Warning – this is a sequel, and there is no way to read it without spoilers for the first novel.
Crossed by Ally Condie
At the end of the last book, Matched, I vaguely recall, our heroine Cassia used her Sorting skills to inadvertently send her forbidden love, Ky, off to the border lands, which meant almost certain death. As we find in an opening chapter from Ky’s perspective, it’s not just labor, nor even being a soldier, but being sent with a bunch of other Abberation teens as targets, armed with pretend weapons, against the Enemy. Ky is one of the few to have made it more than a few days. Cassia, knowing only that she needs to find Ky, goes to a work camp to get closer to him. From there, she runs away to find him with a girl called Indie. Meanwhile, Ky escapes with another survivor, Vick, as well as a younger boy, Eli. They run into the messy series of canyons called the Carving, which Ky remembers from his youth, before his parents were killed. They are looking for an independent community of farmers that Ky remembers used to live there. Cassia manages to learn which way he went, but of course they are not leaving at the same time. Gradually, Cassia learns that the poem she’s memorized about the Pilot is a code poem for the Rising, a rebel group. Believing that Ky must have been part of this all along, she’s now hoping both to find Ky and to join the Rising. But Ky’s true feelings about both the Rising and the Society, which between them killed his parents, are more complicated than that. Shortly before running away from the work camp, Cassia also gets a visit from Xander, her official Match and her lifetime best friend. He’s clearly still interested in her romantically, and he also gives her an illegally obtained supply of the Society’s blue pills – only one of which is supposed to be in her official Society pill box at any time. She believes that they are meant to allow her to do without food for a day or so if she needs it, but hears from others on her journey that they are poison – either meant to put people into suspended animation until the Society can find them, or kill them outright. This felt like a weakness in the book to me, as they talk about the pills a lot, but it’s never clear what exactly they do or if Xander knew what they really do when he gave them to her.
Matched felt like dystopia lite to me. Sure, there’s the repressive Society, which limits all art to only 100 each of the best from the past, and determines people’s marriages for them. But all in all, Cassia’s pretty much in that safe bubble depicted on the cover, with most people seeming truly happy with where the Society puts them. In Crossed, the protective bubble is gone and the whole fictional world is much darker. Much darker sides of the Society are exposed, what with the deliberate massacres of aberrant children and all, but we also see the danger of living outside the Society’s very real protection. Cassia’s casual love triangle from the previous book gets more serious here, as even though she keeps choosing Ky, Xander seems to have more and more to recommend him. There is a lot to think about here, especially for teens, about things like the right balance point for safety versus freedom, and what love really means. Though there’s a fair amount of death, it’s not graphic, and the romance is very tame on the physical side. With plenty of excitement both in the simple survival aspects and in the various philosophical dilemmas (dilemmi?), it’s easy to see why this series is staying popular.
The Women’s Health Big Book of 15 Minute Workouts by Selene Yeager.
Harry Potter: Page to Screen, the Complete Filmmaking Journey by Bob McCabe. 
Young Fredle by Cynthia Voigt. Read by Wendy Carter. Fredle is a young mouse who lives behind the walls of the kitchen of a farm house, also inhabited by Mr. and Mrs., Baby, two dogs and a cat. He and his more adventurous girl cousin, Axel, enjoy pushing the boundaries of the strict mouse rules, talking while foraging and even foraging outside of the normal times. And then they find something new and delicious – a peppermint patty. They both eat themselves sick. Axel is able to run away to wait to get better, but Fredle is pushed out of the nest onto the pantry floor. From there, Mrs. takes him outside, presumed by all the mice to be a death sentence. Getting to this point of the story took long enough that I was surprised at how many discs were left of the audiobook – but this is really just the beginning. Fredle gets better, has an outside mouse bring him food, and discovers the stars and what he thinks are multiple moons. He must learn very quickly how to find food outside and how to stay safe from the outdoor cats as well as raptors, owls, snakes and racoons. Somehow, he makes friends with Sadie, the flightier of the two dogs, and develops an exploratory friendship with a young woodshed mouse who defies her colony’s rules against talking with house mice. He spends what seems like forever searching the perimeter of the house for a way back in, only to be kidnapped by a band of raccoons, the Rowdy Brothers. And when Fredle finally makes his way back home, he finds that he can no longer just go along with the rules that have always been followed, when he can see that doing things differently could save lives. 
