Sky Masters by Dale Brown Brown is a popular and fairly prolific author in the action-adventure category. As a former U.S. Air Force Captain, he brings his inside knowledge of the action and technology of the Air Force into his books. In this book, a conflict over a small island between China and the Phillipines brings the U.S. Air Force into play with new, secret and superpowerful planes and miniature, nearly invisible sattelites. The technology is described in detail, and the action moves rapidly from one locale to another with cinematic precision. Those who love tales of military action with a focus on the plot and the machines will blast through this and come back for more.*
*My loyal readers may note that this description does not match my typical reading profile. Indeed, I am trying to broaden myself as a librarian by reading outside my usual comfort zone. Someday, I will be able to connect this book with a reader who will love it and that will theoretically make the pain of reading this worthwhile.
Everyone Knows What a Dragon Looks Like by Jay Williams. Illustrated by Mercer Mayer. Here is an old-but-good one, fortuantely still available from Amazon as well as at my library. Young orphan Han is a cheerful street sweeper who tends to the gate of the city of Wu, between China and the land of the Wild Horsemen. One day, a messenger brings word that attack by the Wild Horsemen is imminent. The Mandarin calls together his advisors – the Captain of the Army, the Leader of the Merchants, the Chief of the Workmen, and the Wisest of Wise Men – to discuss what to do. They decide to pray to the Great Cloud Dragon to save them. Shortly thereafter, Han meets an ragged and fat old man at the city gate, who says he is the dragon and asks to be taken to the Mandarin. Naturally, the Mandarin and his advisors refuse to believe the man – they all know what a dragon looks like. Only Han is polite and hospitable to the old man, and his courtesy of course saves the day. This is a beautiful, slightly twisted fairy tale from Williams, whose “The Practical Princess” I remember vividly reading in Cricket as a child. This is both absorbing on the surface and provides plenty for more conversation. The beautiful pictures are recognizably the prolific and versatile Mercer Mayer’s fairy tale style, but also clearly Asian in palette and layout. Lightning Bolt loved it so much that we read it regularly for six weeks before I brought it back to the library.
The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place. Book 1: The Mysterious Howling by Maryrose Wood. Read by Katherine Kellgren.
Good Night, Sleep Tight by Kim West What to do with a baby who just will not respond to Elizabeth Pantley’s gentle methods, whose sleeping patterns are resulting in significant sleep loss for both the baby and the caretaker? These were the questions that led me to look for an approach somewhere in between Ferber and other cry-it-out methods, which are very hard on both parents and children, and Pantley’s very gentle suggestions. This was the book that I came up with. I was expecting to have some problems with her approach, and boy, did I. But overall, if one ignores especially her breastfeeding advice except as it bears directly on sleep, the kernel of her method for teaching babies to fall asleep on their own seems straightforward and less traumatic than other popular methods.
Wink: The Ninja Who Wanted to Be Noticed by J.C. Phillips. Wink has always wanted to be a ninja, but when he finally is admitted to ninja school, he keeps getting into trouble. His kicking and jumping skills are fine, but he has difficulty with the silent and stealthy part. Every day, he returns home dejected and listens to advice from his grandmother over their evening tea. Finally, he finds a career where he fits in perfectly. The bright illustrations appear to be either cut from patterned paper or computer graphics and suit the story perfectly. I have met many young children enamored of martial arts, and never yet met one who really mastered the silent and stealthy aspect, making this book perfect for young would-be ninjas.
The Icing on the Cupcake by Jennifer Ross Our would-be heroine is Ansley, Dallas sorority girl and socialite. Her life has been perfect up until now, when she is dumped by her fiance in the middle of a fraternity party, for being mean. And, we discover, she is mean, the kind of popular girl whose status has always meant that she could do pretty much anything she wanted and have people smile at her. She decides that the only solution is a retreat masked as a deliberate life change: moving to New York City to live with her estranged grandmother. Despite the lack of any contact since Ansley’s mother was five, her grandmother welcomes her in, but tells her that she must find a job within two months if she wants to stay. Since Ansley had planned on never having a job outside of (nanny-supported) motherhood, this is a challenge. Instead, she turns to her real passion: cupcake baking. Well, yes, we will all figure out what Ansley’s new job will be before she does herself. The book is sweet and mostly predictable, as Ansley sweetens up and her fractured family reunites, except that the required romance involves the grandmother rather than Ansley, a nice twist. Every chapter concludes with a Waitress-like cupcake recipe: Hole in the Heart red chocolate cupcakes, for example. The recipes are very tasty looking, and seem like Ross is an experienced cupcake baker herself – these are not just regular cakes baked in a muffin tin, and have lots of fun flavors, like lime with ginger frosting or chocolate with chiles. This is a delightful summer read that will likely inspire you to take a trip to the kitchen or your local cupcake shop.
