book review
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On my blog, I recently have been reviewing fiction books that are enjoyable for middle school through high school. I venture into books for younger and older groups when I review classics and even nonfiction, but I haven’t spent much time reviewing books for the youngest children. I have been wanting to write this post
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The Treasure of the City of Ladies is medieval classic about virtue, being a woman, and living a Christian life.
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The Door in the Wall is an amazing little novel with a main character who is disabled that has all the elements I want in a book, both for my children and myself. It is rightful a Newberry winner.
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Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis was truly the most horrific and deeply moving book I have read in a good way. It was C.S. Lewis’s last novel and far darker than any of them.
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Many Christian novels focus on a non-Christian believing on Christ. Pilgrim’s Progress does this at the beginning, but the vast majority of the novel is about how to stay on the Christian walk your entire life. I
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The Mermaid’s Apprentice is a young adult novel that follows Mabel Sinclair as she tries to rescue her brother and follows Antonio Cortez as he tries to finish his required time in the navy before opening his tailor shop. It is a fun story about mermaids and pirates that is part of Palmer’s world of…
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The Tale of Despereaux has been around awhile, I have been wanting to read it for years. It is a children’s novel and appropriate for the young chapter book readers, but the plot appealed to me even as an adult. I also have to admit that the gorgeous illustrations drew me in as well.
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When my dad bought me a hardback version of this novel and had it signed by Brandon Sanderson at a Comic Con, I squealed like a little girl. The hardback edition of this novel is gorgeous! I love the color illustrations, the beautiful flourishes, the font, and the lovely bed sheets.
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The Walking Drum is a historical novel that is very different from the westerns that made Louis L’Amour famous. The book is a stand-alone only because Louis L’Amour never write the sequel he hinted at at the end of the book. Even so, it does have an ending and I found the book very enjoyable.
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Darts is a small book for those who love traditional fantasy tropes in a fun new setting. The setting I am talking about for this book is a bar game of darts (hence the name).
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Reuben the Rooster is an engaging and heartwarming children’s book that tells the tale of a courageous rooster who learns the value of standing up for his friends.
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The Last Unicorn is another one of those older fantasy fiction books that are considered classics. I have been intentionally reading through these greats of the genre to improve my own writing. This one really surprised me with the pureness and lack of many of the modern-day conventions.
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Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was written in 1865 by Lewis Carrol, who was a professor at Oxford. His interest in puzzles and word plays is very evident in the written versions of the books and is very difficult to translate well in a play or movie.
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The Island of the Blue Dolphins is a great award-winning novel for middle school and older readers. It is fantastic as a fictional classic, but also great as a discussion starter.
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A Wizard of Earth Sea is one of those novels that always comes up when people list their all-time favorite fantasy books. This was written at a time when people were not so concerned with breaking away from the tropes of the genre, and yet it still pushed boundaries in subtle ways.
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I highly recommend this novel to readers of middle school age and up. Younger readers would find the content emotionally difficult, though that definitely depends on the child. The Call of the Wild is well-written, descriptive, captivating, and intellectually challenging. It is a classic children’s novel for a good reason.
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This book review is of a slightly different kind of book that what I typically review. The “Can You Survive” or the “Choose Tour Own Path” books are a series of books based on classical novels that are appropriate for young readers. I am not a fan of abridged classics, but this is more like
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The Secret Garden by Francis Hodgson Burnett is a remarkable book that captures the process of grieving, even in children, in an optimistic and uplifting light. I have not seen a movie adaptation of this book that captures the depth of the very well.
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The Cricket in Times Square is a classic of children’s literature for good reason. It is a simple story about healthy friendships.
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Silver on the Tree is the last book in Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising Series. As with most of the books in this series, my review is mixed, but I still recommend it as a high-quality middle school and up book.
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“On Fairy Stories” is actually more of an essay about a genre of literature rather than a book about how to write. Even so, as a writer of young adult fantasy fiction, this essay is incredibly important for shaping my writing career.
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The Hobbit is a classic book for good reason. It was originally marketed for children, and it often still is, but this novel is great for any age. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is a sequel to The Hobbit and is more epic.
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Downfall by Caleb Ward is a Christian Science Fiction/Fantasy Fiction novel. I would recommend this book for adults with some background in the church and its theological debates.
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The Gray King by Susan Cooper is the fourth book in The Dark is Rising Sequence. There is only one more book after this that concludes the series.
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Greenwitch is the third book in The Dark is Rising Sequence. This novel brings back Simon, Jane, and Barney from Over Sea, Under Stone and also Will Stanton from The Dark is Rising. It returns to more of the feel of the first novel, which has less overtly magical elements and odd magic rules.
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The Dark is Rising is the second book in The Dark is Rising Series by Susan Cooper. It follows Over Sea Under Stone, but it has a very different feel and a different main character child who discovers his identity as an Old One.
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Over Sea, Under Stone by Susan Cooper is the first book in The Dark is Rising Series. Some times I review a whole series at a time, but these classic young adult fantasy fiction books have been around since the 1960s and are often recommended individually, especially the first two in the series.
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Pippi Longstocking is a classic children’s book written in 1944. There are two sequels that I haven’t read. The novel was originally written in Swedish, but I read an English translation.
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Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling is a thin book (compared to Kipling’s more famous Jungle Book or Kim) set off America’s coast.
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The Courage of Sarah Noble by Alice Dalgliesh is a Christain historical fiction chapter book for young readers. It shows up in many of the lists of books recommended by homeschoolers.
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This is a very beautiful book and extremely Christian. All the pagan elements from the cartoon I grew up with were not in the book at all. What made me love this book more than the animation was the deep relationships and the inner strength Heidi exhibits.
