magic – Page 9 – Mom Read It

Fantasy, Fiction, Middle Grade, Tween Reads

New Legends of Orkney: Kalifus Rising

Posted on September 12, 2016 by Rosemary Kiladitis

Kalifus Rising (Legends of Orkney #2), by Alane Adams, (Sept. 2016, SparkPress), $24, ISBN: 9781943006052

Recommended for ages 9-14

In this sequel to 2014’s Red Sun, Sam Baron has freed Orkney from the Red Sun, but is now a prisoner of Catriona, leader of the Volgrim Witches. She’s determined to bend Sam to her will and use his half-god, half-witch power to mold him into the formidable force that will crush Odin and help her gain rule over Orkney and beyond. Fortunately, Sam’s not alone; his three best friends, Keeley, Howie, and Leo, find themselves drawn back into the fray to help save Sam. Each given their own quest, the three friends will learn more about themselves in this adventure.

Full disclosure: I didn’t read The Red Sun, and that’s to my detriment. While I could pick up the general gist of the story through exposition and dialogue that discusses previous events, I would have gotten more from Kalifus Rising if I’d read the first book (and now, it’s on my TBR).

This is a solid quest fantasy that your fantasy readers will love. I appreciated that it was a team effort to save Sam, and I love that each friend had a quest that taught them about themselves; some were given quests they didn’t feel cut out for, only to discover the inner strength to achieve the objective. It’s inspirational, which is the point of really good fantasy, isn’t it? The story concentrates on the importance and power of friendship: a key theme for middle graders; there are also great scenes where Sam reacts exactly like a tween/teen would when faced with a seemingly insurmountable task. He tries to convince Catriona that he’s moved over to her side, while relying on his inner strength to remind himself where he really stands, but as Sam – and by extension, the reader – learns, going it alone can be a tough and scary thing; the danger of losing yourself is real and having people around you to remind yourself of who you are is important. (And so is having a kick-butt mom, if I may say so, myself,)

Kalifus Rising debuted as the #1 hot new release on Amazon, so ride the wave and treat your fantasy readers to the Legends of Orkney series. Booktalk and display with Rick Riordan’s Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, Jasmine Richards’ Secrets of Valhalla, Keira Gillett’s Zaria Fierce trilogy, and K.L. Armstrong’s The Blackwell Pages series.

There’s a great Legends of Orkney webpage that includes a link to BattleKasters, a downloadable game based on the series! You want to see the trailer, right? Of course you want to see the trailer.

Fantasy, Intermediate, Middle Grade, programs, Summer Reading, Tween Reads

Summer Reading programs: Harry Potter Week

Posted on August 16, 2016 by Rosemary Kiladitis

I’m sorry I’ve been away for a while, Husband and I took our yearly date vacation to Boston Comic Con, and I decided to embrace the joy of being a little less available than usual. But I’m back, and I’m here to crow about what was possibly the most successful week of programming I’ve had as a children’s librarian: Harry Potter Week. I set all programming to take place during the last week of July, culminating in both a celebration of Harry’s July 31st birthday AND a chance to rile everyone up for the upcoming Harry Potter and the Cursed Child release that week. It was a success, leaving me in the debt yet again of amazing librarians and Pinterest pinners.

I started things off on Monday by getting everyone ready to attend Hogwarts, initially handing out tickets to the Hogwarts Express, Hogwarts student IDs, and a Hogwarts origami sorting hat so they could sort themselves into houses. I decorated my bulletin board to look like Platform 9 3/4, and made sure no one actually decided to make a run for the wall. I don’t want to fill out accident reports. I helped the kids fold their origami sorters, and we were off to the next part: button making!

I came across the button maker when I first arrived at my library, and it’s been a successful part of my maker programs. Finding House buttons on Pinterest made things so much easier; I printed a few sets out on my home printer (I don’t have a color printer at work), brought the pages in, and got to hole punching. Once the kids selected their houses – I didn’t make them stick with a house they didn’t want – I had them come make their own House buttons. They LOVED it.

