MG/YA Book Reviews by a MG/YA Writer
Welcome to the May edition of Bookcase Bizarro!
I’ve been in a state of joy and relief ever since I completed my 2024 taxes, and started the seeds for my 2025 garden. I grow outdoors in the spring and autumn, and indoors in the winter at my home in Toronto. (You can see pictures of part of my indoor garden below.) My entire garden has planted in containers for the past 25 years. I recycle my soil each year by adding organic fertilizer and homemade compost to each pot, and add sand or perlite as needed to prevent the soil from getting too compacted. I also rotate crops to keep diseases at bay.
This year, my seedlings include: two types of peas, two kinds of chard, seven kinds of lettuce, two types of green onions (one with gorgeous red stems), arugula, chamomile, basil, cilantro and sweet alyssum. The chives, sage and French sorrel have proved themselves to be hardy perennials—even in pots—and came back this year as they have every other year. And the oregano, parsley, chard and kale I planted indoors are still growing strong.
Who needed that desk for writing, anyway?
On to this month’s reviews.
On Halloween night, three friends enter a haunted cemetery to uncover a story spooky enough to bag them editorial positions at the school newspaper. Unfortunately, the ghosts have plans of their own.
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.
MG Book Review
When Josie and her friends, Alison and Jackson, sneak into the Bachelor’s Grove cemetery on Halloween night, they hope that a ghost sighting will help them clinch editorial positions on the school newspaper. If a ghost is going to appear anywhere, it will be here, at the cemetery, on Halloween night. If they don’t encounter the White Lady, then maybe they’ll get lucky with the phantom farmhouse. So long as they don’t enter, they’ll be safe. (Those who do disappear.)
Their plans are cut short by a hopped-up security guard, who thinks the kids are there to vandalize the cemetery. Although the three friends escape, they’ve lost their chance for a story. With Josie’s parents out of town, they go back to her house to commiserate. It’s not long before their disappointing Halloween night morphs into something far more terrifying. A creepy image of the phantom farmhouse appears on all three of their phones, with the words I’m watching dripping down the screen. At first, they think that one of their schoolmates is pranking them, but none of them recognizes the number. When a second text with a countdown timer appears, the friends realize they only have three days to discover who—or what—is haunting them. The word deadline takes on a very different—and sinister—meaning.
I’ve been on a bit of a horror kick recently, and I’m always in the mood for a good MG ghost story. And one with a poltergeist farmhouse that devours people? I’m in.
The first thing to say is that Currie knows how to juggle terror with humor, and channels this perfectly through the voice of her protagonist, Josie. Still, this is a full level up from a ‘scary story.’ Ghosts don’t only haunt the cemetery. An invisible intruder has invaded Josie’s house. It is right there with the kids, sending them texts, private warnings through the television and causing electronics to go haywire. (The ghost understands how to target its young audience very well, almost as well as the book’s author.) The countdown timer ratchets up the tension another notch, especially when a local ghost hunter warns the kids that ghosts sometimes harm people to get what they want. Not because they’re necessarily evil, but out of desperation to make themselves understood. It’s a tenuous point of connection between the desperate ghost and the equally desperate kids.
The ghost has given them a time limit, but so have Josie’s parents. They are due back in a few days, and there’s only so many lies Jackson and Alison can tell their own parents before they get suspicious. The terror of parents finding out adds another layer of desperation. Currie stirs in more real-world terror with an overzealous security guard and a very creepy taxi driver, unhinged adult types that every middle grader will recognize.
It’s Watching is a ghost story with more than a scare or two up its sleeve. It’s also a story about loss. Jackson’s beloved aunt has recently died, making this haunting especially disturbing for him. If ghosts exist, then why has his aunt never come back to visit? (Readers might also wonder why she doesn’t come back to help them fight against this hostile ghost?) Neither Josie nor Alison can come up with an answer, which only serves to magnify the loss. Clever Currie. This sense of grief not only provides a pervasive undercurrent throughout the story, it provides a vital clue to the mystery. In an uncommon twist, it makes readers question what lies at the root of fear and leads the characters towards some possible answers.
Recommended for MG readers with a medium-to-high scare threshold, though the strong friendships and loss of a loved one interrupt the fear factor in story-enhancing ways. (#TPL)
YA+ Book Reviews
I’m So Glad We Had This time Together, by Maurice Vellekoop. (Pantheon, 2024)
A fascinating Gen X, coming-of-age graphic memoir of an artist as he navigates coming out as a gay man in the 1980s while forging a career as an artist. It’s hard to think of the 70s and 80s as historical periods when they pretty much encompassed my own childhood and coming out years. It was not an easy time for Queer folk. Homophobia was rampant, with gay men particularly villainized during the AIDS crisis (which was referred to as the ‘gay plague.’) It’s a backdrop that reinforces some of the self-hatred Vellekoop explores, but never sentimentalizes, which makes his journey to self-acceptance even more poignant. Although Vellekoop loves his mother deeply, her religious convictions make it impossible for her to accept him. While Vellekoop buries himself in art, self-medicates with booze, and avoids emotional commitments, he never paints himself as a victim. Instead, he honestly (and sometimes hilariously) explores his coming out as a gay man and an artist, both of which are intertwined.
I also reveled in the pictorial descriptions of 1970s Toronto, including the restaurant at the top of the Simpson’s department store on Queen Street West, where Maurice’s mother took him for lunch as a child. (My mother did the same with me and my brother. We called it “The High, High Restaurant,” not only for the view but because of the extra-long escalators that carried us up a steep and endless rise to the restaurant’s entrance. Vellekoop’s illustrations show the strange isolation of those two escalators, dominating the three-dimensional space like moving parallel sculptures.) He also captures the heady vibe of 1980s Toronto when it was still affordable for artists.
Recommended for readers age 16+ (especially those anywhere on the rainbow spectrum), with plenty of Easter eggs for Gen X Torontonians who grew up in the 70s. Sexual content. (#TPL)
Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales: Emily Wilde #3, by Heather Fawcett. (Del Ray, 2025)
A deepening of the slow-burn romance between Emily, a dedicated scholar and dryadologist, and Wendell Bambleby, the Faerie prince she’s fallen in love with. Things are getting serious and Emily questions whether she wants to spend the rest of her life as Wendell’s queen in one of the most deadly Faerie kingdoms, especially since Wendell is showing disturbing signs of sliding into the amorality and viciousness his people are famous for?
Of course, I read the books completely out of order, starting with Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands: Emily Wilde #2, which was a smidge better than Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales: Emily Wilde #3 (though #3 was still a very satisfying read). I will complete the series by finding out how it all started by reading Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries: Emily Wilde #1.
Recommended for YA+ fantasy lovers. (#TPL)
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.
