Here are 100 books that Sir Scrap Metal fans have personally recommended if you like
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I am a farm girl who lives in rural Texas, surrounded by big blue skies, cornfields, and winding gravel roads. After avidly reading every children’s book and young adult novel I could find, including classics like Louisa May Alcott and J.R.R. Tolkien, I took to writing without thinking twice about it. I’ve published over 10 MG, YA, and New Adult books and I alternate between writing realistic family dramas and high fantasy, with a dose of science fiction that sprang up on its own and fits neatly somewhere between the other two. And then I read more books and plan to write more of them too.
This beautiful volume of three stories about a princess who deals with a spider-enchantress, a pair of feuding wizards, and a benevolent old dragon in her kingdom features pristine, gorgeous illustrations and a sweet-but-strong heroine. I just really love how Princess Cecile is a brave and sensible person and the twist that the real Cecile actually lives in our world and writes about Belamor was really smart, gently suggesting that princess stories are not just escapist fantasy, but an important part of self-expression for young girls as they grow up. It’s rare for me to find anything that so perfectly captures this idyllic genre. Marilyn Churchill has created a new fairy tale.
In this three-part epic adventure, Cecile wakes up in a dream, and finds herself in the Kingdom of Belamor. The fourteen-year-old is unaware that she is, in fact, the Princess of this realm. She soon discovers that a beautiful enchantress has cast a spell over the kingdom and usurped her throne! And when she confronts this compelling, and powerful opponent, she learns what it really takes to be the Princess of Belamor. Now fifteen, Cecile's dream of a peaceful reign is literally shaken when a dragon hidden under the castle awakens after five hundred years of slumber. She must decide…
A gay retelling of the classic fairy tale--a scrumptious love story featuring ungrateful stepsiblings, a bake-off, and a fairy godfather.
Cinderelliot is stuck at home taking care of his ungrateful stepsister and stepbrother. When Prince Samuel announces a kingdom-wide competition to join the royal staff as his baker, the stepsiblings…
I am a farm girl who lives in rural Texas, surrounded by big blue skies, cornfields, and winding gravel roads. After avidly reading every children’s book and young adult novel I could find, including classics like Louisa May Alcott and J.R.R. Tolkien, I took to writing without thinking twice about it. I’ve published over 10 MG, YA, and New Adult books and I alternate between writing realistic family dramas and high fantasy, with a dose of science fiction that sprang up on its own and fits neatly somewhere between the other two. And then I read more books and plan to write more of them too.
This fantasy novel is about a girl who can’t cope with the lack of attention she’s receiving since her baby brother was born. He is very ill and has to use an inhaler so Merel’s parents are always tired and don’t notice her. The story is engrossing and heartwarming as Merel has become so angsty that she refuses to sleep and does nothing but scream. Eventually, she loses the ability to sleep at all. During a trip to a fantasy land to try to get her lost sleep back so she can be normal, Merel learns to accept her family and to feel affection for her baby brother. The story deals with regression abouta new sibling in a fascinating way.
Merel's life has changed. Since the birth of her sick baby brother, her parents seem to have forgotten she exists. But when she finds a tiny silver violin in her bedroom, things take a turn for the worse. Merel learns that her sleep has abandoned her and that she must embark on a perilous journey to recover it, or stay awake forever.
Together with her devoted toy sheep, Roger, Merel sets out in search of a place called Lullaby Grove. She meets a sleepy king with an obsession for feathers and a transparent old man on a night train going…
I am a farm girl who lives in rural Texas, surrounded by big blue skies, cornfields, and winding gravel roads. After avidly reading every children’s book and young adult novel I could find, including classics like Louisa May Alcott and J.R.R. Tolkien, I took to writing without thinking twice about it. I’ve published over 10 MG, YA, and New Adult books and I alternate between writing realistic family dramas and high fantasy, with a dose of science fiction that sprang up on its own and fits neatly somewhere between the other two. And then I read more books and plan to write more of them too.
