My Reading Blog

Sharing my love of books through blog posts (and also for INFO 5421)

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Thunderbird (#1) by Sonia Nimr, translated by M. Lynx Qualey

(Photo credit: University of Texas Press)

Genre/Category: Fantasy for PreK to 6th Grade

Target Age Group: 4th – 6th Grade, or 11-13 years old (Kirkus Reviews, 2022).

Summary:

              Noor, a 13-year-old Palestinian girl, is struggling in the wake of her parents’ death as she is unwelcomed and unwanted at her uncle and aunt’s house, when strange fires begin to happen, always around Noor. With the help of her mother’s friend, Dr. Samir, Noor discovers that she has a special gift that ties her to the life of the thunderbird, a phoenix creature that must be saved. In this first part, Noor travels through time with the help of djinns disguised as cats and girls that look all too familiar to save the life and history of the thunderbird.

Justification:

              It felt incredibly important to me that I actively seek out Palestinian stories for this assignment, not just because of the current state of the world, but because they are often an overlooked populace, one that Americans would benefit to read and hear from. I purposely took several classes in my undergraduate degree focused on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, where we read several different children’s books (Tasting the Sky by Ibtisam Barakat was one of the most memorable). To begin, I simply began to Google for elementary and middle school Palestinian books, with no clear focus. I wanted to see what was out there and what would be available for me to read. After about a day or two of searching and verifying age ranges and blog criteria, I settled on Thunderbird by Sonia Nimr, the first book in a three-book series. I discovered this through the University of Texas Press website. Thunderbird was shortlisted for the 2023 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation (University of Texas Press, 2022). The Dallas Public Library had a few copies, so I read a physical book of this copy. It should be noted that this book is published through a university press, so the structure of the book is a bit strange for a children’s book. It has incredibly small print, which may be difficult for young readers.

Evaluation:

              I will be evaluating three important elements: plot, style and language, and setting. These elements serve the book in various ways and are vital to the reader.

              Because Thunderbird is both a fantasy book and the first in the series, the plot needs to be strong enough to carry the reader through the first book and quickly into the next books in the series. The plot of Thunderbird revolves around a young Palestinian girl named Noor, who has just recently lost her parents in a plane crash and is now living with her uncle and aunt (her grandma was there as well, but passes early in the book). As the reader discovers, the fires that seem to sprout unexpectedly around Noor are actually a supernatural gift tied to the legacy of the thunderbird, a phoenix, that must be saved as it is foretold that the thunderbird will burn soon and not regenerate. We learn, through the cat that is secretly a djinn named Sabeeka, that Noor must collect three thunderbird feathers, one from each burn in the last 1500 years (once every 500 years). Time travel is introduced, as well as Annaleeb, a young girl that looks just like Noor, living in the 16th century, who also has a gift tied to the thunderbird. The first book in the series is concerned with the most recent burn, and it ends on a cliffhanger. This is all important context as to how the plot is fleshed out. Though a short book (about 110 pages), the reader becomes connected to Noor through both the immense grief she carries around and the uncertainty of the future that is being presented to Noor. Her aunt does not want Noor to be around and says some incredibly hurtful things to Noor and about Noor, which endear us further to Noor. The fires that spawn around Noor are deeply connected to her emotional state, one that the reader journeys with because we are angry on her behalf, confused when she’s confused, excited when Noor and Andaleeb begin the journey, frightened when the soldiers in the 16th century kidnap the girls, and intrigued when Sabeeka (the cat/djinn) begins to tell stories and tales. The plot ties us to Noor, and eventually to the girls who Noor will meet, because we care deeply.

              When writing a fantasy book for intermediate and middle school students (typically grades 4th – 6th), the style and language is especially important. A fine line exists between making it simple enough for the readers to understand and parse through but complex enough that it both teaches them and engages them. Sonia Nimr (2022) and the translator, M. L. Qualey, have a clear understanding of this fine line and walk it well. The sentences are short, neat, and full of explanation. The words chosen are purposeful – the translator ensured that some Arabic words remained, like “ya ilahi” which can be translated as “oh my gosh”. This engages the reader by exposing them to a new language; questions are sure to pop up about the specific Arabic words chosen to remain within the translated text. One of my favorite lines that evokes a very strong image is when Noor and Dr. Samir go through a checkpoint to get into Jerusalem. Observing the Separation Wall, Nimr (2022) writes that the wall looks “like a snake stretching out to release its poison” (p. 67). Through this simile, readers can clearly ascertain exactly what Noor (and Nimr) thinks of the Separation Wall. Using things like similes and metaphors, Nimr (2022) is able to connect easily with the young reader. This type of writing would be good for classrooms to both evaluate the historical aspect of the book and the syntax and structure of the text.

              Without a doubt, the most important aspect of this book is the setting: occupied Palestine. It is not just that Noor is living in a new world without her parents but living under occupation by Israeli forces (likely the Israel Defense Force or IDF) where passes and checkpoints surrounded by military personnel and vehicles is commonplace. This setting and the experiences Noor is going through may feel unfamiliar to students, especially within this age demographic. However, this is a book that treats the occupation with clarity but does not linger on the atrocities that are clearly happening in the background, like at the checkpoint that Dr. Samir and Noor go through on their way to Jerusalem. When Noor asks Dr. Samir what he think will happen to the boys arrested at the checkpoint for the fire (that Noor started, out of mind-numbing fear), Dr. Samir tells Noor, “Under the occupation, every citizen is guilty until proven guilty” (Nimr, 2022, p. 67) and that the IDF may release them. But we are afforded the opportunity to read what Dr. Samir really thinks will happen to these boys when he thinks, “They’ll beat them up … Then they’ll hold them at a detention center for months or even years without trial. And then, after all of this torment, they’ll either drum up charges or just keep them in detention, those sons of dogs” (Nimr, 2022, p. 67). At times, Dr. Samir (and eventually Sabeeka, the cat/djinn) is around to drop history about the setting, particularly in Jerusalem where Noor finds the first gate to the latest thunderbird burning. Dr. Samir tells Noor about the history of the Palestinian Museum of Antiquities, which has been renamed the Rockefeller Museum, “for the American donor whose money contributed to building it back in ’38. Naturally, that was during the British Mandate period” (Nimr, 2022, p. 69). This creates opportunities for children to ask questions, to learn history that often feels too old or too far away to be relevant or important. Though I have not read the next two in the series, it is clear that the thunderbird, the phoenix rising from the ashes, is Palestine – it has been under military control, occupation, apartheid for so long and yet it still remains. It still has the people, the olive trees, the resilience. Noor’s anger at her parents’ death, the world around her, the fear of simply living in Palestine is not shied from; Nimr (2022) does not want to sugarcoat this experience by hiding it or stifling it to make it palatable to the masses.

              I would absolutely recommend this book (and the series) to children in grades 4th – 6th grade. The writing style is accessible, with an interesting plot, relatable characters, and a setting that will surely generate questions and conversations. This book does deal with the death of parents, grief and anger, occupation and apartheid by military forces, kidnapping of young children, and mentions of abuse (though none is ever shown on paper). As with any book that doesn’t fit a certain ideal or moral, there is the chance this book could generate conversations around censorship, so it is important that whoever is selecting this book is prepared (and does not self-censor).

References:

Nimr, S. (2022). Thunderbird (M. L. Qualey, Trans.). University of Texas Press. (Original work published 2016).

University of Texas Press. (2022). Thunderbird. University of Texas Press. https://utpress.utexas.edu/9781477325810/

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I Hope This Doesn't Find You by Ann Liang

(Photo credit: Amazon)

Genre/Category: Romance for 7th – 12th Grade

Target Age Group: 9th – 12th Grade (BookList, 2024).

Summary:

              Sadie Wen, valedictorian and co-School Captain, is a perfect model-student, a title she has worked extremely hard for. Her picture-perfect image, however, begins to crack and shatter when her email drafts where she would write all her feelings to the people are accidentally sent, with the worst ones sent to her rival, Julius Gong. Sadie will have to learn how to let go in more ways than she could have ever expected with the help of an unlikely ally.

Justification:

              When I saw Romance as a genre we could pick from, I knew right away I’d be picking that genre for at least one of my books for the 7th – 12th grade range. I love romance novels; that love started early (maybe a smidge too early) when my mom showed me her mass-market paperback romance novels. I’ve read quite a few romance novels over the years, with a wide range of subjects (and quality). To narrow down some options for this genre, I went to Goodreads and to a specific “influencer”, Lexi (a booktoker and booktuber that I enjoy). She had given this book five stars and a glowing review, so I decided to double-check that it hit the criteria for the blog. This book does appear on the New York Times Best Sellers list for Young Adult Hardcover in March of 2024. I Hope This Doesn’t Find You focuses on Asian Australian experiences and features both Sadie and Julius prominently on the front cover of the book, which I loved (romance covers are often very hit or miss). This book is likely to be a big hit with people who liked the To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before series by Jenny Han. I read a physical copy of this book.

Evaluation:

              I will be evaluating three important elements: character, theme, and tone. These elements serve the book in various ways and are vital to the reader.

              Romance is hardly ever worth reading if the characters aren’t interesting. It’s not enough to have witty banter or a hand touch or a longing gaze; the characters need to feel real and lived in, with quirks and flaws and room for growth. On paper, Sadie Wen should be almost too perfect to be enjoyable to read or root for. She’s a perfect student: valedictorian, co-School Captain, a well-rounded athlete, and driven. But perfection has never been easy (or real), and Sadie is clearly cracking under the immense pressure she’s hefted onto her shoulders and her inability to stand up for herself. She shoulders the blame for almost everything around her, including her father leaving the family when she was young, and the distance between her brother and herself. For anyone that has ever been the overachiever, the smarty-pants, the teacher’s pet, then Sadie is perfect representation of the internal thoughts, feelings, and frustrations that arise from occupying this space. What makes Sadie so fun as a character, and so immediately likable in her all quirks and flaws, is that Sadie does what every teenager does: write out their feelings. Sadie, however, does it by drafting an email response of what she really wants to say, but saves it as a draft and never sends it. As Sadie states, “this is my last resort, my sanctuary, the antidote to my anger” (Liang, 2024, p. 29). The person often on the receiving end of these angry emails is her rival, Julius Gong. Where Liang (2024) thrives is writing the dynamic between Sadie and Julius, who are enemies that we all obviously hope will become lovers. Julius has his own flaws and quirks, all of which reveal that Sadie and Julius have always had more in common than they thought. When both Sadie and Julius occupy a page, their fights and banter, their lingering gazes and real-time reevaluations of each other are electrifying and it heightens every aspect of the rest of the novel.

              People sometimes give me a funny look when I tell them that romance novels often have some of the best explorations of what it means to be a human. Romance is inherently a vulnerable genre (regardless of the inclusion or exclusion of sex), and it requires vulnerability from everyone: the author, the readers, and especially the characters. Because of this, there is so much freedom to dive into the psyche of the characters and pull apart what makes them so uniquely them. The quote I always think of when I read romance novels is from Tim Kreider’s (2013) article in the New York Times about anxiety, which he ends with: “if we want the rewards of being loved we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known” (para. 11). When it comes to books like I Hope This Doesn’t Find You, that place our two characters in a traditional enemies-to-lovers trope, this rings especially true. Both Sadie and Julius feel a bit detached from their family and friends because of their incredibly intense drive to win (and to beat the other) – Julius’ desire is about making a name for himself outside of his brother’s shadow and Sadie’s desire is about making sure everyone is happy and comfortable, regardless of herself. The overarching theme relies on these expectations and fears because what Sadie and Julius need is a friend, who understands them, sees them, acknowledges them, respects them, and still will fight for them and fight against them. Liang’s (2024) theme throughout this novel is all about breaking free of those expectations, standing up for yourself, and asking for help – communication is so often at the scene of the crime in a romance novel. It’s a bare-faced acknowledgment that high school feels like forever, like this massive thing, but it’s not the most important thing we’ll ever do and having fun, letting loose, falling in love are all part of the high school experience, just without a grade. This theme, and the book in general, hit close to home. My high school experience was very similar; we were all concerned with our GPA’s and class standings, our clubs and societies, our volunteer hours and AP classes, our extracurriculars that we could put on our college application and how many stoles we would all have. Everyone was your friend and everyone was your competitor, and it was always fun and it was always serious. For those kids in that mindset, this book will feel like both a wake-up call and validation for the thoughts and feelings high school brings.