The Amazing Adventures of Bumblebee Boy by David Soman and Jacky Davis. When Ladybug Girl first came out a few years ago, I loved it, but the premise of a preschooler left out by her older siblings needing to come up with her own superhero way to play didn’t quite mesh with our family. My son, then an only child, had never been left out of the older kids games and couldn’t quite relate. He and I both loved the next book in the series, Ladybug Girl and Bumblebee Boy, where Lulu and her friend Sam take multiple tries to come up with a way to play together and end up having a fabulous playground adventure as the titular superheroes. We actually bought this one, and I brought it up for years whenever the boy had his frequent similar difficulties playing with his friends. There have been other books in this series, but this one has been the first since Ladybug Girl and Bumblebee Boy that once again grabbed the whole family with that perfect balance of real-life dilemmas and fabulous but true-to-life imaginary adventures. In this book, Sam – probably aged 4 or 5 – is playing Bumblebee Boy at home, when his little brother, probably around 2, keeps wanting to join the game. What to do? “Bumblebee Boy flies alone” – but Owen is really determined about wanting to join in. And Bumblebee Boy, busy with pirates, saber-toothed lions, bank robbers and aliens, might find that he needs an assistant. The illustrations alternate between showing the real and imaginary worlds, and the endpapers look like they could be photocopied and cut out for action paper dolls of Bumblebee Boy, Owen and their enemies. Once again Soman and Davis have made a hit for everyone in my family. 
Breadcrumbs by Anne Ursu This is a Snow Queen retelling. I don’t actually like many Hans Christian Anderson stories, but this retelling made me fall in love with the story. Hazel’s been having a rough time lately, what with her parents’ recent divorce and having to leave her beloved school. Still, she’s at least at the same school as her best friend, Jack, whose home life is also less than stellar. Hazel’s creativity and immersion in fantasy worked well at the old school, but she can’t seem to make friends with classmates or teachers at the new school. And then – we know, but neither Hazel nor Jack do – a magic mirror shard pierces Jack’s eye and freezes his heart. One day, he stops talking to Hazel, and the next, he’s gone. Both Jack and Hazel and Hazel and the new friend her mother is trying to get her to make had been making up a story about the impenetrable fortress of a winter snow queen-type person – where would she live? What would her motives be? And then Hazel’s rival for friendship with Jack tells her that he saw Jack climb onto a sled with an odd-looking woman dressed in white and drive off into the woods. Hazel knows that she is the only one who has a chance of rescuing Jack. She sets off into the woods, woefully underprovisioned. As in “Into the Woods”, the woods by her sledding hill turn into the Woods, into which all real and fairy tale characters wander eventually. It’s full of fairy tales characters and conventions, but while she recognizes pieces, the rules are not quite what she knows from her books, and she must use her wits and work hard to keep her goal close to her heart as she journeys. 
Knit Kimono Too by Vicki Square. This is the second book of knit kimonos from designer Vicki Square. I haven’t read the first one, though I did listen to a lovely interview with her on the 
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle. 2012 year marks the 50th anniversary of one of my all-time favorite books. There was even a whole blog tour about it, to go along with 50th Anniversary Commemorative Edition. This has yummy extras, such as a brief bio and memories of L’Engle by her granddaughter, photos, a facsimile of the manuscript for the first chapter with corrections, and L’Engle’s Newbery acceptance speech. 
Linger by Maggie Stiefvater. Read by Dan Bittner, Pierce Cravens, Emma Galvin, & Jenna Lamia. There isn’t really a way to tell this story without spoilers for the first book. In the first book, Sam, a young werewolf, and Grace, bitten as a child but somehow never turned, fall in love and risk it all to find a way to stay together, as Sam will otherwise just turn into a wolf and stay that way forever. A new werewolf, Jack, also attempts a cure but dies instead. And Sam is horrified to see the leader of the pack and Sam’s adopted father, Beck, turn up with a truck full of new werewolves to ensure a future for the pack. 
Everyone is waiting for warm weather to turn wolves human again and answer mountains of questions. Are Beck and Ulrich really permanently wolves? Did the new wolves, including Grace’s friend Olivia, survive the winter? Will the pack be able to survive the impact of Cole’s turbulent past? Will Sam and Grace remain undiscovered, and what will her parents’ reaction be if they find out? I was really wishing that I had more time in the car (something I rarely wish) so that I could finish this sooner. Stiefvater has for me a perfect combination of good characters, compelling plot, just detailed enough world, and beautiful writing. She’s able to make me believe that two teenagers could fall in love and know it’s forever, even when most of the time in real life, I’d advocate for waiting a bit longer. I love the shifting theories about how being a werewolf works – rules that, like real-life science, exist but aren’t easy to nail down. This is the middle volume, and so of course you’ll want to start at the beginning and end at the end. But even with all of that against it, this was a story that grabbed me and hasn’t let me go yet. I recommend this trilogy to anyone who enjoyed Twilight, especially Team Jacob, as supernatural romance done better. 
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