The Magic Thief by Sarah Prineas is one of the most elegantly written and touching juvenile fantasy novels I’ve had the pleasure of reading to my ten year old in some time. The story centers around a young thief named Conn who pickpockets a locus magicalicus (a powerful stone that allows a wizard to unleash great magic) from an old wizard. The fact that Conn isn’t struck dead at once interests the wizard enough to take him on as a servant. Conn says apprentice, but that’s hardly the job he receives.

The old wizard is as disreputable in his own way as Conn is. Twenty years ago, Nevery was accused of attempting to kill the Duchess of Wellmet where Conn lives. Nevery was run out of town just ahead of the soldiers that would have doubtlessly hung him.

Now, twenty years later, Nevery is drawn back to the city because the magic that powers the place is mysteriously drying up. Nevery uses that predicament to leverage his own return and gets the Duchess to grant him amnesty for his past wrongs, even though he didn’t try to kill her.

I love the way Prineas has Wellmet sectioned off into Twilight, Dusk House, Dawn Palace, and the other regions. Illustrator Antonio Javier Caparo’s maps and drawings really established the tone well and led my son and me into a wonderful imaginary journey throughout the city. The place just feels real.

The relationship between the characters, though predictable because they are steeped in tradition, are even more wonderful because the reader knows what to expect. Prineas expertly moves those relationships along, teasing the reader with them. I kept wanting Nevery to acknowledge Conn as his apprentice for so long, then – when Conn was in such dire straits – I’d forgotten about it and Prineas delivered that so expertly that I knew it was coming and was so concerned about other things that I’d temporarily forgotten.

That relationship, that push/pull of wills and the need to understand each other, drives this book and I’m sure will drive the other two in this trilogy. The addition of Benet as the hired muscle and his – eventual – doting uncle role with Conn is amazingly portrayed as well.

I have to admit that the first few pages seemed to dawdle a bit, but this is a relatively big world to explore, and there’s some history – particularly between the major players – that has to be revealed slowly. Prineas makes the whole thing play well, and it isn’t long before she has everything up and running.

Along with all the mystery and intrigue, as well as the duplicitous and suspicious nature of the characters, the author also throws in one-liners that and humor that is to die for. One of the best scenes in the book was when Conn was captured by the duchess’s guards, thrown into a prison cell, then lets himself out with his Lockpicking skills. Only to give himself away when he gladly hails Nevery, whom he hadn’t expected to see at all.

When Prineas locks onto the final scenes of the book, about the last sixty pages so be prepared to keep reading for a bit, there’s just no way to tear yourself free. My son and I were nailed to the pages, pushing way past our bedtimes as we finished up the last one hundred and forty pages in a reading marathon that had us hanging on by our fingernails.

The Magic Thief ends well, resolving several questions, but it raises several others that will keep my son and I anxiously awaiting the next installment. This is definitely a book to pick up for the kids to read over the summer, and you may find yourself chasing Conn and Nevery through Strangle Street and avoiding the Underlord’s minions yourself!

 

The Battle of the Labyrinth is the fourth book of Rick Riordan’s projected five-book opus, Percy Jackson and the Olympians. The series began with The Lightning Thief and has constantly picked up steam as it’s progressed. I’ve been reading the series to my son, and we’re looking at the fifth and final book coming out next year with a mixture of anticipation and dread.

We want the next book. We want to know how everything turns out for Percy, Grover, Annabeth, and the rest, but we don’t want the adventure to end. Riordan’s imagination and zest for action is matched only by his wit and humor. We’ve become fans and end up talking about the books and Greek mythology quite often.

If you haven’t read the series yet, you’ve missed out on a lot. And you’ll probably want to stop reading this review now. Otherwise you’re going to trip across some spoilers for the earlier three books. Riordan’s books, Percy’s adventures, are an organic tale, growing and adding to canon with each new volume. Things just don’t stay the same in Percy’s ever-changing world.

Well, nothing stays the same except Percy’s continuing bad luck with schools. At the beginning of this one, Percy’s mom has a new boyfriend that gets Percy into a well-respected school that Percy normally wouldn’t have a shot at with his past record of suspicious destruction. Sure enough, almost as soon as Percy sets foot on school grounds, he’s attacked by demonic cheerleaders (the empousai, from Greek myth) and the school BURNS.