              The tone of Liang’s (2024) novel never veers into self-righteousness or preaching; it seems wholly uninterested in trying to force anything onto the reader. Tone and theme are interlocked elements and often inform each other, but tone walks a very fine line. When a tone is too strong (often with an over-explained theme), the reader feels put on the spot; when a tone is too weak (often with a lackluster or altogether missing theme), the reader might question why they’re even reading the book. In I Hope This Doesn’t Find You, Liang (2024) spends an adequate amount of time exploring Sadie and Julius as characters: their flaws, their little quirks, their commonalities, their fears. It’s in this exploration, often done in small doses, with Sadie as our narrator guiding us through what she’s finding out in real time, that the tone of the story is developed. Sadie and Julius are rivals and have been so for ten years, so this ensures that the tone isn’t insta-love (love at first sight, love at first kiss, etc.). Both characters have a real history with each other, one that is rocky and contentious. But the tone that Liang (2024) sets allow them both space to find each other in a new space. The novel focuses on showing the clear benefits of reaching out, of asking for help, of communicating, of allowing yourself to be known. In Sadie’s case, the picture-perfect image she’s curated around herself causes her immense anxiety and has forced her into a box so confined that she never actually seems to be the real Sadie around anyone, except when she’s alone. In Julius’ case, his aloof, snarky reputation ensures that no one will ever get close enough to know how stressed out he is, especially with his very popular, successful, and smart older brother who spends most of his page time reducing Julius’ accomplishments into mere nothing. When both Sadie and Julius begin to show signs of breaking, the other is there to reach out because who would know better than the other? As Sadie puts it, in her last email to Julius, “For ten years I thought I was preparing to destroy you, when really I was preparing to love you” (Liang, 2024, p. 308).

              I would highly recommend this book to any high schooler, especially those who are having a tough time with the weight of school, work, family life, social life, etc. This book does a fantastic job of exploring realistic concerns and anxiety, without preaching to the reader. This book does contain kissing scenes, drinking (though this takes place in Australia, where the drinking age is different), and a parent leaving.

References:

Amazon. (n.d.). I hope this doesn’t find you [Photograph]. https://www.amazon.com/Hope-This-Doesnt-Find-You/dp/1338827154

BookList. (2024). I hope this doesn’t find you. BookList. https://www.booklistonline.com/products/9788145

Kreider, T. (2013, June 15). I know what you think of me. The New York Times. https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/15/i-know-what-you-think-of-me/

Liang, A. (2024). I hope this doesn’t find you. Scholastic.

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Don't Let the Forest In by CG Drews

(Photo credit: Amazon)

Genre/Category: Horror for the 7th – 12th Grade

Target Age Group: Grades 9 – 12 (Ferreira, 2024).

Summary:

              Andrew, his twin sister Dove, and their best friend Thomas are off to an incredibly rocky start as they start their senior year at Wildwood, a boarding school that is surrounded by a dark and alluring forest. But soon, monsters begin to emerge from the forest, hunting and haunting Thomas and Andrew, demanding a tithe to the forest. Thomas and Andrew must battle the monsters all while Andrew slowly begins to unravel. 

Justification:

              This book has been on my to-read list for about a year, almost since it came out. It has a stunning cover and a couple of illustrations throughout, which I was immediately drawn to. I knew, once I had seen the blog reading requirements that I’d choose a Horror book, one of my favorite genres and often the most misunderstood genre. Don’t Let the Forest In is right up my alley: boarding schools, forests that hold secrets, codependent relationships of all varieties, and folktales. This book also features queer and asexual representation. It has appeared on the New York Times Best Sellers list in November 2024. I read and listened to this book, which created a unique experience since two of the major characters (Andrew and Dove, twins) are Australians and the narrator used an accent for them.

Evaluation:

              Horror isn’t really horror without a rich atmosphere, a mood that is full of lush imagery and just enough dark corners for something to be lurking. But this can be difficult to create and maintain, especially for a young adult audience. A horror book that leans too heavily into this idea veers into the realm of campy, slasher books; a horror book that doesn’t lean into it enough becomes boring and well … not scary. But Drews (2024) excels in this particular element, cultivating a haunting mood that seems to seep into the characters, embody them, and, in turn, seems to haunt the readers themselves. Drews (2024) utilizes two main avenues to create this spooky mood: a forest that is immediately shown to be off limits to all students and a manor that acts as a terrifyingly complex boarding school, with twists and turns. While this seems, at first, to be the element of setting, both the forest and the school are not the actual places this story exists (more about that in the plot element below). These locations serve as conduits for how we perceive the individual characters, specifically Thomas and Andrew, who in turn continue to guide the reader through the mood and atmosphere that Drews (2024) has created. Thomas thrives in the forest, a secretive place made beautiful by Thomas’ love for it. Andrew thrives only wherever Thomas is, an afterthought of a boy. This overwhelming sense of codependency, of life only being worth something when the other is near and touchable seems to be magnified by the existence of the forest, where the monsters of Andrew and Thomas’ imaginations lurk. Because of the forest, the school, and the codependent relationship, the readers get the sense that the monsters and the real horrors could come from any direction, and no real place is safe. All of the different settings and character relationships heighten the mood into one that is almost unbearable to live in and breathe in because of how strong it is, how horrifying it could be, the promise of another fresh horror just around the corner. It’s exactly what horror books should do.

              Tension and mood often play interchangeable roles, informing each other as they go along. If a horror author cannot create a rich, spooky atmosphere, the tension is much more difficult to generate because it doesn’t feel like anything is on the line. For horror authors to succeed with tension, the stakes must be there, and they must be high. Drews (2024) creates this tension by introducing monsters, of truly horrifying origins. The monsters come from the combined minds of Andrew and Thomas. Andrew, a prolific writer, conjures up wild but short stories about terrifying creatures, all spun as if it was some wildly messed up folktale. Thomas, an artist that wears half the paint, reads the stories and brings these creatures to life in his drawings, either painted or charcoal. When the monsters appear, the boys’ lives are immediately at stake; they may have come from their imaginations but the damage they can do feels real and hurts like its real. At first, the tension exists in the fear of the monsters eventually escaping the forest, coming after the boys at school or in their dorms. But as the story progresses, the tension moves from the horror of the monsters to the origin of the monsters and the secrets that seem to be purposely hidden within Andrew’s mind. Instead of fearing creatures, an easy thing to fear, the reader begins to fear Andrew, while also fearing for him. The tension becomes solely focused on Andrew and what he refuses to acknowledge. Once the reader gets to this point, the story moves at a breakneck speed, which heightens the tension and the mood into a frenzy, into pure chaos. The ending is nerve-wracking because Andrew has become so unpredictable. Letting the characters exist within this space, where they’ve become the main source of tension, allows the reader to evaluate the new information in light of the character’s actions and thoughts, which only magnify the horror of the situation.

              In most horror books, I’m often more concerned with plot than I am with any other genre. Characters can be plenty horrifying on their own, but it is often the crux of the story that brings this horror into focus and allows the reader to grasp the true nature of the characters and their environment. A horror book can succeed with a minimal plot if it is well done. Unfortunately, Don’t Let the Forest In suffers a bit here. We are dropped into the beginning of the senior year for our main characters: Andrew, his twin sister Dove, and their best friend Thomas. Immediately, it is clear that something has happened that has caused the friendship between Thomas and Dove to sour, but Andrew, our narrator, cannot seem to recall the problem. The entire plot hinges on these relationships between these three characters, but because the entire course of their friendship happened over the course of five years and off the page, the plot suffers for it. The reader may find it difficult to understand just why Andrew and Thomas are so codependent, or why Dove seems uninterested and purposely avoidant of both her twin brother and her best friend. The monsters provide an interesting twist, especially considering that they seem to be a mix of Andrew and Thomas, a telling sign of their codependency that even the horrors in their life seem to be shared. However, the real horror soon reveals itself: the past. And spoiler alert for the rest of this post, so there’s my warning. Andrew has retreated so thoroughly into his own mind that he has completely removed himself from reality. It is revealed to us that Dove actually died at the end of their junior year, a death that Thomas feels guilty for. The Dove that Andrew has been seeing has been a trick of the forest, a place that was meant to be their one refuge in their claustrophobic world. The forest doesn’t just want a tithe in the form of blood, but a sacrifice befitting of what was created there by Andrew and Thomas. As the forest states, “You woke us, now sate us” (Drews, 2024, p. 321). This is where the plot suffers the most. Since we do not have the foundation of the friendships between Thomas, Andrew, and Dove, the death of Dove doesn’t hit the way it should. But because we also have only seen Andrew as this skittish boy that has been living inside a convoluted reality full of monsters, the sacrifice of Andrew (his heart, to the forest) doesn’t hit the way it should either. The plot isn’t as fleshed out as it could be, which leaves the reader with more questions than answers and not in a good way.

              I would recommend this book to readers who are interested in discovering their own favorite subgenre of horror and this will likely be a big hit with horror readers interested in folklore and folktales, especially cryptids of sorts. I think that there are better horror books out there, but this is a good introduction to horror and is fast paced which heightens the excitement and horror aspect. This book does touch on child abuse, sexism, misogyny, racism, homophobia, sexual identities, codependent friendships, self-harm and suicide, murder, and gore (lots of it).

References:

Amazon. (n.d.). Don’t let the forest in [Photograph]. https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Let-Forest-CG-Drews/dp/1250895669

Drews, C. G. (2024). Don’t let the forest in. Feiwel and Friends.

Ferreira, K. (2024). Don’t let the forest in. BookList. https://www.booklistonline.com/products/9798844

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I, Claudia by Mary McCoy

(Photo credit: Amazon)

Genre/Category: Michael L. Printz Award Honor Book for 7th – 12th Grade

Target Age Group: Grades 9 – 12 (McIntyre, 2018)

Summary:

              Claudia McCarthy, teen historian, is entering the world of Imperial Day Academy, a fancy prep school for rich teenagers in the Los Angeles area. It is in this playing field that Claudia begins to understand the allure of power and politics and the ever-changing tide of history. Claudia must reckon with her own desires, realized and unrealized, in this modern retelling of I, Claudius.

Justification:

              As the last required genre/category for this blog, I took my time researching this one. I spent time looking at most of the award honor books listed on the American Library Association’s website for this award. I didn’t want to choose a winner (I felt that I had covered winners enough in the PreK – 6th grade realm), so I wanted to purposely select an Honor book. I worked my way from 2015 up to 2025, selecting a handful of titles and researching each one on BookList and Goodreads. Some of the names were familiar (The Hate U Give; The Sun is Also a Star), but most were not. I was intrigued by the name of Mary McCoy’s book (especially having just finished season 2 of “Interview with the Vampire”). I was heavily involved in politics in high school, founding my own club, and in college, often running for Treasurer of the various clubs and organizations I was part of (including the Political Science Honor Society). I saw a bit of myself in the summary of this book on BookList and knew I would love this story. I read and listened to this book, which proved to be rather enjoyable, though I did not quite expect that.

Evaluation:

              I will be evaluating three important elements: style and language, point of view, and design layout. These elements serve the book in various ways and are vital to the reader.

              From the very beginning of this book, it is made abundantly clear to the reader that Claudia McCarthy is an educated and introverted young girl, clinging to her sister, Maisie, as a means of survival as she enters high school at Imperial Day Academy. She has no friends of her own and her parents seem disinterested in her, though not especially sinister. Claudia, for the most part, lives in the past; she is a self-proclaimed historian and throughout the novel, makes pointed and well-researched nods to history (with a quick mention to Ken Burns, the legendary documentary filmmaker). The names in the book harken back to the original source material that McCoy is pulling from: I, Claudius by Robert Graves, published in 1934. Those that are interested in history and politics will surely know these names, like Augustus and Livia, and any of those interested in Roman history may be able to predict where the story goes long before the rest of the readers, which is part of the style that McCoy (2018) uses to lure readers in. McCoy (2018) is not interested in playing coy (excuse the pun); she often utilizes blunt language and characters who are interested in discovering exactly what happened, no frills. This blunt and often crude language feels unchildlike and at times felt like watching children play dress-up in their parents’ closet, ill-fitting and a reminder that they are much younger than they want to believe. Each character, including Claudia, evolves throughout the book through the changes in the way they speak to each other, to the interviewer(s), to the various boards and councils they sit in front of, to their parents, and, ultimately, to themselves. At first, Claudia is shown with little interest in providing her own opinions; she’s a historian, she wants to give the most objective story she can. As she states to the interviewer in the first chapter, “The historian imposes beginnings upon her narrative; they are not naturally occurring things” (McCoy, 2018, p.4). This language is passive, barely showing a sign of a person behind it. But when Zelda Parsons, a member of the Honor Council, kills almost forty-five turtles at Homecoming, her interviewer asks if Claudia believes she has ever been wrong about someone and their character. Claudia’s response is telling: “What do you think? Have I?” (McCoy, 2018, p. 276). The structure of this response works in two ways. First, Claudia reveals, for maybe the first time, that she is genuinely unsure of the people around her, that she’s unnerved by their actions and that they could still surprise her. Second, Claudia isn’t just asking the interviewer, she’s asking the readers. Do we think she’s been wrong? Do we really know these people? And most importantly, do we really know Claudia?

