CHILDREN'S
Released: April 14, 2011
"Ebulliently original. (Fantasy. 11-13)"
Who can't love a story about a Nigerian-American 12-year-old with albinism who discovers latent magical abilities and saves the world?
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CHILDREN'S
Released: April 5, 2011
"The only gripe readers might initially have is with its length, but by the end, they'll immediately wish it was longer. (Fantasy. 10-14)"
Since being inexplicably plucked from their parents' home, three children—Kate, Michael and Emma, who all ferociously resist the label "orphan"—have trickled through a long line of decent to atrocious orphanages.
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CHILDREN'S
Released: March 9, 2010
"With Henry's discovery that the neighboring Nordlands (think Scotland, with a Stalinist overlay) is secretly preparing for war, the author also crafts a continuing plotline for sequels to this pleasant if unambitious opener. (Fantasy. 11-13)"
Offering the comfort of familiarity, "Haberdasher" (aka Robyn Schneider) crafts an alternate-world boarding-school tale set in the loosely confederated Britonian Isles and featuring a trio of commoner lads admitted against all custom to the posh academy where Knights of the Realm are trained.
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CHILDREN'S
Released: March 2, 2010
"In spite of some clichéd, Dan Brown–influenced business with the top-secret Prodigium hunters L'Occhio di Dio, the snappy one-liners, loyal friendships and burgeoning romance will delight fans of Rosemary Clement-Moore's Maggie Quinn series. (Fantasy. YA)"
Veronica Mars meets Percy Jackson and the Olympians in an appealing, if not groundbreaking, series opener.
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CHILDREN'S
Released: Jan. 16, 2009
"Nonetheless, stealing a march on all competitors by treating The Tales of Beedle the Bard (2008) as a separate title, this wins points for currency, and all but the most obsessive readers will find it unexcelled for ease of use as a quick reference guide. (source list) (Reference. 10-adult)"
His publisher having lost 2008's courtroom battle against J.K. Rowling and Warner Brothers over an initial print version of his popular fan site's encyclopedia of everything Potter, Vander Ark offers a revised second take.
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CHILDREN'S
Released: July 21, 2007
The epic adventure ends where, and as, it should in this long-awaited heart- (and, predictably, door-) stopping closer.
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CHILDREN'S
Released: May 1, 2007
"His emotional maturity realistically lagging behind his intellectual development, Cadel rides right up there with Artemis Fowl as a sympathetic anti-villain. (Fiction. 12-15)"
Carried along by much peeling back of layers of deception and repeated thickenings of plot, this hefty but engrossingly complex tale features a young super-brain being groomed for world domination.
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CHILDREN'S
Released: March 1, 2007
Running long but hung about with cantrips to catch clever readers, Stewart's children's debut pits four exceptional youngsters, plus a quartet of adult allies, against a deranged inventor poised to inflict an involuntary "Improvement" on the world.
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CHILDREN'S
Released: April 1, 2006
"A competent, unexceptionable addition to teen fantasy shelves; the sort of thing you'll like if you really like that sort of thing. (Fantasy. YA)"
Stop me if you've heard this one before: Ordinary youth unearths a mysterious artifact, discovers his secret heritage and becomes the pivotal figure in an epic battle between Good and Evil.
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CHILDREN'S
Released: July 1, 2005
"The sardonic tone of the narrator's voice lends a refreshing air of realism to this riotously paced quest tale of heroism that questions the realities of our world, family, friendship and loyalty. (Fantasy. 12-15)"
Edgar Award–winning Riordan leaves the adult world of mystery to begin a fantasy series for younger readers.
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CHILDREN'S
Released: June 1, 2005
Sturdily competent fantasy from a veteran Australian screenwriter, this quartet opener introduces five teenaged orphans raised together in the medieval-like kingdom of Araluen, focusing on the apprenticeship of wiry, clever Will to a mysterious scout/spy, and on Will's changing relations with oversized, rival-later-friend Horace.
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CHILDREN'S
Released: March 1, 2005
"A quick-reading, stand-alone, deliciously spellbinding series opener. (Web site) (Fantasy. 10-13)"
CHILDREN'S
Released: Oct. 1, 2003
"Master translator Bell takes the German text and spins out of it vivid images and heart-stopping language that impel the reader through this adventure about narratives—a true feast for anyone who has ever been lost in a book. (Fiction. 10+)"
It is hard to avoid preciosity in books about books, but here Funke pulls off the feat with vigor.
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CHILDREN'S
Released: May 1, 2003
"Readers who are too young to read Harry Potter independently will find these have just the right amount of menace laced with appealing humor and are blessed with crisp pacing and, of course, DiTerlizzi's enticingly Gothic illustrations. (Fiction. 7-11)"
Unexplained things are happening in the eerie Victorian heap that is new home to the Grace family.
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CHILDREN'S
Released: July 8, 2000
"Still, opening with a thrilling quidditch match, and closing with another wizardly competition that is also exciting, for very different reasons, this sits at the center of Rowling's projected seven volume saga and makes a sturdy, heartstopping (doorstopping) fulcrum for it. (Fiction. All ages)"
As the bells and whistles of the greatest prepublication hoopla in children's book history fade, what's left in the clearing smoke is—unsurprisingly, considering Rowling's track record—another grand tale of magic and mystery, of wheels within wheels oiled in equal measure by terror and comedy, featuring an engaging young hero-in-training who's not above the occasional snit, and clicking along so smoothly that it seems shorter than it is.
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CHILDREN'S
Released: Sept. 8, 1999
The Harry Potter epic (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, p. 888, etc.) continues to gather speed as Harry enters his third year at the Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry and does battle with the traitor behind his parents' deaths.
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CHILDREN'S
Released: June 2, 1999
"Readers will be irresistibly drawn into Harry's world by GrandPre's comic illustrations and Rowling's expert combination of broad boarding school farce and high fantasy. (Fiction. 11-14)"
This sequel to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (1998) brings back the doughty young wizard-in-training to face suspicious adults, hostile classmates, fretful ghosts, rambunctious spells, giant spiders, and even an avatar of Lord Voldemort, the evil sorcerer who killed his parents, while saving the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry from a deadly, mysterious menace.
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CHILDREN'S
Released: Sept. 1, 1998
"It's slanted toward action-oriented readers, who will find that Briticisms meld with all the other wonders of magic school. (Fiction. 10-14)"
In a rousing first novel, already an award-winner in England, Harry is just a baby when his magical parents are done in by Voldemort, a wizard so dastardly other wizards are scared to mention his name.
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