MG/YA Book Reviews by a MG/YA Writer
Welcome to the December edition of Bookcase Bizarro!
In author news, I’m in full first-draft lockdown. I’ve completed nearly 80% of my NaNoWriMo word count goal. The words have slowed down a bit since I’ve started to spend more time fitting scenes together to build the story. The characters have also woken up. Each one’s got their own ideas about how things should go, so life is messy, messy, messy in Garrison Creek. Poor, hapless writer that I am, I’ve chained myself to my main protag’s character arc to maintain my sense of direction. Otherwise, none of us are making it out of here alive. The secondary characters can absolutely have their own lives; they just can’t take over.
I got back the first round of edits for Rogue Wizard, my Garrison Creek novella, and I haven’t even looked at them yet. I’ve decided to stay focused on my first draft throughout December and have kicked revisions down the pipe until the New Year.
First drafts are often a time of extremes for me. So it’s not surprising that I went far beyond my yearly re-read of John Bellairs’ A House with a Clock in Its Walls. I totally binged on audiobook versions of all the Louis Barnavelt/Rose Rita Pottinger books. Yes, all of them. Bellairs’ atmospheric and quirky descriptions of 1950s American Midwest small towns and his cast of misfit characters are exactly what I need right now. I love the way Bellairs manages to mix his trademark sense of humour into the creeping horror that infuses his stories, so that they are more than pure scare.
Still, his stories can get pretty scary.
One of the most terrifying is The Letter, the Witch and the Ring. It’s also one of my favorites because there’s some very interesting gender-bending going on in this book. As a middle grade reader, I found the main protag Rose Rita Pottinger’s rebellion against female roles particularly exciting and relatable.
As a kid, there’s one particular scene in the book that always hit me with a shock of recognition. Terrified of dates and dances and tired of being told that she is a ‘pretty funny kind of girl’ for the way she behaves, Rose Rita tries to make a bargain with a demon, one that Mrs. Zimmerman, Rose Rita’s BF adult F, stops her from making. The wish is inferred rather than made explicit, but it’s easy enough for the reader to guess what Rose Rita wants. I certainly did. Dates, dances? No thanks!
Like Rose Rita, I too hated being a girl and wanted to shrug off my female self like the dresses my parents sometimes forced me to wear. I’d also imagined how different my life would be if I were a boy. (This was long before Beyoncé ever voiced the words.) I’d also never encountered another girl who’d been treated with the same hostility and aggression as myself for being the ‘wrong’ kind of girl. It wasn’t until I read Leslie Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues years later that I understood gender as a social construct, not a biological imperative or a destiny, and that binary thinking can be questioned and changed. But as a kid, I knew none of these things. I only knew that I had been seen. I understood exactly what Rose Rita was about.
I love that Mrs. Zimmerman doesn’t tell Rose Rita that everything will be alright. While Rose Rita might have wanted that kind of reassurance, it’s not what she needs, and Mrs. Zimmerman’s smart enough to know it. Instead, she reminds Rose Rita that it took guts to do all the things that she did throughout the course of the book, and that women in history aren’t remembered for following the rules. If Rose Rita was brave enough to drive a car through the dark woods while being haunted by a ghost at age thirteen, she’d figure out the rest of it. (Couldn’t we all use a Mrs. Zimmerman in our lives?)
I’ve often wondered what Rose Rita made of her life, and who she chose to be. My bet? She/they either became a writer or an investigative reporter. Even in the 1970s, she/they read as LGBTQ+, right alongside Harriet the Spy, and she/they were definitely one of my earliest queer heroes.
This month, I round up my top 6 MG/YA picks for your reading pleasure. Interestingly, none of them were published in 2024. (This says a lot about line-ups at the library.) I also notice that Quill Tree Press put out three of my favourite books, so guess whose catalogue I’ll be browsing in 2025? My reads tended to skew a bit older this year, as well. I read more YA than I’d expected. This month is full of festivals that celebrate light. So on these cold, dark days, let’s all drench ourselves in the light of a good book as the old year creeps to an end.
A quick note to new readers: books that are available from the Toronto Public Library will be marked #TPL, because books don’t have to be new or owned in order to be loved.
Top Picks for 2024
Into the Bright Open: A Secret Garden Remix, by Cherie Dimaline. (Feiwal and Friends, 2023.)
An LGBTQ+ Secret Garden re-telling, set in an indigenous community in Georgian Bay, Canada. (#TPL)
Upper MG/ Young YA
Fourth Dimension: Rule of Three, #4, by Eric Walters. (Penguin, 2018.)
The Apocalypse comes to the Toronto Islands. (#TPL)
Upper MG
The Stars of Whistling Ridge, by Cindy Baldwin. (Quill Tree, 2021)
An unexpected homecoming borne from stolen wishes. (#TPL)
MG
This Town is on Fire, by Pamela N. Harris. (Quill Tree, 2023)
When her white best friend’s racist behaviour is exposed on social media, a young Black woman is forced to question where her loyalties lie. (#TPL)
YA
Starlings, by Amanda Linsmeier. (Delacourt, 2023)
Small town, big Fae folk horror with a heroine who knows how to speak truth to power. (#TPL)
YA
Not So Pure and Simple, by Lamar Giles. (Quill Tree, 2020)
A young Black man confronts his own toxic masculinity when he joins a church to manipulate a young woman he likes. (#TPL)
YA
Thirteen-year-old Ermin is a gifted mechanic and the worst student at St. Anselm’s Training School for Orphans. She’s just failed her exams for the third time—something nobody’s ever done. Worse, Ermin’s been running her own repair business for money—something that’s expressly forbidden. If the headmistress finds out, Ermin will go to prison. Her future will be over before it’s even begun.
But that’s not her only secret.
Her best friends, Colin and Georgie, are wizards in a world where magic is strictly controlled. Ermin worries that her friends will be captured, drained of their power, then banished. When Georgie’s caught aiding the Wizard’s Resistance, Ermin repairs a broken flying carpet so all three of them can escape.
Hesitant to join the Resistance because of her lack of magical power, Ermin steals an experimental device from a wizard hunter that could destroy every wizard in the Creek. She’s faced with a choice: either smash the device or convert it into a different kind of weapon—one that not only helps wizards but just might get her an apprenticeship at the prestigious Guild Academy.
Ermin’s got one chance to get it right. If she fails, she risks losing her two best friends… and her dreams.
Find Shadow Apprentice at your local library through Hoopla or buy from online retailers:
Thanks for being a Bookcase Bizarro reader! I’ll be back next month with more author news, and more MG and YA book reviews. See you then!
#IMWAYR is a weekly blog hop hosted by Unleashing Readers and Teach Mentor Texts. Its focus is to share the love of KIDLIT and recommend KIDLIT books to readers of all ages.
Greg Pattridge also hosts weekly MG blog hop MMGM every Monday at his website, Always in the Middle.
