Second Round Brackets

The Warden's Daughter VS. Forever Or A Long Long Time

Forever or a long long time by Caela Carter about a girl who has a hard time beleiving she will not be given away again after finally being adopted after years in foster care. She is on a search to discover who she is and learn about why she was given up while also trying to make her Brother, Mom, Dad and Teacher as happy as possible. Flora works hard at overcoming her trauma which has left it difficult for her to speak her mind and remember her life events. Throughout the book some of our favourite moments were when they yell "elephant" when they need to escape an awkward situation and all the theories on life in the book. Most of all we enjoyed the journey she takes to connect the small memories she has of her previous life in order to gain an understanding of who she is and where she came from. 10/10


Wardens daughter by Jerry Spinelli: This is a book about a girl who lives in the apartment attached to a prison. Her father is the warden, her mother died when she was young and she has an inmate taking care of her during the summer. She has some anger issues and doesn't trust people very easily. Her deepest desire is to have a mother, a job she wishes her babysitter would take on. There are many events that will make you cry, laugh and cringe including fun girly sleepovers, epic baseball games and an untimely death in the prison. A very enjoyable read. 9/10

Maybe A Fox VS. A Night Divided

A Night Divided: We gave this book 8/10. It inspired us to read more historical fiction which isn't a genre one member of our group has read a lot before. It helped us better understand real life situations that kids our age went through and all the problems that really happened in our world. Gerta and her brother Fritz proved that they were risk takers but for a good cause. They didn't accept that they would be separated from their families and they went to do something about it even though it was really dangerous. Gerta and her best friend Anna had a lot of ups and downs in the book. It was a pretty realistic relationship as they started out doing lots of things that girls this age would do. It was interesting to see just how much impact the government could have on individuals and families and their daily lives. This book was slow in the first half but the second half it was full of suspense and really exciting. We really wanted to know if they'd manage to escape and who might actually die while attempting to leave. The author did a good job of stretching this suspense out and making the second half of the book a real page turner. Other kids should read this book so that they learn about the problems kids our age faced in history. If they haven't read historical fiction before it should make them really want to read more of this genre. We had questions about what their Dad had actually done to start all the issues with the government and his family in the first place. Why did the government feel they had to control people so much and how they managed to keep such detailed files on so many people. We wanted to know more about how they got this information and what Fritz was doing during the day. We also felt that there could have been a bit more historical detail about this time period as it isn't a time we knew a lot about.

Maybe a Fox: We gave this book 9/10. It is realistic fiction which we all really love. We really liked how the author told the story from the point of view of Jules and the fox. It was sometimes confusing but it did help us relate to the little tiny bit of fantasy that was included with the foxes story. This book really made us emotional! Especially when Jules was going, over and over how she could have tried to hold onto her sister before she disappeared. That part was a real tearjerker! It was also neat that the author included social media, like YouTube and made that a big part of the story. Social media is in all our lives so it was neat to see how it could be used to do good in our world. Questions that we were left with were about Sylvie's fate. While we were reading we really wanted to know what had actually happened to her. We also really wanted to know what happened to 'older brother' fox. It was neat how the author included spirit animals and made us think about alternate worlds. We loved how it made us think whether Sylvie's spirit was in the fox when she was born. We thought about how when Senna says she needs to find someone whether that was Jules or somebody else. It really talked about reality when the narrarator started talking about how Sam wished for his older brother to come back home over and over again, then he does come back and he seems as if Afganistan kept part of him and returned the rest of him. Zeke doesn't come back home with Elk and it makes Sam question all his wishes, if he wished for both of them to come back home then would Elk become the same person again. This book was a pretty fast and easy read and it really drew you in and kept you guessing. Maybe a Fox is our winner!

