Tag: books

Picture Books

Dino-Gro
Matt Meyers
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Fun adventure for anyone who had one of those toys that expanded in water.

Best page: dino in the fish tank.

Hudson and Tallulah Take Sides
Anna Kang and Christopher Weyant

A dog and a cat head out for an adventure.

Best page: when they both spot birds in a puddle.

Inside Cat
Brendan Wenzel
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Inside cat is standing in for all inside cats. I think? This book confused me.

Best page: Inside cat looking through all the different kinds of windows.

Nina: A Story of Nina Simone
Traci N. Todd and Christian Robinson
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The words convey the hurt of racism and the illustrations reflect Simone’s growing power.

Best page: Nina and her dad at the piano. (And many more pages. This book was great!)

The Longest Letsgoboy
Derick Wilder & Cátia Chien
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End of life from a dog’s perspective featuring invented (or dog-vented) descriptions of things and much joy. Guaranteed to have you sobbing.

Best page: My oldbones feel new.

I also love how much orange is in this book.

Strollercoaster
Matt Ringler and Raúl the Third and Elaine Bay
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The feeling of riding a roller coster for kids too short to ride a roller coaster.

Best page: the tunnel.

Bright Star
Yuyi Morales
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A fawn and a doe in the desert and an insight into desert life. Also some commentary about the wall.

Best pages: the two-page spread of portraits. I also enjoyed the embroidery throughout.

Wishes
Mượn Thị Văn, Victo Ngai
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A unique collection of wishes surround a journey. Nicely done.

Best pages: the surprise under the cover.

I’ll Meet You in Your Dreams
Jessica Young and Rafael López
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A bit rhyme-y and also creepy. Can the kid just not have their own dreams?

Nothing Fits a Dinosaur
Jonathan Forske
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Getting dressed as a dinosaur is tough in this charming rhymed beginning reader.

Middle Grade

The Legend of Auntie Po
Shing Yon Khor
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Why not have some new legends of the American West? Graphic novels are a perfect format for that.

The Lion of Mars
Jennifer L. Holm
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Life on Mars from the perspective of 11-year-old Bell. A wonderfully imagined setting and plot.

Young Adult

I’m Not Dying with You Tonight
Kimberly Jones and Gilly Segal

A gripping few hours in the middle of a shooting, protest, and riot. The story’s laser focus on those few hours means we don’t get to catch up with the characters after the night in question, which fits with the theme but left me wanting more.

The Last Cuentista
Donna Barba Higuera
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While I was not a fan of the author’s first novel, this was great! I found it to be an interesting story of one girl’s life after the end of planet Earth. There are many good discussions that could be had.

Off the Record
Camryn Garett

Almost Famous meets #metoo in a book about teenage journalist written by someone who was a teenage journalist. Great angles on dual relationships, living in a large body, and the ramifications of powerful men.

Like a Love Song
Gabriela Martins

Another one for the Fame category. Natalie is a big teen pop star who is ready to receive her People’s Choice Award. Until her crappy boyfriend ruins her big award. So begins Natalie’s journey to better to know herself. Plus, there’s this boyfriend scheme her publicist cooks up.

Young Nonfiction

The Other Talk: Reckoning with our White Privilege
Brendan Kiely
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Kiely tells stories from his experience as a white man and makes a persuasive case why white people need to have “the talk” with their kids just like everyone else does.

Not sure what’s going on with that cover.

What Isabella Wanted: Isabella Stewart Gardner Builds a Museum
Candace Fleming and Matt Cardell
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I’m not so much into celebrating rich people who can trample over all sorts of things to get what they want. Not to mention rich people who have the ego to dictate that no one can move your things around in your house, even a century after you’ve died.

The Genius Under the Table
Eugene Yelchin
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A brief memoir of young Eugene’s life in the USSR. Filled with delightful illustrations, and I’m hoping there is more to come.

Grownup Nonfiction

The 4-Hour Chef
Timothy Ferris

A cookbook written by a guy who wasn’t interested in cooking, this had some good tips and a solid program to gain basic cooking skills. It goes off in a lot of different directions after that, but Ferris is fine with you just dipping in and out of things.

I got interested in cooking again after finding this book.

Note that the author is a huge fan of the slow carb diet.

Grownup Fiction

Witch Please
Ann Aguierre

This is one of those titles that seems to exist because its clever, not because it has much to do with the book. Still, I did grab it from a display at the library based on cover alone, so perhaps I am an example of why these types of titles exist.

For those people looking for a midwestern-set romance in a world where witches exist, this is your book.

The Viscount Who Loved Me
Julia Quinn

This follows in the footsteps of the first novel: hasty marriage and a couple not in sync. It had some phrases throughout that struck me as not of the time. I’m pretty sure that a Viscount in the early 1800s wouldn’t say “I found a block of free time.”

An Offer From a Gentleman
Julia Quinn

For the third Bridgerton novel, Quinn switches up the hurried-up marriage plot for a Cinderella-type retelling that I found interesting.

Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake
Alexis Hall

The humor in this snuck on on me as I’d just finished three romances that were fine but not good and was expecting the same from this. But some parts of this book are laugh out loud funny, there’s a fun British Baking Show-like setting, and lots of interesting conversation about being a single mom.

This is a great example of a well-crafted romance.

Romancing Mr. Bridgerton
Julia Quinn

Eh. Colin Bridgerton is a big jerk. Penelope could do better.

Two books this month with characters named Bug!

Middle Grade

Being Clem
Lesa Cline-Ransome
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Clem’s father is killed in the Port Chicago disaster (an event I learned about by reading Steve Sheinkin’s book The Port Chicago 50) and we spend a few years with him and his family as they adjust. Langston, from Finding Langston shows up halfway through, and I seem to have missed a book, but that character is present too.

Too Bright to See
Kyle Lukoff
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The not-scary haunted house book I read in October. (White Smoke was the scary one.)

A summer with Bug, who is mourning her dead uncle and experiencing terrible dreams. This is a compact book with a lot of feelings. Well done.

Frankie & Bug
Gayle Forman

Venice Beach in 1987. The summer that wasn’t quite to Bug’s liking, but turned out just fine. Props to Forman for including a serial killer subplot in a middle grade novel and making it not scary.

The Many Meanings of Meilan
Andrea Wang
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Outrage achievement unlocked! I really felt for Meilan in this story. She’s in a tough place because of family drama. We’re there to see her adjust to her small Ohio town, so different from Boston’s Chinatown, her home since birth.

Young Adult

Firekeeper’s Daughter
Angeline Boulley
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I groaned when I saw how many holds were on this book, and I groaned when I saw how long this book was and I also didn’t love the cover. Then I started reading and was all in. It was the kind of book I put off other things so I could keep reading and I was wrapped up in Daunis’s life.

This was the kind of story I was looking for with the movie Wind River. With that movie I was hoping for a story set on a reservation centered on something besides the white protagonists and written by someone with experience in the community. The Firekeeper’s Daughter’s author is a member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, and this is grounded in a Native woman’s experience. It’s also a crackling thriller, an exploration of identity, and a romance. Boulley has a lot of irons in the fire (especially for a debut novel) but she can tell the heck out of a story.

Good Enough
Paula Yoo

Patti is doing all the things to be successful and get into Harvard/Yale/Princeton in this story of parental expectations, young people identity, music, and a huge crush.

The friend character was underdeveloped, but otherwise, it was a solid novel set during the senior year of high school.

Why We Fly
Kimberly Jones and Gilly Segal

Aside from showing the consequences of taking direct action by kneeling during the national anthem during a high school football game when you’re a cheerleader, this also shows senior-year cracks in friendship brought about by different wants and skin color privilege/discrimination.

Provides great points for discussion about differing outcomes due to race, and has me wondering how being the girlfriend of a sports star is even a thing when everyone assumes the girlfriend is a gold digger.

Bluebird
Shannon Cameron

Cameron was a master at getting me to read just one more page in this post-WWII saga about a newly arrived immigrant to the US.

White Smoke
Tiffany D. Jackson

This took some time to get through because I had to read it during the day—it was too scary otherwise. I loved how Marigold was authentically not to be trusted by her family. It made the haunting that much more complex. Sadly, the ending was rather abrupt, but the ride getting there was tons of daytime reading fun.

The Burning: Black Wall Street and the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921
Tim Madigan & Hilary Beard
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A deep dive into the terrorist acts perpetuated on Black residents of Tulsa. Infuriating. Also, the ease with with it was swept under the rug was fascinating. And infuriating.

I would have liked some pictures.

Grownup Fiction

Caroline: Little House Revisited
Sarah Miller

It’s the Little House on the Prairie story from Ma’s perspective. An interesting choice, as I think that book is the most anti-Indian. It’s also the Laura Ingalls Wilder story set in the real Laura Ingalls Wilder’s life (three years old, Carrie born in Kansas), not the fictional Laura Ingalls Wilder (five years old, Carrie born in Wisconsin). So many layers!

Ma is known for not saying much, so we get to spend a lot of time in her head. There is a lot of attention paid to chores and the work it takes to make a life on the prairie. I found it interesting to see the events of Little House on the Prairie from an adult perspective.

Young Nonfiction

Call and Response: The Story of Black Lives Matter
Veronica Chambers
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This is a gorgeous and informative book that is a size I found hard to hold while reading. I enjoyed the mix of photos and text and found the chapter topics very interesting. There are fun things like a throwback protest playlist and a BLM protest playlist.

I didn’t love that the history section skipped from 1968 to 2012 with no comment.

Run: Book One
John Lewis, Andrew Ayden, L. Fury, Nate Powell
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On the one hand, there were too many random names. On the other hand, there were a ton of great details I never would have learned because I haven’t gotten around to reading longer books about John Lewis or the events depicted here.

I loved learning about the use of the Black Panther, the details of the SNCC discussion that ousted John Lewis, and the description of James Meredith as “kinda strange, really.”

Because of this book, I learned about Jennifer Lawson and I’d love to see a biography of her. She sounds like she had a fascinating life.

