The Magnificent 12: The Call by Michael Grant

Here is the beginning of a big new series called The Magnificent 12. If you followed The 39 Clues, you will enjoy this series as well.

Twelve-year-old Mac MacAvoy thinks he has a normal boring life - until one day at school when things really change! Grimluk, a 3000 year-old man, appears in the boy's bathroom to tell Mac that he is one of the Magnificent 12! Mac needs to find the other 11 twelve-year-olds in order to stop the Evil that threatens the world. Mac is not sure about all of this but he seems to have no choice. The adventures that follow are full of magic and excitement but they are also really funny!

Click here to visit the series website, follow the interactive map, learn more about the characters, and discover important clues.

And be sure to watch the book trailer below. It is probably one of the best book trailers I have ever seen.

The Candymakers by Wendy Mass

I love those cooking contests on television! Beautiful cakes, scrumptious desserts, and those towering sugar sculptures! If you love watching those shows or cooking, this is the book for you!

The four main characters - Logan, Miles, Daisy, and Phillip - have all been selected to compete in a national candy making contest. The winning candymaker will earn $1000, but best of all - their recipe will be produced and sold around the world! Each of our competitors is very different from each other but they soon find themselves in the middle of some sticky surprises and some gooey suspense. And everything sounds delicious - Oozing Crunchorama or Neon Yellow Lightning Chew.

Wendy Mass is certainly one of our favorite authors. She also wrote 11 Birthdays, 12 Finally, and Every Soul a Star. Click here to watch Wendy Mass explain how she came to write a book all about candy! Yum!

No Such Thing as Dragons by Philip Reeve

Everyone knows there are no such things as dragons. Dragons are the stuff of fantasy and legend.

Back in the old days, many people were afraid of dragons. Lonely shepherds disappeared high on the mountain pastures, or their sheep did. When the people in a village became afraid they hoped a brave knight in shining armor would come to slay the dragon. Johannes von Brock was one of these knights.

Or rather, he pretended to be a dragon killer. Because, as all intelligent and rational people know - there are no such things as dragons. Ansel is his ten-year-old servant boy, left unable to speak by the tragic death of his mother and sold into servitude by his greedy father. Ansel knows that his master is a fake but at night when he hears sounds on the high spaces, he wonders and worries. What if dragons are real?

This story of a con man takes a frightening turn when a real dragon appears. And really captures people and animals. And suddenly Ansel's very life is in real danger. From this moment in the story, hang on tight to your favorite reading chair because you are in for a non-stop, action-filled, scary adventure!

The Grimm Legacy by Polly Shulman

What if fairy tale magic really existed? What is there was a library where you could check out the magical items from fairy tales? What if you could get an after-school job at this library?

In The Grimm Legacy there is such a library. While it also loans out all kinds of other objects - costumes, dishes, tools, historical objects and artwork - in one special room there are magical items from the tales collected by the Brothers Grimm.

Our main character, Elizabeth, sometimes feels like she is living in a fairy tale, especially since her father remarried and she gained a step-mother and two step-sisters who are a little bit evil. At a new school with no friends, she jumps at the chance to work as a page at the New York Circulating Material Repository. She likes her new job putting things away on the shelves and finding objects for library patrons, but then she discovers the Grimm collections and scary things begin to happen. As magical items begin to be stolen from the library, Elizabeth and her new friends - Marc, Aaron, and Anjali - find themselves in a life or death race to find some very important items.

If you love fairy tales or magic or a little romance, this is the book for you! Or if you love libraries - like I do - you will really enjoy this special library. I wonder if there is some magic lurking somewhere on our library shelves? Hmmm . . .

Click here to read the first chapter online and watch The Grimm Legacy book trailer below.

The White Gates by Bonnie Ramthun

Here's a great book for kids who like snowboarding, adventure and a mystery!

Twelve-year old Torin Sinclair has just moved to Snow Park, Colorado. All of his life he's been pretty much a surfer boy living with his dad and step-mom, but now he's come to live with his mom who is the new town doctor. His first big goal is to learn to snowboard!

But the kids in school aren't too friendly and he begins to hear about the curse that seems to follow whoever is the town doctor. Fortunately he makes a couple of friends - Raine Douglas, whose father owns the snowboard shop, and Drake Wexler, whose father is a famous snowboarder. Raine's family is of Ute Indian heritage and she eventually tells him about the sacred mountain her family seeks to protect and the origins of the mysterious Ute curse.

Is there really a curse? Is someone out to develop the protected mountain land? And what is with the kids who keep threatening Torin on the slopes?

And what are the White Gates? Well - they are a dangerous avalanche run. Plenty of snowboard action ahead!

Nick of Time by Ted Bell

Pirates, time travel, spies, a Nazi submarine, sword fights, sailing ships - Nick of Time is non-stop adventure and action!

Nick McIver is the hero of our adventure and a hero is just what Nick wants to be. The year is 1939, and war with Germany is coming closer. Nick lives with is parents, the lighthouse keepers, on Greybeard Island in the Channel Islands between England and France. Nick is a marvelous sailor and longs for the days of his ancestor Captain Nicolas McIver and his idol Lord Nelson. Things are becoming dangerous for Nick himself as he gets caught up in his father's secret work as a spy against the Nazis.

Things really spin our of control when he discovers a time travel device sent to him from his ancestor Captain McIver, who desperately needs Nick's help in the past. He also meets Captain Blood, a time traveling pirate. Then a Nazi submarine surfaces off the island and Nick finds himself needed in two places as once. Author Ted Bell also introduces us to his adult fiction character Alex Hawke, who is a British spy.

When he was a boy, author Ted Bell loved books like Treasure Island and Kidnapped. His character Nick McIver seems to spring right out of books like these old-fashioned adventures.

This is the first adventure in the Nick McIver series. Nick of Time is followed by The Time Pirates.

Click here to read the first three chapters of Nick of Time.

Crunch by Leslie Connor

Fourteen year-old Dewey is in a crunch. Actually his whole family is in a crunch - all because of another crunch - a fuel crunch.

Crunch, the book, is a great read! It is a mystery - who is stealing bike parts from the family bicycle shop? Can Dewey catch the thief? It is a what if story - what if a fuel crisis stranded your parents several hundred miles away from home and left you and your siblings to take care of both themselves and the bicycle shop? And it is realistic fiction - older sister Lil is eighteen, but it is a lot of responsibility for her and Dewey to take care of the family farm, the bicycle shop, and their younger siblings.

Things do start to get a little scary as well. The fuel crisis is causing food and other necessities to disappear from store shelves. Cars stop going up and down the highway next to their home. The highways are filed with people walking and bicycling. Suddenly lots of people need their bikes fixed just to get around. Dewey and his slightly younger brother Vince are swamped with bike repairs. And someone is breaking into their shop and stealing not only valuable bike parts but also the money they make for their work. This is not turning out to be the summer vacation anyone planned on.

I really enjoyed the family story in Crunch as well. Everybody is trying but they are still kids and they are under a lot of pressure. And I really like their small family farm as well - a big garden, fruit trees, chickens, goats and sheep. Hmm - I wonder whose farm that sounds like? Click here to find out!

Leslie Connor is a very good writer of realistic fiction. Waiting for Normal won lots of awards for children's literature and I predict Crunch will as well. Click here to read an interview with Leslie Connor and find out just where some of her ideas for Crunch came from. Meanwhile, I'm going to make sure my bicycle is in good working order. You never know when you might really need it . . .