              The style and language play an incredibly important role in the point of view that is presented by the narrator, Claudia. In many ways, the point of view Claudia offers us, the readers, is also an evaluation of her entire character, as we play judge, jury, and executioner. As mentioned above, Claudia is trying to recount the events leading up to her trial in the most objective, passive way possible. At times, this presentation of information feels purposely misleading, like Claudia’s way of throwing us off her scent so that when the big reveal does occur, we never think of questioning the passive voice who is simply telling us a story. But our narrator is complex and she’s, to put it mildly, unreliable. This isn’t immediately clear to the reader, that Claudia is unreliable because at first, Claudia feels very separated from the people we think will be culprits in whatever crime that will certainly be committed. Claudia is barely there at the beginning, hidden behind her sister, Maisie, and her own desire to remain objective. However, Claudia is entranced by the Honor Council, the reigning authority figures on campus who determine all punishments for all crimes. She tries to resist them, but she fails and she fails miserably. She presents this failure because Livia, specifically, is trying to buy her out, trying to give her something so that Livia will have a debt to cash in on. As she states to her interviewer after she refuses the space clearly opened for her by Livia, “Just so we’re clear, I turned down the job Livia offered me. The one Hector Estrella offered me, I took” (McCoy, 2018, p. 192). It’s in this moment that the reader becomes aware that Claudia is not a bumbling fool, no matter how hard she tries to hard behind her stutter and her leg-length difference and her allergies. As we journey through the several years at school that this book spans, we see Claudia become more confident in herself, more willing to do what it takes when others won’t or don’t, and more assured of her space in the Senate and, eventually, the Council. Claudia’s narration provides a unique perspective to history that we don’t often see or read about. Leaders and villains get their names in notoriety, but the real writers of history are the ones puppeteering all of it and that’s Claudia. By the end, we come to understand that Claudia is a mastermind, both realized and unrealized; she wanted absolute destruction of the Council and she got it, just as the fortune teller in the very beginning states. She ends the book with a letter to Hector, where she repeats, over and over again, “You don’t get to save me” (McCoy, 2018, p. 413).

              It may be an odd choice to evaluate the design layout of a chapter book, especially one without illustrations. But the book simply would not work if it was designed any other way. As mentioned, a few times, this book is set up as an interview, with Claudia filling in the story, both telling it in real time and living it. It’s told in four parts, organized around the reigning president (Augustus, Ty, Cal, and eventually Claudia). There are several important aspects to the design layout that make this book so lived in and make Claudia so convincing. First, every time the interviewer (potentially a therapist) and Claudia are talking, the physical page is completely blacked out, with white text. Claudia, occasionally, refers to the interviewer while actively telling the story, but the interviewer’s response is only allowed to be present on these blacked-out pages. It’s foreboding and it lends itself to a particular tension, that there’s something at play that we don’t quite know yet. Second, each chapter and each part are done in roman numerals (i.e. II, IV, XIII). Each chapter has a name which is a line pulled directly from the chapter, and they are often humorous (and later revealed to be disgusting, often from Cal), like “XXII: Looking for Fifteen People to Make Out With” (McCoy, 2018, p. 167). In a way, this humanizes Claudia because she’s, essentially, naming these chapters, pulling these lines, emphasizing something important (and they are important). Third, at the start of each part, there’s a detailed list of the Honor Council members and the Senate council members. It’s very much designed to be a four-act play, with a specific cast, with characters that pop back up every now and again, particularly Livia, who disappears for the majority of the third part. Fourth, multiple forms of writing are displayed here: full text, like a regular novel; court transcripts; sticky notes; notes left in lockers (always in all CAPS); and even a drawing of an origami piece of money. The book ends in a format we had not yet seen: signed letters from Claudia. The first is the neat bow on the story, a quick mention of the future elimination of the Honor Council. The second, behind a page listed “Ephemera”, is a letter, potentially sent to Hector or saved in her file in Imperial Day Academy, that details the crime committed. The design layout is meant to feel relatively familiar to the age demographic that this book is targeted for, since high school is when we are the most exposed to plays, tragedies, comedies, etc. But what this design layout really does is hide Claudia until the very last page. She is bound by the interviewer, the trial, the other characters that demand, and her innate desire to be objective and passive. But when the trial is over, we see Claudia, with no other person around, her truest self, broken free of the constraints she purposely put herself in to tell this story so that she could get exactly what she wanted, often without doing any dirty work at all.

              Librarians interested in recommending this book would do well with recommending it to budding historians, those interested in Roman history and fiction, and those with a clear interest in politics. This will be a big hit for a very specific group of students – future historians will enjoy it for its unflinching takes on history and its incredible attempt to remain objective and future politicians will enjoy it for its strategy and power struggles. It should be mentioned that this book grapples with drugs and drinking, overdoses, animal murder, sexual assault and abuse, mentions of sex (though never shown on page), the usage of cuss words, and physical, emotional, and mental violence enacted by high schoolers onto other high schoolers.

References:

Amazon. (n.d.). I, claudia [Photograph]. https://www.amazon.com/I-Claudia-Mary-McCoy/dp/151244846X

McCoy, M. (2018). I, claudia. Carolrhoda LAB.

McIntyre, B. (2018). I, claudia. BookList. https://www.booklistonline.com/products/9604269

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Legendborn by Tracy Deonn

(Photo credit: Amazon)

Genre/Category: Fantasy for 7th – 12th Grade

Target Age Group: Grades 9th – 12th (Davenport, 2020).

Summary:

              At just 16 years old, Bree Matthews is now navigating a world without her mother, who has died in a tragic accident. After being admitted to UNC-Chapel Hill in a program for high schoolers, she sees something she’s not supposed to be able to see and is thus pulled into a secret society that goes further than Bree, or anyone else, can ever imagine.

Justification:

              Legendborn has been on my radar since about 2022 and a book I knew one day I would pick up. When I was younger, I was obsessed with the Pendragon series by D. J. MacHale, so Arthurian legends have always been exciting to me (and I loved the Raven Cycle series, once I was in high school). However, Fantasy, as a genre, is one I have steered away from as I have gotten older; I tend to gravitate towards books that focus heavily on characters and their interactions and less towards books with world-building. I was both nervous and excited for this book – it is well-reviewed, well-awarded (it won the Coretta Scott King-John Steptoe Award for New Talent), and came with a personal recommendation from a close friend when I told her about this class. And, this class has offered me the rare opportunity to finally knock books off my TBR while still in school! I have to admit: I read this book in one day. I started with the physical book (from my local library) and when I eventually tore myself from it to do my normal Sunday chores, I found the audiobook and listened to it until I could sit back down and read again.

Evaluation:

              I will be evaluating three important elements: character, tension, and believability. These elements serve the book in various ways and are vital to the reader.

              As a reader, we are first introduced to Bree Matthews, a 16-year-old Black girl, and her father while they sit in a room with a police officer, where they are told that Bree’s mother has died in a hit and run, a tragic accident. The time jump takes us three months later, while Bree and her best friend, Alice Chen, are spending their first night on the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill after being admitted to the Early College, a program for promising high school students to live on campus and take classes for credit. Bree is clearly struggling from her mother’s death – she has created walls so tall, so thick, so impenetrable that she lives in a before/after world. There was Before-Bree, a young, excited girl, ready to take on the world, and now, there is only After-Bree, a hardened shell of her previous self, full of grief and rage. These are all incredibly important facts that will inform the rest of this evaluation.

              From the very beginning, Bree leaps off the page, full of anger at the world, at her mother, at how difficult it is to talk about grief. She’s very clearly still struggling, but trying desperately to make sure no one, not even her best friend, sees this. Though this is towards the end, the quote that rings true to Bree is “My agony has a hunger” (Deonn, 2020, p. 379). Bree is a dynamic and complex character. She makes mistakes from the first chapter, fights with her friend, lies to her dad (and others), and stays out late. She also experiences the constant racism, both unsubtle (the Dean, the police officers) and microaggressions (two characters touch her hair at one point, which is a teaching lesson to both the characters and the audience), coupled with the sexism that comes with living life both as a girl and a Black girl. Bree is consumed with her grief and the magic she both exhibits and eventually comes to understand are deeply and intrinsically informed by both her grief and her connection to death. But her grief is not the only thing about her, nor is her rage. As Bree’s father states, “Make it about the love” (Deonn, 2020, p. 386). There are two other major characters: Nicholas (Nick) Davis, the Pendragon heir, and Selwyn (Sel) Kane, the Kingsmage and a Merlin. The boys are opposites of each other, both in appearance and personality (and are foils of each other). While Nick is the main love interest of the first book, it is clear by the end that Sel is also a love interest (with an exciting table-turning moment of discovering Sel had a crush on Nick growing up). The secondary characters are just as dynamic and fun to read, especially when all are together in a room, interacting with each other, showing little signs of the influence of their House on their personalities and temperaments.

              The tension in this book goes hand in hand with both the setting and the pacing of this story. Legendborn takes place in North Carolina, almost exclusively at UNC-Chapel Hill, providing a very real and tangible place within a story that is fantastical and magical. This location, and the South as a whole, is a place entrenched in its own history, with years of reckoning still to come. As Deonn (2020) states in the Author’s Note about Rootcraft, “it feels as if the very soil that helped grow this country is soaked with the acknowledged and unacknowledged blood, sweat, and tears of enslaved Africans and their descendants. And, in truth, it is” (p. 497). The book grapples with this legacy of both UNC-Chapel Hill and the entire South, an undertaking that could be overwhelming to a story, but informs it in a way that makes it more real, more impactful. The story is made more tense by the setting, as Bree must work her way through her family history and other characters must reckon with their own biases and internal racism. The pacing of the story is fast, almost at a breakneck speed, but the story never feels rushed or diminished because of this. Like most YA novels, the story takes place over a very small timeframe; Legendborn takes place over the course of about four weeks, between August and September. With a timeframe that limited and a book that’s almost 500 pages, it’s important that it never really slows down and Legendborn makes good on that promise. With a breakneck pace, a setting that sets the stage for conflict and reconciliation, Legendborn is tense for all 490 pages. Splitting the book into four parts and purposely leaving cliffhangers to then move into a “unrelated” scene made me want to dig further in, try to figure it out for myself (I was able to deduce at least two of the big reveals).

              With all fantasy, believability is an issue, especially for readers like me who tend to stay away from fantasy for whatever reason. Believability, within Legendborn, is focused on the merging of the real world and the magical world. Legendborn is a magical realism fantasy novel, and it excels in many ways in providing this sense of believability. Part of this aspect comes from its setting in the South and from my experience of living in the South. There’s a scene between Bree and her father where they sit in a Waffle House. Bree is trying to avoid looking and talking to her dad, so she hunts for the hot sauce she’ll need, disregarding Tabasco and grabbing Texas Pete hot sauce. The whole scene, while heartwarming, made me chuckle because I’ve been there (but I am very firmly a Tabasco girl). There’s the muggy heat, the bugs that seem to terrorize us all in August, the sprawl that feels so uniquely southern. There’s the specific usage of “ain’t” and “y’all” and “’fore”, twang and drawl and accents that feel exactly like home. I went to college in Seattle and experienced my first teasing of my accent, but there’s several moments in Legendborn when a character finally feels comfortable enough to drop the façade and allow the accent to flow, uninhibited. That sensation is something that can be difficult to describe but Deonn clearly has personal experience with this and executes it perfectly. These little bits of life in the South enhance the believability that the magical world is just living alongside us. The magical aspect of Legendborn leans heavily on secret societies, something that just simply makes sense in a region known for secrets and hiding something deeply sinister behind fancy houses, fancy cars, and money, money, and more money.

