Our second movie feature! First Parent Trap read-alikes, now Groundhog Day!
What would you do if you were stuck in a time loop…re-living the same day over and over again, until you change something significant? Would you survive, or would you slowly lose your mind? The kids in these books are holding out hope for a happy ending….but will they get it?
Our “5 Books…” lists include five books (occasionally with a few extra!) on a specific topic, with a short synopsis so you can decide if it sounds like something you would like. Five Books–one old, one new, one popular with kids, one well-reviewed, and one staff favorite. (But you’ll have to guess which is which)!
* * *
The Retake by Jen Calonita
Zoe knows that the only thing harder than middle school is losing a best friend. She and Laura used to do everything together from taking silly selfies, to joining all the same clubs together and even throwing surprise birthday parties for one another.
But lately things have been weird between them. Now Laura will post a photo of her hanging out with other girls before responding to Zoe’s simple text. She doesn’t even want to sit with her at lunch anymore. Zoe is heartbroken–all she wants is for things to go back to normal.
But then a magical app downloads on her phone…and things get even weirder! Suddenly Zoe can travel back in time to moments where her and Laura started drifting apart. It is like a dream come true. A chance for Zoe to mend their friendship.
But as Zoe goes back to moments of middle school drama–sleepover games gone wrong, field trips with cliques and crushes, and school projects that bring on more-than-awkward encounters–she realizes that second chances don’t always go as planned and that sometimes you need to trust the magic of new beginnings.
A picture-perfect look at tween friendship, that also explores more serious themes of social media pressure, bullying and what it means to be yourself.
The First Last Day by Dorian Cirrone
What if you could get a do-over–a chance to relive a day in your life over and over again until you got it right? Would you?
After finding a mysterious set of paints in her backpack, eleven-year-old Haleigh Adams paints a picture of her last day at the New Jersey shore. When she wakes up the next morning, Haleigh finds that her wish for an endless summer with her new friend Kevin has come true. At first, she’s thrilled, but Haliegh soon learns that staying in one place–and time–comes with a price.
And when Haleigh realizes her parents have been keeping a secret, she is faced with a choice: do nothing and miss out on the good things that come with growing up or find the secret of the time loop she’s trapped in and face the inevitable realities of moving on.
As she and Kevin set out to find the source of the magic paints, Haleigh worries it might be too late. Will she be able to restart time? Or will it be the biggest mistake of her life?
Rewind by Lisa Graff
As far as McKinley O’Dair is concerned, the best thing about living in Gap Bend, Pennsylvania, is the Time Hop–the giant party the town throws every June to celebrate a single year in history. That one day is enough to make the few things that aren’t so fantastic about McKinley’s life–like her crabby homeroom teacher or her super-scheduled father–worth suffering through. And when McKinley learns that this year’s theme is 1993, she can’t wait to enter the Time Hop fashion show with a killer ’90s outfit she’s designed and sewn all on her own. But when the Time Hop rolls around, nothing goes as planned. In fact, it’s the biggest disaster of McKinley’s life.
Before she knows what’s hit her, McKinley somehow finds herself in the real 1993–and it’s not all kitschy parachute pants and Jurassic Park. All McKinley wants is to return to the present, but before she can, she’s going to have to make a big change–but which change is the right one?
This humorous and heartfelt novel about destiny and self-discovery shines a poignant light on the way life could play out–if a person is given a chance to rewind.
Operation Do-Over by Gordon Korman
Mason and Ty were once the very best of friends, like two nerdy sides of the same coin . . . until seventh grade, when Ava Petrakis came along. Now Mason can trace everything bad in his life to that terrible fight they had over the new girl. The one thing he’d give anything for is a do-over. But that can’t happen in real life–can it?
As a science kid, Mason knows do-overs are impossible, so he can’t believe it when he wakes up from a freak accident and finds himself magically transported back to seventh grade. His parents aren’t yet divorced and his beloved sheepdog is still alive. Best of all, he and Ty haven’t had their falling-out yet.
It makes no logical sense, but Mason is determined to use this second chance to not only save his friendship (and his dog!) but do other things differently–like trying out for the football team and giving new friends a chance. There’s just one person he’ll be avoiding at all costs: Ava. But despite his best efforts, will he be able to stop the chain of events that made his previous life implode?
11 Birthdays by Wendy Mass
It’s Amanda’s 11th birthday and she is super excited — after all, 11 is so different from 10. But from the start, everything goes wrong. The worst part of it all is that she and her best friend, Leo, with whom she’s shared every birthday, are on the outs and this will be the first birthday they haven’t shared together.
After celebrating their first nine same-day birthdays together, Amanda and Leo, having fallen out on their tenth and not speaking to each other for the last year, prepare to celebrate their eleventh birthday separately. It’s as horrible as she thought it would be.
But when Amanda turns in for the night, glad to have her birthday behind her, she wakes up happy for a new day. Or is it? Her birthday seems to be repeating itself. What is going on?! And how can she fix it? Only time, friendship, and a little luck will tell. . .
Vivian Lantz’s Second Chances by Kathryn Ormsbee
Vivian Lantz is cursed. Every year, terrible things happen on her first day of school. This year, Vivian has a plan to conquer eighth grade. But eighth grade Turns out to start with her worst first day yet.
Vivian can’t wait to put it all behind her. But instead of waking up to a brand-new day, Vivian somehow gets stuck reliving her catastrophic one. Curse: 9,000 – Vivian: 0. Then she sees her misfortune for what it is: the golden opportunity to get her perfect plan back on track. But when her second chance turns into a third, a fourth, and a fifth, Vivian might have to let go of the perfect day of her dreams… and make a few surprising choices along the way.
You Only Live Once, David Bravo by Mark Oshiro
Middle school is the worst, especially for David Bravo. He doesn’t have a single class with his best (okay, only) friend, Antoine. He has to give a class presentation about his heritage, but he’s not sure how–or even if–he wants to explain to his new classmates that he’s adopted. After he injures Antoine in an accident at cross-country practice, he just wishes he could do it all over.
He doesn’t expect his wish to summon a talking, shapeshifting, annoying dog, Fea, who claims that a choice in David’s past actually did put him on the wrong timeline… and she can take him back to fix it.
But when their first try (and the second, and the third) is a total disaster, David and Fea are left scrambling through timeline after timeline–on a quest that may lead them to answers in the most unexpected places.
A laugh-out-loud, heartwarming middle grade novel that explores how our choices make us who we are.
When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead
“I am coming to save your friend’s life, and my own. I ask two favors. First, you must write me a letter.”
When Miranda starts receiving mysterious notes, she doesn’t know what to do. The notes tell her that she must write a letter, a true story, and that she can’t share her mission with anyone–not even her (former) best friend, Sal.
It would be easy to ignore the strange messages, except that whoever is leaving them appears to have an uncanny ability to predict the future. And if that’s the case, Miranda has an even bigger problem–because the notes tell her that someone needs saving, and she might be too late to help.
Groundhog Day as if seen through the eyes of one of the other characters…the one not reliving the same day.
* * *
So. What do you think? Would you be able to relive the same day over and over if it helped you to fix something? Do you think the characters in these books made things better? Would any of these books make as good a movie as Groundhog Day?
As always, if you need help finding these–or any other books–in the library, ask one of our librarians for help. We LOVE matching kids and books!
Happy Reading!
::Kelly::
BellaOnBooks's Blog 