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As much as I hate the idea of "girl books" and "boy books," the three Maud Hart Lovelace contenders I'm going to talk about here are definitely boy books. I don't think any of them pass the Bechdel test (neither did Fourmile or Zombie Baseball Beatdown, now that I think about it), which isn't the end of things, but worth noting, especially since those two and the following three are all pretty clearly on the list to appeal to boys.

Anyway.

First up is Chris Rylander's The Fourth Stall. It's a Godfather spoof set in a middle school, although I haven't seen The Godfather all the way through (or read the Mario Puzo book), so I'm certainly not going to attempt to point out the parallels (I do think I would have figured out who the rat was way too easily, but I don't think there are tons of middle school students who are going into this book with deep Godfather knowledge either).

Honestly, I wasn't crazy about The Fourth Stall. It's a perfectly fine mystery, but a few things really bugged me. I thought Mac, the main character, was kind of a bully, and not developed well enough to be a true antihero. And then the gender thing. I mean, this is a book set in a middle school. I get that it's supposed to be noir-ish, but discounting a couple of mothers, the only girls that Mac and company interact with are some unnamed mean girls, two female bullies (who are almost immediately written out), and the femme fatale who walks into Mac's office on the last page to set up a sequel. BOOOOOO. Rylander really missed an opportunity with the bullies - he brought three of the ten (I think) major school bullies into Mac's crew for a little while and really should have made one of them one of the girls.

Next up is Fred Bowen's Perfect Game. Speaking of main characters that are hard to root for, here we have Isaac, who spends a little too much time in this book being a self-centered ass. But thank goodness he has some kids with mental and physical disabilities to teach him how to be nicer!

I'm simplifying a bit, but only a bit. This is a very formulaic book - if you've ever read a sports book or seen a sports movie (especially those directed at kids), you know how this is going to end from about the fifth page (and you really only need that much time to find out the specific thing that Isaac wants to achieve, which in this case is a spot on the roster of a city all-star-ish baseball team, which of course he gets). Perfect Game is this year's Ghost Dog Secrets, the kind of book that the author can churn out in their sleep. Kids will read it and enjoy it, but there's nothing particularly special about it and it isn't going to win (it's worth noting, however, that I did not hate Perfect Game; I kind of hated Ghost Dog Secrets).

Last up this time is M. H. Herlong's Buddy. This one could be a contender. It's about a boy, his three-legged dog, and Hurricane Katrina. Lil' T is a character you actually want to root for; he's far from perfect (in fact, he's pretty awful for a long while after Katrina), but you can understand where he's coming from and his growth is really nice and really well-done by the author. Of all the "boy books" on the list, this one should have the widest appeal, especially among dog lovers. And while most middle schoolers aren't going to remember Katrina, they do know it happened during their lifetime, and that should get them interested. Also, diversity! Seriously, this list is a big improvement on last year's list, diversity-wise, with a third of the books having main characters who are people of color.