Putnam Juvenile – Mom Read It

The Matchstick Castle, by Keir Graff, (Jan. 2017, GP Putnam & Sons), $16.99, ISBN: 9781101996225

Recommended for ages 9-13

Brian is on track to having the worst summer EVER. His widowed dad has the chance of a lifetime, doing research at the South Pole. His brother is staying with a friend while his dad’s away. Brian’s being shipped off to Boring, Illinois, to stay with his Uncle Gary, Aunt Jenny, and know-it-all cousin, Nora. To add insult to injury, Uncle Gary’s developed a summer school computer program, Summer’s Cool, and is making Brian and Nora keep actual school hours to prevent the dreaded “summer slide”. Just when Brian wants to tear his hair out from boredom, he and Nora discover a house in the woods beyond Uncle Gary’s property. Cosmo van Dash, the boy who lives there, calls the house The Matchstick Castle, and he lives there with his eccentric family – explorers, writers, thinkers, dreamers – and invites Brian and Nora on adventures where they’ll explore the house to recover a lost uncle, run from wild boars and trap giant Amazon bees. A fanatically boring bureaucrat wants to tear the Matchstick Castle to put up another – well, boring – housing development, but Brian, Nora, and the van Dash family will fight to secure their castle.

This story is way too much fun. Told in the first person from Brian’s point of view, we get a narrator who is having the worst summer ever. He’s a sympathetic character: we get only enough information about his family to know that his mother has died, his father is a very permissive parent, and he’s put into a situation that threatens to squash all the fun and creativity out of his life in favor of being safe and predictable. Boring, just like the Illinois town where he’s enduring the summer. The Matchstick Castle and the family that lives there helps bring color and life back to Brian’s world and, in doing so, brings him closer to his cousin, Nora, while also giving Nora permission to let loose and have fun. Tweens will love the van Dashes. It’s a good opportunity to share fun and crazy family stories as a writing or collage exercise, too. I hope this one shows up on summer reading lists; it’s a perfect summertime read.

I’ve been quiet lately, because I’ve been plowing through my Cybils middle grade fiction nominees. Here are some thoughts.

The Meaning of Maggie, by Megan Jean Sovern (2014, Chronicle Books) $16.99, ISBN: 978-1452110219

Recommended for ages 9-12

Set in the 1980s, Maggie’s an 11 year-old girl who wants to be president one day. She’s funny, quirky, and seemingly always at odds with her two older sisters. Her family is coping with her father’s increasingly worsening multiple sclerosis, the severity of which they try to shield from Maggie.

I enjoyed this book, in part because one of my childhood friends lost her mom to MS. Reading this book helped me, in a way, understand what my friend went through all those years ago, when we were all far too young to understand it. The author drew upon her own life to write this book, and for that, I’m thankful. Maggie is engaging and quirky, and as frustrating as I found her dad, in his ultimate quest to “be cool”, I saw his struggle to hang on when everything was falling apart around him.

All Four Stars, by Tara Dairman (2014, Putnam Juvenile), $16.99, ISBN: 978-0399162527

Recommended for ages 9-12

An 11 year-old foodie raised by junk food junkies has to be one of the best story plots I’ve come across in a while!

Gladys LOVES cooking. It’s her passion. She has a cookbook collection, watches cooking shows with a passion her classmates reserve for video games… and her parents just don’t get it. They microwave everything that they don’t bring home in a greasy bag. How can a foodie live like this?

When Gladys enters an essay contest for the New York Standard newspaper, her essay ends up in the hands of the food editor – who thinks it’s a cover letter. Gladys finds herself with a freelance assignment – to test out a new dessert restaurant in Manhattan! How can she visit the restaurant and write her review without her parents catching on?

This book just made me happy. It’s a fun story, with an instantly likable main character. Even her antagonists are likable, if a bit clueless. The plot moves along at a great pace, and I found myself chuckling out loud at some of the situations Gladys found herself in while trying to keep her secret. This is a great book to put into kids’ hands, a welcome lift from the heaviness that seems to permeate middle grade realistic fiction these days. I can’t wait to read the sequel, The Stars of Summer, when it hits shelves this summer.

Tag: Putnam Juvenile

Explore The Matchstick Castle

Cybils Middle Grade At-a-Glance: The Meaning of Maggie & All Four Stars