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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In The Lighthouse Between Worlds, Griffin lives with his dad, who’s a lighthouse keeper on the Oregon coast. Homeschooled, he’s following in his father’s footsteps, learning to be a glassblower. They share the same quiet days and the same quiet grief, ever since Griffin’s mom died. But then an alarm shatters the quiet, and nothing can be the same again. Because the glass lens in the lighthouse is a portal, linking their world to several others. Cavern of Secrets is the second installment in the Wing & Claw trilogy. My review is spoiler-free: “Winter’s passed and Raffa is back. Little more can be said. It’s the middle book, so it does middle book things.” There you have it. And then there’s The Secret of Dreadwillow Carse. A princess who must preserve her people’s happiness and a girl who understands sadness team up to discover the secret of Dreadwillow Carse. This one has the feel of an allegory to it, and it wasn’t to my tastes. Too much of a downward spiral to the discoveries.

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In 80 Days or Die, close on the heels of Bk1, Max (and his cousin Alex) search for the ingredients of a medicine that could save the life of a friend. But in order to do so, they’ll have to recreate the journey that inspired their ancestor Jules Verne’s famous story, Around the World in Eighty Days. It’s not just a race against time. It’s a race against rivals. The 100-Year-Old Secret introduces Americans Xena and Xander Holmes, descendants of Sherlock Holmes, who tackle one of the great detective’s unsolved cases while visiting England. (I’d say it’s geared for lower middle grade readers.) And Snapdragon is a graphic novel about a girl who meets the town which, who can’t really be a witch. Probably.

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