I originally found out about this book on the PW Kidscast, though it’s since been nominated for a Cybils award in my category.
Bob by Wendy Mass and Rebecca Stead, with illustrations by Nicholas Gannon. Feiwel and Friends, 2018.
I generally think of Wendy Mass as writing snappy, realistic but funny modern-day fantasy, while Rebecca Stead writes still mostly modern-day but dreamier, harder to pin down books. Not authors I would have thought to put together – yet here they are, each writing a different point of view, though it’s never identified who is writing what. Charlotte had a nice breakdown of who might have written which part and why on her blog.
10-year-old Livy is returning to her Gran’s house in Australia for the first time in 5 years. She doesn’t remember anything of that last visit, though she feels compelled to rush up to the closet in her bedroom there as soon as she gets there. She’s full of questions and things she doesn’t understand, including why she’s so anxious about her mother leaving her there.
In the closet, she finds a stuffy, a black pawn, a tape recorder, and a strange green creature in a quite unbelievable chicken suit who says his name is Bob and that he’s been waiting for her, in the closet all of those five years. Why, if he says they were inseparable, does she not remember him?
Bob doesn’t understand everything himself, either. He doesn’t know what he is or where he came from. Woven into the knotty mystery is the ongoing drought in Australia, one that’s threatening to drive everyone off of their land.
This is a quiet, quirky and cozy story, a pleasant break from long series and books filled with never-ending Action.
All Systems Red by Martha Wells. Tor.com, 2017.
In Artificial Condition (avoiding spoilers as much as possible, Murderbot has been traveling around on unoccupied space ships, bribing their intelligent operating systems to let it onboard by sharing its entertainment series. Murderbot has only the vaguest of memories left in its organic parts of the horrible incident where it helped kill thousands of people, since the memories were deliberately wiped from its construct parts. But what would cause it to do such a thing? A particularly annoying system helps Murderbot create a disguise as a normal augmented human so that it can gain access to the planet where the horrible incident takes place. One hitch: Murderbot is forced to take a job as a security consultant to yet another group of too-trusting scientist types.
In Rogue Protocol, Murderbot is on yet another ship, this one with people, trying to investigate the shadowy GrayCris Corporation that seems to be behind so much slaughter. Mixed in with all the plot action of these books has always been the awkwardness of a sentient machine that looks mostly like a human but isn’t quite one. Here, the awkwardness is dialed up to 11 as Murderbot has to befriend a sweet, trusting robot named Miki, who’s treated as a pet by its owners. Miki, of course, has never had to deal with the gruesome situations that Murderbot has been put into, and so has a level of trust with humans that’s never been possible for Murderbot. They’re going to have to find a way to work together, though, to deal with the giant and very hostile combat robots that turn up.
The Girl with the Silver Eyes by Willo Davis Roberts. Scholastic, 1980.
The Penderwicks at Last by Jeanne Birdsall. Alfred A. Knopf, 2018.
The Underwater Ballroom Society edited by Tiffany Trent and Stephanie Burgis. Five Fathoms Press, 2018. 
Heroine Complex by Sarah Kuhn. Daw, 2016.
Heroine Worship by Sarah Kuhn. Daw, 2017.
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