Kate's Tales of Books and Bands

A Mixture of Mischief (Walden Pond Press, February 4, 2020) is the third and final book of Anna Meriano's Love Sugar Magic series, that tells the story of how Leo, the youngest daughter in a family of magical baking burjas, finds her own gifts for magic and her own place in her family. Leo, still fed up about her place as the youngest sister (there are four older ones), is chomping at the bit to learn all she can about the magic that makes her family's bakery so successful.  Finally, her mother is starting to teach her, but before she can relax and enjoy being a dependable part of the bakery, dark clouds appear.  A rival bakery is about to open in town, and her family's magical heirlooms, part of what makes their baking magic work, start to go missing. But most disturbing at all is the appearance in her life of her father's father, who abandoned his family when he found they hadn't inherited his magic.  Her grandfather has discovered that Leo's' magical gif...

The Good Hawk , by Joseph Elliott (Walker Books US, January 2020), is a magical version of early Scottish history (9th century-ish), with tons of heart and lots of violence that tells of two teens desperately trying to save their kidnapped kin. 15-year-old Agatha takes her job as Hawk very seriously, patrolling the walls of her clan's island home, always on the lookout for danger.  Though many are dismissive of her abilities (she seems to have Down's Syndrome) she knows she's a good Hawk.  She has a special gift, too, one she keeps hidden--she can communicate with animals.  Then one night she makes a mistake, and fires a burning arrow at one of her own clan's boats, and she's no longer allowed to be a hawk. Her friend Jaime, always anxious, a thinker rather than a doer, was assigned to be an Angler, though he gets seasick. For reasons he doesn't understand, the clan has chosen him for another role--he must marry a girl from a nearby clan, though his own people h...

This week's Timeslip Tuesday book is an older English one-- The Wind Eye , by Robert Westall (upper MG/YA 1976, still in print).  Westall's work ranges from picture books to adult, often exploring how the past hits the present in dark and mysterious ways.  Which is what happens in The Wind Eye.... It begins when a family, comprising a mother and her teenaged son married to a father with two daughters (one a young teen and one a little girl), setting off to the northeast coast of England to stay in the old house the father has just inherited.  They are not a happy family.  The kids get along fine, but the parents are not getting on well at all. And then the past and the present collide.   St. Cuthbert still is a real person to the people of this part of the Northumberland coast, and he becomes so to the kids as well when they find a boat that travels back to his time, taking them out to the island that was his retreat from the world.   Along the way, there's...

Here are the posts about mg fantasy and sci fi that I gleaned in my blog reading this week!  Please let me know if I missed yours. The Reviews Agent Weasel and the Abominable Dr Snow, by Nick East, at Library Girl and Book Boy Agent Weasel and the Fiendish Fox Gang, at Twirling Book Princess The Bootlace Magician, by Cassie Beasley, at Sloth Reads The Haunting, by Lindsey Duga, at Not Acting My Age and Cracking the Cover The Infinite Lives of Maisie Day, by Christopher Edge, at Charlotte's Library Nevertell, by Katherie Orton, at Booktrailers for Kids and YA Sal and Gabi Break the Universe, by Carlos Hernandez, at Sonderbooks Serafina and the Seven Stars, by Robert Beatty, at Good Reads With Rona A Sprinkle of Sorcery, by Michelle Harrison, at Book Craic The Squire, His Knight, and His Lady, by Gerald Morris, at Leaf's Reviews Urchin of the Riding Stars (The Mistmantle Chronicles, Book 1) by M.I. McAllister, at Semicolon Wild and Chance, by Allan Zadoff, at Ms. Yingling Reads...

I'm still holding on to the middle grade sci fi/fantasy books of 2019, with a slightly over the top grim determination to read all the ones at hand before the end of January...(fortunately January 2020 is not a huge mg sci fi/fantasy release month, so I'm sure I can catch up on this year's in just a few days of reading!). The Infinite Lives of Maisie Day , by Christopher Edge, is an English import that came out here in the US back in April 2019 (Delecorte), and in 2018 in the UK.  It's a story of sisters caught in an altered reality, with time and space gone wonky, with birthday balloons and tasty food meeting a horror of chaos and despair. It's Maisie's tenth birthday, and her parents are making a huge effort to give her a great party.  The greatness of the party is supposed to make up for the fact that none of her friends are coming.  Maisie in fact has none at all.  She's a home-schooled science and math prodigy, who's never had a chance to socialize ...

Here's what I found this week; please let me know of anything I missed! The Reviews Alien Superstar, by Henry Winkler and Lin Oliver, at Good Reads with Rona Boy Band of the Apocalypse, by Tom Nicholl, at Always in the Middle Cog, by Greg van Eekhout, at Sonderbooks The Dark Lord Clementine, by Sarah Jean Horwitz, at Geo Librarian A Dash of Trouble (Sprinkle of Spirits #1), by Anna Meriano, at Leaf's Reviews The Girl who Stole and Elephant, by Nizrana Farook, at Lily and the Fae (I haven't read this myself yet, so not sure it counts as fantasy....) The Girl with the Dragon Heart, by Stephanie Burgis, at Book Criac Lampie and the Children of the Sea, by Annet Schaap, at Whispering Stories The Mystwick School of Musicraft, by Jessica Khoury, at Sharon the Librarian Race to the Sun, by Rebecca Roanhoures, at Ms. Yingling Reads , Book Page , and Bookshelf Fantasies The Red Winter (The Tapestry #5), by Henry H. Neff, at Say What? The Revenge of Magic, by James Riley, at Imagi...