I couldn’t help laughing throughout the section as I read it. Friends of Percy are going to be blown away by the sequence even though they’re expecting it. My son and I kept cracking each other up for days afterward. These books just keep on giving!

The book turns more serious, to a degree, when Luke’s plans to invade Camp Half-Blood are revealed. Luke, Percy’s arch-enemy, is still trying to bring the Titan Kronos back to life so he can wreak vengeance against the Greek gods. Camp Half-Blood, because it houses and trains so many of the demi-gods – the children of the gods with mortal parents, is a prime target.

As always, Riordan establishes the roots of his story in traditional Greek myth. This one deals with Daedalus, the famed inventor that created the Labyrinth that housed the Minotaur. According to Riordan’s story, the Labyrinth has become – to a degree – a living thing that continues growing throughout the world and time. I loved the concept and my son was totally engrossed in the idea that the world was honeycombed with magical tunnels. This is the kind of thinking I’ve come to rely on the author for.

There are other adventures that take place before Percy, Annabeth, and Grover find an opening to the Labyrinth and climb down inside it, but once they’re in place the adventure kicks into high gear. They’re chasing after Nico, the son of Hades, that no one else at the camp knows about. Percy feels guilty about the death of Nico’s sister and doesn’t want everyone weirding out about the younger boy. Percy still believes he has a chance to set things straight between him and Nico.

Grover’s situation has gotten more dire regarding his hunt for the god, Pan. With all the failures Grover has racked up, the satyr community is thinking about pulling Grover’s searcher’s license, which means he can’t continue hunting for Pan. A lot of things are at stake in this one.

Tyson, Percy’s Cyclopean half-brother, stars in this one as well. I have to admit, Tyson is one of my favorite characters in the books. Tyson, with all his childish innocence, has won a special place in the hearts of my son and I. Every time Tyson’s on stage we’re just waiting to see what he’s going to say or do. In this one, Tyson gets to meet Briares, one of the Hundred-Handed Ones, an ancient from Greek myth. Briares’s reaction to his jailer is hilarious and I don’t want to spoil it, but my son and I went around doing it for days, to the point my wife believed we’d taken leave of our senses. She hasn’t quite gotten into the Olympian view yet.

In addition to all the great imagery and dialogue, Riordan continues piling on the Greek mythology in this one. I love how he twists it and brings it into our world. And he dangles each cliffhanger and reveal of the plot with evident glee and precise precision. This next year of waiting is going to be a long one.

Yep, another shameless plug. This one will be out on June 3 in paperback. It includes an all-new short story written especially for this edition.

In case you’re not familiar with the Rover series, they’re family friendly and the first book in the series won the Alex Award in 2002.

John Flanagan has created one of the most seductive fantasy worlds I’ve seen in a long time. He slips his readers into Castle Redmont with incredible ease and introduces them to Will, a fifteen-year-old orphan who hopes to become accepted to be a warrior. Will is worried, though, because he’s small.

The readers feel Will’s heartbreak when he isn’t selected for fighter training, but he is offered the chance to become a Ranger, one of the secretive warriors no one knows much about. The offer is extended by Master Halt, one of the most legendary figures in the kingdom.

Prompted by a mysterious note given to the king by the ranger, Will reveals hidden skills as he sneaks back into the castle. When he gets the note, however, he finds Halt lying in wait for him. From the moment the note was passed, and after finding out Will had a history of climbing the walls and being in places he wasn’t supposed to be, I knew what was going to happen. But Flanagan expertly took me through the steps to get there and I had a great time with the sequence.

Of course, there’s a second surprise waiting on Will when he sneaks back into the room to check out the note, but I was expecting that one too. One of Flanagan’s strengths as a writer is that he gives you what you’re looking for in a story. He’s straight-forward and takes his time developing the world and the characters.

After leaving the castle, Halt begins training Will in the ways of a Ranger. The training is well-detailed and comes into play later in the story.

