Review of Too Small Tola Makes It Count, by Atinuke

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

Too Small Tola Makes It Count

by Atinuke
illustrated by Onyinye Iwu

Candlewick Press, 2024. First published in the United Kingdom in 2023. 90 pages.
Review written March 17, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review

I love Too Small Tola! Here are more adventures for children ready to read chapter books. You don’t have to have read the earlier ones to enjoy this one, but I do recommend them, and characters return.

I like the way these books give younger children a window into other people’s lives without any need to feel sorry for them and showing lots of love.

Too Small Tola lives in Lagos, unbelievable Lagos.

In Lagos there are children who live in mansions. Mansions so big, their parents have to call their children’s cell phones to find which room they are in!

And in Lagos there are children who sleep on cardboard boxes under bridges where people step over them both day and night.

Tola’s family is lucky. They do not own a mansion or even an apartment. But they do not sleep under bridges either. They are lucky enough to have the roof of one room over their heads.

Tola lives with her Grandmommy and an older brother and older sister. We’re getting to know some of the other people in their building.

In past books, Tola was able to solve some problems using Math. In this book, there are some life problems to solve, which can be trickier. Tola is able to solve problems for her neighbors, but she can’t get her school classmates to believe that she worked for a famous rock star’s family during the lockdown – until they get a nice comeuppance in the last chapter.

Other problems involve helping Mrs. Shaky-Shaky, who can no longer go up the stairs, and traveling to the beach to escape the heat, and watching her neighbor’s baby, who makes an escape.

It all involves everyday life for Tola, and we get to enjoy the kind and wonderful people she interacts with every day, as well as appreciate Tola’s ingenuity.

These books always make me smile.

atinuke.co.uk
onyinyeiwu.com
candlewick.com

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Review of Orris and Timble: Lost and Found, by Kate DiCamillo, illustrated by Carmen Mok

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

Orris and Timble

Lost and Found

by Kate DiCamillo
illustrated by Carmen Mok

Candlewick Press, 2025. 76 pages.
Review written June 5, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review

Here’s a second beginning chapter book about an old rat named Orris and a young owl named Timble, who are, surprisingly, friends. Like the first, it’s a sweet and gentle story.

Orris has gotten accustomed to visits from Timble every evening when they talk with each other and enjoy each other’s company. Orris tells a story every night, and Timble loves a line from a story:

“By the light of the stars, by the light of the moon, I will always return.”

But then, one night as the evening gets dark, Timble doesn’t come. And not the next night either.

Now, the subtitle of the book hints at what happened. But this precipitates a crisis for both friends, and ultimately they come to realize how much their friendship means to each of them.

And it’s all done with Carmen Mok’s gentle illustrations and leaves you feeling warm and cozy. Or perhaps adventurous and ready to fly away – but always to come back.

katedicamillo.com
candlewick.com

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Review of Doodles from the Boogie Down, by Stephanie Rodriguez

Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Graphic Novel 0

Doodles from the Boogie Down

by Stephanie Rodriguez

Kokila, 2023. 204 pages.
Review written June 28, 2023, from a library book.

This graphic novel is reportedly not exactly an autobiography, but tells about an eighth-grader named Stephanie who lives in the Bronx and wants to go to a high school for the Arts in Manhattan rather than continuing in Catholic school, as her mother wants her to.

Trying to talk with her mother about it when she got the idea didn’t go far. So Steph does some lying to get to work with the art teacher on her portfolio.

Meanwhile, she’s having adventures learning more about art, enjoying activities with her friends, and navigating middle school. But what will happen when her mother finds out about her schemes?

I still think that graphic novels are the perfect form for middle school memoirs. The author says this isn’t quite a memoir, but it does come with all the emotion of living it.

stephguez.com
Penguin.com/kids

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Review of Graciela in the Abyss, by Meg Medina

Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy, Starred Review 0

Graciela in the Abyss

by Meg Medina
illustrated by Anna and Elena Balbusso

Candlewick Press, 2025. 236 pages.
Review written July 22, 2025, from my own copy, given to me at ALA Annual Conference and signed to me by the author.
Starred Review

First, I am a huge Meg Medina fan – and am privileged to think of her as a friend. When she saw me in line to get the book signed, she greeted me by name and gave me a big hug! How did this happen? Meg was the winner the year I was on the Newbery Selection Committee, and I was privileged to be part of the group that changed her life – and it couldn’t have happened to a nicer and more deserving person!