The Miracle and Tragedy of the Dionne Quintuplets
Sara Miller

The title says it all. Miller’s usual excellence is on display. And if she want to carve out a niche as highlighting adults exploiting children for their own gain, she’s got a lot of stories to choose from.

Everything You Wanted to Know about Indians, but Were Afraid to Ask
Anton Treuer
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A handy question-and-answer format that provides a lot of information about Indians. I found it to be very interesting reading.

Young Adult

Any Way the Wind Blows
Rainbow Rowell

This is the #1 book published in 2021 that gets a certain Queen stuck in my head. Rowell does a great job putting roadblocks in the Simon/Baz relationship over three books, yet still has me rooting for them. We’re back in England for this book, and our heroes are trying to find their way in the early adult years.

Of the three, I think the second one is my favorite, mostly for the American road trip flavor. But it has been a while since I read the first.

Fly Girls: Lux, the New Girl
Ashley Woodfolk

Very, very, very short book that might be great for reluctant readers. It was short enough that it felt like only part of a story and it will be interesting to see what the other three volumes bring.

As with all of Woodfolk’s stories, great emotion!

Fly Girls: Micah: The Good Girl
Ashley Woodfolk

Micah tries to meet her parents’ expectations regarding church and god as she balances those expectations with her own desires and thoughts.

This book relies heavily on ellipses and those are a punctuation mark that I find rob a story of rich details.

Fly Girls: Noelle: The Mean Girl
Ashley Woodfolk

As you might imagine, Noelle’s meanness comes from a place.

While I’m all for short, accessible YA stories, it seems the price of the book would be slimmed down to reflect its smaller size.

Fly Girls: Tobyn: The It Girl
Ashley Woodfolk

Oddly, the library had hard copies of the first three of this series and only an ebook for the fourth. The fourth book tells Tobyn’s story and wraps up all three of the other fly girls. And now we have finished the short saga.

I’m hoping for a longer book from Woodfolk next.

Watch Us Rise
Reneé Watson & Ellen Hagan

While things happen in this novel, there’s not a ton of tension—which isn’t a criticism, sometimes its nice to float along through a school year. I also enjoyed the differing views of what the administrators and teachers of a social justice–focused high school saw as justice, vs. the protagonists’ view of fairness and justice.

Instructions for Dancing
Nicola Yoon

Just a big of magic—the ability to see how couples’ relationships end—and sad feelings about divorce drive this sort-of ballroom dance book. I say sort of because we start strong with ballroom, then wander away from ballroom for the middle chunk of the book before returning for the end.

I was all in for the romance.

Young Nonfiction

In the Shadow of the Fallen Towers
Don Brown
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I’m used to Don Brown’s books using a laser-like focus to draw attention to a big event. This felt much more diffused. Maybe it’s an event that is just too complex?

Wonder Women of Science
Tiera Fletcher and Ginger Rue
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Great things: a wide variety of women scientists working today; profiles include information about their work and their lives.

Not so great: very unpolished and informal writing style including ellipses misused and parentheses and brackets deployed much more often than they should be; sometimes details were stretched to make a point in a way that felt disingenuous, like with the whole “invisible car” discussion; I would have preferred some captions on the photos that were included.

It ended up being a hate read, which was disappointing, because I really liked the concept.

Grownup Nonfiction

History vs. Women
Anita Sarkeesian and Ebony Adams

Sarkeesian and Adams find a host of important women you might never have heard of and give you short biographies about their lives. Each one has a beautiful pencil illustration.

Grownup Fiction

The Visible Man
Chuck Klosterman

Klosterman weaves a gripping tale of a counselor treating a man who can render himself invisible. Uncomfortable feelings abound. I’m curious how counselors who read this book might feel about its protagonist.

The Library Book
Susan Orlean

Orlean’s powers of observation, research, and description bring to life the 1986 fire at the Los Angeles Central Library. The book also includes a history of the library along with daily life in the central library.

I listened to the first few chapters during a car trip before switching to a printed copy. I’m glad Orlean was there to read me the chapter of the library’s fire because I don’t think I would have made it through the chronology. So many things lost.

Picture Books

The Old Boat
Jarrett and Jerome Pumphery
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An old boat shows us relationships with people and the ocean. Very fun generational through line.

The Museum of Everything
Lynne Rae Perkins
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I had a lot of uncanny valley-type feelings—is that an illustration or does it actually exist? This left me uncomfortable, but also intrigued. But mostly uncomfortable.

The concept was so very good, a five-star concept, especially the Museum of Hiding Things page and the Museum of Shadows. But the uncanny valley feelings outweighed the concept. I might page through it again and see if my feelings have changed.

Itty Bitty Kitty Corn
Shannon Hale & LeUyen Pham
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Despite the Statler and Waldorfing by Parakeet and Gecko, Kitty thinks she might be a unicorn in this sparkly pink and purple book.

Best pages: the endpapers give us a few more Kitty, Gecko, and Parakeet stories.

Watercress
Andrea Wang, Jason Chin
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Chin’s perfect illustrations highlight a childhood memory of when one event lead to a bigger story.

