Book Bundles: Edge-of-Your-Seat Novels

(2) 4-6 As Carl Sagan posits, "we're made of star-stuff." Here, Baldwin asks readers to move that fact one step into fantasy and accept that some individuals on this Earth are actually fallen stars who choose to take human form, individuals like Ivy Mae Bloom's mother and her two aunts. Their special status imbues them with magical powers; Mrs. Bloom can barter wishes to those who are troubled and repair slight tears in the Earth's magical fabric. Such responsibility requires constant travel from town to town. And therein lies Ivy's problem. More than anything, Ivy wants a forever home, not the cramped RV her family of five takes on the road 360 days a year. She steals nine of her mom's wishes and requests her "One True Place"--but these wishes have consequences, landing the family at Aunt Agatha's home on Whistling Ridge. Something is wrong there; the town is decaying, its magic weakened. Ivy's self-absorbed twelve-year-old voice is spot on, as are her frustrations with her sisters, but so is her concern for Whistling Ridge. There are multiple plot threads, but a believable young girl emerges as she tries, sometimes awkwardly and sometimes gracefully, to find her place.

Reviewer: Betty Carter

(2) 4-6 Farook (The Girl Who Stole an Elephant) returns to Serendib, her fictionalized Sri Lankan setting, for an exciting Treasure Island–style tale that pits three young protagonists against two murderous villains. Twelve-year-old twins Razi and Shifa help Zheng, also twelve, who has landed on their beach after escaping a shipwreck. Before his ship sank, Zheng managed to save a treasure map leading to the fabled Dagger of Seredib; but there are two other survivors desperate to get the map by any means necessary. Sea monsters, murderers, hidden treasure, a raging storm, and a fast-paced plot full of twists and turns and clever cliffhangers will pull readers into a tale that is also a moving family story. For example, young fisherman Razi must overcome his grief after a family tragedy left him with a fear of the sea. Short sentences laced with action verbs, short chapters, and specific details of the island setting ensure a lively reading experience.

Reviewer: Dean Schneider

(2) YA James, twelve, and his precocious sister Ava, ten, have moved from Texas to Oregon with their parents, and James is bitter about having his entire life uprooted. The siblings struggle to adjust to their new surroundings, amping up a prank war to the extent that they start hurting each other's feelings for real. When the kids begin finding mysterious and threatening letters from "the Keeper" around the house, their parents assume it's all just another prank. James and Ava realize they're going to have to solve the mystery of the letters on their own, and fast, because the Blood Moon is approaching and the Keeper has warned James that he must act before then. James and Ava's Mexican American family dynamic is realistically portrayed, and secondary characters are well drawn, as well. As they investigate their neighbors and the history of their almost-too-idyllic gated community, James and Ava learn that they aren't the first children to be threatened. The story's pace is slow but the mystery is intriguing, and determined readers will be satisfied with the surprising and sinister (involving a cult and human sacrifice) denouement.

Reviewer: Sarah Berman

(2) 4-6 Illustrated by Martina Heiduczek. At school in East Prussia in the early 1940s, Liesl is taught to revere Adolf Hitler. When Germany wins the war, which she believes is inevitable, fountains will run with lemonade and ice cream, and every family will be given a puppy. Then, in 1944, Russian soldiers come; Germany has lost the war; Liesl, her brother, and their baby sister must flee in the dead of winter. Separated from their mother, they live "like wolves" in the forest, subsisting on frogs, squirrels, and wild plants; sometimes they're lucky enough to find unharvested potatoes or to work for Russian soldiers. The children eventually find refuge with a loving Lithuanian couple. To be safe, however, they must erase all vestiges of their German background. What will remain of her, Liesl wonders, once she has relinquished even her native language? As Liesl begins her slow unlearning of Nazi propaganda and comes to understand the atrocities against which she had been sheltered, she gains true insight into who she is--and who she can become. The incidents and challenges involved in the children's survival (based on true events of the Wolfskinder, or "wolf children," who, per an introductory note, were themselves "victims of war") are both sobering and enlightening.

Reviewer: Deirdre F. Baker

(2) 4-6 "Nobody knew exactly when the dark ship came and to be sure at first they could not see it at all but only understood it was there in the thick fog by the smell. There was a drifting stink of death." So begins Paulsen's posthumously published novel--quintessentially Paulsen in many respects. The cadence of the prose is often mesmerizing as long, meandering sentences cascade into short, clipped ones, and vice versa. The plot is classic Paulsen: a young boy masters his fate by mastering the elements. (This author's mark on the wilderness survival genre is so indelible that Hatchet feels like the archetype.) Here the young boy is Leif, who, after his Norse fishing village is devastated by a plague-like sickness, finds himself in a cedar canoe heading north along the rocky coastline. One final hallmark of a Paulsen book is its ring of authenticity, that sense that the author is writing from a position of knowledge, experience, and authority. He established that credibility in his earlier memoirs, Caught by the Sea: My Life on Boats and Gone to the Woods: Surviving a Lost Childhood (rev. 3/21), and it shows on almost every page of this novel, too. The melancholic, elegiac nature of the book, coupled with the way it distills Paulsen's tremendous strengths into a single novel, makes it a fitting swan song.

Reviewer: Jonathan Hunt