Review of Muck and Magic, by Michael Morpurgo

Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary 0

Muck & Magic

by Michael Morpugo
illustrated by Olivia Lomenech Gill

Candlewick Press, 2020. First published in the United Kingdom in 2019. 60 pages.
Review written October 23, 2021, from a library book

This sweet little book amounts to an illustrated short story. It’s about a girl named Bonny who dreamed of being an Olympic cyclist. But one day she fell in front of some horses.

That chance encounter pulled at her, and she found herself coming around them again and again. Eventually, through the elderly lady who owns the horses, Bonny discovers a deep love for horses, and for sculpting.

After Bonny takes a job mucking out the stalls, here’s what the owner tells her:

“Where there’s muck there’s money, that’s what they say,” she said with a laugh. “Not true, I’m afraid, Bonny. Where there’s muck, there’s magic. Now that is true.” I wasn’t sure what she meant by that. “Horse muck,” she went on, by way of explanation. “Best magic in the world for vegetables. I’ve got leeks in my garden longer than, longer than . . .” She looked around her. “Twice as long as your bicycle pump over there. All the soil asks is that we feed it with that stuff, and it’ll do whatever we want it to. It’s like anything, Bonny – you have to put more in than you take out.”

michaelmorpurgo.com
candlewick.com

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A Sea of Lemon Trees, by María Dolores Águila

Award Winners, Children's Fiction Review, Historical 0

A Sea of Lemon Trees

The Corrido of Roberto Alvarez

by María Dolores Águila

Roaring Brook Press, 2025. 291 pages.
Review written February 17, 2026, from a library book.
2026 Newbery Honor Book
2026 Pura Belpré Author Honor Book
2025 National Book Award Longlist

A Sea of Lemon Trees is a novel in verse about an event that took place in 1930 and 1931, when a school district in California decided to make the Mexican American kids go to a separate “Americanization” school from the white kids.

The Mexican community fought back, with the Mexican embassy hiring lawyers for them. They chose a 12-year-old boy who was a good student, Roberto Alvarez, who was fluent in both English and Spanish, to be the lead plaintiff. This is his story.

I’m quite sure I already read Roberto’s story in a nonfiction picture book. (Sure enough! Google pointed me to the 2021 book by Larry Dane Brimner: Without Separation: Prejudice, Segregation, and the Case of Roberto Alvarez. I even reviewed it, but it was a blog-only review.)

This book is for middle-grade readers, and goes more in-depth, and being fiction, tells us more about how Roberto might have felt. And it gives us more information – telling us about Roberto’s best friend, whose family got deported. Back matter informed me that deportations – even of American-born citizens – are not a new phenomenon.

All these factors [the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, and more] led to the Mexican Repatriation, which began in 1929 and continued through 1939. During this time, both Mexican nationals and their American-born children were deported to México, most often without due process, to free up jobs for Americans. This policy was begun by the administration of President Herbert Hoover. The exact number of people forcibly deported is unknown, but estimates range from 300,000 to 2 million, most of them children and American citizens.

By telling us this story from the perspective of a child who was in the thick of it and just wanted to go to school, readers can appreciate how bewilderingly unjust the whole thing was. May it also encourage those readers to stop and think how more modern government actions might feel from the perspective of the marginalized.

mariadoloresaguila.com
mackids.com

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Review of Talia’s Codebook for Middle School, by Marissa Moss

Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Starred Review 0

Talia’s Codebook for Middle School

by Marissa Moss

Candlewick Press, 2025. 216 pages.
Review written January 13, 2026, from my own copy, purchased via Amazon.com
Starred Review
2026 Mathical Book Prize Honor Book, Grades 6-8

Talia’s Codebook for Middle School is a sequel to Talia’s Codebook for Mathletes, which was our Mathical Book Prize Winner for 2024. This book is eligible for this year’s Mathical Prize, but I’m writing this before our discussion.

