Review of Charlotte’s Web, by E. B. White

Animal Characters, Audiobooks, Award Winners, Children's Fiction Review, Classics, Contemporary, Fantasy, Starred Review, Top 100 Writers and Illustrators 0

Charlotte’s Web

by E. B. White
read by the Author

Listening Library, 2002. Written in 1952. Recorded in 1970. 3 compact discs.
Starred Review
1953 Newbery Honor Book
1970 Laura Ingalls Wilder Award

Charlotte’s Web has twice been voted the #1 Children’s Chapter Book of all time by librarians and parents voting in Betsy Bird‘s School Library Journal Top 100 Chapter Books Poll. In fact, it was reading Betsy’s post that I learned that there is an audio with E. B. White reading the book. I immediately checked if our library had that version and happily took it home.

It’s been many years since I’ve read this practically perfect book. My third grade teacher read it to me the first time. Later, I read it to my sons. And my older son watched the Hanna-Barbara animated version over and over again. As I listened to the audiobook, I realized that the many lines I had memorized were the ones that were used in the film. And they did keep many, many of the great lines. (Like the starting and ending lines. Like Charlotte’s salutation.) But I’d forgotten a lot of the side scenes that didn’t make it to the film.

There are so many scenes simply of life in the barn. Swinging on the rope swing. Wilbur escaping his pen right at the beginning. How it felt to have slops poured on top of Wilbur or to roll in the warm manure. The book is truly a paean to life in the barn.

Now at the beginning, I didn’t feel E. B. White measured up to the actors and especially actresses I remembered reciting the lines in my head. But his voice grew on me, and it’s a good, down-to-earth voice for this story. You can hear in his voice his love for the quiet life of the barn. It’s truly a treasure to still be able to listen to him telling his masterpiece of a story.

Now, there’s no need to critique this classic. I was surprised to find little quibbles. What happens to Fern when the whole spider plot happens. Isn’t she in on it? But it’s Charlotte’s Web! The book is genius, and it works. And you can listen to it read by E. B. White himself.

listeninglibrary.com

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library audiobook from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of A Greyhound of a Girl, by Roddy Doyle

Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Fantasy 0

A Greyhound of a Girl

by Roddy Doyle

Amulet Books, New York, 2012. First published in the United Kingdom in 2011.

A Greyhound of a Girl is a sweet story of four generations of Irish women. The book starts with twelve-year-old Mary, who feels guilty that she hates the hospital, where her dear granny is dying. Then one day, Mary meets a mysterious woman.

The woman was old. But, actually, she wasn’t. Mary knew what it was, why the woman seemed old. She was old-fashioned. She was wearing a dress that looked like it came from an old film, one of those films her mother always cried at. She looked like a woman who milked cows and threw hay with a pitchfork. She was even wearing big boots with fat laces.

After meeting the woman a few more times, Mary learns she’s her granny’s mother, Tansy, who died when Granny was three years old. Mary’s mother gets pulled into the story, and we end up with their interwoven tales culminating in a four-generation road trip, with one of the generations dead and another dying.

The story isn’t morbid, and it’s all told on the level of things children will find interesting. We look at the previous generations through the eyes of childhood and current times through Mary’s eyes. Through it all, there’s the flavor of Ireland. I like that they didn’t change the language drastically for American readers. They’ll quickly get the idea that when things are “grand,” they’re going well. And they’ll learn the meaning of “cheeky.”

This is a book that will remind you of the ways life is grand and family is grand.

roddydoyle.com
amuletbooks.com

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of The Fellowship for Alien Detection

Children's Fiction Review, Science Fiction 0

The Fellowship for Alien Detection

by Kevin Emerson

Walden Pond Press (HarperCollins), March 2013. 428 pages.

Science Fiction stories with aliens aren’t really my thing, but they were very much my son’s thing, so I have a soft spot for them still. When my now-25-year-old son was much younger, Bruce Coville was his favorite author, particularly the My Teacher Is an Alien books. The Fellowship for Alien Detection has similar themes, with kids the only ones able to figure out an alien plot to take over the world.

