Fire: Tales of Elemental Spirits is a collection of five stories, two by Robin McKinley – “Hellhound” and “First Flight,” and three by Peter Dickinson – “Phoenix,” “Fireworm,” and “Salamander Man.” As a topic, these “fire elementals” make for a great story collection. As for the stories themselves, there is a major difference in the two authors’ styles, and this makes for an uneven collection.
It’s hard to be a vegan vampire in New York City, especially when you’re Madison Livingstone. And as summer progresses, it gets even tougher. Maddy’s always had a hard time making friends, and now it seems that she’s losing her sister, too, to new interests and, heaven forbid, boys. So, when her brother Hudson announces that the evil and dangerous Knaveheart—the most vicious of the Old World vampires—has come to New York to find his successor, all of their worlds are turned upside down in an effort to keep him away from their family and send him on his way back to the Old World for good.
Noh had only felt her mother’s arms around her when she had just been born before she was taken from Noh and a little girl was left with a well-meaning yet befuddled father and two aunts to lead her through life. A life that was destined to be special thanks to a family trait that she was blessed to inherit from her father’s family.
Kelly Quinn has always wanted to have her own club, but her mom said she had to wait until seventh grade to start one. So, when she does start one, it’s a cooking club. She and her two friends will be cooking out of a book that Kelly found while cleaning out the attic. The only thing is that this cookbook causes things to happen to the people who eat the final outcome. Did they find a magic cookbook? or is it all just coincidence?
The Search for WondLa is a magical, mysterious story that will captivate children. Tony DiTerlizzi, author of The Spiderwick Chronicles, begins a new series of books featuring a strange and fantastic world inhabited by strange creatures and a little girl, Eva Nine.
The Shape-Shifter’s Curse is a part of a series called The Magic Repair Shop. This is book two and is intended for ages 9-12, but certainly there is a wider audience that can enjoy Amanda Marrone’s writing. Read More »
The Goddess Girls is an excellent children’s series. I highly recommend this to anyone, especially someone looking for a good chapter book series for girls ages 8-12. I enjoyed them as an adult, though more as a quick thirty-minute read. The authors do a fantastic job of mixing Greek myths with issues young girls face on a daily basis.
Artemis the Brave is the fourth book in the series. Artemis, one of my favorite Greek mythological figures, is portrayed as a tomboy, she is friends with a lot of people, and never ever has a crush on a boy. She also is very brave, though sometimes that is a front. Read More »
Fourteen-year-old Bryn is trying to come to terms with her scientist mother’s disappearance, her father’s quest to find her, and the mysterious brown boxes her father had had shipped to Aunt Pen’s from her mother’s Alaska storage site. Knowing her mother was working on a secret project made Bryn even more concerned, and after hearing strange noises from the basement, where the boxes were stored, she decided to investigate, and was stunned to find something that appeared to be an egg moving around in a box, and beginning to hatch. Wondering what kind of animal this possibly be, Bryn called upon her inherited ability to communicate with birds in order to make the creature feel more comfortable.
Imagine being a young girl in Victorian London. Now imagine having both of your parents just disappear into thin air, and suddenly responsible for caring for yourself and your younger brother. If that is not enough for any twelve-year-old to handle, add on the fact that faeries do exist, and there is a dangerous war going on between the two factions of faeries, the Seelie and Unseelie, and with the humans. Emily Snow stumbles onto the knowledge of faeries on what starts out to be a typical morning, and her life will never be the same. She saves a tiny, dark-skinned man from other small, dark, tattooed men, all of which turn out to be piskies. Emily Snow will now be public enemy number one, with both faerie factions, and Ravenhill, an unpleasant man who apparently dislikes faeries very much, and people who consort with faeries.
The Shroud of A’Ranka was a great follow-up to the first Brimstone Network novel. Bram has ably taken on the mantle as leader of the newly-reformed supernatural defense agency, and they are hard at work fighting malevolent supernatural foes of all kinds. In this second novel, their enemy is twice as formidable: an ancient vampire warlord who is bent on bringing forth a dark age where vampires rule and use all humanity as a food source. Read More »
The Brimstone Network is such a cool idea for juvenile fiction. I wish this book had been around when I was a kid! The Brimstone Network is a millenia-old agency that protects the world against supernatural threats, using a combination of sorcery and science — until they are all killed by a swarm of malevolent supernatural creatures. Thankfully, Elijah Stone had a contingency plan that activates upon his death. His son, thirteen-year-old Bram, will be called into action to form a new version of the Brimstone Network. When Elijah Stone died, Mr. Stitch, an artificial man made of many parts of fallen Brimstone agents, was awakened to seek out Bram Stone, to help him in his task. It sounds like a huge burden for a young boy, huh? I thought so, too. But Bram definitely rises to the occasion.
