Tag: book review

Posted in Adventure, Fiction, Tween Reads

Book Review: The Mapmaker and the Ghost, by Sarvenaz Tash (Walker Books for Young Readers, 2012)

Posted on by Rosemary Kiladitis

Recommended for ages 9-12

Goldenrod Moram wants to be an explorer and mapmaker like her hero, Meriweather Lewis (of Lewis & Clark fame). When she decides to spend her summer making a map of the forest behind her home, she stumbles into an adventure that has been over a hundred years in the making. Before her summer vacation is over, she will find herself in trouble with a local group of troublemakers, The Gross-Out Gang, and she will meet a strange old lady with an interesting family connection. She will also meet her idol face to ghostly face!

The Mapmaker and the Ghost gives readers a new heroine in Goldenrod Moram. She’s smart and gutsy, like many ‘tweenage characters these days, but she is not on the hunt for treasure – she just wants to make maps like her idol, Meriweather Lewis. And how often do you hear Lewis and Clark coming up as a literary and historical idol? Readers get a look at an important figure in American history and learn a little more about who he is.

 
Some of the characters are predictable. The Gross-Out Gang, for instance, is made up of kids who come from a multitude of mixed backgrounds: the rich parents who have no time for their children; the divorced father in a deep depression who cannot focus on his daughter; and the kid who’s been bounced around from foster home to foster home are all here. The ending is predictably light, but it gives the reader hope that every situation, when you use your brains and bring understanding and honesty to the situation, can work out for the best.
 
This is Ms. Tash’s first book. Her website offers information about the book and a link to her blog.
Posted in Adventure, Fantasy, Middle School, mythology, Tween Reads

Pandora Gets Jealous, by Carolyn Hennesy (Bloomsbury, 2008)

Posted on by Rosemary Kiladitis

Recommended for ages 10-13

Get ready for Mean Girls meets Clash of the Titans.

Pandora – Pandy to her friends – has no idea what to bring to school for her project on the gods’ presence in their lives. If she brings the piece of her dad, Atlas’, liver again, she’s totally going to fail. When she stumbles across a locked box hidden away, she knows she should not bring it. Her dad told her that she should never open it. But it would be perfect. When the mean girls at school tease her and tell her that the box is worthless, it somehow ends up being opened, and the seven evils escape into the world, and poor Hope ends up being locked in the box.

Zeus and Hera charge Pandora with tracking down and recapturing all of the evils she released in six phases of the moon, or else. Pandy sets off with her two best friends, Alcie and Iole, and a little stealth help from Olympus. Her first stop: Delphi, to recapture Envy.

Pandora Gets Jealous is the first in Ms. Hennesy’s Pandora series; each book features the evil that she and her friends must recapture. Aimed at girls, the writing starts off light, with Pandora appearing almost vapid, but the story becomes intense very quickly. The solid mythology in the book is a great way to bring these stories to a younger, female audience that may still see Greek mythology as something geared toward boys despite there being gods AND goddesses on Olympus. Like Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, Ms. Hennesy makes Greek mythology contemporary for a new audience.

The author, actress Carolyn Hennesy, has a Pandora-focused website with a wealth of additional content on the series including teachers’ guides, book synopses, and a discussion forum.