With all this going on, I felt the story took a little time to build up my interest because I saw no villain on the horizon, but once Flanagan had me hooked, I was solidly hooked. So was my son. After that, we hung on every word, waiting to see where Will and Halt’s adventures took them.

One of the best aspects of the novel is Will’s relationship with Horace, a fellow orphan that was accepted to the Battleschool. At first I was a little put off that we were following Horace’s adventures. I didn’t care for him and thought he was a bully, but Flanagan deftly drew out my interest and my sympathy for the character. When Horace and Will met again, I hoped they wouldn’t fight and argue as before, but they did.

It’s not till later, during a truly fantastic action sequence, that the matter between Horace and Will is resolved once and for all. The story underscores everything good and noble about warriors and men who have risked their lives together.

Flanagan really makes the big character and story arcs pay off. My son and I flew through this book. When we weren’t reading about it, we were talking about it – about the weapons, the training, the way the characters were brought together, and about the adventures that probably lay ahead of them. You know you’ve got a good book on your hands when you can’t stop thinking about it even after you’ve finished it.

Flanagan began writing the series for his son, a reluctant reader, and the books first came out in Australia. So far seven of them have been published there and only four have been published in the United States. However, the United States publisher has stepped up the publishing program so the readers of both countries will soon be waiting breathlessly for the same new book.

This is a great series to read whatever your age. Flanagan tells a timeless story, and he tells it well. School librarians should definitely pick this one up and put it on the shelves. Fans of Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series will love these books just as much.

 

Readers familiar with Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians series are in for another fun-filled romp in The Titan’s Curse. The author has a five-book run planned for Percy and his companions, and then a return visit in a later series, which his young fans will clamor for.

If you haven’t read either of the two previous books, I’d warn you to stay away from this review because you’re going to find out things that are better discovered through your own reading.

In The Lightning Thief, twelve year old Percy Jackson found out he was the son of Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea. My son and I read YA books together all the time, and these are his favorites. What draws him in the most – and I mean hours at a time, till my voice gives out on me – are Percy’s cool water powers and the immense tapestry of Greek mythology that Riordan weaves in so well.

My son doesn’t know it, but he’s basically getting a classical education reading these novels with me. He finds the stories of the gods and goddesses, all their petty problems and efforts to get revenge on each other, wonderfully fascinating. He was so enthralled by the first book that I had to buy him a book on Greek mythology, which he read on his own just to get more background on the mythical characters in the pages.

You don’t have to brush up on your Greek mythology, or even tell all the stories to your kids. Riordan does a masterful job of making those ancient tales of gods and goddesses come alive in his stories, and giving you all the background material you need. But don’t be surprised if your child starts prowling the library shelves in search of more information.

The Titan’s Curse starts off with an almost 007 feel that I really liked. Riordan usually plunks Percy down in the middle of action, but the search for two new half-bloods (sons and daughters of gods who don’t know they are such) captivated my son and me immediately. And things, of course, go really badly for Percy and his friends.

Still, despite all the close calls, my son and I were laughing out loud at Percy’s adventures. Grover, the young satyr that’s his friends, ended up getting some of the best parts, but the chapter where Percy ends up riding the mythical pig was an absolute hoot.

Blackjack, Percy’s Pegasus buddy, puts in an appearance in this book as well, and absolutely steals the show for a while. “God alert,” Blackjack warns. “It’s the wine dude!” Of course, he’s referring to Dionysus, the Greek god that’s currently serving punishment as head of Camp Half-Blood. In fact, Mr. D actually steps into the thick of things more forcefully in this volume. But the line, typical pre-teen terminology, had my son and I cracking each other up for days as we kept repeating it.

In every book in the series, there’s always a quest. In the first book, Percy had to find the thief that took Zeus’s mystical lightning bolt. In the second, Percy had to save Grover. But in the third book, Percy has to save his best bud, Annabeth, with whom he’s becoming even more enamored. This quest sends Percy and his friends zooming across the United States again, and reveals even more Greek mythological geography that’s been relocated to this continent.

Athena is back on hand, as well as Artemis and Apollo. Luke’s efforts to resurrect Kronos as still in play, and it looks bad for our heroes. There’s a prophecy (told by the Oracle in a way that is extremely humorous) that foretells the death of one of the heroes on the quest.