We’ve got more journaling goodness. Lots of middle school situations to navigate, and lots of pictures to go with Talia’s musings. I like Talia’s approach to life as codes: For example, the codes of what parents’ expressions mean, the code of how you can tell when people “like” each other, the code of how to lead others without coming across as too bossy.

It is good to read the first book before reading this one, and I think like me you’ll be glad to read more. Talia’s still on a math team, but now it’s a combined team of girls and boys, and her best friend (a boy) is acting like her best friend again. The new team leader is a girl, and Talia feels like she’s Miss Perfect – until she gets to know her better.

Meanwhile, Talia’s parents are putting lots of pressure on her, and she’s worried about the next math team competition – doesn’t want to get her answer wrong again.

Let me just say that I think the math competition portrayed is terrible – most kids answer ONE question each, in a speed competition with a buzzer. When my kids did math competitions in middle school, there were different phases, including one that was a written test with multiple problems and another that gave teams a chance to collaborate and solve harder problems. So much pressure on *one* question would be terrible!

But other than that, I love this portrayal of a girl who loves math – and who learns to make friends with both girls and boys in middle school. I hope there are more to come.

marissamoss.com

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Review of The Man Who Counted, by Malba Tahan

Children's Fiction Review, Historical, Mathematical, Old Favorites, Starred Review 0

The Man Who Counted

A Collection of Mathematical Adventures

by Malba Tahan
translated by Leslie Clark and Alastair Reid
illustrated by Patricia Reid Baquero

W. W. Norton and Company, 1993. First published in Portuguese in Brazil, 1972.
Review written September 14, 2021, from my own copy.
Starred Review

It was a delight to revisit this book, a tale of mathematical feats and curiosities performed in Baghdad by a man who began life as a humble shepherd.

The narrator of the story is a man traveling home to Baghdad who meets Beremiz Samir, a man who can count the number of birds in a flock as they fly by. But his mathematical agility goes beyond counting, as he solves mathematical puzzles for people and gains a post with the vizier in Baghdad.

The stories are told with middle eastern flourishes and the reader is entertained by the situation as well as the many puzzles. Here’s an example of the first puzzle solved:

We had been traveling for a few hours without stopping when there occurred an episode worth retelling, wherein my companion Beremiz put to use his talents as an esteemed cultivator of algebra.

Close to an old, half-abandoned inn, we saw three men arguing heatedly beside a herd of camels. Amid the shouts and insults, the men gestured wildly in fierce debate, and we could hear their angry cries:

“It cannot be!”
“That is robbery!”
“But I do not agree!”

The intelligent Beremiz asked them why they were quarreling.

“We are brothers” the oldest explained, “and we received these 35 camels as our inheritance. According to the express wishes of my father, half of them belong to me, one-third to my brother Hamed, and one-ninth to Harim, the youngest. Nevertheless, we do not know how to make the division, and whatever one of us suggests, the other two dispute. Of the solutions tried so far, none have been acceptable. If half of 35 is 17 ½, if neither one-third nor one-ninth of this amount is a precise number, then how can we make the division?”

“Very simple,” said the Man Who Counted. “I promise to make the division fairly, but let me add to the inheritance of 35 camels this splendid beast that brought us here at such an opportune moment.”

Beremiz presents a solution, and continues to present solutions to problems that come his way. He also expounds on fascinating facts about certain numbers and provides interesting history of mathematics. There are a wide variety of problems. I am especially fond of the liars and truth-tellers puzzle at the end.

I will say that Beremiz presents his calculations as if by magic – he doesn’t really explain how the reader, too, could have gotten the solution. So the book gives the impression that magical mathematical geniuses exist. However, for anyone who enjoys mathematical puzzles, the fun in this book will make up for that.

It was a delight to revisit this classic. It’s similar to The Number Devil, by Hans Magnus Enzensberger — perfect for people who like to play with numbers.

