Picture Books
Dancing Hands: How Teresa Carreño Played Piano for President Lincoln
Margarita Engle Rafael Lopez
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Lovely illustrations capture the 1860s. This picture book has a lot of words in it which felt like a lot when I read it aloud to the cats, who were indifferent and gave me no feedback if it was too long. I would have liked a picture in the back matter.
The Bell Rang
James E. Ransome
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A week in the life of a enslave family where each day starts with the bell ringing. As depictions of enslaved families are rare, this is a pretty cool book.
What is Given From the Heart
Patricia McKissack & April Harrison
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Calm and quiet pictures illustrate a story of giving when one has very little.
Sulwe
Lupita Nyong’o
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Sulwe’s skin is darker than her family and she is troubled by this. I’m glad to see more of this topic lately (I also enjoyed the middle grade novel Genesis Begins Again) and I loved the illustrations.
Double Bass Blues
Andrea J. Loney & Rudy Guiterrez
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A lot of really great sounds paired with illustrations that are both abstract and representational. Really great faces!
Hey Water
Antoinette Portis
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It’s the water cycle, but with each form having its own page. Both the illustrations and text draw the eye from page to page.
Bear Came Along
Richard T. Morris & LeUyen Pham
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A book that builds on itself and has a lot of dramatic tension.
I was unclear about why the river didn’t know it was a river. Are rivers having some sort of identity crisis I don’t know about?
A Friend for Henry
Jenn Bailey, Mika Song
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Henry likes very specific things. He also doesn’t like very specific things. It’s hard for him to make a friend.
Between the words of the text and the excellent illustrations, I felt for Henry. Especially with the carpet squares.
Across the Bay
Carlos Aponte
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Carlos lives with his mother and grandmother, but misses his father who, his mother tells him, lives across the bay. One day Carlos travels across the bay by ferry to look for his father.
The illustrations were sunny and tropical, a nice break from gray winter skies.
Bowwow Powwow
Brenda Child, Jonathan Thunder
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Windy Girl and her dog Itchy Boy remember about the powwows in the summer.
Stop Bot!
James Young
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A vertical story of a bot that floats up the face of a tall building. As it floats, people try to stop it. There are many details to follow from page to page.
Gittel’s Journey
Lesléa Newman & Amy June Bates (sp)
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Gittel is sad to leave her home to sail to America with her mother. She is even sadder when her mother has to send her on alone. The illustrations feel period-appropriate.
Middle Grade
Each Tiny Spark
Pablo Cartaya
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Emilia Torres is making strides becoming her own person, learning to manage her style of learning and is navigating changing friendships and her dad’s return from a tour of duty. There were many good character acts.
Lety Out Loud
Angela Cervantes
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Letty is learning English (her second language) and her time at a camp at the animal shelter—the kind of camp we used to call a day camp, rather than a sleepaway camp—has her writing and making plans. This book has well-rounded characters and a suitable middle-grade level of tension/subject matter.
The Distance Between Me and the Cherry Tree
Paola Peretti
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A slim book about a girl losing her sight written by a woman who was a girl losing her sight. It was a slow, repetitive build, but I was completely emotionally invested by the end.
The Other Half of Happy
Rebecca Balcáreal
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Quijana struggles with not knowing more Spanish, especially when her cousins move to her Texas town. She also has a big crush on Jayden and doesn’t want to visit Guatemala with her family.
This book hit all the middle-grade notes, and I appreciated the full-on exploration of feelings around her crush. It was also one of those books that took me forever to get through. That’s usually a sign that something hasn’t quite clicked for me.
Young Adult
The Stars and the Blackness Between Them
Junauda Petrus
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The story of Audre, a girl banished from Trinidad for loving another girl. She lands in Minneapolis where she reconnects with Mabel, a childhood acquaintance.
This book includes tons of good friendship and love stuff. I loved how individual Audre and Mabel’s voices were. There was a bunch of dream stuff that I felt like meandered and I’m too linear of a person for the ending, but otherwise this was an enjoyable read.
Where the World Ends
Gearldine McCaughren
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This was a book that I read to find out what happened to strand twelve people on a crag of rock more so than for a love of the story itself. There’s also a lot of bird killing in this book, which could be off-putting for some.
I didn’t love this novel, but I enjoyed how McCaughren could find a lot of plot in a tiny space where each day was the same, plus her descriptions were excellent. I also was really looking forward to the author’s note at the end and it did not disappoint. What a tale has been woven from just a few sentences in the historical record!
The Hand on the Wall
Maureen Johnson
This was a very satisfying conclusion to the Truly Devious trilogy. Aside from wrapping things up, it was good at evoking New England during a blizzard.
Cursed
Karol Ruth Silverstein
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An overly long book about a fourteen-year-old girl dealing with the sudden onset of a chronic and painful disease written by a woman with the same disease. It includes a prickly male teacher I could root for. I’m always up for a teacher who is a stickler and also loves their students. Also includes a principal and a doctor who might as well have been twirling their villainous mustaches.
There were weird gaps in the plot. Sure, she lives with her dad, but why does she never see her mom?
This book wasn’t the most polished I’ve read, but a lot of people deal with chronic illness and I don’t come across depictions of the day-to-day struggles. I welcomed this portrayal.
Someday We Will Fly
Rachel DeWaskin
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Did you know that Shanghai was a place for Jewish people to flee to during World War II? Me neither! This book imagines the life of a teenager from Poland living in Shanghai with her father and much younger sister. It was full of interesting details about a segment of WWII history I knew nothing about.
It’s also a WWII book set outside of Europe, something I regularly comment that we need more of. It was a World War, not a European War.
Sick Kids in Love
Hannah Moskowitz
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“They don’t die in this one.” That’s what the text on the front cover says. It took me a bit to notice it because the library’s bar code was partially blocking the words, but it cracked me up when I did finally see it.
There are all kinds of illnesses, many of them not fatal, and this is the second rheumatoid arthritis book I’ve read this month.
Aside from being a great love story, it also does a deep dive into life as a sick person and how things work differently. It’s also a good “finding your family” book.
This is one of those books that was pleasurable from start to finish. It’s not changing the world, or upending literature as we know it, but it’s a good story that I put off reading the newspaper for. Nicely done, Hannah Moskowitz.
Surviving the City
Tasha Soillett & Natasha Donvan
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Much of this book was unclear to me. Partially because I’m not familiar with the traditions of the culture and also because it took me a bit to catch on to the ghost things.
Young Nonfiction
The Great Nijinsky: God of Dance
Lynn Curlee
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A brief history of the famous that dancer that includes just the right amount of detail and which also normalizes same-sex relationships in a way I find to be very good.
Growing up, in the 80s and 90s, we didn’t talk about gay people, except the ample use of the word “faggot.” I remember seeing a poster in the late 80s titled something like, “Famous gay people throughout history” and my first reaction was “No, all of those people can’t be gay!”
I didn’t hate gay people, I just didn’t ever see them, except as flamboyant caricatures in a very few movies, or as sick and dying men on TV. I was not overly told that being gay was a “wrong” thing, but I had absorbed the message that something was wrong with it.
I’m all better now, so no worries there, but I know there are kids who are still raised the way I was. They have more messages countering the stealthy and overt “gay is bad.” The more varieties of media that can say matter-of-factly, “these two men were lovers” the better off we all are.