Best page: From the depths of the trunk, they unearth a brown paper bag, rusty scissors, and a longing for China.

Keeping the City Going
Brian Floca
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A great time capsule of the quarantine, this also has an illustration style that complements the subject.

Best page: the spread of delivery trucks. So much detail!

Middle Grade

The Girl From the Sea
Molly Knox Ostertag
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Graphic novel about falling in love and coming out set on an island off the coast of Nova Scotia. Fans of the Secret of Roan Inish will like this. (And vice versa! Don’t miss out on the Secret of Roan Inish!)

Young Adult

Slingshot
Mercedes Helnwein

A debut novel that I bet has been being written for more than a decade, give its length. It does a thing I hate, which is to have a modern teenager listen only to the music of someone born in 1979 (as the author was.) Very few teenagers listen exclusively to the music of a previous generation, but you wouldn’t know that from some YA novels.

However! The book makes up for this by really diving in on the teenage feelings of anger and obstinance and oh-my-god-I-love-him!

You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone
Rachel Lynn Soloman

Twin sisters undergo genetic testing when they turn eighteen to see if they have the gene that will lead them down the same path their mother is living: Huntington’s disease.

Lots of complex sibling feelings!

A Sitting in St. James
Rita Williams-Garcia
Read for Librarian Book Group.

My ire for publishers that shelve novels in the YA section just because their authors have written middle grade and YA in the past continues. The character that this story revolves around is an octogenarian! This is adult fiction through and thorough and should be read by a wide swath of the population. By designating it YA, a bunch of people will never find it.

I thought a lot about Gone with the Wind when reading this. Like most white people living in the twentieth century, I went right along with the depictions of the enslaved people in that book. Williams-Garcia moves the focus of her plantation novel to include the many people who keep the plantation going, though white characters are included.

Raping enslaved girls and women (and some boys and men) is a basic fact of this book. While it’s mentioned in passing, the resulting children make for very complicated emotion and politics in this novel. (Another thing Gone With the Wind tra-la-la’d right past.)

And all that is to say, this is a long, gripping, incredibly rewarding book that gives a full picture of plantation life in Louisiana right before the Civil War. Nearing the end, I hoped for a sequel. How would everyone’s life change with the coming war? But alas, it looks like this is a one-off. Williams-Garcia includes an epilogue summing up the characters’ lives.

Concrete Rose
Angie Thomas

Readers of The Hate U Give will know Maverick as Star’s father. But back in the 90s, he was a teenager figuring things out. Aside from getting to spend time with Big Mav, there is a lot of wondering what it means to be a man. Good stuff!

Curses
Lish McBride

A large cast—thankfully McBride includes a cast of characters in the front—tell a new version of Beauty and the Beast. Solid fairy tale setting with interesting magical things.

Young Nonfiction

Secrets of the Sea
Griffith & Stone
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Learn about a nineteenth century pioneering marine biologist. I found some details were confusing. Though she looked much younger, the back matter made it clear that Jeanne Power was in her late thirties at the time most of the illustrations depict.

Delicious!
Julie Larios & Julie Paschkis (sp)
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Very short poems about different kinds of street food from around the world. The illustrations were as fun as the poems. I would have liked the back matter to be consistent when explaining the foods.

From a Whisper to a Rallying Cry
Paula Yoo
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A deep dive into Vincent Chin’s 1982 murder. Yoo’s description of the murder is gripping and she does a great job showing how the crime unified the Asian-American communities. I wish the captions to the pictures did not spoil what was coming in the chapter.

In the Shadow of the Moon
Amy Cherrix
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This book begins with a letter from the author arguing that readers should read this book because the subject is still important. It kind of comes off as begging, though I’m sure to children born after the year 2000, the early space program is a very old bit of history.

Cherrix provides us with great details and shows us the differences between the U.S. and U.S.S.R.’s space programs. The book illustrates how having a focused goal and money to back it up leads to success.

Violet & Daisy
Sarah Miller
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Miller provides a ton of details about Violet & Daisy, the famous (in the early 20th century) conjoined twins. We follow them from birth to death. Pictures were abundant and details were mostly fully explained (there was a very quick mention of one of the twins having a child that was given up for adoption.)

Grownup Fiction

The Other Miss Bridgerton
Julia Quinn

How to make a kidnapping okay and the kidnapper (a privateer) worth falling for? This book answers that question.

(p.s. Kidnapping is never okay.)

Arcadia
Lauren Goff

I thought I hadn’t read this, though reading the first paragraph reminded me I had. However, I enjoyed it enough the first time, I kept reading and was rewarded with Goff’s excellent descriptions of life on a hippie commune.

The last part is the weakest, but it does, in 2012, center part of that section in the future where it is 2018 and a severe flu is causing problems. It’s quite fun to compare and contrast. Also to realize what was being described in 2012 sounded pretty bad. We had no idea what we were in for.

Picture Books

Fox at Night
Corey R. Tabor
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Fox finds a lot of things scary. In the meantime, readers get to guess what things are are scaring Fox.

