Seriously sinister

Okay, if creepy, crawly bugs give you bad dreams, don't even THINK about reading The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls by Claire Legrand!  Victoria is 12 years old; she's a perfectionist and likes everything to be exactly right and just so.  She doesn't have any friends except Lawrence, who's really more of her "project," as she constantly tries to correct him into being a better person.  They live in Belleville, which is a little too eerie in both it's perfect-ness and the way it doesn't seem to notice the local orphanage.  Then Lawrence disappears, Victoria's parents start getting weird, and these BUGS keep crawling out of everywhere (even with occasional bug illustrations right in the middle of the page you're reading), so Victoria checks out the orphanage.  She finds Lawrence - which is good - and a nasty gardener, a shape-shifting house, and the reason scary Mrs. Cavendish is keeping the kids there - which isn't good.  And did I mention bugs?  Yuk. If you're brave enough, get out your bug spray and find out if Victoria can learn what friendship is truly all about.

My first Cirque du Freak!

Once again, I was wrong - and that's okay! I honestly didn't think I'd like Birth of a Killer by Darren Shan, but it moved quickly and definitely kept my attention. This is the first book of a trilogy written as a prequel to the Cirque du Freak series, and it tells the story of how Larten Crepsley became a vampire. Sounding like something out of a Dickens novel, Larten had a pretty rotten childhood, complete with working in a nasty factory under a brutal boss. After Larten is on the run (I won't tell you why), he's hiding in a cemetery crypt when he meets Seba, a 500-year-old vampire who asks Larten to be his assistant. The story covers several years, during which Larten meets up with the bizarre Cirque du Freak and eventually becomes "blooded" as a vampire. Is it better to read the prequel and then the regular series, or the other way around? My middle school readers would have the best answer to that....