Middle Grade Monday: City of Dragons: the Awakening Storm by Jaimal Yogis and Vivian Truong

Image: Scholastic Inc.

City of Dragons: the Awakening Storm by Jaimal Yogis and illustrated by Vivian Truong. City of Dragons #1. 240 p. Graphix/ Scholastic Inc., September, 2021. 9781338660425. (Review of a finished ppb courtesy of publisher.)

Happy Monday! The dogs and I survived the bomb cyclone. Well it kind of bombed in my area. We only got 5 inches and it sure was cold!  Son #1 is south Jersey got 9 or 10 inches. Son #4 in the Boston area got over a foot. Yesterday was such a sparkly winter day though! We went out often for short periods due to the cold, but they love the snow. 

Middle Grade Monday features a graphic novel series starter called City of Dragons: the Awakening Storm by Jaimal Yogis and illustrated by Vivian Truong. Grace is bi-racial. Her Chinese father died three years earlier and her white mother has recently remarried. They are set to move to Hong Kong, where her step-father works for a tech company. She is about to attend an international school. She's fine with all that. She even looks forward to the challenge.

She's given a challenge she never expected on a field trip. An elderly woman hands her an egg. Shortly afterward, it hatches and it's a dragon! She soon learns it's very difficult to keep a baby dragon a secret. She's also well-versed in Chinese mythology thanks to her father and grandfather and knows she must keep the dragon safe. Sure enough, there are beings both human and magical that are after the dragon, and, maybe, even Grace.

The energy of the palette as well as the varied panel layout add to an already cinematic plot and keeps the pace fast. Grace and her diverse group of friends are likable and that baby dragon is a hoot. Your graphic novel fans will gobble this one up and pant for the next installment!

Fact Friday: New on Earth: Baby Animals in the Wild by Suzi Eszterhas

Image: Simon & Schuster

New on Earth: Baby Animals in the Wild by Suzi Eszterhas. 352 p. Earth Aware Editions/ Simon & Schuster, March, 2021. 9781647221423. (Review of finished purchased copy.)

Happy Friday! The weather buzz is all over the place as we hunker down for anything from a blizzard to zero snowfall here in northern NJ. Fact Friday features New on Earth: Baby Animals in the Wild by Suzi Eszterhas. Ms. Eszterhas' name should ring a bell among careful readers of The Daily Book Talk. She's a professional wildlife photographer and I have featured her books on Fact Friday often. This book features, well, baby animals from all around the world. The photos are well-captioned, containing bite-sized tidbits of information about the animal and or the photographic techniques used to get the shot. There are baby bears in Alaska, baby tigers in India, cheetahs in Africa. The photos are all stunning and many just tickle the "aw, so cute!" button.

If you love animals, this is the book for you. If you are interested in conservation, this is the book for you. If you are a budding wildlife photographer... As an additional point of interest, the author is donating 30% if the proceeds to the Wildlife Conservation Network. I have a wait list for the book in my library already. It's sure to be a crowd pleaser. 

#tbt: Yellow Star by Jennifer Roy

Image: Author's Website

Yellow Star by Jennifer Roy. 234 p. Marshall Cavendish, 2006. 9780761452775. (Own.)

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day. #tbt features Yellow Star by Jennifer Roy. This first-person verse novel tells the story of Syvia Perimutter, the author's aunt, who was four when she and her family were relocated to the Lodz Ghetto in Warsaw, Poland in 1939. She lived there until she was ten and the ghetto was liberated. Of the 270,000 people who were forced into the ghetto, only 800 survived and just 12 of those survivors were children. She and her siblings were hidden in cellars when the children were to be deported to concentration camps.

The author chose to tell her aunt's story in free verse as a work of historical fiction instead of a more distant informational voice. While it is fiction, every word is true. It's a short, but powerful book. Suspense is high and there will be tears. An extensive author's note in the back matter details the lives of the survivors in the post-war period.

Yellow Star was published in 2006. It was named a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor, a Sydney Taylor Honor, an ALA Notable Book, and an SLJ Best Book. It's audio version won a "Headphones Award." I read this one with my ears, but don't recommend listening while driving. I had to pull my car over to cry.

Teen Tuesday: Always by Morris Gleitzman

Image: Penguin Australia

Always by Morris Gleitzman. 302 p. Felix and Zelda #7. Viking/ Penguin Australia, November, 2021. 9780143793243. (Review of purchased, finished paperback copy.)

Teen Tuesday features Always by Morris Gleitzman. Felix Salinger's story comes to an end in this seventh book of a very powerful series. Readers may be a bit confused at first, because this is a dual-narrative. All the others have been narrated by Felix. Wassim begins the book with his search for Felix Salinger. He lives in an unnamed eastern European country with his Uncle Otto since the deaths of his parents, but their existence is threatened by a neo-Nazi gang called the Weasels. Wassim, who is mixed race is often their target. Wassim's grandfather knew Felix from their work in the Resistance

Felix has retired from his surgical practice and after bidding his granddaughter, Zelda good bye at the airport, wonders how he will fill his days and avoid loneliness. When Wassim shows up on his doorstep with a note written by Wassim's grandfather over seventy years earlier, Felix knows he needs to offer Wassim "good protection." But how can an elderly man protect a young child in the face of unbridled hate?

