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When a children’s book was praised by none other than sitting US President Theodore Roosevelt, that tells you two things: 1. The book is old. 2. The book is good enough for a President to spend his time reading it, so its got a good chance of being pretty good.

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame follows anthropomorphic animals in their various adventures through the world. While there are many picture books about animals, long middle-grade books about them are significantly more rare. This book proves its quality from a reading today.

Summary

At the beginning of the book we meet the Mole, who is coming out of his hole as spring is beginning. He happens to run into a Rat and follows him to the river-bank, where there is a vibrant community of animals. The Mole has never seen it before, but is greatly impressed and thus takes up lodging by the river.

We soon meet the Toad, a rich fellow who is constantly getting himself into scraps by his addiction to motor-cars when he is a terrible and careless driver. We also meet the Badger, who Mr. Mole discovers after venturing in a dangerous manner into the Wild Wood. 

The four are close friends and we follow their escapades as the Rat has a yearning to explore the seas and Mr. Toad gets himself thrown in jail for stealing another person’s motor-car. There is even a full-scale battle as the four face an army of hundreds for control of the Toad’s ancestral home. They all seek to help each other through trouble, but nonetheless get in a normal amount of it for adventuresome animals.

Review

The humanlike attitudes of the animals and their going-ons are quite hilarious, and the characters are very identifiable. The Rat’s desire to go and explore the world is awesome, as is Mr. Mole’s folly into the woods and his affection for his old but now deserted house. Mr. Toad is quite a humorous character, escaping from prison and all and being extremely puffed-up. And Badger is just a sensible, wise fellow.

At first the setting seems to suggest that this animal world may be a secret one that we are not privy to, but further displays in the book such as paintings in the animals’ houses and policemen arresting Mr. Toad show that it could never happen in real life. The reader will nevertheless be drawn to the story and wonder if animals may really be like this.

The language in the book is quite up-to-date, although it contains a few words that current readers may find confusing. There is only one remark of preachiness in the entire book, while the entirety of it is simply in fun. It is easy to get into the story and feel right there in the action.

There is one scene that is intriguing and good where the characters have a sort of spiritual experience and witness a miracle.It seemed pretty out of place and was such a surprising shift of gears that I had to go back and re-read it at first to ensure the author really had just hopped from the fun lives of animals into the divine. At first I thought the author had made a mistake by not leading up to it, but now I think he likely did wrote it that way on purpose to really emphasize the event (paradoxically, by not emphasizing it at all). If that was his goal, he succeeded.

Kids tend to grow up now much faster than they did in 1903 when the book was written, and since it is a fairly good-sized book with over 58,000 words, it is best suited for upper middle-grade children. I wonder a little if kids at this age will appreciate a playful, funny book about animals (filled with action as it is) such as this one. No doubt many will get engrossed in the story and after that the chances of anyone putting it down are slim. It is different from many kids books these days in that it is pervaded by a sense of calm and relaxation, which is sorely missing from most middle grade books and altogether absent from those of the young-adult variety.

As evinced by Roosevelt’s remark, the appeal of this book is to older readers as well as younger, and I think a good many adults will take pleasure from this book. My biggest complaint is that there are not more adventures of these four written by the author. I will have to take a look at his other works, since this one cannot be anything but highly recommended.

Seeing by Joseph Falank is a novel about a kid named Jake who has a couple different tragedies happen to him. The book navigates us through it with Jake as he battles with it himself.

I heard of the book on strong recommendations and so I reached out to the publisher, Winter Goose Publishing, for a review copy, which they very kindly gave me. Unfortunately I have to say that I cannot recommend it, which I regret because I was really hoping to enjoy the book.

Summary

Seeing starts with the main character at a funeral, but we don’t know exactly how we got there. Obviously the start is meant to hook the reader, which it does. The book then proceeds us to take us back to the days leading up to the death, in Jake’s life at school.

We find Jake at school, competing in a race for Field Day. Although he is going up against a girl who runs for the school team, he manages to beat her, to his great surprise. We are also introduced to a kid named Andy, who is new to the school and doesn’t have any friends.

