Other Half of My Heart / Sundee T. Frazier 296 p.

Bahni Turpin performs this audiobook superbly. What fun to listen to all the characters.
Minny and Keira King are biracial twins. Minny resembles her father--white; while Keira her African American mother. Grandmother Johnson enters them into the Miss Black Pearl Preteen of America. Grandmother is a serious-minded former teacher who dictates how they are to look and to perform. There Minny learns how life treats Keira back their hometown in the Pacific Northwest. Sundee Frazier demonstrates that tension and unfairness still exist between the races. The scene with the dog and its spit will make you LOL. And the trick they play on Grandmother Johnson backfires.

2012 Notable Children's Recordings

Thunder over Kandahar / Sharon E. McKay 260 p.

Fourteen-year old Yasmine only knows Britain when she and her Western educated academic Afghan parents return to Afghanistan. Rather naively they ignore their country's customs. After Yasmine's mother is brutally attacked for travelling out-of-doors without a male family member, they flee to their grandfather's country home. There Tamanna and Yasmine become best friends "sisters of the heart". Thrilled they attend a near by school for boys and girls. The Taliban burn down the school and threaten the teacher and students with death. The village believes this Western educated family to be spies. With Tamanna facing an arranged marriage to an older man and Yasmine and family targets of the Taliban, the girls must flee unaccompanied. They face land minds, suicide bombers, Taliban bands.
This emphasizes how hard life is in Afghanistan, especial for women.

2012 Notable Children's Recordings

Unforgotten Coat / Frank Cottrell Boyce 42 p.

Sarah Coomes narrates with story of two boys, immigrants from Mongolia. Julie becomes their "good guide" through the soccer, British slang, school dress-down days. The brothers are fleeing a demon who makes you vanish. They takes different ways home every night. They have piqued her interest in Mongolia, so she studies up. Though Julie tries to learn where they live, she fails until her mother helps when Julie needs to return a coat. A very telling happening occurs when Julie cannot get anyone to answer the door. Finally after pounding and pounding, a brother appears to take the coat. Julie sees fear in everyone's face. Poignantly, one brother calls to say goodbye when the authorites find them and send them back to Mongolia.

Cloudy with a Chance of Boys / Megan McDonald 260 p.

Stevie Reel is a novice when it comes to boys. Then comes the new boy in her earth science class who calls her at home! They end up partners in a science project. Older sister Alex is not much help. She's busy trying to get her first kiss from fellow thespian Scott Towel. Youngest sister is just not into boys she'd rather kiss her frog. McDonald expertly interweaves Shakespeare into the story and Jenna Lamia delivers wonderful lines.
Humorous chick lit-like, character-driven story for pre-teens.


2012 Notable Children's Recordings

Ghetto Cowboy / Greg Neri 218 p.

Suddenly, Coltrane finds himself dumped in a rough neighborhood in north Philadelphia. At her wits end, his mother has turned him over to his father, a man he has never met, when he ditches school for an entire month. This Detroit pre-teen is surprised to see a horse. Harp, his father, sets him to work in the stable-- a job Cole vows to do until he can get back to his mother. His father runs this stable full of retired racehorses which acts as a safe haven for the neighborhood kids. Everyone who works gets to ride a horse. Cole sees his father in a new light as he struggles to keep the stable open.

Based on a true story of inner-city horsemen in north Philadelphia.

2012 Notable Children's Recordings

Okay for Now / Gary Schmidt 360 p.

Doug Swieteck moves to "The Dump" in Marysville, New York where his father has found employment. He is saved by weekly visits to the public library where the librarian is teaching him to draw using the Audubon’s Birds of America as models. Doug keeps many secrets as he lives down the thug reputation of his middle brother. His father’s abuse is so realistic that you feel for Doug and his family. Doug uses what he learns from the bird prints as he moves from edgy to more open to life in Marysville. Schmidt amazingly integrates baseball, gym teachers, principals, theatrical escapades, and timely preoccupations like the Moon landing and the Vietnam War. This realistic story will resonate with you. And you will want to cry at times.

Return of Doug Swieteck who first appeared in Gary D. Schmidt's Newbery Honor book: The Wednesday Wars.

2012 Notable Children's Recordings

Lucky for Good / Susan Patron 208 p.

This final novel in the Hard Pan trilogy finds eleven-year-old Lucky living a comfortable life in the small town of Hard Pan, California with her adoptive mother Brigitte interacting with the local quirky characters and helping in Brigitte’s Hard Pan Cafe.  Challenges come like health department threatening to shut down the café, losing a good friend Lincoln, and the return of six-year-old Miles’s mother from prison with strong religious beliefs.  Lucky worries that Justine will take Miles away from Hard Pan.  And she ponders about her long absent father and works to find his sister.  Patron incorporates bits of poetry, genealogy, and health ordinances along with Lucky’s contemplation of a Higher Power and her first kiss with aplomb.  Readers will enjoy the upbeat ending as Patron ends all the plot lines.

