Today I'm Guest Reviewing The Scorpio Races at Book Chick City

Today you'll find me over at Book Chick City where I'm guest reviewing The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater.  Thanks so much to Carolyn for inviting me to visit again and for sending me the book to read!

Stay alive, stay astride, stay out of the water...

Every November, the Scorpio Races are run beneath the chalk cliffs of Skarmouth.  Thousands gather to watch the horses and the sea that washes the blood from the sand.  The mounts are savage water horses.  There are no horses more beautiful, more fearless, more deadly.  To race them can be suicide but the danger is irresistible.

Sean and Puck both enter the Races hoping to change their lives.  But first they'll have to survive.

As a big fan of Maggie's Wolves of Mercy Falls series I was really looking forward to reading The Scorpio Races.  Although the story was totally different and nothing like what I expected I ended up really enjoying it.  I still think that Shiver is my favourite of Maggie's novels but The Scorpio Races was like nothing I've read before and I really liked the idea behind it.

I'm not going to say anymore here so you'll have to head over to Book Chick City if you want to read my full review :o)

Review: Fallen Grace - Mary Hooper

London, 1861.
Grace Parkes, a pale but determined figure, clutches a precious bundle closely to her.  Grace has a heartbreaking duty to carry out . . .

Every day Grace must find a new way of earning enough money to pay the rent for the bleak, cold room that she and her sister live in, and to buy them enough - just - to eat.

But there is another danger threatening Grace, a danger linked to an event in her past that she is desperate to forget.  Grace has caught the eye of the Unwins, an unscrupulous family whose shady business dealings are those of death and mourning.  The Unwins will stop at nothing to defraud Grace of what is rightfully hers . . .

Visit Mary Hooper's website for more information

Review:
Grace and Lily are orphans who struggle every day to earn enough money to pay their rent and buy even the smallest meal.  Life isn't easy but they have each other and Grace is determined to do whatever it takes to keep them out of the work house.  An unfortunate change in circumstance forces them to turn to the Unwin's for help, Grace may not like working for the unscrupulous family's funeral business but it is her only option and at least this way Lily will be safe.  But are the Unwins really all they seem or have Grace and Lily put themselves into their most dangerous situation yet?

I have been really enjoying historical fiction recently and Fallen Grace was definitely a book that had me hooked from the moment I picked it up.  From the opening chapter it is easy to feel sympathy for Grace, my heart bled for her throughout the difficult task she has to perform and from that moment on I was willing things to work out for her.  Although Grace is in a difficult situation she always does her best to stick to her principles and she has a strong will to survive.  She is no weak heroine who sits around waiting for someone to rescue her and is very reluctant to ask for help even when she desperately needs it. 

Lily may be the older sister but in reality she is a child trapped in a teenager's body and needs Grace to look after her.  She is such a sweet character and someone you want to look out for but I was impressed with the patience that Grace shows towards her because she ends up getting into quite frustrating situations.  Lily adores her sister and would be completely lost without her but in her own way Grace needs Lily just as much.  I loved the relationship between the two of them and I also loved the way that Lily proved that she isn't quite as stupid as some people think she is. 

The setting of the book is wonderfully described and you are transported back to Victorian London.  Before reading this story I knew practically nothing about the lavish Victorian funeral traditions and found them fascinating to read about.  I was thoroughly sickened by the Unwins and the way they took advantage of grieving relatives to earn as much money as they could from them.  It is a testament to Mary Hooper's writing that I literally wanted to climb inside the book and punch someone, I love it when an author can make me feel that strongly about the bad guys!

Fallen Grace is a beautifully written story and one that I would highly recommend to fans of historical fiction.  It is a book that shows just how difficult it was for the poor to survive in Victorian England and makes you feel relieved not to have lived in the 19th century.  Overall though Grace and Lily's tale is one of survival and hope.

Source: Received from Bloomsbury in exchange for an honest review

Other reviews of this book:
Heaven, Hell & Purgatory Book Reviews
If you have reviewed this book on your blog please leave a link to your review in the comments & I'll add the link here.

Guest Post: 12-year-old Kain makes his blogging debut talking about his favourite books

So today I have a special guest post from Kain who is going to be talking about some of his favourite books.  Kain is only 12 and this is his first ever blog post but I have a feeling we may be looking at a future member of the next generation of book bloggers!  Kain has even agreed to write a couple of guest reviews for me so watch out for his name again in the coming months.

