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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

A Box of Bones, by Marina Cohen


A Box of Bones, by Marina Cohen (middle grade, Roaring Book Press, May 28 2019), is a lovely and moving book that's part mystery, part fantasy, and part child acquiring greater wisdom story.

12-year-old Kallie is following the path of her no-nonsense father, leading an organized life (a hanger with an outfit for each day of the week, for instance) devoid of whimsy and fanciful imagination.  (Which seemed almost pathological, and definitely unbelievable, to me whose life is the opposite!).  Her grandfather, who's her primary caregiver (her father having a job, and her mother having died years ago), is less rigid in his approach to the world, and so drags Kallie to a local fair.  There a mysterious stranger gives her a puzzle box, and Kallie's life changes.

The puzzle aspect to the wooden box overcomes Kallie's general aversion to inexplicable gifts from strangers, and so she sets out very scientifically to solve it.  When she does, a set of bone cubes with pictures on them fall out, and Kallie finds herself confronted with things she cannot explain.  Her best friend, the similarly scientific Pole Rodriguez, offers practical explanations for the odd occurrences creeping into Kallie's life, but a new classmate, Anna, who's wild imagination is her own coping mechanism, challenges Kallie with her exuberant embrace of the fantastical.  And for sixth grade English she has a teacher who's dragging her into Narnia, despite her best efforts to resist it.

Kallie starts wondering more and more about her mother, a very distant memory, and that story becomes the greatest challenge of all to her controlled, practical world-view.  When she turns on Anna and her stories about her life and rips them apart, wounding her friend greatly, she's forced to awknoldege that imagination is more than a pointless exercise, but something that can bring comfort, which Kallie will need when she finds out the truth about her mother.

Interspersed with Kallie's real-life story is a second story, a fantasy about Leah, a bone-carvers apprentice in a world under the cruel thumb of a tyrannical, murderous queen.  The two stories don't at first seem directly connected, but Leah's story, which seems tied to the bone cubes of the puzzle box, creates a dark and magical shadow for Kallie's ordinary life.  The ordinary life part is only just barely fantastical, but the reverberations of Leah's story make the whole thing magical (and will satisfy readers who are drawn to the book by its promise of fantasy!).  Illustrations by Yana Bogatch enhance the mood of dark fantasy (for readers who unlike me aren't reading so fast and immersedly that they don't see the pictures...sigh.  This is a Failing of mine.)

It is a gripping read (a single sitting one for me) poignant and magical and memorable.  It would make a great book discussion story for sixth graders; I'd love to be part of such a discussion, and pick apart the interconnections of the two stories.

For what it's worth, Kirkus is right there with me on this one, although they're more direct in calling it a mystery.  It is mysterious, but Kallie doesn't actually "solve" the mystery of the puzzle box and why she was given it in the first place, so kids who read mysteries for the sake of following clues along a direct path might feel a tad disgruntled.   I am not one of those readers, being ready to accept that sometimes strange and magical things just happen.

ps:  Kallie goes on to read the subsequent Narnia stories on her own.

ps 2:  this might be my favorite cover of the year so far

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

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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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Dark Metropolis

by Jaclyn Dolamore Thea waits tables by night, and by day, she takes care of her mother, who is plagued with bound-sickness; her mother was magically bound to her husband when they were married, but Thea’s father disappeared in a war.  Those who are bound-sick are taken away to the asylum, and Thea lives in constant fear that someone will notice her mother’s deteriorating mental state and that she will be left entirely alone.  Then Thea meets Freddy at the Telephone Club, where she works, and her friend mysteriously disappears.  Thea is thrust into parts of the city she didn’t know existed and, along with Freddy, discovers the darker aspects of their community. Although there was a lot going on for just about all of the book, there was a severe lack of depth to the world.  There was magic, but it was only mentioned or used in direct relation to the plot.  The magic wasn’t part of the world except as it was used to make the story work.  The charact...
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