I love middle grade reads, so this is my longest list this year. In no particular order, here are the books to which I gave a five-star rating in 2020.This is a book for keeps.More often than not, in India, books that address homosexuality are categorised as young adult or adult books, but with this book more than any others before, I disagree. To Night Owl from Dogfish is clearly a middle grade book. The characters, the themes, the tone - everything, for me, is middle grade. Avery and Bett learn that their dads are going to get married, and they start exchanging emails, laying plans to ensure that they don't get to know each other. They don't want two families to become one, thank you very much. They don't want to become sisters.Their fathers want to send them to summer camp together. They want to refuse to go and when that fails, they determine not to talk to each other. … [Read more...]
The Good Thieves
I've said it before and I'll say it again - you cannot go wrong with Katherine Rundell. The Girl Savage, Rooftoppers, The Wolf Wilder, The Explorer, and now, The Good Thieves. I've loved all of them. I love the poetry in the storytelling, the feisty characters and the power of relationships. Katherine Rundell's work just sucks me in each time and holds me in the story until I've read the last sentence.A rich conman Sorrotore has swindled Vita's grandfather out of his home, an old castle that is falling apart. Sorrotore insists that he bought the castle cheap - he paid 200 dollars for it, and her grandfather's account reflects the payment. Yet, he never sold it. He would never sell something so precious to him, and however pressed he was, he would never sell it for a paltry two hundred dollars.However, lawyers are expensive and the family cannot afford to fight a long legal battle, … [Read more...]
The Explorer
With some writers, I feel I just cannot go wrong. Katherine Rundell is one of them. Sure, I like some books more than others, but at the end of each one, I find myself smiling, deeply contented. I didn't write about the first two books I read by Rundell (The Girl Savage and Rooftoppers), but I did review The Wolf Wilder, which was one of the top ten middle-grade books I read in 2018.The Explorer began slowly, just like The Wolf Wilder. I took a while to get into the story and feel for the characters - I even read another book in between. Yet, when I came back to The Explorer, I stayed, sucked into the secrets of the jungle.A six-seater plane crashes into the Amazon rainforest. The pilot dies, leaving four children who barely know one another. There's Lila, who is fiercely protective of her five-year-old brother Max. Then there's Con, who seems … [Read more...]