The Mysterious Benedict Society

The Mysterious Benedict Society
By Trenton Lee Stewart 

This is a very fun book (and series!) for people who love puzzles, mysteries, and secret missions...
Four specially-chosen, quirky, and orphaned children are sent to the Learning Institute for the Very Enlightened to help solve a mystery they don't completely understand but are supposedly well-equipped to tackle. The challenge is for them to work together--and think WAY out of the box--to stop evil forces from controlling the world's population...hard to explain, but read it and enjoy!

Tell Me Again How A Crush Should Feel

Tell Me Again How A Crush Should Feel
by Sara Farizan

From the publisher:
Leila has made it most of the way through Armstead Academy without having a crush on anyone, which is a relief. As an Iranian-American, she's different enough; if word got out that Leila liked girls, life would be twice as hard. But when beautiful new girl Saskia shows up, Leila starts to take risks she never thought she would. As she carefully confides in trusted friends about Saskia's confusing signals, Leila begins to figure out that all her classmates are more complicated than they first appear to be, and some are keeping surprising secrets of their own.

Wildwood

Wildwood
By Colin Meloy
Illustrated by Carson Ellis

Since I used to live in Portland, Oregon, I particularly loved the setting of Wildwood. And since I love the music of the band The Decemberists, I had a hunch I would enjoy the writing by that band's lead singer and lyricist, Colin Meloy. And I did!
Wildwood is the first book in a trilogy of fantasy stories involving two 12-year-old kids, Prue and Curtis, who accidentally wander into an enchanted wood that borders the city of Portland. In these woods, talking forest animals and humans, some with (dark) magical abilities are preparing for a war--and Prue and Curtis find themselves more involved in the civil unrest than they could have imagined!
Full of adventure and wit, Wildwood will keep you reading and wondering how it will all work out...

The illustrations throughout the book by Carson Ellis are wonderful, too!

grayson

grayson

By Lynne Cox

A lovely little book! Lynne Cox recalls an incredible experience she had as a 17-year-old long-distance ocean swimmer: a baby grey whale, separated from its mom and lost, followed her around as she swam in the ocean near Long Beach, CA one morning.
The author describes the amazing ocean animals she saw and the wild experiences of that day in vivid detail, sharing the magic of the Pacific ocean with those of us who usually stay on the beach!

The Schwa Was Here

The Schwa Was Here
By Neal Shusterman

I really enjoyed this bizarre and fun story of a boy called the Schwa who is "partially invisible"; that is, no one seems to notice him--not his teachers, classmates, bus drivers...not even his own dad.
But one classmate, Antsy, who sometimes feels invisible himself, befriends the Schwa and they team up to use invisibility to their advantage. One adventure leads to another, and eventually there are some hard realities to face, and a real mystery to be solved so that the Schwa doesn't truly disappear.

Neal Shusterman wrote Downsiders, which I also loved.

I Lived on Butterfly Hill

I Lived on Butterfly Hill
By Marjorie Agosín

This is a fictionalized account of a real dictatorship that happened in Chile, a beautiful country in South America. In the novel an 11-year-old girl named Celeste, from Valparaíso (the "San Francisco of Chile") experiences the disappearances of friends and neighbors as the General takes power over her country. Eventually her own parents, who are doctors helping the poor, are forced to go into hiding--and Celeste moves north to Maine to live with her aunt until Chile is safer for her family.
I Lived on Butterfly Hill is slow-paced, written by a Chilean poet and writer, and it has lovely illustrations throughout the story.
Celeste's experience of living far away from her parents--not knowing where they are hiding, for two years--and learning to adapt in a new country is very moving. 

Akata Witch

Akata Witch
By Nnedi Okorafor

This book is kind of a Teens-Turned-Superheroes thriller set in Nigeria! Very original!
Full of magic--and black magic--strange twists and turns, realism and fantasy, I wasn't really sure how this wild story would unfold, up to almost the last page.
It has plenty of fantastical elements, but also stark realism--about fitting in, about racism, about being different, about accepting oneself...It's an interesting novel, for sure!