The book was on the long side for me, but I think kids who like the alien theme will find that a bonus. Two middle-school kids from opposite sides of the country, Haley and Dodger, have been given a fellowship to spend the summer investigating their own theories about alien activity on earth. Haley has been investigating missing time events, associated with missing people. Dodger has been hearing strange broadcasts from a town called Juliette. The broadcasts are always from the same day.

As they travel to suspicious sites, soon they seem to be under suspicion by sinister forces. Neither Haley’s nor Dodger’s parents realize the danger their children are in for. If they investigate further, will they be kidnapped by aliens as well? What will happen to the missing people of Juliette? What will happen to planet Earth?

The plot of this book is fairly complex, with each kid piecing together clues before they come together, as well as the reader getting glimpses of what’s going on in Juliette.

I recently read lots and lots of Middle Grade Science Fiction and Fantasy books for the 2012 Cybils Awards, and, believe it or not, I didn’t read anything like this book — a good, basic, kids-watching-out-for-aliens story that my son would have loved. If any kids at my library come looking for a book about aliens, I know exactly what to put in their hands.

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on an Advance Review Copy sent to me by the publisher.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of The Runaway King, by Jennifer A. Nielsen

Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy, Starred Review 0

The Runaway King

by Jennifer A. Nielsen

Scholastic Press, New York, 2013. 331 pages.
Starred Review

The Runaway King is the sequel to Cybils-winning The False Prince, and I like it even better than the first book. Yes, you should probably read them in order, mainly because this book gives away some things from the first book. In fact, you probably shouldn’t read my review until you’ve read the first book. You do not have to vividly remember what happened in the first book to read this one, because crucial information is filled in without being tedious.

Jaron’s life is threatened right at the start of the book. The pirates who were hired to kill him are upset that they failed. If they don’t get him, they’re going to attack all of Carthya. Other neighboring countries are threatening as well, but Jaron’s regents don’t want to let him prepare for war.

The title is something of a misnomer, because Jaron never runs. He decides to pretend to be pouting in safety, but instead he’s going to head to the pirates and deal with them. How will he deal with them? That’s what this book is about.

I do think I’m going to need to reread the book to decide if I think Jaron is more clever or more lucky. His plot was rather complex, and I got the impression things didn’t go as he planned them — but there was still at least one major surprise for me regarding his intentions, and I enjoyed that. (Is that obtuse enough to not give anything away?)

I love the way Jaron compulsively tells the truth. The reader can see him doing it as he goes and watch people “misunderstand” his words with his careful misdirection. And how much do we readers misunderstand? I’m going to have to reread it just to figure that out.

The story still isn’t finished; trouble looms at the end of the book. But this is one of the more satisfying second books I’ve read in awhile. The story in this book has a nice beginning, middle, and end, and isn’t simply an unfinished continuation.

This book, like its predecessor, begs comparison with Megan Whalen Turner’s Queen’s Thief series. This one actually doesn’t suffer by the comparison (which is high praise coming from me!). Jaron doesn’t seem as in control of his complicated plan as Gen would be, but he also is in a more precarious situation to start with. He’s a younger king than Gen, and he’s growing into his kingship. Watching him do so is a delight to read.

jennielsen.com
scholastic.com

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of Jepp, Who Defied the Stars, by Katherine Marsh

Children's Fiction Review, Historical 0

Jepp, Who Defied the Stars

by Katherine Marsh

Hyperion, New York, 2012. 385 pages.

Jepp, Who Defied the Stars is the fictional story of a court dwarf who served at the castle of astronomer Tycho Brahe. Now if, like me, you didn’t know that Tycho Brahe had a castle, let alone a dwarf jester, you’ll find the details of the time period fascinating.

Jepp’s story is one of someone marginalized who attempts to rise above his fate. Unfortunately, for me, that part was good, but didn’t really hit me deeply. I didn’t quite buy Jepp’s motivation along the way. This may be because I strongly dislike books written in the present tense. This book disguises it by presenting the first part as Jepp describing what happened in the past to have him wind up in a cart traveling to Denmark. It’s probably no coincidence that I found the first part, with Jepp in the court of the Infanta, much more compelling than the later part in Tycho Brahe’s castle. That’s probably because everything in Tycho Brahe’s castle is told in present tense, and I couldn’t quite overlook how that annoys me in a book (she said, while using it in a review).

