Meet Revver: a little squirrel with big dreams . . . to drive a race car! His siblings might not understand his need for speed, but Revver doesn’t care. And he certainly doesn’t care about looking for food, climbing trees, or any other “ordinary” squirrel activity. He spends his days staring at the racetrack just below his nest, where the cars zoom by day in and day out.
When Revver finally gets the chance to sneak out to the track, he finds that becoming part of the pit crew is more difficult than he expected. He never learned anything about engines in Squirrel School! Then Revver meets tire changer Bill, who luckily has a soft spot for animals. Can Revver prove to Bill that he deserves to be part of the team?
Perfect for fans of Ralph S. Mouse, Revver the Speedway Squirrel is a funny, action-packed, and heartwarming story about family, feeling different, and following your heart.
My Review
The beginning of this book was a little bit weird to me. There’s a lot of setup of mama squirrel and Revver and his siblings (including a somewhat shocking moment when mama squirrel cheerfully warns her babies that if they don’t learn the lessons she’s trying to teach them that she may have to eat them.). Revver doesn’t have time for or interest in ordinary squirrel things. What he really wants is to be involved in the racetrack he’s been watching all his life from the nest.
Once Revver reaches the track and begins to learn about being part of a team and the importance of thinking things through, the story gains a lot of momentum. Revver’s dream is within his grasp, but only if he can learn the squirrel lessons he once thought were so useless.
On the whole, this is a fun story that combines animal narrators and a racetrack setting that should appeal to readers with both those interests. It’s probably best for readers who are right between chapter and middle grade books.
Content Notes
Recommended for Ages 8 to 10.
Representation Main characters are squirrels.
Profanity/Crude Language Content No profanity. Some crude references to bodily functions. One of the squirrels is named “Farty” because he has lots of gas.
Romance/Sexual Content None.
Spiritual Content None.
Violent Content The mother squirrel tries to teach all her babies about dangers and survival. She tells them if they don’t learn all the lessons, she may have to eat them. A man kicks a squirrel into the air. Coyotes surround a squirrel, hoping to eat her.
Drug Content None.
Note: I received a free copy of REVVER THE SPEEDWAY SQUIRREL in exchange for my honest review. This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use, but which help support the costs of running this blog.
One of the few good things about this year has been that I’ve ended up with a bit more time to read– and thank goodness, because this year has been an incredible one for finding new favorite books.
This month brings even more fabulous titles packed with romance, humor, explorations on social justice and racial issues, and lush fantasy landscapes. Here are a few of the titles I’m most excited about coming out October 2020.
The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass by Adan Jerreat-Poole
What you need to know: Francie Frye, a reluctant northwoods Nancy Drew tackles her third mystery and hopes to uncover the truth about her mother. Loved it!
What you need to know:Mad Max: Fury Road meets Frozen. (I’m intrigued!) A quest for her missing best friend pairs a girl with a team of unconventional allies.
What you need to know: A girl faces a terrible curse in order to save the lives of those she loves. Magic and alchemy. Sounds perfect for fans of GIVE THE DARK MY LOVE and TO BEST THE BOYS.
What you need to know: A cursed wood encroaching on a peaceful kingdom. A girl who can save it with the help of a pesky fox, a powerful bear, and the magic in her veins. Poston is on my auto-buy list, so I MUST have this one!
Available October 20, 2020
What’s on your October reading list?
Have you read any of the books on my list already? Which books are you looking forward to reading this month?
Eli isn’t just a teenage girl — she’s a made-thing the witches created to hunt down ghosts in the human world. Trained to kill with her seven magical blades, Eli is a flawless machine, a deadly assassin. But when an assignment goes wrong, Eli starts to question everything she was taught about both worlds, the Coven, and her tyrannical witch-mother.
Worried that she’ll be unmade for her mistake, Eli gets caught up with a group of human and witch renegades, and is given the most difficult and dangerous task in the worlds: capture the Heart of the Coven. With the help of two humans, one motorcycle, and a girl who smells like the sea, Eli is going to get answers — and earn her freedom.
