Candyfreak

by Steve Almond

Genre: Memoir
Age group: 11+ (But it's really versatile. An adult could read this and not get bored. A 10 year old could probably handle the language as well. (I don't mean bad language! He uses a lot of obscure words))

Throughout his whole life, starting at a very young age, Steve Almond has loved candy. He's kind of relied upon candy to help him through hard times. He eats at least one piece EVERY DAY without fail. But not all candy is available anymore. For example, one of his absolute favorite chocolate bars, the Caravelle, was discontinued. Why do smaller candy businesses close down? How are candies and chocolate bars like the Caravelle even made? These are just some of the questions he's trying to answer as he journeys through "the chocolate underbelly of America" to find out the sweet, sticky truth.

The topic of this book is just amazing. I mean, a whole book about candy, where you actually get to see what goes on inside real live candy factories and read about the marvelous tastes and fillings and chocolate enrobers and nut applicators involved with the making and consuming of these candies? It was awesome! Steve Almond uses many big and/or obscure words that younger readers may have to look up the meanings for, but other than that, the language is pretty easy to understand. The memoir aspect of this book was made clear in the beginning, a little in the middle parts, and again reinforced at the end, but sometimes the "So What" was a little unclear or hard to make out. However, you, the reader, still get that candy has been his crutch in hard times and that it is very important to him. This book was filled with awesome descriptions and inspired me to eat more candy, especially the ones described in great detail in this book. Before Candyfreak, I never realized how much I was missing out on.

Moment of Silence

There is no author, because this is not a book.
Recently Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 was shot down over the border of Ukraine and Russia. Nobody has yet been pinpointed as the perpetrator, the person who actually did the missile shooting. It might not even have been intentional. Maybe it was a case of misidentification, and they thought the plane was something else. But all 298 people on board that plane were killed. I would like to observe a moment of silence for those people right now.











Thank you.

The School for Good and Evil

by Soman Chainani


Genre: Fantasy
Age group: 11/12+

In Sophie and Agatha's town, every year, two children are kidnapped. Well, not so much kidnapped as just taken—for they are not taken to be ransomed, but taken to be trained at the School for Good and the School for Evil. And after every year, new fairy tales show up with those two children as the hero and the villain. This year, it's Sophie and Agatha's turn. Sophie loves pink and spends hours each day on beauty treatments and makeup. She's sure she's going to the School for Good, to be turned into a perfect princess. Agatha dresses in black, misshapen dresses, and lives in a graveyard with her cat, Reaper. It's likely that she's heading for the School for Evil, where students learn Uglification and Special (Evil) Talents. But when the day actually comes, and Sophie and Agatha are finally taken, Sophie's dropped in the School of Evil and Agatha at the School of Good... Surely there's been some mistake! ...But the School Master doesn't make mistakes. If they really are in the wrong schools, is there some way to put things right? Or could Sophie and Agatha actually be in the places they're meant for?

Though this book might have some cliches and whatnot, it's so excellent that stuff doesn't really matter. I started it one morning, and I literally could not think about anything else for the whole day. I found myself picking this book up and reading another chapter—or two, or three, or the whole rest of the book—whenever I had the chance. It was that good. I liked how the characters interacted with each other: It was so real! Soman Chainani really understands how people work, and he uses many of these types of relationships between two people in this book. I also really enjoyed seeing how the characters changed over the course of the book. This is a kind of story where the characters' changes are a huge part of the plot. I can't say too much about the changes, for fear of spoiling the book, though. However, I will say that Sophie and Agatha's friendship is a very important part of the book, and that changes a LOT. I loved this book a lot, and I highly recommend it to everyone. Not everything is what it seems in this book—in fact, many of the characters are clueless to or are hiding things from themselves—and all of this secrecy wrapped in a magnificent display of storytelling makes for an extremely exciting read.

The Wig in the Window

by Kristen Kittscher

Genre: Realistic fiction/mystery
Age group:10/11+

Sophie Young and Grace Yang are—almost—spies. Well, they're trying to be. They're erring on the old-fashioned side, and use walkie-talkies rather than smartphones, and they like to sneak out in the middle of the night to spy on any of their neighbors who might still have their lights on—you never know who in your neighborhood might be a serial killer. But they're not really serious about it. It never escalates to anything more than a fun game... until they peek inside the window of Charlotte Agford, the middle school guidance counselor.
Sophie and Grace always knew there was something up about Agford. What's with the weird wig, and her posse of students who are always ready to do her bidding, S.M.I.L.E.? When they see an unsettlingly red liquid spattered all over her kitchen counter, and overhear a suspicious phone call, they know something's up. The police dismiss it after they find evidence to show that it was just beet juice, Sophie and Grace think there's more to it, especially when a mysterious blue car and a strange man with a unibrow show up. There's more to Agford than meets the eye... And it's up to Young & Yang to figure out what's going on.

This was a really great read. It was entertaining, and kept me completely on my toes (not literally). I think it's an excellent mystery book. Usually when I read mystery books, every time I get a new clue I guess who the criminal really is, and then at the end I see if any of my guesses were right. This book has so many red herrings that partway through the book I just gave up trying to figure out who was the bad guy. It's not confusing, though. It's just really, really hard to point fingers because there are multiple situations which would work. Besides the main plot, where Sophie & Grace are trying to solve the mystery of Charlotte Agford, there are also some friendship problems which makes it more relatable (and slightly more believable) for middle-grade readers. This book is intense, exciting, and sometimes even scary, and the story is not only a great idea, it's written really well. My only problem is the cover: it doesn't really fit the characters the way they're described in the book. But that's just a cover.