But that may simply be my unreasonable bias. As I said, though, the historical details are fascinating. And the lives of court dwarves give the reader something to ponder over. The overarching question — do the stars determine our fates? might seem old-fashioned, but I like what the author does with it. Truly we can be more than the person we are born to be.

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of The Dark Is Rising, by Susan Cooper

Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy, Starred Review 0

The Dark Is Rising

by Susan Cooper

Simon Pulse, New York. First published in 1973. 244 pages.
1974 Newbery Honor Book
2012 Margaret A. Edwards Award
Starred Review

I decided to reread Susan Cooper’s books when I heard she’d won the 2012 Margaret A. Edwards Award. I missed her books when I was a kid; I’m not sure why. They would have fit nicely with the other fantasy books that were my favorites: C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Edward Eager, Zilpha Keatley Snyder. But I have read them once, as an adult. Also in the meantime, The Dark Is Rising was named one of the Top 100 Children’s Novels in School Library Journal‘s poll.

I have to admit, The Dark Is Rising isn’t my favorite kind of fantasy, at least not as an adult. I like the main character to have some clear goals and some plans for attaining them. In The Dark Is Rising, Will Stanton does have to find the Six Signs, but to do that, he has to follow his gut. He has to trust to luck and his newly discovered magic and do his best.

However, The Dark Is Rising is a wonderfully atmospheric book. The Dark Rider isn’t as sinister as Tolkien’s dark riders, but he’s close. (And, come on, this is a children’s book!) In her Margaret Edwards speech, Susan Cooper described how she was living in America, far from her home. She answered that longing for her home by putting it in The Dark Is Rising. You can feel it. The places described feel real.

And Will moves by feel. You see that throughout the book. So though I personally don’t prefer a book where the character just senses what should come next, Susan Cooper was able to pull it off by giving us the feelings along with Will. In fact, as I thought about rereading this book, I admit I remembered most vividly how frightening the beginning of the book is, where the cold tries to get in, and the snow breaks Will’s attic room skylight. Here’s the scene after he cleans that up:

There was nothing to see, now, except a dark damp patch on the carpet where the heap of snow had been. But he felt colder than the cold air had made him, and the sick, empty feeling of fear still lay in his chest. If there had been nothing wrong beyond being frightened of the dark, he would not for the world have gone down to take refuge in Paul’s room. But as things were, he knew he could not stay alone in the room where he belonged. For when they were clearing up that heap of fallen snow, he had seen something that Paul had not. It was impossible, in a howling snowstorm, for anything living to have made that soft unmistakable thud against the glass that he had heard just before the skylight fell. But buried in the heap of snow, he had found the fresh black wing feather of a rook.

He heard the farmer’s voice again: This night will be bad. And tomorrow will be beyond imagining.

She’s definitely got the atmosphere going. She also works in so many things that seem mythic. Elements of wood, bronze, iron, water, fire, and stone. Herne the Hunter. Even the time of Midwinter through Twelfth Night. And she moves her characters back and forth through time smoothly, which is an accomplishment in itself.

In some ways, it’s appropriate for Will to follow his nose in this book. On his eleventh birthday, he discovers as the seventh son of the seventh son, he’s one of the Old Ones. He has a task, but has to learn quickly. Part of that learning is to learn to feel his own magic. I don’t remember the remaining books well enough to remember if this progresses to where he is more of the instigator. I am looking forward to noticing that this time around.

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on my own personal copy.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of Fangbone! Third-Grade Barbarian

Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy, Graphic Novel, Science Fiction 0

Fangbone!
Third-Grade Barbarian

by Michael Rex

G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2012. 120 pages.

Fangbone! Third-Grade Barbarian is straight-up silly fun. I do not expect to see it sitting on the shelves for long, or, well, ever.

Fangbone the Barbarian has been sent by his clan to our world to protect the Big Toe of Drool.

Here Fangbone explains the back story to his new third grade class:

Five hundred winters ago, the greatest evil that ever lived ruled over Skullbania. Venomous Drool was his name. He built an army that swept through the lands and almost wiped out the clans.

