Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate, 2007

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Kek comes from Africa. In America he sees snow for the first time, and feels its sting. He's never walked on ice, and he falls. He wonders if the people in this new place will be like the winter – cold and unkind.
In Africa, Kek lived with his mother, father, and brother. But only he and his mother have survived, and now she's missing. Kek is on his own. Slowly, he makes friends: a girl who is in foster care; an old woman who owns a rundown farm, and a cow whose name means "family" in Kek's native language. As Kek awaits word of his mother's fate, he weathers the tough Minnesota winter by finding warmth in his new friendships, strength in his memories, and belief in his new country.

(256 pages)

As a 21-century American kid, I am incredibly spoiled.

And I know that. I recognize it, and sometimes feel bad about it. I live in a wealthy country, in a (relatively) wealthy family, in a lifestyle that caters to my physical and emotional comfort. I get hung up sometimes on things like bad teachers or college decisions, and this book is a well-needed reminder to me that I really have nothing at all worth complaining about. I really am a "poor little rich girl."

Now that's off my chest, I suppose I should turn to the book itself. I haven't read many books told entirely through verse, but the poetic format really works here to get the story across in Kek's very distinctive voice. It's clear that he's really feeling the disconnect between his own lyrical language and the foreign and - to his ears - harsh sound of English. By turning the narration (which by necessity is written in English) into poetry, Applegate captures the rhythm and beauty of Kek's language. Or at least, I assume she does; I don't actually know anything about African languages.

I can't really critique the story itself, because it feels like it's real. I know that there really are people who are just like the various characters in the novel, and that makes it so much richer; Home of the Brave truly is as much a lesson in empathy as it is an entertaining read. I'm so very glad I did read Home of the Brave, and gained a sense of perspective on both my life and the life of African immigrants, and I look forward to reading it again in the future. I highly recommend you read it as well!

The Girl Who Could Fly by Victoria Forester, 2008

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You just can't keep a good girl down . . . unless you use the proper methods.
Piper McCloud can fly. Just like that. Easy as pie.

Sure, she hasn't mastered reverse propulsion and her turns are kind of sloppy, but she's real good at loop-the-loops.
Problem is, the good folk of Lowland County are afraid of Piper. And her ma's at her wit's end. So it seems only fitting that she leave her parents' farm to attend a top-secret, maximum-security school for kids with exceptional abilities.
School is great at first with a bunch of new friends whose skills range from super-strength to super-genius. (Plus all the homemade apple pie she can eat!) But Piper is special, even among the special. And there are consequences.
Consequences too dire to talk about. Too crazy to consider. And too dangerous to ignore.

(328 pages)

A few weeks ago, I saw in my Goodreads monthly releases e-mail that Victoria Forester has finally written a sequel to The Girl Who Could Fly, and that it's coming out late October. To say I'm excited about The Boy Who Knew Everything is an understatement - I've been waiting for this book since 2008. During the painful wait between now and October, I decided to review my long-time favorite The Girl Who Could Fly, thereby simultaneously spreading the word about a great MG book and having a valid excuse for re-reading an old favorite (instead of tackling my massive TBR pile, which I really need to start working on - I've never returned so many unread books to the library!).

What is it about The Girl Who Could Fly that has made me love it so much? For starters, there are the characters. I knew from the beginning that I couldn't help but love Piper McCloud, the homeschooled girl with a penchant for floating and a desperate desire for friendship. Back in 2008, having only been homeschooled for a few years, I could relate just a little too closely to Piper as she sat on a hidden perch and watched all of the kids her age stream off to school where they got to goof around and make friends. My situation wasn't quite as extreme as hers (my parents weren't actively separating me from my peers, and actually tried very hard to find friends for me), but that core loneliness struck a chord in me. Plus, I just plumb loved her bubbly determination to make the world a better place, even in the beginning she was a little too ditzy to actually figure things out. I also loved the kids at the school, but I can't talk about them much for fear of spoilers. Needless to say I became deeply attached to each and every one of them, and revisiting The Girl Who Could Fly is like revisiting old friends.

I also love the idea of the story. Who could resist a book about kids with special abilities, brought to a special academy for kids with abilities? It's like Camp Half Blood or the X-Men academy, but with a dark twist. A pretty disturbing twist. A twist that is actually way creepier now than I remember it being the first time around. I think maybe I just blanked out on some of it the first time. Because what some of the characters, both big and small, went through was just plain evil. And heartbreaking. And in the end, the anger and sorrow I feel about what has happened is amplified as I struggle with which it is that certain people deserve: the anger, or the sympathy. It's a deep book, much deeper than the flighty cover and the exciting synopsis make it out to be.