So of course there is no surprise that I love this book. Let me tell you what I love about it.

First, it’s in a stunningly beautiful package. It’s a middle-grade novel, but it’s illustrated. There are full-page illustrations periodically throughout the book as well as chapter heading decorations. And underneath the beautiful paper cover is a gorgeous illustration on the case of the book.

The story itself is a unique fantasy tale about water spirits. The book begins in the Prologue with Graciela’s death! (This is a surprise in a children’s book.) She fell into the sea when she ignored her older sister’s cautions. But in chapter one, she wakes up a hundred years later as a sea spirit. And she has a loving guide named Amina who helps her learn the ways of the sea. She becomes a glazier who polishes sea glass, so people find wonderful treasures on the shore.

However, not all sea spirits are good. There are Needlers in the deep who make trouble for everyone. And there are places that are dangerous for a sea spirit who hasn’t mastered her new powers yet. When she died, Graciela didn’t lose her tendency to go where she wants to go despite the warnings of others.

Our other main character is Jorge, a boy who lives in the village on the shore with his family of blacksmiths. He wants to make toys, but his parents say that’s a waste of time. When he finds an eerie harpoon his ancestor fashioned to slay sea spirits and steal the pearls of their teeth – Jorge wants to destroy it, but that’s not easily done, and his parents want to use it as designed.

The two threads end up coming together, and Graciela and Jorge need to work together to protect the sea and make things right.

The undersea world Meg Medina has created is beautiful and mysterious. I love how different this book is from the many other children’s fantasy novels I’ve read. Though there is some death, and Jorge has horrible parents, this is a gentle fantasy that would make a wonderful read-aloud for an upper elementary school classroom.

megmedina.com
candlewick.com

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Review of The Gate, the Girl, and the Dragon, by Grace Lin

Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy, Starred Review 0

The Gate, the Girl, and the Dragon

by Grace Lin

Little, Brown and Company, 2025. 340 pages.
Review written July 4, 2025, from my own copy, purchased at ALA Annual Conference and signed by the author.
Starred Review

Grace Lin’s new book has the hallmarks of her other award-winning works: Beautifully illustrated by the author (one of the few people to win both Caldecott Honor and Newbery Honor) and woven through with Chinese mythology. This one, rather than being set in a mythical land, is set in a modern city’s Chinatown.

I got to hear Grace Lin speak about this book, and the reason she likes to make beautiful books is that when she was a child, she loved lavish, beautifully illustrated editions of Grimms’ and other European fairy tales. But she had one book of Chinese fairy tales, and it was ugly with sparse black-and-white pictures and stilted translations, giving her as a child the impression that Chinese fairy tales weren’t as good. No child will ever get that impression from Grace Lin’s books!

And the special edition of the book I got at ALA is a stunningly beautiful book with sprayed edges showing a dragon and a lantern. Inside the book, there’s a picture for each chapter and frequent full-color images. When a tale within the story is told (and there are several), the tale is set off with a colored border.

But besides the beautiful look of the book, the story is a perfect tale for younger readers ready to listen to a chapter book – I hope this book is featured in many, many classroom read-alouds for years to come.

The main characters of the book are Gongshi – spirits of stone.

It is impossible to tell just by looking at a stone if it is a Gongshi. But, eventually, the right kind of human will feel the spirit’s dream like one feels the sun after it rains. And that human will take the sleeping stone and carve it. And the stone becomes a statue.

That is when the Gongshi awakens.

It turns out that the elaborate City Gate leading to Chinatown is a portal to the magical home of the Gongshi. They go out into the world and protect and help humans. But when they take a break, they go home through the gate. Those gates normally feature two lions, the Lion and the Lioness. The Lion holds a ball – the Sacred Sphere – and the Lioness holds a Lion Cub. In the spirit world, that lion cub is named Jin, and he becomes the hero of this story.

Though he doesn’t start out as the hero. In anger, he kicks his zuqiu ball in the house, and it knocked over the pedestal holding the Sacred Sphere, which rolled away. Jin was not able to stop it, and it rolled right out the gate. Then a man took it from him. And when Jin tried to go back through the gate to his mother, the gate was closed!

On the other side, all the Gongshi are trapped as well by the closed gate. So they can’t come out to help. Jin must somehow find the Sacred Sphere and open the gate. And yes, that quest involves a girl he meets – a girl who can see and speak with him – and a dragon – a dragon who currently has the form of a worm.