Many battles were fought, and many great warriors died to keep his evil from spreading.

Finally, Drool was defeated, and cut into many small pieces. . .

The pieces were separated and taken to different lands so that Venomous Drool could never rule again.

But since my birth, a new army of Drool worshipers has been moving through Skullbania, collecting the pieces one by one, and rebuilding Drool.

The only piece that they do not have is his big toe! My clan was put in charge of protecting the big toe because it is the most evil, cursed, wretched part of his body.

I was given the toe and sent into your world. Venomous Drool and his army will never find me here. He will never get his big toe back.

For I am FANGBONE! Protector of the Big Toe of Drool!

Of course, the situation of Fangbone in a normal (well, klutzy) third grade class has all sorts of opportunities for hilarity. I love the way the teacher tells the kids, “Class? Class! Please relax. Fangbone comes from a faraway place. People are different all over the world. We must respect his culture.”

The story of the book? Fangbone helps his class defeat the bullies in the school’s beanball tournament. And his new class helps Fangbone defeat the monstrous creatures the Drool worshipers send against him.

Best of all? This is a graphic novel with pictures that match the silly fun of the words. There are already three volumes in the series and I already anticipate having kids come to the Information Desk again and again asking if we have the next volume (because someone snatches each volume up just as soon as it gets turned in). Everything about this book says kid appeal. Michael Rex is the author of such stellar parodies as Good Night, Goon and Furious George. He put all that clever and insightful humor into this graphic novel series. A win all the way around.

mikerexbooks.blogspot.com/

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of Hokey Pokey, by Jerry Spinelli

Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy 0

Hokey Pokey

by Jerry Spinelli

Alfred A. Knopf (Random House), 2013. 285 pages.

Hokey Pokey is not quite like any other children’s novel I’ve ever read, and therefore a little hard to explain. Of course, I don’t want to explain too much, because part of the fun is figuring out what’s going on.

It’s true: Kids live in their own little world, don’t they?

The book opens with the universe whispering to Jack: It’s time!

Here’s how he wakes up:

Something is wrong.
He knows it before he opens his eyes.
He looks.
His bike is gone!
Scramjet!
What more could he have done? He parked it so close that when he shut his eyes to sleep, he could smell the rubber of the tires, the grease on the chain.
And still she took it. His beloved Scramjet. He won’t say her name. He never says her name, only her kind, sneers it to the morning star: “Girl.”

Everything goes wrong from there on out. Jack’s revered in Hokey Pokey. He caught Scramjet himself from the herd of bikes running wild on the Great Plains. It is wrong that a girl should be riding the famed Scramjet and paint it yellow with pink sparkles. And then other things go wrong as well.

The strength of this book is the description of the world of childhood, complete with the logic of childhood. There are places to play like Thousand Puddles, and the Playground. There’s a pile of Dirty Socks that stinks badly enough to make anyone gag. There’s Cartoons where kids can watch all day long. There’s Snuggle Stop, where Little Kids can get hugs (and Big Kids sometimes go secretly).

I like the Four Nevers that get told to any Newbies:

Never pass a puddle without stomping in it. Never go to sleep until the last minute. Never go near Forbidden Hut. Never kiss a girl.

All in all, it feels like a pretty decent description of the world of childhood – except, the world of childhood from a boy’s perspective. Sure, there’s a Doll Farm and girls doing girly things, but there weren’t any little girls mooning over horse books or playing house with their dolls, so I didn’t see my own childhood in those pages. Though that may be appropriate, since the protagonist is a boy.

As an adult reading it, I could tell pretty quickly where it was going, and I felt like it took a long time to get there. With nice touches along the way, mind you. I wonder how it will come across to an actual kid. Will they relate to it, or is all the charm in nostalgia? Will they find it insightful? Will they wish they really did have a world like that? Or will it seem like an adult’s idea of a kid’s world?

There were a lot of creative and imaginative details. I would have appreciated the herds of wild bikes more if I hadn’t recently read The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, by Catherynne M. Valente, which had the same thing. But there were other great details like the Hokey Pokey Man who gives frozen treats of every possible flavor, or the monsters that appear over kids when they sleep, or the half a walnut shell in the right front pocket of every pair of pants. When a kid holds it to his ear at bedtime, he hears The Story.

