Val Muller

This review contains minor spoilers. I heard much praise about this book before I decided to read it, and I think all the praise I heard built it up in my mind, which left me slightly disappointed. The book follows a (sort of) magical circus that travels the world and opens only at night. The […]

Advertised as “featuring 1,046 must-know vocabulary words,” this supernatural mystery is published by Kaplan and marketed to students wanting to build vocabulary for the SAT. That said, the primary goal of this story is learning words rather than the plot itself. The story follows a high-school junior, Will Lassiter, who lives next door to a […]

I received an advance review copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion. This is a short (PDF at 65 pages) read that opens with a prolog: Jasyra being confronted by the Demon King, who breaks all protocol by breaking the Dragon Fyre Sword and scattering it in many pieces across the world. […]

I read about this book in one of my local newspapers. It was written by an author who lives in a town nearby, so I wanted to check it out. She decided to create this picture book when a pair of ravens decided to nest in a water tower near the balcony of her home. […]

Confessions of an Imperfect Caregiver by Bobbi Carducci Anyone who has ever been a caregiver can relate to this book. Though nonfiction, it’s told in the first-person point of view in a narrative style that reads almost like a novel as it chronicles the struggles of author Bobbi Carducci as she spent years caring for […]

This middle-grade book comes with a warning at the beginning that it is somewhat graphic. And it is. As the title suggests, this is a “how to” book told in the first person by Mick Bogerman. He and his brother Finley end up in a zombie cave and have to learn how to kill zombies […]

Last summer, I read and reviewed Poison Study, the first book in this trilogy. When I attended the Pennwriters Conference this spring, I was delighted to see that Maria V. Snyder, the author, was a presenter. I purchased the third book in the trilogy (the second was not for sale at the conference), had it […]

All the great things I heard about this book were true. It earns a top rating from me. The Scorpio Races takes place on an isolated, stormy island. Every November, the Scorpio races are held. These are deadly races in which the capaill uisce, water horses based on Irish/Scottish mythology, race for both speed and […]

I picked up this book at a used book store and couldn’t resist. It’s a middle-grade mystery involving Shakespeare and 500-year-old British history. Some of it is factual. Other details were fabricated based on historical reality in order to construct the mystery. The book follows a sixth grader named hero. Like her sister Beatrice, Hero […]

Last month, I attended the Shenandoah University Children’s Literature Conference, and I got to hear Blue Balliett speak about writing middle-grade mysteries. Of course, I had to purchase two of her books and get them autographed. This stand-alone book is the first I chose to read. The Danger Box follows the adventures of a boy […]