Simon Kids | Daddy Mojo

Stories to Keep You Alive Despite Vampires, year-round treat reading

Scary is relative. Sometimes the things that fourth through sixth-grade ages find scary, actually start out funny. Other times those stories are icky, disgusting, or mildly disturbing, but they’re never graphic and usually fun. Stories to Keep you Alive Despite Vampires is kid scary in the best of all possible ways. Ages eight and up know Lemony Snicket, while their compatriots who are a year older are reading it. Despite Vampires is cut from a similar cloth, with a couple more influences that’ll make the book demo just a bit older.

Stories to Keep you Alive Despite Vampires is an anthology collection of spooky, scary, heartfelt, tongue-in-cheek stories for ages eight and up.

Age-appropriate scary stories know no best month to be read

Trubble Town 2, The Why-Why’s Gone Bye-Bye, too 4 tout

Disparate is an adjective that I absolutely love. I’m currently teaching 8^th grade ELA and I used that term in conversation when comparing things that have nothing to very little in common, and then trying to make a compelling argument as to why they belong in the same classification. A cursory glance at the pages of Trubble Town 2, The Why-Why’s Gone Bye-Bye would yield the same conversation. That is if I were to tell you that this graphic novel is flat-out hilarious, weird, creative and constantly gives readers a smile, even when they don’t know what’s going on. It is.

Trubble Town 2: The Why-Why’s Gone Bye-Bye is a time-shifting, absurdly hilarious all age graphic novel that ages eight and up will celebrate.

Stop, elaborate and listen

Once Upon Another Time: Tall Tales, fast paced, quick mglit turns

What if The Princess Bride and Back to the Future Part II had a baby? Hear me out. The former has familiar fairy tale characters but is completely its own entity. The latter is in a trilogy of films that build upon its created world and ends on a cliffhanger. Once Upon Another Time: Tall Tales is the second in this series of mglit books by New York Times bestselling author James Riley. It’s a book that combines elements of those two things in middle-grade fiction that zip and zags with speed, humor, and aplomb.

Once Upon Another Time: Tall Tales takes Lena and Jin further down the rabbit hole as the Golden King plots Earth-ending revenge.

Upending fairy tales and making them cool for MGLit readers

Spy School Project X, marks the spot on go-to, mglit

Mglit is an abbreviation for middle-grade fiction. However, there are many instances where an mglit book can also be perfect for upper-elementary school readers. It’s kind of like the colloquial definition of art, it varies and can depend on who is viewing it. By any definition, Spy School is one of the go-to, must-read book series for the aforementioned groups. Spy School Project X is the tenth book in that series and, while it does show signs of maturity, it doesn’t show signs of decreasing quality or tired characters.

Spy School Project X is the tenth book in this fabulous mglit series, yet is as spry, fast and fun as it started. They are go-to books for ages eight and up.

To change, evolve and still maintain excellence-this does that

Charlie Thorne and the Curse of Cleopatra, mglit as great as it gets

Soooooo good. We’ll just cut to the chase on Charlie Thorne and the Curse of Cleopatra and say that this book all but reads itself due to it being so entertaining. It’s one of those middle school books that upper elementary kids can read, and that their parents will borrow from them-and find it just as entertaining. Curse of Cleopatra, much like the first book in the Charlie Thorne series, is so much fun to read that you’ll wish that you hadn’t read it so that you can read it again the first time. So what is this book that had me and our 12 YO raving about?

Charlie Thorne and the Curse of the Cleopatra is the third entry in this consistently enthralling series for grades four and up (way up)

This series.

Lizzy and the Cloud, an illustrated allegory and a great goodnight read

Allegorical illustrated books can be about many things or they can be about nothing at all. Maybe they reference amorphous feelings, or perhaps it’s just about a kid who’s having an off day. The tricky part in quantifying these books is that sometimes your interpretation of the book will differ from mine, but that’s OK because we’re both correct. Lizzy and the Cloud is an illustrated book of a Rorschach test that leads to an M. C. Escher painting that you’re looking at through dreamy, haze-colored glasses. And by that I mean, readers might come away from the book with different interpretations of what Lizzy and her cloud actually mean, but they’ll all be on the same page when it comes to singing the book’s praises.

Lizzy and the Cloud is a great good night book, with illustrations that speak beyond its text and a story ages 4 and up will smile at.

A great-goodnight book that can be read once or multiple times in a sitting

Lia Park and the Missing Jewel, rippingly shreds the opening to this series

Librarians realize when book trends jump the shark. Too many books are made that are too similar, that are too closely related in too short of a time period. Sometimes that window is mercifully short, other times it wears out its welcome. Books on teen vampires, diversity and post-apocalyptic thrillers with a plucky cast of upstarts come to mind as recent trends that flooded libraries with too much of that content. There are times though when a publishing void is filled with just the right amount of books that previously weren’t represented enough. This can be a tricky thing because savvy young readers know when requisite categories are simply being checked off or were ordered en masse because publishers wanted a book that had this or that. Lia Park and the Missing Jewel is not a book that fits into any of those categories. I have to state it like that because one might put the book in league with others if they simply gloss over its plot.

Lia Park and the Missing Jewel is the first book in a new series that combines familiar elements, but adds a great heel, real tension and more for a great act.

if you’re looking for a ground floor entry into a great series-this is your sign

Once Upon Another Time, escapist mglit that’s a fun, summer, anytime read

I have a thing against film biographies because I already know how they end. Once Upon Another Time feels like a biography because readers will feel like they know the characters, and certainly will recognize the setting where it all happens. There are giants. There’s a magic beanstalk that the giants have used to go down to where the humans live. However, there is also magic, invisible beings, faceless knights, and kings, both good and bad. The result is an mglit book that lives in the world of James Riley’s, The Half Upon a Time series, but is an entirely new, three-book offering that’ll please those readers aged nine and up.

Once Upon Another Time is great, escapist fun that’s set in the world James Riley created in Half Upon a Time and perfect for ages 9 and up.

This is great, go-to stuff for ages 9 and up