See the Hogwarts button in the middle? I made a bunch of those and handed them out to my coworkers, explaining to the kids that any of the librarians, computer people, or helpers were like the Hogwarts faculty, so if they needed help and I wasn’t around, they could just look for the Hogwarts button. My coworkers enjoyed being part of things, and the kids were excited to see a Hogwarts atmosphere taking shape around them. I welcomed the kids to their Houses as they made their buttons, and then moved onto the next part of the opening ceremonies: their Spell Books. I told them that every student at Hogwarts needs to start out with a basic book of spells, and handed out this great PDF including just about every spell in the Harry Potter universe. The pages are 4×6, and since I didn’t have the budget to buy small photo albums as suggested, I just let the kids cut them out and staple them together. We talked about some of the more popular spells, like Expelliarmus and Wingardiuim Leviosa (I totally did the Hermoine “Levi-oh-sah”), and I reminded them NOT to use Unforgiveable Curses on one another. It’s all fun and games until someone Avada Kedavras, you know. Day One at Hogwarts was a success.

On Day Two, we made Marauder’s Maps. I LOVE this one from Harry Potter Paraphernalia, which made things easier on my Corona Kids. There’s a lot of folding, but there’s a lot of wiggle room for someone who isn’t a master folder. I helped the kids with their maps, and everyone was insanely happy with the results. There’s another great map on Instructables, but I ultimately didn’t go with it, because the cutting and folding looked like it would have gotten confusing for most of my kids. The Harry Potter Paraphernalia map was a great introduction to folding for my group, and with some more practice and increasingly complex projects, I hope we can tackle the Instructables map next year.

After we made the maps, we talked about Patronuses. There are still a bunch of kids in the library who haven’t read the books or seen the movies, so introducing them to Hogwarts was exciting, and the Patronus really got them interested. I handed out black construction paper and put out a basket of sidewalk chalk and told them to create their own Patronuses. I figured the chalk on black paper would give the Patronuses an ethereal, otherworldly quality, and I was right! Plus, the kids loved working with the chalk and paper, and let their imaginations go wild. It was great! We had all sorts of Patronuses: a turtle, a giraffe, a unicorn; I even had a kid ask me if it was okay to make Medusa her Patronus. She wasn’t sure if a Gorgon was in Harry Potter’s world, and I told her that Fluffy, the three-headed dog at Hogwarts, is a Greek mythological figure named Cerberus, so if she wanted a Gorgon to be her Patronus, that she should go for it.

On Wednesday, I showed Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and put out Harry Potter/Hogwarts coloring sheets – there are TONS on the Internet! The kids love a good movie day, and since I don’t know how many have cable, this was a first for quite a few. Movie day tends to be my own little oasis in the week, because I tend to between 2 and 4 programs a day during Summer Reading.

Thursday was our Wand Workshop, and despite there being many amazing wand workshops online, I have way too many kiddos to pull out the hot glue guns, so I stuck to chopsticks – I bought a pack of 100 for $1.99 from a local Asian grocery, some glitter glue, duct tape, and stickers. It was just fine; the kids love having something to do, and they love to create. I was able to crop down some of the wand pictures – I can’t publish pictures of the kiddos here on the InterWebs – but you can see some of the imagination that went into their wandmaking here, and that would make Mr. Ollivander proud.

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Friday was the big finale: Harry’s Birthday party and a Horcrux Hunt! The Horcrux Hunt is just like my other weekly treasure hunts: I put up pictures of the Horcruxes, plus a bonus picture (the Deathly Hallows), and gave the kids sheets to find them and write down the number on each picture. Prizes were bookmarks, Oriental Trading craft kits, and temporary tattoos. For Harry’s birthday, I set up a few coloring stations and we made paper bag and book page owls, inspired by this French Harry Potter party site. It’s super easy! We used brown lunch bags for the owl’s body; pages from books destined for the garbage made up the ruffle in front. I traced circular objects of different sizes for the eyes, using the bottom of a small mug for the brown eye feathers, my 1″ hole punch for the whites of the eyes, and a bottlecap for the black of the eyes. I asked the kids to put their owls on a bookshelf when they were done, so we could take a picture of our owl post. It looked amazing!

Of course, no Harry Potter party would be complete without a HAVE YOU SEEN THIS WIZARD? Wanted poster, which I quickly whipped up with a poster board I had.

