Captain Smiley: The Adventure of the Bouncy Frisbee
Kerry Phillips’ Captain Smiley: The Adventure of the Bouncing Frisbee reads like a warm nod to the superhero comics many of us grew up with. It delivers that bold, comic-book rush. At the same time, it carries a fresh, modern spark that fits comfortably with today’s young readers. The themes feel thoughtful. The representation feels timely. Nothing comes across as dated.
The story begins with a small problem that feels enormous in a child’s world: Ace’s favorite frisbee is lodged at the very top of a tree. A simple playground mishap turns into a real adventure once the kids call on Captain Smiley. He doesn’t arrive with instant fixes or flashy shortcuts. He listens first. He invites ideas. He helps the children work through the challenge together. The rescue is lively and fun, capped by an even more exciting bouncing frisbee, yet the real highlight is the way the journey unfolds.
Under the action sits a steady emotional message. Ace is upset, and that frustration is taken seriously. It isn’t brushed aside. Captain Smiley nudges the children toward naming what they feel, using their words, and supporting one another while they think it through. For young readers learning how to manage big feelings in small bodies, that approach matters.
The artwork lifts the entire book. The illustrations are vibrant, expressive, and full of joy. They capture the comic-book spirit with ease. Every character feels distinct and animated, which keeps the pages visually engaging from start to finish. The representation also lands with real significance. Seeing a superhero who reflects children of color will mean a great deal to many readers. It feels natural and empowering, woven into the story instead of presented as a separate lesson.
The final pages add extra value with activities like word searches and reflection questions, extending the experience beyond the last scene. That makes the book a strong fit for classrooms, family read-alouds, or independent reading time.
Overall, it blends humor, heart, and meaningful representation in a way that stays accessible and genuinely engaging. Captain Smiley is the kind of hero kids will want to return to. Families will appreciate the positive messages tucked neatly inside the adventure.
Your Story Told by Another
Stanley Livingstone’s Your Story Told by Another is a layered allegorical coming-of-age tale: Jacob, a foundling guided (and occasionally heckled) by an enigmatic Old Man, and framed by a present-tense narrator under an oak, moves from childhood missteps into adult moral weather, learning that “Providence” may be less a cosmic GPS than a mirror held up by a “Sender” whose identity the book dares you to recognize as your own. The plot advances by episodic “steps” (sometimes tender, sometimes sharp-elbowed) where everyday scenes, kites, soccer, friendships, a charismatic “Grand Master,” even a deliberately odd “Zombie Club,” become moral instruments, tuned toward the idea that what feels like fate is often an authored interior life.
What I felt most strongly while reading was the book’s insistence on texture over sermon, even when it’s openly didactic. The Old Man’s teachings don’t land as bullet points; they arrive the way uncomfortable truths usually do, sideways, mid-conversation, when you’d rather be anywhere else. One moment, Jacob is a kid sprinting with a stolen kite; the next, he’s being pressed to ask not “what do I do next?” but what kind of thinking precedes action. And later, when the narration turns toward imbalance, hypocrisy, and the Enemy-within, I appreciated how the book refuses to make villains exotic. The perpetrator, the mirror, the self-justifier, those roles commute between “them” and “me” with unnerving ease.
I also liked the framing device. The narrator’s midnight debates with the Snowy Owl and the storyteller turn the novel into a kind of campfire argument about meaning itself, especially around scripture and interpretation. There’s a provocative claim that the Qur’an functions less as a lullaby and more like a decoder, an awakening tool, not a tranquilizer, which gives the book a specific spiritual gravity without pretending the reader’s questions are impolite. The story sometimes pauses to explain what it has already dramatized. But the closing movement won me back: the Epilogue’s quiet, almost fairy-tale intimacy (an Old Man at a gate, a child’s whispered secret) and the final “Morning After” emptiness, oak, dew, no footprints, leave you with the unnerving sense that guidance might vanish the instant you’re ready to blame it for your life.
