Published by Balzer + Bray

Summary:  Resilience comes to life in a NASA lab, a rover built to explore Mars.  At first, he thinks he is a back-up for another rover named Journey, but he eventually learns that he is the one being sent into space.  He is curious about humans, or hazmats as he calls them, and particularly takes a liking to engineers Rania and Xander.  Rania has a daughter named Sophie, who starts writing letters to Resilience.  Although the rover never sees them, the letters give readers some insights into Rania’s home and family life.  The book is divided into five parts that cover more than 20 years, as Resilience gets launched and explores Mars with his drone, and friend, Fly.  An accident puts the rover out of commission for many years, but in the end, he is able to realize his dream and Rania’s of returning him to Earth.  320 pages; grades 4-7.

Pros:  Jasmine Warga does an amazing job of realistically bringing Resilience to life with a personality and curiosity that still keeps him in the realm of machine yet shows readers human emotions.  The subplot about Raina told through Sophie’s letters is also extremely well done and very moving.  A great recommendation for fans of The Wild Robot, and a Newbery contender for sure.

Cons:  While I could very much appreciate this book, I never really got engrossed in it. I guess I just generally prefer reading about people.

Published by HarperCollins

Summary:  Middle school is off to a rough start for David. On one particularly bad day he messes up a presentation on his family heritage (he’s adopted), gets food poisoning before a big cross-country race, and causes an accident that injures his best friend, Antoine, ruining Antoine’s dreams of making the varsity cross-country team.  When he wishes for a do-over, he gets a visit from a wisecracking time-traveling dog.  Fea, as David nicknames her, is on a mission to help him straighten out his life. Reliving the most recent day doesn’t take care of it, so David has to travel deeper into his past. Fea also helps him acknowledge the romantic feelings he has for Antoine by sharing her regrets from her own life. It turns out she was once a human who loved a girl in high school but never had the courage to tell her.  The forays into the past start to reveal interesting clues about David’s birth and adoption, and everything comes together with a few surprising plot twists.  384 pages; grades 4-7.

Pros:  Although this story addresses the serious topics of being yourself and living life without regrets, it is also a ton of fun with a narrator who has a great self-deprecating sense of humor and a plot that adeptly handles the intricacies of time travel.  Betsy Bird has this on the fall edition of her Newbery predictions list.  We shall see in just a few short months.

Cons:  The plot twists at the end required some suspension of disbelief.

Published by Random House Books for Young Readers

Summary:  Bell, age 11, is the youngest kid in the American settlement on Mars.  He enjoys his life underground, hanging out with the teenagers, working on the algae farm, and taking care of his cat, Leo.  There aren’t many rules, but the few that are in place are strictly enforced. One of these is about not interacting with other countries’ settlements, even though it seems as though there were international friendships in the past.  When a shipment from Earth unleashes a serious illness among the adults, it falls on the kids to try to get help from Finland, France, or one of the other countries.  What they discover there surprises everyone–and leads to a healing of misunderstandings of the past.  Includes a lengthy author’s note about her interest in Mars and space exploration and how she came to write this book.  272 pages; grades 4-7.

Pros:  Jennifer Holm adds another masterpiece to her unusually diverse list of works, this one a fun science fiction story that imagines a pretty plausible settlement on Mars with a cast of loveable characters, and a few interesting plot twists.  This would make a great book club selection that would appeal to a wide range of readers.

Cons:  It seemed sad that anyone who settled on Mars was unable to ever return to Earth.

Published by Disney Hyperion

Thanks to Disney Hyperion for providing me with a copy of this book to review

Summary:  She has no memory of her life before waking up on a sinking yacht.  Soon she meets a boy named Chance who names her Wild and vows to look after her, even though he’s in foster care and living in a group home.  It soon becomes obvious that Wild is an extraordinary dog.  She and Chance learn to communicate via electronics, and their conversations are picked up by Junebug, a girl hacker with a mysterious past…but some skills Chance and Wild need to survive.  As the three race from one place to the next, constantly pursued by the military organization bent on destroying Wild, they start to piece together the dog’s past and what it might mean for all of their futures.  In the end, Wild is on her own once again, but with hints that there may be more to come in her story.  256 pages; grades 4-7.

Pros:  A dog narrator, non-stop action, and many, many narrow escapes…what’s not to like?  Kids will find themselves caught up in this exciting story from chapter one, and will keep the pages turning all the way to the end, which will no doubt have them hoping for book 2.

Cons:  There are some pretty dark secrets in Wild’s past, and (spoiler alert) she has been bred to kill.  I generally enjoy quite a bit of humor with a dog narrator, but no such luck here.

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