Riordan’s pacing is fabulous. There’s never a dull moment in one of these books. Things – and threats – just keep happening at a mile-a-minute. This book truly felt like trying to stay on top of an avalanche as we hurtled to the ending. And it only left us hungry for Book Four: The Battle of the Labyrinth.
 

Scraps of Time 1960: Abby Takes A Stand is the first of a series of juvenile novels by Patricia McKissack. A group of kids help their grandmother explore the contents of her attic and find scraps of memories. As each scrap is found, the grandmother, Gee, tells a story from her childhood and from the childhoods of other family members that exposes how differently today’s world is from the one she grew up in.

McKissack is the author of several novels for young readers. Besides chapter books, she’s also written several picture books. Her subject matter ranges from serious to humorous, from realistic to historical to fantasy.

This first book of the three-book series is on the 2008 Children’s Sequoyah Masterlist. The story details the sit-ins the black community had to stage in Nashville, Tennessee to end segregation in the city. Although the story is deliberately kept small, I read the story to my son and he had no problem seeing the bigger picture as well as all the problems the black families faced while striving for equality.

McKissack’s language is simple, direct, easy-to-read, and emotional. Through just a handful of family members, the fear and outrage is quickly and efficiently shown to the reader.

Abby’s story is compelling to any parent or child. When she mistakenly ends up in a WHITES ONLY restaurant called the Monkey Bar, she’s treated horribly by the white people there. Parents can easily know what it must have felt like by imagining how their child would have felt under similar circumstances. And kids can instantly identify with Abby at being left out of something and told she wasn’t allowed to do something.

The book is only 100 pages long, with big print and illustrations by Gordon James that are equally emotional. We read it in a couple sittings without straining ourselves. I grew up in this time period in Southern Oklahoma, so a lot of what McKissack writes about was familiar to me. It’s amazing to think how much things have changed in that time period, and that our children will never really know what those times were like.

Lowji Discovers America is a fun book with a great message. It’s also one of 2008’s Children’s Sequoyah Masterlist reads. Author Candace Fleming tells Lowji’s story in a great first-person voice that will doubtless have young readers rolling in the aisles as the hero tries to figure out how things are done in his new country, and tries to figure out a way to get a pet.

The author captures a lot of the accent Lowji would have in his speech after so recently coming from Bombay, India, and she gives him great parents. Ma is very strict and loving, but Bape seems to have an incurable love of puns that is just painful to read. My son loved them!

I loved how Lowji had a notion of what America would be like after living in crowded Bombay all his life, then was heartened and disappointed at the same time. He thought things would be vastly different, but they really aren’t at first.

The disappointment over not getting to have a pet quickly shifts gears to Lowji trying to figure out a way to get one anyhow. The author’s digs at the common backdrop of American culture, especially in the giant store ALL-MART, was terrific.

There are a lot of episodes that continually build Lowji’s story. I felt his sadness when the bird, Tippy, deserted him for the other kids in the store. But I was laughing aloud with my son when the pig, Blossom, nearly has a heat stroke and Lowji saves her by bringing her into the store. This is exactly the kind of thing my kid would do, and it just proves that kids speak the same language more than adults do.

I also loved how Lowji constantly talked Landlady Crisp into getting animals to do her work for her. The cat is brought in to handle the mice. The dog is brought in to handle security. And the goats are brought in to handle the lawn care. This is all very Tom Sawyerish and works well.

However, parents might not find the burping contest and squirting milk out of one nostril quite so funny. My son, of course, thought they were tremendous.

Lowji Discovers America delivers a familiar and humorous story in an accent that will probably be new to most young readers. There’s also a lot of information regarding Indian culture. If you’re working on the Sequoyah list with your child, this novel should definitely be one of those you pick up – especially if your child is a boy!

My 10 year old son and I read a lot of books together. Usually we read for adventure and for laughs, but we’re currently working on the 2008 Children’s Sequoyah Masterlist, a group of 12 books thought to be the best of recent books by authors living in the United States. The award is named after Sequoyah, who is remembered as the father of the Cherokee alphabet.