Ender's Game

by Orson Scott Card

Genre: Science fiction
Age group: 11-12+

It's hundreds of years into the future, and aliens, buggers, have attacked Earth multiple times... Earth's resources are running out and her army commanders are running out of options. The buggers are strong, and seem to share one mind—they communicate almost instantaneously. It will be hard for the humans to beat them. They've taken to breeding military geniuses to defeat the aliens, and are waiting for the one who will end the buggers once and for all...
And they want Ender Wiggin, a boy of only six. They want him to skip ahead to battle school and become the one they want. He's stronger than his compassionate sister Valentine and more composed than his psychopath brother Peter—the government believes he is the one. And Ender is going to try to be that.
Battle school isn't easy for Ender, but he excels in everything he does. Colonel Graff, the principal of battle school, has taken a shine to Ender, and he gets promoted and promoted. But when he faces the Simulation, a series of games to help him train and get better at fighting, he is sometimes forced to do things he doesn't want to do. As Ender is pushed further and further into this new world of competition, danger and desperation, he tries to hold the pressure... But little does he know, the worst is yet to come.

As I usually do, I really liked this book. Firstly, the end is so surprising. I was totally not expecting what happened to happen. It works so much better than if the end part was just cut off and everything was happy ever after. The end goes deeper than that. Some people might say this book is a giant cliche, what with the aliens attacking and all that. IT ISN'T. Ender's Game still focuses on saving the world, but it's also about human nature. Through the action and fight scenes, we get to see inside Ender's head and watch as he's handling the pressure in the only way he knows how. Sure, this book may not be as action-packed as other books, but that doesn't make it boring. It just means that it goes deeper than the superficial violence and romance. (There isn't really much romantic stuff in Ender's Game, though.) This could be considered a book about aliens and exploding starships—or it could be considered a book about ethics and human nature. It's really up to you.

Revolver

by Marcus Sedgwick

Genre: Historical fiction
Age group: 11+

Sig was a normal boy in Alaska... that is, until his father, Einar, drove across the frozen lake outside their house and froze to death. And to make things even more unusual, a man called Wolff came to Sig's house looking for Einar's gold... Einar's gold that Sig knows nothing about. But even though Wolff knows that Sig has no clue where this gold is, he is determined to stay until Sig's stepmother and sister return home from a trip, and maybe even past then. Wolff is dangerous, and there's nothing Sig can do about him. Except... there's a revolver in the pantry. If Sig could get that gun, he could win. He could get rid of Wolff. Can he—or will he—do it? Or will his memories of his dead pacifist mother get the better of him?

This book skipped back and forth between the present (actually the early 1900s in Alaska) and the past (before the early 1900s in Europe). The present is told from Sig's point of view and the past from his father's. Admittedly, getting both of these points of view gives you a lot of information that you otherwise wouldn't get and need to know in order to understand the story. However, it's slightly confusing the way it switches. I was reading and suddenly it switched from present to past. I was really confused and had to go back and start over, using a higher level of concentration than usual. However, I got used to it after maybe 50 pages, and then the story started to get more interesting. It's a little sparse, and Marcus Sedgwick does not waste words on beautiful description, but that works in this case because Alaska is also sparse. Not all stories are cut out for vivid imagery. This is not one of my favorite books and I did not love it, but it wasn't bad. It's an interesting type of mystery/historical fiction that makes you wonder who really is the bad guy.

Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes

by Jonathan Auxier

Genre: Fantasy
Age group: 10+

Today, there aren't many blind thieves. But there was a time when there were. Peter Nimble was the best of them all—an orphan, trained to be a thief by his cruel master who forced him to steal jewelry for him, who one day met a haberdasher and stole a box from him. He, naturally, opens the box, and finds inside three pairs of eggs that when cracked reveal—three pairs of eyes. But they aren't normal eyes. There is a pair of gold, a pair of onyx, and a pair of emerald. When he tries the gold pair, he is suddenly transported to another place in another time and finds himself floating in the ocean, next to a ship. He is lifted aboard, and meets Sir Tode, a knight who has been turned into an unfortunate mix between cat and horse. He also meets the haberdasher, who explains to him the eyes and tells him their purpose: to help Peter as he embarks on a trip to discover his one and only destiny.
This book was pretty good. The writing sounds oldish—no, that's a bad way to put it. It sounds not modern, it sounds like it was written by, for example, Merlin. YES, that's what it is. It sounds like it was written by Merlin or some other famous wizard from way-back-when. That's not a bad thing. It's the right style of writing for this book; I think any other way would ruin certain parts of it. It makes the book more whimsical. I also liked how there are so many new obstacles popping up all the time—it adds a lot of excitement. Unfortunately, the fact that so many obstacles are popping up all the time can be a bit overwhelming and feels almost naive, and at times I felt as if this book was written by my 5th grader friend. However, it's a really interesting story, and is carried off pretty well. Maybe it's not as well-written as some of the other books of this genre, but it's certainly a great and entertaining read.