Soon we meet Jamie, who used to be Jake’s best friend but is now his “best enemy,” as the book says. By winning the race Jake has qualified to face Jamie on Field Day. Jamie bullies him and tries to fight him, and he is consoled by his grandfather. His grandfather and he are living together and have grown especially close since Jake’s father simply walked away. Jake’s mom also has a new boyfriend Tim, who Jake understandably doesn’t like.

Jake gets help from his grandfather to train for the race on Friday for Field Day. His grandfather inspires him to increase his time all the way from 12 seconds to 10, and promises that nothing will keep him away from being there at the race.

Jake’s grandfather and he talk about death and Jake’s grandmother. I wouldn’t go into this much detail in the story if I was recommending it, but since I am not it is necessary to fully explain why. So Jake’s grandfather dies, and Jake is of course devastated. Andy comes over to his house to say he’s sorry, and Jake decides to invite him to play baseball, after which they become kind of friends. Tim also talks with him and they become a little more tolerant of each other.

When Jake goes to school, Jamie continues taunting him and attacking him, and soon Jake pummels him. The principal isn’t too mad at him because he knows what’s happening in his life and how Jamie has been bullying him all year.

There have been hints of a romance between Jake and Zoey, the girl he beat in the race, all book, and she reveals that she purposefully threw the race against him to make him feel good because she thought he needed the boost. Jake decides to do the race, even without his grandfather there, and he manages to win and defeat Jamie. He feels better at the end and looks forward to a better year in eighth grade than in seventh.

Review

There are several things that I consider lacking about the book. First of all it’s centered around tragedy, which isn’t really too attractive to me. When I read a book like this I can’t help but chuckle. All the things wrong in the world and this book I’m supposed to be reading for my own pleasure can’t help but tell me about even more.

That’s not to say that stories can’t be have death or horrible things happen; I love many that do. But the book doesn’t revolve around them; the book is about what the main character does in response to it. In the On the Run series, for example, which is one of my all time favorites, Aiden and Meg’s parents are in jail for life of terrorism and they are stuck in a juvenile detention farm. They break free from the farm and run around the country to prove their parents’ innocence, avoiding deadly terrorists and the FBI.

If a comparable book to Seeing had been written for that series, it would consist of Aiden and Meg lying around, depressed and trying to get over it, wallowing at their prison farm, but not doing anything. Do I want to read about that? Not a chance. Do I want to read about them being heroes and saving their parents while making monkeys out of the government? Oh, yeah.

This is the big problem with Seeing: Jake does absolutely nothing in the book. Sure, he wins a race at the end, and beats someone up, but that’s really not good enough to have a whole book around it. I want to read not about what happens to kids, but what the kids do. Jake does nothing of note.

Another big problem is that a ton of the book is fluff. You can literally read this 203 page book in fifteen minutes because you can completely skip over multiple chapters without missing a single thing. All of that space was spent in saying cliches and making observations, none of which was really all that beneficial to the story.

There are other problems with the book as well. Zoey throwing the race for Jake doesn’t make any sense, nor does Jake’s reaction. I don’t really think a teenage cross country racer would throw a race, and the action doesn’t make sense. Zoey says that she was helping him back up, when in reality by throwing the race she was setting him up for far more potential humiliation by getting smoked in the final by his worst enemy in front of the whole school.

Plus, I really don’t think that letting someone else win a competition is a good way to look out for them. I’ve run in races in the past, and let me tell you that if someone intentionally did poorly and let me win, I would be absolutely furious. Jake, however, surprisingly considers it a good thing.

To me one of the worst scenes in all of children’s books is the last scene in Crash where the narrator kid throws the race to the Quaker kid. Being nice and a good person is great, but the purpose of a competition is to judge who can compete the best, period.There’s nothing personal to it, and there’s nothing special to it.

If I’m racing someone I don’t care if I turn out to be faster in that given race or the other guy does, but I’m going to give it all I’ve got, and I think that’s the right way to go about life. So not only is Zoey throwing the race unbelievable, but it also gives the wrong message by promoting something like as being a good thing to do, instead of promoting working your hardest and doing your best.

