The Truth About Martians — Review

Thought for the Day:

“The whole culture is telling you to hurry, while the art tells you to take your time. Always listen to the art.”
~Junot Diaz ~

Gifts for My Writer Friends:

The Manuscript Shredder has a great post HERE on The Magic Fix-it Scene. Don’t miss this one.

Anne R. Allen has a fun and useful post HERE on writing rules and why to ignore them.

Janice Hardy did a guest post on Jami Gold’s blog HERE that will help you figure out conflict. It’s a good one.

I took last week off to spend family time while Maggie was here. She is back in NYC now and will have her surgery the end of the week. Her concert was terrific and as soon as her new album is available on Apple Tunes and other places, I will post a link. All the songs were written for her voice by Graham Sobelman, a remarkable musician and songwriter who got permission from Donald Hall, the husband of the late Poet Laureate, Jane Kenyon, to use her poems as lyrics for his songs. Eventually there will be two albums of these amazing songs. I will keep you posted.

Last week I offered a copy of Tell Me Earth & Sky to one of you. This week’s winner is Joanne R. Fritz. If you don’t know her, Joanne is a writer from Pennsylvania who has a fascinating story about herself on her ABOUT ME page on her site, and she writes great reviews on her blog. Check out her site HERE. Joanne, I will get your book out to you soon. No giveaway this week, but I have a fun book review.

I am a bit of a fan of a TV show called Project Blue Book. It’s a little cheesy, but I have always been fascinated by the stories of UFOs, and Project Blue Book talks about some of the reported sightings from years back. When I saw a book called The Truth About Martians by Melissa Savage available for me from the Tulsa Book Review, I snapped it right up. I loved it. Here is the review I wrote for them. 

Mylo and his best friend, Dibs, spend a lot of time talking about super-heroes and extraterrestrials, perhaps because it’s easier than talking about the sad things in their lives. When a brilliant light flashes over their little town one night, everything changes. Boys will be boys, and though they’re told not to go to the area where something crashed, they do, and they find pieces of strange metal with glyphs on them. They return with some friends and find something even more amazing. Soon men from the Air Force are crawling all over the town and even taking some people away. The kids have the most important thing of all, but can they do what has to be done?

Author Melissa Savage has written a pretty riveting story about what might have really happened at Area 51 in the 1940s that will thrill young readers and perhaps raise their interest in science and space. The writing is crisp and clear, the characters well-drawn and believable, and the story is complex and compelling. The incidents of snot, farts, and toe jam might be off-putting for some readers, but once past that, this is a real winner.

There will be no giveaway this week.  I gave the nice hardbound copy I received for review to the library at my granddaughter’s charter school with a tiny budget. Check back next time. I may have a giveaway then. If you are reading this in your email, please click HERE to get to my blog, then click on the title of the post, and leave a comment. And don’t forget to check for other Marvelous Middle-Grade Monday posts at the Greg Pattridge’s blog HERE.