Book Review: The Moonlight Meeting by Tracey Hecht & Rumur Dowling

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The Moonlight Meeting cover imageYoung children can find inspiration to read through Grow & Read, an early reader program that spins off from The Nocturnals series. The first book, The Moonlight Meeting by Tracey Hecht & Rumur Dowling, introduces the main characters while also revealing a bit about their real animal characteristics.

Tobin is a shy pangolin who lets out a stinky gas when he’s startled. Bismark is a brash sugar glider who’s a bit aggressive and quick to take offense. Dawn is a fox, a thinker who comes up with solutions to conflict. The three meet and figure out a way they can all be happy sharing one juicy pomelo.

The Grow & Read program was created under the supervision of reading specialists and that shows in the way the book is structured. It lists a level on the front that corresponds generally to an age group, and there’s light copy accompanied by illustrations on every page. Chapters are short, and the story includes well known words as well as more challenging ones to increase vocabulary.

The Moonlight Meeting story is cute and the whimsical illustrations by Waymond Singleton should help budding readers follow along and be encouraged to learn new words as they turn pages. Fun facts at the end should satisfy the interests of kids who are drawn to nonfiction.

I highly recommend The Moonlight Meeting for readers aged 6 to 8 and their parents.

The publisher provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Saturdays With Hitchcock by Ellen Wittlinger

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Saturdays With Hitchcock cover imageLife is complicated for 12-year-old Maisie. Her uncle has moved in with her family after getting injured while filming a movie in Hollywood. Her grandma is showing signs of dementia. She finds out that a boy “like” likes her. And her best friend reveals a secret that she doesn’t know how to respond to. Changes are even afoot at the movie theater where she loves watching old films. Her own keen eye for details, combined with some wise advice from her uncle, just might help her navigate the uncertain times.

Saturdays With Hitchcock by Ellen Wittlinger delves into the pleasure and the pain of living through transitions. Maisie wishes everything could be simple and uncomplicated, the way it was before things started to change. But life isn’t static, and changes can be both good and bad. She discovers that having strong friendships and family ties are what’s most important when you need to adapt to unexpected circumstances.

Maisie is a strong character with keen observations about the people around her. She’s relatable because she often doesn’t know how to respond when new things come her way. She needs time alone and time talking things out before she decides what to do. In the end everything doesn’t end up neat and tidy, but she has a clear idea of how to move forward. I recommend Saturdays With Hitchcock for mother-daughter book clubs and readers aged 9 to 12.

The publisher provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Book Review: Red Again by Barbara Lehman

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Red Again cover imageA boy is riding his bike when he spies a red book on the sidewalk. He takes it home, climbs to the top story and reads about a boy fishing. The fishing boy spots a red book of his own and opens it to see a boy reading in the city.

Red Again tells a story with only illustrations, no words. It’s a great way for author Barbara Lehman to get across a message about the power books have to connect us in unexpected ways. Through books children are able to make friends and get to know each other.

Because there are no words, there is opportunity to make up a story to go with the illustrations, and children should have fun bringing their own imaginations into play. The story also continues with a girl finding a red book of her own and so the adventure goes on.

With its glossy red cover and simple watercolor illustrations, Red Again will have children and their parents flipping pages back and forth to see where the stories of the children in the book connect and wanting to see how the book ties them together.

The publisher provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Book Review: Pashmina by Nidhi Chanani

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Pashmina cover imagePriyanka doesn’t understand why her mother won’t talk to her about life in India or the father she has never known. Born in the U.S., Priyanka feels the tug of two cultures: the food and traditions of her mother’s home country and the modern customs of her American friends.

Then Priyanka finds a Pashmina shawl, and when she wraps it around her she is transported to India, where she sees beautiful sights and enchanting landscapes. She convinces her mom to send her on a trip to visit her aunt, where she discovers the truth about her mother’s past and the complicated world of modern India.

Pashmina by Nidhi Chanani delves into the world of first-generation American children of immigrants. Parents often want to retain the culture of their birth country, reflected in food, clothing, religion, and more, while integrating into their adopted land. They may also reject parts of their heritage, leaving their homeland to escape oppression of some kind.

As a teen, Priyanka is confused by her mom’s refusal to talk about her past, embarrassed about her name, and unsure about how she fits in. When she sees the real India, not just the one of her dreams, and her mom finally opens up to her, she learns how to honor both cultures in her life.

