Review: 'The Swap'

The Swap
By Megan Shull
Middle grade fantasy/contemporary setting
August 2014
Katharine Tegen Books
ISBN: 978-0062311696

Ellie's life doesn't look that great to her, especially when her best friend has a new best friend and they both ridicule her. What Ellie doesn't know is that to Jack, Ellie looks like someone who has her act together. She doesn't know the guy who looks like an in-control, popular athlete is the youngest of four brothers with a widowed father who has turned drill sergeant to keep his boys in line. He doesn't know she and her mother have been struggling to appear that everything is just fine since her dad left.

As school starts, when they both end up seeing the school nurse, they discover far more about each other from the inside out than either of them ever dreamed possible in Megan Shull's witty, wise and wonderful The Swap. Whoever that new school nurse is, she was able to switch things up so that Ellie is inside Jack's body and Jack is inside Ellie's.

The pair quickly agree to a plan that they will have a quiet weekend and try to get back to that school nurse as soon as possible. The plan, of course, goes awry because of their families and friends. But this is where Shull pulls off the fun with wisdom just underneath. Jack, as Ellie, is pampered by a mom who loves to spoil her only child. He could even get used to this spa treatment stuff. Ellie, as Jack, glories in being in with a bunch of roughneck brothers. Jack and Ellie may be in each others' bodies, but they are still themselves.

Being able to see how each other lives, Ellie and Jack also are able to take charge about the things that hurt each other the most -- Ellie's ex-best friend and Jack's distant father. As each other and acting together, they are able to accomplish things they never would have been able to do on their own. And, as they learn about the reality of each others' lives, they are not afraid to be themselves.

As these are tweens, the onset of adolescence from the other gender's point of view is handled with great humor and no vulgarity. This is one of the highlights of Shull's strategy of telling the story in each of their points of view in alternating chapters.

Although the ending at first felt a little too good to be true, it is actually far better than it might have been. Saying more would constitute spoilers, but let's just say sometimes, characters not only get what they deserve, they get an ending that is great for everyone.

©2015 All Rights Reserved CompuServe Books Reviews and reprinted with permission

Review: 'The Iron Trial'

The Iron Trial (Book One of Magisterium)
By Holly Black and Cassandra Clare
Fantasy MG
September 2014
Scholastic Press
ISBN: 978-0-545-52225-0

First, a fangirl moment. Holly Black is one of the most imaginative YA and MG novelists we have right now. The Coldest Girl in Coldtown was a chilling, spooky YA novel with unexpected twists and an engaging protagonist. Doll Bones is a spectacularly successful MG horror novel with great characters, a plot that makes sense and some rather goosebumps-raising moments.

Teaming with Mortal Instruments, Infernal Devices and Bane Chronicles author Cassandra Clare, here is another story that is not the same as everything else out there.

The Iron Trial is the first book in the Magisterium series. It not only builds on the tropes so many learned to adore with Harry Potter, it’s a complete turnaround of what readers expect a hero’s journey to be. Callum Hunt, as a baby, survived a massacre of mages in a war against the Enemy of Death. His mother died after carving the message "Kill the Child" with her last breaths. His father, a strong mage himself, has kept Call from magic or knowing much about any of this for his entire life.

But now that he is 12, he has been called to take part in a series of tests to see if he qualifies for training at the Magisterium, where mages learn to control their power. Those who fail have their magic bound at the end of the first year, knowing only for the rest of their lives that they are missing an integral part of themselves.

Call is on orders from his father to fail. His father doesn’t want him there; Call thinks he will be harmed. Despite his best efforts to fail, he is chosen by one of the most talented mages. And now he’s torn. What if he could be good? And now, for the first time, he has friends. And he’s kinda good at this magic after all.

 

The training that Call and his new friends undertake, the friendships formed and Call's journey into discovering why he is different unfold with steady pacing. The world-building and character development work together very well here. The ending is an ending but also shows how the second book will continue Call's journey.

Whether recommending to a teacher for read-aloud because of the plot twists, or to readers who think all fantasy is the same or those ready for something that goes beyond Hogwarts, this is a book to put in their hands.



©2014 All Rights Reserved CompuServe Books Reviews and reprinted with permission

Review: 'Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy'

OPHELIA AND THE MARVELOUS BOY
By Karen Foxlee
Middle grade fantasy
January 2014
Knopf Books for Young Readers
ISBN: 978-0385753548

Ophelia is an intrepid tween who prefers science to magic, fact to fantasy and, right now, the past to the present. The last is because her mother died a few months ago of cancer.

Her father has buried himself in his work as a sword expert, taking Ophelia and her older sister, Alice, away from their London home to a European city filled with snow. They're to spend their time ice skating while their father puts together an exhibition of the greatest swords ever gathered together.

The girls are bored as well as in mourning. Ophelia explores the vast corriors and twisty exhibit halls of the museum where the exhibition will be held. The nooks and crannies of the museum are far preferable to the company of the museum curator, a vaguely menacing young woman named Miss Kaminski. She may be beautiful, and her father and Alice may think she's spiffy, but Ophelia wants nothing to do with her.

Ophelia soon has her hands full with a quest. In one of the locked museum rooms, she discovers, is a boy. He has been there for a long, long time. Ages ago, the king who he was met when he was sent across the water to defeat the Snow Queen had him locked up at the behest of his new wife. As Ophelia battles fantastical things she knows cannot exist, but which do, the boy fills her in on his story.

As Karen Foxlee's new novel, Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy, picks up speed in an action-filled adventure, her heroine finds she has also embarked on a personal journey that involves honoring the spirit of her mother, a fantasy writer who loved to spin tales about frightening things. Foxlee knows just when to switch scenes to what Ophelia's father and sister are up to, when to tell the reader more about the marvelous boy and when to move Ophelia's quest forward.

One of the great aspects to this story is that it is not sad. It is filled with life and making time count. Foxlee knows how to spin wisdom into her tale with light and laughter. She also has a masterful touch at description.

Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy is a fabulous fantasy for middle grade readers who love fairy tales, adventure and stories of courage and love.

©2014 All Rights Reserved CompuServe Book Reviews and reprinted with permission