Monday, January 5, 2015

The Ninja Librarians The Accidental Keyhand

Booklist (April 15, 2014 (Vol. 110, No. 16))
Grades 4-6. Dorrie wants so badly to be a hero, to fight with her sword and triumph over evil. Sadly, she’s stuck fencing local bullies like Tiffany Tolliver, the middle-school mean girl, to protect the honor of her favorite librarian and swordplay teacher, Mr. Kornberger. Things get terribly interesting when she and her Star Wars–loving older brother, Marcus, fall into Petrarch’s library, a magical portal to libraries throughout time and space and home to a secret society called the Lybrariad. These heroic lybrarians are trained to conjure objects out of thin air by reading descriptions from books and to rescue any outspoken individual from censorship or worse (while still shushing, of course). Delightfully funny from the first page, where Dorrie laments having never been bitten by anything more bloodthirsty than her little sister, this middle-grade time-travel adventure is surprisingly full of fun and action (and a madcap mongoose). Downey’s hilarious debut is perfect for any library-­loving reader as well as those who never considered librarians to be cool.

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