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Geeks and the Holy Grail (Camelot Code #2), by Mari Mancusi, for Timeslip Tuesday

The first book in the Camelot Code series, The Once and Future Geek , mixed time travel between the medieval world of King Arthur and our own, and it is a very entertaining book.  The second book in the series, Geeks and Holy Grail (Hyperion, October 2019), is also entertaining (though not quite as funny; King Arthur as a modern day high school student is hard to beat....). When Morgana, sworn enemy of King Arthur, attacks the druids of Avalon, Nimue, the youngest of them, takes the Holy Grail and runs with it.  King Arthur is dying, and only the Grail can save him.  Desperate to keep it from falling into Morgana's hands, she stumbles into Merlin's Crystal Cave.  But instead of Merlin there to help her (he's on vacation in Los Vegas, in our time), there's only his very inexperienced apprentice, Emrys.  His attempt to hide the grail works, in a sense--as a small, flatulent dragon, it sure doesn't look much like a grail.  But it isn't much use to Arthur as a...
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The Secret

The Secret

Ugly to Start With by John Michael Cummings


Hello.

I don't really know how to start this review. I have so many things to say, but when I go to write them down my head empties. This book was so rich with emotion and reality that it is hard to describe.
In Ugly to Start With by John Michael Cummings, each chapter could stand alone, with a specific message, a different issue touched on. My favorite was probably either the first chapter "The World Around Us" or the second to last chapter "The Scratchboard Project". I like these best because the relationship with the main character and others is more of a positive one. While the chapters do go together, they are not as cohesive as I might have normally liked. However, in this book, I like the feeling of having just snap shot memories and moments. It reminded me of a photograph album that would never actually be able to be made. While the experience is there, the photos taken, these are moments which would never have been caught on film, and the people in them would have never wanted them to be. Each character, even though the reader only met most of them for a chapter, had personality and a face. Each one was specific and different and heartbreakingly real.
The chapters were vastly different and so were the issues mentioned with in them. Cummings hit on sexuality, racism, alcoholics, adultery, and others. There were things that shocked me and left me horrified, while other times I was smiling even just for a moment. I feel that this book really hit home with what it means to be a teenager in the 1970's, to be in this environment of constant social issues and arguments while trying to make something out of yourself, even if no one else believes or cares if you succeed.
This book reminds me a little bit of The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros because of how each chapter can hold there own, and is a different story per chapter. However the main character of Ugly to Start With reminds me more of Holden Caufield, in the way that they are both teenagers who are sort of sulky, despairing and depressed.
I give this book a 3.25 because I think the book hits on a lot of hard issues and that is what made me a little bit more uncomfortable and dislike it a little.

Favorite Quotation: "There was this huge, filled up world all around us that I couldn't see." (p. 7)

xoxo.

Miss Liz

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This week's round-up of middle grade science fiction and fantasy from around the blogs (10/13/19)

Here's what I found in my blog reading this week; please let me know if I missed your post! The Reviews The Bootlace Magician (Cicus Mirandus #2), by Cassie Beasley, at Randomly Reading The Boy Who Was Fire, by Marcus Kahle McCann, at The Children's Book Review City of Bones, by Victoria Schwab, at Pages Unbound The Dark Lord Clementine, by Sarah Jean Howitz, at Sally's Bookshelf Dead Voices, by Katherine Arden, at Charlotte's Library Dragon Pearl, by Yoon Ha Lee, at Imaginary Friends The Dragon Warrior, by Katie Zhao, at Log Cabin Library , Forever and Everly , and Lost In Storyland Ember: the Secret Book, by Jamie Smart, at Mr Ripleys Enchanted Books The Hippo at the End of the Hall, by Helen Cooper, at Charlotte's Library Homerooms and Hall Passes, by Tom O'Donnell, at Ms. Yingling Reads The International Yeti Collective, by Paul Mason, at Book Craic The Little Broomstick, by Mary Stewart, at Fantasy Literature Mightier than the Sword, by Drew Callander and ...
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Stolen Time, by Danielle Rollins, for Timeslip Tuesday

If you are in the mood for a real page turner of a YA time travel story (it only took me two and a bit hours to read 400 pages), with lots of twists, lots of great characters, and lots of action, look no further than Stolen Time, by Danielle Rollins (Febraury 2019, HarperTeen). It begins in Seattle, in 1913, when Dorothy runs away from the marriage her con-artist mother has inveigled her into.  Her flight leads her to a time traveler, from New Seattle, 2077.  Ash is on a mission to find his mentor, the professor who figured out time travel technology, and who disappeared. leaving his team of young people gathered from different times without guidance and purpose.  Dorothy stows away in his ship, and Ash inadvertently takes her back to his own time, to a city devastated by earthquakes and inundated by tidal waves. It's a city living in fear of a vicious gang, whose co-leader, Roman, was once one of the professor's brightest students.  But Roman wanted time travel to ...
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The Clockwork Scarab

By: Coleen Gleason Two girls are dead and one has gone missing in 1889 London.  The only clues are an Egyptian Scarabs that were found at both the murder scenes. Well, not exactly murder, both deaths were made out to look like suicides.  Mina Holmes, as in Sherlock Holmes's niece, and Evaline Stoker, sister of Bram Stoker (author of Dracula), are called to a secret meeting at the British Museum by Irene Adler.  Stoker and Holmes are called to investigate these series of murders by the Princess of Wales.  Along the way Holmes makes friends with Dylan Eckhert.  Dylan was at the museum looking at the statue of Sekhmet,  and Egyptian  Goddess, when he touched a scarab on the statue.  Next thing he knew, he woke up in 1889 London.  His problems come from the fact that he's from 2016 London.  Miss Holmes also has a rivalry with Lieutenant Grayling, of Scotland Yard.  Miss Stoker runs into a mysterious pick-pocket, Pix (meaning Pixie), a c...
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