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Review of The Trouble with Heroes, by Kate Messner

Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Starred Review 0

The Trouble with Heroes

by Kate Messner
read by Mack Gordon

Bloomsbury Children’s Books, 2025. 4 hours, 16 minutes.
Review written February 2, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I’m embarrassed. I have a print copy of this book, signed by the author, which I received at ALA Annual Conference last June and was eager to read. But somehow, with award reading, one thing and another – I didn’t get it read until my audiobook hold came in. However, all is not lost – the book was good enough that I will certainly want to read it again, and I do own a copy.

This audiobook packs a lot of punch into four hours. Finn Connelly was caught kicking over a headstone because his dad’s headstone wasn’t the kind you can kick over – and he’s in deep trouble. Turns out, he defaced the headstone of a beloved woman who had climbed all of the 46 High Peaks of the Adirondacks, and who had written letters to others who wanted to become 46ers, encouraging them in their paths. So the lady’s daughter says she’ll drop charges – if Finn will hike all 46 High Peaks that summer, and take her mother’s dog with him.

At the same time, Finn has a Language Arts poetry project he needs to complete in order to pass seventh grade. It’s supposed to be on the theme of heroes. The teacher suggests he write about his dad.

Finn’s dad was a firefighter who saved people on 9/11 and was captured in an iconic photo. And he went on to work overtime during the Covid-19 pandemic to save people. But Finn doesn’t buy the hero worship. Because he knows all too well how human his dad was.

The book is a novel in verse about Finn’s summer, climbing the 46 peaks with three different trail mentors. And the dog, whom he nicknames Drool-face. It’s told in Finn’s voice as he tries to complete poems for his poetry project. And it’s a whole lot of fun to watch his attitude slowly change – from thinking it’s all stupid and he’s a terrible person and heroes are all fake – to something much more optimistic. And at the same time, we watch him wrestle with who his dad really was.

And it’s all done in four hours! Honestly, I would have liked a little more. The story wasn’t incomplete, and plenty of details were filled in about these actual hikes – but I enjoyed my time with him and would have liked a little more of it. (This isn’t a real complaint – I think it’s fantastic to have good books for kids that aren’t ponderous tomes. But, yeah, I was a little sad it was so short.)

Oh, and the book will also make you hungry for cookies – as Finn devises a cookie to go with each of the 46 High Peaks. (Hmmm. I may have to look in the print book to try a recipe or two.)

A book that’s both powerful and heart-warming. At first, it made me want to go out and do some hiking, but the talk of rock scrambles and mud squelched that impulse to settle for enjoying reading about it.

katemessner.com

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Review of Will’s Race for Home, by Jewell Parker Rhodes

Children's Fiction Review, Historical, Starred Review 0

Will’s Race for Home

by Jewell Parker Rhodes

Little, Brown and Company, 2025. 196 pages.
Review written February 4, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review
2026 Coretta Scott King Author Award Winner
2026 Capitol Choices selection

Here’s a Western with a Black kid as the protagonist. The book starts out in late 1888. Will lives with his parents and his grandfather on land they sharecrop in Texas, giving most of the profit to the owner. Father and Pa say it’s not much better than slavery.

So when Father hears about a coming land rush for land in Oklahoma, opening up on Monday, April 22, 1889, at noon, Father and Will join the crowd heading out to stake their claim. They’ve got their mule Belle hitched up to a wagon, and they hope to make it on time, because there are more people seeking 160 acres of land than there is land to give them.

And the journey is difficult. They find a friend who helps them, and then they need to help the friend. And they have to get their mule and wagon across the Red River on the border between Texas and Oklahoma. They face gunslingers and sheriffs who don’t want Black folks to claim land. Will gets to know his father better and then gets to know himself better, because by the end he has an important part to play.