An Abundance of Katherines by John Green. Read by Jeff Woodman This has been on my reading list for a while, though, as our teen librarian thought I would enjoy it, and she has Magic Powers regarding knowing what books I will like. Our hero, former child prodigy Colin Singleton, is heart-broken, feeling like he has a hole in his gut. He has just been dumped for the nineteenth time by a girl named Katherine. His best friend, Hassan, who doesn’t believe in dating at all, takes him on a road trip to help him recover. They wind up in tiny Gutshot, Tennessee, where they are hired to help with an oral history project for the factory there. They make friends with the owner’s daughter, Lindsay Leigh Wells, while Colin tries to make a mathematical formula to predict the future of relationships. Green makes the book thoughtful and very very funny, and I loved every minute of listening to it (except for one or two minutes when I knew that Colin was about to do something really stupid.)
Spellwright by Blake Charlton In a world where magic is literally spelled, dyslexia can have deadly consequences. Not only can the dyslexic person cast deadly misspells, but their touch can cause the living words in magical texts to misspell themselves. Nicodemus Weal is a cacographer, possessed of magical abilities but unable to spell correctly. He’s apprenticed to the wizard Anwu Shannon, an older man who’s taken a cacographer in each generation under his wing. A convention of wizards and other magic-users is gathering at the wizards’ home of Starhaven. Some of them believe that Nicodemus might be the Halcyon, destined to prevent a magical apocalypse. Others think he might be the Storm Petrel, destined to cause it. Certainly, some unsavory magical creature seems to be stalking wizards in Starhaven, and Nicodemus may be their ultimate target. The magic concept is fascinating and unique, but the characters around Nicodemus never felt quite jelled to me. Large bits of back story also seemed to rise up out of the blue just in time to provide a plot twist. It’s clearly the start of a longer series, and I’m hoping that Charlton will have time to iron out the wrinkles before the next entry. It’s still a book for most who enjoy traditional fantasy.
White Cat by Holly Black The more I read of Holly Black, the more a couple of themes come across: Magic is real and scary. Family is not to be trusted. This book is set in a slightly different modern-day than her other books. Teenaged Cassel wakes up on the snowy roof of his boarding-school dorm room, knowing that his cover is blown. He’s been trying to pass for normal, even though he comes from a family of curse workers, all of whom work for one of the big five crime families. Cassel himself isn’t a worker, but con games are in his blood. Even lying low at boarding school – trying to escape some truly dark memories – Cassel is supporting himself as a bookie, running betting schemes all over the school. Now that the school sees him as a danger to himself, he’s sent to stay with his family until he can get a doctor’s consent to go back home. Once with his family again, the plot thickens. His oldest brother, a strong man for the crime family, is clearly up to something, and his young wife is suffering from some kind of spell. His next oldest and favorite brother is losing large amounts of his memory – is someone doing memory work on him, or is he doing such large amounts of memory work that the blowback is tearing holes in his own memory? All magic is called cursing here, and all the magic Cassel sees is used for cursing, controlled by the crime families ever since it became illegal shortly after Prohibition. Then, at his mother’s house (abandoned until she gets out of jail), he finds a white cat, the same white cat that he was following in the dream which ended up with him on the roof. In the dream, the cat’s name was Lila, the same name as his childhood best friend, the daughter of the head of the crime family; Lila, around whom his terrible memories center. Cassel needs to figure what is going on, and decide if there is anyone he can trust or if there is such a thing as real friendship. The plot is full of twists in the main plot, and has some nice subplots as well. The overall tone is dark and sarcastic, the plot fast-moving, and Cassel a likeable character despite his repeated assurances to the reader that he is not a good person. Fans of Holly Black’s other work will enjoy this, of course. The urban setting calls to mind Charles de Lint, though Black’s work is less dreamy and much faster paced, while the crime world fantasy is reminiscent of Stephen Brust’s Jhereg series, but less comedy than some of those works. It’s good stuff, and the cover makes it look like there will be more. 
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin. Read by Janet Song
alibrarymama 