in an orphanage where her badass military skills are literally never used until the events of this book)?

Which brings me to the historical aspect of the book.  I don’t need historical fiction to be a 100% accurate depiction of the time period (this one’s historical fantasy anyway, with dinosaurs replacing a ton of  inventions simply because dinosaurs are cool), but I like to see some nods to realism.  The book does have some great notes in the back of the book about the real people and events who inspired parts of the story.  However, I draw the line at the modern dialogue.  Characters literally say things like they want to “roll up” to a place.  It’s possible to write historical fiction that doesn’t sound so “old-timey” it might put off some readers, while still avoiding obvious anachronisms.  I know the author likes history, but I also like history (particularly the American Civil War), and parts of it were not done justice here.

Young readers may actually like this book (because, again dinosaurs and the American Civil War, two fascinating topics), and so far I seem to be the black sheep with my low Goodreads rating.  However. I wanted to DNF the book several times because it was confusing and badly paced and I ultimately wasn’t that interested in the characters.  I’m disappointed, but I don’t recommend this one.

Unschooled by Allan Woodrow

Information

Goodreads: Unschooled
Series: None
Source: ARC from City Book Review
Published: August 29, 2017

Summary

George and Lilly have always imagined they would be on the same team for the fifth grade Spirit Week competitions, but when they become captains of rival teams, their long-time friendship is suddenly at stake. Worse, the whole fifth grade seems willing to cheat to win.

Review

*Review first posted on City Book Review.

Unschooled tackles tough questions about the value of friendship and honesty vs. the value of winning. It can seem transparently didactic at times, with parents and teachers lecturing about fair play, teamwork, and the responsibility to stand up to bullies, and with George and Lilly repeatedly reflecting on these things. However, these moral lessons are balanced by the wild nature of the hijinks the fifth graders engage in to attempt to sabotage the opposing team. The book features secrets, slime, and some pungent egg salad, all guaranteed to capture the attention of young readers. George’s and Lilly’s friendship also brings some levity to the book, as they question whether throwing away all the good times they’ve had together is worth the prestige of winning.

Unschooled is likely to be a hit with parents and educators for its message, but young readers will enjoy reading about the pranks played.

The Scourge by Jennifer A. Nielsen

INformation

Goodreads: The Scourge
Series: None
Source: Library
Published: August 30, 2016

Official Summary

When a plague isn’t all that kills…

As a lethal plague sweeps through the land, Ani Mells is shocked when she is unexpectedly captured by the governor’s wardens and forced to submit to a test for the deadly Scourge. She is even more surprised when the test results come back positive, and she is sent to Attic Island, a former prison turned refuge—and quarantine colony—for the ill. The Scourge’s victims, Ani now among them, can only expect to live out short, painful lives there.

However, Ani quickly discovers that she doesn’t know the whole truth about the Scourge or the Colony. She’s been caught in a devious plot, and, with the help of her best friend, Weevil, Ani means to uncover just what is actually going on. But will she and Weevil survive the Scourge—and the gorvernor’s wardens—long enough to make their escape and expose the cruel plan?

Review

I LOVED Jennifer A. Nielsen’s Ascendance Trilogy and her historical fiction novel A Night Divided, so  I was excited about her most recent release, a medieval-esque fantasy where a girl and her best friend discover the unsettling truth about a scourge that is beginning to ravish their country. The beginning of the novel, unfortunately, was rough going for me, and I thought I might be disappointed by Nielsen’s work for once, but the second half of the book really picked up with character development and action, and now I’m a fan of The Scourge.

The start was slow partially because protagonist Ani really got on my nerves. At this point in the book, she is annoying and hotheaded to the point of foolishness.  Initially I thought maybe I was supposed to admire her, that perhaps the author was trying to pass her off as “feisty” or “bold” and it wasn’t working, but by the end of the novel Ani seems to recognize herself that sometimes she needs to stop, think, and shut her mouth, so there’s some real character development here.

The plot also picks up pace as the novel progresses, particularly once Ani and her friend Weevil reach the sick colony. It’s pretty obvious what part of the plot reveal will be for most of the book, and therefore mildly frustrating that Ani doesn’t seem to get it (though it’s probably fair she doesn’t get it, considering her position as a character living the story and mine as a reader). However, the motives for what is going on completely took me by surprise and were not what I would have predicted.  I’m still debating whether the bad guys were achieving their goals the most efficient way possible, but I’ll grant that it’s creative.

The best thing about the novel, however, may be the friendship between Ani and Weevil–real, flawed, and absolutely beautiful.  I don’t always “feel” the friendships in books the way I think the authors wanted me to; here I did.

If you’re looking for a novel with a bit of a mystery, a dash of daring, and a lot of heart, you’ll enjoy The Scourge.

