The Accidental Apprentice
The Accidental Apprentice is a real middle grades charmer, and I’m delighted it’s the first in a series. Kids who love Pokemon, How to Train Your Dragon, and Fablehaven will appreciate the secret magical world inhabited by Lore Keepers, who bond with and train the world’s magical creatures.
by AMANDA FOODY
All Barclay wants is to be like everybody else. Orphaned in an attack by one of the fantastic beasts that roam the Woods, he knows his only shot at a family and a normal life is to apprentice himself to one of the villagers — and if the only person willing to take him on is a mushroom farmer, well then, Barclay is going to be the best darn mushroom farmer Dullshire's ever seen. When he slips into the woods and accidentally bonds with a magical beast, things get complicated, and Barclay discovers that the only way to get out of this new adventure and get his normal life back is to come in first in the Lore Keepers’ apprentice exhibition. Unfortunately, some of the Lore Keepers are up to no good, and they, too, are pinning their plans on the apprentice exhibition.
The Accidental Apprentice is a real middle grades charmer, and I’m delighted it’s the first in a series. Kids who love Pokemon, How to Train Your Dragon, and Fablehaven will appreciate the secret magical world inhabited by Lore Keepers, who bond with and train the world’s magical creatures. It’s a great magical world with thoughtful organization, peopled with interesting characters and creatures. I also like Barclay as a reluctant hero — a kid who’s worked so hard to be “normal” doesn’t let go of that desire easily, even when there are fantastic storm hounds and tiny dragons around. His bond with his Beast feels real — he pushes against it at first, but he can’t help feeling a connection to the magical creature who chose him in the Woods.
If you’re looking for a new magical world to explore, this one’s worth visiting. I really enjoyed it.
The Last Fallen Star
Sure, it’s hard to be magic in a family of Muggles, but it’s even harder to be a saram (a person without magic) in a clan of powerful Korean witches. In The Last Falling Star, Riley’s life has revolved around the Korean magical community ever since a Gom clan family adopted her when she was a baby, and even though she’s memorized every spell she can get her hands on, she’s resigned herself to an unmagical life — until her sister comes up with a crazy idea. Hattie is about to earn her Gi bracelet — and her place in the adult magical community — but she’s found a spell that would let her share her magic with Riley. If Hattie performs the spell at her initiation ceremony, Riley will get half her magic — and the sisters will triumphantly enter the magical community together.
Only it doesn’t go as expected. It turns out, Riley’s history is way more complicated than she knew. Now, with Hattie’s life hanging in the balance, Riley and her best friend Emmett (my favorite character!) have to complete a quest to find the last fallen star — whatever that is — so they can restore order to the universe and save Hattie. Along the way, they’ll find a library full of birds, ghosts who need a little help moving on to the afterlife, a secret magical community run by a banished clan, and the best bulgogi tacos with kimchi salsa in town.
The Rick Riordan imprint tends to be hit-or-miss for me, but this is one is definitely a hit. I found the folklore of the gifted Korean clans and the Godrealm fascinating — I didn’t know much about it going in, so I learned a lot as I read. (I kept having to pause to look stuff up because I wanted to know more!) If you’ve got a middle grades mythology lover, you’ll want to add The Last Fallen Star to your library list.
The Troubled Girls of Dragomir Academy
Dragomir Academy, hidden away in the distant mountains, is where bad girls go. If they’re lucky (and learn to mind their manners), Dragomir grads can end up working as support staff for important sorcerers. If they’re not — well, at least they can’t cause trouble miles away from civilized society. At first, Marya is determined to follow all the rules and show that she’s not trouble after all. Gradually, though, she realizes that the men in power are hiding dangerous secrets and that sometimes good trouble is worth the risk.
by Anne Ursu
It’s hard to be a girl in the patriarchal world Marya has grown up in. While her brother Luka is on the fast track to become a sorcerer (and one of the nation’s elite protectors), Marya is constantly in trouble.
Dragomir Academy, hidden away in the distant mountains, is where bad girls go. If they’re lucky (and learn to mind their manners), Dragomir grads can end up working as support staff for important sorcerers. If they’re not — well, at least they can’t cause trouble miles away from civilized society. At first, Marya is determined to follow all the rules and show that she’s not trouble after all. Gradually, though, she realizes that the men in power are hiding dangerous secrets and that sometimes good trouble is worth the risk.