The story weaves together several tales and perspectives from both sides of the closed gate. Every tale has a part in the eventual resolution, and it’s a wonderfully woven story of young ones rising to the occasion and making the world better, against enormous odds.

gracelin.com
lbyr.com

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Review of Rebellion 1776, by Laurie Halse Anderson

Children's Fiction Review, Historical, Starred Review 0

Rebellion 1776

by Laurie Halse Anderson

Caitlyn Dlouhy Books/Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2025. 416 pages.
Review written June 18, 2025, from an Advance Reader Copy sent by the publisher.
Starred Review

Here’s a side of the American Revolution I had never heard. We’ve got Elspeth, an ordinary girl living in Boston in 1776 and working as a maid. Her mother and brothers had died of smallpox in Philadelphia, so her father took the two of them to Boston, and he found her a position as a maid. The book opens as cannons are firing from both the British, under siege in Boston, and from the Patriots, trying to dislodge them.

The British and Loyalists are driven out, and Pappa plans to evacuate at the same time. Elspeth doesn’t want to go, so she hides overnight – but Pappa never shows up! Did he leave without her? Did something happen to him? While she’s trying to find him, to get in touch with him, Elspeth works for the family that replaced the loyalist judge she’d been serving. But her position is precarious as a girl without her father there to vouch for her.

And then smallpox comes to Boston. Elspeth has had it, but now folks are being inoculated – given a light dose of the disease – which is still a dose of the disease. And still takes months to run its course! (And I thought being sick for a day after a vaccination was bad.) And her good friend wants to enlist as a soldier. And the 16-year-old ward of the family she serves has independent ideas. And there are nefarious characters making use of wartime to enrich themselves.

The whole tale pulled me in and made me think about ordinary people during wartime – and how most folks simply want to live their lives. But world events can make that difficult.

It was a delight to read about Elspeth’s resourcefulness and courage as she holds on when it seems like she’s alone in the world.

madwomanintheforest.com

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Review of Candle Island, by Lauren Wolk

Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Starred Review 0

Candle Island

by Lauren Wolk

Dutton Children’s Books (Penguin Random House), 2025. 340 pages.
Review written June 12, 2025, from an Advance Reader Copy sent by the publisher.
Starred Review

Wow. Lauren Wolk has done it again – a powerful middle grade novel that gives you all the feels. It turned out it was the perfect length to read on a flight from Virginia to Portland, Oregon – and it left me in awe. (I’m going to leave it behind with one of my nieces in Oregon – they’re in for a treat!)

This is a novel about secrets. We get a list in the Prologue:

Six mysteries waited for me on Candle Island.

One involved a bird.

The second, a hidden room.

A song the third.

A poet the fourth.

A cat fifth.

A fire sixth.

Each of them exciting in its own way.

But none more interesting than the mystery I took with me.

The book opens as Lucretia Sanderson and her mother arrive on Candle Island in Maine. They’re coming in summertime, but they’re not summer people – they’ve bought a furnished house, and they’re planning to stay.

They’d left their home in Vermont after Lucretia’s father died in a car accident, hoping to get some distance from painful memories. But they also left to get away from journalists who have been hounding her artist mother after a New York gallery sold a Sanderson painting to the First Lady, and it’s hanging in the White House.

The first mystery – finding an abandoned baby bird not in a nest and figuring out what kind it is – is the simplest, and gets Lucretia exploring the island. They find lots of tension between the summer people and the island kids – and the island kids are pretty skeptical of Lucretia and her Mom. It doesn’t help that they’ve moved into the house of a girl who lived there three years ago and whose parents died after she moved out.

We do find out about Lucretia’s secret about halfway through the book, and it’s indeed the most interesting, and the most momentous one. Can she keep her secret? Can she make new friends if she does? And what about the secrets other people are keeping?

So this is a book about mysteries and secrets and knowing whom to trust – and feeling safe enough to share your secrets with people who have earned that trust.

And bottom line, this is a beautiful book set on a beautiful island off the coast of Maine. It will linger in your heart.

laurenwolk.com

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Review of Bad Badger, by Maryrose Wood

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

Bad Badger

by Maryrose Wood
read by Chris Devon

Dreamscape Media, 2025. 2 hours, 41 minutes.
Review written April 24, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Maryrose Wood is good at writing straight-faced stories that gradually get sillier and sillier. This one is perfect for kids ready for chapter books.