When You Reach Me VS. Circus Mirandus

The book we’ve chosen as the winner in this bracket is When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead. There were things that we enjoyed about both of the books but we all agreed that When You Reach Me was the clear winner because of its unique plot. At first it just seemed like a regular book about friendship but then there were all these mysterious events that happened. Miranda starts receiving these letters and has to figure out who is sending them to her and why. The author really keeps the reader guessing right to the end. It wasn’t until the very last pages that we finally understood who the laughing man was and his connection to the rest of the characters and the story. We were happy with how the book ended and we appreciated the time travel element. For most of us this was the first time travel book we’ve read so that it special since it’s the first. GG & AW

The Thing About Jellyfish VS. The False Prince

We liked both The Thing About Jellyfish and The False Prince. The Thing About Jellyfish is the story Suzy, a young girl who loses her one of her oldest friends in an accident. Suzy struggles to understand the death of her friend and stops speaking as she searches for an explanation. We found at first, the story was difficult to read. It was a mature topic that felt sad. We are voting for The False Prince, we loved the adventure, action, and mystery in this book.



The False Prince-KJ


I really liked this book because of all the word choices the author used. I also liked this book because of the way the author told the story. It was very different for me and something I wasn’t used to. Something the author did that I liked was the twists she does.It was very exciting, clever and it got you hooked in more. For example what Sage did to Connor was surprising and what Roden and Cregan did was unbelievable! The author did a very good job of making you feel like you’re in the book and that you’re the different characters. The author did well describing everything and everyone in the book!





THE FALSE PRINCE- Kirat


I thought this book was interesting because first of all the vocabulary and all the details and how they described the characters. It felt like I was the characters I could feel their emotions. I almost cried. The author Jennifer A. Nielsen is really good at plot twists. The main character, Sage is very interesting, especially his backstory and how he grew up and survived.


I really want this book to win because it was a page turner I could not put the book down. The Characters had very different stories I have never read a book with these kinds of characters.

One Crazy Summer VS. Lemons

A meh kind of bracket. We had high hopes for this bracket but ultimately were a bit disappointed by the results. They aren’t terrible books, we didn’t feel we wasted our time but no one in our bracket felt like they were among our most amazing reading experiences.

We read One Crazy Summer first. We felt it took a long time to set up and then ended too quickly. It is the story of three sisters who are sent to spend the summer with a mother who left them years ago. The mom was not a warm and fuzzy character and we wanted to know more about what made her leave her kids and not really want to be in contact with them. Unfortunately, we don’t get a lot of answers to these questions as the book and summer come to an end without resolving this. This book is part of a series and we feel we might get more answers the farther we read into the series. It is set in the 1960s in Los Angeles and deals with serious issues around how people deal with each other based on race - this made it a unique reading experience for some of us. We were left with a lot of questions and that did not make us happy.

Lemons, on the other hand wrapped up everything in its ending but too neatly for some of us who felt the end was too simple. It tells the story of a girl who moves in with a grandfather she’s never known when her mom dies. She makes friends with a boy who wants to find sasquatch and struggles to make friends. Once again we learned a lot about a topic we knew little about but we still had questions about what happened to the mom and the grandpa before that ended their relationship.

Neither book was without faults and most of us gave marks in the 7.5/10 range. When it came to voting two students voted for Lemons and one for One Crazy Summer. I was leaning towards One Crazy Summer but that would have still made it a tie...so in the end we went with the girls votes - majority rules and Lemons will move on.

We look forward to reading something people were very excited about in the next round!

When Friendship Followed Me Home VS. Posted

We read the books “Posted” by John David Anderson and “When Friendship Followed Me Home” by Paul Griffin. Both of these books would be considered realistic fiction, and have characters in middle school. When both Adam and Tendai read “Posted” they really liked the book and both rated it as one of the better books they had recently read. The idea of not having technology to interact with each other and having to use post-it notes as a way to communicate was an interesting plot idea. Except once we finished “When Friendship Followed Me Home” the winner of this bracket was clear. Ben Coffin from WFFMH was faced with life struggle after life struggle, making this a book that had you hoping for something to go his way with every passing chapter. WFFMH leaves the reader emotionally distraught with what Ben goes through and is a book that every middle school reader should have the opportunity to read. It shows us the bravery and resilience of a young man who has the world against him, and the book leaves a long lasting impression on the reader, which is why it deserves to land in the hands of others readers in our Mighty Mini Smackdown!