Category: Young adult/children’s

I grabbed this book from the shelf on a whim on a day when I was headed to the beach: I wanted something that wasn’t heavy (literally or metaphorically!) and that wasn’t a book I cared about keeping spotless. Something that would be an interesting story, something that would be unlikely to make me want…

After reading Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan back in May, I ended up checking out three John Green books from the library, wanting to read more of him, thinking I liked his literary voice. Looking for Alaska was OK: hugely readable but also a bit over-dramatic/too much of an “issues”…

Colin Singleton has just graduated from high school, but he worries he’s already past his peak: he was a child prodigy, but doesn’t really know what he’s good at, aside from learning languages and remembering facts and anagramming phrases, and he fears he won’t actually amount to anything. And to make things worse he just…

Miles Halter leaves Florida at the start of his junior year: he’s headed for the Alabama boarding school that his father also attended, but it’s not really out of tradition that he’s going, and it’s not that he’s had a particularly traumatic high school experience thus far. I mean, he’s a nerd, and doesn’t really…

Will Grayson, Will Grayson is the story of two teenagers named, yes indeed, Will Grayson: both live in the suburbs of Chicago, and end up meeting one night. Their story’s told in alternating chapters, with Green narrating from the point of view of one Will Grayson, and Levithan writing from the point of view of…

This is the third of the Lewis Barnavelt mysteries, after The House with a Clock in Its Walls and The Figure in the Shadows, though the star of this one is really Lewis’s friend Rose Rita Pottinger. It’s summertime and Lewis is off to boy scout camp, and Rose Rita wishes she could go along…

I seem to be on a kids’ books kick at the moment, or maybe just a John Bellairs kick. This book is the sequel to The House with a Clock in Its Walls (though sadly, it’s not illustrated by Edward Gorey like the first one was) and introduces us to Lewis Barnavelt’s friend, Rose Rita…

I’m sure I read this book as a kid and liked it, though by the time I picked it up as an adult I had forgotten just about everything about it, including the fact that it was illustrated by Edward Gorey. I’m glad I re-read it, because it’s really satisfying, right from the start. I…

I found this book on the sidewalk and picked it up without having heard of this author or the series (this book is the third of four, but it works as a stand-alone story as well). It seemed promising—London! Italy! Intrigue! 1898!—but as I started reading, I was a little grumpy. The story opens with…