I’m in a club! I’ve never actually seen the other members, but I can tell they’re very cool. It’s the Marvelous Middle Grade Monday club! Everyone in the club is a book blogger who posts a middle grade book review on a Monday. This was the brainchild of Shannon Messenger. You can see a list of folks who are publishing a review on a particular Monday by going to her site. If you have enjoyed reading the middle grade book reviews on my blog, you would probably enjoy the others’, too.

11 Birthdays, Wendy Mass, (2009, 267 pages) wins the award for prettiest book jacket of time travel books I have reviewed to date. The author has written several books about different tween/teen characters who celebrate a birthday as part of the book’s story line. They include Finally (about turning 12) and 13 Gifts. I hate to go all girly here, but I have to say the covers of these books are cupcake gorgeous! Okay, enough about the gloss.

The plot of a character being locked in a repeating day is one that few authors of time travel stories use, notable exceptions consisting of The Power of Un, and 15 Minutes. I wish more authors would explore it. As in the movie, Groundhog Day, when the characters realize they are repeating a day sometimes they try to make it better.  In so doing they make us as readers reflect on how we could live more fully.

Amanda and Leo in 11 Birthdays were born on the same day. They became best friends and even had their birthday parties together each year, until their tenth birthday when Leo made some comments that changed everything. The friendship ended. Amanda doesn’t enjoy her 11th birthday party, the first one without Leo, very much. She goes to bed relieved to put it behind her. But when she wakes up it’s her birthday again!  She figures out Leo is also locked in a repeating day. They mend their friendship, and try to make the repeating 24 hours the best it can possibly be while they try to find their way out to the next day.

This was a really fun story with likeable characters.

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