Specter Rising was a very satisfying conclusion to the Brimstone Network trilogy. Mr. Sniegoski did a great job of upping the ante, tying up lose ends, and integrating the storylines from each book. It has been a real pleasure to read about The Brimstone Network with its unique, interesting, and mostly children/young teen characters. The author managed to write a story that has an appeal for an older reader but also will make younger readers happy. Read More »
Lexington Livingstone isn’t generally the confrontational type. However, when she discovers that popular girl Mina is only using her for her speech writing skills, Lexie decides that she’s had enough. Taking up arms, she runs against the perfect Mina to be ninth grade class president. But will she lose herself in the process? Only time will tell. In the meantime, she has to deal with her younger brother and sister planning for Hallo-month and two obnoxious, havoc-wreaking pixies who have come to stay for a spell.Growing up in the care of the Foundling Hospital, those children left to be taken in had never known anything of their parentage but were tagged with a number that would someday connect them to a special token that was left with them when they arrived along with a number. Cirrus Flux was the one exception; he was the boy without a number, the boy who didn’t exist.
Cirrus and his best friend at the Foundling Hospital, Bottle Top, were two of the oldest boys left in the care of Mr. Chalfont and the nurses. When they ventured over the walls of the hospital to investigate the tree outside, known to all the children as the Gallows Tree, they never imagined it would be the start of a grand and dangerous adventure for them both—and for Cirrus, an adventure that would lead to answers about his father and the very special reason he was to be protected above all.
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In the third book in the Heck series, Milton is back in Heck and determined to rescue his friend Virgil and his sister Marlo. He disguises himself to enter Blimpo, the third circle of Heck where the children who are guilty of gluttony are sent. In Blimpo, the kids are forced to run on giant hamster wheels called Dreadmills as a way of generating energy. They are fed Hambone Hank’s barbeque, a heavenly concoction, which is Milton’s first clue that something is very wrong. In Heck, nothing is ever heavenly without a price.
Milton Fauster has done the unthinkable; he has escaped from Heck and returned to his normal life. Normal, though, is not really the right word to describe it. Milton is different. He has come back missing some of the “energy glue” that holds the body and the soul together and is experiencing spells that seem to be getting worse. Although he looks the same, people seem afraid of him. His friends don’t want to be around him and even his favorite teacher treats him like an outcast. Read More »
Milton Fauster is a good kid. He’s kind and he always tries to do the right thing. His sister Marlo is not good. In fact, Marlo could be described as a Goth girl who delights in causing trouble, and the more trouble, the better. Marlo likes to take things that don’t belong to her, and it is just Milton’s luck that on the last day of his life, Marlo casts him as her unwitting accomplice in her lip gloss larceny. Smothered by an exploding marshmallow bear, the siblings find themselves in Heck, a limbo for children. Read More »
In the second book in the Rowan of the Wood series, Cullen’s life has not gotten any better. He is still struggling with the fact that there is a 1400-year-old wizard trapped in his body and his home life is still miserable. He feels angry all the time and just wants to be a normal kid again. When Moody, Fiana’s former companion, reappears with an idea about how to separate Cullen and Rowan, Cullen is all for it. Read More »
Cullen Knight has not had an easy life. After losing his father and sister in a tragic accident, Cullen’s mother is mentally unable to care for him, so Cullen is sent to live with the Samuels. While outwardly the Samuels may seem to be a suitable foster family for the young boy, in reality they treat Cullen like a servant and are only interested in getting their Read More »
The sight of a dragon (Niklas carrying Sean from The Eighth Room) in flight has sent the human world into a supernatural hunting frenzy. The purchase of silver bullets and stakes has skyrocketed and Darkbrook is on high alert as the forests surrounding them has become infested with hunters and reporters. Such a sighting in a era of cameras, media and the internet is proving a great deal harder to discount and the council is forced to look beyond the usual swamp gas and UFOs to solve the problem. A teleporting toddler, troubled werewolf, and hatred-filled, greedy young wizard begin to change the equation completely.
Undecided on her life course, with her friends starting to find new paths in their lives, Jacob Lane feels a bit left behind and very unsure of herself and her life ahead. After meeting the toddler Mallie, who promptly disappears again, Jacob is quickly drawn into the cause of trying to find the missing dragonling and her elder brother who had been sent to find her. One rescue leads to another, and while on a quest to help rescue a captured and wounded vampire, Jacob ends up in the land of Faerie where she meets some new friends and discovers a previously unknown talent.
I was a bit surprised at how the prologue related to this story because it broke the mold made by the first three, however I was intrigued by Danny and his back story which I hope to learn more of soon. Though shorter then its predecessors it doesn’t fail to entertain and is nicely set up for the next story in the series. A delightful tale sprung from the mind of Jennifer St. Clair, The Seventh Secret is the fourth and newest installment in the Jacob Lane series.
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Buy a print copy of The Seventh Secret from Amazon by clicking here.
Books in the Jacob Lane series in the order in which they should be read:
The Tenth Ghost
The Ninth Guest
The Eighth Room
The Seventh Secret
The Sixth Stone
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