Before she was known for releases like Crenshaw and the Newbery award winning The One and Only Ivan, Katherine Applegate brought the Animorphs saga to the world. The series shows Applegate's impressive skill as a writer, as she weaves an accessible sci-fi story of epic sweep and exciting action sequences with surprisingly sophisticated world-building and affecting character development. The narrative also touches on themes regarding the traumas of war (through a kid-friendly lens) and mankind's relationship to the environment. All of the above is spread across the series in books of digestible length. Appropriate for ages ~7+, but contains a level of depth that can engross readers of any age!

Reviewed by Ginny H. 

In this adventurous, science fiction story, Mori lives a perfect life in Old Harmonie. Their town is a utopian community where kids are genetically altered to super-enhance a powerful trait, like puzzle solving, physical agility, or photographic memory. But when a strangely perfect new girl named Ilana moves in, Mori and her friends begin to question the only world they have ever known. 

Check out The Firefly Code by Megan Frazer Blakemore! 

Wires and Nerve picks up after the events of Winter (and Cinder, Scarlett, and Cress) so STOP RIGHT NOW if you haven't read those books. Actually, what's wrong with you? Go read those! They're so good! Start with Cinder, you're welcome.

Iko, the android who loves pretty clothes and shoes is also a butt kicking secret agent. She's been sent to Earth to round up the remaining rogue mutant soldiers from Luna and send them home to face justice, but every once in awhile one of them will slip away from her. Cinder tells her not to worry, but Iko can't help but feel like she's failing by not getting every single soldier safely away from Earth. Now it seems like she might be right, these soldiers are coming together in a way that threatens everyone Iko loves. Read more about Wires and Nerve Vol. 1 by Marissa Meyer

If you liked Stranger Things, read Paper Girls by Brian Vaughan. Vaughan, author of Saga, utilizes many of the same elements as Stranger Things: independent children, other worlds, absent parents (seriously, where are the parents?), and otherworldly monsters. The story begins as several twelve year-old paper girls bike their evening route on Halloween, 1988. What starts as a normal shift grows stranger and more supernatural by the hour. The main character, Erin, is delivering papers, when she is accosted by strange boys in Halloween costumes. Another group of paper girls rescues her and they agree to travel together for safety, but along the way they realize that people in town have started to disappear. Read more about Paper Girls by Brian Vaughan

Claude Rains was perhaps one of the most recognizable character actors from the classic era of film.  He was able to play almost any part. Among his best known roles were Captain Louis Renault in Casablanca and Prince John in The Adventures of Robin Hood.  The Invisible Man was his first major film role.  Prior to this film he had only appeared on screen in one silent film short.  The rest of his early acting life had been spent on the hardwood stages.  In The Invisible Man, Mr. Rains stars as Dr. Jack Griffin, who disappears one day while working in the lab of his friend and mentor Dr. Cranley   His mysterious disappearance from the lab has Flora, Dr. Cranley’s daughter and Jack’s girlfriend, worried regarding his whereabouts.  Unbeknownst to the two of them Jack Griffin has done more than simply walked away from the lab and them.  He has literally disappeared, becoming completely invisible.  Wrapped in bandages to hide his invisibility he sets up a lab in a local Inn to work on a way to bring himself back to normalcy.  Sadly the formula which made him invisible is also affecting his mind and he is becoming more unbalanced and violent as time passes. Read more about The Invisible Man (1933)