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Hi everyone, My name is Kain and I am 12 years old. My mum put me forward for this post because she follows Feeling Fictional.

There are 2 things I enjoy, one is to read and the other is to play on my 360, but I wont bore you with that so I will tell you about my favourite saga, author and my top 5 books.

My favourite saga is the Darren Shan saga, by Darren Shan. I like this saga because the way that Darren makes the beginning of the story sound like a normal teenagers life, but then a sinister turn of events makes him become a vampire to save his friend Steve's life. The saga follows Darren on his journey from a vampires apprentice to a vampire prince!

My favourite author has to be Darren Shan purely because he has wrote 2 sagas, The Darren Shan Vampire saga and The Demonata which follows a group of Mages and a magician who try to save the world from hoards of Demons!!

I also like him because he also writes stand alone books like The Thin Executioner which follows the puny youngest son of the town executioner journeying to a sacred holy mountain in order to get immortality and epic stamina, and also the respect of his father. He is also good because of the way he writes, for example, he can make you actually care for the main character and literally make you balance of the edge of your seat.

My five favourite books are

1. The Thin Executioner by Darren Shan
2. Department 19 by Will Hill
3. The Executioner by Chris Carter
4. Xombies Apocalypse blues by Walter Greatshell
5. 8 lives down by Major Chris Hunter

I hope you enjoyed this as it was my first ever post, please feel free to comment.
Thanks for reading!

Kain

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Thanks so much for a lovely post Kain, I hope you enjoy the books I sent you & I'm looking forward to reading your reviews :o)

Guest Post: What is Steampunk & Top 5 Steampunk Book Recommendations

Today I have a fantastic guest post from the lovely Hannah from My Book Journey telling us all about Steampunk and giving us her top 5 book recommendations.  When I found out I was going to a Steampunk ball Hannah was one of the people I went to asking for costume ideas and she had a lot of great tips for me so I was very excited when she offered to write a Steampunk guest post for me.  So I'll hand you over to Hannah and let you enter the world of Steampunk!

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Hannah

Steampunk Supreme

At this very moment Sarah is in America at the steampunk ball, dressed up in all her finery and most likely having a spiffing time! So what better topic to look at than steampunk?

At first I thought it might be helpful to define what steampunk is, for those new to the genre. However it’s not as easily definable as I had first thought. The Internet is littered with debates and forums arguing what steampunk means, discussing whether it is actually a genre or an aesthetic.

When we think of steam-punk we automatically think of cogs, gears, alternate histories, steam powered inventions and science fiction. However steampunk isn’t limited to the Victorian period and likewise stories set in the Victorian era aren’t automatically steampunk. The best definition I’ve found is by Mike Perschon at the Steampunk Scholar. He describes it as a blend of technofantasy, neo-Victorianism, and retrofuturism. I’m not going to explain all of this as we could be here a while, but if you want to find out more then visit the Steampunk Scholar’s blog. http://steampunkscholar.blogspot.com/

For me steampunk is all about the fashion, and I love trawling through websites like Etsy to find unique and interesting pieces of jewellery and clothing.

Regardless of what your connotation is of steampunk, I hope you enjoy it and make it your own. The books I’ve picked out below have all been published in recent years; however there are other reads by authors such Shelly and Verne that are certainly worth looking at.

Top 5 Steampunk books:

1. Soulless by Gail Carriger.

At the center of Soulless's "parasol protectorate" is Miss Alexia Tarabotti, a young woman who lacks not only a suitor but also a soul. And those are not her only problems: When she accidentally kills a vampire, it begins a series of events that she must set out to resolve without the help of any proper authorities.

(Note from Sarah: you can read Hannah's reviews of the first 3 books in the Parasol Protectorate Series on her blog here)

2. The Boneshaker by Cherie Priest

Cherie Priest's much-anticipated steampunk debut features the sort of calibrated suspense that readers of her Four and Twenty Blackbirds would expect. Boneshaker derives its title from the Bone-Shaking Drill Engine, a device designed to give Russian prospectors a leg up in the race for Klondike gold. Unfortunately, there was one hitch: On its trial run, the Boneshaker went haywire and, long story short, turned much of Seattle into a city of the dead. Now, 16 years later, a teenage boy decides to find out what is behind that mysterious wall. Can his mother save him in time?

3. Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld

Prince Aleksander, would-be heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, is on the run. His own people have turned on him. His title is worthless. All he has is a battletorn war machine and a loyal crew of men. Deryn Sharp is a commoner, disguised as a boy in the British Air Service. She's a brilliant airman. But her secret is in constant danger of being discovered. With World War I brewing, Alek and Deryn's paths cross in the most unexpected way…taking them on a fantastical, around-the-world adventure that will change both their lives forever.

4. Alchemy of Stone by Ekaterina Sedia

Mattie, an intelligent automaton skilled in the use of alchemy, finds herself caught in the middle of a conflict between gargoyles, the Mechanics, and the Alchemists. With the old order quickly giving way to the new, Mattie discovers powerful and dangerous secrets - secrets that can completely alter the balance of power in the city of Ayona. This doesn't sit well with Loharri, the Mechanic who created Mattie and still has the key to her heart - literally.

5. The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack by Mark Hodder

It is 1861, and Albertian Britain is in the grip of conflicting forces. Engineers transform the landscape with bigger, faster, noisier and dirtier technological wonders; Eugenicists develop specialist animals to provide unpaid labour; Libertines oppose restrictive and unjust laws and flood the country with propaganda demanding a society based on beauty and creativity; while The Rakes push the boundaries of human behaviour to the limits with magic, sexuality, drugs and anarchy. Returning from his failed expedition to find the source of the Nile, explorer, linguist, scholar and swordsman Sir Richard Francis Burton finds himself sucked into the perilous depths of this moral and ethical vacuum when the Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, employs him as "King's Spy."  His first mission: to investigate the sexual assaults committed by a weird apparition known as Spring Heeled Jack; to find out why chimney sweeps are being kidnapped by half-man, half-dog creatures; and to discover the whereabouts of his badly injured former friend, John Hanning Speke. Accompanied by the diminutive and pain-loving poet, Algernon Swinburne, Burton's investigations lead him back to one of the defining events of the age: the brutal assassination of Queen Victoria in 1840; and the terrifying possibility that the world he inhabits shouldn't exist at all.

For more information on steampunk, try the following websites:

General:
• Steampunk.com http://www.steampunk.com/
• Steampunk Scholar http://steampunkscholar.blogspot.com/
• Age of Steam http://ageofsteam.wordpress.com/

Fashion:
• Etsy http://www.etsy.com/
• Steampunk Couture http://www.steampunkcouture.com/

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Thank you so much for a wonderful post Hannah!  I've only read one of your book recommendations (Soulless by Gail Carriger - read my review here) so I've just added 4 more books to my wish list! 

If you don't already follow Hannah make sure you go and pay her a visit at My Book Journey, you can also find her on Twitter here

I'd love to know what you all think of Steampunk: Do you have any other book recommendations?  What do you think of the genre?  What would you wear if you were going to a steampunk ball?

Guest Post: Catherine Bruton - Debut Author of We Can Be Heroes

Today I'm very excited to introduce you to author Catherine Bruton whose debut novel We Can Be Heroes was released on the 1st of August. 

My dad was killed in the 9/11 attacks in New York. But the stuff in this book isn’t about that. It’s about the summer me and Jed and Priti tried to catch a suicide bomber and started a riot.

There’s stuff about how we built a tree house and joined the bomb squad; how I found my dad and Jed lost his; and how we both lost our mums then found them again.

So it’s not really about 9/11 but then again none of those things would have happened if it hadn’t been for that day.

So I guess it’s all back to front, sort of …





Sounds like a great read doesn't it!  I ordered my copy but didn't have a chance to read it before my holiday so watch out for a review when I get back.  I'll leave it to Catherine to tell you more about the inspiration behind the story and to introduce you to some of the main characters.

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Hello, and thank you so much to Sarah for inviting me to do a guest post on her fab site, and for letting me talk about my own new novel We Can be Heroes. It seems rather shameless of me and I’m not very good at this whole self-promotion lark, so I think I’m just going to have to screw up my eyes and go for it!

We Can be Heroes tells the story of 12 year old Ben, whose dad died in the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York. Ben was only three when it happened so he doesn’t really remember his dad. He goes to spend the summer with his grandparents because his mum is suffering from a mystery illness and there he meets Priti, a 10 year old Muslim girl, who is convinced her brother is a suicide bomber. The pair, along with Ben’s madcap cousin Jed, decide to turn detective to foil the bomb plot with hilarious – and explosive consequences.

