The Winter of the Dollhouse, by Laura Anne Schlitz

Tiph struggles to be seen by her family and at odds with her stepmother.  Tiph loves dolls and everything about dolls, but her stepmother doesn't understand why she wants to spend all of her money on doll house accessories.  But one day, outside of the local toy store, Tiph meets an old Hungarian woman who does understand her.  Tiph is fantasizing about owning an antique German doll of Gretel when the woman collapses on the street.  Tiph ends up helping the woman gets home and is entranced to find that she owns a fabulous old doll house.

The old woman needs help around the help and they develop a plan whereby Tiph will do chores and earn money to purchase dolls.  meanwhile, the woman invites Tiph to play with hers.  Tiph, however, has a problem with kleptomancy that is getting her into trouble and when one of the lady's dolls disappears, suspicion falls in Tiph.

Gretel the doll is in a panic.  She wants to be Tiph's as much as Tiph wants her and if the mystery of the missing doll is not solved, this will never happen.  So, the toys work away at a plan to fix everything.  And in the process of doing so, they discover an ancient doll that reveals secrets about the old lady.

Meanwhile, there is a school production of The Wizard of Oz that Tiph is in.  Disappointed with her part as a munchkin, she is encouraged by the old lady to volunteer to understudy for the Wicked Witch (which is the part she really wants).  When the actress playing the witch falls ill, Tiph gets her opportunity.

Along the way, Tiph works out her issues with her stepmother and learns that adults have very complex lives.  All in all, it is a very busy story!  While much of this is well-written and the individual threads make great stories, it is terribly unfocused.  Was this a story about Tiph learning to stand up for herself and/or understanding the importance of honesty?  Was this a story of the old woman coming to terms with her lost childhood?  Or of a mother and daughter coming to mutual understanding?  Or of the dolls getting the humans to sort out their problems so they would be played with?  Likely, it is all of those things, but it left me with distractions, being thrown from one thread to another when, even at the very end, nothing seemed to come together.

Orris and Timble: The Beginning, by Kate DiCamillo

The first in a trilogy of early reader books about the unlikely friendship of Orris the rat and Timble the owl. When Timble gets caught in an abandoned mouse trap, Orris struggles with whether to help free him or not.  Remembering the tale of the Lion and the Mouse, Orris reasons with himself that helping Timble will mean that Timble will owe him a debt of gratitude.  When Timble simply flies away, Orris is upset that he didn't even get a thank you.  But a much greater gift awaits.

Quirky and sweet in the way that all of DiCamillo's works tend to be.  The deeper meaning of the story is probably not going to sink in to the target audience's minds, but this easy-to-read book is engaging enough to lead the reader to the rest of the series.

The Danger of Small Things, by Caryl Lewis

In the near future, the bees have died off.  And along with them, the various species of plants that rely on bees to be pollinated.  And along with those, the animals that feed on those plants.  In sum, the death of pollinating insects has caused a global food collapse.  Panic, wars, and the downfall of civilization follow shortly thereafter.  So far, so interesting.

In the aftermath, young girls are sent to concentration camps where they are worked to the bone using brushes to pollinate the fruit and nut trees by hand in hopes of raising a crop that can in turn be sold to support the totalitarian regime under which they live.  This is only until they reach puberty, when they are "married" off to young soldiers to make children for the regime.

Jess is one of those girls.  She was sent to the camp when she and her brother were caught trying to cross the border and escape.  Initially distrusted by most of the other girls and targeted by the camp's queen bee, Jess becomes the leader of a quiet rebellion in the camp.  To foment an uprising, she creates secret works of art to agitate the masses.

From a fascinating premise, the novel falls back on so many familiar dystopian tropes -- from the beginning (lifted from Handmaid's Tale) to the pro-natalist plotline (Divergent).  An evil priest and a bullying queen bee offer little new to a story that can't seem to decide whether military regimes or high school cliques are worst.  It's tired material and a story that adds little to the genre.  It also makes very little sense -- the fruitless effort to hand pollinate on the industrial scale that modern apiculture attempts, the strange waste of resources using hand-made brushes, the mystery of what the little boys are up to, and so on.  Disappointing exposition on an original and thought-provoking idea.

Bad Badger: A Love Story, by Maryrose Wood (ill. by Giulia Ghigini)

Septimus loves to watch sunsets from his porch as he listens to opera and sips chamomile tea.  All of which makes him a bad badger.  He doesn't even look like one!  Instead of the stripes that all badgers are supposed to have, he has spots.  Perhaps he isn't even a badger at all?  He might have a better time sorting out his conundrum if he knew any other badgers.

