MIDDLE GRADE
No Vacancy
Tziporah Cohen, Groundwood Books (SEP 1) Hardcover $16.95 (144pp), 978-1-77306-410-9
In Tziporah Cohen’s No Vacancy, an eleven-yearold leaves New York City after her parents buy a rundown motel upstate.
At the Jewel Motor Inn, in New York’s Finger Lakes region, Miriam shares a grimy room, painted a color “halfway between macaroni and cheese and rotting bananas,” with her toddler brother. She guesses it’ll be a long, lonely summer of babysitting, motel renovations, and chores, all far away from her friends.
Then Uncle Mordy comes to help, and Miriam makes friends with Maria, the motel housekeeper, and Kate, whose grandparents own the diner next door. Kate and Miriam hatch a scheme to bring customers to their families’ struggling businesses. Their plan works, though the subterfuge troubles Miriam, as do other turbulent events with her family members and new community.
Miriam is a delight, both sarcastic and complex. She works through tense scenes involving her swimming phobia and her mother’s unexplained antipathy toward Maria. Miriam also learns to be more comfortable with her own identity, but not before scarfing down untold numbers of grilled cheese sandwiches at the diner, bluffing that she doesn’t eat bacon because she’s vegetarian (false), not because she is Jewish (true).
Additional sensitive plot layers portray differences between types of Judaism, showing how people of different faiths, languages, ages, and backgrounds can have respectful and close relationships. Miriam’s complicated feelings toward a motel guest in a wheelchair results in thoughtful passages about the nature of disability, prejudging others, and being honest with yourself and those you love.
Descriptions of grape pies, lazy summer bike rides, and diner banter are redolent of smalltown life. No Vacancy has a moving, dramatic conclusion that leaves Miriam understanding more about life and herself and feeling more connected to her new community.
Frankie and the Gift of Fantasy
Ruthy Ballard, Whipsmart Books (OCT 1) Softcover $12.95 (260pp), 978-0-9978532-7-8
In Frankie and the Gift of Fantasy, a ten-year-old boy finds independence and purpose when he is transported from California to a distant planet.
Francesco, who goes by Frankie, is always being nagged to be productive instead of daydreaming. When a mysterious crack appears in his bedroom ceiling, he touches it and is transported to Urth, a strange, double-mooned planet. There, he meets an alien woman, Ideth, who serves as a mentor to children like Frankie who have the “gift of fantasy.”
Frankie renames himself “Soccer Fan,” following Urth’s tradition of choosing an anagram of one’s given name. With this symbolic step of taking control, Soccer Fan undertakes his quest to observe, learn, and grow. Along the way, he conquers his acrophobia and rescues a friend from danger.
Among the book’s thought-provoking topics and developments are investigations of the potential unfairness of criminal justice systems, and a subplot about a group of friendly aliens who can’t imagine their future; Frankie is frustrated by their inability to plan for a recurring danger. Kid-friendly scientific descriptions utilize words like “echolocation” and “syzygy.” In an interesting sidebar, the book shows the effects of Frankie’s months-long disappearance back on Earth, where his parents worry and an innocent man is accused of kidnapping him. The stress and pain of the situation is disconcerting, but amplifies the joy of Frankie returning home.
Amid descriptions of Frankie leaping over tree roots in a forest or traversing dangerous bluffs and fissures come detailed illustrations with additional visual context. Ideth and the other aliens are not depicted in these images; their appearances are left to the audience’s imagination.
Frankie and the Gift of Fantasy is a rousing science fiction adventure—truly edifying entertainment.
No Ordinary Thing
G. Z. Schmidt, Holiday House (OCT 13) Hardcover $17.99 (240pp), 978-0-8234-4422-9
A quiet orphan, a magic snow globe, and an evil factory owner feature into G. Z. Schmidt’s charming novel No Ordinary Thing.
Ever since twelve-year-old Adam’s parents disappeared on a trip, he has lived with his uncle above the Biscuit Basket Bakery, helping to make ends meet. Then Adam finds his parents’ old snow globe, which contains the secret of time travel. He begins to hope that he can save his parents. But Adam can’t control where the snow globe takes him, and he isn’t the only one who wants it.
