PBC's Book Reviews

Whether you work your fingers to the bone operating a quern, starve yourself until you are skin and bones, or turn to cannibalism and gnaw meat to the bone when the tuckahoe is gone, Alena Bruzas’ book To the Bone

Fans of Sabaa Tahir’s Ember in the Ashes series will love this spinoff duology. Full of all the elements which Tahir’s fans are used to (stunning prose, enthralling mythology, and deeply relatable characters) this book easily grabs the readers’ attention

Seventeen-year-old Sal Amani lives in a haunted house, and everyone at Holden High knows it. However, Sal is keeping secrets, and his sister Asha—who is a talented writer with dreams of attending university and becoming a journalist—has put her life

With a name like Grimsbane, a person is bound to find connections to death, destruction, woe, and gloom. And readers will find all that in Joan Reardon’s The Grimsbane Family Witch Hunters. Set in Witchless, Indiana, this novel for middle

Lamar Giles, author of Ruin Road, takes the idea of selling one’s soul to the devil to a whole new level. His novel further reinforces the moral: Be careful what you wish for, and even suggests that sometimes fear can

Eloise Parrish is the picture of sunshine and optimism while her sister Oli is “shadows and hesitation, with a hard shell” (3). The duo are avid birders, and their favorite place is the Braided Woods in Connecticut.  Because their parents

With her novel When We Flew Away, Alice Hoffman writes an emotionally stirring prequel to The Diary of Anne Frank. In this poignant piece, Hoffman reminds readers of the power of hope even when evil walks in the world. Even

With their graphic novel Pearl, Sherri L. Smith and Christine Norrie bring readers a historical fiction account of the attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent response from the United States. In this version, Amy Hakata lives in Hawaii in

In her novel Kareem Between, Shifa Saltagi Safadi shares a story about the experiences of seventh grader Kareem, who loves football and dreams of being the first Syrian American NFL player. Seeing his name on an American jersey would spell