Tag Team
Raúl the Third, Elaine Bly
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El Toro and La Oink Oink get (as my father would say: you don’t have to, you get to!) to clean up the Caliseo after their big match. This is all thanks to Mal Burro and Peeky Pequeño who have skipped out on their obligations. This book was mostly written in English, with Spanish written in purple. Sometimes the English or Spanish was repeated, sometimes phrases were used alone.

I was mostly annoyed that El Toro and La Oink Oink cleaned the Caliseo.

Training Day
Raúl the Third, Elaine Bly
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El Toro isn’t up for training until Kooky Dooky finds a way to motivate him.

Middle Grade

Finding Junie Kim
Ellen Oh
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I had a goodly amount of whiplash as the book flipped back and forth between Junie’s story of a depressive episode and her grandparents’ time in Korea during the Korean war. But ultimately enjoyed details of all the stories.

Korean War books are few. Authors need to get on that, STAT!

Young Adult

The Box in the Woods
Maureen Johnson

We reunite with Stevie and it’s the summer after she’s solved the Ellingham mystery. She’s back at home and experiencing the comedown that is normal life. (I felt her deli-ham-slicing pain.) Luckily, she is whisked off to a summer camp where she is supposed to solve a 1978 murder of four teenagers.

Props to Maureen Johnson for the fun tech bro details and the many period details about the mystery.

I really love this series.

Aetherbound
E.K. Johnston

The versatile Johnston tackles sci-fi with the story of Pendt, who grows up on her family’s space cruiser. She’s the runt of her family and her life is shaped because of that.

Johnston is great at writing books that stick with me.

This is Not a Love Scene
S.C. Megale

Maeve is a powerhouse who knows how to get things done—including the student film she’s directing. This is an interesting and engaging #OwnVoices story about being a teenager. And also living with muscular dystrophy.

Our Year of Maybe
Rachel Lynn Soloman

Best friends Sophie and Peter have been close since they were children. But when Sophie gives Peter one of her kidneys, his world opens up and their friendship changes.

An excellent exploration of how relationships are formed and the personal growth that comes when they flex.

Goodbye Perfect
Sara Barnard

What happens when your best friend runs off with her boyfriend? Sara Barnard plumbs the emotions of friendship. I’m excited to read more from her.

Along for the Ride
Sarah Dessen

Auden is saddled with terrible parents (they are currently winning the 2021 award for worst fictional parents who are not physically or psychologically abusive) and keeps to her studies and herself. When she flees to her father’s house, she spends the summer meeting her new sister, learning that people are complex, and that bicycles are freedom.

This is Sarah Dessen at her best.

The Truth Is
NoNieqa Ramos

There was a dark cloud over this book. That dark cloud was instantly recognizable when I finished reading and realized Ramos also wrote the Disturbed Girl’s Dictionary. Enjoyable and hard, that book was.

In this book, Verdad has boxed herself off and is lonely after her friend dies. But when she meets Danny her relationship with her mother goes south and her friendship world opens up. So many uncomfortable feelings!

Destination Anywhere
Sara Barnard

Payton takes a desperation flight from her home in Great Britain to Canada because it’s the only way she can think of to escape her parents’ insistence she attend school. Her attempts at travel are guided by a bunch of tourists she meets. As she gains confidence, we learn more about her lonely life and what happened the previous year.

Barnard goes hard into heavy feelings, and just as hard into the joys and miseries of of travel and forming friendships.

A Quiet Kind of Thunder
Sara Barnard

The U.S. of A. doesn’t tend to turn out a lot of selective mute children (we trend toward the depressed or the ADHD diagnosis) but Steffi (a Brit, not an American) has been working to overcome her selective mute diagnosis for years. When she’s paired up with Rhys because he uses British Sign Language and she has some passable BSL skills, her world changes.

I was interested in the way BSL was depicted in bold in the novel and wondered how someone fluent in BSL would feel about that. I think the author did it to show Steffi’s progress mastering the language, but I’m curious how others felt.

Young Nonfiction

The People’s Painter: How Ben Shahn Fought for Justice with Art
Cynthia Levinson, Evan Turk
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I think the art was supposed to make a point about the subject’s style, but I found it messy and off-putting.

Sunrise Summer
Swason and Behr
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Spend the summer in Alaska, fishing for salmon on a small, family-owned piece of land. There were many interesting details and great back matter.

Twenty-One Steps: Guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier
Jeff Gottesfeld and Matt Tavares
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Who are the people who guard the tomb of the unknown solider and why do they serve? There are a lot of great close-up details and expansive views in this picture book.

Grownup Nonfiction

The Anthropocene Reviewed
John Green

I’m a bit of a John Green completionist (Vlogbrothers, Dear Hank & John, novels, the Anthropocene Reviewed podcast) so I’d heard Green reading versions of many of these essays on his podcasts. I appreciate the podcast version more, but the essays are fine in print form.

By the way, I’m writing this review while listening to a YouTube livestream from February where Green was autographing one part of the 250,000 first printing pages. I preordered, so I got a signed copy. It was a green signature, and the pen was clearly on the downslope. I gave my John Green autograph 2 stars.