For while Septimus enjoys his quiet life, he longs for a friend.  And when he is visited by a friendly gull, Septimus does everything he can to make Gully feel at home.  In subsequent visits, the two of them explore their shared interests and their differences (Gully loves the ocean, for example, but Septimus hates to get sand in his fur!).  The visits become so regular that Septimus comes to take Gully and her company for granted.  But then one day Gully doesn't show up on the porch.  Days pass and still no Gully!  Septimus goes in search of his friend and learns some powerful lessons about friendship along the way.

A delightful and quirky book.  Charmingly insecure, Septimus (a badger "within acceptable parameters") frets and worries in a funny way that will delight children and adults.  While there is a story for children here, it really is an adult story -- full of meditations about the compromises that one makes in friendships and the way in which friendships enhance our lives.  The ultimate lesson about acceptance ties the story's sweet and timeless message with a bow.  

The first of a series intent on exploring relationship building.

The Unexpected Lives of Ordinary Girls, by J. Anderson Coats

In 1910, in a mining town in Colorado, Stanislava doesn't have a lot of options.  The daughter of Slovenian immigrants, she is expected to marry and have lots of children.  Her family is dirt poor. The boys work with their father at the smelter and meanwhile the girls take care of the babies and the housework.  But until now, Stanislava has been able to go to school and read books.  This has stirred big ideas in her head.  She dreams of actually going to college.  She dreams of renaming herself Sylvia and no longer being looked down upon as a "Bohunk."

But when her older sister runs away and elopes with a Protestant man, Stanislava is pulled out of school and set to work helping her mother get all of the chores done. No longer allowed to go to school or read books, she can feel her dreams slip away.  So, she decides to run away herself to the big city of Denver.  There, she stumbles across the public library and eventually finds a home there.

An entertaining and fast paced adventure of survival against the odds for a young girl trying to eke by a living and running up against sexism, racism, and tradition.  There are a fair share of anachronisms and a fair share of improbably good fortune, but it doesn't detract from the thrill of the story.  Stanislava/Sylvia is intelligent and clever and full of lots of great ideas -- the hallmark of a children's heroine.

Books on the immigrant experience of Eastern European immigrants are few and far between.  While this is hardly an educational book, there is enough period detail here to send a curious reader to the non-fiction shelves.

Butterfly Heart, by Moa Backe Astot

Vilda, a half-Swedish half-Sami teen, has been grown curious about her ethnicity.  Her mother doesn't know Sami and Vilda never got to attend a Sami-speaking school, so Vilda's never learned how the language.  Her grandfather though has been teaching her a few words and she's hungry to learn more.  She also wants to get a gabdde (a traditional ethnic outfit) so she can wear it at festivals and show off her heritage.  But then her grandfather suddenly dies.

Wracked by grief and a realization that learning how to be Sami has just grown all the more harder, she stumbles through the summer trying to piece her plans back together again.  There's a cute older boy who speaks Sami, who she pins her hopes on, but he rejects her as being a child.  She unsuccessfully tries to explain her feelings about not knowing her heritage and losing her grandfather to her bewildered friends.  To top it all of, she's just gotten her first period.

A spare story of grief and search for identity through the eyes of a thirteen year-old.  American audiences won't know much about the Sami -- an indigenous people who live in northern Scandinavia -- but the search for one's heritage and where one fits in should be meaningful to anyone.  Vilda can be pretty mean at times and definitely selfish (and her use of language will trigger some parental readers) but her coarse edges and big feelings struck a realistic note.

17 & Gone, by Nova Ren Suma

Seventeen year-old Lauren sees missing girls.  Girls who ran away, girls who stepped out for a minute, girls who got into the wrong car.  All of them seventeen like her and now gone.  It started when she found an old missing person flyer, but quickly became an obsession as she hunts down more examples and finds out how many of them there are.  How easy it is to become "gone" where you're young and female.  

The girls talk to her, telling her their stories and how to find them.  They tell her the things they wish they could tell their families.  Lauren has become a conduit for them. And in doing so, she loses touch with herself.

A graceful story of a descent into schizophrenia -- a common enough trope in YA.  What makes this one stand out is its theme:  the danger of being female and seventeen.  A lot of seventeen year-old women  disappear. They are hard to find and frequently disappear under circumstances that leave them abandoned and forgotten.  A young woman runs away from home.  Does she disappear because she doesn't want to be found or because she has been abducted?  Or perhaps initially the first and then the latter?  And for those safe at home, how easy is it to become overwhelmed by all the dangers that are out there?  All of the reasons and ways in which a girl can become gone?  And how seemingly little concern there is that so many of them are missing?  The novel, as compelling as it is in its storytelling, is equally unsettling in its message.