I am nothing, if not dedicated to getting kids excited about books.

All in all, I had between 30-50 kids take part in each day’s program, and everyone seemed really excited and happy. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is on several school reading lists this year, so I hope that the kids took away a little of the magic from the books. I do know that when Harry Potter and the Cursed Child hit shelves that Monday morning (we’re not open on Sundays, so the books stayed in a lockbox in my manager’s office), they were grabbed up quickly and joyously!

Thanks again to the wonderful bloggers and librarians that shared their ideas and helped me create a great program. I’ve got a Harry Potter party Pinterest board where I keep the pins I used and will add to for future parties, and you can check out my Harry Potter Week Google Drive folder for any printables that I used, all in one spot.

Fantasy, Teen, Tween Reads, Young Adult/New Adult

Beauty and the Beast, retold: Roses by Rose Mannering

Posted on August 7, 2016August 7, 2016 by Rosemary Kiladitis

Roses, by Rose Mannering, (May 2016, Sky Pony), $6.99 via Kindle, ASIN: B01EEQ9D7Q

Recommended for ages 12+

The first in The Tales Trilogy, which will bring well-known fairy tales together in a war-torn fantasy world, Roses is the story of Beauty and the Beast. A nameless young girl arrives to live in the city of Sago, a ward of the wealthy Ma and Pa Dane. She is unusual, with silvery skin, white hair, and violet eyes; in a world where magical beings are feared and loathed, her appearance causes eyebrows to raise. At first, Ma Dane horribly mistreats the girl, even hiring a cruel nanny to beat her and verbally abuse her. As the girl grows older and Ma Dane is reminded of a promise she made long ago, her relationship to the girl becomes more of a showpiece, trotting her out so visitors can gawk at her. She’s given the name Beauty as a cruel joke. When Sago goes through an uprising where magical beings are hunted down, Beauty is sent with Ma Dane’s master of horse, Owaine, to flee into the hill lands for her own safety. Eventually, though, even the hills aren’t safe for Beauty, and she’s forced to run again: this time, to a castle and a Beast, who holds a terrible secret.

Rose Mannering builds an incredible fantasy world in Roses. I wasn’t sure where the book was going at first, to be honest; the Beauty and the Beast part of the story builds gradually, with the first half of the book giving us Beauty’s background. I would have loved more of Beauty and the Beast, because their relationship is masterfully shaped and formed. It looks like we’ll likely get more of these two in future Tales, as it looks like Beauty is going to be a key character in this trilogy.

There are themes of child abuse and bullying, secrets kept and mysterious amulets abound in this first volume. Fantasy and fairy tale fans will be thrilled with a new series to love, and YA romance fans will be drawn to it, because Beauty and the Beast is THE romance! (Beauty and the Beast fans: YES, there is a library, and YES, it is just as breathtaking as your imagination makes it.)

There are so many great YA fairy tale retellings to booktalk this with: your Marissa Meyers’ Lunar Chronicles, Sarah Cross’ Beau Rivage series, Colleen Oakes’ Queen of Hearts – these are just a few. You can start a book group with all of the fairy tales being rewritten these days; ask your readers to read the original tale and the revamp, and talk about the similarities, differences, additions to the worlds, even show the original movies. Our fairy tales have had new lives breathed into them as we hold onto them, which could be a whole topic of discussion, too. We have Disney Princesses as tattooed pin-ups and weapon-wielding warriors, and we’re imagining Disney Princes are real-life people. There’s a lot to talk about here!

Roses is a promising beginning to a new fantasy series. A good add to fantasy collections. The hardcover was published in 2013 and is now available in paperback. I read the Kindle edition for my review, which is also available. The second book in the Tales Trilogy, Feathers, was published in June.

