Flora and Ulysses

2014 NEWBERY AWARD WINNER!!!
by Kate DiCamillo

Genre: Fantasy, I guess... It feels less like fantasy and more like just fiction, but it really is more fantastical.

It all started with a vacuum cleaner. When Tootie Tickham received an all-terrain one for her birthday and tried it outside (yes, it works on grass too), she accidentally sucked up a... squirrel?
Yes, a squirrel, and Flora, a natural-born cynic who loves reading comics, saved it from certain death. At first it just appears to be a regular, everyday squirrel who has just been sucked up into an all-terrain vacuum cleaner... But then it lifts up the vacuum cleaner. With one paw. The truth finally dawns on Flora: This squirrel is a superhero!
Flora names the squirrel Ulysses, and they become excellent friends. Ulysses, Flora soon finds out, can fly, write poetry, and of course, lift vacuum cleaners. But every superhero comes with an archvillain. And sure enough, Flora's cheesy-romance-novel-writing mother (who, by the way, cares more about a little shepherdess lamp than about Flora) hates Ulysses as soon as she sees him. She's convinced he's diseased, and is eager to get him out of the way and dead. Can Flora save Ulysses? Can Ulysses save himself? Can either of them save the world? Maybe they can't do it alone, but they can definitely do it together.

This book had a theme of friendship and love all the way through it. And, wonderfully, it was not between a boy and a girl or even human and human—it was between a girl and a squirrel. It's such a different idea... And Kate DiCamillo wrote the idea awesomely. She has dropped a lot of interesting characters into Flora and Ulysses. Another thing I like about this book is that there are some pictures. Sometimes there will be a comic strip illustrating part of the story. Sometimes there are full-page pictures to go along with the words. Sometimes there are small pictures next the words that show one thing they are talking about. Anyways, the pictures help the story a lot, especially the comic strips, because Flora likes comics a lot. Oh, and another good thing is because sometimes Kate DiCamillo writes in a somewhat roundabout, whimsical way, like she is writing for younger audiences, which isn't bad but sometimes it can be a little bit distracting, and in this book she writes in a more straightforward and clear manner. However, I stand firm in my belief that the best aspect in this book was the friendship and love theme. It was just carried off so beautifully!

The Time-Traveling Fashionista on Board the Titanic

by Bianca Turetsky

Genre: Fantasy
Age group: 9+

Louise Lambert is your average middle school student, with the exception of one thing that really sets her apart from the crowd—Louise loves fashion, especially vintage. She'd much rather go to a vintage clothing store than a glossy shop at the mall, and is working on building her soon-to-be extensive collection of vintage clothes. So when she one day receives an invitation to a pop-up vintage clothing store, she absolutely can't wait. 
The store is perfect for her, filled with wonderful finds, and when Louise discovers a beautiful pink dress, she can't resist trying it on. But when she does, a strange thing happens—the store around her disappears and she is transported into the past. Now she's Alice Baxter, stunning teenage movie star, aboard a luxurious cruise ship... and Louise is loving it. Until she finds out the name of the cruise ship. Turns out, Louise is on the Titanic, which is fated to crash into an iceberg and drown hundreds of its passengers. The only way for her to get back to the present is to put the dress back on... but it's gone missing! Can she find the dress and go back to her normal life, before it's too late and she's stuck in the past forever?

I really liked this book for two main reasons. 1) The pictures. This is one of the rare novels that has full-color pictures every so often, which is AWESOME!! Also, the pictures are of beautiful dresses, which I think are very nice. 2) The plot/story idea. It really is amazing nobody thought of this before, because this is a really fun idea, and Bianca Turetsky could really have fun with this. It's surprisingly action-packed. While this book may not be as interesting for some people, it's a really great book for fashion-lovers and people who are just looking for something new and fresh.
This book is actually part of a series, The Time-Traveling Fashionista, and Louise has, as of today, 2 other adventures: The Time-Traveling Fashionista at the Palace of Marie Antoinette and The Time-Traveling Fashionista and Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile.

The Fault in Our Stars

by John Green

Genre: Realistic fiction
Age: 13+

Hazel has cancer in her lungs. She uses an oxygen tank. Her parents hover over her at her every waking moment. Her mom wants her to get out more, and so she's been forced to attend a depressing cancer support group for kids like her - kids whose days are numbered. She tolerates the support group, and doesn't really enjoy it. But one day a boy called Augustus Waters shows up, a friend of her friend Isaac's. He used to have cancer, and now has one prosthetic leg, and he and Hazel immediately like each other. They start to spend time together, and Hazel makes Augustus read her favorite book, and he makes her read his. But soon they discover that they like-like each other.
But Augustus has been keeping a secret from Hazel. And when he decides to tell her, both of their new lives are going to change.

At first, I expected this book to just be very overrated. Then I read it.
It was AMAZINGLY GOOD. This is a new type of love story, with many more obstacles specially created for a book about cancer. It has so many emotions, tightly packed into a thick-with-thoughts novel, told in the slightly sarcastic (but definitely unique) voice of Hazel. And then a plot twist occurs nearer to the end of the novel that for me, at least, changed everything. My friends who read The Fault in Our Stars cried at the end. That is the level of the storytelling and plot in this book. In other words, it is EXCELLENT.

