The Turnover uses basketball as the background for a boy’s crisis of faith in his grandfather. The Turnover by Mike Lupica. Simon & Shuster, 2020, 234 pages. Reading level: Middle Grades, ages 10-12 Recommended for: ages 10-14 Lucas Winston loves basketball and he loves his grandfather. In fact, he loves basketball largely because of his grandfather, the best coach in the league. It’s the family game—Lucas’s father might have been a college star but for a knee injury in high school. Pancreatic cancer took Dad out of the game, and out of Lucas’s life, early on. But there’s still Gramps, a substitute dad and a roll model in one. When…

Beast: Face-to-Face with the Florida Bigfoot is a chilling, gripping tale of survival in the unknown. Beast: Face-to-Face with the Florida Bigfoot by Watt Key. Farrar Straus Giroux, 2020, 215 pages. Reading Level: Middle Grade, ages 10-12 Recommended for: ages 12-16 Adam Parks was found by the side of the road. When he came to in the hospital with a police sergeant looking down at him, he couldn’t remember what happened. Or not entirely: he and his parents were on their way back from Disney World on Highway 98, late at night, when something loomed up in the middle of the road. Dad swerved and their car plunged into the…

The Winter King by Christine Cohen. Cannonball Books, 2019. 360 pages. Reading Level: Young adult/teen, ages 12 and up Recommend For: Ages 12 and up The annual feast for the Winter King is looming. Cora Nikolson and her mother (head cook in High Aldorman Fyodor’s kitchen) are working themselves to the bone to prepare. Their family is reputedly under a curse; if Cora’s mother loses this job, the family will starve. As it is, they’re barely surviving. Desperate to help her family, Cora hatches a bold plan: she’ll insinuate herself into Nils’s good graces in order to gain more work hours. Nils, though, is no friend of her family’s. Desperate…

Running Wild gives readers ages 6-10 new appreciation for the immense variety and careful design evidenced in animal motion. Running Wild: Awesome Animals in Motion by Galadriel Watson, illustrated by Samantha Dixon. Annick Press, 2020, 59 pages. Reading Level: Picture Book, ages 6-8 Recommended for: ages 7-12 Basically, all motion is a physics problem. In organic creatures, the proper term is “biomechanics.” That’s a new word for me, but this picture book packs lots of information I hadn’t considered. Rather than marching through various phyla highlighting their unique manners of motion, the text considers types of motion (such as hopping, swinging, crawling) and chooses examples from across the animal kingdom…