              I simply could not recommend this book enough. It does deal, intimately, with the lose of a parent, grief and rage, racism and sexism against several characters by other characters, and challenging relationships. For those who have recently lost a family member, this may be a refreshing portrayal of grief and provide a productive and healthy avenue to discuss grief, anger, and death. This is best suited for high schoolers and anyone above that age group (I’m 29 and I loved this). There are two additional books in the series, which is ongoing.

References:

Amazon. (n.d.). Legendborn [Photograph]. https://www.amazon.com/Legendborn-Tracy-Deonn/dp/1534441603

Davenport, E. (2020). Legendborn. BookList. https://www.booklistonline.com/products/9738035

Deonn, T. (2020). Legendborn. Margaret K. McElderry Books.

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Heartstopper by Alice Oseman

(Photo credit: Amazon)

Genre/Category: Graphic Novel for 7th – 12th graders

Target Age Group: Grades 7-10th (BookList, 2020).

Summary:

              Charlie Spring is in Year 10 at Truham Grammar School for Boys, where he has recently been outed and is keeping a “relationship” secret. After being seated next to popular rugby player, Nick Nelson, the two boys develop a friendship (and maybe something more) and discover they have more in common than they think.

Justification:

              I watched the first season of Heartstopper on Netflix when it first came out and absolutely loved it. When I realized that a required reading title for the 7th-12th graders section was a graphic novel, I knew this was my opportunity to finally read Heartstopper. Volume 1 won the British Book Award for Children’s Illustrated and Non-Fiction and has been banned in multiple countries (including the United States). This series remains popular, both as the book series continues and wraps up (with Volume 6 being the last one) and with the phenomenal tv show. I did purchase this book because I knew I was likely to enjoy it; I read it in a night and returned it the next day in order to buy the box set and Volume 5 (which I then read in a few days). Because Heartstopper started out as a web comic, it’s still available to read online via Alice Oseman’s website and her various platforms.

Evaluation:

              I will be evaluating three important elements: illustrations, setting, and characters. These elements serve the book in various ways and are vital to the reader.

              The illustrations in Heartstopper are incredibly interesting because of how quiet the story is. The story follows Charlie Spring and Nick Nelson, two boys who meet when they’re seated next to each other for a class at Truham Grammar School for Boys. Instead of focusing on major events, the story focuses on the small moments in their lives, like walking home, playing with their dog, texting each other for the first time, and all the schoolwork involved. Because we have access to these quieter moments in life that make up the bulk of our lives, the illustrations follow suit. The illustrations are in a dark blue/green shade with white and black used for shadowing and filling out space. The only other colors we see are on the front cover, with Charlie’s red backpack and Nick’s blue saddle bag. The main focus of the illustrations is on the facial expressions we see from both Charlie’s perspective and Nick’s perspective (especially as each boy comes to terms with the crush they have on each other). Sometimes, pages have no words but are focused on the illustrations, like pages 176 and 177 (Oseman, 2019), when Charlie’s family comes home while him and Nick are hanging out. The most that is ‘spoken’ is a speech bubble that has “!!” in it. As a reader, we can glean from the illustrations the excitement and joy that the characters are experiencing because we see it on their faces without ever needing to read it. In many ways, Oseman’s (2019) illustrations operate on a show, don’t tell basis; if it can be explained better through an illustration, then it should be done that way. Oseman (2019) also utilizes two interesting components to her illustrations. The first is that whenever Charlie and Nick are having a moment, little leaves flutter around them. Obviously, this is likely not actually happening, but it adds to the romantic quality of the moment without detracting from it. The second is that Oseman (2019) often features non-verbal moments through her illustrations. In one scene, Charlie is explaining to Nick what happened between him and Ben (a situationship gone south) but it’s all done via text message, which is part of the illustration, not as a text bubble. This inclusion of multimedia messaging within the illustration is engaging to a reader because, oftentimes, I had to turn the book certain ways to read everything I was being presented. The illustrations never get overly detailed, which grants the reader the rare opportunity to infer how the characters are feeling and decide for themselves if that is accurate.

              When Heartstopper Volume 1 begins, the reader is immediately thrown into Charlie’s life; there’s no major backstory or prologue to clue a reader into who Charlie is or where he lives or what he does. Our introduction is actually when Charlie, an out gay 14-year-old teenager, meets up with Ben, a closeted boy who is a bit harsh with Charlie. The setting is first established here, on page 4 (Oseman, 2019), where we learn that Charlie attends Truham Grammar School for Boys. Without needing additional information, a reader, especially one in middle school or high school, would be able to understand or at least acknowledge the difficulty Charlie likely had or still has as an out gay teen in a school full of boys. It’s not often that a setting speaks so much with so little, but Oseman’s (2019) use of this setting places Charlie’s actions, reactions, and emotions within a very particular context. An all-boys school is a ripe setting for potential bullying, judging, and even violence (which we see with Ben and Charlie). Charlie’s hesitancy with school is borne of real, emotional trauma enacted against him by his peers. What is refreshing is that Oseman (2019) does not allow the setting to determine the fates or personalities of the characters; the setting is merely an avenue in which their own personalities are put to the test. The school often also acts as a neutral ground between Nick and Charlie, in that they can be around each other without evaluating their own feelings. In many ways, the changing view of the setting by both Charlie and Nick allow the reader to see how a setting does not have to define us.

              I would be remiss if I did not evaluate the characters in this graphic novel. It is also difficult to not feel emotionally connected to either Charlie or Nick because of my own personal experiences with being a queer teenager (who was not out at school). The majority of the first volume focuses on Charlie and his blossoming friendship with Nick Nelson, with small portions of Nick’s perspective (which is refreshing). Charlie is a quiet boy who loves to play the drums; Nick is a popular boy who loves to play rugby. After becoming friends, Nick sees Charlie running and recruits him for the rugby team, where he introduces Charlie to his friends. Charlie, in turn, introduces Nick to his family (Nick’s introduction to Charlie’s friends occurs in Volume 2). As mentioned above when discussing the illustrations, the parts of Charlie and Nick’s lives that we see are the quieter moments, often fleeting glances between the two, a quick moment of physical contact, or a shared inside joke. Oseman’s (2019) exploration of Charlie’s trauma (not specified as such in Volume 1) around his forced outing juxtaposes the fear that Nick, experiencing an identity crisis, has about not understanding himself as well as Charlie seems to. It’s refreshing and exciting to see a book, particularly a graphic novel, that portrays these characters with kindness but still allows them the space to struggle and evaluate and worry, all real parts of coming to terms with one’s identity and deciding when (and if!) you should come out. It’s important to note that most of the conflict centers around Ben’s internalized homophobia, particularly in the beginning, and the loud homophobia shown by Harry Greene, that provides the climax of the book. Because of this, Charlie and Nick are only fleshed out to a certain extent and most of their character development occurs once they are friends (and slowly moving to something more). In a way, this form of slow character development acts as a tease to the readers to grab the next volume (and the next, and the next, and the next). Fortunately, it definitely worked on me – I read all 5 volumes in a week!

Recommendation:

             Without a doubt, I would recommend this book (and all subsequent volumes) to any older middle school and high school students. This book is well-designed, the illustrations are simple but effective, and the story is overwhelmingly gentle and kind to the characters and their experiences. It’s heartwarming and routinely made me cry. I wish I had something like this when I was a young high school student, figuring out my own sexual and gender identity.

References:

Amazon. (n.d.). Heartstopper #1: A graphic novel [Photograph]. https://www.amazon.com/Heartstopper-Alice-Oseman/dp/1338617435

BookList. (2020, May). Heartstopper, v. 1. https://www.booklistonline.com/products/9732786

Oseman, A. (2019). Heartstopper volume one (A. Oseman, Illus.). Hachette Children’s Group.

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A Hatful of Dragons and More Than 13.8 Billion Other Funny Poems by Vikram Madan

(Photo credit: Penguin Random House)

Genre/Category: Poetry for PreK to 6th graders

Target Age Group: Pre-school to Grade 2 or Ages 3-7 (Astra Publishing House, 2020).

Summary:

              A delightful and, at times, meta poetry book that is full of intriguing characters and fun illustrations that are elevated by clever wordplay and silly rhymes. It features interactive poems, hide and seek with characters, and poems of all kinds that will hold the interest of any young reader.

Justification:

              I remember reading all of Shel Silverstein’s books in elementary school and how difficult it was to check them out because everyone else was reading them! I was most excited for this required reading item because of my experience with poetry when I was younger. To search for a book that met this requirement, I decided to pull up Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein on the Dallas Public Library catalog and select a subject line for “Children’s Poetry”. I was curious what books had come out during the start of the pandemic, when funny poetry would have been much appreciated, so I selected 2020 for the publication date. I worked through the search results, selecting a few that seemed interesting. It was A Hatful of Dragons and More Than 13.8 Billion Other Funny Poems that caught my eye because how did he fit 13.8 billion more poems in a book?! I decided to look the book up before I checked it out and discovered that it was actually on the Texas Bluebonnet Book Award Master List in 2021-2022! It was available as a digital ebook via Libby, so that’s how I read this book.

Evaluation:

              I will be evaluating three important elements: illustrations, pacing, and style and language. These elements serve the book in various ways and are vital to the reader.

              When selecting and reading poetry, one does not often assume it’ll be accompanied by illustrations. There is the real potential that illustrations could detract from the poems, even if they are comedic in nature. But A Hatful of Dragons by Vikram Madan never suffers this fear; the illustrations are paired perfectly with the poems, complimenting them in such a way that they are both part of the poem on the page and their own poem that stretches for the entirety of the book. The cover of the book is the only time the illustrator (and author) includes color; the illustrations in the book are completely in black and white, which only benefits the story as to let the poems shine. In one notable poem, titled “Australian Animal Chant”, the illustrations serve as a key to the chant itself, almost like hieroglyphics (Madan, 2020, p. 54-55). The illustrations range from very simple and clean to incredibly detailed and organized chaos, all determined by the poem on the page(s). One of the most detailed illustrations accompanies the poem “Prickly Lot” which spans two full pages and multiple dragons and their prickliness because all their food comes out charred (Madan, 2020, p. 16-17). One interesting thing that Madan does with his illustrations is create a through-line with characters; one reoccurring character is the young girl, first shown on pages 8 and 9, that pops up any time dragons are mentioned. At the end of the book, the reader is gifted with another reason to reread the poems: a character is playing hide and seek throughout the story, dressed up as random people! In this sense, the illustrations are as interactive with the reader as the poems are, which elevates the experience of reading this book. The rereadability of this book is high because the illustrations pack so much into quite a small space. This usage of the negative space left by the words of a poem creates a rich environment for Madan’s silly, enticing illustrations to engage the reader further by spending time on each individual page to dissect the poem and the corresponding illustrations.

              On occasion, a book of poetry will be interconnected in some aspect that allows for a specific pace to be set, primarily by the author themselves. This particular book of funny and silly poems has a very clear pace set thanks to the way the poems and illustrations interact with other poems and illustrations. At times, the pace is dizzying, like with “The Tin Twin’s Tin” (Madan, 2020, p. 50-51) that’s a real tongue twister – it’s a poem that simply demands to be read out loud to get the full experience. The faster a reader tries to go, the more difficult the poem becomes, forcing readers to slow down while daring them to speed up. In an interesting usage of space, some poems continue onto the next page, requiring a pause in reading to turn the page and creating a sense of tension with this pause. One of the cutest poems is “The Pouch” which ‘ends’ on page 35 with “Where no one can see, is a cute little joey …” and really ends on page 36 with “… And stuck little me” (Madan, 2020, p. 35-36). As a reader, this forced pause allows time to think of what could come next and involves the audience in a way that poems often do not. At times, the pace is meandering, emphasized with illustrations, like the poem “Roller Coaster” (Madan, 2020, p. 52-53) which takes up two huge spaces and is full of a twisting, winding roller coaster. A reader takes their time to track the path the coaster is likely to take while reading the poem. And at times, the pace is stopped, completely, for the reader to interact with the poem, like the poem “13,841,287,201* Nonsense Poems in One!” (Madan, 2020, p. 18-19) which is like a MadLibs poem, but with only 7 possible options for each of the twelve blank spaces. This poem could halt any continued reading in order to play with this poem because of just how many real possibilities exist to create a poem. Madan (2020) purposely utilizes the poems to speed up the readers, slow them down, let them travel through the illustrations with the poem, and to stop altogether to allow them a turn at creating a poem.