The thing that really grabs my son’s attention is a true story about kids, especially if they’ve had to endure hardships. The hardest part about reading these books with him is explaining that all these horrible things really took place. That idea sometimes overwhelms him. He still lives in the mindset that adults can fix everything. I hate taking that away from him, but he also learns to appreciate the life he has and learns to be giving to others that have less.

Brothers in Hope: The Story of the Lost Boys of Sudan is one of those books. It’s really short and can be read within minutes, but the impact of the story is still with my child days later. Based on the tragic, real-life incidents in the Sudan where warlords massacred whole villages in the civil war that took place there, the book focuses on an eight year old boy named Garang Deng.

Garang became one of the leaders of the 30,000 Sudanese boys between 8 to 15 that became orphans as a result of that war. They ended up walking over 1000 miles to try to find safety. The fact that boys that age could endure the hardships and know enough to save most of them is astounding.

As I read the book to my son, I knew he was lost in that struggle, trying to imagine what he would do. That’s what he’s like. It wasn’t an adventure like we normally read. This was a real life-or-death situation.

Several of the boys died along the way. That fact is touched upon in the narrative but doesn’t weigh too heavily. Mary Williams, the author, has handled truly difficult subject matter here and in a way that leaves young readers shaken but not despondent. Although only 40 pages long, the books is a real eye-opener about what goes on in the rest of the world.

The artist, R. Gregory Christie, does an amazing job with kid-friendly pictures. The acrylic medium really stands out on the page, and the colors are all warm earth tones that reflect the geography of that region. Emotions, despair and joy, are plain for the reader to see in the way the characters stand. The art complement the simple, hard-hitting text wonderfully.

If you’re working with your child in the Sequoyah Reading this year, you may find that the subject matter in Brothers in Hope: The Story of the Lost Boys of Sudan is hard to deal with. Be prepared to answer a lot of questions from your child. Thankfully, I knew enough about what had happened there to answer most of them. You might want to read up on that civil war and the general outcome. I know my son seemed less pensive when I could answer his questions and let him know that most of those boys were truly safe now, and over 3000 of them came into the United States.

Only twelve years old, Edmund Amos Peters has already lived a life filled with incredible adventures. He and his father went down in a ship after leaving New England. Edmund was saved by Captain Gallows, one of the fiercest pirates still taking prizes in 1846. Nicknamed Shipwreck, for obvious reasons, he stays on as a cabin boy for the pirates. I’ve read several of Siddhartha Fleishman’s novels over the years, starting with By the Great Horn Spoon! when I was younger than my ten year old. I’ve always enjoyed the way he’s clever with his characters and situations, and the fact that he doesn’t dawdle. His stories always have the characters doing something at a frantic pace.

Packed full of adventure and interesting characters, The Giant Rat of Sumatra captures the imaginations of kids (and adults!) from the opening pages and doesn’t let go until the end. There’s always some problem Shipwreck and the brave Captain Gallows have to deal with.

After arriving in San Diego, California, which at that time is Mexican property, Captain Gallows declares that he’s going to go straight. He buys himself new clothes, a ranch, and even renames himself. As Don Alejandro, he sets himself up in business buying cow hides.

This is old-style adventure writing at its finest. There are mysterious characters and nefarious doings from the opening pages, and a sea battle as Americans sail into the harbor in an effort to take the city in the final pages.

In between those hooks, the juvenile novel jumps through hoops to entertain young minds and adults as well. I loved the lady bandit and her semi-stalwart gang, and the pistol duel that Captain Gallows arranges for the control of her and her crew.

The descriptions of the places and the people brought a lot of images to mind. They all seem true to life.

The Giant Rat of Sumatra is a 2008 Sequoyah book. Kids in elementary school get to vote on the best of the lot if they read three of them. Parents are welcome to help, and I heartily recommend reading this one aloud, taking turns with your child if your child can read.