We Can be Heroes has been compared to Millions, The Curious Incident and The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. It has been described by reviewers as a ‘an outstanding debut’ ‘an astonishing, inventive book’, ‘a remarkable piece of work,’ and‘An important book: brave, honest, funny and very tense.
You can read an extract on The Guardian Books website http://gu.com/p/3vhk7

The central idea came from an article I wrote for The Times in 2008 about children who lost a parent in the September 11th terrorist attacks
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/families/article4706754.ece

After that about a million other things inspired me, from the Year 9 boys doodling manga cartoons in my lessons; my daughter’s obsession with wheelie shoes; the mischief my kids and their pals got up to (nibbled washing machines, disappearing lap top keys etc!); reading teen spy books to my son; a joke somebody made about a terrorist moving in across the road; watching Son of Rambow and Juno; the Muhammed family wedding on Elm Grove . . . and lots more that I’ve probably forgotten. The whole lot seemed to come together in a big muddle and the silly stuff was as big an inspiration as the serious bits.

Sarah asked me to talk about my characters and where they came from so my first big confession is that the three main characters in the novel are hugely inspired by the kids in To Kill a Mockingbird – my favourite novel as a teenager and still now. In fact I deliberately borrowed from Harper Lee the idea of three kids with over-active imaginations imagining a threat where perhaps none exists, whilst failing to perceive the real danger that lurks on their doorsteps! I guess I also borrowed the central themes of racism and prejudice but set in a modern British context.

Priti in particular is very much inspired by Scout – a kid with a big imagination, a huge vocabulary and an ability to miss the blindingly obvious! She also takes a lot of elements from many brilliant and bonkers little girls I have been lucky enough to teach over the years. Her quirky intelligence comes from my best friend from primary school, Kit. Her sense of style is inspired by my little daughter who has a zany and eclectic dress sense (she once went out with a pair of tights on her head – but not on her legs because, as she explained, ‘Then it would just look weird, Mummy!’) Oh and because the novel explores themes of racism, Priti is also a Muslim who is Islamophobic! She buys into all sorts of negative Muslim stereotypes which I hope the novel ultimately confronts and challenges.

I love Priti because she is hilarious but my favourite character is Ben who narrates the story and sees life in terms of the cartoons he is always drawing (his comic book version of events even appears at the end of the book!) I think I feel most strongly about Ben because he’s based on the real kids who lost their mums and dads in 9/11 - kids who I had spoken to, or whose parents I had interviewed. I always had them in mind as I was writing the novel. I sort of wrote the novel for them.

Jed is Ben’s overbearing older cousin who seems like quite a bully when you first meet him but he’s got stuff going on too. His parents have split up, he no longer sees his mum, and his dad is a bit of a racist bully (actually more than a bit) so no wonder he’s messed up. Jed is the Dill character in the novel - the one who needs the game of let’s-catch-a-suicide-bomber more than any of the others because it provides an escape from the difficult stuff that’s going on in his life.

Jed’ story was inspired by an article I wrote for The Times on Parental Alienation Syndrome and mums who are estranged from their children and so I guess his story line and that of his mum are a tribute the amazing MATCH mums I interviewed. I can’t help hoping that by the end of the novel readers will have come to love Jed as much as I do but he’s not easy to love! Jed’s way of talking and his appearance are totally inspired by my utterly Uber-cool nephew (who is actually a total sweetie, so I hope he will forgive me for borrowing his mannerisms and giving them to a character who is utterly foul at times!)

Most of the other characters are a mix of several people. Granny and Grandad are inspired a bit by my in-laws but also by my own grandparents, and the parents of various school friends. Oh, and Ben’s dad is clearly my lovely hubbie - which he isn’t happy about since I killed him off in print! ‘How could you kill me off?’ he wailed when he found out. ‘Why couldn’t I be the hero and do a car chase and kill some baddies and stuff?’ I tried to explain that Ben spends most of the book trying to connect with the father he never knew – and that there are baddies, and bomb-plots and kidnapping and stuff and they are all sort of a result of his character dying. But the old man is unconvinced and still sulking about literary husbicide (is that the word for killing your husband? If not, what is? Please help) Sorry, Jonny!

So, um, that’s it! If you do get a chance to read We Can be Heroes I’d love to hear what you think of it. Thank you again, Sarah, for inviting me to do a guest post on your fab site and Happy Reading, one and all!

