East Dragon lives like royalty in a palace with his eight brothers and sisters and the emperor’s family. He and his siblings are beloved by the emperor who values their advice and provides a beautiful home for them. West Dragon lives in a cave, but he’s happy there… until his cave becomes overcome with kings and knights who try to prove their worth by “waving their silly swords.” West Dragon drafts a plan to get them all out of his hair so he can take a long nap, and soon, the lives of the dragons intersect. Unfortunately, not everyone sees dragons in the same peaceful light, and these different perspectives soon cause trouble for everyone. Can two dragons from opposite sides of the world see past their preconceived notions of each other in order to join forces?

I’m a big fan of this book for its small details and large-scale ideas. (Get it, large-SCALE? Ha!) Scott Campbell’s whimsical illustrations bring to life two very different environments, and depict both dragons in an adorable fashion. The story itself is fun and will bring out giggles from young children, while also presenting the idea that differences aren’t things to be afraid of. No judgment is cast for which dragon is better or right, they simply live in different worlds, which is just fine.

East Dragon, West Dragon will make for a spirited read aloud with children of various ages, and I’m looking forward to sharing it with my own preschool and kindergarten aged children.

Dawn is fascinated with children’s lit, and her life as a mom and a preschool teacher leave her immersed in it on a regular basis. She blogs at my thoughts exactly.

But other then having an overactive worrying imagination, he’s a perfectly normal kid. He and his best friend Gigs have a made-up language and made-up games that, along with time, has cemented their friendship. He’s waiting for the switch to turn on that will make girls interesting and attractive, and that might be happening when free-spirit Sydney moves to his class and they are partnered up on a project.

No one really talks about Ma — not his siblings, not Uncle George (who is really his father with just an odd name that has stuck), but Frankie worries about her too. He worries why she doesn’t leave the house, and begins to wonder if he might end up like her. But Sydney asks a lot of questions. At first he does everything he can to avoid them, but in the end letting himself get to know her and be known by her, helps him to figure himself out a little bit more.

I can’t put my finger on why exactly, but this book feels firmly like a book for middle schoolers and above. It doesn’t have a lot of swearing or any activities that would worry the parent of a child younger than 13, but there are some mature themes mentioned. I love that there is a true coning-of-age YA book that should appeal to ages 13 and up out there that isn’t full of explicit language and sex.

It’s also one sure to appeal to adults who are fans of the coming-of-age tale (like me!). I like that it has a boy protagonist, but because the emotional quotient is very high it will also appeal to girls (and of course he has a girl best friend/perhaps more than a friend).

And if you like quirky — this one has just enough to keep you smiling, though not enough to annoy you if you don’t like quirky (although if that’s your opinion, I strongly feel you are missing out). A father called Uncle George? A cat named the Fat Controller? A made-up language? It’s all there.

AUDIOBOOK NOTES: The accented reader Stig Wemyss added to that element of place (New Zealand) that resonated loudly with this American listener.

Jennifer Donovan realized that she was addicted to audiobooks when she knew she had to replace her lost/stolen ipod within weeks — and not so she could get her groove on. She blogs about other likes at Snapshot.

We Belong Together celebrates those perfect matches we find in the world around us, from peanut butter and jelly to hot chocolate and marshmallows and chocolate cookies and milk, from pencil and paper to a fork and a spoon. “Because some things are just better together,” says the back.

You Are My Cupcakeis an adorable homage to all the sweet silly names moms call their little ones; sweet pea, gumdrop, cutie pie, pumpkin. The last page reads, “I could just eat you up!” Super cute and sweet.

Both books are high-quality, and will stand up to multiple rereadings. The drawings are oversized and enticing, with happy faces that will entice your baby to smile back. Smooth and shiny textures will draw chubby toddler fingers to the page. Perfect for toddlers, their mommies, and more, these sweet, happy books are a great addition to any library.

Elizabeth has 3 teens so she rarely reads board books anymore. She read these two to her 14-year-old daughter who said, “That was weird,” but agreed the books are super cute. Learn more at her blog Planet Nomad.

It’s the 100th day of school, of course! My daughter’s classroom has been keeping a chart marking each day of school, and we’re currently in the late 80s. They’re not only learning how to count to 100, but they’re also talking about the concept of grouping and counting by fives and tens. One hundred certainly feels like a gigantic number to a child who’s only been alive for five years or so. To see 100 of anything can be pretty exciting.

Masayuki Sebe’s Let’s Count to 100!, released last August, is a wonderful accompaniment to this type of lesson. Each two-page spread is filled with 100 adorable creatures, from scampering mice to burrowing moles. Some of them are captioned with silly phrases or interactions (there’s even a fart joke with one mole, that probably isn’t too funny to the mole behind him but hilarious to the kindergarten set!), and all are illustrated in a big-eyed, colorfully cartoonish fashion. While all pages feature 100 of something, some pages ask readers to answer different questions that involve counting or sorting the objects, and the final page even challenges children to find one particular creature for each spread. (Not surprisingly, the gassy mole appears here, too!)