This picture book blends fiction and non-fiction in a brilliant package. It’s part of a series about little KeeKee, a cat who is bursting with the innocence and curiosity of young children, as she travels the world to famous cities. In London, she sees some of the main tourist landmarks and has tea with a certain elegant old woman in Buckingham Palace. I think the book simply stands out because it’s so sincere. KeeKee’s excitement about everything is palpable and while the book has some sound facts in it, it brings the big world down to a tiny, friendly pint-size and is filled with joy.
“KeeKee’s Big Adventures in London, England is part travel guide, part exploration—an adventure not to be missed." —Foreword Reviews
“A charming, beautifully illustrated guide to the English capital for kids."—Kirkus Reviews (Top Indie Picture Books 2019)
Winner of 2020 Readers’ Favorite Awards: Gold Medal Children’s Picture Book and Illustration Award; & Gold Mom’s Choice Award
Travel lovers, get ready to explore in KeeKee’s Big Adventures in London, the 5th book in the award-winning series.
Join KeeKee, the globe-trotting calico kitty, on her latest brilliant adventures in London. Along with her friend Willamb Sheepspeare, she whisks readers through the majesty of…
I’m pretty sure I’m about to die in space. And I just turned twelve and a half.
Blast off with the four winners of the StellarKid Project on a trip to the International Space Station and then to the Gateway outpost orbiting the Moon! It’s a dream come true until…
I am a farm girl who lives in rural Texas, surrounded by big blue skies, cornfields, and winding gravel roads. After avidly reading every children’s book and young adult novel I could find, including classics like Louisa May Alcott and J.R.R. Tolkien, I took to writing without thinking twice about it. I’ve published over 10 MG, YA, and New Adult books and I alternate between writing realistic family dramas and high fantasy, with a dose of science fiction that sprang up on its own and fits neatly somewhere between the other two. And then I read more books and plan to write more of them too.
This is the second book in a YA series, a sequel to the also excellent Esme’s Wish. It features fantastic, to-swoon-for writing that builds a lavish water-based alternative world called Aeolia. In the first book, Esme’s mother disappeared but Esme found her in Aeolia. What I love about this second book is how it develops the family relationships as Esme tries to convince her father that his wife is alive in a fantasy land while her mother’s antagonist in Aeolia, Nathan Mare, turns into one of the best villains I’ve seen in a while. Detailed and menacing with his obsession with talent (called Gifts in Aeolia) because he doesn’t have a Gift, and ultimately convincing as a bad guy, he offers some subtle and thought-provoking reading.
In the enchanted world of Aeolia, fifteen-year-old Esme Silver faces her hardest task yet. She must master her unruly Gift - the power to observe the past - and uncover the secrets she needs to save her mother, Ariane. In between attending school in the beguiling canal city of Esperance, Esme and her friends - old and new - travel far and wide across Aeolia, gathering the ingredients for a potent magical elixir. Their journey takes them to volcanic isles, sunken ruins and snowy eyries, spectacular places fraught with danger, where they must face their deepest fears and find hope…
I’ve always loved fairytales. What little girl with a growing romantic heart doesn’t? By the time I was eight, I told people I was Cinderella because of all the work I did at home. An exaggeration, even for the oldest child, but still. My first prom dress, during a year I won’t mention, was reminiscent of Cinderella’s blue ballgown. As I became a writer myself, I noticed my stories held themes I learned from fairytales. Love, loyalty, courage, and a dose of magic. I simply add space or aliens to the mix.
A Snow White who lives on a cold mining planet and often enters the fighting ring to earn cash? What’s not to love? Princess Essie fled her homeworld after the death of her mother, but the new queen isn’t the darkest threat she faced in the palace. She learned to survive by fighting, coding drones on a mining planet, and not trusting anyone. When Dane crash lands on her planet in the search of a lost treasure, she’s pulled into the war she tried so desperately to avoid. There is great world-building, exciting chases, and near escapes.
