Wendy Mass

I am a synesthete. Different fibers, texture, and touch, as well as music, have color for me. My ability has varied at different points in my life, but I know that Mozart is filled with blues and yellows, and a caress can be purple or the color of midnight blue velvet against the grain. To read this story was wonderful.

Mia has a different type of synesthesia than I do. Her world is more vibrant as numbers and words take on color, texture, and hue. At the same time, she faces issues that show more confront most of us: the pain of grief, the despair of loss, the confusion of growing up, the recognition of being different.

Handled with sensitivity and compassion, Wendy Mass guides the reader through Mia's world, sharing information, intuition, and understanding.

A lovely story. show less

I've bought too many books recently...picture this: We're in Barnes & Noble at Norterra and G is looking at graphic novels. As she flips through one she's read before as a refresher for the sequel, I peruse the middle grade shelves. I spot a Garbage Pail Kids book by R. L. Stine (!!!), a book about a magic house, and a World War 2 book about kid spies, but then I pick up a book I've seen many times before. A book that did not draw me in with its cover despite the giant orange cat. Nor was I show more intrigued by the title featuring a library. It just didn't seem that interesting, but this time I picked it up and actually read the description.

A few things jumped out at me: a mystery, a little free library, a cat that guards the library, AND ghosts (including a ghost librarian!). I brought it home with me and I'm so glad I did.

I hope G will read The Lost Library. Evan and Rafe are 5th graders about to be middle schoolers and she's ALSO about to leave 5th grade behind so she might think they're too young for her (kids like to read up). But I'm hoping the cat saving mice will draw her in. This book is about so much more than just the mystery of the little library—it's also about grief and loss, forgiveness and overcoming. I loved it. show less

"He can make me go with him, but he can't make me interested." Addie packs up and spends a summer on a college campus where her futurist father is leading a team of students developing virtual and augmented reality projects. Despite Addie's initial reluctance, she becomes interested in VR as a way to escape and explore, and she even makes a friend in real life, Mateo. They share interests—geocaching, moon trees—before they finally share more personal stories, like what happened to show more Mateo's brother and Addie's mom. Ultimately, with the help of some students, Doug, Lily, and Surekha, they work together to develop VR experiences for people in the hospital where Mateo volunteers. At its heart, this is a story about empathy, whether it's a stranger with chemo or your own parent. Addie reflects, "I think it's harder to have empathy for the people we love the most. When they do something wrong it feels so personal." The layout is creative and dynamic, and the illustrations are full of relevant details. Mendez and Tse do excellent work with shadow and light, and the faint shimmer of VR. Panels set in the past have a gray outline with rounded corners, while VR panels have a half-round cutout along the middle of the bottom. Addie and her family present as white; there is diversity among the secondary characters. show less

A former classmate recommended this book and I was sucked in almost immediately. Do you expect to learn the meaning of life in a young adult / children's book? Oddly enough, you do pick up some of that meaning along the way.

Jeremy receives a box that is meant to be opened on his 13th birthday, from his long-dead father. The only problem is that the box has four locks and he doesn't have the keys. His summer is alternately devoted to his quest for the keys and an odd sort of community show more service that teaches him and his friend Lizzy something along the way.

Jeremy and Lizzy are best friends from birth -- and it is possible that their friendship could evolve from siblings -- and Jeremy is the good one. Lizzy is impetuous, a bit of a scamp who steals things that mostly have no value. Jeremy is more reluctant, not really willing to get out of his shell, or to even eat something beyond peanut butter and jelly. But he turns out to be the more thoughtful of the pair -- and finds throughout the course of his quest that there is both no answer and many answers to the meaning of life. I admit I started rethinking my own answer to the question. It was handled well, and I loved the slightly surprising twist at the end. show less