All of Me! The Blossoming Universe of Violet Diamond by Brenda Woods

“To white people,” Violet thinks, “I’m half black. To black people, I’m half white.... Is that what I am, a percentage?”

Since Violet Diamond turned eleven, she's begun to notice the looks people give her family when she's out with her blonde mother and her blue-eyed half-sister Daisy, born of her mom's first marriage. Violet, whose black father died just before she was born, is tired of curious people asking if she's adopted.

And when she learns that she has a famous grandmother, a noted black artist whom she's never met, she can't let the matter rest until she gets her mother to take her to Roxanne Diamond's exhibition in Seattle. But the visit does not go well. Her grandmother still blames her mother for the auto accident that ended her son's and Violet's father's life, and asks Violet and her mother to leave.

Violet feels even more like a puzzle piece that doesn't fit anywhere.

But Roxanne Diamond has a change of heart, and invites her to visit her over a long weekend. Violet loves her grandmother's art-filled house, meets her  aunts and cousins, goes to Disneyland, and bonds with the elegant Roxanne, whom she names "Bibi," from the Swahili for "grandmother." But just as the puzzle pieces begin to come together, Violet finds her grandmother unconscious on the kitchen floor. If Bibi dies, Violet will lose her and her memories of V's father before she can complete her understanding of who she is.

But this time, Violet is the missing piece that makes certain the picture can be completed.

Mom and Daisy were standing at Bibi's bedside. All eyes were on me. "Can Bibi and I be alone?" I asked.

"How are you feeling?" she asked Bibi when they were alone.

"Better and better. I've been waiting for us to have this time alone to thank you."

"Thank me for what?"

"If you hadn't been here and called 911, I probably would have died that day. You saved my life, Violet."

I grinned. "I did, huh?"

"You did. And because you did, you and I will have lots more fun times together," she said softly.

As Bibi had told her when they talked about their favorite color, "there are fifty-nine shades of blue," Violet sees that  families can come in many shades as well, in Brenda Woods' Coretta Scott King Award-winning The Blossoming Universe of Violet Diamond (Penguin Group, 2014). Although author Woods takes a fairly light-hearted look at some of the feelings inherent in living in a multicultural family, she doesn't eschew a dramatic rescue by Violet that saves her grandmother's life and mends the divide within the family, and her Violet is a likable and spunky character who will win middle readers' empathy and understanding. Kirkus Reviews gives this one a starred review and says, " Infused with humor, hope and clear-eyed compassion—a fresh take on an old paradigm."

Home Alone: The Magic Trap (The Lemonade War Series) by Jacqueline Davies

illusion (n) something that seems to be one thing when it is really another; a magic trick

It was a sound like an explosion that yanked Evan back awake. The sound was so loud, it even woke Jessie, who could sleep through an army invasion. "What was that?" she shouted, looking at Evan with wild eyes.

Evan and Jessie hurried out of their mother's room and followed the noise of the storm. When they got to Jessie's bedroom, they couldn't believe their eyes. A large tree limb was sticking right through the wall and lay on Jessie's bed.

Evan looked at Jessie, expecting her to flip out, but her face was very still. "If I'd slept there, I'd be dead." she said, like a reporter stating a fact.

When Jessie and Evan's war reporter now-you-see-him-now-you-don't dad turns up for first time in a year, their Mom reluctantly agrees to take him up on his offer to stay with the kids while she flies to the West Coast for an important business conference. The friend she'd recruited has just been taken to the hospital, the expensive flights are booked, and an important commission is riding on her making the trip.

Dad smiles and says, " I'll do it. I'm their dad!" and despite Evan and Jessie's distrust of their elusive parent, at first Dad is great. He makes pancakes, he agrees to help Evan build a disappearing rabbit box for his upcoming neighborhood magic show and even buys a white rabbit they name Professor Hoffman, although he absentmindedly leaves him in the car trunk for hours. Dad takes down the rotten railings around their back porch, declaring them an accident waiting to happen, transforms the rickety porch into a stage with red velvet curtains, and even orders a wicker disappearing box from India for the grand finale. When he cuts a hole in the porch floor for Jessie to make her secret escape from the box, he blithely announces he's calling a contractor to replace the whole deck.

