A Day at the Beach by Gary Schmidt and Ron Koertge (Clarion Books, 224 pages, grades 3-7). These 28 stories take place over the course of a single summer day at Rockcastle Beach on the Jersey Shore. They’re divided into four sections by time of day, bookended by a brother and sister going for early morning and evening runs on the beach. Dealing with a wide variety of issues including a father’s cancer, bullying, a stray dog, and a lost phone, the stories are studies of the kids’ emotions as well as the human interactions and compassion that help them through. As anyone who has spent a day on a crowded beach knows, meetings can be fleeting, and lives can intersect, then diverge again forever.
I’m not much of a short story fan, since the hardest part of a book for me is starting it and getting to know the characters. But the writing in this book is so amazing, the stories so compelling, and the feeling of being on a crowded New Jersey beach on a hot summer day so perfectly captured, that I could not put this book down. Anyone who aspires to write fiction would do well to study this collection of stories to see how engaging characters and situations can be created in just a few pages.
Blood in the Water by Tiffany D. Jackson (Scholastic Press, 272 pages, grades 5-8, publication date July 1). Kaylani’s nervous about spending the summer with the Watsons, family friends who live on Martha’s Vineyard, but after dealing with her dad’s arrest and imprisonment, her parents both feel she could benefit from time away from Brooklyn. While Mr. and Mrs. Watson are welcoming, their granddaughters Cassie and London are not, and Kaylani questions whether she belongs in their affluent Black community that has long history on the island. When one of Cassie’s friends, popular and friendly Chadwick, dies mysteriously one night, the whole community is shocked, and Kaylani decides to use her keen powers of observation to try to figure out what happened. Her investigations lead her to a tangled web of family allegiances and deceit, putting her own life in jeopardy, but ultimately she is able to find out what happened, getting justice not only for Chadwick but for her father as well.
This mystery features a spirited and determined protagonist, with an interesting setting on Martha’s Vineyard that made me want to learn more about the island’s Black history. The mystery is compelling and will have readers guessing right up to the last few pages. I can’t think of too many middle grade mysteries that feature a murder, leading me to recommend this more as a middle school book. Thanks to Scholastic for providing me with a free advance copy of this book.