What I love about The Girl Who Could Fly, though, is that it's a deep book and a shallow book, all in one. It's got small-town rivalries and mean gossips and the push and pull of life in boarding school (not to mention the insanely cool talents all of the main characters have!), but then it's also got things that make you cringe and cry out and just plain cry. Every time I've read The Girl Who Could Fly, I've found new things to draw from it - this time, it got me mulling over the things that make people unique, and the fact that no one has the right to command others to change. When I was younger, the scene that struck me the most strongly was the one with the giraffe - which I won't spoil - and I came away with the idea that it takes only a little bit of kindness to light up someone's world.

So go. Read this book, and discover the wonderful world of Piper McCloud - I promise you won't be disappointed. And now you won't even have to wait five years to read the sequel!

School For Sidekicks by Kelly McCullough, 2015

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Evan Quick is a GIANT superhero geek who dreams of one day becoming a superhero himself. Every morning he checks to see if he's developed his powers overnight, and every day there's nothing. No flying, no super strength, no invulnerability—that always hurts to check—no telepathy, no magic. Not even the ability to turn off the alarm clock without smacking the switch.

But then Evan somehow manages to survive a supervillian's death ray, and is sent to the Academy for Metahuman Operatives. Unfortunately, his new school is not what he expected, and instead of fighting bad guys, Evan finds himself blacklisted, and on the wrong side of the school's director. If Evan ever wants to realize his dream, he must convince his "mentor" Foxman, a semi-retired has-been, to become a real hero once again.

(336 pages; Release date August 4, 2015)

All right, I'm starting on the deep end with this one: School for Sidekicks was just a little too, well, politically correct for my tastes. Evan's father had two mothers, one of the students at the school is a gender-neutral shapeshifter, a girl tries to kiss another girl - each of these were completely unnecessary to the plot, and really only served to send the not-so-subtle message of "Look at me, I'm a liberal author!" I can understand having things like that in a book when they're central to the plot or are in a book directed at the gay community, but in this case McCullough went out of his way to add them to a kid's book that totally didn't need them at all. And I'm really sad that he did that, because it totally hurt my enjoyment of the book.

Political correctness (which, I am perfectly aware, won't even bother a lot of readers) aside, School for Sidekicks is still just a little too . . . much. This is apparently McCullough's first children's book, and it's pretty obvious that he's not used to toning his material down the way you have to for MG. Besides Foxman (who, as I said, is a recovering drunkard), there are a few points where the violence becomes a bit too graphic for me. At one point, somebody literally dies a few times but is basically rebooted each time. The deaths aren't described extremely vividly, but they're still deaths and they're not exactly peaceful deaths. At another point, a professor teaches his students a class on killing bad guys with common objects they might have at hand. He goes in-depth into describing what organs you can hit when you stab which spots at which angles, and I honestly had to skip over a paragraph or two because it was getting a little too much for me. Sure, I'm a wimp, but that's not exactly the sort of thing middle-school kids should be reading about, either. There's also some pretty bad language scattered throughout, including the "D" word and the "B" word (the one for "illegitimate child").

Now let's talk about the good aspects to the book. McCullough did a good job inserting as many twists as he possibly could into the dry formula, and I really enjoyed a lot of the aspects of his take on the superhero universe. Foxman, Evan's superhero mentor and a recovering alcoholic, was my personal favorite character because he was so different from all of the other usual superhero tropes. Plus, he was hilarious! I wish I could have someone like him to talk to when I'm down. The big reveal at the end was pretty mind-blowing, too, and really makes you rethink everything. It also sets up for some very interesting sequels. I really loved Evan as well, because I could see myself in him. As a massive Harry Potter/Doctor Who fangirl, I can totally relate with his obsession with superheroes - I just wish I was lucky enough to attend Hogwarts and meet all the characters in Harry Potter, the way he attended the "School for Sidekicks" and met all his favorite heroes. Even if some of them did turn out to be total losers!

Honestly, though, I feel like the bad-to-good ratio on this one is just too high. I won't be recommending it to anyone, and I doubt I'll be reading the sequel. If the bad points I've mentioned don't turn you off, though, then you could still give it a try. I know that without them, I would definitely have really enjoyed School for Sidekicks.

Disclaimer: I received an ARC of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.