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Thanks so much for a wonderful guest post Catherine, I'm really looking forward to reading We Can Be Heroes!  I love the fact that your daughter is confident enough to go out with her tights on her head and not worry what anyone else thinks (I have to admit I also feel a bit sorry for your hubby that you killed him off lol).

If you'd like to find out more about Catherine and her work you can visit her website here, follow her on Twitter or like We Can Be Heroes on Facebook.  You can also read a sample chapter from We Can Be Heroes on the Egmont website here

If you've already read We Can Be Heroes I'd love to know what you thought of it so please leave a link to your review in the comments & I'll read it when I get back from my holiday!

Paperback / Kindle

Review: Texas Gothic - Rosemary Clement-Moore

Amy Goodnight's family are far from normal.  She comes from a long line of witches, and grew up surrounded by benevolent spirits and kitchen spells.  All fairly harmless, but Amy can't wait to get to college and escape the "family business".

But things take a darker turn when she and her sister Phin spend the summer looking after their Aunt Hyacinth's ranch.  Amy is visited by a midnight spectre who is clearly trying to send her a message.  It seems that the discovery of an old grave on a neighbour's land has been the catalyst for an apparent ghost uprising.

Aided by local friends and Ben, the handsome cowboy who just can't take his eyes off Amy, the sisters investigate.  And they soon find that there's something strange and dangerous going on, deep in the heart of Texas . . .

Visit Rosemary Clement-Moore's website for more information

Review:
Amy comes from a rather eccentric family of witches and has spent years trying to keep their secret and smooth things over between them and the rest of the world.  She has magical abilities but prefers to live a normal life and worries what will happen if her family's secret is discovered.  When Amy and her sister Phin agree to look after their Aunt's ranch while she is on holiday they get a lot more than they bargained for.  With work on a nearby ranch disturbing a graveyard Amy soon finds herself having ghostly visits and her family's secrets become harder and harder to keep.

Texas Gothic is the first book I've read by Rosemary Clement-Moore but it definitely won't be the last, I'm glad I already have The Splendour Falls on my to read pile!  I really, really hope that Texas Gothic turns out to be the first book in a series because I want to see more of Amy and Ben, I'm sure there is plenty of scope for more stories about Amy's crazy family and the antics they get up to.

It's actually been a while since I've read a story about witches so it made a nice change from the usual vampires and shape shifters that seem to have taken over the paranormal genre at the moment.  I also loved the Texas setting, there are nowhere near enough sexy cowboys in YA and I totally want to start a campaign to rectify this!  Amy is a great narrator for the story, she is the sensible member of the family, the smart one who always smooths over troubled waters and looks out for everyone.  Although she is reluctant to use her magical abilities she steps up to the plate when she realises that there is no other alternative.  It was actually nice to see her start to accept herself and her family as the story progresses.

When she first meets Ben, Amy finds herself in a very compromising position and I found it hilarious watching the scene unfold.  I don't think I've laughed out loud as much when reading a book for a long time, for someone who is usually so sensible Amy sure does end up in a lot of messes - especially when Ben is involved.  Ben was someone I liked immediately, he comes across as cranky but he is also quite a gentleman and yes he is totally swoon worthy.  I loved the banter between him and Amy, it was refreshing to see them spend so much time arguing with each other rather than fall straight into each other's arms.  It is definitely true what they say about love and hate being the opposite side of the same coin, and you can really feel the attraction between them even while they are fighting.  It was great that Amy remained true to herself though and wasn't going to let Ben get away with telling her what she should do.

Texas Gothic really is a fantastic read and one that I almost wish I could wipe from my memory just so I could start it all over again.  This is definitely going on my re-read pile though and I'll be keeping my fingers crossed for a sequel.  I'd recommend this to any YA paranormal fan who likes smart heroines, a good mystery and a hero to swoon over.

Source: Received from RHCB in exchange for an honest review

Other Reviews:
My Book Journey
I Want To Read That
If you have reviewed this book on your blog please leave a link to your review in the comments & I'll add the link here.

Extract: Eight Keys - Suzanne LaFleur

Today I'm excited to be able to share the first chapter of Eight Keys by Suzanne LaFleur with you.  The book is published in the UK today and looks like a lovely read, I'm looking forward to picking it up when I get back from my holiday!

Before I used it, the key had infinite possibilities.

Eleven-year-old Elise feels stuck.  Her school locker-buddy squashes her lunch and laughs at her, every day.  She doesn't want to go to school - and her best friend Franklin just makes things worse.

