Month: July 2019

Book Review: Recruit

~ Beth Mitchell ~ 14 Comments

31618483._SX318_If you’re looking for an action-packed summer read, check out Chris Bradford’s Bodyguard books. Larrabee discovered the first one, Recruit, on the first day of summer vacation and has since binge-read the whole series.

In the first book, 14-year-old British kickboxing champion, Connor Reeves, is recruited into a top-secret squad of teen bodyguards trained to protect young celebrities. After some intense training, he travels to Washington, DC for his first mission: to guard the President’s high-spirited daughter.

Kids who like the Alex Rider series will like this one too. Both series are fast-paced and have a similar mix of action and suspense. Like the Alex Rider series, the Bodyguard books contain some violence and so are appropriate for older (grades 5+) readers.

You should be warned that the publisher has republished each of the original four books in two parts, so you’ll need to get the books two at a time. (Larrabee and I learned this the hard way.) Recruit ends with a major cliffhanger, and the rest of the story is in the second book, Hostage.

One of the coolest things about these books are all the fascinating details about the way bodyguards assess threats and counter dangers to their principal. After reading them, you’ll find yourself walking around in Code Yellow.

 

 

Book Review: Rocket to the Moon!

~ Beth Mitchell ~ Leave a comment

Screen Shot 2019-07-18 at 2.55.39 PMTomorrow is the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. If your kids are intrigued, check out Rocket to the Moon! by Don Brown, a history of rockets in graphic novel format. Starting with the first Chinese firecrackers, Brown traces the innovations and discoveries that led to the manned missions to the moon.

This book is full of interesting information. Larrabee read it in a day and quoted facts from it to me for weeks afterward. My personal favorite tidbit is that three early rocket scientists from three different countries were all inspired by the same novel: Jules Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon. Hooray for science fiction!

Rocket to the Moon! is the first book in Brown’s Big Ideas That Changed the World series. I’m looking forward to the next one.

 

Book Review: Changeling

~ Beth Mitchell ~ 2 Comments

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Tinn and Cole Burton, the main characters of William Ritter’s Changeling, are twins. They look identical in every respect, and they get into all the same mischief. But only one of them is a human boy. The other is a goblin changeling. And neither knows which one he is.

Then, just before their 13th birthday, the twins find a note in their favorite climbing tree. The note instructs the changeling to return alone to the goblin horde the next day or else magic in the Wild Wood will die, the horde will die, and he will die.

Tinn and Cole are not entirely sure the note is real, but they can’t take the chance that one of them might die if they do nothing. So they decide to follow the map enclosed with the note into the Wild Wood and across the swamp known as the Oddmire to find out who they really are. Along the way, they meet strange creatures and face many dangers.

Changeling is a fast-paced fantasy adventure. It has a fairy tale-like feel that reminded me of The Girl Who Drank the Moon. My favorite thing about the book was how Tinn and Cole wrestle with the uncertainty about which one of them is a goblin and what that will mean for the other one and for their relationship.

This book is the first in a new series (The Oddmire). Some series openers have frustrating cliffhanger endings, but I’m pleased to report that this book does not fall into that trap. It provides a couple of tantalizing clues about the next book, of course, but it resolves the main story questions raised in this one in a satisfying way.

Thank you to Algonquin Young Readers and NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read an advance copy of this book. Its expected publication date is July 16.