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The Paper Magician Series is a traditionally published young adult fantasy fiction trilogy, sort of. The Plastic Magician is part of the series and world, but not part of the trilogy.
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I have been trying to focus my book reviews on young adult fantasy fiction, but periodically, I also review books that help me on my journey in my writing career.
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“As the flames consigned to dust the last existent written prophecy about the Light Bringer on the planet of Corylus, a shadowy figure watched the words vanish with satisfaction …
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Sir Gibbie was written in 1879 by a Scottish minister named George MacDonald. George MacDonald was the favorite author of C.S. Lewis and has been well-known for both his theological writing as well as his fiction.
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Mercedes Lackey is a master writer with over 140 published novels, and the quality of her stories are reliable. This novel tells the story of a fourteen-year-old girl named Rune who is the illegitimate daughter of a tavern wench.
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As a small child, I watched a cartoon of Gulliver in Lilliput and had firmly formed the image, as so many people do, that this was a children’s book.
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How to Write Funny is a Writer’s Digest book that is a collection of essays and interviews like many of their other how-to books. In general, I liked the book and learned a lot, but I do have a few complaints.
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I don’t often write reviews with spoilers, but I can’t really explain why I like this book so much without talking about the ending. As with many of my reviews of classics, I find that I must review this book in comparison with the movie that I had seen first.
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Dragons at Crumbling Castle is a collection of short stories written by a seventeen-year-old Terry Pratchett when he worked as a junior reporter at a local British newspaper in the nineteen sixties.
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I really love this children’s story! Being a fan of classic fairy tales, The Princess and the Goblin fits that format perfectly.
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The Wonderful Wizard of OZ, as with so many books, is much better than the movie. I am honestly surprised how many of my reviews start this way.
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The Sea-Hawk follows Sir Oliver Tressilian right after he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth I for buccaneering.
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Pinocchio is an Italian children’s book that is well worth reading. I had never read this book until now and had only known it from the Walt Disney movie. As with most films, the book is much better. In this case, it is almost an entirely different story.
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Jane Austin is by far my favorite author, which is surprising since she isn’t my typical genre of book. It still can remember my emotions the first time I read Pride and Prejudice. I was completely captured.
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Astray by J.F. Rogers is a young adult Christian fantasy fiction book. The main character, Fallon, is an orphan who receives an amulet on her seventeenth birthday from a neglectful and abusive grandmother. The artifact leads her through a portal to a mythical realm in which she learns that her mother is still alive and…
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Heart Song is a well-written teen science fiction novel about space colonization. The protagonist is a thirteen-year-old orphan girl who is part of a space colonization program to build the first base on a planet outside our solar system.
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Why have I never heard of this book before! Seriously one of the best books I have EVER read, and I downloaded it on Kindle for free as a lark. This book was written in the 1920s and should be included on the lists of classics that everyone should read.
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All Things Now Living by Rondi Bauer Olson is a young adult science fiction novel. Amy is a sixteen-year-old girl whose father shoves her into the dome-locked world of New Lithisle with coding to stop the dome from collapsing.
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How Fiction Works apparently thinks of itself as the modern replacement for E.M Forester’s Aspects of the Novel and debates with that classic continually. Though this book has some good observations, it is quite a bit more academic.
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Aspects of the Novel by E.M. Forster is not a how-to-write book. It is a collection of lectures delivered in the 1920’s by Forster at King’s College in Cambridge. The point of the book is to discuss what makes a good fiction novel work.
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Steering the Craft: A Twenty-First-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story by Ursula K. Le Guin is a fantastic book, but don’t read it thinking it will teach you how to write a novel.
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I have read a few writing books, and I think this is one of the better books out there. It is optimistic and encouraging. Rather than telling you all the things you shouldn’t do when writing fiction, Jack Smith focuses on all the options of what you can do.
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This Christain urban fantasy/spiritual warfare novel was probably one of the most fun books I have read in a couple of years! Seriously, if I could give it a bonus star, I would. If you like Frank Peretti’s novels, you will love this one more.
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I had started reading George MacDonald’s writing because C.S. Lewis loved it so much and I love C.S. Lewis’ writing. When I sat down to read this book I expected it to be light and easy like The Princess and the Goblin. Boy, was I surprised!
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This children’s book was written by my husband, Dr. Kerry Lee Jr. and illustrated by me over 14 years ago when we were dating. I had submitted it to many publishers because I had always wanted to write and illustrate books, but it just would get lost in the slush piles.
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The Retail is a satire on modern American under-employment. Penn, the main character, gets a job at a home improvement store which all but destroys his life. It is so funny and yet I find it also disturbingly sad.
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I had kind of expected this book to be just another cutesy home decorating book which I tend to read one after another like some guilty obsession akin to chocoholics eating chocolate. It turns out this book ended up being more than what I had expected.
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I had been very excited about this book because I had hoped from the description of it that I could learn what good conversation past and present was like and therefore improve my own style of conversing.
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Forever Chic by Tish Jett is a well-written survey of French culture that highlights the strengths that brings so much admiration while dispelling myths such as “French women don’t go to the gym”.
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Orchids on your Budget was a lifestyle book first published in 1936. I found this book so fascinating for my quest to enjoy my life because it was about just that with similar conclusions that I have discovered.
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I read a biography of Abigail Adams by Phyllis Lee Levin this past month. This is probably one of the best biographies I have ever read (and I LOVE reading biographies!).
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The book I chose was by Justine Picardie. She was very thorough, and I enjoyed her book, but like a lot of modern British writers, she was a bit over dramatic and liberal with her opinions.
