When the World Was Ours

 

by Liz Kessler

Wow, what a perfect middle grade holocaust book. Max, Elsa, and Leo will stay with me for a long time. The story begins with three nine year old best friends in Austria on one perfect day. Leo's father takes a picture, and all three kids get a copy. The thread of this picture and its significance is woven throughout the story. Leo and Elsa are Jewish, and it's 1936, so we know where this is going. The author manages to not hold back on the horror while not going overboard on graphic details, relying on great writing and pure emotion to bring us into this terrible world. I'd love to say so much more, but don't want to ruin the experience for anyone else. Just read this book.

Wolf Hollow

by Lauren Wolk

A terrible bully moves to town and blames her bad deeds on a shell-shocked WWI veteran. It was dark and sad and well written, but I really thought the characters could have been much more developed. The mystery was frustrating but compelling. I enjoyed it well enough, but not as much as I liked Echo Mountain.

 

The Only Girl in Town

 

by Ally Condie

This is a beautifully written book that I absolutely loved until the very end. So much suspense, so much fun with the main character's awesome cat, a love story, a friendship story, an ode to running, and more. So much potential. I loved the short chapters and alternating timelines. But the ending was a little disappointing. I enjoyed the reading experience so much, but certainly wish there had been more.

Away

 

by Megan Freeman

At the end of Alone, while the story wraps up nicely, we are left without knowing what really happened to the world Maddie lives in. Freeman could have left us with that, and it would have been fine, but when I saw that there was a follow up, I had to have it. 

The story starts the same place Alone starts, but from the perspective of the people who made it onto the transport vans, including Ashanti, Maddie's sleepover buddy. We also meet Grandin, a country boy whose dad refused to get on the transport, Harmony, an aspiring journalist, and Teddy, who loves movies and film. These four are thrown together when the transports arrive at the "camps." As life settles down and time passes, and the people are still not told what existential threat the outside world is facing, these kids aim to get to the bottom of the mystery. When all was revealed, I found the answer to be completely plausible.

I did find it to be a little less compulsively readable than Alone, simply due to all the jumping around in formatting. Ashanti writes in verse, Harmony writes via letters to her aunt, and Teddy's sections read like a screenplay. A neat idea, but it made it a little harder to follow for me.

All in all, a very worthy follow-up to Alone with a satisfying and believable ending!

Alone

by Megan E. Freeman

Maddie and her friends have the Best. Plan. Ever. Maddie tells her mom she's at her dad's. And tells her dad she's at her mom's. And her friends hatch a similar plan with their parents. But really, they're going to Maddie's grandparents' condo. They're only in town in the summer. It's the perfect plan, until Ashanti gets sick, and the whole thing gets called off. Maddie has already bought all the snacks, though, so she goes ahead and has the party by herself. She falls asleep with her phone on silent, and when she wakes up, she's... alone. Everyone has been evacuated for an unknown reason, and Maddie has to figure out what's going on and how to survive. I absolutely loved this tense, super suspenseful novel in verse!

 

The Canyon's Edge

by Dusti Bowling

Nora's mom died in a tragic restaurant shooting at Nora's birthday dinner. Understandably, her father wants to wrap her up and protect her from everything now, and she's suffocating. On the one year anniversary, he takes her on a camping/hiking trip to try to get their minds off what happened a year ago. But suddenly, tragedy strikes again, separating Nora from her dad. Now she's alone in the Arizona desert. It's hard enough trying to live through wild animals, hunger, and dehydration, but the ghosts of her past also won't leave her alone. Can Nora find her dad, and the peace she craves? This is a well-written and tensely paced novel in verse that will be enjoyed by anyone who enjoys survival stories.

 

Thirteens

 

by Kate Alice Marshall

Eleanor is the new girl in a tiny town. Her past is sad, and not really something you want to share with potential new friends, but she's doing her best to fit in. Unfortunately matters only gets worse when she starts seeing creepy things that no one else sees... a grandfather clock that appears out of nowhere, a big dog with red eyes, and a bird made of bones. Eventually she realizes that her classmates Pip and Otto see these "wrong things" too, and they find themselves as unwitting participants in a very old mystery.