This goes back to another problem in the book; Jake is described as “invisible” and “hiding,” which really doesn’t make much sense to me. Basically what it’s implying is that since his father’s desertion Jake has become more withdrawn and doesn’t have as many friends, and that’s a bad thing and he needs to learn to come out of it. To me, however, he seems perfectly fine. Sure, he’s upset about his dad leaving, but who wouldn’t be? He may not have a ton of friends in the seventh grade, but is that really such a bad thing?

It’s a problem I’ve seen in a lot of children’s/YA books where the author describes someone as being in bad shape or having something wrong with them, but most of the time there is no evidence to support that conclusion. Things in the real world are not so cut-and-dried and people are not categorized into boxes that say “ok and where he should be” and “struggling and needs help.” In actuality, almost everyone is really fine and simply living the life that seems the best to them, including Jake. So character growth and struggles are awesome, but trying to simply say that something is wrong with a character is to me a losing proposition.

I will say I love the idea of Jake getting inspiration from his grandfather, since I really look up to mine (now deceased). But it seemed to me that, starting the book from the funeral and then going back, the author made the grandfather the one really likable character just so he could kill him off. It definitely wasn’t cool to use him as a tragedy inflicting tool like that. Not that a great character can’t die like that in a book, of course, but for it to work there has to be a lot more to the book and a lot more action from the kid, as I already said. Still, the grandfather character while he was alive and his interactions with Jake were well done and the best part of the book to me.  

So now you can tell why I don’t recommend this book. I commend the author for what was surely his hard work to write the book as well as Winter Goose Publishing, a small publishing company that has gone out of their way to promote this book and seems to be a house that authors should love. But because of the large flaws in the basic structure as well as in more specific aspects of the book, I cannot advise reading it.

Hi everyone! Thanks for you all being great and helping me through with the launch of Kid Writers Magazine, the only writing magazine in the world managed by kids, for kids. As you may know, it’s a place where kids can learn about writing and get published.

I’m proud to announce that the second edition of the magazine is out today! This edition is jam-packed with even more awesome content that first one. We’ve had tons of submissions from kid writers throughout the country, and I’ve worked with many of them to get them published in this edition.

Get the magazine here!

We’ve got our usual seven stories, the cover story being The Superfly Scavengers, a tale written by me where a kid finds a secret message on an old record player and tries to track a treasure down only to have to steal it by from a dishonest relative. Sounds pretty crazy, huh? 

Some other great ones are The Treehouse Tussle by Nancy Burton, where a kid has new neighbors who try to get the property line redrawn to remove his treehouse, and the second part of The Treasure Chest Trackers by Lisa Fitzgerald, continuing from the first edition where two kids have found a hundred year-old treasure and now have to travel across the country to get it.

Perhaps my favorite story in this edition is Jack and Mary’s Spy Club: Mission 2: The Crooked Classroom Cheaters. In this mission Jack and Mary’s class is taking state tests, but when some students seem to be cheating and inflating their scores at the expense of other kids, it’s up to Jack and Mary to stop them. We’ve also got a mini-book coming out for the JMSC where they track down a writer who apparently doesn’t exist, so stayed tuned for that.

We’re also lucky enough to have an interview with Linda Sue Park, author of some books in The 39 Clues, the Newbery Medal winning A Single Shard, and A Long Walk to Water. Ms. Park lives just minutes from my house and she kindly agreed to an interview at the local Rochester Book Festival. You can hear more of those interviews here.

To make this magazine even better, I’m releasing a mini-book in conjunction with it as a free gift to the first thirty people who order. It’s a hilarious tale called The Wrecking Ball Employee where a kid attempts to get a job but is more successful in things like getting eaten by a girl who thinks he’s a hot dog and being accused of poisoning by a government agent. After the first thirty buyers it’ll be coming out as a separate book you can purchase, but you can get it as a bonus now (you might want to hurry because I’ll have some more publicity for this later in the week but I wanted to make sure my loyal blog readers got the first go).

