The Dragon Orb, the first installment of The Alaris Chronicles by Mike Shelton, follows the story of three teenagers: Bakari, a scholar wizard; Allison, or Alli, a battle wizard apprentice; and Roland, a counselor apprentice. These three kids have shown immense powers and promise as...

The Adventures of Crimson and the Guardian is a children’s fantasy by Karen Cossey. While taking a walk in Pixie Forest, Kinsey sees a cloak on the ground and tries it on, only to see a unicorn appear. She is astonished when the unicorn introduces...

The Pandora Device: Camp Hawthorne, Book One is a children’s science fiction story by Joyce McPherson. Sixth grader Stella Harski, who lives with her grandmother, gets the opportunity to go to Camp Hawthorne, the same camp her parents attended. She hopes to find information about...

I enjoyed reading The Grave of Lainey Grace by Aaron Galvin. It is good, lighthearted reading for fans of slice-of-life narration with a touch of fantasy. The main character, Briar Ann Wade, is 10 years old at the start, 12 at the finish. Briar Ann’s...

The Sparrow Princess by Russell Whitehead - with interior illustrations by Laura DuBose - is a fairytale-style fantasy geared toward the middle grade/young adult audience. This tantalizing tale begins simply with a young child princess losing her mother and her father, the Queen and King,...

The Haunted Aquarium Castle by Robert Scott McKinnon is a fascinating and spooky mystery. Mini Ann Harper and her roommate, Jane Mary, are ichthyology aficionados. They are fish enthusiasts, and they possess one of the most notable aquariums in the world. It holds four thousand...

I loved The Secret Case Of The Space Station Stowaways by Patricia A. Monteith. I am a little embarrassed admitting that because it is so obviously a book for children. As I have mentioned elsewhere, I read a lot. In the right mood, I will...

P.K. Tyler's The Jakkattu Vector offers as creative a premise as you'll find in science fiction: an alien race, the Mezna, has come to save humanity from its reckless disregard for Earth's ecosystem. Now, natural-born humans are confined to reservations on what little habitable land...

There are several things that are not good for us, but instead we tend to bask in these forbidden pleasures anyway. The Candy Judge by J. Marie Cooper is a beautifully illustrated children’s story about the consequences of eating too much candy. The Candy Judge...

There is a new Magical Aquarium that’s just opened up in town. PJ is quite excited. She loves everything about the sea and she wants to learn everything she can about life in the sea. Her older sister, Blake, has already studied the sea at...