Your Story Told by Another is for readers who enjoy allegorical fiction, spiritual parable, philosophical coming-of-age, and metaphysical adventure, especially those who don’t mind being gently provoked into self-reflection. If you’ve ever been moved by Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist (or, in a more austere register, Hesse’s Siddhartha), you’ll recognize the pilgrimage-as-mirror architecture, though Livingstone’s voice is more argumentative, less lullaby, and deliberately warns you not to “get lost in the metaphors.” This is a strange but earnest parable that I enjoyed.
Pages: 335 | ASIN : B0FMC4DCWB
The Thirteenth Cagebreaker: A Cantara Academy Novel
The Thirteenth Cagebreaker is a young adult fantasy set in a glittering, ruthless magic school where talent is currency and control is everything. We follow Sparrow “Roe” Kettler, a dockside voice mage whose mother vanished years earlier after attending Cantara Academy on the same kind of scholarship. When Roe arrives, the academy’s Designating Stone brands her as the thirteenth amethyst, the first student it has ever physically marked, tying her to a secret history of “Cagebreakers” and to a containment machine under the school that feeds on students deemed too dangerous. The book follows her first term as she scrambles to catch up academically, builds a fierce little found family, falls into a complicated maybe-more-than-mentorship with Blaise Arcement, and slowly uncovers a system that cages magic and calls it safety, all building toward a public confrontation that forces the powerful to answer for what they have built.
Roe’s voice is sharp and funny and aching all at once, full of dock slang and small sensory details, like the way her secondhand robes never quite sit right or how academy marble smells different from salt-wet wood. The writing balances that chatty tone with these sudden punches of poetry, especially when it talks about cages, about learning to make yourself small so people feel safe around you. The magic school setting is lush and cinematic, but what stuck with me more than the floating bridges and singing gates was the constant hum of class difference and scrutiny. Scholarship kids sit under the banners near the kitchens, sponsor families glide through the memorial halls, and every hallway conversation is edged with who has power and who is expected to be grateful.
What surprised me most was how much this fantasy plot about a containment Vault and a secret Cagebreaker Protocol ends up feeling like a story about being told your feelings are too loud. The author keeps coming back to this idea that systems call it “control” or “stability” when what they really want is compliance. Roe’s training scenes hurt, especially when teachers tell her to forget the work songs that kept her community alive or label her survival magic as “crude” and unprofessional. At the same time, there is a very tender through-line: Minna and the other scholarship kids who adopt Roe almost on sight, the quiet solidarity in the library stacks, and Blaise choosing truth over the legacy he was born to protect. The slow-burn romantic fantasy element feels earned because it is built out of hard choices and shared risk, not just witty banter. I did feel the book’s “Book One” status in the last stretch; the big machinery of the world is still turning when you hit the final page, but Roe’s emotional arc from scared scholarship girl to someone willing to testify in front of the Board feels complete enough that the ending lands.
The author is not shy about institutional abuse, parental abandonment, or the way grief sits in the body, and she flags that clearly right up front, which I really appreciated. The story keeps a thread of stubborn hope running through all of that, though. Roe does not magically fix the system with one song, and she does not become perfectly controlled or endlessly forgiving. She keeps choosing, again and again, to tell the truth, to ask better questions, to trust the people who have actually earned it. That repeated choice gives the book this grounded, almost defiant optimism. It feels less like a fantasy about a chosen one and more like a fantasy about a girl who refuses to let the people in charge decide what her magic is for.
If you like young adult fantasy that mixes a moody magic school, found family, and a slow-burn romance with sharp conversations about power and control, I think you will really click with this. It is especially for readers who have ever been told they are “too much” or who grew up squeezing themselves smaller to fit someone else’s comfort. If you are up for a character-driven, emotionally intense ride that feels like a friend taking your hand and saying, “You were never meant to live in that cage,” then this book is absolutely worth your time.