I love that Sebe brings all the items together near the end, in groups of ten, to illustrate that ten tens equal one hundred– exactly the math lesson that my daughter’s class is learning as they chart the school days. Look, learning can be fun, kids! (And it can even use bathroom humor while it’s doing it!) Let’s Count to 100! is a great book for any child, but certainly with that 100th day of school right around the corner, now’s the perfect time to read it together.

Dawn’s fascination with children’s literature is fulfilled on a regular basis with her own children, as well as with the preschool class entrusted to her care each day. When she’s not in the classroom, she tries to blog now and again at my thoughts exactly.

A new picture book by Phillis Gershator and Mim Green, with illustrations by David Walker, Time for a Hug introduces the concept of time passing as a mom and child bunny go through their day together, starting at eight o’clock in the morning when the child wakes up, all the way until the clock reads eight again in the evening and it’s time to get ready for bed. During their day together, interspersed among the block building, the reading, and dining, it is time for a hug again and again.

The flow of the day for mom and child will be recognizable to young children, and the warmth and love shown in the pages just as comforting and soothing. My five year old daughter enjoys the simple text of this picture book because she can read much of it independently. I can also see this as just the right kind of book to read to a baby or toddler, for the pictures are bright and engaging, and the words repetitive and predictable. As Valentine’s Day approaches, perhaps Time for a Hug is just the right book to read to your own child, for a hug from a loving parent is always welcome!

Dawn gets hugs from her own kids, as well as her preschool class on a daily basis! When she has a spare moment from being Teacher or Mommy, she can be found blogging away at my thoughts exactly.

We’d moved from a tiny town in the Canadian prairies to a town in Northern California’s high desert, and the one good thing that place had to offer was a library that would let me take as many books as I wanted at any given time. I thought they were crazy. I would stagger out of there with 20 or 30 books. My English teacher noticed me too. She invited me to be on the yearbook and the student newspaper.

The combination of these things—loneliness, sickness, access to lots of books—made this a year that I spent a lot of time snuggled under blankets, reading, escaping into the world of my imagination. I remember that English teacher (I don’t remember her name, sadly) giving me a copy of A Wrinkle in Time and saying, “Try this. I think you’ll like it.”

I opened it and read, “It was a dark and stormy night. In her attic bedroom Margaret Murry, wrapped in an old patchwork quilt, sat on the foot of the bed and watched the trees tossing in the frenzied lashing of the wind,” and was already hooked. I didn’t have an attic bedroom–we lived in a depressingly-average 60s-era bungalow–but I wanted one. I did have a patchwork quilt. And I love storms. By the time Mrs. Whatsit showed up and announced wild nights were her glory, I knew I had found a book to keep and treasure. (I got my own copy, don’t worry.) And so, I was along for the ride as Meg and Charles Wallace and Calvin tesseract across the universe to save Meg’s father, in an adventure that mixes theology, science fiction, pure fantasy, and the realities of everyday life on planet Earth.

I think the feeling of being alone is universal. Every child can relate to crushing embarrassment at school, to feeling misunderstood by even loving parents and siblings, to cowering in a storm and wondering if anyone else out there will ever understand you. That’s part of what makes A Wrinkle in Time such a great book. It’s instantly accessible. But then, to have Meg celebrated for her faults, to realize that what is so scary about Camazotz is that there is no originality, no true humanity, was very affirming to me as a young teen. And even though I knew that, unlike Meg, I would never do higher math, stories like this still gave me courage to keep on facing down my fears every morning on my way to that junior high.

I went on, of course, to read the companion books, then many of L’Engle’s other books. Now, as an adult, I especially love her non-fiction and poetry. All my copies are signed too, because she once visited Portland and I was able to hear her speak, and she was just as affirming and imaginative as you would expect. She was too tired to sign books afterwards, so we were encouraged to submit a list of up to 10 titles, and she sent us signed nameplates in the mail. That generosity is still stunning to me.

Once I had kids, I couldn’t wait to share my favorite books with them. They enjoyed A Wrinkle in Time too; begging me to keep going through just one more chapter to find out what happened.

It’s hard for me to believe A Wrinkle in Time was published 50 years ago–it still feels very fresh to me. This book was legendary for the number of rejections it received before someone finally had the courage to publish it, and I do feel it was ahead of its time. The legend lives on–one of last year’s most popular YA books, Matched, imagines a world very like Camazotz, and what might happen to give one of those identical children the courage to break free.