Early Reader, Fantasy, Fiction, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Intermediate

The power of stories: The Storyteller

Posted on July 28, 2016August 24, 2019 by Rosemary Kiladitis

The Storyteller, by Evan Turk (June 2016, Athenum), $18.99, ISBN: 9781481435185

Recommended for ages 5-10

Every now and then, you get an epic in storybook form. The Storyteller is such a tale. We sit down and listen to the storyteller: the narrator of the book, who tells us how the Kingdom of Morocco formed at the edge of the great, dry Sahara desert; how there were fountains of cool water, and storytellers to bring the people together. We also learn that as people forgot the perils of the desert, they forgot about the storytellers, too – except for a single boy, who happened upon a storyteller while in search of a drink of water. The storyteller spun tales for the boy, always leaving him thirsty for more stories.

Once a sacred duty to preserve a culture’s collective memory, the advent of television, movies, and the Internet whittled away at the practice of storytelling. What The Storyteller gives us is a beautifully complex, layered tale that illustrates the power of storytelling, an art that – according to the author’s note at the end of the book – is at long last making a comeback.

Mr. Turk’s art has an ancient feel to it, capturing the story’s spirit using a variety of instruments: water-soluble crayon, colored drawing pencils, inks, indigo, sugared green tea, a heat gun, and fire. The final product made me feel like I was holding a revered story scroll, reading tale straight from history.

Evan Turk received the New Illustrator Honor from the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation for Grandfather Gandhi. Find more of his artwork at his author website. The Storyteller has received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and School Library Journal.

This is a picture book more for school-age kids than little ones. The publisher suggests ages 4-8, but I’d bump it up to ages 5-10, because I feel like Kindergarteners would be better able to sit through the story and lose themselves in this tale. I also feel like this would be a great book to skew a little older with; for instance, upper elementary grades that have storytelling/fairy tales units would have great success introducing this book to classrooms.

Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Teen, Young Adult/New Adult

The Night Flower series continues with Blood Orchid

Posted on June 15, 2016May 14, 2016 by Rosemary Kiladitis

Follow the tour at http://yaboundbooktours.blogspot.com/2016/04/blog-tour-sign-up-blood-orchid-night.html

Blood Orchid (Night Flower #2)
by Claire Warner

Genre: Historical Fiction/Paranormal/Romance
Release Date: June 2016

Summary from Goodreads:

Tied to Justin with bonds stronger than blood, Melissa De Vire heads into her new life with fear and anger. Anger at Emily, at Katherine and most of all, anger at Justin, fuels her resolve to find a cure for the curse. From the English court in 1752 to the fires of the French Revolution, Melissa struggles to survive her new existence and find forgiveness for Justin as clues to a cure begin to surface.

Add to Goodreads

Excerpt from Blood Orchid:

“Move,” Emily’s voice barked out the order and she began to run. Melissa followed as best she could. Her feet skidded on the slick messy cobbles that lined Paris’ streets and she slowed her progress, trying to stay upright.

“What the hell are you stopping for?” The blonde turned to face her, blue eyes angry beneath the large hat and hastily scraped back hair. Dressed in muddy breeches, an oversized shirt and carrying a long bloody dagger at her waist, she was a far cry from the poised, seductive creature she usually portrayed. At Emily’s insistence, Melissa had also ditched the long skirts and corsetry and was trying to keep pace with her lithe companion. “Come on,” Reaching out a hand, she seized hold of Melissa’s wrist and dragged her forward, across the unsteady surface with the grace of a cat. From some distance behind them, they could hear the catcalls and cries of the crowd that milled through the streets. The shouts bounced off ancient stone walls and the echoes produced amplified the sound so that it appeared to surround and envelop them.

“Why are we running?” Melissa choked out as Emily pulled her along an alley. “We won’t die,”

“Because I’d rather not know what decapitation feels like…” Emily’s voice was terse as she released Melissa’s arm and began to clamber over the wall. “You can stay and find out for me if you like,”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Melissa called as she reached up and found the first foothold. Pulling herself up the stone face she pondered how she had ended up with Emily as her companion for this mad dash through Paris.

“Then don’t talk nonsense,” Emily’s hands reached the top of the wall and she levered herself to the top. “And get a move on… I don’t want to get caught because you have the movement rate of a snail,”

Melissa gritted her teeth and pulled herself upward, her limbs stiff and uncoordinated since the loss of her last donor. Cold trickles of sweat rolled over her skin and she grunted with the effort of climbing. Emily reached down a hand and pulled her upwards, until they both straddled the top of the wall. Melissa stopped briefly and stared out across Paris. Fires flickered in the distance as shouts and screams echoed through the air of the ancient city. Emily had no such time for wool gathering as she began to lower herself to street level.