Bad Badger is about a badger named Septimus who is afraid that he’s not very good at being a badger. Instead of stripes, he has spots. Instead of living in the forest, he lives in a cottage by the sea. He loves listening to operas in Italian on his phonograph, collecting shells, making omelets, watching the sunset, and other activities not at all usual for badgers.

But then Septimus makes a friend. A seagull comes to his house every week on Wednesday. Gully doesn’t say much besides “Caw,” but Septimus feels their friendship grow and become tremendously important to him – so they share things they each enjoy most.

But when Gully goes missing, Septimus doesn’t know how he will find him, simply that it must be done.

This sweet story is about true friendship and not letting others define who you are.

maryrosewood.com

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Review of Violet and the Pie of Life, by Debra Green

Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Mathematical, Starred Review 0

Violet and the Pie of Life

by Debra Green

Holiday House, 2021. 279 pages.
Review written December 13, 2023, from a library book.
Starred review
2024 Mathical Honor Book, Ages 11-13

When Violet’s best friend Mackenzie wants to try out for their middle school’s production of The Wizard of Oz, Violet only joins in because it would be fun to go to rehearsals with Mackenzie. Never mind that Ally, the popular girl Mackenzie says is terrible, does a wonderful audition for Dorothy.

But when Violet gets the part of the Cowardly Lion, and Mackenzie gets the part of a flying monkey, Violet has to decide if she’ll stick with it when her friend quits. And would it be disloyal to be friends with Ally, who really doesn’t seem so bad?

Meanwhile, while Violet’s navigating all this friendship stuff, her parents fight and her Dad moves out. And doesn’t answer her emails. Maybe now she has a part in the play, she can get both her parents to come and remember how much they love each other.

Through all of this, Violet looks to math as something she can count on. The pages of this book are filled with charts she makes, laying out the problems of her life like math problems — from a chart of the intensity of her parents’ fights to flow charts of her plans to email her Dad. I especially liked when her affinity for math helped her quickly understand how much commission her realtor Mom would make after selling a home in Laguna Beach.

This kids’ novel is no math text book, but it’s math-friendly, featuring a middle school kid with relatable problems who thinks in mathematical ways.

HolidayHouse.com

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Review of Bird of a Thousand Stories, by Kiyash Monsef

Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy, Starred Review 0

Bird of a Thousand Stories

by Kiyash Monsef

Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2025. 340 pages.
Review written March 20, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review

Bird of a Thousand Stories is a sequel to Once There Was, which was a Morris Award Honor Book in 2024, the year I was on the committee, so of course I was delighted to hear about a sequel. The Morris Award is for best young adult debut books, and this book is shelved in our library’s juvenile section, but it walks the line between both. Our protagonist, Marjan, is in high school and lives on her own after her father’s death, but the plot and situations fit well with middle grade novels. There’s not even any romance in this book, more of an adventurous chase around the world to find and free the Bird of a Thousand Stories.

You don’t have to have read the first book to enjoy this one, but my advice is not to miss it! I do think that the author’s craft is a bit better in this, his second novel. It feels more unified, as the main story is about the same quest throughout the book.

As with the first book, folk stories are woven through the book, and this time there’s a continuing story about the Bird of a Thousand Stories – the bird Marjan feels compelled to find. An Author’s Note shows us that he seriously researched this story to include it.

Filling in a little bit, in the first book, Marjan’s father died, and she discovered he had a business helping magical creatures – which were very real. Marjan discovered she’d inherited the gift of being able to communicate with them mind-to-mind with just a touch. However, she also gained the attention of a powerful family who made a business of selling off magical creatures for money. As this book begins, she has an uneasy alliance with them.

Also in the first book, Marjan acquired a roommate who’s a cheerful runaway and a witch – a witch who’s spells are hit-or-miss. In this book this friend has some kind of powerful spirit helping her – but is it really help? Something new in this book is that Marjan discovers an uncle who kept himself separate from the family is an heir to the same magic, but gave it up to trust it to her father. So Marjan isn’t alone in her quest, but there are questions throughout about trusting the right people to help and not trusting the wrong people. And who is which?

It all adds up to a magical adventure traveling to many different parts of the world, trying to do right by magical creatures.

kiyash.com

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