This book is fun and imaginative and nostalgic. I hope I’ll hear from some kids who’ve read it, because I’m curious what they will think of it.

randomhousekids.com

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of The Great Cake Mystery, by Alexander McCall Smith

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

The Great Cake Mystery

Precious Ramotswe’s Very First Case

by Alexander McCall Smith
illustrations by Iain McIntosh

Anchor Books (Random House), New York, 2012. First published in Scotland in 2010. 73 pages.
Starred Review

A book for beginning chapter book readers about the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective, Precious Ramotswe, when she was a little girl! Now readers ready for short chapters can enjoy the flavor of Botswana, as adults have been doing for so long.

Sweet things have been disappearing at Precious’s school, and one boy has been found to have sticky hands. But is that enough evidence against him? Precious doesn’t think so, and she comes up with a clever trick for catching the real thief.

The story is simple and perhaps a little predictable, but it doesn’t talk down to kids and would be a delight to read aloud to a class or to a family at bedtime.

The style, matter-of-fact and pleasant, matches that used in the books for adults, and I did feel like I was meeting the same person as a child. And now we have the treat of her interactions with her father, Obed Ramotswe. In fact, he tells Precious a story at the beginning, which is what triggers the thought that she may be a detective one day. And then a piece of cake is missing from her school.

She might easily have forgotten all about it – after all, it was only a piece of cake – but the next day it happened again. This time it was a piece of bread that was stolen – not an ordinary piece of bread, though: this one was covered in delicious strawberry jam. You can lose a plain piece of bread and not think twice about it, but when you lose one spread thickly with strawberry jam it’s an altogether more serious matter.

This book is a selection for this year’s Summer Reading Program in Fairfax County, Virginia, and I’m delighted that got me to finally read it. This will be a fun one to tell kids about. It’s perfect for that first desire to step into chapter books and will reward readers with an absorbing story.

I also love that it’s set in modern Botswana as a lovely place where normal kids live and go to school. Some things about Botswana – like the wildlife – are spelled out, and the pronunciation of names (like Ramotswe) is given. But it’s clear that kids are kids and are the same everywhere.

alexandermccallsmith.com
anchorbooks.com

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of Kepler’s Dream, by Juliet Bell

Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary 0

Kepler’s Dream

by Juliet Bell

G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2012. 247 pages.

Here’s a sweet summer friendship story, with a mystery and family drama woven in.

Ella Mackenzie is at “Broken Family Camp” at her grandmother’s in Arizona while her mother undergoes chemotherapy in Seattle that they hope will save her life. Her parents are divorced, and her father can’t take her because he leads fishing trips in Spokane. He doesn’t get along with his mother, but persuaded her to take Ella.

Ella finds that her grandmother, Violet Von Stern, is a formidable woman who insists on good grammar and seems to like books more than people. In fact, she has a private library to house her collection, and while Ella is there a book dealer and two teenage boys are helping Mrs. Von Stern catalog her collection.

Fortunately, there’s a girl around who’s eleven like Ella. Rosie is the daughter of Miguel, who works on Mrs. Von Stern’s property. Rosie and Miguel take Ella to Rosie’s uncle’s place to learn horseback riding. But while she is there, Ella has family mysteries to solve. What happened to her grandfather and Rosie’s grandfather so long ago? And is that related to why her grandmother and her father always fight?

All that’s background to a more blatant mystery. One night there’s a break-in that looks like an inside job. And a rare edition of Johannes Kepler’s work of fiction, The Dream, the most valuable book in the library, has disappeared.

The characters in this novel and quirky and feel alive. The friendship between the girls must get past a bit of prickliness to get off the ground, which feels realistic. And you’ve got the weight of Ella worrying about her mother to give the book some depth. (Spoiler alert: Her mother lives. This book stays uplifting and positive. That would have changed its character to a real downer.) Her relationship with her father does get better, and she gains a relationship with her grandmother.

Again, this is a nice story of friendship and family with a mystery thrown in.

julietbell.com
penguin.com/youngreaders

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fiction/keplers_dream.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!