These are books that kids will want to read-or should read, but will enjoy doing so. Board book, picture books, kid lit, elementary school books, middle school books, high school books, all age comic books and more will be talked about here.
The story of Doug Underbelly starts out fast. Underbelly is the king of the mole people and it’s important to know that because he’s being called back to do the king’s work by the end of the first chapter. Granted, there is a two-page prologue that gives readers a very quick overview of the situation. Doug is just trying to be a typical seventh-grade student, but he’s also the King of the Mole People. Unfortunately for him, the later seems to always have the upper hand.
If I say classics reimagined it might bring about the worst case scenario in your mind. They’re going to remake The Princess Bride? Here we enter the sometimes interchangeable at worst or synonymous words at best. In common movie terms, I’d think of a movie being reimagined as sticking close to the source material, but contemporizing it for a new audience. Classics Reimagined: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a book from the same named series by Rockport Publishing.
A story is only as good as its heel. Toss in that the heel is also a bully and it can take on primal feelings of disdain, guilt and shame. Not only are they not a good person, they’re actively picking on other people. It’s on. The Tornado is by author Jake Burt. Its tagline is “Only a force of nature can stop this bully”. This is middle school reading that’s more fun to read than that tagline infers. Ultimately, it’s about friendship, making mistakes and owning up to them.
Jared Chapman has cornered the market in joyful toilet training books. That’s a narrow niche, but for those parents who are trying to get their child out of diapers and into underwear this is the most important segment of books that you can read. Mind you, Vegetables in Holiday Underwear is not a wonky toilet training book. Instead, it’s the third book in this series by Chapman to illustrate that has vegetables (and sometimes fruits) talking about underwear (or bathing suits), wanting to wear it and having an amazingly fun time doing it. If there’s a kid from 3-7 years old in your orbit this book will provide laughs aplenty, and just might solve their diaper issue.
Stuart Gibbs Level Up. The name of the book is Charlie Thorne and the Last Equation. However, when we were reading it that’s what we kept thinking of the book in our head. Stuart Gibbs, the author of Spy School book series that upper elementary and middle students love has really upped his game with Charlie Thorne. This is the series that fans of Spy School need if they want their action and story just a bit older than Ben Ripley. A side vision in my mind had Gibbs thinking to himself, “You want a book that has more action and will demo just slightly higher? Take that!” He’ll then drop the mic and challenge someone to a dance off in the street.
Is that real? Does it really exist? Those are the qualifiers for anything that our second grader is reading now. It’s the exact opposite of his brother who was more into madcap humor, science-fiction and Captain Underpants. Nay, his younger brother is mainly attracted to non-fiction. When he read Red Rover, Curiosity on Mars for the first time he peppered me with all sorts of questions about Mars, if people lived there, if water existed there and how the probe was getting its power.
The great thing about an all age book is that it can inspire those younger readers without dumbing down the content for older ones. If said content can motivate elementary or middle school readers to learn (see: read) more about the characters then it’s a massive win/win situation. It’s the breadcrumbs of gateway reading. The Big Book of Monsters by Hal Johnson with illustrations by Tim Sievert does just that. It highlights 25 classic monsters from movies, literature and folklore into a beautiful reference book for the curious.
What I liked most about the book is that it doesn’t feature the go-to monster MVPs. Sure, Dracula and Frankenstein are in there. However, even when they are featured the book treats them in the classic literary sense. It’s as if we’re being given the tour of their book through the eyes of a narrator who’s able to skim the utmost surface of these classics.
For example, the five-page vignette on Dracula takes a broad, but detailed enough to be scary overview of the classic Bram Stoker story. I had forgotten that the classic Drac was able to shape shift, was incredibly strong and a real nasty character. At the end of the overview are two pages dedicated to the mythos of Dracula and some additional stories might tickle your jugular if that story was in your vein. There was also the true-life story of an English poet, his deceased wife and how her impossibly well preserved body might have factored into Stoker’s tale.
How about Fafnir, Apep, The Horla, Humbaba, Rakshashi or The Lamia-have you ever heard of them? We hadn’t and those stories are fabulously told and they were absolutely more terrifying because I was absolutely unfamiliar with them.
The Horla from 1887 is especially cruel. All of the monsters have their scary stats on the first page that they’re featured on. It lists a category, base of operation, when they supposedly lived, powers, dastardly deed and fear factor. Some like The Headless Horseman rank in at three skulls in the fear factor. Let’s face it; to a large section of the population he’s more known as a Curious George short and a Tim Burton film from the late 90’s. Three skulls is being generous.
However, The Horla is from Guy de Maupassant and published in 1887. The Horla came from Brazil and unlike its other monster brethren is invisible-and not in an Invisible Man campy kind of way. The Horla was intent on torturing mankind and treating them the way that humans treat farm animals. Think of it as a vegan poltergeist that drives its host insane and then moves on to another person.
The Big Book of Monsters makes those more advanced readers (like me) want to read more. Additionally, the book is written as such an accessible level that that 10 year-old readers will be able to understand the stories in an age appropriately, scary manner. Some of the stories have a palpable sense of dread. It’s that foggy, damp vibe that dominates Halloween. As this is a book about great characters and stories it’s not exclusively for October. This is a great book, that introduces other great characters that are the stuff of nightmares, but it’s done in a way that those upper elementary kids will enjoy in the most positive of unruly ways.
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Mummies are something that we’ve had a keen interest in for decades. When I was single and childless I would plan my vacations around places where mummies could be seen. On one particular excursion I was near Siwa, Egypt and visited a series of tombs that the locals were talking about.* Sure enough, there were mummies there, just chilling out in a series of enclaves that were cut into the side of a mountain. I never disturbed any of the remains-or took anything from the burial site. I’ve seen The Brady Bunch Hawaii episode, I know that taking things from sacred locations never, ever ends well.
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