But the next morning, up early, Jessie finds a note in the kitchen and runs upstairs to wake Evan, with the news that their father's super-dad act has been itself an illusion, ending in a disappearing act of his own:

HEY, KIDDOS!
HAD TO LEAVE EARLY BECAUSE OF THE STORM.  MOM WILL BE HOME SOON. KNOCK 'EM DEAD AT THE SHOW.
LOVE,
YOUR DEAR OLD DAD

There's a war on somewhere, and he has to be there. After all, "I'm the Best!" he's told Evan, with his charming grin. Evan and Jessie decide it is better not to tell their mom that Dad has left them alone until she gets back the next day. But when Jessie goes downstairs to watch cartoons, she finds another surprise worth getting Evan up for.

"It's on all the channels! The storm is coming! Here! It's not tracking to the west. It's heading straight for us! It's not a tropical storm anymore. It's a hurricane!"

Evan intuits that it's better not to tell the neighbors that they have been left alone by their father, and he knows Mom's flight won't be landing in a hurricane and that he and Jessie are on their own. "Stay calm and carry on!" Evan tells the panicked Jessie, using Mom's favorite World War II slogan, and carry on they do, in Jacqueline Davies' latest-in-series, The Magic Trap (The Lemonade War Series) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014). The two very different siblings carry on together, playing to their strengths--Jessie coming up with her emergency supply list and Evan capably nailing up tarps and putting out buckets to catch the leaks, even hauling Jessie out of the flooded basement where she has gone to try to rescue the missing rabbit. And when the storm passes, Evan calmly comes up with a perfect performance for his rescheduled show, wowing the crowd with his card tricks, while in the best show-must-go-on tradition, Jessie overcomes her claustrophobia inside the disappearing box to vanish and reappear for the finale with a flourish in the audience--with the just-found Professor Hoffman in her arms.

Again author Davies uses her contrasting characters to build a suspenseful story of a brother and sister depending on each other with humor and insight, dealing with both the storm without and the storm within as they try to understand their driven dad's motivation that left them alone in a hurricane. As they try to resolve their "family first" mom and their "just-have-to-be-there" dad, Evan and Jessie instinctively work out a blend of their own abilities that get them through it together.

All the qualities that have made The Lemonade War an exemplary realistic fiction series for middle readers are present here--sibling rivalry, Evan's capable social and athletic skills set against his lackluster academic skills, Jessie's compulsive mastery of numerical skills and her total inability to interpret human behavior, and family problems that would disintegrate most families--along with pitch-perfect kid dialog and insight into elementary school relationships that make these books so notable. The author even shows off her extraordinary writer's chops in her chapter headings--all definitions of magic trick terms that also highlight the premise of each section.  And in this fifth book Davies shows that rare ability of the best of children's authors, to create plots in which their characters grow and change in a way completely true to themselves. Beverly Cleary had that ability, and it is with all reverence that I can say Jacqueline Davies has it, too, in the manner of Evan's best card trick, in spades.

While each book stands alone brilliantly, this series is at its best read in order. Previous books are The Lemonade War (The Lemonade War Series), The Lemonade Crime (The Lemonade War Series), The Bell Bandit (The Lemonade War Series), and The Candy Smash (The Lemonade War Series).

Holy Unanticipated Occurences! Flora and Ulysses by Kate DiCamillo

Flora Belle Buckman admits that she is a cynic.

She has her reasons.

One of Flora's very favorite bonus comics was entitled TERRIBLE THINGS CAN HAPPEN TO YOU! As a cynic, Flora found it wise to be prepared. Who knew what horrible, unpredictable thing would happen next?

After all, a terrible thing has already happened to Flora. Her parents have suddenly divorced, her mother is cranky and distant, wanting only for Flora to make herself scarce while she writes her romance novels, and her dad is living in a small apartment too far away for Flora to walk for a visit. Still, Flora hasn't quite lost her belief that amazing things can happen the way they do in her Illuminated Adventures of the Amazing Incandesto! comics, and Flora is right to believe.