Pages: 457 | ASIN : B0G6LRSPM3
MERRY-GO-ROUND BROKE DOWN: A NOVEL OF GREED, GUILT, AND GLOBALIZATION
Merry-Go-Round Broke Down, by authors David Woo and Margalit Shinar, is a multi-voice social thriller that uses one high-stakes frame, a hostage crisis in a Manhattan hotel bar in September 2008, to pull you through nine character stories that span continents and years. Each chapter drops into a different life, from a Chinese factory-town power broker facing the “sell or shut down” pressures of reform to an immigrant caught in the machinery of subprime mortgages, to a Wall Street salesman selling risky bonds with a straight face. The stories braid back toward that locked door in New York, where the gunmen fight to be seen and heard, even as the world looks away.
What struck me first is how the authors keep the book readable without sanding off the sharp edges. They don’t hide the ugliness. People say cruel things. They rationalize. They grab what they can. And yet the prose often stays concrete and physical, like the polished bull-and-bear centerpiece glinting under a chandelier right before everything goes sideways. I also liked the structure: each chapter feels like a self-contained novella with its own weather, its own pace, its own moral pressure. That gives the book momentum, and it also makes the argument feel earned.
The authorial choice that worked best for me is the refusal to make globalization an abstract villain. It shows up as a chain of handoffs. A mortgage gets “sold onward to some other idiot,” and a person’s life gets dragged with it. A town council in Norway weighs shiny civic dreams against risk, while a salesman performs confidence like it’s oxygen. Even the more cinematic moments land because they come with character texture, like Tomoko snapping from fear into action on a bus, doing something messy and brave and human. The didactic impulse sometimes peeks through, especially when a character’s inner monologue turns into a tidy thesis. But most of the time, the book earns its big ideas by putting them inside real choices, with real consequences.
Merry-Go-Round Broke Down is a contemporary fiction novel with the propulsion of a financial thriller. It’s fiction, but it wants to explain the world while it entertains you. I’d recommend it most to readers who like big-canvas, idea-driven novels and don’t mind sitting with moral discomfort, especially people interested in how the 2000s boom-and-bust era rippled across borders and into ordinary lives. If you want a story that makes you look up from the page and think, “Wait, is this how it really works?,” then it delivers.
Pages: 323 | ASIN : B0GFQ83FLL
The Reset Self
The Reset Self is a self-help book that argues you are not broken, you are over-conditioned, and most of your pain comes from living as a “role-self” instead of as a real person. Seravyna Böhm walks through how early family dynamics, cultural pressure, and constant performance teach you to become the Strong One, the Good Child, the Fixer, or the High-Achiever, then shows how expectation scripts and the nervous-system load of constant over-compliance turn into anxiety, resentment, burnout, and numbness. The heart of the book is a set of simple tools, like Role Naming, Expectation Tracking, the Fingertips Principle, Non-Compliance Experiments, Feeling Without Feeding, and the Daily De-Script, all aimed at helping you step out of old roles in real time and act from choice instead of fear.
I really like the core idea that “you are conditioned, not defective.” It feels kind, and it also feels sharp. The shift from “I need to fix myself” to “I learned this role, and I can unlearn it” has a surprisingly strong emotional impact. I also appreciate how clearly the book names common identities like the Strong One or the Peacemaker and then maps them to concrete patterns in work, family, and healing spaces. The chapter on the “invisible engine of misery” and the expectation–resentment loop hit hard for me, because it turns messy feelings into something you can actually see and work with. The latter material on ethics, choice, and accountability keeps the method from slipping into selfishness. It keeps repeating that understanding conditioning explains behavior and does not excuse harm, and that balance feels very grounded and humane.
I appreciated the writing and structure overall, especially the warm, steady voice that often feels soothing and reassuring. The author takes time with each idea, circling around it in a way that lets the message really sink in, with phrases and examples that come back like friendly reminders. The strong use of metaphor and direct address creates an intimate, conversational feel, which works well. The focus stays almost entirely on lived experience, which keeps the material accessible. What stood out most to me is that the tone remains compassionate, clean, and practical, and the case examples keep the tools grounded in real life.