              It’s difficult to assess a book of poetry without discussing the usage of style and language; an easy argument could be made that it may be the most important element to discuss when it comes to poetry, since every word and turn of phrase is purposely chosen. Madan (2020) does not limit himself to using words that are familiar to the targeted age group nor does he try to outsmart them. This is most noticeable in the poem “Unruly Bunch” (Madan, 2020) which has the line, “They’re making an anarchic scene” (p. 34). Children in the targeted age group may not understand this word anarchic but with the context of the poem (unruly oysters) and the accompanying illustrations, it makes it an accessible word that can be discussed and evaluated. The clever play on words throughout the book also allows for enjoyment for years to come; some jokes are bound to go over some children’s heads but when they get older, they may discover these jokes and new meanings to pick apart and laugh about. The best example of this is “Time Machine” where a child builds a time machine, asks for a dime to “enter now, and exit at a future time” (Madan, 2020, p. 48). But the trick is that the person who entered is locked in the machine and will simply be allowed to exit … at a future time that is undetermined. The book also contains references within itself, like “Taxi Crab” where the taxi driver threatens to dump the characters “on the seventh page!” (Madan, 2020, p. 25). This line triggers a desire to go see who is on the 7th page and it is, in fact, the two characters in the cab! The meta-aspect allows for this book to be reread multiple times and still discover new little things in both the word choices and illustrations for readers.

Recommendation:

             This book was such a thrill to read! It has silly poems, limericks, fill-in-the-blanks, a hieroglyphic poem with Australian animals, and reoccurring characters that are referenced throughout. It’s a meta poetry book so I think this could even be read by older children, in intermediate or middle school, and there would still be some enjoyment for them. I read some of the tongue twisters out loud to really see if there were (they were!) and it felt just like I was an elementary school kid discovering Shel Silverstein for the first time.

References:

Astra Publishing House. (2020). A hatful of dragons and more than 13.8 billion other funny poems. https://astrapublishinghouse.com/product/a-hatful-of-dragons-9781635924039/

Madan, V. (2020). A hatful of dragons and more than 13.8 billion other funny poems (V. Madan, Illus.). Wordsong.

Penguin Random House. (n.d.). A hatful of dragons and more than 13.8 billion other funny poems [Photograph]. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/611338/a-hatful-of-dragons-by-vikram-madan/

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Julián is a Mermaid by Jessica Love

(Photo credit: Amazon)

Genre/Category: Banned Book for PreK to 6th graders

Target Age Group: Kindergarten to Grade 3 (BookList, 2018).

Summary:

              Julián and his Abuela are on the subway on their way home one day when they meet three beautiful mermaids. Julián is inspired to become a mermaid himself, using Abuela’s drapes and plants (and creating a bit of mess!). When she finds him dressed up, he worries about her reaction to seeing the real Julián – but she shows him support and love by taking him to the beach, to meet other mermaids, just like him.

Justification:

              In mid-October, it was Banned Book Week, and I decided that in order to celebrate, I would read a banned book in the preK to 6th grade portion. I was curious as to what books could possibly be banned for this age group. Similar to Ellen Outside the Lines, I felt a little overwhelmed with the possibilities – who better to ask than the Children’s Librarian? This time, I went to a different Dallas Library branch, one closer to my office, and I explained the parameters for the assignment and asked for a physical book. She took me to the children’s sections and showed me a few options – I was so intrigued by this book and the beautiful illustrations inside. I checked it out and did some research back home. For the 2023-2024 school year, PEN America compiled a list of the most banned picture books; Julián is a Mermaid came in at the Number 2 spot (tied with another book), with 5 total bans (Tolin, 2025). Considering that this book came out 5 years prior to these bans, that felt notable. I read the physical book.

Evaluation:

              I will be evaluating three important elements: illustrations, mood, and theme. These elements serve the book in various ways and are vital to the reader. Page numbers are provided by the reviewer and are not listed in the book.

              Of all the elements that make up this book, the illustrations, by far, outshine everything. They are rich and beautiful, full of life and clearly done with care and love towards the environment and the characters. On the copyright page, before the title page, it mentions that the illustrations were done “in watercolor, gouache, and ink” (Love, 2018, p. 2). Each page feels like looking at a painting in a museum; the colors blend with the surroundings, as well as taper off towards the end of each page, which gives it a dreamlike quality. Each page has a light brown base color (almost like a brown sack lunch) that allows all the other colors to shine vibrantly. With little dialogue, the illustrations speak volumes. For example, most of the characters depicted in this book are people of color with a wide variety of skin color and different hairstyles, particularly for the women and girls. No matter who is shown on the page, the illustrations treat them with kindness, showing them with smiles and fun outfits, creating both a sense of community and an understanding that each person is unique. One of the best illustrations in the book happens toward the end, when Abuela brings Julián to the beach to meet all the other mermaids dressed like him. It’s three full spreads of bursting colors, sparkling outfits, and confetti, a party where everyone is being celebrated. Julián, through the illustrations, grows more confident, going from hiding behind the wall to the front, right behind the three beautiful mermaids he first met that inspired him. The usage of watercolor paintings with this book allows for a gentle and tender approach to a story that relies heavily on conveying a message through the illustrations themselves.

              With very few words throughout this book, the mood of the book is experienced almost exclusively between the looks shared between Julián and his Abuela. Abuela is an older woman, which a reader can tell from the wrinkles shown on her face. She is often looking at Julián with a mix of love and patience. This is most easily seen when she finds Julián dressed up in her drapes and a plant to look like a mermaid. Her face is shown with a small smile and her hands behind her back. On the next page, she’s shown giving Julián a beaded necklace. Julián’s face changes here, too. At first, he’s apprehensive of Abuela and what she may say, seeing him dressed up. But once the necklace is offered and they begin their journey to the beach, Julián’s smile grows and grows. During this exchange, which spans a majority of the middle section of the book, the mood dips and the tension grows. The reader may sense that Julián is nervous for his Abuela’s reaction, but the reader has had no previous experience to show that Abuela would be cruel. This mix of expectation and knowledge heightens the mood, making the reader a little nervous, too. But because of the low dip here, the mood rises quickly and maintains a positive note for the rest of the story once Abuela hands Julián the necklace. Letting the mood flow from excitement to nervousness to pure joy takes the reader on the emotional journey that Julián is also experiencing in this book.

              It has been noted how little this book relies on words, using them almost as a secondary aspect to the main illustrations throughout. Because of this, the theme (and the mood) is well-defined by the characters the reader sees on the page and the way that they interact with each other. Julián wants to be a mermaid and uses his Abuela’s household items to create his look. When Abuela “catches” him doing so, it is apparent, only through the illustrations and the single line of “Uh oh!” (Love, 2018, p. 23), that Julián is nervous to see what his Abuela will do and/or say. Just as mentioned above when discussing mood, there’s tension here that lays the groundwork for the theme. Abuela could ridicule Julián for both the mess he made and dressing up like a mermaid. But she doesn’t. Instead, she offers Julián a necklace (much like a peace offering) and takes him to the beach, to see and join people that are like him. It’s in this act of allowing Julián to be exactly who he’d like to be that the theme makes the full circle. No one ridicules or bullies the mermaids in the beginning of the book; they simply are allowed to exist in the world as something to aspire to, like Julián does. In the quiet of Abuela’s house, even here no one is ridiculed or bullied for being themselves. And at the beach, in front of everyone and the ocean, people dance together, celebrate together, dressed exactly as they’d like to dress. No one, not even the people that Julián and Abuela pass, say anything or make faces or act like they’d like to ridicule Julián. The overall theme of allowing others to be themselves, fully and freely, treating them with love, and taking them seriously brings the community together in ways that bullying, ridiculing, or judging others simply will never be able to do. We cannot judge our way into forming a community. Julián and Abuela show the reader that the way to build a community is to let people be free to be themselves, without boundaries or borders. It’s only then that we can celebrate together.

Recommendation:

             This book would be a fast and enjoyable read for younger children, likely under 2nd grade. The illustrations are beautiful, and the dialogue is sparse but well done. The overall theme and story of this book is gentle and caring and could generate critical conversations about judging people.

References:

Amazon. (n.d.). Julián is a mermaid [Photograph]. https://www.amazon.com/Juli%C3%A1n-Mermaid-Jessica-Love/dp/0763690457

BookList. (2018, May). Julián is a mermaid. https://www.booklistonline.com/products/9299956

Love, J. (2018). Julián is a mermaid (J. Love, Illus.). Candlewick Press.

Tolin, L. (2025, January 27). The 23 most banned picture books of the 2023-2024 school year. PEN America. https://pen.org/banned-picture-book-list-2024/

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The Girl Who Thought in Pictures: The Story of Dr. Temple Grandin by Julia Finley Mosca

(Photo credit: innovation Press)

Genre/Category: Informational/Biographic for PreK to 6th graders

Target Age Group: Kindergarten to 2nd grade (BookList, 2017).

Summary:

              An informational look into Temple Grandin’s life told in verse, this book focuses on her upbringing, the challenges she faced as an autistic woman, and her many inventions that have helped agriculture and livestock to this day.

Justification:

              I watched the 2010 HBO movie, Temple Grandin, during the pandemic. Because I was a staunch vegetarian for six years in high school and college, I was aware of Temple Grandin and the work she had done to make things more humane for livestock. However, I didn’t know much else about her. When trying to decide what informational/biographic book to read, I decided I wanted to read more about Temple Grandin. During my research, this book popped up and the illustrations and story looked interesting. I discovered the National Science Teaching Association during this as well, which included this book as a Best STEM Book in 2018. This book is also told in verse, which was an interesting decision that made it more fun to read out loud (which is how I read it). I read the physical book.

Evaluation:

              I will be evaluating three important elements: illustrations, accuracy, and theme. These elements serve the book in various ways and are vital to the reader. All page numbers are provided by the reviewer and are not listed in the book.

              Because The Girl Who Thought in Pictures is a biographical book about Temple Grandin, the illustrations needed to be simple and clean so as not to take away from the story being told to the reader. The illustrator, Daniel Rieley, does a fantastic job of ensuring that the illustrations benefit the words and story without being the centerpiece of the book. The illustrations are colorful, but they are rarely overly detailed or intricate. They are 2D illustrations that almost look like paper cutouts which makes them feel unique and interesting to look at, even in their simplicity. The story interacts with the illustrations at multiple points, like on page 18, where the words are stacked on the stairs depicted (Mosca, 2017). Throughout the book, each time the reader is shown a glimpse into Grandin’s thought process, the illustrations are pictures, not words. For example, on pages 24 and 25 (Mosca, 2017), Grandin is thinking of how to help cows be less scared when navigating the system towards the barns. In this spread of illustrations, the words don’t describe what the reader is seeing; the reader must use the images that Grandin is thinking to understand what she wants to create. This allows readers to experience thinking in pictures, like Grandin does (and as the title suggests). Keeping the illustrations simple also allows this book to be accessible for much younger kids where overexplaining something could detract from their enjoyment of the book.

              It would be difficult to fully evaluate this book without discussing the accuracy of the book, considering that it is a biographical picture book for children. Determining accuracy in children’s books can be challenging because there’s a fine line between underexplaining and overexplaining about a person’s life and achievements. Too little explaining runs the risk of oversimplifying and losing accuracy. Too much explaining loses the audience, even if it is the most factual and accurate book that an author can create. Mosca (2017) does a great job at finding this balance between remaining accurate and true to Grandin and her life while simplifying the story enough to be accessible and entertaining to young children, all while writing in verse. The end of the book features a note and picture from Temple Grandin, a two-page spread of fun facts and tidbits, a two-page spread that’s a full timeline of Grandin’s life, another two-page spread that is a written biography of Grandin, and ends with the bibliography from the author. In the Fun Facts and Tidbits spread, the information presented is still presented like the rest of the book (just not in verse) and is information from the author’s chat with Temple Grandin. In the Acknowledgements portion, Mosca (2017) thanks Grandin for “contributing personal photos, speaking at length with the author, and providing helpful commentary throughout the creation of the book” (p. 42). Accuracy, for this book, is done by direct consultation and inclusion of the person the book is about which ensures that the book remains accurate and truthful to Grandin’s life, experiences, and achievements. Additionally, the bibliography is transparent and accessible to those who wish to learn more about Grandin. Accuracy in children’s books requires trust and Mosca (2017) ensures that the trust is not broken.

