Rebecca M. Douglass, Author

Participating this week in the fantastic Marvelous Middle Grade Mondays blog hop hosted by Greg Pattrige of Always in the Middle . Check out his blog for a list of additional middle grade reviews. I've been discovering some great reads there. Title: Red Fox Road 
Author : 
Frances Greenslade Publication Info : 
Puffin Canada, 2020. 238 pages (Kindle edition) Source: Library 

Publisher’s Blurb: 

 A thirteen-year-old girl on a family vacation becomes stranded alone in the wilderness when the family's GPS leads them astray. A compelling survival story for ages 10 to 14, for fans of Hatchet and The Skeleton Tree . Francie and her parents are on a spring road trip, driving from British Columbia, Canada, to hike in the Grand Canyon. When a shortcut leads them down an old logging road, disaster strikes. Their truck hits a rock and wipes out the oil pan. They are stuck in the middle of nowhere. Francie can't help feeling a little excited -- she'd often imagined how...

Title: The Adventures of a Girl Called Bicycle Author: Christina Uss Publisher: Margaret Ferguson Books, 2018. 320 pages (hardback) Source: Library digital resources Publisher's Blurb: Introverted Bicycle has lived most of her life at the Mostly Silent Monastery in Washington, D.C. When her guardian, Sister Wanda, announces that Bicycle is going to attend a camp where she will learn to make friends, Bicycle says no way and sets off on her bike for San Francisco to meet her idol, a famous cyclist, certain he will be her first true friend. Who knew that a ghost would haunt her handlebars and that she would have to contend with bike-hating dogs, a bike-loving horse, bike-crushing pigs, and a mysterious lady dressed in black. Over the uphills and downhills of her journey, Bicycle discovers that friends are not such a bad thing to have after all, and that a dozen cookies really can solve most problems.   My Review: I didn’t know what to make of this book at first. The idea of...

  Below is the cover on the edition I read. Wonder why they made those small changes, but in any case, I prefer the first one. It's hard to see any of the details on the book I got from the library. It's a nice illustration of how small changes can improve a cover. Title: Xander and the Lost Island of Monsters (Momotaro series #1) Author: Margaret Dilloway. Illustrations by Choong Yoon Publisher: Disney/Hyperion, 2016. 309 pages Source: Library Publisher's Summary:   Xander Miyamoto would rather do almost anything than listen to his sixth grade teacher, Mr. Stedman, drone on about weather disasters happening around the globe. If Xander could do stuff he's good at instead, like draw comics and create computer programs, and if Lovey would stop harassing him for being half Asian, he might not be counting the minutes until the dismissal bell. When spring break begins at last, Xander plans to spend it playing computer games with his best friend, Peyton. Xander's f...

  In a Nutshell: Aunt Isabel is the aunt of the main characters in Fiona Ingram's The Secret of the Sacred Scarab. She's an experienced world-traveling journalist on the trail of something interesting that just happens to get her nephews (Justin and Adam) into a lot of trouble. It's been too long since I read it for me to pull out a favorite quote, so instead, I'm just going to share my review of the book from January 2015. And it makes a nice reminder that I'm overdue to read the second in the series!   Click the cover for purchase link. Title: The Secret of the Sacred Scarab Author: Fiona Ingram Publisher: iUniverse 2008, 272 pages Source: I'm actually not sure; it's been on my ereader for quite a while. I either won it in a give-away or picked it up on a free day, I think. This fast-paced adventure is by one of my fellow BookElves .  Publisher's Summary: A thrilling adventure for two young boys, whose fun trip to Egypt turns into a dangerously e...

  Title: Gangsta Granny Author: David Walliams Publisher: Harper Collins Children's Books, 2011. 297 pages. Source: Library Publisher's Blurb: Another hilarious and moving novel from David Walliams, number one bestseller and fastest growing children’s author in the country. A story of prejudice and acceptance, funny lists and silly words, this new book has all the hallmarks of David’s previous bestsellers. Our hero Ben is bored beyond belief after he is made to stay at his grandma’s house. She’s the boringest grandma ever: all she wants to do is to play Scrabble, and eat cabbage soup. But there are two things Ben doesn’t know about his grandma. 1) She was once an international jewel thief. 2) All her life, she has been plotting to steal the Crown Jewels, and now she needs Ben’s help…   My Review:  I got this book thanks to our March 2017 Goodreads GMGR group read. It was a bit different this time: we were all supposed to pick books we thought had a particularly ...