It feels like children’s books are getting shorter lately, which is a welcome change. In under 200 pages, Jewell Parker Rhodes gives us a story full of danger and drama, as well as compassion and hope, and shedding light on a part of American history I hadn’t known a lot about. (My own great-grandparents had a homestead in Oklahoma – now I’m curious if they were part of that same land rush.)

jewellparkerrhodes.com
lbyr.com

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Review of The Nine Moons of Han Yu and Luli, by Karina Yan Glaser

Audiobooks, Award Winners, Children's Fiction Review, Historical, Starred Review 0

The Nine Moons of Han Yu and Luli

by Karina Yan Glaser
read by Sira Siu and Brian Nishii

HarperCollins, 2025. 10 hours, 1 minute.
Review written January 31, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
2026 Newbery Honor Book

The Nine Moons of Han Yu and Luli tells two stories, 1200 years apart. Han Yu is a boy living in China in the year 731, during the Tang dynasty. He sells steamed buns in the market with his father. But when his entire family gets put into isolation because of his sister’s case of the illness sweeping the countryside, Han Yu decides to accept the commission intended for his father and travel along the trade routes later known as the Silk Roads to deliver the goods and make more money than his family can make in a year.

Alongside that story, with alternating chapters, we learn about Luli, who lives in 1931 Chinatown in New York City. Luli’s family owns a restaurant that used to be bustling and busy, but now hard times have fallen and business is slow, and they are in danger of losing the building that houses their restaurant and their home.

The parallels in the story are skillfully executed, though the children’s lives are so far apart in time and space. Both children start selling steamed buns to help their families. Both face difficulties and hardships with a parallel flow through the alternating chapters. Despite the cliffhanger chapter endings, I never found myself annoyed to switch characters, because I was equally interested in each character’s adventures.

Han Yu has a way with animals that they come to him and turn to him. And rumors say that a tiger protects him. Along the way, he meets a young poet who becomes his best friend. Luli, too, has a dog who protects her, and friends who help. Her whole class visits the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and they also visit the Chinese art treasures that Luli’s neighbor keeps in their building at the gift shop.

What ties the two stories together? There’s a piece of silk that has been handed down in Luli’s neighbor’s family for generations. It has a poem written on it in Chinese characters. So we’re ready to hear the story of how it came to be.

I have to say that both characters have some awfully good luck that keeps disaster averted – but in a children’s story, I think we all have more tolerance for that. (I certainly needed those kids to get a happy ending!) And the kids themselves both have plenty of opportunities to display courage and resourcefulness.

It’s not every author who can tie together two stories of children from 1200 years apart who never meet and have it work beautifully. This story, steeped in actual history, gives the reader a deep appreciation for Chinese culture along with the joy of a story well-told.

karinaglaser.com

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Review of All the Blues in the Sky, by Renée Watson

Award Winners, Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Starred Review 0

All the Blues in the Sky

by Renée Watson

Bloomsbury Children’s Books, 2025. 182 pages.
Review written January 27, 2026, from my own copy, given to me at ALA Annual Conference and signed by the author.
Starred Review
2026 Newbery Medal Winner

I was happy when the Newbery Medal Winner was announced – and it was a book sitting by my bed in one of my TBR piles, signed by the author. And yes, I’d heard the author speak before I got it signed at ALA Annual Conference, and I was very excited about reading it.

I was disappointed in myself that I hadn’t read it yet. (So many books, so little time! I wanted to read it right away, but there are so many books in those piles, plus award reading, plus I just blew it.)

However, the good side was that it made perfect Snow Day reading. In between walks in the snow, I lounged by the fire, and as a novel in verse, it wasn’t long before I had this beautiful book read.

Here’s the first page of the text:

I didn’t know
best friends could die.

Yes, this is a book about grief. The narrator is Sage, and on her thirteenth birthday her best friend was walking to her house and was hit by a car and died.

Sage is in a grief group after school with four other kids. Two of them lost a loved one suddenly, and two lost a loved one slowly, after a long process. Sage feels like that’s not the same, since she didn’t get a chance to say good-by.

But there are ups and downs after loss. And sometimes the sadness and happiness come at the same time. Sage wants to be a pilot, and she’s going to a program about learning to be one, and she thinks about all the different shades of blue in the sky – and all the different shades of grief.