              Temple Grandin is an inspirational woman and the theme of a book about her life should echo this sentiment. Mosca (2017) does so by discussing the impact of being a woman and an autistic woman had on Grandin’s desire for change in the world. This book is told in verse and is presented quite simply, with simple illustrations and words that would already be accessible to the targeted age group. Because Grandin’s life is presented in this book, the theme of the book evolves as Grandin grows up. In the beginning, the theme is focused on how support from teachers and parents can positively impact someone. In the middle, once Grandin graduated college, the theme focused on her experience as an autistic woman, trying to break into the livestock world, a place dominated by men. And in the end, the overarching theme is that our differences make us who we are and there’s nothing we cannot do. As Mosca (2017) writes, “So, here is the lesson: Feeling odd or offbeat? Being different might just be what makes you so neat!” (p. 34). The theme is very clearly presented but the impact it has is not lessened because it is spelled out for the young kids reading this book. Hearing how a woman, an autistic woman, persevered in the face of enormous challenges, can benefit young girls, especially those interested in STEM studies, to feel confident to take on the world. Mosca (2017) treats this theme (and overall message) with excitement and promise; each page where Grandin overcomes an obstacle feels like a moment where Mosca (2017) would shout, “You can do this, too!”. And by the end, it really does feel like nothing could stop a reader from going out into the world and making the most of it.

Recommendation:

             I would recommend this book to younger kids, closer to kindergarten and not any older than 3rd grade. The illustrations are simple, and the book is told in verse, which is likely to be more accessible and exciting for younger children. This book is also the first in a series about women in STEM so it would be great for young girls and those particularly interested in science.

References:

BookList. (2017, August). The girl who thought in pictures: The story of dr. temple grandin. https://www.booklistonline.com/products/8899058

Mosca, J. F. (2017). The girl who thought in pictures: The story of dr. temple grandin (D. Rieley, Illus.). The Innovation Press.

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Ellen Outside the Lines by A. J. Sass

(Photo credit: Amazon)

Genre/Category: Disability or Differences for PreK to 6th graders

Target Age Group: Grades 4-7th (BookList, 2022).

Summary:

              As an autistic teenager, Ellen sees and experiences the world differently than her classmates. But on a trip to Barcelona, Spain with her Spanish class, she’s able to open up to her friends, explore her Jewish and queer identity, and balance friendships with a new crush.

Justification:

              Since this book was for a specific required reading goal (for Disabilities and Differences), I was a little unsure where to start. Because my local library in Dallas is well-known for its children’s programming and collections, I decided to make my way there and ask the Children’s Librarian for recommendations, describing the parameters and that I’d like to read a book about autism. She introduced me to this book and described that the audiobook is one she really liked (and she loves audiobooks). I decided to trust her recommendation, and I checked out the audiobook on my phone via the Libby app. Once I got home, I researched the book to discover more about it. I learned it was listed as a 2022 Best Middle School Book by the School Library Journal. I am not typically an audiobook enjoyer – I struggle to pay attention and I’m often too busy to be able to write notes or lines that I like down. However, Emma Galvin was the narrator for this book, and she exceeded every possible expectation I had. She changed her tone, the slight accent, and volume when each character spoke, so that it felt like a large company of narrators but was, in fact, just one person. I was engaged and excited to hear more every time the next chapter was starting, a rarity for me!

Evaluation:

              I will be evaluating three important elements: character, style and language, and pacing. These elements serve the book in various ways and are vital to the reader. Regarding evaluation, I listened to the eAudiobook, narrated by Emily Galvin, and the impact of listening to this book is discussed for each element evaluated.

              Evaluating character as an element can be a bit tricky – representation matters, far beyond what I could explain, but is it enough when creating characters? In the case of Ellen Outside the Lines by A. J. Sass, the characters were clearly written with care and understanding by Sass. Ellen (she/they), an autistic, Jewish 13-year-old teenager, is dynamic and her experiences felt both lived in and were well written. Throughout the book, Ellen learns how to share different parts of her life, particularly her autism, with her friends and classmates; she’s given space to explore her own gender identity and sexuality, and she’s given room to fail, apologize, and try again. As their friendship with Laurel, their best friend, deteriorates and changes, Ellen gives other classmates the opportunity to show their true colors, often surprising Ellen. It’s in these moments with new friends where Ellen is given support to share their experiences with autism that opens the door to new friendships and a new crush. No other character is as fleshed out as Ellen, though Isa (the new student) becomes a major character as the book progresses (though occasionally Isa is treated as a conduit for Ellen). However, each character comes to understand that consequences still exist even when we understand the motive, intention, and desire behind any action (like Ellen sharing secrets with Laurel). Listening to the audiobook instead of reading the book allowed the characters to have their own unique voice, thanks to Galvin, which only elevated the experience, especially since this book does have a rather large cast of characters. It should be noted that it was, at times, difficult to listen to due to the second-hand embarrassment that comes from simply being a teenager, but neither the author nor the narrator ever treated these moments as funny or worthy of ridicule. The way the characters simply jumped off the page (or out of the headphones?) was refreshing and exciting.

              In my research for this book, I was curious if the experiences being written about were something the author themselves had experienced, particularly in relation to Ellen’s experience as an autistic teenager. A. J. Sass (he/they), in a blog post from 2022 (Sass, 2022b), discussed his own experience as an autistic teenager and how that informed his approach to Ellen and her experience. In the style and language that Sass utilizes, it’s clear that they understood how an autistic teenager would talk, think, and act with themselves and other characters. Ellen often speaks in clipped sentences, just a “Yes” or “No”, with little to no elaboration which another character is often expecting from Ellen. However, as the reader/listener, we are privy to Ellen’s internal thoughts where they think about the interaction in different ways and their decision to respond the way they did. Ellen requires people to be open and literal with her and verbal and social cues are more difficult for her than they are for others, which leads to many miscommunications between various characters and Ellen. The decision to structure Ellen’s sentences in a particular way that mimics this literal understanding is done well and is enhanced by the audiobook where we can hear the firm “No” or excited “Yes”. The language that Sass uses presents new (English) words that may prompt a reader to ask questions about specific words, particularly when it comes to discussing sexual identity. The inclusion of Spanish throughout the book also includes the reader in the scavenger hunt that Ellen and her classmates are on during their study abroad trip. The style and language invoke a particular type of person with regard to Ellen, while asking the readers to be involved in learning new things alongside Ellen.

              Pacing is an interesting element within this book. First, it takes place over a two-week span and is structured to follow each day (i.e. Day One, Day Two, etc.). Second, it’s set primarily in Barcelona, Spain, where Ellen and their classmates are on a study abroad, performing a scavenger hunt to learn more about the Spanish culture and language. Using this type of structure to follow Ellen as they grow and evolve more into the person they’d like to be provides a unique glimpse into the mind of a teenager and how they take in information and move forward. While Sass is not a teenager anymore, it’s difficult (even for myself) to forget what it was like being a teenager and the constant change around me. Within this structure, the pace of the book is established. In the beginning, the book moves a little slower as Ellen is still trying to understand her new surroundings, the closeness she has with her other classmates, and her changing friendship with Laurel. As Ellen grows more confident in their ability to speak up and voice their needs and wants, the book picks up pace, culminating in a fast-paced climax that left me on the edge of my seat, nervous about what would happen next. By the end of the book, with the climax resolved, the book languishes with Ellen as she enjoys her last night in Barcelona, Spain. The reader is allowed to relax, just as Ellen is finally relaxing into her relationships with her new friends (and crush, Isa). Pacing the book in such a way allows the reader to journey along with Ellen and her own experiences and emotions during her study abroad trip, while maintaining a clear and clean structure to follow along.

Recommendation:

              Without hesitation, I would recommend this book, particularly as an audiobook. By the end of the book, I was so emotionally invested in the characters, especially Ellen, that I remembered being quite teary-eyed in my car on the way home, listening to the last few minutes. Ellen’s experiences as an autistic, Jewish, queer teenager, exploring those identities and their intersections, while blossoming into their own person and finding community was refreshing. Children in intermediate or middle school would like this book. I only wish I had something like this when I was younger!

References:

Amazon. (n.d.). Ellen outside the lines [Photograph]. https://www.amazon.com/Ellen-Outside-Lines-J-Sass/dp/0759556296

BookList. (2022, March). Ellen outside the lines. https://www.booklistonline.com/products/9757245

Sass, A. J. (2022, March 21a). Ellen outside the lines (E. Galvin, Narr.) [eAudiobook]. Hatchette Audio.

Sass, A. J. (2022, March 22b). A. j. sass: On the challenge of shifting plans (autism, anxiety). A Novel Mind.

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¡Vamos! Let's Cross The Bridge by Raúl the Third

A 2022 Pura Belpre Illustration Award Winner

(Photo credit: Raúl the Third's Website Books — Raúl The Third)

Genre/Category: A 2022 Pura Belpre Illustration Award Winner, PreK to 6th Grade

Target Age Group: Grades 2-6 (Junior Library Guild, 2022).

Summary:

              Little Lobo and his friends are off to journey across the bridge to join a celebration, but they encounter an obstacle when traffic keeps them from getting to their destination. However, they make the best of the situation with each other and the others on the bridge by throwing their own celebration.

Justification:

              This book was a 2022 Pura Belpré Award winner for Illustration. Of all the awards that I needed to research and read, this award was the one I was the least familiar with. Because of my unfamiliarity with the award, I first researched the award itself to understand why it was created and the parameters of the award itself. Once I found a comprehensive list of the current and past winners, I limited my options further by only allowing myself to choose a book that had won the Illustrator award. Prior to this award, a majority of books I had chosen won for narrative purposes. I wanted to highlight, specifically, illustrations. I loved the name of this book and decided to do some further research to see what it looked like, the story itself, and where I could access it. I fell in love with the bright colors and the art style, so I borrowed this book from my library via the Libby app and read it on my phone. I expected this book to be the most difficult to read on my phone, but it was actually the best because of how many little details are scattered throughout that provide clarity about the story, Spanish words for the reader to learn, and bright colors to keep a reader hooked.

Evaluation:

              I will be evaluating three important elements: illustrations, pacing, and setting. These elements serve the book and are vital to the reader.

              Of all the books I read for this first round, I’m a bit biased towards this one: it had the most exciting, jam-packed illustrations, with almost too-bright colors. Since every page is full of characters, bits of the story, a mix of Spanish and English, and color, it can verge on the side of overwhelming, but it works so well for the story and the pace set by the author. As a life-long Texan, I’m often exposed to Spanish and it felt exciting for me, a full-fledged adult, to recognize terms in Spanish and journey with Little Lobo across the bridge. Engrained into the illustrations is the use of Spanish, like the illustration of the night sky rising above the bridge and the stars labeled as estrellas and the moon as luna. On some pages, there’s almost no sentences; the words are on the items to specify them and the different noises that all the various characters and vehicles can make while crossing the bridge. The funniest part of the illustrations is when Kooky Dooky, a rooster, gets impatient to cross the bridge and the entire illustration feels like a huge honk. As a reader and a driver, I could hear the incessant beeping of car horn just by the illustration. Because the author and illustrator purposely chose bright colors and to use every single inch of the page, the whole book feels like a big celebration. Everyone’s faces are shown smiling and when they realize they can’t get across the bridge for the celebration, they instead make one, right there, on the bridge, sharing food and laughing and singing and dancing. The last sentence of the book is, “That night, on a bridge between two countries, La Celebración came to everyone” (the Third, 2021, pg. 43).

              When an author and illustrator use up every inch of a page to devout to illustrations, the pace of the story almost naturally falls into a frenzy and it’s imperative that the author captures that within the plot to move us along just as fast as our eyes are trying to take in everything on the pages. Raúl the Third (2021) expertly does this and moves us, the readers, along quickly. What is fascinating about the story is that for a majority of it, the characters are stuck in traffic, on a bridge, impatient to reach their destination. But because the book prioritizes the illustrations and the excitement, the overwhelming urgency, the frustration, the resignation to their fate, the story follows this range of emotions as quickly as the characters are experiencing them. I devoured this book because of how fast it read, and then I went back and read it again and again and again, to catch all the little hidden gems within the illustrations. Like I mentioned above, occasionally, it borders on too much – but that only elevates the pacing even further. It’s meant to be a little overwhelming; being stuck in traffic is never not overwhelming and when you’re surrounded by different people, vehicles, languages, and all kinds of smells (good and bad), it’s easy to let impatience take over. The joy of the eventual celebration on the bridge is made even more joyous because of this pacing, elevated by our own sense of impatience for our characters to get to their destination. And the pay off of pacing a book like this is to discuss the importance of taking our time and smelling the roses.