R.C. Lewis also tackles an ugly truth about child abuse in a way that keeps it real without splaying the guts all over the page. We can’t fix our world if we continue to pretend such things never happen.
Her home planet is filled with violence and corruption at the hands of King Matthias and his wife as they attempt to punish her captors. The king will stop at nothing to get his beloved daughter back-but that's assuming she wants to return at all.
Essie has grown used to being cold. Temperatures on the planet Thanda are always sub-zero, and she fills her days with coding and repairs for the seven loyal drones that run the local mines.
When a mysterious young man named Dane crash-lands near her home, Essie agrees to help the pilot…
I am a professional dabbler who has tried things from beekeeping, duck herding, race car driving, coding, and filmmaking. But I am famously known as the author and illustrator of imaginative and fun children’s books and comics. My latest book is the hilarious supervillain graphic novel Mischief and Mayhem. It’s a story about Missy who gets kicked out of superhero boot camp and ends up as a supervillain (a nice and friendly one). I’ve always enjoyed reading about unexpected heroes and characters who flip the script. We all have challenges in our lives and when we face them head-on is when we truly find the heroes in ourselves.
In this fast-paced action-adventure, super-secret agent Agent 9 has to stop King Crab and his diabolical plans to melt the polar ice caps and build a massive water park. If that doesn’t grab your attention, I have no doubt that James Burks’ wonderful and dynamic illustrations will. There are chase scenes, explosions, and humor on every page that’ll surely keep the reader hooked with every turn. I love how Agent 9 has to address her own personal struggles so she can level up and win the day. A very welcome addition to any children’s graphic novel bookshelf.
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"Funny, adorable, and action-packed!" —Kazu Kibuishi, #1 New York Times bestselling creator of the Amulet series
From the creator of the Bird & Squirrel graphic novel series, comes this hilarious and action-packed new series which follows a feline secret agent who will do whatever it takes to save the world—even if it means destroying a few things along the way.
The Super-Secret Spy Service’s mission is to keep the world safe from maniacal villains. And Agent 9 is one of its best operatives. Although Nine always manages to complete the mission, there is occasionally some collateral damage (like the priceless…
For those who enjoy fantasy adventure, the Faerie Tales from the White Forest series offers a new twist on the traditional faerie tales so loved by young readers.
From devastating curses to death-defying quests, Brigitta and her growing collective of misfit friends face greater and greater challenges when destiny calls…
Since first reading dystopian novels as a teenager, I’ve been fascinated by the new worlds that authors create and the fight that the protagonist endures to survive a hostile world. The difference from then to now is that it was previously a mostly male-dominated world. We like to see ourselves reflected in the protagonist, so I’ve been delighted to find so many strong and powerful women at the core of many contemporary dystopian novels. I find that they often include more thoughtful and complex characters with subtle storytelling.
A badass woman whose not quite a woman. I was absorbed in this speculative sci-fi tale. It’s an easy and quick read yet the characters are well enough developed that I became furious on the protagonist’s behalf. I liked that it had me asking many questions on the grey moral landscape that is robotics and artificial intelligence.
I found the protagonist relatable in spite of the fact she wasn’t human. She was programmed to please a man, yet discovered a form of self-actualization through reading. Her growth as a character was refreshing and I was rooting for her the whole way. Under a desert sky as sweat trickled down my back, I couldn’t move, I had to keep reading.
"Provocative...a Frankenstein for the digital age...a rich text about power, autonomy, and what happens when our creations outgrow us." — Esquire
"Unexpected and subtle...delicious and thought-provoking." — New Scientist
For fans of Never Let Me Go and My Dark Vanessa, a powerful, provocative novel about the relationship between a female robot and her human owner, exploring questions of intimacy, power, autonomy, and control.
Annie Bot was created to be the perfect girlfriend for her human owner Doug. Designed to satisfy his emotional and physical needs, she has dinner ready for him every night, wears the pert outfits he orders for…
David Millett is a digital artist. He is an accomplished author, filmmaker, and producer of paper and eBooks. He loves writing, painting, filmmaking, composing, and performing music.
