Candy Bunny Reader

  I smell a new favorite series of mine in the making... I am so glad I finally picked this up! It had me on the edge of my seat. Amari and the Night Brothers by BB Alston follows 13 year old Amari, whose has been struggling in school and her older brother Quinton all of a sudden went missing. One day, she finds a mysterious briefcase telling her that she has been nominated by Quinton to join The Bureau of Supernatural Affairs, which Quinton himself was a part of. The Bureau invesitigates supernatural cases around the world and also tries to keep everything supernatural away from regular humans.  Amari joins the summer camp that trains new recruits, and she decides to become an agent like her brother to make it easier to find him. But then she discovers something about herself that is quite dangerous--and it leads to more surprises from there. It includes discovering the secrets and plans of the notorious Night Brothers! What else can I say except that it is such a page-turnin...

  I think I have found Kate DiCamillo 's most underrated book! Ferris is about Emma Phineas, or "Ferris" as she is nicknamed because she was born at a fair near the Ferris wheel. She is about to have the most unforgettable summers of her life before fifth grade. Ranging from her Uncle Ted's mysterious art project, to her little sister Pinky wanting to be a thief, and her grandmother Charisse's conversation with a ghost. All of these seemingly random events actually do come together gracefully and unexpectedly.  This book is different from most of Kate DiCamillo's books because it's more on the contemporary, slice-of-life side, even though there is a magical realism element with the ghost only Ferris's grandmother can see and talk to. It's a great story about all kinds of love--from family love, to friendship love, to romantic love.  I gave it 5 stars ! So far I've read two Kate DiCamillo books this month that I love! I am very lucky.

  Yes! Another great book by one of my favorite authors, Margaret Peterson Haddix ! The Remarkables is about Marin, an 11-year old girl who just moved to Pennsylvania from Illinois. She has no new friends yet, and just had a falling out with her two friends, Ashlynn and Kenner, back in Illinois, before moving. Her parents are really busy with their new jobs and taking care of her new baby brother, Owen. So, Marin spends a lot of time on her own. One day, as she is exploring her new neighborhood, she sees a bunch of teenagers hanging out with each other near one specific house. What's unusual about these teens is they seem to disappear and reappear out of thin air, and only Marin seems to notice this strange phenomenon. That is, until she meets a boy, a neighbor, named Charlie, and he reveals he can see them, too.  Unfortunately, Charlie thinks the reason he can see them is because of a dark family secret regarding his father. He thinks the teenagers are actually his father an...

  Now this is a book that lives up to the hype! The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers is about a group of space travelers in a spaceship called the Wayfarer who have been selected to create a space tunnel between two planets that recently had a war with each other in hopes to bring peace. The setting is in the far future where Earth has become mostly inhabitable and many humans have left Earth to go live on other planets (mostly Mars). Those humans are called Exodans, by the way. However, the real focus of the story is about the relationships (friendship, family, and romantic) between our main space traveling team and the wordbuilding as they visit and talk about many different planets along the way. The cast is as follows: Rosemary, a human from Mars who gets to work on the Wayfarer as a clerk and is trying to escape her dark past. Then there's Ashby, another human who is the stern but kind captain of the Wayfarer, and is in a relationship with the captain of a...

 Trigger warning: family death Another great graphic novel you can read in a day! Baba Yaga's Assistant by Marika McCoola and Emily Carroll.  The main character is a half Russian-half American girl named Masha who lost her mother when she was younger, and was raised by her grandmother and father. But she also just recently lost her grandmother, and her father has been dating another woman who already has a daughter of her own named Dani who does not like Masha. Feeling unappreciated in her new family circumstances, Masha decides to run away from home, into the woods, and become Baba Yaga's assistant.  Masha has always been impressed by Baba Yaga's stories thanks to her grandmother. When she gets to Baba Yaga's famous house, Baba Yaga gives her three tricky tests to see if she is worthy of becoming her assistant. You'll have to find out if she passes the tests and what else happens... What else can I say! Such a great, little, magical, witchy story! 5 stars! Check t...