The book’s story lines run throughout time and merge together well. Each of Adam’s adventures results in a fragment of his sense of the past, especially related to the mysterious cover-up of a tragic fire. He interacts with characters at different points in their lives—a reminder that, even as time passes, a person’s need for human connections and friendships remains, as do the dangers of hatred and greed.
The cast is diverse. It includes Adam’s hardworking Uncle Henry, the ominous M, and a plucky thief, Francine. These characters serve as representations of the perennial virtues and vices of human beings; each helps Adam learn that the best way to honor the past is to move on.
The novel is set in New York and contains clever historical allusions. Its villain, greedy Robert Tweed Barron, is an allusion to notorious robber barons and figures like Boss Tweed, who fed corruption into nineteenth-century New York. Such touches emphasize the dangers of unregulated corporations and the corruptive potential of wealth.
Resolving mysteries and featuring glimpses into its hero’s future, No Ordinary Thing is no ordinary time travel story; it contains timeless lessons on friendship, bravery, and letting go.
Lightning Mary
Anthea Simmons, Andersen Press (SEP 1) Softcover $9.99 (272pp), 978-1-78344-829-6
Lightning Mary is a rewarding novelization of how Mary Anning became one of the first people to discover dinosaurs.
In 1810, Mary, an eleven-year-old girl, made a world-changing discovery on a muddy English beach. Here, Mary bursts with life and personality: she isn’t interested in looking pretty or keeping her stockings clean, and storms don’t keep her from searching beaches for “curiosities and treasures,” like tiny shells and fossils that stir her fierce curiosity.
Solitary by nature, Mary draws the interest of a lonely local boy. Mary has never had a friend of her own, and watching sensitive, well-brought up Henry rub away some of Mary’s rough spots is one of the book’s pleasures. Meanwhile, her mother, who is overburdened with children, is everything that Mary is sure that she doesn’t want to be, while conversations between Mary and her father reflect their close relationship; he teaches her how to spot a possible treasure hidden in a dried clod of mud, and how to use a small silver hammer to tap the mud away without damage.
Full, imaginative writing opens up Mary’s world, which is too small to satisfy her thirst for knowledge. In her era, there’s no theory of evolution and scant awareness of Earth’s history. The idea that giant beasts once roamed the land is considered mere folklore. All that Mary wonders about, and the information that she craves, is locked away in the future. But Mary’s curiosity is not to be denied. Her discovery of a boulder-sized skull makes waves, both for Mary and in the world that she lives in.
Lightning Mary covers one year of Mary Anning’s life, and is an appealing introduction to her fascinating story.
The One Great Gnome
Jeff Dinardo, Jhon Ortiz (Illustrator), One Elm Books (SEP 1) Hardcover $12.99 (128pp) 978-1-947159-59-4
A lonely eleven-year-old discovers a secret underworld filled with gnomes and trolls in Jeff Dinardo’s quirky fantasy tale, The One Great Gnome.
The day after she and her parents move from New York City to rural Connecticut, Sarah finds a stone gnome in their potting shed. But it isn’t a statue. As she returns the miniature sword to his hilt, the gnome comes alive, telling her he’s been sent to the surface from the underground land of Oglinoth to search for a way to beat the trolls who have taken over the gnome kingdom.
Like Alice falling into Wonderland, Sarah follows the gnome, Vesper, through a tiny door and discovers a world beneath her feet. She promises to help Vesper save the gnomes, but the more she learns about Oglinoth, the more she realizes that the trolls may have a different motive.
Sarah’s friendly nature endears her to others right away. She empathizes with each gnome, troll, and human she comes across. Her joyful and curious disposition helps as her new, eccentric friends sweep her into their years-long conflict, in which she becomes an understanding intermediary. Vesper and the other gnomes, as well as the trolls, speak as if their rivalry exists because it always has, and it’s hard for them to hear anything different until they listen to Sarah’s outsider perspective.
Whimsical events become layered and humorous because of the story’s straightforward narration, including nonsensical actions and quaint traditions, and its quirky illustrations are a complementary feature. With tributes to imaginative children’s classics embedded in it, The One Great Gnome is an endlessly fun middle grade
adventure.