The new commemorative edition is gorgeous, with all sorts of extras—a copy of L’Engle’s acceptance speech for the Newbery Awards, a copy of a chapter from the original manuscript with her own scribbled pencil marks, an introduction by Katherine Paterson and an afterword by L’Engle’s granddaughter Charlotte Voiklis, telling a bit of her Gran’s story and the story of the book. There are family photos, including one I love of Madeleine reading to her two granddaughters, and more. There’s also a special facebook page for the 50th Anniversary commemorative copy, where you can keep up with different events that will be happening this year to celebrate the occasion.

This post is part of a special 50 blogs in 50 days celebration, so please read some of the other thoughts, with a different theme each week.

A Wrinkle in Time is classic for all the right reasons—because it is a story that has and will endure, because it touches something timeless in all of us. If it’s been a while since you’re read it, I encourage you to share a copy with a young person in your life.

One of you (U.S. only) will win a copy of the 50th anniversary edition of A Wrinkle in Time. Just leave a comment, and we’ll announce the winner in our giveaway column on February 8. This giveaway is now closed.

• The winner of the Lunatics giveaway is #20 Beth C.
• The winner of Crossed is #23 Shelly Burton.
• The winner of The Flight of Gemma Hardy is #26 Tennille.
• The winner of the Shadow of Your Smile giveaway is #29 June.

Don’t miss a thing: Check out our current giveaways. Subscribe to our feed or video reviews on YouTube. Follow us @5M4B on Twitter or on Facebook.

Elizabeth is glad she never has to be 12 again, but she survived. Learn more at her blog Planet Nomad.

To find out what my son thinks of his personalized book and to enter to win your own, click over to my full review on 5 Minutes for Mom. Leave a comment by February 6 for your chance to win.

Don’t miss a thing: Check out our current giveaways. Subscribe to our feed or video reviews on YouTube. Follow us @5M4B on Twitter or on Facebook.

Nancy is happy her son loves his name as much as she does. She writes about her 2 boys, books and life in Colorado at Life With My Boys and Books.

I enjoy fiction that causes me to think in that way, but I really wonder if kids get it. My daughter has enjoyed learning about the Civil Rights movement, and she respects Martin Luther King, but do kids like to read this sort of book? And do they understand?

Dear America: With the Might of Angels by Andrea Davis Pinkney is a perfect example of a great story — a school story — about a very strong twelve-year-old girl who wants to be a doctor. When she earns the chance to leave her run-down, second-rate school on the poor (Black) side of town to go to the richer all-White school, she and her family leap at the chance. But then the anti-segregationists step in and try to force her out. At first, her family is fighting for the rights of all the kids, even though she is the only one willing to make the valiant effort to attend, but when the local dairy provider comes out for segregation in the newspaper and the whole town decides to boycott dairy, it becomes a harder battle, and Dawnie and her family end up being resented by much of the town.

I make it sound like a dramatic heroic story, and it is, but I think that kids (girls, really) will relate to her — looking forward to her birthday, competing for an honor at school, making a new best friend, sticking up for her little brother. That’s what makes this such a nice book. The Dear America books deftly weave history and plot, and this one is no different.

AUDIO NOTES: I also listened to this on audiobook, which the library had available before my review copy came in. It was a great version. It’s hard to voice a child, but Channie Waites conveyed Dawnie’s enthusiasm and her questions perfectly.

Sylvia & Aki by Winifred Conkling takes on school integration as well.

This book is based on the true story of two girls. Sylvia Mendez and her family rent a house that is vacated when Aki Munemitsu and her family are sent to a Japanese internment camp in the World War II-induced paranoia.

When Aki must leave, she can only take a few things. Everything else must be destroyed, lest the officials find something that would mark them as anti-American. She can’t take her doll, but she can’t bear to destroy her either, so she tucks her away high in the closet.

When Sylvia moves in, she finds the beautiful traditional Japanese doll and tucks her on her bed beside her own traditional Mexican doll. The girls end up corresponding and and even becoming friends as Aki survives the uncertainty of the camp (Where is her father? Will they be reunited? When will they be able to leave?) while Sylvia battles segregation.

When her aunt tries to register Sylvia and her brother for the school that her half-white/half-Mexican children attend, she is told that her niece and nephew have to attend the Mexican school that is much further away. Sylvia’s dad fights for her to attend, all the way to court in a much lesser known — but earlier — court battle versus the Orange County school system in California.

This short book looks at two groups that experienced discrimination during this post-war time in the US. It’s a little heavier on history than plot, reading almost like that very engaging type of non-fiction that tells a story using the format of a novel, which might make it a good fit for kids who prefer non-fiction to fiction, and conversely it could introduce pure fiction lovers to the wonders of well-written non-fiction style.

*****

Though the Cybils Middle Grade fiction shortlists have already been posted, I still have some reviews to post that I read as a round I panelist. These two books were both nominated.

Jennifer Donovan enjoys historical fiction if the history and the fiction is right, but middle grade historical fiction is even better. She blogs at Snapshot.