2012 Notable Children's Recording

Jefferson's Sons / Kimberly Brubaker Bradley 368 p.

Kimberly Brubaker Bradley tells the personal side of  Thomas Jefferson's later years through the eyes of three of his slaves, Beverly, Madison, and Peter (a boy close to the Heming family). Beverly and Madison are sons of Sally Heming and Thomas Jefferson (generally accepted by historians).  Sally is very demanding that her children keep the identify of their father a secret.  Bradley gives an historically accurate account of slaves lives intertwined with the story of the Jefferson's life after his presidency.  Heming's children are given some better treatment (better work, even violin lessons) but they still were slaves, expected to work on the estate. Jefferson did free two of Sally's brothers but none after that.  Heming's children were freed:  two allowed to walk away and two in his will.  Bradley paints the evils of slavery with great sensitivity yet children will get it.

 2012 Notable Children's Recordings

Like the Willow Tree : the diary of Lydia Ame / Lois Lowry 216 p.

Only eleven-year old Lydia Pierce and her older brother Daniel survive the horrific flu epidemic of 1918 that took both their parents and baby sister in a matter of days.  Their grieving uncle takes them to be raised in the Shaker community at Sabbathday Lake near Portland, Maine.  In this installment of the Dear America series of diary novels, Lydia tells the story of their adapting to this new way of life.

2012 Notable Children's Books

Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place: the Hidden Gallery / Maryrose Wood 313 p.

Miss Penelope Lumley, governess and graduate of the Swanburne Academy, takes the three Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place to London, England. In this second of the series about these three feral children finds them still acquiring social skills of Victorian England and book learning. Madcap adventures abound like when the four flee pirates from a melodrama and find refuge in the hidden gallery. More was revealed about the children but more is to come. And secrets about Miss Lumley are left fully unexplained. Look for another chapter in their lives. Read-alike recommendation is the Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events about the Baudelaire orphans.

2012 Notable Children's Recordings

Dead End in Norvelt / Jack Gantos 341 p.

Jack Gantos, the fictional character created from bits of the real Jack Gantos and some from his writer's mind, fires off a live ammo from a WWII Japanese rifle and ends up grounded for the entire summer. These two months in 1962 prove to be pivotal. When he is not reading the entire series of Landmark history books, he’s digging a bomb shelter in the backyard, or he’s Miss Volker’s typewriting recorder for her town founders obits, complete with historical events that occurred on their last day. Quirky characters, strange adventures, Eleanor Roosevelt stories, and some very interesting history are presented with a wit that makes you laugh out loud.

P.S. Gantos really did live in Norvelt, Penn.

Gantos reading his own work is such a delight.
Newbery Medal winner

2012 Notable Children's Recordings
2012 Notable Children's Book

Countdown / Ben Mikaelsen 248 p.

Elliot Schroeder, 14, of Crazy Peak, Montana is the first teenager to go into space. While on a NASA mission he talks to Vincent Ole Tome, also 14. Turns out the two have a lot in common, dreams of a better life -- not necessarily following their father's dream. Vince dreams of going back to the "wooden" school instead of becoming a Masai warrior And Elliot wants to be a pilot not a cattle rancher. As the two strong-willed boys argue about religion, cultural differences, etc. via the ham radio, the world listen in. Their discussions spark similar ones around the world. So NASA arranges for the two to meet where they decide they can be friends. A provocative look at cultural differences.

Read by a master of audiobooks George Guidall.

2012 Notable Children's Recordings

Clementine and the Family Meeting / Sara Pennypacker 162 p.

Clementine is just beside herself. There is a family meeting tonight - a whole school day ahead. What is it about? Has see been too mean to her brother? Too messy? Her parents won't reveal the agenda til meeting time. School is school. She's first thrilled to have the best science partner that is until their project, a rat, goes missing. Then her science geek partner wants to do the project on his walking through walls--not. Finally meeting time comes and she learns she is not in trouble. Mom is pregnant! Just what Clementine (and her younger brother) don't need. After all the table for four is just perfect, two and two means none one is left alone. Jessica Almasy performance is so like a third grader...what...ever.

2012 Notable Children's Recordings

Ivy + Bean What's the Big Idea / Annie Barrows 131 p.

Ivy and Bean team up to find a cure for global warming. The second graders investigate cooling the earth with ice cubes-- a no go. Others suggest planting trees, a giant vacuum cleaner to suck up the heat and send of into space, and lots more. Ivy and Bean's idea for the science fair involves creating awareness in adults. A cool way to introduce this topic.

2012 Notable Children's Recordings