The poetry in this book is beautiful. We feel with Sage, grieve with her, but also rejoice with her. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself shedding some tears while reading it. (Especially at the rejoicing with her part.) And the book brings us to a place where we know she’ll be able to carry on, feeling all the emotions.

An Author’s Note at the back tells us that Renée Watson lost fifteen people she loved, including her mother, in the space of two years. This didn’t surprise me, because she brings authenticity to the story. And ultimately, hope. She ends the Author’s Note and the book like this:

I hope this book gives every reader permission to feel real emotions, to admit when life is hard.
I hope this book reminds every reader that in the midst of sadness and grief, there can be joy and goodness.

And Renée models that – because out of her own deep loss, she brought forth this wonderful book.

reneewatson.net

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Review of The Queen’s Secret, by Jessica Day George

Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy, Starred Review 0

The Queen’s Secret

Rose Legacy, Book Two

by Jessica Day George

Bloomsbury Children’s Books, 2019. 250 pages.
Starred Review

This is the second book in a planned trilogy about a land of exiles where people can communicate with horses. And our heroine, Anthea, has an especially strong bond, able to communicate with all the horses, not only Florian, the stallion who’s bonded to her.

I enjoyed this book more than the first one. In that one, the set-up of magical telepathic communication with horses seemed a little bit too much like generic wish-fulfillment.

In this book, the set-up is done, and I enjoyed seeing the people and horses trying to work together. The horse communication seems horsey, not just the thoughts of people attributed to horses.

The Horse Brigade has the favor of the queen – but the king is not so easily won over. As the book opens, they are trying to prove themselves by carrying messages and trying to be useful in the king’s service. However, as things develop, it appears that someone is working against them.

Then an outbreak of illness starts – in the exact places where the horses had been. For a country that already thought horses bring disease, trying to win support for the Horse Brigade just became much more difficult.

The book does end on a disastrous note. We will have to wait for the next book to see how Anthea and the horses of Last Farm can overcome a major setback.

These books are perfect for fantasy-lovers who also love horses. It takes the idea of becoming one with your horse to the next level.

jessicadaygeorge.com
Bloomsbury.com

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Review of Here Comes Lolo, by Niki Daly

Beginning Chapter Books, Children's Fiction Review, Starred Review 0

Here Comes Lolo

by Niki Daly

Catalyst Press, 2020. Originally published in 2019 in Great Britain. 78 pages.
Review written November 27, 2021, from a library book
Starred Review

I read these beginning chapter books about Lolo out of order, and still love every one of them. This is the first one, where Lolo is introduced. She lives with Mama and Gogo (her grandmother) in South Africa. As all good beginning chapter books, the stories about Lolo reflect the interests of a young child beginning to learn to read. What’s fun about Lolo is that living in South Africa makes her concerns a little different than they might be if she were an American child — yet her personality and adventures are relatable.

There are four short stories in the book:

“A Gold Star and a Kiss for Lolo” is about her desire to win a gold star for reading from her teacher, but the setback that happens when she does.

In “Lolo’s Hat,” Lolo falls in love with a floppy hat in a shop window — but it isn’t there when she and her Mama go back for it.

“Lolo and the Lost Ring” begins like this:

Whenever Mama, Gogo, and Lolo went for a walk, Mama would look up and say, “I love the clouds against the blue sky.” Gogo would look around and say, “I love those trees,” or “What a nice dress that woman is wearing.” Stuff like that.

Lolo liked looking at the ground where flowers grow and where there were cracks to jump over on pavements.

And that’s where she found it: a ring lying in a crack in the pavement!

“Lolo and a Dog Called Hope” is about a dog that lives next door and is being mistreated. What should she do?

Lolo deals with small problems with flare — and with the help of Mama and Gogo.

Often with beginning chapter books, I read just one to get the idea of the series. But with Lolo, I wanted to read them all.

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