I am clearly the target audience for a middle grades boarding school novel about taking down the patriarchy through education and fabric crafting, so I am happy to say I really enjoyed this lovely little fantasy. I recommend it.
The Door by the Staircase
The Door by the Staircase is an engaging middle grades fantasy book that deeply explores what makes a family.
by Katherine Marsh
Life at the orphanage is pretty horrible for 12-year-old Mary, so she’s thrilled when a super-nice lady appears, insisting that Mary is the only girl for her. Mary’s even more thrilled when it seems that the super-nice lady only wants to feed her delicious food, buy her pretty clothes, and give her plenty of time to read and play. It seems almost too good to be true. And, of course, it is. Or, at least, it might be.
With the help of her new friend, a magician’s son, Mary discovers that kindly Madame Z is really the notorious Baba Yaga of Russian folktales—and that Mary is likely to end up on Baba Yaga’s dinner table any day now. Mary knows she should fight back, but she’s torn—Madame Z is the first person to be truly kind to her since her brother and mother died in a terrible fire, and Mary can’t help thinking that Madame Z must love her a little bit, too. Not sure what to do, Mary enlists aid from Jacob and a talking cat to escape from Baba Yaga’s grasp, even though part of her has begun to think of that chicken-legged hut as her home.
The Door by the Staircase is an engaging middle grades fantasy book that deeply explores what makes a family. There are some scary parts—Baba Yaga is, as mentioned, fairly notorious—and some sad parts, especially the story of how Mary’s family died, leaving her in that lonely orphanage. It’s maybe a little spoiler-y to go into it knowing that Madame Z is Baba Yaga in disguise, but it seemed pretty obvious from the get-go, so I don’t think you lose anything knowing it in advance. It’s a little slow to pick up speed, but once the book gets going, it’s hard to put down—and Mary and Jacob are genuinely likable, complicated protagonists whose friendship grows and develops in a realistic way. Marsh does a good job of painting Madame Z so that we can understand both why Mary would want to get as far away from her as humanly possible and why she might want to stay with her forever.
The Goblin’s Puzzle
Take one boy without a name who may or may not be a slave. Add a girl named Alice who wants to be a sage but can’t seem to break into the smart boys’ club and a girl named Alice who happens to be a princess. Mix in a goblin with fondness for puzzles, a mind-controlled dragon who does his hunting by name, and a nefarious Duke scheming to overthrow a kingdom, and you’ve got all the ingredients for The Goblin’s Puzzle, a really clever middle grades fantasy that raises questions about slavery and women’s rights, absolute versus relative truth, heroism, and more.
by Andrew S. Chilton
“That was the trouble with fate. When you were sure what everyone’s fate was, everything worked nicely. When you were not, things got confusing fast.”
Take one boy without a name who may or may not be a slave. Add a girl named Alice who wants to be a sage but can’t seem to break into the smart boys’ club and a girl named Alice who happens to be a princess. Mix in a goblin with fondness for puzzles, a mind-controlled dragon who does his hunting by name, and a nefarious Duke scheming to overthrow a kingdom, and you’ve got all the ingredients for The Goblin’s Puzzle, a really clever middle grades fantasy that raises questions about slavery and women’s rights, absolute versus relative truth, heroism, and more.
The book starts with the boy, a slave without a name, who—through a series of unfortunate events—finds himself in possession of an-almost-all-knowing-but-certainly-not-telling goblin and in pursuit of Just Alice, who’s been captured by a dragon who’s confused her with the princess because they have the same name. But rescuing Just Alice—who desperately wants the chance to prove that she’s as wise as any sage her age—is just the beginning of the boy’s adventures, which take him across a kingdom on the brink of war and which, the goblin implies, will lead him to the truth of his origins and the discovery that he is not really a slave after all.
This book has a Roald Dahl/Lemony Snicket irreverence and a twisty-turny plot that make it perfect for a readaloud. (I also kept finding parallels to The Horse and His Boy, though the books are completely different.) I could quibble that Princess Alice deserves a more nuanced character development (she does) and that the villainous duke is a bit two-dimensional (he is), but these are small issues in an otherwise excellent book. Add this one to your library list.