MG Novels – Page 63 – Susan Uhlig

The Mailbox

Posted on April 8, 2009 by Susan Uhlig

the-mailbox From the compelling first line of The Mailbox (Delacorte, 2006) by Audrey Shafer to the end, this story held me in its grips.

Twelve-year-old Gabe, who has bounced from foster family to foster family until moved in with his uncle Vernon, a Vietnam vet, comes home to find Uncle Vernon has died. Not wanting to believe it and fearful of going back into the foster system, Gabe goes to school the next morning as if nothing has happened. When he comes home, the body is gone and Gabe gets the courage to keep going from the notes left in his mailbox and the gift of a dog named Guppy. This is one of those MUST READ books.

Author Audrey Shafer is also an MD. Read more here.

Award Winners, MG Novels, So Many Good Books

Savvy

Posted on March 25, 2009July 8, 2025 by Susan Uhlig

A 2009 Newbery honor book…

savvy The first sentence of Savvy (Dial, 2008) by Ingrid Law is a grabber and immediately lets you know you’re in for an interesting ride. “When my brother Fish turned thirteen, we moved to the deepest part of inland because of the hurricane and, of course, the fact that he’d caused it.” The book doesn’t disappoint.

The main character, Mibs, short for Mississippi, is about to turn 13, the birthday when Beaumont kids get their savvy. She’s sure it will be a good one. But that especially becomes important when Poppa is injured in a car accident and won’t wake up.

This is one of those books I know I’ll be rereading! (And I’ve heard she’s writing a sequel and they’re making a movie…woo whoo!)

Read more about the author at her website. I can’t wait to see what she comes up with next!

MG Novels, So Many Good Books

Home of the Brave

Posted on February 5, 2009 by Susan Uhlig

I love it when I read an award winning book and agree that the award was given for a very good reason.

Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate is one of those books. She won a 2008 SCBWI Golden Kite for this book published in 2007 with Feiwel and Friends.

Written in verse, this middle grade novel captured me from the first lines as Kek, a refugee from Africa, arrives in a “flying boat” in Minnesota and sees all the white, and wonders where the world has gone. Ms. Applegate really made me see and feel not only how hard it is for Kek to adjust, but makes me see and feel his home in Africa. All I can say is WOW!

Katherine Applegate is also the author of the Animorph books, plus she ghost wrote 17 of the Sweet Valley Twins. Read more about this author of many types of books at her website: http://www.katherineapplegate.com/

MG Novels, So Many Good Books, YA Novels

Assassin & Confessions from the Principal’s Chair

Posted on August 24, 2008 by Susan Uhlig

More books I’ve been feasting on. (I refuse to post about the books that strike me as famine.)

I’ve read two books by Anna Myers recently. She’s an SCBWI Regional Advisor in Oklahoma and always makes me laugh when I meet her. I’d suddenly realized after the SCBWI LA Conference this year that I hadn’t read any of her books. Duh! Both of these books are in that Tween land where they are sometimes classified as middle grade (mg) and sometimes as young adult (YA).

Assassin (Walker and Company, 2005)

This story is told in alternating viewpoints – Bella, a young impressionable girl, who has lost her mother to death and been abandoned by her father, wants to be on the stage, and Wilkes, better know as John Wilkes
Booth, the actor who shot and killed Abraham Lincoln. I sometimes was
annoyed with Bella, but Wilkes was totally convincing. Don’t skip the
prologue!

Confessions from the Principal’s Chair (Walker and Company, 2005)

Bird is sitting in the principal’s chair and how she got there and what she does takes you for a ride in the mind of an 8^th grade girl.
This book is funny, and too true–boy, do I remember those feelings of trying to make my mother feel bad- and has a really satisfying ending.

Think I’ll have to go read more books by Anna…

If you want to know more about her, go to her website at http://annamyers.info/