The Magic Thief Series by Sarah Prineas

          I absolutely loved this book!  It had plenty of mystery, fantasy, and adventure.  It's kind of like Harry Potter, in the way that it has magic and wizards--just no wands.  I liked the way the author described everything. It's one of my favorites.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll

Jessica:  Having grown up watching Disney's cartoon version of Alice in Wonderland and now watching it with my own children, I have always had a soft spot in my heart for these stories.  I loved reading them as a pre-teen.  However, after watching the new Disney version by Tim Burton (it was very . . . interesting, to say the least), I had to re-read them to make sure they weren't more bizarre than I recalled.  They may be a bit off-the-wall, but not so outlandish as the movie would lead you to believe; in fact, both books were quite comical and had me laughing out loud.

Carroll was a master at language and logic--he actually worked as a mathematics tutor at Oxford, and you can tell that he had a brilliant mind.  He uses word play frequently in his stories, which makes them all the more amusing.  Both books are very clever and entertaining and well-deserving of the title "classics."

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland has the stories of the Mad Hatter & March Hare and the Queen of Hearts.  Through the Looking-Glass deals more with the chess pieces--the white and red queens--and traveling from one "square" of a giant chessboard to another. It includes the characters of Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee and the talking flowers.

Alice with Tweedle-Dum & Tweedle-Dee before their battle

Lydia:  I loved the royal subjects and how they acted. For example, how the Red Queen is running with Alice and they get absolutely nowhere. Then there is the White Queen who starts crying because she will get hurt in the future. I loved these books in every way!

Alice talking with the White Queen

(I suppose I am biased, but I love Lydia's drawing style!  I made her sketch a couple of her favorite scenes so I could show her off a bit . . . :)

Peter and the Starcatchers by Dave Barry & Ridley Pearson

  This is supposed to be a retold story of Peter Pan, but it has a lot more adventure and way more details. It tells what happened before Peter Pan became the Peter Pan he is now. It was so fun to read I just couldn't put it down. I loved it!

The Girl Who Could Fly by Victoria Forester

This was an employee pick at Barnes & Noble (my favorite date night destination!) a few months ago, and it caught my eye.  When I found it sitting on the "New Arrivals" shelf at the library (it's not that new, but I'm not complaining), I snatched it up, eager to squeeze it in between two other books I was reading.

For the first half the book I read with quite a critical eye.  The cover of the book has a comment from Twilight's Stephanie Meyers: "It's the oddest/sweetest mix of Little House on the Prairie and X-Men . . ." This totally threw me--there was little or no Little House on the Prairie involved.  But then halfway through the book it started to really grab me.  What a sweet story!  It was exciting, interesting, clean (okay, it had one bad word), and it even had a good moral.  Perhaps what I liked most about it was its potential for discussion between parents and their kids who read it--about how the story symbolizes the choices we make and the tools used by the adversary (especially distraction!).

So while Piper McCloud, the main character, has a bit of a forced accent and seems a bit Pollyanna-ish--hey, what's wrong with that, right? :)

Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine

Now, if you've seen the movie, Ella Enchanted, don't despair; the book is ten times better.  I mean, don't get me wrong--I liked the movie okay, and I think Hugh Dancy is a great actor, but they changed a lot of things and made it somehow modern in ways it wasn't supposed to be.  So . . .  all that aside, back to the book.

There have been countless retold fairy tales about Cinderella, but I love the twist on this one--that Ella has to obey any order she is given.  You'll find all the elements of the original story (i.e. the glass slippers, the ball, pumpkin carriage, and wicked stepsisters) along with a spunky, spirited heroine who has a mind of her own.  This one is appropriate for about 4th grade and up--clean and cute, and hey--a Newberry Honor book!

Fablehaven series by Brandon Mull

Fablehaven: a magical preserve where frogs eat people, fairy's turn big, and goblins go to school. When Kendra and Seth go to their grandparents house for a week they see some pretty strange things. Will they ever get to the bottom of it? And will they ever see their grandma again? Fablehaven is a great series of books.

Once Upon a Time: Before Midnight & The Storyteller's Daughter by Cameron Dokey

I find that I have to intersperse my heavy reading with lighter books so my brain doesn't start to hurt . . .  and this series was a perfect "'tweener."  It was recommended to me my my lovely sister-in-law, Amy (who has excellent taste in books).  The series has several titles, all of them retold fairy tales, and three or four of them are written by Cameron Dokey.  Now they aren't life-changing and tend to be a bit predictable (because of course we all know how the fairy tale ends, right?), but they are clean and fun--and who doesn't like a nice happy ending once in a while?

Before Midnight is a retelling of the Cinderella story.  There is an unusual twist on the father and step-mother relationship that makes it different from the familiar Disney version, and I really liked it.

Another title I read was The Storyteller's Daughter.  You'll find a lot of stories out there about Beauty & the Beast, Cinderella, etc., but you don't often hear about Sharazad, and I found her tale quite intriguing.

I would really recommend this series (hopefully all the others are as good!) for any preteen daughters you might have who are perhaps too caught up in vampire series books. . . .  You are safe with these, and they're still interesting and have enough romance (but not too much) to keep them reading.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riorden

I am a huge fan of the Harry Potter books, and this series by Rick Riorden has come pretty close to that level of enjoyment for me. They are a series of books about a young unlikely hero--Percy Jackson, son of Posiedon. Following adventure after adventure, you find yourself brushed up on your Greek mythology and thoroughly entertained into the bargain. They are well-written with a hip (but not really disrespectful) teenage voice to them (written in first person), and the dialogue is totally believable. I thought each book in the series improved upon the one before it.