How to Rock Braces and Glasses

by Meg Haston

Genre: Realistic fiction
Age: 10-11+

Kacey Simon is the most popular girl in the whole of Marquette Middle School. She's scored the lead in the school play and gets to kiss Quinn Wilder, has her own program, Simon Says, on the Marquette Middle TV Program, and always makes sure to tell people the cold, hard truth. Whether they like it or not. Truthfully, Kacey's pretty harsh. But nobody's going to challenge the coolest girl at school.
One day, though, she gets an infection from her brand-new contacts - and gets stuck with huge, clunky glasses. Then she trips and needs - GASP! - braces!! And to top it all off, she's suddenly developed a hideous lithp. She goes from top of the pyramid to the very, very bottom in a few days. And that does not bode well for her social life. She soon overhears her best friend planning to ditch her, and loses her spot in the school play. But then she becomes friends again with Paige - one of the least popular girls in the school - and they start a plan to get Kacey right back where she belongs - at the top. But when she meets a new boy called Zander who has his own band, and becomes their lead singer, she starts to wonder if she really, truly wants to be super-popular again.
This book is not only funny, it's new. There are so many books out there that have a tyrannical mean girl who rules the school, but this one takes that idea and changes it up - because how many books out there have a tyrannical mean girl who drops to the pitiful, somewhat-nice girl? The point is, it's a new idea that's really very appealing. There are spots of humor, and Kacey's sarcastic voice makes for a great narration. Also, Kacey has to make lots of choices and decisions throughout the course of the book, and you sometimes find yourself urging her mentally to go with that choice! Overall, this was a great read, especially for middle-schoolers. :)

Son of the Mob

by Gordon Korman

Genre: Realistic fiction
Age: 11+

Vince Luca just wants to be normal. He dreams of dating Angela O'Bannon, the most popular girl in school. His big brother Alex keeps trying to hook Vince up, because he thinks Vince's love life is his love life. He's trying his hardest in football at school. Only, the chances are just about zero of Vince ever being truly normal - especially since his dad is a powerful mafia boss.
His dad already knows Vince wants nothing to do with the family business, but his work keeps sneaking into Vince's life. Then Vince meets Kendra Bightly - a girl who he really, truly falls in love with. It should be easy, but it isn't. It would be hard to explain his father's occupation to any girl, but it's particularly hard with Kendra... especially seeing as her dad is the FBI agent who wants to get rid of Vince's dad once and for all.

Just like most of Gordon Korman's books, this one is HILARIOUS!!! Vince is in a sticky situation, which allows for tons of humor, and Korman adds a generous helping. Even my mom, who rarely laughs at books, found herself laughing just about every five seconds. Also the plot is really great - it's sort of like Romeo and Juliet, only modernized, less tragic, and nobody dies. But the idea of people in love from two families who (in this case, somewhat indirectly) hate each other is the same. Overall, though, even if the plot was really bad (though it isn't), the humor would save it from collapsing. Actually, if you like humor, read lots of Gordon Korman. He's really great for that kind of thing. He also wrote No More Dead Dogs, which I reviewed also on this site.

Zero Tolerance

by Claudia Mills

Genre: Realistic fiction
Age: 11+

Sierra Shepherd is in 7th grade, and is probably the best model student ever. She's in Leadership Club, helped to sew the banner displaying Longwood Middle School's four values (Rules, Respect, Responsibility and Reliability), always gets straight A's and always - ALWAYS! - follows the rules. So when she opens her lunchbox at school one day and finds she accidentally brought her mother's identical one rather than her own and finds that it contains a paring knife, she - naturally - turns it in to the lunch lady, expecting to hear a "Thank you for being responsible. We'll contact your mother immediately." But Sierra's school has a Zero Tolerance policy - absolutely NO drugs and NO weapons, with NO exceptions and NO excuses. Even if it was just an accident and Sierra just wanted to hand it in. Now she's facing an expulsion, and is spending her days in in-school suspension... with the "bad" kids. But soon she starts to realize that they aren't juvenile delinquents... nor is she the most perfect student in the school.

The author of this book brought up an issue that actually happens today and crafted a totally real story about it. My dad actually read an article in The Economist about the same thing Zero Tolerance talks about - zero tolerance policies in schools. There were some pretty strange things in the article that qualified for expulsion or suspension. For example, according to the article, The Perils of Peanut-Tossing, a school with a dress code of black shoes decided the situation was major enough to bring in the police when a five-year-old boy who didn't have black shoes wore red shoes colored in with black Sharpie, and red splotches were still visible. And talking about firing a Hello Kitty soap bubble gun earned a suspension. Is it really OK to suspend young children for such minor reasons as this? Is it worth it? Besides all that, Zero Tolerance is written is a really engaging way, and I also enjoyed seeing how Sierra and her view of herself and others changed throughout the course of the book. This is a novel where that is very, very true.

Saints

by Gene Luen Yang

Genre: Historical fiction graphic novel
Age: 12+
This book is actually part of a long novel, Boxers & Saints, in two parts, Boxers and Saints. They are from different sides of the story in the Boxer Rebellion. This one is supposed to come second, but if you read it first it also makes sense.

Four-girl was born in China as the fourth daughter to her mother on the fourth day of the fourth month. In Chinese, "four" is a homonym of "death," so her family treats her not-so-nicely. They didn't even bother to give her a name! Her grandfather especially. He thinks she's a devil. So she tries to become a devil. She "freezes" her face in a "devil face" and is taken to a doctor who helps her stop. But then she causes a tragedy. One day she finds a person in the woods - a person who is a girl but looks like a boy and is wearing armor. She tells the doctor about it, and he takes her to the priest. Four-girl becomes a Christian, and finally she gets a proper name... Vibiana.
But China during the Boxer Rebellion is not a safe place for Christians like Vibiana. Will she stay true to her new faith, or will she abandon it to be safe?

This book had a really unusual ending to me. It was definitely out of the ordinary. But it fit the story very well, so I'm not complaining or anything. I think my favorite part of Saints was the epilogue. It felt so strong and... it was a great epilogue for this book. I think the theme of religion was also really strong, and I liked how Vibiana traveled through her faith... I thought it was very true-to-life. Overall this book stayed with me for a long time after I read it. It gave me a lot to think about.