Also in the Night Flower series…

Check out the promo for The Black Lotus (Night Flower #1) here, then head over to GoodReads for more info!

About the Author

When I was a child, I made up games and characters when my sister and I played with dolls. As I grew older, I would make up scenarios and scenes, fully intending to write them down but never finding the time. In my late teens, I discovered the world of role playing and settled into an avid ‘geeky’ life of D&D, comics, sci-fi and fantasy fiction. Years passed and I finally gave voice to the stories in my head. I write romance, fantasy, action and adventure. I love tales of steampunk and history, tales of magical powers and dark curses lurking in the shadows. Though The Black Lotus is not my first attempt at a novel, it is the first I have finished.

And some fun facts about me:

I sew.

My favourite Disney film is Atlantis.

I’ve been a film extra and stood 5 feet away from Sam Rockwell.

Babylon 5 is my fave sci-fi show.

I cried at the end of Toy Story 3.

Author Links:

Website│Goodreads│Twitter│Facebook

GIVEAWAY:

Info to come.

Blog Tour Organized by:

YA Bound Book Tours

Fantasy, Fiction, Middle Grade, Tween Reads

It’s a Fairy Tale Summer: Girl in the Tower

Posted on June 5, 2016June 4, 2016 by Rosemary Kiladitis

The Girl in the Tower, by Lisa Schroeder/Illustrated by Nicoletta Ceccoli, (March 2016, Henry Holt & Co.), $16.99, ISBN: 9780805095135

Recommended for ages 8-12

In true fairy tale fashion, we have an evil queen, a magic spell, and a hidden princess. Young Violet has never known life outside of the castle tower: the evil Queen Bogdana imprisoned her mother shortly after Violet was born, believing that Violet’s beauty will allow her to create a spell that will make her just as beautiful. Bogdana enchanted Violet’s father, sending him away with no memories of his wife or new baby. Mother and daughter pass their days making up stories for one another, alone in their small cell. Thankfully, the palace staff looks after the two, even creating a beautiful garden to sneak the young girl out to once in a while, where she plays with the hummingbirds that live in the garden. As Violet nears the age where the queen can work her spell, she takes Violet, telling her she will become a princess and be adopted by Bogdana and the king, but can never see her mother again. Violet’s mother makes the sacrifice for her daughter’s sake, but Violet is far too smart for Bogdana – she knows something is strange in the castle, and she’s going to find out and reunite her family.

This is a wonderfully modern fairy tale that retains the sense of wonder and magic from classic tales. Violet is a spunky, smart young princess in training, the Bogdana is a perfectly evil queen with a deep-seated self-esteem complex. Ms. Schroeder may humanize Bogdana by letting us in on her motivation, but it doesn’t change the fact that she’s done horrible things to people for the most insipid purposes, and Violet – a naturally lovely and kind foil to Bogdana’s darkness – is going to set the balance right. It’s a great book with strong heroines – her mother is pretty outstanding, herself – and I can’t wait to get this onto my shelves and into my booktalks. I love my fairy tales – the kids here all know it – so I’ll be chattering this up alongside Imelda and the Goblin King for a nice discussion on smart heroines. The black and white illustrations by Nicoletta Ceccoli add beautiful depth to the story.

Add this one to your middle grade fairy tale collections, and take a look at some more of the artwork here:

Early Reader, Fantasy, Fiction, Fiction, Intermediate

Imelda and the Goblin King: This ain’t Labyrinth.

Posted on May 10, 2016August 24, 2019 by Rosemary Kiladitis

Imelda and the Goblin King, by Briony May Smith (Oct. 2015, Nobrow), $17.95, ISBN: 9781909263659

Recommended for ages 5-8

Imelda is a young girl living in an enchanted forest, surrounded by the local fairies she calls friends. But the awful Goblin King appears to kidnap the Fairy Queen, and the fairies ask Imelda for her help. Now, it’s up to Imelda to get rid of the Goblin King for good!