It all begins when her neighbor lady Tootie Tickham receives a truly horrible birthday gift from her husband, the towering Ulysses Super-Suction Multi-Terrain 2000X vacuum cleaner, which on its maiden voyage zooms out her backdoor and sucks up an innocent foraging squirrel, right up to his tail. The heroic Flora switches into superhero mode herself and provides mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to the squirrel. The squirrel revives, minus part of his fur, but with some seemingly super-squirrel powers. Flora names him Ulysses, in honor of his change agent.

"I'm going to try and explain what happened to you, okay?"

Ulysses nodded his head very fast.

"What happened is that you got vacuumed. And because you got vacuumed, you might have, um, powers"

Ulysses gave her a questioning look. "Do you know what a superhero is?"

Flora looked down at Ulysses. Considering the human beings she was surrounded by, believing in a squirrel seemed like an increasingly reasonable plan of action.

Ulysses is super strong, he can fly, and he has a fondness for typing original poetry.  But those super powers are not what Flora Belle Buckman thinks she wants, but in his way, Ulysses has just the powers--Holy unanticipated consequences--she needs to get her mother to love her and her father again, restore vision to Tootie's "temporarily blind" nephew William Spiver, also "temporarily" traumatized by his mother, along the way. Although Ulysses' main motivation is to find and eat a giant donut, in terribly funny and truly poignant adventures this super squirrel manages to restore love and understanding  to Flora's family.  Along the way, Flora loses her cynicism and Ulysses achieves all the donuts he desires.

As her father, George Buckman remarks,

"Holy Bagumba!" The universe was expanding.

Multiple Newbery winner Kate DiCamillo (for Because of Winn-Dixie and The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup and a Spool of Thread)) has in her latest, Flora and Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures (Candlewick Press, 2013), a sweet, fantasy-tinged comedic novel,  occasionally illustrated in artful cartoon panels, that is further proof that DiCamillo is a master tale-spinner.  Flora is a delightful character whose cynicism and belief that Terrible Things Can Happen is shaken by some truly fantastic unanticipated consequences of a runaway all-terrain vacuum cleaner that change everything.  As Kirkus Reviews writes, " An original, touching and oh-so-funny tale starring an endearingly implausible superhero and a not-so-cynical girl."

Extreme House Makeover: Allie Finkle's Rules for Girls: Moving Day by Meg Cabot

Allie Finkle's mom and dad have bought a house--without even asking her if she wanted to move!

"It looks like all of those houses on those TV shows my mom likes to watch called things like Please Come Fix Up My House and My House is Really Old. Won't Somebody Fix It Please!"

Allie Finkle loves her life. She lives in a nice, almost new suburban house (even though the closet is a little too small for her rock collection) across the street from a sort-of best friend Mary Kay (even though she's a little too bossy) and has the best fourth-grade teacher (EVER).

And now her parents say she has to move. Oh, they say the house is bigger, with plenty of room for everyone and that she can walk to Dairy Queen anytime she wants and that she can get a kitten when they are all moved in. But even the kitten doesn't cinch the deal for Allie when she goes for her first walk-through. Inside the rooms seem cold and dark, with grey walls and lots of spiders. And the turret room that is supposed to be hers is the creepiest of all, complete with creaking floorboards. Allie quickly adds a new item to her "Rules for Girls:" "Don't let your family move into a haunted house."

When pleading and arguing fail, Allie stoops to making off with the FOR SALE sign on their house, but her parents are determined that the move go on, leading Allie to post her hardest rule, "YOU CAN'T GO BACK!" Although a tour of her new school helps Allie make a good friend, the last days before the big move are filled with ups and downs. Allie stands up for a turtle which seems destined to become turtle soup at the local Asian restaurant and becomes a celebrity as an animal activist, but her last day at her old school finds her grounded for tossing cupcakes at her farewell party. Sadly, Allie realizes that there are some situations for which she hasn't yet come up with a rule.

Allie Finkle's Rules For Girls: Moving Day, published last month by the best-selling teen fictionista Meg Cabot, introduces a funny and feisty new heroine whose honest musings on the ways of the world will win fans for what looks like a sturdy new 'tween series.