The Magic Half

The Magic Half

By Annie Barrows

Summary:

Miri Gill is eleven years old and is the only child in her family who does not have a twin. Her older brothers Robbie and Ray are twins and her younger sisters Nell and Nora are also twins. When people look at the Gill family they look from Nell and Nora to Robbie and Ray leaving Miri in the middle with no attention. The Gill family has just moved to the countryside from the city and Miri feels even lonelier without the liveliness and excitement of the city.

One afternoon when an old man, Mr. Guest, tells Robbie and Ray that there are stolen items on the Gill family property, the boys start looking immediately, with dreams of enough reward money to buy an iPod. Miri's brothers refuse her help so she returns to her bedroom where, to her surprise she finds a piece of glass (from an eyeglass) taped to her bedroom wall. Miri looks too far into the glass and finds herself in 1935! Miri can time-travel! Miri finds herself in the same house, the same room, and in the middle of the Great Depression!

Soon after Miri arrives, she realizes that she is not alone.  There are four people living in the house: Flo; Sissy; Horst and an eleven year old girl, Molly. Sissy and Horst are Flo's teenage children and Molly's parents have abandoned her, so she was left to be cared for by her Aunt Flo. Molly works as a maid for her cousins and aunt. She is the only one who meets Miri, and they become best friends. 

Miri wants to go home, and she wants to bring Molly home with her and let her forget her past as a maid. Molly agrees. Everything is set, there is only one problem ... they don't know how to get back to Miri's home in the future...

Review:

I really liked The Magic Half  because of the time traveling side of the story, and because of the twins. I have never read a book with a character who time travels, and I don't know any twins so this was unique and interesting for me. Even if time travel is not true, it is an interesting idea for a story, and I enjoyed reading about the relationship between the twins.  I wonder what a twin would think about this book?

I think that Miri is an unusual character but she is a character that a lot of tweens would find fun. She is a tomboy and plays adventurous games with her brothers, but also plays nicely with her sisters. I love how the author made Miri's siblings two sets of twins, instead of four brothers and sisters. The twins makes the story a bit more engaging.  They are always fighting and doing things together in their own little worlds, and Miri just watches it all go by.  It shows the reader how lonely Miri really is and also makes the reader empathize with her and be pulled into the story.

The Magic Half is an interesting and unusual book which many tweens might enjoy as an easy and relaxing read.

211 pages

The Daring Game

The Daring Game

By Kit Pearson

Summary:


Eleven year old Eliza is going to boarding school in Vancouver for the first time ever. She is very excited but shares her parents' worries and believes that she will soon become homesick. Eliza has read many stories of girls who attend English boarding schools, but she knows that her life at Ashdown Academy will not be the same as in her books. At the same time Eliza is more afraid than ever that her new dorm-mates won't like her...

When she arrives at Ashdown Academy she instantly becomes best friends with one of her dorm-mates, Carrie, who is an American border at the school. Pam, Jean and Helen are Eliza's (and Carrie's) other dorm-mates. Pam is the Yellow Dorm head and has a bossy personality. Jean is a shy little girl from Scotland and Helen is mischievous, unpredictable and daring. While Eliza gets to know her dorm-mates, she still can't figure out whether to be friends with Helen. She is always getting into trouble, never doing her school work and she steals.

After Helen complains that nothing exciting is happening at the Academy she decides to start a game: a daring game. Every month a name will be picked and there will be a dare. To succeed a player must break the school rules during every dare and not get caught.  Eliza has never broken a school rule and she has promised her parents that she will be good and not get into trouble while she is at Ashdown. Eliza suddenly gets pulled into Helen's game as do her other dorm-mates. She is not sure that she wants to play.

A moths fly by the dares get harder and Eliza's name is still not picked. As she see her friends tackle the dares she is worried about when her name will be picked and what her dare will be...


Review:

I will start off by saying that I have read this book numerous times when I was about nine years old. I was looking for a fun book to read about two weeks ago and I came across The Daring Game. I looked at it's paperback cover and it was very worn! I thought that since I hadn't read read it in a while and it looked loved, that I would read it one last time. I think that now that I am twelve I am not as interested in the story as I was a couple years ago. I think that the age range that corresponds to The Daring Game is 8-11 years old. After age eleven I think that this book would not be as fun and exiting as it appears at first. 

The Daring Game is an interesting and different book because there is not just one dare for all the four girls but each girl has their own dare. Each girl has their own adventure and their own experience of punishment but at the same time of self-accomplishment.

The Daring Game is not like some other stories about a girls boarding school. First of all, because the story takes place in the city not in the countryside and because it is in 'modern' day. We don't know the exact year that the story takes place in but with some hints in the book we can tell its contemporary.

I really think that The Daring Game is a book that a lot of girls would like because of the 'modern' side of the story and also because the story focuses on more than one person. It is a kind of advantage because you can get four sides of a story but at the same time you get to see four different lifestyles that the girls live at Ashdown Academy.

I don't really know what else to say about The Daring Game except that I loved it, but I think that that was my last time reading it! Wonderful job Kit Pearson (author)! Many tweens will enjoy this book. I would recommend this book to any tween under the age of 12.

221 pages

Be sure to watch for the new 'Top 10 Books' page where you can find my list of top 10 books and extra comments (not in the reviews) on the books coming out on the 25th of June! Don't miss it!