"Reason" is a science fiction short story first published in the April 1941 issue of Astounding Science Fiction and collected in I, Robot (1950), The Complete Robot (1982), and Robot Visions (1990). It is part of Asimov's Robot series and was the second of Asimov's positronic robot stories to see publication. It tells the story of Cutie, a new class of robot that was designed to autonomously run a space station, which supplies energy via microwave beams to an energy-starved Earth. Cutie comes to realize, because he is so perfect and his human companions are so imperfect, that humans could not have created him. The book explores what it means to be human.
From the writer whose name is synonymous with the science of robotics comes five decades of robot visions-36 landmark stories and essays, plus three rare tales-gathered together in one volume.
From Publishers Weekly
NAL launches its new SF imprint, ROC, with a collection of 18 of Asimov's ( Foundation ) robot stories. The earliest tales here, written from 1940 to 1960, remain among the most-loved in the field, the best being "Little Lost Robot," about a robot who obeys an order to "get lost." "The Bicentennial Man" (1976) about one robot's desires and efforts to be first free, then equal,…
As an author, one of my goals is to encourage kids to fall in love with reading–but I’m not an illustrator. I wish I practiced art more as a kid. If I had, maybe I’d be illustrating my own books. If only these five books existed forty years ago, perhaps I wouldn’t have given up on art. So, in addition to falling in love with reading, I’d love to inspire those same kids to keep exploring their artistic sides. I’ve seen how these books invigorate the artistic spirit of creatives and I hope they do the same for you.
It’s amazing what a little crayon can do, especially when it’s broken.
Inspired by Ohi’s viral broken crayon illustrations, Park invites two aliens into the planet of broken crayons where magic is made. It’s amazing what a little friendship and art can do together (hmm, similar theme to Dear Unicorn, now that I think of it). Bonus: check out Ohi’s social media for loads more creative found object artwork.
This wildly imaginative, crayon-inspired picture book shows that with a bit of teamwork and a universe of creativity, anything is possible!
Buzz! Zap! CRASH!
Gurple and Preen are in a big mess!
When they crash-land onto an unfamiliar planet with nothing but boxes of crayons, they must work together to get the mission back on course.
From Newbery Award–winning author Linda Sue Park and illustrator Debbie Ridpath Ohi comes a story about all the best things that can come out of a box of crayons.
Floretta- the story of an old woman who discovers life beautifully anew thru the helping hands of a child. The chakra colors of dawn and twilight are woven through the pages as the cycle of life is magically composed. The subject of “heaven,” has the potential to open discussions with…
My favorite books—to read and to write—have always been funny Christian romances. But all four of my kids prefer fantasy. They want me to read with them, and they’ve been asking me to read nothing but fantasy for years. Now I can say it’s my second favorite genre. In fact, I learned to like it so much I eventually started writing a children’s fantasy series of my own, in between all the mushy stuff. Beyond Wisherton is the first in that series.
Dragons are cool. The one on this cover is clearly mechanical, and that got my attention. Cove is a rather dark setting so I would only recommend this for older kids. Readers can tell from the beginning that the oppressive society is rooted in fear. What is behind that fear? The main characters, Trenton and Kallista, aren’t all that concerned with the bigger picture. They’re only trying to solve a puzzle left by Kallista’s father. We get to watch them become good friends in the process.
Trenton Colman is a creative thirteen-year-old boy with a knack for all things mechanical. But his talents are viewed with suspicion in Cove, a steam-powered city built inside a mountain. In Cove, creativity is a crime and “invention” is a curse word. Kallista Babbage is a repair technician and daughter of the notorious Leo Babbage, whose father died in an explosion—an event the leaders of Cove point to as an example of the danger of creativity.
Working together, Trenton and Kallista learn that Leo Babbage was developing a secret project before he perished. Following clues he left behind, they begin…
