Reviewer: Sarah
Middle school, for many of us, was a time of great confusion.  There were training bras, and zits, and oops I forgot my deodorant, and oops the boy who used to be my friend is now my crush, and what do you mean I need glasses and braces and STIRRUP PANTS (why, early nineties, [...]

In honor of the early release of Chris’s new book THE CIRCUS SHIP, we are posting this video in which we ramble on like besotted maniacs about his books (for about six minutes). We made the video before the book had come out, thinking it wasn’t going to be released until mid-October, but we were [...]

Sarah was here visiting this weekend, and we decided to make a bunch of video reviews. They all ended up being about picture books, and most of the picture books were older. We decided that we would post these videos (whether we did them together or separately) on Tuesdays and call it OLD RELEASE TUESDAYS, [...]

Sometimes, an “issue” book is simply an “issue” book.  The protagonist is a cutter.  On drugs.  Pregnant.  Homeless.  Abused.  Et cetera.  The book revolves entirely around said issue, and things progress much in the same manner as an after-school special (which, come to think of it, do they even make those anymore?).  These books often [...]

Secrets are, by nature, phenomenally interesting.  (Also, they’re far better when they belong to someone else and you overhear them.)  It’s why we love James Bond and Alex Rider and Sydney Bristow and Jason Bourne…secrets are their livelihood.  It’s also why we love novels, because the act of reading fiction in itself is a form [...]

Several years back, a certain bookseller named Melissa grabbed my arm and said, “Sarah!  You’ve got to read this!  Now!”  She handed me the galley for THE WARRIOR HEIR, and I put it on my to-be-read pile.  As usual, Melissa was dead-on.  From the moment I started WARRIOR HEIR, I knew this was an author [...]

There are days I go to collect the mail, and rather than the usual stack of bills, it’s all requests from charities.  Children’s charities, health-related charities, feminist charities, religious charities.  Each one is deserving, and each one shows real kindness to real people that I will never be able to help with my own two [...]

Here’s the sad truth of it:  I am in the second round of braces.  I suffered through the first round while in middle school, and now, years later, I found myself back in the orthodontist’s chair with some wayward bottom teeth.  (Why couldn’t they have behaved as well as the top teeth?  Why?)  I’m currently [...]

note from Melissa: it’s not so obvious who’s writing each review here, because I’m using this crappy template that I can’t adjust and haven’t had a chance to meddle with a better one.  Each post is tagged at the bottom with the author’s name. The majority are by me, but they’re not all by me, [...]

I’ve been a David Lubar fan from way back, and I’m always impressed by his ability to shift from genre to genre without missing a beat.  Contemporary teen novel?  DUNK.  Sci-fi teen novel?  HIDDEN TALENTS and its sequel, TRUE TALENTS.  Quirky early reader?  PUNISHED.  Bizarro middle-grade short stories that go from funny to creepy?  The [...]