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Review: Dog Trouble by Kristin Varner

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Dog Trouble by Kristin Varner

Dog Trouble
Kristin Varner
First Second
Published October 29, 2024

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About Dog Trouble

From the author of Horse Trouble comes a graphic novel perfect for fans of PAWS and Allergic!

Ash is a good kid at heart. But his grades are slipping, and when he gets caught vandalizing an old building, it’s the last straw. It’s decided: Ash will spend some time away from the city, at his dad’s place on Ferncliff Island.

It’s bad enough that Ash has no friends on the island (just an annoying little stepsister), but his parents are also making him do community service! He volunteers at the local animal shelter, even though he’s not really a dog person. Dogs slobber! They smell! And the dogs at the shelter bark, bark, and bark. But as Ash bonds with the dogs―especially Cooper, a clever, fun-loving pointer that gives sloppy kisses―he starts to see that maybe his time on Ferncliff Island isn’t a total loss.

My Review

If a book had the power to make me a dog person, this one would probably do it! (I don’t hate dogs, but I’m solidly a cat person.)

The story follows Ash, a boy who must spend his summer volunteering at an animal shelter after getting into trouble with some friends. At the start of many of the chapters, a dog profile appears, introducing readers to a dog that will appear later in the story and giving some information about its breed and personality. Some terms related to the care of animals appear in bold in the text. Those are defined at the bottom of the page. I liked that format of keeping the panels focused on the story but continually making caring for animals accessible to inexperienced readers.

Ash makes a lot of mistakes, and sometimes, even when he’s doing the right things, accidents happen. I loved that his supervisor at the shelter responded calmly, acknowledged his anxiety, and helped him navigate whatever issue was at hand.

Ash also makes an unexpected friend and forms a closer bond with his stepsister than he imagined would be possible through his experience of staying with his dad for the summer. Having gone through some of the blended family challenges, I felt like the portrayal of those relationships made a lot of sense, and the evolution felt organic.

All in all, if you love dogs and/or stories about navigating family challenges or skateboarding, Dog Trouble is one story you won’t want to miss.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 9 to 12.

Representation
Ash’s parents are divorced. His stepmom and stepsister are Black.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Romance/Sexual Content
None.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violent Content
References to animal abuse or trauma. (Nothing shown on scene.) One of the dogs in the book dies (off-scene). The loss is unexpected and difficult for Ash.

Drug Content
None.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use but help support this blog. I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.

Review: Mind Over Monsters by Betsy Uhrig

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Mind Over Monsters
Betsy Uhrig
Margaret K. McElderry Books
Published July 16, 2024

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About Mind Over Monsters

Gordon Korman meets Scooby-Doo when anxiety-prone middle schoolers try a mindfulness app that has them face their fears all-too-literally in this spooky and humorous middle grade adventure.

FACE YOUR FEARS! That’s what the meditation app with the cheesy name De-stress-o-rama is telling Lena to do. She’s one of seven always-worried middle schoolers trying out this new app to see if it can help students handle stress. But something is going wrong—very, very wrong.

The group’s fears are becoming all too real, first lurking and dangling, then chasing them around and threatening to swallow them whole. From a stubborn inky blob that is fear of the dark, to the queasy giant in sweaty underpants that is fear of public speaking, monsters are invading Cranberry Bog Middle School! Can Lena’s group of worriers figure out how to conquer their fears before the whole school is swarmed?

My Review

This was a really fun book with some really cool moments. I liked that the story featured meditation as a helpful practice for people with anxiety. Of course, if your meditation app created real creatures based on your fears, it wouldn’t be very helpful. I still liked that meditation is shown in the book, and many kids found it helpful (sans monsters).

Another thing I liked a lot was Lena’s relationship with her mom. There was a moment in the book where I thought I knew what was going on, and I remember thinking I was going to be mad if the book left this thing unaddressed. And Betsy Uhrig proved yet again that my trust in her is well-placed because I loved how she handled the issue between Lena and her mom.

The monsters that emerged from the app made sense but also weren’t meant to be super terrifying. It made sense that the kids in the book would be scared, since the creatures were tailored to the kids’ specific fears, but they didn’t make the book overly scary. I think the story is really accessible to kids with big fears. I love that, too.

The monsters emerging into real life in this book made me think of The Darkdeep by Ally Condie and Brendan Reichs. I think readers who enjoyed that series will like this one. I recommend it for middle grade readers struggling with fears, too.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 8 to 12.

Representation
Lena is white, but her group of friends, the Worriers, is pretty diverse.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Romance/Sexual Content
Lena’s best friend seems to have a crush on a boy who likes her.

Spiritual Content
Fears begin appearing in the form of three-dimensional beings.

Violent Content
Situations of peril. Descriptions of fears.

