October means it's time for my annual list of horror stories. Who
doesn't love a good scare in October? It's almost required to prepare
for Halloween by scaring yourself silly. Here are six horror books
published in the last six months.
6 new horror novels
Noether was a new name to me. After this book, she's among my favorite historical figures. She's an impressive figure. For her accomplishments to be sure, but even more because of her dedication. She didn't care about compensation or recognition. She really only cared about the math. She didn't care that people thought her too loud, big, sloppy, or clumsy. She was completely herself. I already admire her for that. Her accomplishments are hard to explain to a child audience given that they deal with theoretical physics and mathematics, Still, I'm all for giving kids a wide variety of heroes Noether is one who hasn't gotten enough attention.
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Author: Elise Gravel
Genre: comedy/graphic novel
Similar books: Narwhal and Jelly by Ben Clanton
Fox and Rabbit by Beth Ferry
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Summary (provided by publisher): Like most crows, Arlo has a big brain. But Arlo has something else: a little pal who’s not afraid to tell him when he’s being insufferable!
In the first of three episodes, a battle of the brains and bird-to-bird banter soon turns into an unexpected friendship. Arlo and Pips' adventures include a visit the big city and the beach on their hunt for shiny things and French fries. Cool crow facts are included throughout the book.
My opinion: Gravel has two aims here. On the surface, this is a simple story about a braggy crow. Arlo boasts about how wonderful he is and Pips points out the flaws in what he says. It's Pips' rejoinders that allpw the second aspect to come into play - the science facts. For each thing Pips says, Arlo shares a true fact about crows that proves his boast. There's not much more to this plot but it's a fun little book for young readers.
Advanced Reader Copy provided by NetGalley
Author: Stefan Bachman
Genre: fantasy
Similar books: The Cursed Inheritance of Henrietta Achilles by Haiko Hornig
The Bone Thief by Alyson Noel
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Summary (provided by publisher): Twelve-year-old Zita, an orphan and a housemaid, has resigned herself to a life of drudgery when a strange letter arrives, naming her the only living heir to the Brydgeborn fortune. Now the mistress of the castle, Zita soon realizes foul play led to the death of her family. And as she is guided through lessons in the art of witchcraft by the somewhat mysterious Mrs. Cantanker, Zita begins to wonder who is friend and who is foe.
My opinion: Orphans are pretty standard in middle grade fantasy. Especially the orphan who is lifted out a life of hard work to discover they have inhereted a magical legacy. In that aspect, this book is entirely what you would expect. And of course, Zita discovers that her family history is covering up some secrets. Finding her magical strengths leads her to the truth about what happened to her parents. There are a few surprises in the final chapters that I won't get into here (no spoilers) but overall this book treads familiar ground. A shame since ti's set in a world and magical worlds that held a lot of promise.
Advanced Reader copy provided by NetGalley
This audiobook promises a combination of culture clash, discovering your family, the sensitive portrayal of mental illness, and a kid learning self confidence. It could be perfection, so I'm pretty excited about this one.
The microbiome fascinates me. Not just because it's this whole world inside of your body but because it is vital to good health. We have this idea that the body does its thing all on its own but that simply is not true. We can't digest without the microbiome. Microscopic life protects and cleans our skin. It's amazing. Its also complex and we can't fully understand it. That makes it a tough subject for a kids book. How do you ex.plain something to kids when we don't fully understand it? D'yans has handled it correctly, making it very representative and artistic. Not a lot of hard facts, more fact based statements. By starting us with the image of a garden and the various life forms in it, the way they work together for the health of the garden on the whole we have a vague structure to consider the microbiome. We don't get into the hows, just the whats. It aids in digestion. We need it. Everyone's is different. It gets started when we are born, a gift from our mother, but is changed by our environment and experiences. With highly artistic illustrations, this book occupies a strange place between non-fiction and a picture book, but it's a solid way to start understanding a complicated idea.
Advanced Reader Copy provided by NetGalley
Author: Saadia Faruqi
Genre: realistic fiction
Similar books: Pop Flies, Robo-Pets, and Other Disasters by Suzanne Kamata
Extra Credit by Andrew Clements
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Summary (provided by publisher): Mimi is not thrilled to be spending her summer in Karachi, Pakistan, with grandparents she’s never met. Secretly, she wishes to find her long-absent father, and plans to write to him in her beautiful new journal.
The cook’s daughter, Sakina, still hasn’t told her parents that she’ll be accepted to school only if she can improve her English test score—but then, how could her family possibly afford to lose the money she earns working with her Abba in a rich family’s kitchen?
Although the girls seem totally incompatible at first, as the summer goes on, Sakina and Mimi realize that they have plenty in common—and that they each need the other to get what they want most.
My opinion: The set up here is one we don't often see in middle grade fiction - a child visiting her mother's homeland for the first time, experiencing a vastly different culture, feeling like an outsider while also feeling like she should understand it better. We get culture clash paired with degrees of class since Mimi and her mother are, by American standards, low income while her grandparents are, by any standards, wealthy. Then we meet Sakina who lives in poverty. So Mimi learns to recognize her own privilege while Sakina also gets a bit of a lesson about assumptions of another culture. We get a simple presentation of the responsibility of the "haves" to the rest of the world. We're also confronted with openly corrupt politics and the complexities of relationships with parents. Most interesting is the ending. Unlike most books for this age group this plot doesn't tie up all of the loose ends. It's more of a snapshot, the events that happen while Mimi and her mother are in Pakistan. A few plot points get resolved but most do not. We're left to draw our own conclusions, making this a great choice for book clubs.
Advanced Reader Copy provided by NetGalley
