★★★★★ An extraordinarily beautiful survival story

Island of the Blue Dolphins

Scott O'Dell

I was five years old in 1961, when Scott O'Dell's Island of the Blue Dolphins in 1961, it won the Newbery Medal. Thus, I didn't read it until many years later. I still remember the impression it left on me -- like a jewel, perfect in its simplicity.

The only thing I can compare it to is Gary Paulsen's Hatchet, another survival story that left me with much the same feeling.

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★★★★☆ A spaceship makes tea and a detective looks for bodies

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★★★★★ Witches and pain magic

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★★★★★ Kaladin and Sylphrena dance

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★★★★★ Finding a home

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★★★★☆ Thursday Next goes recursive

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★★★☆☆ Simon is still droopy, but at least we learn things

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★★★★☆ An adult middle-grade children's novel

The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches Sangu Mandanna When I began The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches I thought it was a middle-grade novel. The cover is very middle-grade-ish. And three of the main characters, the young witches girls Altamira, Terracotta, and Rosetta, are middle- grade or young-teen girls. The tone is also very middle-grade. As Sangu Mandanna writes in her Acknowledgements When I started writing this book, we were eight months into the pandemic and all I wanted to work on was a warm, cozy, romantic story about magic and family. And that, indeed, is what she wrote. Mika, our heroine, is a lonely, emotionally scarred young woman who finds a home and a family. It is all very warm and cozy -- it feels like the perfect middle-grade novel. I was therefore a little surprised by this quote: Her eyes very round, seven-year-old Altamira said, with perfect gravity, “That was some excellent Mary Poppins shit right there.” That made me laugh ...

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