Trash

Trash 

By Andy Mulligan

Summary:

On the Behala dump site, 14 year old Raphael Fernández is living with his aunt and cousins in a little torn-apart garage. Since the day that Raphael could walk he was forced to work all day picking up trash. Everyone in Behala works from the break of dawn until sunset. At the end of the day, if you find something valuable like a tire or a scrap of plastic, you hand it in to the head of the dump site and you get a few pesos (money) in return. If you don't find anything valuable then you walk back to your 'house' empty-handed. Raphael finds the rare bits and pieces of plastic and has enough money to survive, although he needs more. He wants to leave the dump site with his best friends Gardo and Rat and live in a rich neighborhood, but for him, that is still just a dream.

One day when Raphael and Gardo are out in the middle of the dump site, they find a leather bag. The boys know how many pesos they can get for the bag alone and are proud of themselves but they don't know what the bag contains.

When Raphael is alone he opens the bag and inside he finds a wallet containing 1100 pesos, an ID, some photos, some newspaper clippings and a key. He thinks that maybe with everything that the bag contains he could live in a rich neighborhood with all of the money that he has found. He can't wait to leave the Behala dump site with Gardo and Rat. They could start living a new life as rich people!

Raphael is very happy that he and Gardo found the bag ... until the next day police show up offering 1100 pesos for the lost bag and wallet if it is found. What will Raphael do?
 

Review: 
I was surprised when my mum came home from WHSmith Paris and handed me Trash. I was surprised because my mom knows the type of books that I like to read and Trash (judging from the summary) is not historical or romantic. It is a book about adventure and survival. I like reading books about adventures but I have never read a book with an adventure like Trash.  Also I have never read a book with a boy as a main character and have never had a boy's view on a story.  But in the end I got attached to reading about a boy. It was a change from my normal, romantic, 'girl adventure' books. I would definitly read another book with another central male character because it was interesting to see how boys' views are sometimes different and they choose different ways to solve problems.

Trash was an interesting book to read because Raphael's story is not like any other story I have read. In a lot of books the main character has a sufficient amount of money to live a nice life. But Raphael is poor and we learn about how he survives and gets enough to eat. At the same time there is an adventure and mystery going on in Raphael's life as well. It is very common to find only adventure and mystery in books but I really enjoyed the survival side of Raphael's story. I think that a lot of people who have read Trash might really think about how lucky some people (even they) are.

In the book, we don't know where the story takes place but we do know that the money used by Raphael and his friends is pesos. At first I thought that the story took place in Mexico because of the currency (pesos) but then my dad reminded me that pesos are used in a lot of countries. I think that it is good that the author (Andy Mulligan) does not tell us where the story takes place, because it makes us realize that that there are a lot of people in the world who come from the same background as Raphael. Also it shows us that the story could take place any where in the world.

I did not think that I would enjoy Trash but in the end I did. My thanks go out to the author, Andy Mulligan for writing the an amazing story and for blending an education in it.

I would recommend this book to any tween.

211 pages

Distant Waves

Distant Waves

By Suzanne Weyn

Summary:

It's the beginning of the 19th century and teenage Jane Oneida Taylor is living in Spirit Vale, New York with her four sisters and mother. Jane's father abandoned her mother after Jane's youngest sister Mimi's birth, leaving the five girls in the care of his wife. Jane's mother works as a medium in Spirit Vale while Jane and her sisters are left to occupy themselves. Jane doesn't have her mother's talent but has a talent for journalism. Jane dreams of one day being known for writing the best article of the decade or even the century...but she needs a story for her glory.

As the years fly by Jane and her sisters find themselves in Europe each wanting to start their own life and have an adventure. The girls are all busy traveling, reading about new inventions, going to parties and taking strolls along the seaside. 

Mimi is in Paris as a companion to a rich lady.  Jane, along with her three other sisters, is  staying with their mother's cousin just outside of London. Jane starts to write articles about her time in Europe hoping that they will be published later on her her life. As Jane spends more time with her younger sisters Amelie, Emma and Blythe, she feels that although her best friend (and sister) Mimi has left her, she still has her other sisters' company, sympathy and love. Jane develops a strong sisterly bond with Blythe that she never had with any of her other sisters... 

 

When Jane's mother arrives in London with Mimi (whom she picked up in Paris) she is persuaded that her daughters' futures do not lie in Europe. Jane agrees because she still hadn't found an article which would launch her career. However, the only way home is...on the Titanic. Many things lie on board the Titanic, greatest ocean liner in the world, including love and death. Maybe Jane has found her article after all.

Review:

Distant Waves  is a hard book to review because it has so many up-and-down moments. The first 150 pages of the book are just about Jane's life in Spirit Vale. Nothing 'adventurous' happens while Jane is in Spirit Vale. We learn about what Jane does everyday and how she interacts with her sisters. At the same time it prepares us to see the difference between Jane's early life and her days on the Titanic.

I like reading about big families and how they interact with each other, so reading about Jane's life was very interesting. I love Jane's interest in journalism and she inspired me a lot with her opinions. She has a different view of everything. She sees the good and the bad in people and objects in a different way than a normal teenager would. The author has made up a lot of new characters in this book (which is common), but I like how she wrote about some characters who were actually on the Titanic, for example, John Jacob Astor. 

As I have mentioned in other reviews, I love historical books and reading about historical events but it has been a really long time since since I have read a book about the Titanic. I have a My Story book about the Titanic and I have read it many times, but not recently. I think that the story of the Titanic is very interesting but at the same time sad. Suzanne Weyn (author) has, from my view, written a great story about the Titanic (after page 150) and in the end I enjoyed the book. 

I recommend this book for tweens over the age of 11.