              For most of the story, our main characters don’t move, though the illustrations and pacing provide a real sense of urgency. Because these characters don’t move, the majority of this story is told in one particular setting: a bridge, connecting Mexico and the United States. In our modern political climate, it is easy to feel uneasy about this setting; it’s in the news practically every day for one reason or another, and if you live in Texas, like I do, it’s often a topic of conversation anywhere you go. But the author and illustrator paint this bridge as a meeting place, where communities can rejoin, where people can connect and laugh and eat. Raúl the Third (2021) presents a setting that is not dark or scary or mysterious, but a setting that is full of interesting people and languages and food, just to name a few. When describing the cities that are connected by this bridge, Raúl the Third (2021) writes, “At night, from high above, the two cities on either side of the bridge look like one big city” (p. 11). At the core, the setting we spend most of the book in is the bridge, but it's also this man-made divide between two cities. A river dividing a city is not abnormal, but what is abnormal is the borders we’ve drawn around it, the regulations we’ve put on the people of both cities (and countries) to be able to move between the two. And the sentiment expressed by the author is that from high above, borders don’t exist – we made them. The bridge as a setting is a great place for children to have discussions about metaphors, about the world we live in, about finding compromise and commonality between people. But choosing the bridge to be the place of the celebration is a wonderful reminder that we can be a community again and we can celebrate again.

Recommendation:

              I would highly recommend this book to very young readers since it relies on illustrations more than words. For those learning Spanish or English, this would be a fun book to place a game to locate all the different items labeled in either language.

References:

Junior Library Guild. (2022, January). ¡Vamos! Let's cross the bridge. https://www.juniorlibraryguild.com/vamos-let-s-cross-the-bridge-9780358380405j

the Third, R. (2021). ¡Vamos! Let’s Cross the Bridge. (R. the Third & E. Bay, Illus.). Versify, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

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We Are Water Protectors by Carole Lindstrom

A 2021 Caldecott Award Winner

(Photo credit: Carole Lindstrom's Website We Are Water Protectors by Carole Lindstrom)

Genre/Category: A 2021 Caldecott Award Winner, PreK to 6th Grade

Target Age Group: Kindergarten to Grades 2 (BookList, 2020).

Summary:

              A young Ojibwe girl must reckon with an oil pipeline being forced through her community and her tribe. Through the stories from her grandmother and her own connection to water and Earth, she finds strength to battle this black snake that threatens their water, a sacred part of life. It is an uplifting call to fight the giants of climate change told through the lens of the Ojibwe tribe.  

Justification:

              This book is the winner of the 2021 Caldecott Medal. Initially, I had planned to use a Newberry Medal winner but decided to pick a Caldecott Medal since I was the least familiar with it of the two possible medals. To provide an additional limitation to myself, I tried to only focus on the years that I had not yet read anything from. I was intrigued by the cover of We Are Water Protectors which is a proud young girl, surrounded by the vibrant blue of the water. I purposely studied Native American History when I lived in Seattle, Washington for my undergraduate studies and nothing on my list yet had any connection to this rich history. Because I knew I would be traveling internationally when this blog check was due, I decided to borrow this book from the library via the Libby app and read it on my phone to retain the color illustrations (my Kindle automatically sets all color to black and white scale). Similar to Unspeakable by Carole Boston Weatherford, reading a picture book on a phone can be a challenge, but it did also allow me to zoom in on portions of the illustrations I liked or wanted to explore.

Evaluation:

              I will be evaluating three important elements: illustrations, mood, and point of view. These elements serve the book and are vital to the reader.

              By far, the main draw of this book are the beautiful illustrations, done with care to the story and to the characters. The colors used are rich and deep, with the blue hue of the water standing out the most. The world being depicted in We Are Water Protectors is one that is vibrant, exciting, and, and most importantly, alive. In the start of the book, when Nokomis (the Grandmother) is talking to the main character, the water acts both as a method of moving the story (as waves) and as a form of weaving the world into one cohesive place. We don’t exist without water, and this is apparent by what I think is the best illustration in the book, which depicts a pregnant woman, surrounded by a red and purple crescent moon, with water flowing within and around her. This sense of oneness with water, and therefore the Earth, is emphasized throughout the whole book. With this in mind, the villain is introduced through two methods: as words, called the black snake, and as illustrations, depicted as an oil pipeline with a snake head. This combination of folklore, the feared black snake, and reality, the feared oil pipeline, makes for a truly terrifying depiction of something that is dead set on destroying life. However, the book does not linger on this fear; instead, the book focuses on and reiterates the importance of our connection to water and to each other, all through the usage of a young girl, armed with a feather, surrounded by her tribe (and later, all people). The illustrations make it clear we are not going to win against this black snake if we go at it alone. We require community and a return to our oneness with water and Earth. This is how the book ends: an illustration of people of all races and genders, armed with signs, fighting together against oil pipelines and the contamination of our water.

              When discussing climate change, particularly the very real dangers of oil spills, it can be difficult to keep the mood from falling into a pit of despair and anger. What was refreshing about We Are Water Protectors is that it acknowledges the real fear and frustration with oil pipelines specifically but refuses to give into the doom and gloom. The vibrant illustrations bolster the mood and ensure we don’t fall into despair. The mood of the book starts calm and blissful; the water is in every part of the tribe’s lives and we see a beautiful sunrise/set (it is not clear which it may be) that is soft, gentle, and incredibly peaceful to the audience. But the introduction of the black snake/oil pipeline shatters this peacefulness and requires the reader to have awareness of how things may change if this snake takes over. Lindstrom (2020) writes, about the black snake, “Its venom burns the land. Courses through the water, making it unfit to drink” (para. 8), set in between the twists of the black snake, set against a deep orange, with plants attempting to grow but dying. This mood change happens for exactly one page. The immediate next page is bright with the blue of the water and the main character charging forward with a feather, her arm raised, and her face serious. The rest of the book uplifts the reader and allows room for hope without reducing the anger and the worry caused by this black snake. By the end of the book, the mood is righteous, full of eagerness and a sense of community. To capture this mood, the book ends with an Earth Steward and Water Protector Pledge that readers can sign and date.

              The point of view in this book is not hidden anywhere; it practically leaps off the page, especially through the usage of the illustrations of the young main character, with a determined face. What drives home the point of view of this book is furthered by the Author’s Note, which expands upon why the author chose this story to tell. Current events, like the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) and the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in 2016, compelled the author to bring a story like We Are Water Protectors to the public and to children in particular. Carole Lindstrom (2020), the author, states that she “is a citizen of the Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe” (Author’s Note), which is also located in North Dakota where the DAPL protests occurred. After reading the book and the Author’s Note, I realized I had a personal connection to this story as well. In 2016, in my undergraduate studies, a few students at my college traveled to North Dakota to join in the DAPL protests; unfortunately, on their way home, they were involved in a car crash and one student passed away. I felt incredibly moved by the decision to highlight the DAPL protests and the Ojibwe tribe and to emphasize, strongly, that we need to stand against and fight oil pipelines, whether that be through going to a protest, providing financial aid, or creating art like We Are Water Protectors. Ultimately, the point of view of the author is not a controversial one, but it is a strong one and it upholds the idea that to fight oppression, like oil pipelines and climate change, we must act as a community.

Recommendation:

              Having conversations with children about things like climate change and oil pipelines can be intimidating, but We Are Water Protectors provides a simple but effective bridge to cross to address these topics. I would highly recommend to very young readers, as the book is simple.

References:

BookList. (2020, March). We are water protectors. https://www.booklistonline.com/products/9730736

Lindstrom, C. (2020). We are water protectors. (M. Goade, Illus). Roaring Book Press.

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Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre by Carole Boston Weatherford

A 2022 Coretta Scott King Author and Illustrator Winner

(Photo credit: Carole Boston Weatherford's Website Books that Affirm a Sense of Justice & Joy – children's books by the weatherfords)

Genre/Category: A 2022 Coretta Scott King Author and Illustrator Winner, PreK to 6th Grade

Target Age Group: Grades 3-6 (BookList, 2021).

Summary:

              In the early 1900s, the Greenwood district of Tulsa, Oklahoma, a black neighborhood, was thriving and dubbed the “The Black Wall Street”. However, after an incident between a young black man and a young white woman, the white neighborhood retaliated by burning down Greenwood, devastating the community in many ways. It’s only recently that this massacre has entered the national conversation around race and history in the United States.

Justification:

              This book won the 2022 Coretta Scott King Award for both Author and Illustrator. I haven’t read any books off this list since I was in middle school, but I always loved that they honored both authors and illustrators. Similar to the Texas Bluebonnet Award, I honored my experience as a middle schooler and searched between 2019-2025 books (7 years’ worth of winners). I was fascinated by Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre because not only did it win both awards, but the art style was unique, and the topic was something that has recently been in the news as researchers have discovered new information about the massacre. I read this book as an e-Book, on my phone via the Libby app using my Dallas Public Library card. Though this book was available to read on my Kindle, through Libby, the illustrations became black and white, so I stuck with using my phone. This experience was a bit rough, but it did allow me to zoom in and out on different pages to get a closer look.

Evaluation:

              I will be evaluating three important elements: illustrations, tension, and accuracy. These elements serve the book and are vital to the reader.

              From the very beginning of Unspeakable, the reader understands the sensitivity of the subject through the tenderly crafted illustrations. It’s in these illustrations that we see happiness across the faces of black men, women, and children who are living in a thriving and bustling town of Tulsa, specifically in the Greenwood district. The town is practically glamourous, shown in bright colors, with the sun shining down on the town and the townspeople. The townspeople are well-dressed, often in the highest fashion of the 1910s and 1920s, with grand homes, manicured lawns, and cars lining the streets. When the reader is shown a two-page illustration, with train tracks dividing the town (and page), it allows for two things to occur simultaneously: an understanding on the part of the reader that this town is segregated, and that the segregation in this town is “inverted” or different. In many stories about segregation, train tracks become the line between the white neighborhood in the north, often the “right” side of the tracks, and the black neighborhood in the south, often the “wrong” side of the tracks. This is not the case for the Greenwood district, and it shows, without ever telling us, that this may be a point of tension (discussed below). In fact, it would be difficult to separate the elements of illustrations and tension within Unspeakable, as they are interconnected and inform each other. Even when the mob destroys Greenwood, we are not allowed to linger on the destruction, but we instead are shown the sadness, anger, and grief on the faces of the residents of Greenwood, who either decide to leave or rebuild. The characters are not aged up, but we can see the worry lines that appear on their faces and understand how devastating this act of violence was, even without needing to see it. The book ends with a reconciliation illustration, with people of all races and genders holding hands; it’s clear that reconciliation involves us all and has to happen with us all there. We cannot excuse ourselves from the past, but must understand it, acknowledge it, and learn from it.

              The tension in this book is delivered in two main ways: the usage of a repeated phrase and the illustration during the climactic moment. Though the reader and author both know that this book is about a real event that occurred in the 1920s, the book opens with, “Once upon a time”, inserting a feeling that we are about to hear a folktale. As the reader is introduced to the town through the offerings it had (doctors, libraries, banks, hotels, etc.), the author continually uses this phrase; in fact, the author uses “once upon a time” seven times, all before the climactic moment. Though this usage of a phrase creates tension through an act of foreshadowing, it also causes another point of tension: there are no people alive today that remember Greenwood district in all its glory, as so much time as passed before it was brought back into the consciousness of the country. It is both folktale and reality, and we must reckon with this juxtaposition and tension when we discuss the massacre. The tension created by the illustrator occurs right at the climactic moment. The two-page spread has the main illustration on the right side, at the very end of the page, leaving the remaining page and a half to be almost completely blacked out (part of the shadow of the room). The young white woman is almost barely on the page, clearly walking away, and facing a young black man. The usage of shadows, of darkness spreading, causes a particular kind of tension: foreboding. We, as readers, know something bad is about to happen and we know the result of some conflict, but we don’t know this middle part, where the climax occurs, what sets it all off. We must be aware that it could change at any second, so when the page suddenly goes dark and shadowy, the feeling of tension, of fear, of the unknown hits the peak, just as the climax occurs at the same time.