Grownup Fiction

The Duke and I
Julia Quinn

A day at the beach and I had finished my book. What to do, what to do? Instead of downloading another ebook, I wandered into Seaside’s Beach Books and found a perfect beach companion.

Lady Whistledown—an excellent device for delivering backstory! And who doesn’t love a big family, romance between wealthy people, and the Regency period? Well, maybe not you, but I’m a fan.

I’m excited to see if I can beat the next season of Bridgerton and finish all eight of this series.

Kindling the Moon
Jenn Bennett

Bennett’s debut novel featured pacing that didn’t quite crackle along, but this urban fantasy had all the sexy romance markers.

Picture Books

We Wait for the Sun
Dovey Johnson Roundtree, Katie McCabe, Raissa Figueroa
Read for Librarian Book Group

A moment from Dovey Johnson Roundtree’s childhood beautifully illustrated by Raissa Figueroa

The One Thing You’d Save
Linda Sue Park & Rober Sae-Heng
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A collection of poems written in Sijo—a Korean style—about a class assignment of the one thing students would save from a fire.

I often struggled to follow who was speaking.

Mornings with Monet
Barb Rosenstock and Mary GrandPré
Read for Librarian Book Group

Learn how Monet painted a series of paintings of the Seine in this very interesting picture book that also gives the flavor of a Monet painting.

Rabbit! Rabbit! Rabbit!
Lorna Scobie
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An only-child rabbit gets a bevy of new siblings an must adjust. It took a turn at the end that I wasn’t expecting.

Nicky & Vera: A Quiet Hero of the Holocaust and the Children He Rescued
Peter Sis
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Yet another story of the Holocaust. It’s interesting, but gets swallowed up by odd page layouts.

The Lost Package
Richard Ho & Jessica Lanan
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The kind of picture book I adore. Spare words, and tons of details to go back and find. The author’s note tells of his personal appreciation of USPS.

Hello, Rain
Maclear, Chris Turnham
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A lot of great description of rain paired with whimsical illustrations.

We Become Jaguars
Eggars, White
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A boy and his grandmother become jaguars and explore the land around them. Packed with visual delights. Also this sentence: “She laughed like great thunder and I laughed like lesser thunder and we jaguared on.”

Jump at the Sun
Alicia D. Williams and Jacqueline Alcántara
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Picture book biography of Zora Neale Hurston. Great leaping illustrations complement the text.

Middle Grade

The Sea in Winter
Christine Day
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The stakes were low, but middle grade readers who are separated from the thing they love due to injury might feel differently about this story of a girl nursing a knee injury that is keeping her from dancing. It’s also a good chronicle of taking things out on your family.

This book was at the bottom of the to-read pile for a long time because the cover was conveying that this story was set in perhaps Norway, and there would be fairies and ogres and many magical things. Imagine my surprise when I started to read and found out it was a contemporary middle grade set in Seattle and Olympic National Park.

Unsettled
Reem Faruqi
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In this novel in verse, a Pakistani girl comes to the US with her family and finds her new life is improved by swimming.

Pity Party
Kathleen Lane
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This book is chock full-o-fun! Quizzes, short (some very short) stories, ads. All very tongue-in-cheek and aimed at middle school kids feeling awkward.

Young Adult

Last Night at the Telegraph Club
Malinda Lo
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The core of the book, Lily’s story of finding the Telegraph Club and falling in love, is strong and rich with period details.

There’s some backstory that felt like it bogged down the narrative, which is too bad because this is otherwise a solid historical fiction.

That Summer
Sarah Dessen

This is a little clunky, pacing-wise, but does a great job at really drilling into those teenage feelings that happen when everything goes wrong and you are the cause of a large portion of it.

Some things are grounded in the 90s, when this book was written, and best left there. I winced at a description of a minor character: he was as whipped as any man can be.

The Seventh Raven
David Elliott
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Here’s the deal. For about 80% of novels in verse, I think the story would be better served if the author undid their free verse, made them into sentences, added additional sentences to make paragraphs, and then had themselves a novel.

But a small portion of novels in verse I can appreciate, like this one. Elliott uses poetic forms which gave me something to chew on as I read this story of a family of boys transformed into ravens to save their newborn sister.

What We Left Behind
Robin Talley

The fate of happy high school couples as they head off to college is well-known. Usually it’s not a happy ending for the couple. But this sad outcome does provide a lot of plot.

This happy couple also has complicating factors due to genderqueer processing. The book does a great job of exploring the many wedges that are driven between a couple as they head off to college, plus it might be handy to read for older people who are curious about these young people and their discussions of pronouns and gender exploration. It’s also from 2016, so some things might be out of date.

Note that this has a lot of one-star reviews on Goodreads written by people who have problems with how the genderqueer identity was explored.

Lies We Tell Ourselves
Robin Talley

Alternating perspectives of two girls. One is integrating a high school and one is the daughter of the publisher of the town paper who is anti-integration. I had some interesting feelings re: whose story this was to tell. It also got me thinking about some assumptions I have about people who did integrate all-white high schools.

