Joseph's 3-in-1 Superhero Odyssey Squared by Jospeh Lupton is an all-around fun read. Likely, if you are on book ten, then you have read the previous adventures involving this persistently heroic fella! This was my first time with him, and I must say that he...

An Instrument for Florenda by Tomeko Brown and Christopher Smallwood is about a young girl who wants to learn to play the clarinet after the school announces that they are introducing their first band after the summer vacation. The school hired a teacher who had...

Adventures in Nursing is an informative book. LaQuana Smith divides the material into three main parts. She begins by telling the story of how she chose to study nursing and the lessons she learned in the process. LaQuana also talks about how she planned her...

Did you know gnomes are magical? In fact, it is believed that “gnomes bring a touch of magic to any garden they live in.” So why would someone throw away a gnome garden ornament? Margaret lived alone and spent most of her time tending her...

Young people love the adventure of Halloween: dressing up in costumes, trick or treating, and, of course, all that candy. Alicia loves Halloween. She and her friends are planning to throw a virtual Halloween party, this one taking place in the virtual world they all...

Nick Cicero is an ordinary fifth grader when he finds out that he has a kidney disease that will change his life. After falling seriously ill, Nick learns that he was born with one kidney that didn’t work and now his other one is shutting...

Joseph J. Ridgway’s Ava’s Dream is a story about Ava’s journey in learning about the three branches of the government during her summer vacation. A new park had opened up in their town and Ava was more than excited to step through its large silver...

Charles Dickens’s classic story, A Christmas Carol, is as popular today as it has been for almost two centuries. There have been movie adaptations and numerous retellings of this story about greed and the true meaning of Christmas. Scrooge, visited by the three ghosts of...

Annalynn doesn’t expect to find her family sick in the living room, but that’s exactly what happens. When she tries to help out by giving them tissues, a strange thing occurs. Some strangers in red and blue force themselves into the house and steal their...

A Raptor Ate My Homework is the first book of The Backpack Dinosaur series by Julian Michael Carver. It is a short story suitable for middle schoolers. Andy and Anna Saunders are both fourth graders. While Anna is a math whiz, Andy’s head is full...