I would recommend The Reset Self to anyone who feels like the “responsible one,” who is burned out from people-pleasing, or who has done a lot of therapy and self-work and still feels strangely stuck. It’s especially well-suited to high-functioning, over-thinking adults who look fine on the outside and feel empty or angry on the inside. As a clear, gentle guide for unhooking from old roles, easing the nervous-system load, and making everyday choices from something that feels more like your actual self, it is thoughtful, practical, and genuinely encouraging.
Pages: 231 | ASIN : B0GBZWFMRN
O Tubarão Que Queria Surfar / The Shark Who Wanted To Surf
The Shark Who Wanted to Surf by Isabel Ricardo is a fun, fact-filled story about a blue shark named Carmel who dreams of surfing like the “two-legged creatures” on the surface. Each time he swims close enough to learn, the humans panic and flee. Carmel is left disappointed. Still, he refuses to let fear or doubt wash away his goal. That persistence gives the book a heartfelt, encouraging tone.
Ricardo introduces a variety of sea creatures who become part of Carmel’s world. Along the way, readers pick up engaging facts about anatomy and behavior. Those details deepen the underwater setting while also tracking Carmel’s emotional journey. Some animals dismiss his dream as silly. That response may feel familiar to young readers who have ever been discouraged for wanting something different. Others respond with warmth. Fizz the dolphin and Tentaclaude the octopus stand out as steady sources of support. Their kindness shows how far encouragement can go when someone is learning, growing, or trying something new.
A standout feature is that the book is bilingual, which adds an extra layer of value to the reading experience. Seeing the story presented in two languages supports vocabulary growth and language confidence without interrupting the flow. It also invites shared reading between children and adults who may be stronger in one language than the other. In a story centered on reaching across differences and refusing to give up, the bilingual format feels especially fitting. It widens the audience, strengthens comprehension, and makes rereading even more rewarding.
The backgrounds are detailed and adorable. The underwater scenes feel lively and full of personality. The color and small visual touches make the setting welcoming, even when Carmel hits setbacks. The illustrations also strengthen the emotional moments, especially when Carmel feels hopeful and determined because his friends believe in him.
I would recommend The Shark Who Wanted to Surf to young readers who enjoy ocean adventures, and especially to anyone who needs a reminder that dreams are worth chasing. Even when others disagree. It’s a gentle, uplifting story about friendship, courage, and self-belief.
Pages: 109 | ISBN : 978-1962185783
Unrealized Power
Lucas James and the Legend of Maxa follows a sarcastic teen whose telepathic bond with an ancient alien forces him to confront power, responsibility, and what it means to protect someone. What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
The unrealized power I believe we have within us, was on my mind as I wrote this one. Along somewhat parallel lines is the idea that our external appearance doesn’t define who we are or our capabilities.
Lucas’s voice is very specific. Did that voice come naturally, or did it evolve as you wrote the book?
I knew his great power would come from his mind more than his physical self. I suspected Lucas would have a big personality and a lot of strong beliefs as I began to write. His grand ideas, coupled with the fact that he wasn’t thrilled about being at camp, gave way to him being pretty unique and memorable as he evolved – in my humble opinion.
The camp setting feels authentic. Do you have personal summer camp experiences that shaped Wee Great Falls and its rituals?
Going to several camps as a kid, and then later in life with my son, certainly resonated with me. Places like this are interesting and can feel like their own little worlds, which I hope is the sense of the setting created here.
The book balances slapstick chaos with genuine tenderness. How did you decide when to lean into humor and when to slow down for emotional moments?
I think humor is naturally woven into tenderness, love, and even fear, in life. When the characters are afraid, they look to something that makes them laugh as a distraction, while other characters might be humorous just by being themselves. At our core, though, I believe what drives most of us in the end is love. I’m glad that you appreciated this balance.
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When Lucas is forced to go to Adventurer Camp one last time, it’s far from just the conventional zaniness and ordinary traditions in the wilderness. The ground is rumbling and a mysterious flower is blooming all over camp, but more than that – he is seeing and hearing unusual things. Lucas learns more about the campgrounds and about himself, as he follows his intuition into a life or death situation.
