Salt is a novel in verse set during a time when the Native Americans and the colonists are headed toward war. Despite tensions, two boys become friends. The Thing About Georgie is a contemporary story about a kid who has troubles at home (because there’s a new baby on the way) and troubles at school (because of friends & an upcoming school play). Oh, and Georgie is a boy with dwarfism. Where the Mountain Meets the Moon is a story full of stories, because Minli loves the tales her father tells, about the Old Man in the Moon and the Jade Dragon. A Chinese quest with lovely illustrations.

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The Adventures of a Girl Called Bicycle is a quirky story that sends Bicycle and a bike with personality on a cross-country road trip. She makes many friends along the way. Un Lun Dun is a fantasy that works very hard to contradict the usual tropes in fantasies with a “chosen one.” Lots of whimsy as Zanna navigates through a world populated by London’s lost and broken things. In Dreamwood, Lucy runs away from boarding school in order to find her father, who’s gone missing. This one’s kind of an alternate history, and the world-building is fascinating.

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Three Times Lucky is the first of the Mo & Dale Mysteries, set in the small town of Tupelo Landing. It’s smart and funny. I’m looking forward to picking up the rest of the series. The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street is a neighborhood story. The Vanderbeekers are a big family (five kids), who might lose their home because their grouchy landlord won’t renew their lease. Dragon Slippers reminded me a lot of Dealing with Dragons. Creel is sacrificed to a dragon in the hopes that she’ll be married off to the knight who rescues her. But she befriends the dragon instead.

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Enter the Core wraps up the Max Tilt trilogy. Still following in the footsteps of their ancestor Jules Verne, Max & Co. seek the truth behind Journey to the Center of the Earth. Action-packed adventure with literary tie-ins. Beastkeeper was an odd one. Things are changing and Sarah doesn’t like any of it. Her mother runs away, and her father is getting stranger (and scarier) by the day. When he shuffles her off to her grandmother’s house (a dilapidated tower in the middle of nowhere), it becomes increasingly clear that her family has never been normal. Indeed, they must be cursed. (It’s a contemporary/magical realism fairy tale that never really even tries to be happy.) And then there’s the classic The Voyage of the Frog. Fourteen-year-old David finds himself alone and adrift. A survival story at sea.

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George by Alex Gino, will soon be re-releasing as Melissa. Even if nobody else realizes it, George knows she’s a girl. Hiding it is hard. Speaking up is harder. But when she tries out for the part of Charlotte in their grade’s production of Charlotte’s Web, the grown-ups around her begin to take note. In Arlo Finch and the Valley of Fire, Arlo’s family moves back to his mom’s hometown, a tiny place up in the Colorado mountains where things are a little on the strange side. When he joins the Rangers, since all the kids in town do, he finds out that supernatural stuff is real … and full of risks. (Hoping to finish the trilogy this year. It’s really good.) And in Wildwood, Prue crosses a bridge and finds a whole world that’s hidden away in the woods.

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