I am still stubbornly refusing to say good-bye to the middle grade sci-fi/fantasy books of 2019.  Though I did read around 200 of them, when I went through the Goodreads list of 2019 MG fiction, I found some that I had overlooked.   If I'd started focusing on 2020 back when it started, I don't know when I'd have gotten around to reading those books, and I'm very glad to have read them, so here I am. I'm really surprised that The Twelve , by Cindy Lin (HarperCollins, July 2019), didn't get more buzz (or at least, more buzz that trickled down to me).  This is a debut East Asian zodiac fantasy that is a really fun adventure, with tons of kid appeal and fascinating magical powers! Usagi's island home was supposed to be kept safe from invasion by the powers of the 12 zodiac warriors, trained in the use of the magical gifts of their signs on Jade Mountain, home to not just the warriors and their heirs, but to 12 wonderfully magical treasures.  But the Dragon warri...

The Thief Knot , by Kate Milford, is the third of the Greenglass House series (though there are other books set in the fictional town of Nagspeake). The first, Greenglass House, will always have a special place in my heart, because not only did I myself love it, but it was the last book I read out loud to my little one (now 16), and he loved it too....So it was a treat to anticipate returning to Nagspeake with The Thief Knot (it's a real pleasure to keep a book you really want to read out for a few days, so that every time it catches your eye you get a happy zest moment), and a treat to actually do so (because it was really good)! The Thief Knot is essentially the story of a group of kids coming together to solve a mystery--in this case, the kidnapping of a politician's little girl, Peony.  Best friends Marzana and Nialla had been wanting excitement, and despite all the curious and dubious things about their home in the Liberty district of Nagspeake (full of shifty characters w...

welcome to another week of middle grade sci fi/fantasy goodness, gathered by me from around the blogs for your reading pleasure!  Please let me know of any posts I missed. The Reviews The Big Shrink (Upside-Down Magic #6), by Sarah Mlynowski, Lauren Myracle, and Emily Jenkins, at Puss Reboots The Book of Secrets, and The Book of Answers (The Ateban Cipher books 1 and 2) by A.L. Tait, at Always in the Middle Brown, by Håkon Øvreås, at Charlotte's Library The Good Hawk, by Joseph Elliott, at Log Cabin Library Jinxed, by Amy McCulloch, at Ms. Yingling Reads and Waking Brain Cells Magical Mischief, by Anna Dale, at Leaf's Reviews The Mask of Aribella, by Anna Houghton, at Book Murmuration The Monster in the Lake, by Louie Stowell, at Book Craic The Obisdian Compass (Time Castaways #2), by Liesl Shurtliff, at Charlotte's Library Orion Lost, by Alastair Chisholm, at Book Craic and Mr Ripleys Enchanted Books Secondhand Wishes, by Anna Staniszweski, at Ms. Yingling Reads The S...

The Obsidian Compass , by Liesl Shurtliff (middle grade, Katherine Tegan Books, Oct 2019) continues the time travelling adventures of three siblings adventuring through time that began with The Mona Lisa Key (link goes to my review).  That first book ended with Mateo, Ruby, and Corey getting home again safely, after many dangerous and difficulties aboard a time travelling ship captained by a ruthless man who was trying to use Matteo, in particular, for his own selfish purposes. But getting home safe wasn't to be the end of their time travelling.  Mateo needs to find his friend, Jia, one of Captain Vincent's crew, who was in danger of being dumped somewhere in time by the captain after she crossed him to help Mateo and his siblings.  Captain Vincent still has the obsidian compass that allows him to time travel, so Mateo decides to try to make his own, and against all odds, he succeeds.  But when he starts using it, he gets his family snarled anew in danger. As they ...

One of the joys of being a first round Cybils Awards panelist is getting to read charming books that weren't on your radar at all.  A case in point, for those of us reading for Elementary/Middle Grade Speculative Fiction, was Brown , by Håkon Øvreås, illustrated by Øyvind Torseter (American edition 2019, Enchanted Lion). This is the first book in the best-selling, award winning, and much beloved My Alter Ego is a Superhero series, and it's a great one to offer the elementary school aged kid who's past early chapter books, but for whom the generously illustrated, fewer words per page books are just right. Rusty's beloved grandfather has died, and to make things worse, bullies are wrecking the fort he's built out in the woods with his best friend, Jack. What Rusty needs is a superhero to save the day, and so he becomes one himself! With his brown clothes and cape, and armed with cans of brown paint and advice from his grandfather's ghost, he gets revenge as th...

Happy New Year!  Here's what I found this week in my blog reading; please let me know if I missed your post. The Reviews Cog, by Greg van Eekhout, at Raise Them Righteous The Dark Lord Clementine, by Sarah Jean Horwitz, at Raise Them Righteous The Darkdeep, by Ally Condie and Brendan Reichs, at Twirling Book Princess The Door to the Lost, by Jaleigh Johnson, at Feed Your Fiction Addiction Esme's Wish, by Elizabeth Foster, at Book Craic and Hasanthi's Book Blog The Forgotten Girl, by India Hill Brown, at Charlotte's Library The Healing Star, by A. Kidd, at Always in the Middle The Key of Lost Things (Hotel Between #2), by Sean Easley, at Say What? Jinxed, by Amy McCulloch, at Sharon the Librarian Legacy (Keeper of the Lost Cities #8), by Shannon Messenger, at Carstairs Considers Over the Moon, by Natalie Lloyd, at Raise Them Righteous The Root of Magic, by Kathleen Benner Duble, at Not Acting My Age Stoop Sale Treasure, by Corey Ann Haydu, at Ms. Yingling Reads The T...