Kate Milford
Clarion Books
Set in the Sovereign City of Nagspeake, Greenglass House is a smuggler's inn. Smugglers have their seasons and Milo is used to Christmas being the one time of year where he can just relax with his family. When strange guests begin showing up one after the other, Milo discovers that role playing can bring out talents he never knew he had. With the help of an unlikely friend, it's going to take an adventurous spirit uncover his guests hidden agenda. Greenglass House elegantly artfully weaves together a page-turning mystery, the search for the meaning of family, and the celebration of story. Kate Milford spins a tale whose sum is a reflection of what can be accomplished when each of its parts harmoniously, symbiotically, and synergistically play off one another. In a truly genre-defying experience, readers will be awestruck by a world that makes them forget about the line between fantasy and reality.
Ann M. Martin
Feiwell and Friends
Rose has a diagnosis of high functioning autism, tricky territory for any author to navigate. Martin's first-person narrative emotionally draws the reader closer while maintaining distance through Rose's objective observations of her world. Rose has the highest esteem for rules, making bus rides especially problematic due to drivers not using directionals and her obsession with homonyms takes on a simultaneously endearing and grating quality for the character's voice. If there isn't space for Rose (rows) to add new examples, she has to rewrite the entire list. In a pitch perfect attempt to comfort a distraught classmate, Rose offers the girl a special triple homonym. When a collarless Rain is let out during a hurricane by her questionably intentioned father, a story whose fascinating character kept me turning pages early on becomes compellingly plot driven. A seemingly extraordinary and unexpected twist later on in the book is made extraordinarily believable by some early on layering. Keep the tissues handy. This is truly a rare gem of a story that lies firmly on the intersection of literary merit and kid appeal.
Jonathan Auxier
Amulet Books
A story of two orphan's trying to find a home is made that much more terrifying by a creature of legend who grants the heart's deepest desire. Of course, this comes at a cost. Jonathan's prose walks the very delicate line between timelessly crafted writing and a story accessible to any kid looking for a creepy adventure.
Plenty of great books keep you entertained from the first page to the last. For me, the mark of an exceptional book is how much I remember about it weeks, months, even years after I’ve finished. It’s been six months and I can still feel the story. I can picture Constance’s ring falling off of her finger and the need to put the book down for a moment so I could take in how the action of a ring hitting the floor could evoke such terror. The deep pride I felt for Molly, who could take an ordinary button, what little she has to her possession, and transformed it into a sense of security for her brother. And Kip, who’s cheery, confident, and courageous demeanor preserved Molly’s true north. It’s not just the world, and characters, and tone of the book that still resonates. As I read it, I recall vivid details about how the effected my life.
Kwame Alexander
Houghton
The Crossover has a lot going for it. At it’s core, Crossover tells a page-turning story of adolescent twins Jordan and Josh. When Jordan begins to drift towards his new girlfriend, Josh struggles to adjust. In the sports novel genre, there’s no shortage of stories that use the game as a backdrop to for messages, feelings, and relationships. While many are perfectly fine examples realistic fiction, until Crossover, I wouldn’t force any of them on anyone. Kids who like to read about sports will find all their favorite elements in this novel as well. There’s relationships with teammates, lesson about life through the lens of the game, and of course, the question will they pull it off? But it’s the language that sets Crossover apart. Encapsulating the athleticism, precision, finesse and swagger of the sport, the book is a celebration of basketball’s cultural relevance.
The most beautiful thing about sports is that neither the athletes or the spectators know the ending before it plays out. Every season brims with subplots, twists, celebrations, heartache. Through storytelling, language, and a whole lot of style, Kwame Alexander conveys all the excitement of a championship run.
Aaron Starmer
Harper Collins
We love following the adventures of kids who discover secret worlds like Wonderland and Narnia but what happens when they re-enter the everyday world forever changed? Fiona is scared. Her magical world is being threatened by The Riverman who is stealing the souls of her new friends. To complicate things even more, she believes this entity has bled out of Aquavania and is responsible for the disappearance of countless children. Fearing she is next, Fiona seeks out a biographer in Alistair, the kid down the street. Starmer's portrayal of a realistic coming of age story set in the 80s provides a brilliant landscape, allowing the story's fantastical elements to take a backseat so that readers can examine the psyche of a girl whose mentality ages anywhere between a few days and a few months seemingly overnight. It's a story that sets itself apart not only in it's concept- but as Fiona recounts her adventures in Aquavania, her retellings grow increasingly sophisticated, reflecting a maturity beyond her physical years. By the end of the book, you can no longer differentiate the once innocuous stories of a girl and her land of make-believe and the depiction of reality where entities that steal souls are, in fact, child predators.
S.E. Grove
Viking Juvenile
The Glass Sentence is a truly accessible, conceptually stunning work of high-fantasy. I generally shy away from books that surpass a certain thickness, so when knowing this, @sussingoutbooks, a trusted source for all things brilliant in children's literature, informed me that I would, in fact, be reading Glass Sentence, I figured it must have some truly distinguishing merit. As somebody who is frequently able to lose all track of time, I could relate to the trouble this causes Sophia. But sometimes, being a child not bound by time has its advantages. The story begins with a letter from Sophia's great grandmother recounting the Great Disruption. While swinging into the local swimming hole, the world seemed to come to a stop for only a moment. But within that moment, the passing of many seasons occurred until the world became unstuck and life seemed to resume as normal. However, everything was not as it had been before the Disruption. A new world where ages from the ancient past now existed along side ages from the present and ages from the far future. When Sophia's Uncle Shadrack, a world renowned cartologer, goes missing, Sophia must protect the one artifact that could uncover the legendary Carta Mayor, the map of time and protect it from being rewritten. Unless, of course, Sophia can be convinced that undoing the Great Disruption would be in the world's best interest.
Steve Sheinkin
Roaring Brook Press
If a mark of a distinguished story is how long it sticks with you after you've finished reading it, Sheinkin's latest could rival any story I've ever heard. As this former text-book writer has tried to atone for his sins, he has revolutionized the expectations for middle-grade non fiction. Stitching well researched and well sourced material into edge-of-your-seat narratives, Sheinkin outrages his readers as he takes on a fairly obscure footnote in american history's move towards desegregation. In a story billed as the largest mutiny in naval history, through eye witness accounts and court transcripts, Sheinkin clearly lays out the intricacies of this disturbing betrayal of american ideals. While the incident at Port Chicago paved the way for our country's first experience with desegregation on a systematic level, Sheinkin uses the Navy's own actions in the aftermath of the mutiny trial to refute the notion that justice was served. Port Chicago 50 leaves readers with a sense that the book has yet to be closed on the subject and will hopefully inspire a new generation of activists.
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