We Are Inevitable
Gayle Forman

I like that Forman has built a YA career with a bunch of books that tell the stories of young people who have graduated high school.

And so it goes with this story of a guy who is going down with the particular sinking ship of a local bookstore run by his family.

The Lady Rogue
Jenn Bennett

Jen Bennett’s excellent skilz of romance-telling take a back seat for a story set in Romania in the 1930s and a particular cursed ring.

It was very fun to see Bennet flex her historical fiction muscles. I haven’t seen them in play since she switched over to YA. Also, I’ve visited the region, so I enjoyed the travel.

Someone Like You
Sarah Dessen

I read this after reading Dessen’s That Summer because the two books were adapted into a movie. Because of that, when I started reading this book, I was supremely confused because nothing about the two books overlapped. Once I let go of my expectations, I found a story that summed up the emotional highs and lows of one of my own high school relationships. Well done!

The movie, by the way, picks parts from each book and combines them. By doing so, a lot of the feelings are lost and we’re left with a middling teen movie.

Grownup Fiction

The Ex Talk
Rachel Lynn Soloman

Well this is fun! Why are there not more romances set at public radio stations?

Shay (to be honest, not my favorite name) is stuck in a stuck-in-life-phase and new reporter Dominic rubs her the wrong way. But when she has a chance to host a local call-in show, she grabs it, even if it means partnering up with Dominic.

Picture Book

Unspeakable
Carole Boston Weatherford and Floyd Cooper
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A picture book that shows the before and after of Greenwood, Oklahoma, a prosperous town burnt to rubble by white mobs. Descriptions are appropriate for the age the book is aimed at.

Time for Kenny
Brian Pinkney
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A picture book with multiple short stories about Kenny and his life. I found that each story began and ended abruptly. The loose style of the artwork was great a capturing movement, but not so great with faces.

Don’t Hug Doug (He Doesn’t Like It)
Carrie Finison and Daniel Wiseman
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As we start to come out of quarantine, it’s good to remind yourself that some people aren’t huggers. Like Doug. Alternative are presented.

I am Not a Penguin: A Pangolin’s Lament
Liz Wong
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Poor pangolin! He only wants to explain about himself, but all the other animals only want to learn about penguins. But in all the confusion, readers will learn a lot about pangolins.

Milo Imagines the World
Matt de la Pena and Christian Robinson
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Milo and his sister are headed somewhere on the subway. While on the train, Milo imagines the lives of those around him.

Mel Fell
Corey R. Taylor
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Mel’s decided today’s the day to get out of the tree in this uniquely oriented book.

Runaway: The Daring Escape of Ona Judge
Ray Anthony Shepard & Keith Mallett
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You know what’s in the historical record? That Ona Judge self-emancipated from George Washington’s household.

Short sentences give a lot of information about Judge’s daily life with the Washingtons.

Middle Grade

Just Like That
Gary D. Schmidt
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An old-fashioned telling of a girl and a boy who are both dealing with loss. Set in the 1960s at a girls boarding school in New England, this book has all the feelings.

Red White and Whole
Jajani Larocca
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Meets all the novel-in-verse standards and feature an Indian American girl balancing her own wishes and her parents’ expectations.

Starfish
Lisa Fipps
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A novel in verse about a middle schooler whose large body causes her a lot of trouble, especially from her mother. While body fat is omnipresent, I felt this book leaned too far in the “too much” realm.

Young Adult

The Wide Starlight
Nicole Lesperance
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Nordic fairy tales twine with present-day Eli as she searches for her missing mother. This was an interesting premise that felt a bit sloggy.

We Are the Ashes We are the Fire
Joy McCullough
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Part story of a young woman mourning the injustice dealt by the justice system after her sister was raped, part long-form poem about a medieval woman.

I confess, I skimmed the poem.

Fat Chance, Charlie Vega
Crystal Maldonado
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Charlie Vega is fat. And also many other things. Maldonado illustrates day-to-day life lived in a large body (it is so hard to shave behind your knees!) and gives us a story of friendship, romance, navigating unsupportive parents, and dealing with grief.

Amber & Clay
Laura Amy Schlitz
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While I groaned at the thought of another novel in verse, Schlitz pulled me in by bringing Ancient Greece to life. Telling the story through artifacts was super interesting, and I loved the details about daily life.

The Initial Insult
Mindy McGuinnis

Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” is a very short story. I know, because I reread it after reading this novel. I find that Poe’s story lacks detail.

This book updates the bones of the story to present day and adds many layers of detail. It was unsatisfying in different ways, though. I found some of the details (like the secret one character kept) to not be realistic, and it escalated in a way that was overly dramatic. Normally McGinnis’s drama is so very good, but not so for me this time. Plus, the panther spoke in verse. There was much too much verse in the reading lineup this month. (Which isn’t this book’s fault, but didn’t help.)

The Love Curse of Melody McIntire
Robin Talley

Despite my love of live theater and interest in things the stage crew is responsible for (sewing, building things, being persnickety about small details) I never got involved with the drama kids. They were just so obvious about their drama, and I say this as a fairly dramatic person.

