Reviewed by Kimberly Christensen Middle grade fiction When Willa’s dad takes her on a whale-watching trip to see the migrating humpbacks, an unexpected thing happens: A whale talks to her. The whale, called Meg, seems as surprised as Willa that the two can understand each other, but they form a […]
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Reviewed by Kimberly Christensen Young Adult Fiction Content Warning: This book includes descriptions of death, depression, attempted suicide, animal poaching, animal cruelty, forced migration, human trafficking, war, genocide, child soldiers, and rape. Following the death of her boyfriend, high school senior Valentine falls into a severe depression and nearly overdoses […]
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Reviewed by Kimberly Christensen Song for a Whale by Lynne Kelly Middle Grade Fiction Sometimes a book just stops you in your tracks and demands that you sit with it, pushing aside as many demands of “real life” as you can in order to lose yourself in the book’s world. […]
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The Eagle Tree by Ned Hayes (Little A, 2016) Young adult contemporary fiction Review by Kimberly Christensen To say that fourteen-year-old March Wong loves trees is an understatement. He climbs multiple trees per day and can cite endless amount of information about trees, from information about their species to how […]
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The Light in the Lake by Sarah R. Baughman (Little Brown, 2019) Middle Grade Fiction Review by Kimberly Christensen In rural Vermont, twins Addie and Amos lived at the edge of Maple Lake, a place that had been home to generations of their relatives. Everyone loved the lake, with its […]
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Endangered by Eliot Schrefer Young adult fiction Fourteen-year-old Congolese American Sophie is set to spend the summer in the Congo with her mother, who runs a sanctuary for bonobos. Sophie arrives with mixed feelings. Although she spent her young childhood in the Congo, she now lives in the United States […]
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Me and Marvin Gardens by A.S. King Middle Grade Fiction Published by Scholastic Trades Review by Kimberly Christensen Everything around twelve-year-old Obe Devlin is changing. New subdivisions keep springing up behind his house on the acres of land that once belonged to the Devlin family. Obe’s former best friend, Tommy, […]
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This review may contain spoilers. Wilder Girls (Penguin Random House, July 9, 2019) helps to usher in a type of wild fiction that deals with ecological collapse. In the story, teenagers at the Raxter School for Girls are quarantined on an island off the coast of Maine. They’ve been sequestered […]
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Same Sun Here By Silas House and Neela Vaswani Middle Grade Fiction Review by Kimberly Christensen When middle schoolers River and Meena become penpals, the two students form a fast friendship. Meena recently immigrated to New York City from India, and lives in a small flat with her mother and […]
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The Thing About Jellyfish By Ali Benjamin Published September 22, 2015 by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers Middle Grade Fiction Review by Kimberly Christensen The summer before seventh grade, Suzanne’s former best friend, Frannie, drowns while on vacation. Frannie and Suzy’s friendship had derailed in that most painful of […]
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Saving Wonder by Mary Knight Hardcover, 288 pages Published February 23rd, 2016, by Scholastic Review by Kimberly Christensen Curley Hines and his grandpa love their mountains and their way of life, even though mining accidents that happened on the mountains claimed the lives of their family members. Still, most everyone […]
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Midnight at the Electric by Jodi Lynn Anderson Hardcover, 259 pages Published June 13, 2017 by HarperCollins Reviewed by Kimberly Christensen Midnight at the Electric interweaves three different generations of protagonists to tell the heartbreaking and simultaneously hopeful stories of young women living through times of societal upheaval. The stories […]
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The Final Six by Alexandra Monir Hardcover, 352 pages Published March 6, 2018 by HarperTeen Reviewed by Kimberly Christensen The Final Six is a young adult science fiction novel that leapfrogs the reader into a dystopian future in which space colonization is humanity’s best hope for survival. With megastorms, rising […]
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Novel by Ohio University emeritus prof asks hard questions. Plot set in familiar-seeming college town. © Jim Phillips, Athens News, Athens, Ohio, USA (June 6, 2018), p. 15 Ted Bernard’s novel Late-K Lunacy opens in a small college town in the foothills of Appalachian Ohio, on the banks of the […]
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