Another winner from Nobrow! This debut by Briony May Smith is a fun fairy tale with a strong female main character and eye-catching, bright art that fills each spread with movement and interest. The Goblin King is suitably dour and fierce looking, and his little minions look just as distasteful. Imelda is a great fairy tale heroine, rosy-cheeked and pink-dressed, but she’s no passive princess locked in a tower, waiting for a prince – she’s got a plan to turn the Goblin King into a worm, and she enlists the fairies to do it.

I also love the great fairy tale font. It’s very bold, with emphasis on the “stomps” and exclamations of “Goblin King!” It’s a different font that makes the story as interesting for a reader as it does for the audience in a read-aloud.

A fun fairy tale for school-age kids, this one will be a fun addition to collections where fairy tales do well. I’d pair this one with Kate Beaton’s Princess and the Pony for a read-aloud on princesses who can save themselves, thank you very much. Put this on a shelf with Luke Pearson’s Hilda series, too – the kids will love it.

Fantasy, Fiction, Fiction, Intermediate, Middle Grade, Tween Reads

Science, Mystery, and Magic: The Peculiar Haunting of Thelma Bee

Posted on May 10, 2016May 10, 2016 by Rosemary Kiladitis

The Peculiar Haunting of Thelma Bee, by Erin Petti/Illustrated by Kris Aro McLeod, (Sept. 2016, Mighty Media), $16.99, ISBN: 9781938063725

Recommended for ages 9-13

Eleven year-old Thelma Bee is always doing something. She’s reading, she’s working on science experiments, she’s hanging out with her best friend – a guy! – Alexander. Her father runs an antique shop in town and her mother is always off on some kind of adventure, exploring and searching for different animals, so she’s got adventuring and imagination in her blood. When a dour woman shows up at her father’s shop with a small box, things start going very, very wrong: her father is kidnapped by a ghost that very night, and it’s up to Thelma, Alexander, and a local group of ghost hunters to get him back safely. It’s a scary mission, but one Thelma has to undertake – and she’ll learn a lot about herself in the process.

The Peculiar Haunting of Thelma Bee is so much fun! Middle graders are going to love the smart, spunky middle grader that doesn’t care about the mean girls and their dopey fashion choices – she has better things to do. When her dad is kidnapped by a ghost, right in front of her, she charges into action, amassing the facts she knows and researching what she needs to fill in the gaps of her knowledge and save her dad. She’s a great heroine for middle graders, girls and boys alike, because she shows that science, facts, and a clear path of reasoning will get you through some tough times.

The book is fast-paced, leading us into action pretty quickly, and not letting any lag set in. I’ll be booktalking this one hard, and pairing her with Hermione (Harry Potter) and Annabeth (Percy Jackson) for my fantasy-loving readers. Put this one right next to Neil Gaiman’s Coraline, Sally Gardner’s Wings & Co. series, and Karen Foxlee’s Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy to create a solid girl-power reading display.

The book trailer is below, and you can visit Mighty Media’s Thelma Bee page here. Erin Petti’s author page is here.

If you’re going to be at BEA/Book Con this week, I am SO envious! Have a great time, and visit Mighty Media at Booth 2170 when you get a chance! They’ll be at BookCon from 10am-6pm, and Erin Petti will be signing ARC’s of The Peculiar Haunting of Thelma Bee at 1PM, with a bookstore event to follow at 5pm at (Uncharted Books).

Adventure, Fiction, Fiction, Middle Grade, Realistic Fiction, Tween Reads

Mysterium #1: The Black Dragon has suspense, magic, and mystery

Posted on March 11, 2016 by Rosemary Kiladitis

Mysterium #1: The Black Dragon, by Julian Sedgwick/Illustrated by Patricia Moffett (Mar. 2016, Carolrhoda Books), $18.99

Recommended for ages 10-14

Danny Woo didn’t have the most traditional upbringing. As the child of circus performers in a traveling circus, he learned a great deal from his death-defying parents, until a suspicious fire left him an orphan in the care of his journalist aunt, Laura. When an explosion at Danny’s boarding school closed the school while repairs are made, Laura swept him off to his mother’s homeland, Hong Kong; she’s researching a dangerous triad gang known as the Black Dragon, but Danny feels like she knows more than she’s letting on. After his aunt is kidnapped, Danny and his old circus friend, a dwarf named Major Zamora, are left to save Laura – and themselves – using every trick they learned at the circus.