Steel Trapp: The Challenge appears to be the first book in a brand-new young readers series by bestselling author Ridley Pearson. Although Pearson writes the Lou Boldt suspense novels for adults, and has written stand-alone novels for the same market, Pearson is no stranger to the 9-12 year old readers. In fact, he’s a bestselling writer among that age group as well. Together, he and author Dave Barry have written three new books that further enhances the legend of Peter Pan, creating a whole new backstory that explains a lot about the characters, the world, and the magic that’s so much a part of the Peter Pan experience.

However, Steven “Steel” Trapp appears to be a new action hero. In addition to being a science geek extraordinaire, Steel also possesses a photographic memory. Once he’s seen something, he can remember it in vivid detail and never forgets anything. He’s got a memory like, well, a steel trap, which is where he gets his nickname. Other than that, Steel is pretty much a normal kid with normal kid issues. Thankfully, Pearson’s book isn’t about normal things.

The book takes off at a full gallop with Steel competing in a Science Fair in Washington D. C. There are about a zillion things going on and the tension ratchets up quickly. I was intrigued by Pearson’s choice of jumping in without really introducing his character, but I went along with it and trusted him. By the time I’d quickly zipped through this short, introductory chapter, I had about a million questions. But of the good variety.

Mostly I wanted to know how Steel had gotten into the fix he was in, what was in the mysterious briefcase everyone seemed to be looking for, and what was going to happen next! As a writer, those are all questions you want your readers asking in the opening acts.

Ridley doesn’t answer all those questions at once. Instead, the book moves back in time, picks up a mysterious FBI agent who’s having trouble with a plane that’s going down, and with Steel’s journey by train to the nation’s capitol. While on the train, Steel gets onto the trail of a group of terrorists when a briefcase is left behind by a woman. He knows it’s hers because his photographic memory points this out to him. But when he tries to give the briefcase back to her, she tells him he’s mistaken.

Admittedly, I thought the intro to the puzzle was a little outlandish, but it served to move the story along so I went with it. There are a few illogical twists and turns to the plot, but Pearson runs with it and pulls it together – if not completely, then with at least a rapid-fire pacing and a few twists.

I did have one big problem with the book, and that was with Steel not knowing his father was an FBI agent. Those guys get lots of phone calls and messages, have lots of files with them at all times. All it would have taken is one glance and the subterfuge would have been up. Also, guys that work undercover for the FBI are usually gone a lot longer at a time than Mr. Trapp appears to have been.

One of the things I did like was Pearson’s use of U. S. Marshal Roland Larson from his previous adult novel, Cut and Run. It’s nice to see that all of Pearson’s characters live in the same world, and you have to wonder if a boy with a photographic memory will soon put in an appearance in one of Pearson’s adult novels.

I liked Steel’s partner-in-peril, Kaileigh Augustine, a lot. The idea of a poor little rich girl isn’t a new one, but it establishes Kaileigh’s character and independence almost immediately. Plus, it gives her and Steel financial freedom of a sort with further adventures. I just hope Kaileigh is in them because Steel needs someone to play off of in order to work well.

The plot got almost a little too twisted and complex. It was relatively simple in the long run, but setting it up and moving through multiple permutations got difficult to deal with while juggling a half-dozen characters. But it kept me from solving everything till right at the end – which is exactly the best place for a reader that’s been playing fairly with the mystery to figure everything out.

I was surprised at how much the adults played roles in the novel, but it didn’t bother me too much over all. I would have liked to see Steel handle more action, and I definitely want to see more science in the books as the series progresses. Pearson does mention in interviews that the book began as an adult novel and he rewrote it from Steel’s point of view. It’ll be interesting to see how the adult/teen ratio changes in the next book in the series.

But I want Steel’s family to stay close as well. I liked his mom and dad, and the parts they had to play in everything. Cairo, Steel’s dog, was a hoot and I was cheering him on at the end when he caught the bad guy’s scent and they went flying after him.

Steel Trapp: The Challenge isn’t on the same level as Anthony Horowitz’s Alex Rider series (which gets a nod in Pearson’s book!), but it’s a fun read. Since there’s only one teen spy book coming out a year from Horowitz, Pearson’s teen troubleshooter is a welcome addition to the adventure scene. You won’t find many writers that can provide the same kind of headlong pacing that Pearson does.