Dark Breaks the Dawn by Sara B. Larson

Information

Goodreads: Dark Breaks the Dawn
Series: Untitled #1
Source: City Book Review
Published: May 30, 2017

Summary

The forces of Dark and Light must remain in balance on the island of Lachalonia, or the consequences could be dire. Dark King Bain has no qualms, however, and is bent on extinguishing the royal family who bears the power of the Light.  When he succeeds in killing Princess Evelayn’s mother, she becomes responsible for the fate of her people much sooner than she had planned, and she will have to take great risks to keep her kingdom safe.

Review

My feelings about Dark Breaks the Dawn are complicated.  Reading it now, as an adult, I find parts of it cliché and almost absurd—yet I can’t help thinking that if had read this book in middle school, I would have thought those “absurd” parts fabulous.   But, then again, I would have found them fabulous partly because they’re things I might have written about myself in middle school…but I think that I’ve learned better by now.  I guess my main conclusion can only be that I personally thought Dark Breaks the Dawn fairly flawed, but there’s probably a younger audience out there just waiting to gobble it up.

Some of these clichés include people with rainbow colored hair, people who have jewels literally embedded in their bodies that give them magic, and a royal family that is all-powerful simply because they are royal (divine right of kings or something, I guess).  None of these things are inherently bad; they just lack some of the subtlety or nuance that I think can be found in a lot of today’s YA fantasy.  And, as I said, in seventh grade I probably would have thought a character with purple hair and a magic jewel in her chest was the coolest thing ever, so maybe it’s all a matter of perspective.

I think the more objective flaw is the book’s pacing.  There’s instalove, to start, which makes it difficult for readers to feel invested in the romance.  Protagonist Evelayn also solves many of her problems with extraordinary ease.  This mean that things that are hyped up as big, dangerous, impossible events by the characters do not come across that way to the reader.  Instead of feeling that Evelyan was performing epic feats, doing things that no one had ever dared to do before, I got the impression that was she accomplished was hardly difficult at all.  I wish scenes had been more drawn out and built more suspense.

Otherwise, however, Dark Breaks the Dawn is pretty solid fantasy.  There’s a clear battle of good vs. evil, plus a badass princess, and a decent amount of plotting and intrigue.  There’s supposed to be some Swan Princess influence, but that only comes in at the end of the novel and looks as though it will be more of a focus on the sequel.   The book isn’t really for me, but I could imagine other people liking it.

Skeleton Tree by Kim Ventrella

INformation

Goodreads: Skeleton Tree
Series: None
Source: City Book Review
Published: September 26, 2017

Summary

When Stanly discovers the skeleton growing in his yard, he knows immediately that he has the perfect entry for the Young Discover’s Competition.  The skeleton is also apparently his younger sister Merin’s new best friend, able to make her laugh when nothing else can. As Merin gets sicker and sicker, however, Stanly begins to wonder if the mysterious skeleton isn’t more of a curse than a blessing.

Review

I originally wanted to read this book in October because it seems like an appropriate Halloween read; after all, there’s a mysterious skeleton growing in two kids’ backyard, which may or may not have nefarious intentions.  The book itself even takes place around Halloween and features a Halloween party.  However, I realized quickly while reading Skeleton Tree that basically none of this is the point; the real story is about family relationships and dealing with a terminal illness.

I’m not going to get into any arguments about whether a book about death is “too dark” for middle grade.  Some readers will appreciate the book and some will not, and parents/educators can feel free to make judgments about that for individual readers.  However, the reality is that children do frequently have to deal with death in their own lives, whether we like it or not, so addressing the topic in a book for this age level does not feel inappropriate to me.  I do find the approach to dealing with death in Skeleton Tree a little odd, particularly because it’s wrapped up with magic and mystery that, for lack of a better word, leaned a little towards the frivolous for me.  However, it’s totally possible this approach will work for other readers, so I don’t want to dismiss it completely.

Personally, I found the family dynamics most compelling.  The relationship between older brother Stanly and his sister Merin seemed very realistic to me; Stanly vacillates between enjoying hanging out with his sister and being annoyed by her.  Sometimes he’s annoyed because she does things she can’t help because, well, she’s younger than he is.  Sometimes his annoyance really feel merited.  (Merin is that sibling who has to tell Mom everything. You know the one.  Even when she promised not to.  Even when telling Mom is going to get everyone into trouble.)  Their underlying love for each other is apparent, though.

The relationship between Stanly and his mother is more complicated because, as a parent, she’s obviously more fixated on her sick daughter and seems to take Stanly for granted.  She trusts him to take care of Merin while not totally recognizing how much she relies on him.  I was grumpy with her at times, but this is also something that felt realistic to me.  It doesn’t seem fair, but parents sometimes do do this to their kids.  Again, I don’t think it’s “too dark” to represent that faithfully in a middle grade book.

Mostly, however, Skeleton Tree just feels unique.  The family dynamics are realistic, perhaps even recognizable for many readers.  The magic skeleton plot line, however, is completely wild, and it helps the book stand out.  This book is definitely worth looking into for readers of middle grade.