Drug Content
None.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use but help support this blog. I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.

Review: Camp Prodigy by Caroline Palmer

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Camp Prodigy
Caroline Palmer
Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Published June 11, 2024

Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads

About Camp Prodigy

Perfect for fans of Victoria Jamieson and Raina Telgemeier, this heartwarming middle grade graphic novel follows two nonbinary kids who navigate anxiety and identity while having fun and forming friendships at their summer orchestra camp.

After attending an incredible concert, Tate Seong is inspired to become a professional violist. There’s just one they’re the worst musician at their school. Tate doesn’t even have enough confidence to assert themself with their friends or come out as nonbinary to their family, let alone attempt a solo anytime soon. Things start to look up when Tate attends a summer orchestra camp—Camp Prodigy—and runs into Eli, the remarkable violist who inspired Tate to play in the first place. But Eli has been hiding their skills ever since their time in the spotlight gave them a nervous breakdown.

Together, can they figure out how to turn Tate into a star and have Eli overcome their performance anxieties? Or will the pressure take them both down?

My Review

In the early pages, I found the transitions from one panel to the next a little jarring, but either I acclimated to the storytelling, or the transitions smoothed out by the end of the first chapter. I love the way that Palmer uses color, particularly panels with washed-out colors, to highlight when characters have a strong emotional reaction to something or someone. It made those moments stand out and gave them a huge emotional impact. It was like visually seeing the blood drain from someone’s face.

I liked both Tate and Eli as characters. They have such different personalities, and I enjoyed the way they interacted with one another, pushed each other in healthy ways, and helped give each other space to heal or grow.

The bulk of the story takes place during a month-long overnight summer camp for orchestra students. Tate and Eli both play the viola, so they compete for chair assignments in their section of the orchestra and attend rehearsals. The viola students are a pretty diverse group, both in appearance and personality. Some push for perfection. Others prioritize fun and building social connections in the summer camp environment. The book does a great job balancing and blending scenes showing musical instruction and summer camp activities and using them to show growth in both Tate and Eli.

This graphic novel is a quick, easy read bursting with bright colors and charming personalities. Readers who enjoy summer camp stories, books about musicians and music, or books about exploring identity and building friendships will not want to miss this one.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 8 to 12.

Representation
Both Tate and Eli are nonbinary. Eli is Black. Tate is Asian American. Characters of other races and ethnicities round out the cast.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Romance/Sexual Content
None.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violent Content
A couple of people make discriminatory comments about someone’s nonbinary identity.

Drug Content
None.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use but help support this blog. I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.

Marvelous Middle-Grade Monday

I’m sharing this post as a part of a weekly round-up of middle-grade posts called Marvelous Middle-Grade Monday. Check out other blogs posting about middle-grade books today on Marvelous Middle-Grade Mondays at Always in the Middle with Greg Pattridge.

Review: Lightfall: The Dark Times by Tim Probert

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Lightfall: The Dark Times (Lightfall #3)
Tim Probert
HarperAlley
Published April 2, 2024

Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads

About The Dark Times (Lightfall #3)

The Lights have gone dark in Irpa.

Danger lurks as the air grows colder and threats lie in the shadows at every turn. While the rest of their fellowship seeks safety, Bea and Cad team up with a small group of survivors to travel to the Citadel of Knowledge, pursuing answers to their world’s darkest mysteries.

But their journey reveals even more secrets. Until an unexpected ally shines a light in the darkness, providing a clue to a mystery from long ago…and a beacon of hope for the future.

My Review

I waited two years for this book. The only disappointment, and I’m not sure it’s truly disappointing, is that it’s not the conclusion to the series. I don’t know why I thought it would be, but it’s not. The great thing about that is there are more Bea and Cad adventures still to come!

Because the story takes place during an unending night, the color palette is very dark with a lot of golden/firelight colors. It’s not my favorite combination of colors, but I get why that palette worked for this particular part of the tale.

Bea and Cad remain great characters and deliver fun and surprising lines. The ever-optimistic Cad loses hope for a bit, and Bea steps up as a bold warrior in a couple of scenes. I loved seeing the two of them experience some growth and depth. Their friendship remains a powerful force that helps them both.

I read this book at the end of a pretty grinding day, and it was very much the warm, fun adventure I needed to finish my day on a high note. The artwork by Tim Probert continues to amaze me. Everything has a playfulness to it, and the story world feels epic and fantastical. It’s so fun.

I’m really glad to have the next installment of this series on my shelves. I think fans of the Amulet series or fantasy graphic novels in general will love these books. If you’re unfamiliar with the Lightfall series, you can check out my reviews of the first and second books.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 8 to 12.

Representation
Cad is a Galdurian, which means he looks a little bit like a giant axolotl?? There are minor characters with brown skin.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Romance/Sexual Content
None.