Now I was ready for something to be different.
Anything, really.

One day Elise discovers an incredible secret.  A secret that might just help her unlock her past, and take a chance on the future.

I decided that tomorrow I would see what that key opened up.  It had my name on it after all . . .

Visit Suzanne LaFleur's website for more information

Chapter 1

Why My Life Really Stinks

The trouble all started right before the first day of sixth grade, the last time Franklin and I played Knights.

Knights works like this: we get our swords, we head out to the woods, and we go on chivalrous missions to battle ghost knights.

Uncle Hugh made our wooden swords when we were six, which is when we came up with the game. Franklin’s mom wasn’t happy about him making us weapons, but Uncle Hugh assured her that the worst that could happen was we would get splinters—and that’s only happened a couple times. We never really battle each other.

Or at least, we never had before.

Franklin met me in the woods with his purple bicycle helmet on. Some days he wears his helmet when we play. It’s weird, but I don’t say anything about it. It’s not like it matters, anyway.

Franklin almost always begins the game. He did that day, too.

“Kneel before me,” he announced in his deepest voice. I knelt and bowed my head. “Your quest shall be to find the missing cast of King Alberto.”

“I think it’s a cask,” I interrupted in a regular voice, looking up. “With a k.”

“I’m not sure,” Franklin admitted, also in his regular voice. Then he whispered, as if it were a secret from the game, “What is that, anyway?”

“I don’t know.”

Franklin shrugged, put his serious face back on, and continued in his deep voice. “You are to find the missing cask-t of King Alberto. Rise, Sir Knight, and go forth upon your quest.”

He tapped my shoulders lightly with his sword. I stood and knocked his sword with mine, which was his signal to go forth upon the same quest.

We took off, slowly at fi rst, until Franklin yelled, “Ghost knight, behind you!” I stopped to battle the phantom who aimed to ruin our quest. Franklin let out another scream and ran past me to battle a few more ghosts.

My ghost killed by decapitation, I paused for a minute to watch Franklin. He looked funny, swinging his sword and yelling at things that weren’t really there. I had never thought about what we looked like playing. Was it a silly thing to do, really?

An abandoned cardboard box lay close by.

I summoned my deepest voice.

“Halt, human!” I yelled. “Halt!”

Franklin stopped, breathing hard. “Yes . . . Good Knight?”

“Good Lady,” I corrected in my deep voice.

“Huh?” he asked, in his regular voice.

“I am a lady knight,” I said.

“There are no lady knights,” he said.

“Of course there are. I am a lady ghost knight, possessing the body of the knight you thought you knew. And I have found your sacred casket, and it belongs to me.” I set my foot on the cardboard box like an explorer stepping off his ship onto new land. “You have no choice but to fight me.”

Franklin thought for only a second before falling back into the game.

“You shall never have our sacred casket, demon! And I shall free my fellow knight from your possession!”

He dove at me, sword outstretched, and I met his sword with my own. There was no neat clash of metal, just a dull thunk of wood smacking wood. We both hit hard. After a few strong hits, which sent Franklin darting backward, I turned and ran, scooping up the cardboard box—the cast or cask or casket or whatever- it- was- now—looking back to swipe at Franklin every few feet. He was putting up a good fight. This was definitely one of the best games of Knights we had ever played.

But when you’re playing Knights in the woods, you have to be careful of these things all at once: where you swing your sword, that you don’t drop your treasure, and that you look where you’re going.

It’s not hard to guess which one I forgot.

We came to a stretch of the woods where the path ran above a steep hill. I twisted to take another hit at Franklin, but my front foot slipped, and I fell.

After the world had stopped tumbling, I heard “Elise, Elise, Elise, Elise!”—Franklin hurrying after me through all the rocks and leaves and vines and shrubs and prickers that lined the hill.

“Next time,” Franklin panted, when he’d caught up with me where I was lying curled up in a ball, “you should wear kneepads. Kneepads and shin guards.”



The front of my legs, from my knees to my ankles, ended up covered in bloody streaks. Aunt Bessie made me sit for her to clean all the cuts, but they dried in yucky scabs all over me for my first day at my new middle school. Aunt Bessie and Uncle Hugh both vetoed the long jeans I was wearing to hide my wounds.

“It’s too darn hot for that sort of silliness! You’ll pass out!” declared Uncle Hugh

“The material will rub against those cuts and open them right up,” insisted Aunt Bessie.

