Skip to main content

ENCHANTED STORIES: Brave Like That



Brave Like That
By Lindsey Stoddard
Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2020. 261 p.

Cyrus is an eleven-year-old with a firefighter dad. In fact, Cyrus was left at the firehouse when he was a baby and his dad decided he wanted to keep him. All of the firefighters and Cy’s two friends all want Cyrus to be a star middle school football player like his dad. But Cy doesn’t really think he is “brave like that”—brave enough to be hit in rough tackles or to say what he really wants. In fact, Cy cares more about the stray dog that is at the humane society or listening to jazz music with his grandma or being kind to a new kid at his middle school than he does about football or looking like the “right” type of kid in front of others. This is a brilliant look at what makes a person (or a kid) brave. Readers will cheer as Cy learns to figure out who he is, how he can explain that to those around him, and how he can deal with the underline struggles and problems that he is facing.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Review: The New Girl

The New Girl By Cassandra Calin New York: Graphix, 2024. Comic. 261 pages. 12-year-old Lia and her family have just moved from Romania to Montreal, and she's doing her best to keep up with the changes. But, she's homesick. She misses the rest of her family, her friends, and her favorite Romanian treats. She doesn't speak French and her English is shaky, which makes it hard to make friends, even in her international immersion class. And she's dealing with super painful menstrual cramps every month. But before long, Lia starts to hit her stride. She befriends the other bilingual girls in her class, she gets a spot as the artist for her school's magazine, and even has a new crush -- Julien. Though she may be the new girl, Lia is starting to fit in. This slice of life graphic novel is an adorable choice for middle grade readers and young teens. Lia is a likable protagonist and readers will have little difficulty relating to her adjustment to school. The text speaks to a...

Review: The Factory

The Factory By Catherine Egan New York, NY : Scholastic Inc., 2025. Fiction. 306 pages.  Thirteen-year-old Asher Doyle has been invited to join the Factory, a secretive research facility in the desert which ostensibly extracts renewable energy from the electromagnetic fields of its young recruits. But Asher soon realizes something sinister is going on. Kids are getting sick. The adults who run the Factory seem to be keeping secrets. And the extraction process is not only painful and exhausting, but existentially troubling. Asher makes a handful of new friends who help him with an investigation that turns into a resistance, which turns into...a cliffhanger! The Factory is a page-turning sci-fi with multidimensional characters, an intriguing plot, and refreshingly straight-forward writing. Egan weaves in detail about climate crises and social unrest, making the story's dystopian setting feel rich and plausible. With its sophisticated themes and accessible storytelling, I would recomm...

Five Favorite Aunt and Uncle Books

  Aunt and Uncle Day I discovered a new holiday. Apparently, July 26th is National Aunt and Uncle Day! In order to celebrate this day, I am sharing my five favorite middle grade books that have stellar aunts and uncles. Now, due to a lot of various circumstances, these books have a lot of hard things (death of a parent, parental neglect, and one case of good parents sending their child off to visit an uncle during summer vacation). So, be aware that these titles not only showcase some amazing aunts and uncles, but they also open the door to talk about hard topics.  Closer to Nowhere  By Ellen Hopkins  Putnam’s Sons, 2020.  This book is actually told from two different points of view—Hannah and Cal’s; however, the two protagonists are cousins. Cal comes to live with Hannah’s family and Hannah’s mom—Cal’s aunt—becomes Cal’s support and champion. Cal’s mom died and his dad is in prison. Cal is in a family foster care situation and doesn’t feel like he belongs. Hann...