Spiritual Content
Bea learns about magic from a mentor who teaches her that everything in her world has a soul, and if you can learn to listen to each soul around you, you can ask them for help.

Violent Content
Situations of peril. Battle scenes.

Drug Content
None.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use but help support this blog.

Marvelous Middle-Grade Mondays

I’m sharing this post as a part of a weekly round-up of middle-grade posts called Marvelous Middle-Grade Mondays. Check out other blogs posting about middle-grade books today on Marvelous Middle-Grade Mondays at Always in the Middle with Greg Pattridge.

Review: This Is Me Trying by Racquel Marie

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This Is Me Trying
Racquel Marie
Feiwel & Friends
Published

Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads

About This Is Me Trying

Perfect for fans of Nina LaCour, This is Me Trying is a profound and tender YA contemporary novel exploring grief, love, and guilt from author Racquel Marie.

Growing up, Bryce, Beatriz, and Santiago were inseparable. But when Santiago moved away before high school, their friendship crumbled. Three years later, Bryce is gone, Beatriz is known as the dead boy’s girlfriend, and Santiago is back.

The last thing Beatriz wants is to reunite with Santiago, who left all her messages unanswered while she drowned alone in grief over Bryce’s death by suicide. Even if she wasn’t angry, Santiago’s attempts to make amends are jeopardizing her plan to keep the world at arm’s length―equal parts protection and punishment―and she swore to never let anyone try that again.

Santiago is surprised to find the once happy-go-lucky Bea is now the gothic town loner, though he’s unsurprised she wants nothing to do with him. But he can’t fix what he broke between them while still hiding what led him to cut her off in the first place, and it’s harder to run from his past when he isn’t states away anymore.

Inevitably drawn back together by circumstance and history, Beatriz and Santiago navigate grief, love, mental illness, forgiveness, and what it means to try to build a future after unfathomable loss.

My Review

I can’t resist a new book by Racquel Marie, so I knew I would have to read this one. It’s different than her previous two books, both of which had only female narrators. Different doesn’t mean bad, though. I liked both Santiago and Beatriz as narrators. On the surface, this book seems like a simple story, but the author weaves in so many layers that it takes us the whole book to unwind them all.

Both Santi and Bea have complicated relationships with their parents and are raised by one parent. In Santi’s case, his supportive guardian is his grandfather, and his dad flits in and out of his life, pursuing his dream to be a professional musician. Bea’s mom is kind of the opposite. Having a child very young made her curve her life around her daughter and devote herself to making sure Bea had everything she needed.

The elephant in the room, of course, is the death of Santiago’s best friend and Bea’s boyfriend, Bryce. It’s been nearly three years, but those wounds remain fresh for both of them, and they avoid or deal with their grief in different ways.

One of the things I really liked about the book is the descriptions of Bea’s hair, makeup, and clothes. She has a very goth style going on that reminded me of someone I went to school with. I liked that even though the people who know her can see through her prickly exterior and realize that she’s lonely and hurting, they don’t blow through her boundaries. They make their case. They offer. But ultimately, if she asks them to leave her alone, they do.

As the story progresses and the layers unwind, I couldn’t help getting more and more caught up in the story. Grief is hard, even when it’s not as complicated as this. The author does a phenomenal job bringing that complexity to the page and making room to celebrate relationships and beauty as well.

Also: bonus for having an adorable black cat named Lottie to flit in and out of scenes the way cats do! The scenes in which Bea walks her cat with a leash are awesome.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 14 up.

Representation
Important characters have depression, anxiety, panic attacks, and intrusive thoughts and behaviors fueled by obsessive-compulsive disorder OCD. Beatriz is biracial, with a Colombian American mom and white dad. Santiago is Latino American. Beatriz identifies as pansexual. Santiago identifies as queer. A couple minor characters are lesbians. One is nonbinary.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Extreme profanity used somewhat frequently.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing between boy and girl. References to kissing between two boys and sex between two girls. References to sex between a boy and girl. (All sex happens off-scene.)

Bea’s mom got pregnant as a teenager. Bea imagines what that life was like and how it impacted her mom’s plans.

Spiritual Content
People gather for a memorial service for a boy who died. Later, someone comments that he is looking down on his friends.

Violent Content
References to a boy who died by suicide (the method is never disclosed). Characters discuss suicidal ideation and morbid ideation. The story focuses on grief from this loss as well as the loss of parents due to a car accident or cancer.

In one scene, a boy behaves in a predatory way toward another person, pursuing them when the person makes it clear they do not want the attention. The person’s friends stop the boy from harassing them.

A boy and girl (minor characters) have an emotionally abusive relationship operating around the fringes of the story.

A girl hurts her hand punching a boy.

