 Hi everyone, my name is Steph, this is Little Bookish Teacher and welcome or welcome back to my channel. March is synonymous with middle grade books here on BookTube because we love a bit of alliteration for middle grade March, right? And this month I really do want to highlight some particular middle grade titles along with the rest of my content. So if you do follow along on my regular channel novelty corner, you may have seen my vlog reading the Amari Books by BB Alston. This is a really fantastic middle grade fantasy series. There are two books out currently and I read both of them for a vlog, but I wanted to do a separate review video here because I think they are really fantastic books and worthwhile of having a video on both channels. So as I said, there are two books currently out in the series. There is Amari and the Night Brothers, which is book one, and Amari and the Great Game, which is book two. They're written by BB Alston. They were published in 2021 and 2022 respectively and they were published by Hardy Grant Publishing here in Australia. The initial premise and setup of this series is that Amari's older brother Quinton has gone missing and she has never given up on the belief that he is still alive and out there somewhere. And he manages to somehow give her directions to the Bureau of Supernatural Affairs and the tryouts for their summer camp. And this opens her eyes to the fact that the world is not as simple as she first thought and that there are supernatural beings who live in and around her every day and that he was an agent for the Bureau of Supernatural Affairs and that he has gone missing on a case for them. And so she becomes determined to win a place at their summer camp and to also become an agent like him so that she can find out what happened to her brother. Along the way she makes some new friends. Her new best friend is Elsie and Elsie is a were-dragon who can't shift into were-dragon form. They are roommates and best friends and together they work together to try and figure out what is going on with Quinton. This becomes more complicated. As Amari is inducted into this world she has to find out what her magical talent is and as it turns out she is a magician which is the most feared class of magic user in this world and as a result she is sort of treated like a pariah and people are very prejudiced against her because they fear her. They fear her magic even though the fact that she has no knowledge of this world she is brand new to it. She does absolutely no understanding or awareness of what being a magician means to her but she learns that pretty quickly because people really have a hard time with her. But all through it she is determined to prove herself, to prove her worth and to prove that she belongs in this world. I absolutely loved the first book. The second book had some things in it which I'll talk about in a minute that frustrated me a little bit but overall the writing and everything that I loved about this book was still in here just with some things that I had to think about a lot more. And the second book also involves unpacking a little bit more about how and why the magicians are feared within this world. What did I love about this series so far? I absolutely love the writing. I think BB Austin has done an incredible job of writing Amari and all the side characters and building up this world. The world is really cool. Is it reminiscent of another book series that shall not be named absolutely? But it is done so much better. There is a stronger connection to the real world. This is a world where the supernatural and the magical meet the technological. So in many ways this feels like SFF in that there are science fiction elements as well as the fantasy elements woven into it and that is my favorite kind of blend of fantasy to be perfectly honest. There are tons of very cool characters in this series with very cool abilities and connections to Amari. There are heroes and there are villains and there are people who you don't think will be important who have significance in this story as you get further into it and it was just really nice to get to know all of them. Some of my favorite side characters were the talking elevators that can transport you to anywhere in the building. So the Bureau of Supernatural Affairs is set up in a hotel and these elevators can take you anywhere but they'll have a conversation with you as you go and they have personalities and some of them if they're really old or really slow and some of them are hard of hearing and so they shout a lot and some of them are super fast and like you learn about their personalities as you go along and I thought that was really fun. And obviously I think one of the most important facets of this story is the discussions around prejudice and racism and bullying and the impact that that has on Amari and the kind of things that she has to face on a daily basis just in order to get through the day. Now as I said I absolutely love both of these books. The one thing that frustrated me a little bit in Amari and the Great Game is that there are plenty of adult characters who she has as allies in this book and there are adults who are villains and that's fine it's middle grade so we expect going into a middle grade title that more than likely a villain is going to be an adult figure. However in Amari and the Great Game it's set up in a way that she's completely isolated from anyone who can help her as something that is basically set up as a training school for future members of the Bureau of Supernatural Affairs. Many of the adults are teachers and as a teacher myself one thing I find really frustrating is the evil teacher trope because I think that is really harmful. It's not to say that there aren't teachers out there who kids don't get along with and who they don't have strong relationships with and of course there are always going to be teachers who may or may not be in it for the right reason but for the most part I've never met teacher or worked with a teacher who was not there to work with with kids and I find it really frustrating in middle grade titles that the default seems to be you know let's make either every adult the villain or let's make it so our characters don't have anyone to turn to at any point in time. It's not to say that the adult can always solve the problem I don't think that's the case because it's a middle grade title it has to be the main character who's going to solve it but sometimes all you need is a guide and I felt really bad for Amari that literally she is cut off from everyone and it made it kind of harder to read this book than it did in Amari and the Night Brothers so take that with a grain of salt that's just something that I was thinking while I was reading and I'm an adult reader reading in middle grade I'm not the target audience so I get that but in a lot of ways I also know that these stories can be written with positive adult role models for these characters without them needing to take up the whole plot and I know that because I've seen it written in books I just wish we got more of it but aside from that as I said these were really fantastic I had honestly just I sped through them they're not short books they're they're quite hefty but they are highly enjoyable very engaging Amari is a truly wonderful character who I think is going to be one of my favorite middle grade characters for a very long time and I'm looking forward to picking up the third book whenever it comes out in the comments I'd love to know if you've read either of these books and what you thought of it if you want to let me know that you're here but you don't want to leave a comment for free to leave any kind of magic emoji down below I will leave links to all of the books and where you can find them in the description and I hope that we're on the world just staying safe and healthy and I will see you in my next video thanks so much for watching bye everyone