I’ve got tons more exciting projects in the works as we speak, so be ready. Head on over to kidwriters.org and get the magazine and let me know what you think! You can also check out a preview of the magazine here. We’re always accepting new submissions from kids so adults make sure they all know about it and kids get busy! 

The Contagious Colors of Mumpley Middle School is an absolutely crazy book, ranging from the wild to the ridiculous, but is funny and somehow true to life all the way. Through the tale of Wilmer Dooley, an aspiring sixth grade scientist, Fowler DeWitt examines a number common middle grade themes in this wacky tale.

Summary

The book is told in first person person, so we get to know Wilmer pretty well. His dad is a scientist who works with food and has invented something called the SugarBUZZZZ!-a kids snack line full of sugar. Wilmer wants to be a scientist like his dad, and there’s a lot of pressure on him to win the sixth grade science award, just like his old man did.

Unfortunately, Wilmer has some enemies. First is Mrs. Padgett, his Biology teacher, who hates him because he knows more about science than her despite the fact that she has an advanced degree. She wants Claudius to win, a kid who has a famous doctor for a father but who doesn’t know anything about science. Claudius is always snooping around and trying to steal and take credit for Wilmer’s ideas.

Plus, Wilmer has got Roxie to worry about. Wilmer thinks Roxie is the most awesome girl in the sixth grade, but he always worries he’s doing the wrong thing and that she’s not paying attention to him at all.

Soon, though, Wilmer has bigger problems; the entire school has come down with a mysterious disease that is causing them to change colors, and no one knows what’s going on. At first all the kids are acting hyper and jumpy, but as time goes on they start to slow down and even get close to dying!

Wilmer knows it’s up to him and his science skills to save the day. It’s not going to be easy, but he has to develop an antidote to the virus or else everyone at his school is going to drop dead. Not only that, but it’s a perfect opportunity to win the sixth grade science award and impress Roxie!

Review

This is a good book on the whole. It is very funny and of course completely unbelievable, but it’s very fun and that’s the way that it’s meant to be. As I mentioned, it talks about a number of themes: A boy trying to get a girl, trying to live up to your parents, dealing with enemies, and having a fight with your best friend.

The main problem with the book to me is that it will only really appeal to a niche readership. The age range listed for the book is 2nd to 5th grade, but it is hard for me to imagine a second grader reading it, and the romance part is more fitted towards a somewhat older audience. On the other hand, older kids won’t like it simply because of how crazy the plot and characters are. I’d say it would appeal most to boys in 4th to 5th grades.

I also don’t like how the author tries to tie everything together at the end of the book by having everyone just help each other and come together. In the end Claudius, who has been a huge enemy of Wilmer throughout the whole book, suddenly is necessary for Wilmer to complete the mission. Wilmer has also been working on his own throughout the entire story, but in the end it becomes necessary to ask his dad. That is fine, but the author makes a big deal about preaching how you need help, when it would’ve been much better to simply let the story do the talking.

In the end, this is a good book. It also has a sequel, The Amazing Wilmer Dooley, in which Wilmer goes to 7th grade. Perhaps funnier than anything in the book is how the author manages to speak to everyday things in kids lives in the form of some of the most crazy characters and events I’ve seen yet.

Get The Contagious Colors of Mumpley Middle School from Amazon

Hi everyone, thanks for helping support me with my project, Kid Writers Magazine! I’ve been working on something else that’s also going to be awesome; my first book!

Of course I’ve been writing books for a long time, but this is the first time I’m actually going to publish one. It’s called The Club Calamity: Calvin’s Crazy Cookie Caper. The story revolves around Riverwood Elementary where school clubs are taken away because of lack of money. Calvin and his friends start a fundraiser to get the clubs back, but not without dangers along the way.

It’s really a fun kind of a book and I think it’s inspiring how Calvin pulls the whole thing off. It’s about a 16,000 word book, so it’s for kids 7-12 years old. I’m planning to self-publish it soon, so I would really appreciate anyone who would be kind enough to take a look at the book and give me some advice on it. I would also really appreciate any reviews you guys can offer once the book comes out.

So if you want an ARC of the book just let me know and I hope you like it as much as I do!