So the kids in this were a bit much for me—the superstition just felt silly, and thus the credence given to it felt silly. But I was impressed that Talley balanced a huge (Les Miz size) cast of characters and the many theater details she included were interesting. Though there were multiple mentions of the sitzprobe and I never saw whatever that was happen. (I’ve looked it up, it’s apparently a rehearsal where the singers and the orchestra focus on blending together.)

I also enjoyed how the story was advanced using different devices like that middle section that was all dialog, but totally worked. Given the amount of detail in this story, I assumed the author was a drama kid from birth, but it turns out the details came from a lot of research.

Kate in Waiting
Becky Albertalli

Book two of two set during a musical production put on by a high school. (The first was The Love Curse of Melody McIntire) In this book, it’s a fall musical, which seems to be a thing that exists for plot purposes, as every high school I’ve ever encountered has spring musicals.

Anyhoo, Kate hasn’t yet made it out of the chorus, but she’s hoping that she and her friend Anderson will get some juicy roles in the production of Once Upon a Mattress.

From a plot standpoint, I was amazed at how Albertalli set this up and then sent us off through a delight of things hitting just when they should. It’s also a great friendship book, and has a sweet romance.

Love is a Revolution
Renée Watson
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Nala lives with her aunt, uncle and cousin/sister/friend in Harlem. She meets Tye and stretches the truth about herself. From there, we have a great story of a relationship, friendships, and family dynamics that does a great job of exploring the boxes we put ourselves in. And the boxes that others put us in.

Picture Books

The Bear in my Family
Maya Tatsukawa
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Readers may wonder early on who the bear really is.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Carole Boston Weatherford and Frank Morrison
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The illustrations and rhyming storytelling is top-notch in this picture book about the Queen of Soul. But what really pushes the book to greatness is the cover hidden under the jacket.

Young Adult

Rent a Boyfriend
Gloria Cho

Cho imagines a world where young Asian-American women can rent a boyfriend to get their parents off their backs. (This is, apparently, a thing that does happen in Asian countries.)

This was a fun romance.

Let Me Hear a Rhyme
Tiffany D. Jackson

This book is a love letter to a time and place (90s Brooklyn). I had trouble with the back and forth of the narrative, but enjoyed the mystery and the antics.

The Rest of the Story
Sarah Dessen

A great summer-at-the-lake story with observations about class, family, and addiction. I sometimes felt whiplashed by Dessen’s technique of jumping forward and then looping us in, and I wished I had made a character list at the beginning. But the characters were great and they kept me reading.

The Way You Make Me Feel
Maureen Goo

Trying on and shedding personalities is one of the most interesting things about being a teenager. Due to a prank gone awry at her junior prom, Clara starts spending more time with new people and that makes apparent what her current attitude leaves out of her life.

As usual with Goo, really great characters!

Fan Art
Sarah Tregay

This book is set in Boise and I’m pretty sure the high school in this book is standing in for my high school. Aside from that very specific enjoyment, I liked that the main character was out to his parents and not out to his friends. It’s rare to see that combo.

My Calamity Jane
Hand, Ashton, Meadows

Calamity Jane, Annie Oakley, Frank Butler, and Wild Bill Hickock take us on an alternate history trip as they hunt garou, what we call werewolves. Full of the patented asides the Janies are famous for, this was a great trip, though I suspect Wild Bill’s actual show spent a lot of time talking about killing Indians, not garou, which dampened my enjoyment some.

Grownup Fiction

The Nickel Boys
Colson Whitehead

Elwood’s life before, after, and during his time at the Nickel Academy is rich with detail in this engaging, heartbreaking book. The acknowledgements have links to connections with the real-life reform school the Nickel Academy is based on.

Young Nonfiction

Paper Son
Julie Leung & Chris Sasaki
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Not only the story of pioneering (and uncredited) Disney animator Tyrus Wong, but also an introduction to paper sons and daughters.

The Snow Fell Three Graves Deep
Allan Wolf

Wolf provides a good balance of poetry and prose as he tells the tale of the Donner Party.

Gone to the Woods
Gary Paulsen
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Paulsen’s memoir of his childhood is rich with language, vivid, joyful, and heartbreaking. Life has changed a lot since Paulsen was a boy and hopefully not as many children lose their childhoods as he did.

Grownup Nonfiction

Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town
Jon Krakauer

Krakauer’s coverage of a “rape scandal” (which really was a lower-than-average series of rapes) is full of things to be frustrated about. New to me was David Lisak’s work on serial rapists and the role of prosecutors in charging or not charging rapists. The women’s stories—all of them—are gasp inducing and the aftermath (legally and personally) is rough. I read this book in a 24-hour period.

Shit, Actually: The Definitive, 100% Objective Guide to Modern Cinema
Lindy West

I greatly enjoyed this “objective” tour through modern cinema. Lindy West’s asides and observations brought much mirth to the household as I read.

Translation: the boyfriend heard a lot of this book as read by an up-and-coming Audible narrator: me.