Always is best read by those who have read the entire series. As in the earlier books, each chapter starts with the title word, in this case, "always." Knowing that this was my last visit with Felix, I had decided to read the book slowly. I soon realized that I had to frequently put it down due to the peril Felix and Wassim were in. The world doesn't seem to have changed much since the 1930s and 40s. It takes a lot of courage to stand up to hate- courage and hope for a better world.

This was a beautiful and perfect ending.

Middle Grade Monday and Audiobook Review: Daughter of the Deep by Rick Riordan

Image: Disney

Daughter of the Deep by Rick Riordan. Unabridged e-audiobook, ~11 hours. Read by Soneela Nankani. Disney Hyperion, October, 2021. 9781368078511. (Review of e-audiobook borrowed from the public library.)

Happy Monday! I hope you enjoyed your weekend. Son #3 came to visit for the weekend, so I got to cook and bake and feed him up, and also had leftovers to send him back to the city with. Unfortunately, the shower faucet decided to break while he showered and the water wouldn't turn off! I grabbed a screwdriver and tried to turn the little screw that holds the handle on, but that didn't work. I left a message on my plumber's machine and looked up how to turn the water off to the house. Found the spot and turned the water off. The good n news is, the shower isn't running. The bad news is, nothing is. I can't tell you how many times I went to turn water on! Yikes. The luxury of running water! Hopefully, the plumber will call me back this morning. 

In other news, the Youth Media Awards are being announced later today. My reading took a hit this year, so I have no real handle on many of the books receiving buzz. I also continue to have mixed feelings about the awards in general. And yet, I will tune in with my class at nine.

Middle Grade Monday features Daughter of the Deep by Rick Riordan. What if Jules Vernes' sci/fi classics, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and The Mysterious Island weren't works of fiction, but based on real events? That's the premise for Uncle Rick's latest adventure. It feels like a series starter, but there's talk online that it's a stand-alone. Regardless, it was optioned for a movie before it was even published!

Ana Dakar attends an elite five-year high school called the Harding-Pembroke Academy, where students are trained extensively in all things maritime and graduate to become marine biologists and naval officers. She and her classmates are on their way out to sea to take a test that will determine their course of studies, when their seaside school is attacked by submarines and destroyed. Presumably, everyone on campus, including Ana's adored older brother are dead. The students' chaperone informs them that the culprit is most likely their rival school, the Land Academy. They change course and head to a secret island which was the place where Ana's parents were killed on a secret mission some years earlier.

As with any Rick Riordan book, the cast of characters is huge and diverse; the world-building is unique and the action is fast. He just might inspire a new generation of children to dust off Jules Verne as well!

I went into this book only knowing that it was a new RR book. I didn't know about the Jules Verne connection, so that was a reveal as I listened. I also didn't realize that it was narrated by one of my least favorite narrators. I just find her voice annoying and whiney and her performances a bit too over-the-top, so I probably should've read this one with my eyes. I'm guessing it must be me, because her audiobooks are consistently praised. Decide for yourself. 

This audiobook also contained sound effects and mood music which also drove me bonkers. I don't need music to cue me into feeling suspense, thank you very much. I found them distracting and irritating. 

Fact Friday: Vanishing: the World's Most Vulnerable Animals by Joel Sartore

Image: Author's Website

Vanishing: the World's Most Vulnerable Animals by Joel Sartore. 400 p. National Geographic, September, 2019. 9781426220596. (Review of purchased copy.)

Happy Friday! Fact Friday features Vanishing: the World's Most Vulnerable Animals by Joel Sartore. National Geographic photographers are among the best in the world, capturing stunning images of both humans and animals in all sorts of situations, from grave danger to unbridled joy. Vanishing is part of the Photo Ark series and focuses on animals that photographer Sartore feels will most likely disappear in the next ten years, as well as a few animals that are already extinct. This hefty coffe-table book weighs in at 400 pages and contains 375 full-color, often full-page photos. The thought that any of these animals might someday be gone forever is heartbreaking. 

#tbt: Cinder by Marissa Meyer

Image: Macmillan Publishers

Cinder by Marissa Meyer. Lunar Chronicles Volume 1. 400 p. Feiwel + Friends/ Macmillan Publishers, January, 2012. 9780312641894. (Own.)

Happy Thursday TMS Readers! #tbt features Cinder by Marissa Meyer. As I wrote up my review of Gilded for this week's Teen Tuesday post, I happened to look up Cinder to check to see if I was remembering correctly that it was Ms. Meyer's debut. I saw that it was, and has been out for ten years ago this month. Easy to plan #tbt this week!

Cinder is the best mechanic in New Beijing, hands down, but she's also a cyborg and they are shunned and discriminated against. No one treats her worse than her own stepmother and one of her two stepsisters. She's flustered when Prince Kai brings his broken droid into her stall for repair. He's under pressure to marry Levana, queen of the Moon as his father negotiates with her for a cure to Letimosis, a dreaded plague. Kai and Nainsi have been searching for the Moon's lost heir, Princess Selene when Nainsi malfunctioned.

This sci-fi, Cinderella mash-up is quite enjoyable. It's fast-paced, there's quite a lot of intrigue and a little bit of romance in a vividly created world. It ends on a cliff-hanger, but luckily, readers can move right on to the second installment, Scarlet, without waiting. Happy reading!