My Review
The story world in GIRL OF HAWTHORN AND GLASS is unlike anything else I’ve ever read. It’s both contemporary and fanciful, charming and full of teeth. A tiny coffee shop to a forest of awake trees to a walled compound of violent witch children to a library where the books might attack. It kind of has everything.
From the first page I found Eli likeable. Right away I wanted to follow her down the path of solving the mysteries of her existence and to learn more about the mysterious motorcycle rider who befriends her. I loved the banter between Cam and Tav, too. Those two were fantastic.
The story is a bit dark. The magic has that eye-for-an-eye feel to it, where the rules are unbreakable, and it’s all about figuring out how to make what you need conform to the rules of the magic. And Eli is, after all, an assassin, so she thinks a lot about killing, and, until things start to go sideways, she never questions her assignments.
Representation Tav is Black and nonbinary. Cam is Asian-American and gay. Eli is pansexual.
Profanity/Crude Language Content Extreme profanity used infrequently.
Romance/Sexual Content Kissing between two girls. Kissing between a girl and nonbinary character.
Spiritual Content Witches, who live in a connected but separate world, created Eli to kill ghosts in the human world. Eli is made from stone and blood and other materials. Witches have rituals– sometimes about giving gifts or accepting favors.
Violent Content One scene describes Eli killing someone she believes to be a ghost. Other situations of peril. In the witch world, there are children who are fixated on violence. Eli can transform into a toothy crocodile girl and does so to bite an opponent.
Drug Content None.
Note: I received a free copy of GIRL OF HAWTHORN AND GLASS in exchange for my honest review. This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use, but which help support the costs of running this blog.
It’s hard to believe that the last (also first) time I did a post like this was the end of April. It’s been more than SIX MONTHS, y’all! They went by in a blink.
Since it’s been a bit, let’s do another check-in. Grab yourself a hot (or cold!) drink and let’s do a bit of catching up, friends.
If we were having coffee I’d tell you that we just recently started school. My oldest is doing e-learning through her high school, and so far it’s been a mixed blessing. It’s not like homeschool– her teachers are doing live classes. She thrives on individual attention and a relationship with her teachers, though, and that’s not easy to establish online (not to mention that her teachers are all juggling the extra work of in-person and online students).
She’s a really motivated student, and right now that’s sometimes translating into an intense perfectionism that makes for really long homework sessions. She’s also lonely (understandable) which means that I spend a lot of my evenings with her, just being present and available while she works on homework. I love having that one-on-one time with her which we often don’t get during the day with the littlest awake, but it makes for really long days, so by the end of the week, I’m exhausted.
My littlest will be doing some “enrichment” activities at home that we’re calling school time. She’s two, so it’s really just more for structure and fun since we aren’t doing a lot of outings right now. My mom is taking this on and it’s honestly so amazing. She’s super creative and patient, so I think (hope) this is giving her a meaningful way to engage in all of that plus teach the littlest lots of new things. I would seriously be losing my mind right now without my mom.
If we were having coffee, I would say that since my last update, my family has made hundreds more masks. Right now, we’re making them to give to my daughter’s school and other community members.
Honestly, it’s been incredible to have something we can physically do that feels useful. We can help people, even if it’s in a small way. A book reviewer I follow on Twitter recently shared that she’s a preschool teacher with few PPE supplies and worried about her safety at school. To be able to put a package together for her and send it off felt so good.
If we were having coffee, I would tell you I’m still having trouble sleeping. Between the pandemic, hurricane season, the election, and all the extra hoops to jump through for safety, sometimes I just can’t get my brain to shut off. I hate it. Not only does it mean I’m losing sleep, but then I’m snappy and irritable with my family. And then I have guilt for all the snappiness and irritability and inability to just shut off my brain and sleep.
Audiobooks seem to help. Listening to a story focuses me long enough to let my brain rest and helps me fall asleep.