The Black Dragon is the first book in a new series. Mysterium follows the adventures of Danny Woo, a tween who survived the fire that killed his parents. Brought up in a traveling circus, Danny has some tricks up his sleeve and knows that his remaining family – his aunt Laura and his friend, Zamora – knows more about his parents’ deaths than they’re willing to let on. Previously published outside the US, there are three books in the series (so far); I hope they’ll also be published in the U.S., to give audiences a chance to read the whole series.

I liked what I’ve read so far. There’s a lot of action and intrigue, with some questions posed and just enough answers given to tease readers into getting the next book. Danny is a smart, capable kid who uses the hypnosis and sleight of hand techniques he learned from his dad to aid his own investigation. He tends to go with his gut feelings on things, because he’s good at “reading” people – another talent he picked up from his father. His friend Zamora is a loyal friend who acts as Danny’s partner and protector. We’ve got good exposition, interesting characters with talents not usually explored by tween fic, and multi-ethnic, diverse characters that make this a good choice to add to reading lists. I’d pair this with Simon Nicholson’s Young Houdini middle grade series for a nice display on magic in fiction.

Check out the Mysterium webpage for more information on the rest of the series, which you can also buy for your reader if you can’t wait for them to be published stateside.

Fantasy, Fiction, Fiction, Middle Grade, Tween Reads

Zaria Fierce brings Norse myth to modern adventure!

Posted on January 21, 2016 by Rosemary Kiladitis

Take a timid girl, put her in a seemingly impossible situation, and you’ll find out what she’s really made of. Zaria Fierce, a 13 year-old living with her adoptive family in Norway, finds herself up against trolls and magical creatures of all sorts when she heads to school one morning and is confronted by Olaf, a troll – you got it – from under a bridge. She thinks she’s outsmarted the big creep, but he gets the last laugh when he kidnaps her best friend, Christoffer. Now, it’s up to Zaria and her friends to save Christoffer, but Zaria’s in for a wild ride with some big revelations along the way!

Zaria Fierce and the Secret of Gloomwood Forest, by Keira Gillet/Illustrated by Eoghan Kerrigan, (2015, self-published), $14.99, ISBN: 978-1942750017

Zaria Fierce and the Secret of Gloomwood Forest lays the groundwork for a new series that brings elements of Norse myth to modern day. Neither Loki nor Odin are stirring up trouble here, though – we’ve got the trolls making trouble, some elves, and dwarves, enchanted forests, and magic items aplenty here. There are secrets revealed and some big decisions Zaria must make – and they’re not always the right ones. She’s a girl with a lot of heart and has friends who quibble with her and each other, but would do anything for her.

Zaria Fierce and the Enchanted Drakeland Sword, by Keira Gillet/Illustrated by Eoghan Kerrigan, (2015, self-published), $14.99, ISBN: 978-1942750031

The story continues in Zaria Fierce and the Enchanted Drakeland Sword. Armed with a better understand of who she and what she needs to do, Zaria and her friends are back and trying to fix a major mistake she made while trying to free Christoffer. We’ve got pirate ships and giants in this story, and a very creepy doppleganger making some trouble for Zaria. Can she get hold of the enchanted Drakeland sword and foil Olaf’s plans?

The stories are written and illustrated in a manner that recalls fantasy and adventure stories I read as a kid. The black and white fantasy sketches are beautiful and creepy – I love the white stag and the deliciously creepy Olaf – and brings a lot of imagination to the page.

Self-published by the author, the books can be purchased via Amazon (I’ve linked each title to its Amazon page below the cover shots). You can find a book trailer and Zaria Fierce coloring sheets on Keira Gillett’s website, sign up for her newsletter, and get a countdown to the next book in the Zaria Fierce trilogy. Keep an eye out for an author interview with Keira Gillett, right here, very soon!