Clara Poole and the Wrong Way Up — Taylor Tyng

Soaring to the top is one thing. Staying there is quite another. The warm and the winning second book in the engrossing middle grade adventure Clara Poole series.

Fresh off winning WOOBA's One-Hundredth Air Race, Clara Poole should be flying high, but she's feeling more uncertain than ever. After a summer of negative publicity, she arrives at Air Academy unsure if she even deserves to be there, to train as an aeronaut alongside her new friends . . . only to discover that there are several conditions to her acceptance.

But that becomes the least of her problems when a series of strange accidents throw her and her friends' safety into question. Circumstances shift from bad to worse when the school's headmaster goes missing, hurling the academy into disarray and under the iron-grip control of Assistant Head of School, Cyprian Hunt. Friends become enemies, and enemies friends as Clara tries to keep herself out of trouble. But trouble may the one thing she can't avoid.

With humor, heart, and more death-defying feats that you can imagine, Clara Poole and the Wrong Way Up is a stunning second novel that explores how the journey to get what you want is perhaps more important than the goal itself.