By Cassie Beasley

Published: 2015

AR level: 4.8

AR points: 9.0

Word Count: 57,735

Circuses may have come and gone as a place of entertainment, but I can’t help but remember my first one in the 1980s, a Barnum and Bailey extravaganza. Also, who can quite get the music out of their heads of the cinematic masterpiece The Greatest Showman? I know I can’t, and although circuses may be in the past (because, honestly, the animal issues were definitely an issue), something about them continues to capture our imaginations.

Beasley’s Circus Mirandus will do just that–capture your imagination. This middle grade work-of-art will spur the imagination of your young reader–but it may spur yours as well. As the novel follows a story set in both the past and present, you may be feeling like you want to go out and find a magical circus of your own!

Here’s the publisher’s description:

Even though his awful Great-Aunt Gertrudis doesn’t approve, Micah believes in the stories his dying Grandpa Ephraim tells him of the magical Circus Mirandus: the invisible tiger guarding the gates, the beautiful flying birdwoman, and the magician more powerful than any other—the Man Who Bends Light. Finally, Grandpa Ephraim offers proof. The Circus is real. And the Lightbender owes Ephraim a miracle. With his friend Jenny Mendoza in tow, Micah sets out to find the Circus and the man he believes will save his grandfather.

The only problem is, the Lightbender doesn’t want to keep his promise. And now it’s up to Micah to get the miracle he came for.