Pashmina is a great exploration of identity that touches on female empowerment. I highly recommend it for all readers and mother-daughter book clubs with girls aged 9 to 15.

The publisher provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Book Review: Tru & Nelle: A Christmas Tale by G. Neri

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TTru and Nelle A Christmas Tale cover imageruman Capote and Nelle Harper Lee are well known writers, yet young readers may not know that the two met when they were children in the town of Monroeville, Alabama. Their friendship continued even though Capote often lived elsewhere, and as adults they helped each other with their writing. Author G. Neri wrote about the two as children, weaving in facts with fiction in the novel, Tru & Nelle. His follow up, Tru & Nelle: A Christmas Tale, revisits them at another time in their lives, Christmas of 1937.

Once again Neri takes basic facts from the time then adds fiction to create a story that shows the simple pleasures of celebrations during the Great Depression as well as the hardships some people suffered. The result is an often light-hearted tale that also delves into the darker side of the era, especially for black people who faced danger regularly while living in the South under Jim Crow laws.

Writing about iconic literary figures is no easy task, especially when Lee herself fictionalized her childhood in her novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. Yet Neri succeeds in helping readers understand the real lives and personalities of Capote and Lee as well as the people who shaped them. I recommend Tru & Nelle: A Christmas Tale for readers aged 10 to 13.

The publisher provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Book Review: Christmas in Cooperstown by David A. Kelly

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Christmas in Cooperstown cover imageCousins Mike Walsh and Kate Hopkins love solving mysteries, so when they discover a vintage baseball card has been stolen from the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, they are on the case. The list of suspects is short, but catching the thief with evidence proves a challenge. They’ll have to use every trick they know to return the purloined card back where it belongs.

Christmas in Cooperstown by David A. Kelly is just the kind of mystery that’s great for young readers aged 6 to 9. The young protagonists are never in true danger as they use their wits to solve a crime. Part of the Ballpark Mystery series, the story is followed by real information about the National Baseball Hall of Fame and the invention of baseball. There’s also a recipe for muffins made with blueberries and chocolate chips. The combination of fiction, nonfiction, and a recipe should satisfy lots of readers.

Easy-to-read chapters and cute illustrations by Mark Meyers keep kids turning pages and having fun while building reading skills. There are lots of titles in the whole series, and the stories are likely to be read more than once as kids revisit clues in the story.

The publisher provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Book Review: This Is a Good Story by Adam Lehrhaupt

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This is a Good Story cover imageTelling a good story means knowing how a story builds, with a protagonist, a plot, a conflict and more. Children often learn the elements of storytelling in school, where they have to write for classwork. But what if they could learn it earlier, in a way that makes them think of storytelling as fun? That’s the idea behind the picture book by Adam Lehrhaupt, This Is a Good Story.

The story begins with a girl creating a picture book with a hero and a heroine who live in a good town filled with good people. The plot heats up when an evil overlord attacks. A touch of whimsy is added when an omniscient reader gives the girl direction on what to draw and ideas on how to make her story better.

At the end, when the girl has finished her book to her own satisfaction, a list of the elements of story appears along with definitions. Pictures by Magali Le Huche are child-like, and it’s easy to picture young readers being inspired by both pictures and words to want to create their own picture books when they read this one. I expect parents and kids both will love it.

The publisher provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Book Review: The Audition by Maddie Ziegler

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The Audition cover imageHarper McCoy loves her life in Connecticut. She’s got great friends and everyone on her dance team knows her skills. But when her family moves to Florida for her dad’s job, she finds herself having to prove her ability at a new dance school. The girls on her new team would rather have their old friends than welcome a newcomer. To win their respect Harper must work hard and show them that they all benefit when they work together.

The Audition by Maddie Ziegler takes readers inside the world of competitive dance, revealing the stamina, athleticism, creativity and more required to stand out. Dancers often start out when they are very young, and they learn multiple styles even though they may excel at one. The world is very familiar to author Ziegler, who is an award-winning professional dancer and who starred on Lifetime’s Dance Moms for six seasons.

Ziegler’s expertise informs the story and makes it believable. Yet The Audition is also relatable to girls who don’t dance, as it may be a familiar story to anyone who has ever been shut out of a group of already close friends (a situation that applies to almost everyone at some point). Harper deals with mean girls, humiliating situations, and more without losing sight of who she is and what she can achieve. It’s an inspiring story for anyone.

I recommend The Audition for readers aged 9 to 12.

The publisher provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

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