Meditation also helps. I recently read a couple books about it, one that I reviewed, and another that I haven’t reviewed yet on Christian meditation. It has helped SO much to have a physical practice that calms and centers me. So that’s been good.
If we were having coffee, we’d have to talk books. I recently read WHERE DREAMS DESCEND by Janella Angeles and I’m still completely in love with it. It’s got so much to love– an incredible story world, unforgettable characters, and totally swoon-worthy romance. I also thought that FOREVERLAND by Nicole Kear was super cute. It’s about a girl who runs away because her family is splitting up, and she decides to live in the theme park where her family once took a fun family trip. I’d want to know what you’ve been reading and what’s on your list that you can’t wait to read.
If we were having coffee, you might want to know how some of the things I was planning to do in my last coffee post are going. I mentioned wanting to start up my Bookstagram account again, which I have done. I’m a bit hit-and-miss with posting still because life has been very chaotic. But I feel like it energizes me about books and my blog and reading, so I’m really excited to keep doing it.
I also mentioned wanting to do more list posts on my blog. I’ve done a few (I’ll list them at the end of the post in case you want to check them out), and have a few more in the works. I’m really excited about my debut novel lists. The MG Debut list is up, but I’m still wrestling with the YA list. I think I need to break it into two lists, and I just haven’t figured out how I want to do that. By what I’ve read vs plan to read? By genre, like Contemporary vs Fantasy? I’m not sure yet, but there are WAY TOO MANY for just one list.
I also posted a huge list of #ownvoices Asian-Inspired Fantasy, which was super fun to put together. I’ve read lots of the titles on the list, but found so many more to add to my reading list.
1 / 6
If we were having coffee, I’d tell you that some of the books I’ve read this year have really challenged me. I read one that cast a bit of shade at adult reviewers, and I’m kind of embarrassed at how much it undermined my confidence.
I had a whole blogger identity crisis where I was like omg, am I a complete weirdo and need to just stop doing this and start one of those lifestyle blogs where I review books sometimes but also post about, like the kids, and do product reviews, and I don’t even know, fashion or something? Honestly, I love those blogs and follow some really incredible ones, but that is so not me. I don’t think I’m at all interesting enough to be the subject of an entire blog. Ha. But seriously, no.
For now, I’m still here doing my thing. I’m trying to be more sensitive to the others in the YA community, and to step outside my shell a bit more and post some personal stuff, which is super hard for me.
So that’s pretty much my life over coffee.
If we were having coffee, what would you say?
Tell me about you. What’s been happening that you’d want to share with me over a cup of coffee? It can be bookish or personal or just totally random. Leave me a comment and let me know how you are.
In the final Enchantment Lake mystery, Francie’s search for the truth about her mother—and herself—plunges her into danger during a North Woods winter
When she wakes in her aunts’ cold cabin on the shore of Enchantment Lake, Francie remembers: everything about her life has changed. Or is about to. Or just might. Everything depends on the small, engraved silver box that she now possesses—if only she can follow its cryptic clues to the whereabouts of her missing mother and understand, finally, just maybe, the truth about who she really is.
Francie, it turns out, has a lot to learn, and this time the lessons could be deadly. Her search for answers takes her and her best friends Raven and Jay as far afield as an abandoned ranch in Arizona and as close to home as a sketchy plant collector’s conservatory and a musty old museum where shadows lurk around every display case. At the heart of it all is a crime that touches her own adopted North Woods: thieves dig up fragile lady’s slippers, peel bark from birches, strip moss off trees, cut down entire forests of saplings to sell for home décor. But Francie is up against no ordinary plant theft. One ominous clue after another reveal that she possesses something so rare and so valuable that some people are willing to do anything to get it. When Francie’s investigation leads her into the treacherously cold and snowy North Woods, she finds out that she too is being pursued.
My Review
I’m so glad I got to read all three of the books in this series so close together. All three books were super enjoyable– definitely brought back some great memories of reading Nancy Drew books when I was younger. I love Francie and Raven and the adventures that they face.