Drug Content
Teens drink alcohol at a party. A drunk boy calls a girl to give him a ride home. Some characters smoke.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use but help support this blog. I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.

Review: The Final Curse of Ophelia Cray by Christine Calella

Book Review and Content, Fantasy, Historical, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , , , , , ,

The Final Curse of Ophelia Cray
Christine Calella
Page Street Press
Published April 9, 2024

Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads

About The Final Curse of Ophelia Cray

Storms and pirates are nothing compared to the evil within men’s hearts.

After a lifetime of abuse at the hands of superstitious townsfolk, Ophelia Young, a bastard child of the notorious pirate queen, is tired of paying for the sins of her mother. Despite playing by the rules her whole life, she’s earned nothing but spite and suspicion. So when a naval officer saves her from the jeering crowd at her mother’s hanging, Ophelia hatches a new hope of enlisting in the navy to escape her mother’s legacy and redeem her own reputation for good. But Ophelia soon discovers that a life at sea isn’t as honorable as she hoped.

Betsy Young is as different as she could be from her half-sister Ophelia. She’s a nervous homebody who wants to keep her family safe and longs to be in love. So naturally, she’s devastated when the son of their family’s business partner rejects her hand in marriage and her sister joins the navy. But when her father contracts a life-threatening illness as well, Betsy has to bring Ophelia home to save the family business.

Unfortunately for the Young sisters, Betsy trying to get Ophelia recalled reveals that Ophelia enlisted fraudulently under Betsy’s name, a secret which Ophelia struggles to keep from crewmates who would kill her if they knew she was the pirate queen’s daughter. To save Ophelia from the naval authorities, Betsy will have to board a ship during hurricane season and brave all the dangers of the sea to get them both home safe.

My Review

Is it weird to say that I found it refreshing to read about pirates as the villains in this book? Ha. Actually, I liked a lot of things about this book. The relationship between Betsy and Ophelia, of course, drew me into the story. They are half-sisters nearly the same age but with very different personalities. Despite their differences, these two girls have each other’s back in everything but this: Betsy’s crippling anxiety keeps her mostly at home, and Ophelia longs for a life at sea in the Navy.

While I really appreciate that Betsy has anxiety, I felt like the representation in the story was uneven. At the beginning, Betsy’s anxiety pretty much runs her life. She has decided to stay home where she feels safe, and she can barely speak when someone outside her family tries to talk to her. When she faces boarding a ship and making the journey to find Ophelia, she doesn’t make that decision lightly or without her anxiety spiking. As the story progresses, though, her anxiety sort of evaporates? She experiences life-threatening situations and eloquently advocates for herself and others. She grieves and feels fear, but I felt like the symptoms the story used to define her anxiety faded away.

I don’t know. I guess it made me a little bit uncomfortable because it implied that all she needed to do to conquer her anxiety was get out there and be brave, and that’s not really how clinical anxiety works? Maybe this wasn’t supposed to be representative of clinical anxiety, though.

At any rate. I really appreciated the relationship between the sisters and the representation of the pirates in the story. It was nice to read something that didn’t totally romanticize piracy. The plot was pretty evenly paced, and I loved the twists and turns the story took.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 14 up.

Representation
Betsy has anxiety. Ophelia is asexual/aromantic. Minor characters are lesbian.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Strong profanity used infrequently.

Romance/Sexual Content
In one scene, a boy kisses a girl without her consent. She breaks off the kiss and makes it clear it isn’t what she wants. He stops, but is unhappy. Later, a girl welcomes kisses from a boy. In another scene, a boy coerces a girl to kiss him, and she bites his mouth.

Spiritual Content
Betsy and her mother believe in some spiritual things, like bad vibes and curses. Ophelia wrestles with whether she believes in anything like that. The people of her town seem to believe her mother’s blood is cursed, and they treat her terribly because of it. Later, some inexplicable things happen, and Ophelia isn’t sure what to make of them. She seems to finally believe in some spiritual happenings, whether it’s her mother’s spirit guiding her from beyond or some other benevolent force.

Violent Content
Betsy and Ophelia attend a hanging. The person’s face is covered, but they watch until she dies. The crowd abuses Ophelia, pushing her, pulling her hair, and nearly trampling her. Ophelia makes it clear this kind of treatment from her neighbors is pretty common.

Sailors are whipped as punishment. They battle those on enemy ships.

Pirates attack a ship, shooting some on board and brutalizing others. Some graphic descriptions of violence, including brief torture and dismemberment. A sailor wraps chains around a girl’s neck to mimic a hanging. Sailors battle for control of a ship, stabbing and shooting each other as they can.

Drug Content
Characters have wine with dinner. A fellow sailor passes Ophelia a bottle of whisky, which she takes a small sip from. Three girls drink rum together. One drinks until very drunk.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use but help support this blog. I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.