              In my evaluation of accuracy of this book, I want to be clear about a few things: first, I’m a white woman, I’m not a historian (though I do have a bachelor’s degree in history), and I knew only a very little about the Tulsa Race Massacre before I decided to read this book. It may seem strange then to decide to evaluate accuracy, but choosing this element to focus on required me to do my own research. History is more often than not written by the “winners”; they get to decide what should be included and excluded from history. Accuracy is focused on the factual nature of the story, but history and the writers of history force us to ask and evaluate what a fact really is. In this sense, Unspeakable does a fantastic job with the Author’s Note and Illustrator’s Note. They address this by stating that “officials at the time focused on covering up the massacre rather than documenting it” (Weatherford, 2021, Author’s Note). No state sanctioned research was done until 1997, over 75 years after the massacre. The illustrator, Floyd Cooper, has a personal connection with Greenwood: his Grandpa grew up there. Cooper writes that, “Everything I knew about this tragedy came from Grandpa; not a single teacher at school every spoke of it” (2021, Illustrator’s Note). So, while we can state with certainty that Greenwood was a bustling town, with doctors and lawyers, libraries and hospitals, movie theaters and hotels, we also must hold another set of truths in the other hand: personal experiences that cannot be studied or fact checked. It’s not as simple as stating that Unspeakable is a factual, accurate book (which it is). It’s about confronting facts and evaluating, for ourselves, what someone is trying to tell us or have us believe when they say, “This is a fact.”

Recommendation:

              For young readers, this book would be a great place to start a lesson on history and history of African Americans in the 1900s. I would recommend this book as I do feel like it’s a jumping point for honest and open conversations that young readers may be ready for.

References:

BookList. (2021, February). Unspeakable: The tulsa race massacre. https://www.booklistonline.com/products/9740716

Weatherford, C. B. (2021). Unspeakable: The tulsa race massacre (F. Cooper, Illus). Carolrhoda Books.

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Millie Fleur's Poison Garden by Christy Mandin

A 2025 Texas 2x2 List Book

(Photo credit: Brandi Henry)

Genre/Category: A 2025 Texas 2x2 List Book, PreK to 6th Grade

Target Age Group: PreSchool to Grade 3 (BookList, 2024).

Summary:

              To make her new town of Garden Glen feel like home, Millie Fleur and her mom decide to plant and grow a garden of poisonous plants. To their surprise, the never-changing town of Garden Glen is not thrilled and threatens to kill the plants in any which way. Millie Fleur must decide: does she cower to the demands of Garden Glen or stand up tall for her garden?  

Justification:

              This book is part of the current Texas 2x2 List for 2025. Since this list highlights books for children under Grade 2 and it was an unfamiliar award list to me, I decided to stick with the most current list. I first read through and picked a few titles that sounded interesting. Millie Fleur’s Poison Garden immediately stood out to me for two reasons: I love gardening, and I love books about weird and quirky things and thought a poison garden hit that target well. After I saw the cover, I knew I would love this book, so I went out and bought it as a hardcover book. I read this as a physical book. Funny enough, the poison garden inspiration came from a garden in England, United Kingdom, which I was traveling through via train when I read the book.

Evaluation:

              I will be evaluating three important elements: illustrations, setting, and theme. These elements serve the book in various ways and are vital to the reader.

              When reading Millie Fleur’s Poison Garden, it is clear that the illustrator (and author) understood that the colors couldn’t be bright and vibrant; the colors needed to feel worn and spooky. And these colors are dark greens and browns, moody blues and purples, ghostly whites and the darkest of blacks. As we journey through the first sprouts of Millie’s garden, along with her pet/familiar Frog, we see how excited she is through her facial expressions; when the townspeople see it and criticize it, we become aware quickly how these words have truly affected Millie, even if her response to the town expresses strength. But the highlight of the illustrations of this book are the interesting and different plants that are both creepy and cute. Some examples include: Fanged Fairy Moss, Ghost Nettle, and Freaky Freckled Fig. We, as readers, experience the same emotions as the students, who are invited by Millie to tour the garden: we are enticed by the weirdness and newness of the garden, but aware that we should maybe keep our distance and we are forced to navigate these emotions along with the town of Garden Glen. How do we embrace something that sounds scary but is quite interesting? The answer to that question is answered by the children first, as is with most things in life. They embrace Millie and her garden and because of this, the town itself changes to embrace and encourage diversity and differences. The illustrations, at the end, don’t show us a town overridden with vines and scary plants, but a town that has entwined itself with beauty and change. In many ways, the illustrations go hand in hand with the next element: setting.

              Garden Glen is a cookie-cutter town, the houses arranged in neat rows, all identical in shape, color, and size. It is a town that would take great pride in being called orderly and clean. When Millie and her mom show up, on the title page, in their car with bat wings followed by a Frank & Sons Movers truck and move into the rundown castle-like home on the top of a hill, the readers can tell there will be problems. No words have been spoken yet, but we know exactly who lives here and what they expect of newcomers, so the setting becomes a point of tension right away. With young readers, there may be some firsthand experiences that understand how a place/setting can try to define us or box us in. For myself, I remember growing up in the neat rows of a suburb of Fort Worth and feeling like self-expression was exciting, but ultimately viewed as a threat to a specific understanding and way of life. We see this play out with Millie, who never tries to fit in but exists as herself in a setting that does not allow it. But as the story progresses, the setting of Garden Glen slowly begins to change, as the plants make their way out of the poison garden by nature of the children being interested. Eventually, the creepy but cute plants become integral to Garden Glen and Millie and her plants change the setting from stifling and never-changing to unique and diverse. The setting is very visibly affected by the opening of the hearts of the citizens.

              Overall, the illustrations and setting play two major and interconnected roles in developing and understanding the theme of Millie Fleur’s Poison Garden. We see the town itself change and evolve into a more open, unique town while the citizens slowly begin to smile and embrace differences, all through the illustrations and choosing Garden Glen as our town. Readers are likely to understand the theme and message of this book quite easy, since the illustrations work well with the words to make it clear that understanding differences and loving people because and regardless of these differences is vital in having a thriving, beautiful town. Without differences, Garden Glen is an inhospitable place for uniqueness or breaking of the norms. Millie and her creepy but cute poison garden change this town, for the better. However, it is clear that Mandin did not want readers to think change is always good or always easy to embrace; the town of Garden Glen does not change overnight or in a day, but it takes time, patience, and kindness. The theme is not only embracing diversity but understanding that we all move at our own pace and that kindness makes change easier. When we provide ourselves and each other with grace and space, we allow for a more beautiful and unique world. The pay off for patience is worth it.

Recommendation:

              Without a doubt, I’d recommend this picture book to a young reader, though I think young girls may find it more fascinating. For any girls interested in spooky, creepy things, this would be a great place to start.

References:

BookList. (2024, October). Millie fleur’s poison garden. https://www.booklistonline.com/products/9804635

Mandin, C. (2025). Millie fleur's poison garden. (C. Mandin, Illus). Scholastic.

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A Wolf Called Wander by Rosanne Parry

A 2019 Texas Bluebonnet Award List Book (nominated)

(Photo credit: Rosanne Parry Official Website)

Genre/Category: A 2019 Texas Bluebonnet Award List Book (nominated), PreK to 6th Grade

Target Age Group: Grades 3-6 (BookList, 2019).

Summary:

              Life in the mountains with his wolf pack was all Swift, the wolf, ever thought he needed. After a rival pack attacks his home and his pack, Swift has no choice but to head out into the wilderness, a place full of hunters, fire, and fear. In the end, Swift must find his own way to family, home, and pack.

Justification:

This book was chosen because it was one of the 20 books on the 2019 Texas Bluebonnet Award List, though it did not win the award. I have always loved the Texas Bluebonnet Award List since I spent most of my 6th grade year reading books off the list, so I decided to simply peruse the last 6 years (as a nod to my grade year) and search for books that sounded interesting based on title alone. I picked one book from each year and based the next round of searching on title cover and summary. At a young age, I was fascinated by wolves and nature, so I was intrigued by A Wolf Called Wander by Rosanne Parry right away. Once I found out that it included illustrations throughout, I was hooked. I read this book as a physical book, which elevated my experience of the illustrations. It also happens to be based on a real story and real wolf, OR-7.

Evaluation:

              I will be evaluating three important elements: style & language, plot, and illustration. These elements serve the book in various ways and are vital to the reader.

              For many readers, language and the way the words are styled may be the most important element of a book, especially a chapter book like A Wolf Called Wander. This book is for Grades 3-6, so the style of the sentences and the word choices are suitable for both easy understanding and a gradual increase in vocabulary, particularly through the usage of descriptive writing. For example, Parry (2019) calls vehicles “noisemakers” (p. 128) but the reader must make their own inferences of what this means. This noisemaker is not illustrated until page 128-129, which shows a large 18-wheeler speeding down a black road (often referred to as a black river). This active engagement for readers is purposeful by Parry to ask the reader to imagine what a black river and noisemaker would look like, if they have versions of them in our world as humans, and what part we may play in both of these dangers. The book starts out with a young voice, just like we start with Swift as a pup. As Swift ages and becomes the wolf named Wander, the sentence structure grows and becomes more complex. For example, after the rival pack has attacked and Swift is trying to heal from his wounds, he is laying in the grass thinking of his pack and thinks: “The air will be cooler come night. It will carry a smell better” (Parry, 2019, p. 46). Then, towards the end of the book, after Wander (who has changed his name) has met his mate, Night, he thinks: “Winter holds the mountains in its frozen grip, but as the days grow long, it melts into spring” (Parry, 2019, 207). Changing the language and style to match that of the growing wolf is exciting and allows the reader to do the same with Swift/Wander, which furthers the connection between our main character and the readers.

              A Wolf Called Wander starts with a very large cast of characters and the readers are introduced to all of them within the first 20 pages: Swift’s mom and dad, uncle and aunts, and brothers and sisters. Each one means something to Swift, and these relationships are fleshed out right up until the rival pack attacks. It is heart-wrenching to read about Swift watching, hearing, or contemplating the pain and suffering each member of his pack has or had endured, especially considering just how well we, as readers, got to know them. Neither the words nor the illustrations shy away from discussing and showing the gruesome nature of life and the terrifying obstacles that Swift/Wander faces. When Swift misses Warm, his brother, the readers miss Warm; when Swift rejoices in meeting another wolf, Night, the readers rejoice. We want Swift to find a home, to find his pack. (Spoiler ahead!) When Swift, who has changed his name to Wander, realizes he may never find his pack, he doesn’t give up, but decides it’s time to build his own pack, his own family, and his own home. Near the very end, Wander is thinking about his family as he prepares to meet his own cubs: “I breathe in the memory, knowing that we will always, and never, be together” (Parry, 2019, p. 207). The big dramatic question of A Wolf Called Wander, of if Swift would ever meet his pack again, is answered right there; it’s bittersweet, but it is acknowledgement of all that Wander has been through and all the excitement that is to come with a new family.

              The illustrations in A Wolf Called Wander are done in full black, white, and shades of gray – there is no color but on the front cover. While this is not a picture book, the illustrations play an important role for the reader: they provide additional information, especially since Swift is not a human and does not call human things the same words we use. As the reader, it wasn’t until I saw the illustration of the truck that I understood the true size of a noisemaker; I had just assumed it was a 4-wheeler, something that could get into the woods. I found myself lingering on pages with full page or half page illustrations, just to see what additional information could be gleamed from them. The readers get to know Swift/Wander through the way that Armiño, the illustrator, depicts him – sleek, muscular and then lean as he journeys, and ultimately as a full-fledged wolf that has become a father to his own set of pups. The illustrations are well done in providing another layer of emotion, particularly when Swift is in the woods when a lightning strike causes a quick-moving fire (Parry, 2019, p. 178-179). The two-page illustration is dark, with one side completely dark gray/black. The reader feels through the words and illustrations the genuine danger of the situation and the almost overwhelming sense of fear and urgency that Swift is experiencing. In some cases, the illustrations are simply decorative, like a feather or a branch or a flower; this again immerses the reader by reminding them that they are in the woods, surrounded by trees and birds and living creatures.

Recommendation:

              Though I would recommend this book to a young reader, especially those interested in wolves and the natural world since this book ends with a bit of history about OR-7, the real life Swift/Wander, and facts about the world he lives in, it is important to mention that this book deals heavily with death, grief, eating to survive, and hunters and guns. This should be taken into consideration in deciding if this book is appropriate for young readers.

References:

BookList. (2019, May). A wolf called wander. https://www.booklistonline.com/products/9715879

Parry, R. (2019). A wolf called wander. (M. Armiño, Illus). HarperCollins/Greenwillow.