The Ice Age Cometh! The Meltdown: Diary of a Wimpy Kid? by Jeff Kinney

JANUARY: Everybody in my neighborhood is outside today enjoying the warm weather--except ME. It's kind of hard to enjoy a heat wave in the middle of WINTER.

Even though it's warm outside, the thermostat at school still thinks it's WINTER. So the furnace is on full blast all day, which makes it hard to concentrate in class.

If we do figure a way out of this climate mess, it's gonna be someone from MY generation. That's why I'm always nice to the SMART kids, because THEY'RE the ones who are going to save our butts.

But the warm spell stops abruptly. The Ice Age is back, and Greg and his best friend Rowley are back to frozen feet on the walk to and from school.The school bus only goes as far as Lower Surrey Street; both of them live on Upper Surrey; and the kids on Lower Surrey always ambush them if they take the bus. Greg gets the idea of taking the Whirley Street bus halfway home and then cutting across the woods to Upper Surrey Street. But despite their winter mufflers, the Whirley Street kids discover they are interlopers and chase them into the woods, where they meet up with the worst kids of all--the Mingos, who seem to live in the woods all year.

All I knew for sure was that if we stopped running, we'd be DEAD.

Just as it felt like the voices were on TOP of us, we broke through the trees and into the open.

SCREECH! Luckily Dad was paying attention or me and Rowley would've been ROADKILL!

But at least it would have been over QUICK. I'm sure the MINGOS would've take their TIME.

And then it starts snowing--hard--for days. School is called off, and when their moms decree no video games inside, Greg and Rowley decide to build the snow fort to end all snow forts, a veritable medieval redoubt of hand-crafted blocks of snow. But their challenge does not go unnoticed. The Lower Surrey Street army rises to the occasion, followed by the Whirley Street knights. Even the all-girl Safety Patrol and the Mingo family get into the melee'! Let the snowball wars begin!

It's the cold, cold world for the Wimpy Kid, in Jeff Kinney's latest in his mega-popular graphic series of middle school stories, Diary of a Wimpy Kid The Meltdown Book 13 (Amulet Books, 2018). No doubt, Greg Heffley will be ready for the spring thaw and the long-awaited end to this winter of his discontent.

It's a great book to have on hand for the first snow day! Other books (and movies) in the Diary of A Wimpy Kid series can be found here.

A "Step" Up: The Steps by Rachel Cohn

If you thing it's hard keeping track of all the Steps in my life, try being me.

The Steps are the bazillion stepbrothers, stepsisters, and half siblings my parents keep laying on me.

From Cinderella to the Brady Bunch, learning to live with step-parents and step-siblings has been hard for kids, and life for Annabel Whoopi Schubert is no different.

Annabel is just hoping for a great Christmas break in New York, shopping and skating at Rockefeller Plaza with her B.F. Justine, but everything turns upside down when she learns that her mom Angelina, plus her Grandma Bubbe, with whom they live, agree that what she needs is to visit her dad and step-family in Sydney,--the one in Australia! Anabel thinks their sudden decision has something to do with Angelina's new romance with Harvey, whose dorky son "Wheaties" is in Annabel's class at school.

Wannabe designer Annabel loves Sydney, with its trendy fashions and cool little shops, but she can't help feeling some jealousy when her same-age stepsister Lucy and little brother Angus call her father "Dad," and she painfully realizes that her dad Jack is happy and settled in Sydney and will never move back to New York. Although she loves holding her baby half-sister Beatrice, her step-mother Penny seems to be trying to keep her from feeling like a member of the family. While she has to admit that Lucy seems like a fun girl, she notices that Lucy, too, is angry over being forced to entertain her rather than visiting her Granny Nell in Melbourne as she always does at Christmas.

Things come to a head on New Year's Eve, when both girls feel so put-upon that they decide to get even with Jack and Penny, sneaking out and taking the train to Grandma Nell's in Melbourne anyway. Before they show up for the expected showdown at Nell's, Lucy stops to hang out with her old school friends a bit, and Annabel finds herself smitten with Lucy's ex-step-brother Ben, whom they meet in the park.

Grandma Nell draws out the girls' stories and firmly but sympathetically assigns them the penance of cleaning out her garage while she makes dinner for her former son-in-law and, much to Annabel's delight, his son Ben. When Grandma Nell flies back to Sydney with the repentent Lucy and Annabel, they find a crowd of concerned and disgruntled family members, including Bubbe and Angelina, as well as her now official fiance' Harvey and Annabel's now future step-brother Wheaties. Having shared an amazing adventure, Lucy and Annabel have finally become friends, and former exes Jack and Angelina make an effort to put their anger and hurt behind them.

In The Steps Rachel Cohn doesn't gloss over the real pain and loss for children involved in divorce and remarriage, but she also manages a laugh a page as Annabel attempts to deal with a trans-hemispheric family and a convoluted family tree of step-relatives. Annabel (nicknamed "Whoops" by her almost boyfriend Ben) finds that there's some bitter, but also some sweet, in her blended family.