One of the other things I enjoyed is the fact that environmental issues are so well-integrated into the story. I felt like the facts and issues never sounded forced, but they added a lot of intrigue to the mystery and kept the stakes pretty high all the way through the book.
I recommend starting with ENCHANTMENT LAKE, since it gives you a chance to get to know some of the other characters first, but the mystery plot is fairly self-contained, so I think readers who wanted to start with this book could do so.
This book begins immediately after A CLUE IN THE TREES leaves off, so if you have the opportunity to read them back to back, I think that will also be more enjoyable, but not at all necessary. Each story contains a standalone mystery.
Like the other two books in the Enchanted Lakes series, THE SILVER BOX is a quick read. I think mystery lovers will definitely enjoy the pacing of this book as well as its unforgettable characters and charming Northwoods setting. It’s an excellent series to get lost in if you’re looking for an engrossing story or something to distract from reality.
Content Notes
Recommended for Ages 10 up.
Representation Francie’s best friend Raven is a Native American.
Profanity/Crude Language Content None.
Romance/Sexual Content Francie is dating a boy who is away at college.
Spiritual Content None.
Violent Content Francie discovers the body of a woman who’s been hit over the head. She and another character face kidnapping and other situations of peril.
Drug Content None.
Note: I received a free copy of THE SILVER BOX in exchange for my honest review. This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use, but which help support the costs of running this blog.
It’s finally fall! A new season and new fantastic middle grade books coming out soon to usher in the spooky season and the cooler weather. (Well, thoughts of cooler weather, anyway. Here in Florida, we have a while yet before we get a real break from the heat.)
I’m not usually a big Halloween girl– I was raised not celebrating, so I guess I’ve never really gotten into the holiday as an adult. This year, though, there are some spooky books on my wish list that I think will be perfect for readers looking for a deliciously creepy crawly read.
There are also some great stories about relationships and celebrating the arts, like writing, ballet, and figure skating. I’m super excited about reading those.
One book on the list is particularly special as it’s the story of an unlikely friendship between a Palestinian man and an Isreaeli woman. An inspiring story about friendship crossing boundaries like that is something we all need.
For the books on this list that I’ve already read, you’ll notice a link to my review. I’ll try to come back and update the list as I post new reviews, so it should be pretty current. You can also browse the titles on Goodreads and see what other readers are saying.
Note: This post contains affiliate links.
13 Middle Grade Books Out Fall 2020 (Plus 3 August Titles You May Have Missed)
What you need to know: A sweet, imaginative story about a girl dealing with grief and loneliness and a class putting together the play, PETER PAN. Funny and heartfelt.
What you need to know: A forest where “Ballets come alive.” A missing sister and the ballet, Giselle, featuring ghostly sylphs who will try to force Kiki to dance until she dies.
What You Need to Know: A sister looking for her lost brother. A magical circus where the cost of entry is a memory. For fans of CIRCUS MIRANDUS and THE NIGHT GARDENER.
What You Need to Know: Great friends. An aspiring writer and motel owner facing a roller coaster of challenges. Immigration laws that could jeopardize everything she cares about.
What You Need to Know: A boy gets hired by his aunt to help her fix her children’s book about a grumpy frog and prize-winning zucchini. Sounds hilarious to me!
What you need to know: Sequel to The Dragon Warrior. A brother set on revenge. A sister who must save him. High adventure and Chinese mythology in a modern-day setting.
What you need to know: A land in peril since a monster has started drinking all the water. A 12-year-old fated to aid an elderly woman to save the village, if only she can pry her away from her knitting.
What you need to know: A Palestinian and an Israeli sit on the steps of the home where each grew up and begin a surprising friendship. Based on Tolan’s extensive research and reporting.
Available November 3, 2020
What’s on your fall reading list?
Are any of these middle grade books on your fall 2020 reading list? What books are you most looking forward to reading this fall?
