In Will Sparrow’s Road, Will is a liar, a thief, and a runaway who only looks out for himself. But he’s beginning to understand that you can’t trust what a person promises any more than you should put stock in how a person looks. Oddities and rarities and misfits. Good and bad and belonging. The Cathedral of Fear is the fourth book in the series. A mystery that mostly takes place in war-torn Paris … and is riddled with references to streets and sites that would warm any historian’s heart. Interesting references to the famed French author Alexandre Dumas. More adventure than mystery here, since readers aren’t given many clues or enough context to solve the problem. And (alas!) English-speaking readers are left hanging by the final revelation, which hints at more, because these first four books are the only ones that have been translated from the original Italian. And Tiger kicks off a kung fu series. Five young kung fu masters are hidden away by their teacher when their temple is overrun and its one hundred fighting monks slaughtered. They must stop the one who planned this massacre, someone who they considered a brother, one of their Grandmaster’s former pupils. This book takes place from the point of view of Fu, whose name means tiger and who uses tiger-style fighting.

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The Tea Dragon Festival is the second in a series of graphic novels. In a remote village where tea dragons belong to the whole village, Rinn forages for roots and mushrooms … and wakes a dragon. Meanwhile, their uncle returns with a friend on a quest of his own. Scenic and adorable. Lost and Found is a middle grade title by one of my favorite authors. Ezekiel has a knack that’s only brought him trouble. He finds lost things. A useless “micropower.” But then a police officer shows up at his door and asks for help in finding a lost child. Suspenseful. And The Last Gargoyle is also by a favorite author! There aren’t many like them. Gargoyles (properly called grotesques) were created to serve as guardians of the people in their buildings. But something wants them gone, and “Goyle” is suddenly the last of his kind in the city.

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In the graphic novel NewsPrints, Blue is a newsboy in a city where the ongoing war against neighboring countries is in the headlines. Making ends meet is tough, so the chance to work part-time for a quirky inventor is a big deal. And then there’s Crow, a new and mysterious friend, and an old friend Hector, who’s a war correspondent on the trail of a big story. Sarah, Plain and Tall is a classic for good reason. When their father sends away for a wife, Anna and Caleb are looking forward to meeting their new mother. They trade letters until her arrival. But will Sarah like them enough to stay? In Missing May, Summer was an unwanted orphan until Uncle Ob and Aunt May take it into their heads to bring her home. It isn’t much, but it’s absolutely everything Summer craved. A loving home. But then Aunt May dies, and Uncle Ob doesn’t seem to know how to go on. Not unless he can get a word from May directly. So he and Summer and a quirky neighbor boy named Cletus set out to do just that.

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Estranged: The Changeling King is a return to familiar places, where the Changeling and the Childe are doing their best to fit into the worlds they are each learning to call home. But something’s amiss, and a new adventure blurs those boundaries. The Accused is the third book in the Theodore Boone, Kid Lawyer series. I really like how each book in the series builds upon those previous. And I can’t really tell you too much about Mighty Jack and Zita the Sapcegirl without spoiling either series. Suffice to say that world collide … in wonderful ways. I *adore* Hatke’s comics!

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Plain Kate was one of my favorites. Kate is a woodcarver of incredible skill. Circumstances conspire to force her into a deal with a witch. A fascinating fantasy in a setting reminiscent of Russia, with folk lore and gypsy caravans and needing to learn the roamer way. I will always read Sherlock Holmes books. This one’s kinda … so-so. In Death Cloud, an adolescent Holmes must endure his winter holidays with relatives, but drear days are interrupted by 1) the discovery of a body, 2) the friendship of a streetwise orphan/river rat, 3) the assigning of an American tutor who teaches Holmes to apply his keen mind to deductive reasoning, and 4) said mentor’s plucky daughter. Hatchet is a classic. Brian is on his way to spend the summer with his dad in Alaska when the little two-seater plane’s pilot has a heart attack and it goes down in the midst of the Canadian wilderness. With nothing more than a hatchet, the thirteen year old has to figure out how to survive. As an aside, Brian’s also dealing with his parents’ recent divorce.

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