I sat on the edge of the bathtub in my shorts with a box of Band- Aids—plain ones, thank goodness—and stuck them all over my legs. When I had a crisscross of at least twenty peach bandages over my tan legs, I realized that trying to hide the scabs was even worse that just letting them show. I rested my head on my knees and then let out a huge “Grrr!” of frustration.

“Elise! The bus will be coming.” Aunt Bessie peeked around the door. “Do you want us to walk you?”

“No,” I said. As I walked out the front door, some of the Band- Aids drooped off my legs, not sticking on one side. I grabbed one to yank it off, but the other side was tightly glued to the hairs on my leg. “Ow!” I yelled as it ripped off. I added “Bye!” before leaving Uncle Hugh and Aunt Bessie standing on the porch, looking kind of worried.

When I made it to the bus stop, the usual kids from our grade were there: Franklin plus Sam, Ben, Stewart, and Diana. I had never really gotten to know the other boys, and what I knew about Diana was that she wore funny cat sweaters. Because it was hot, she was in a cat T-shirt. Pink, with a black- and- white cat patched on in other materials.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi,” I answered.

“I went to camp all summer and there was no electricity and no real toilets.”

“Sounds awesome,” I said, not sure if that was awesome.

Talking with Diana always made me feel uncomfortable. She was so weird.

The older kids who had gone off to middle school before us were clumped together a few yards away, talking and laughing and ignoring us. No parents had come to the bus stop.

Once we got on the bus, it was totally like usual—just me and Franklin on our own, in our own seat, having our own conversation. That was how the whole school day always used to go. We didn’t really need to get to know the other kids because we had each other.

Franklin, of course, didn’t comment on my yucky legs. It was like he couldn’t see them, even though I couldn’t help but stare at them the whole time, thinking about how messed up they looked. He was suddenly Mr. School Facts, telling me all these things about what can go wrong at middle school. You could be placed in the wrong math class, be picked on by eighth graders, fail to conjugate verbs properly in language class (whatever that means). . . . Then he moved on to all these worries about our middle school, which has three different elementary schools feeding into it. There would be hundreds of kids there we didn’t know. And then he actually calculated how many that would be by taking the average number of kids per grade in our area’s elementary schools and multiplying that by the number of grades in the middle school and multiplying that by the number of feeder schools (minus ours, of course) and by the time he had gotten to the answer I was defi nitely Not Listening.

It didn’t matter how many new kids there were at school. It took only one to ruin my life.



When I sat down in homeroom, my backpack scraped against my legs.

“Crap,” I muttered, running my hand over my skin, getting blood on my fingers. I hoped no one had noticed and quickly wiped my hand on my shorts. The girl next to me made a disgusted face, rolled her eyes, and shifted away from me.

The teacher handed out sheets of paper with locker assignments. There are so many middle schoolers at our school that sixth graders have to have partners—which is, apparently, totally okay according to the teachers, because sixth graders’ textbooks aren’t as thick as seventh and eighth graders’ books. So while I can look forward to one day having my own locker, I also get to look forward to having really humongous books and backaches from carrying them around.

The locker assignments seemed to be alphabetical, because across from my name, Elise Bertrand, was Amanda Betterman.

We were given twenty minutes to set up our lockers. In the hall, I followed the numbers until I found 2716, and who should show up at the same time but the girl who’d sat next to me in homeroom. I recognized her long, streaky brown hair, held off her forehead by two clips, and her tiny white skirt.

“Oh, gag. I have to share with the Bloody Queen of Scabs.” Several kids standing around her looked at my legs and laughed. Then Amanda said to me, very seriously, “Please don’t get blood on my things. I don’t want to get any weird diseases.”

“I don’t have any weird diseases.”

To make everything one hundred times better (not), who should show up but Sir Franklin, needing to stick up for me. “It’s no big deal, she just got hurt playing Knights.”

Which was not the right thing to say. At all.

“What’s Knights?”

“It’s a pretend game.”

Amanda smirked. “Playing pretend. That sounds really cool.”

But the way she said it meant the opposite: so not cool.

The other kids started laughing at me and Franklin. Kids we didn’t know but also a couple kids we’d known since kindergarten.

Apparently cool sixth graders don’t play. They definitely don’t play Knights. They have streaky hair and short skirts.

But there I was on the first day of school with scabby knees like a kindergartener, and my best friend got me pegged as a baby.