The Well Red Librarian

Booktalks, Display Ideas, and Programming from your favorite Redheaded Librarian

[wellredlibrarian]

“Winterwood” by Shea Ernshaw

*I was given an ARC of this title by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review*

I have to admit, I was really looking forward to getting my hands on this book. I absolutely loved Earnshaw's previous book "The Wicked Deep" and couldn't wait to see what she'd come up with for her second novel. Unfortunately I only found this book to be so-so.

In Winterwood, Earnshaw returns with her beautifully creepy, atmospheric writing that I love, but unfortunately her latest novel felt mostly like a regurgitation of "The Wicked Deep", just with a different setting. Same absent mother figure, same small town girl with an eerie edginess, same newly arrived boy from the World Outside. I was also disappointed that the eponymous wood didn't play a bigger part in the plot. Mostly it stands in the background as a creepy menace; not something I was expecting from a place that lends its name to the title.

Overall I found this book just okay. Would definitely recommend taking this book for a test drive via your local library before deciding whether to add it to your shelves at home.

[sigeel]

when you’re an introvert at a party ;D

[lgbtqreads]

Fave Five: LGBTQ Witchy YAs

Fave Five: LGBTQ Witchy YAs

Witch Eyes by Scott Tracey

Hocus Pocus & the All-New Sequel by A.W. Jantha

Labyrinth Lost by Zoraida Cordova

Strange Grace by Tessa Gratton

The Brilliant Death by Amy Rose Capetta

Bonus: Many of the stories in the Toil & Trouble anthology edited by Jessica Spotswood and Tess Sharpe are queer! And for Middle Grade, try The Witch Boy by Molly Ostertag.

Double Bonus: Check out how many amazing ones…

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[wellredlibrarian]

The Brilliant Death by Amy Rose Capetta

I received an ARC of this book from Novelist in return for an honest review.

This book was so good it put me in a week long book-hangover. I’m really hoping Capetta writes a follow-up because I need more Teo and Cielo goodness!

The Brilliant Death follows Teodora di Sangro, or Teo for short, as she makes her way to the Capitol to meet with the Capo. The Capo is trying to unify Vinalia, but he needs the help of the heirs to the five families, and the best way to do that is to keep their first born sons under his thumb. To that end, he has poisoned the heads of the five families, including Teo’s father, and has demanded that the heirs attend him at his castle.

Teo, who is a strega (unbeknownst to her family and the rest of her townspeople) and has been quietly using her powers to get rid of her family’s enemies for years, decides to answer the Capo’s call. On the way to the city, she meets Cielo, another strega who can shift genders as easily as breathing, and shows Teo just how powerful she might become if she learns to harness her magic.

As Teo’s powers, and her attraction to Cielo, grow the strega starts to wonder if she can ever go back to living life in the shadows. That is, if the Capo decides to let her live at all.

Part of what I really loved about this book was Capetta’s use of language; “wordsmith” is definitely a term I’d use here. Like with this line from early on in Teo’s journey to the Capitol - “At some hazy point, after so much walking that my feet became the high note in an aria of discomfort, one spot in the sky turned raw pink.”

Also, I totally loved the relationship between Teo and Cielo and all its genderfluid glory. “It’s true that I contain more than one thing,” Cielo said. “And sometimes the balance shifts.”

Also, also, the way Capetta explores feminism and being a woman in a patriarchy-fueled society is spot on, but I don’t want to say any more here for fear of spoiling some plot-points.

All-in-all, I found this truly a wonderful read.

[diversityinya]

On the limits and possibilities of ‘diversity’: Investigating form and content

By Shannon Gibney

In graduate school, we had an epic battle over characters’ racial diversity/representation on the page, and craft. Some well-meaning white writers in workshop were including problematic depictions of characters of color in their stories – the “all-seeing,” “magical” black woman, the homeless black man, the perpetual Asian American foreigner. When confronted, I remember that one particularly irascible, intractable white male peer accused us of policing art. “You can write about whatever you want, however you want,” he sputtered. “If I want to write about a triangle on the moon, I should be able to do it. And no one should criticize me for not including black people.” I remember I smiled wryly and said, “Yes, but that doesn’t mean that it will be good art. If you are using problematic and tired racial stereotypes and tropes in your writing, or just writing a flat universe of (white, male, middle-class) characters it doesn’t matter how awesome your triangles on the moon might be: your form is probably pretty lazy, too.”

Needless to say, he didn’t exactly appreciate my commentary.

It did, however, force us to confront the relationship between diversity of content, and diversity of form – a topic which I thought I’d pose in this blog post. Quite simply, I’m interested in this question: Does more racial/identity diversity of characters and content necessarily mean more formal diversity? Meaning, are stories that include characters from a variety of racial, ethnic, class, gender, and other identities more likelyto be better written stories, or take more formal risks, or be more formally interesting, than stories with characters with mainstream (read: white) backgrounds? In the course of writing my new book, Dream Country,I certainly found this to be true.

Dream Countryis a sprawling story of colonialism, war, family, and home, and features five narrators on two continents, over 200 years. There was no way to write this novel and do the questions it asks justice without pushing myself out of my formal comfort zone. It could not be your standard one-voice YA novel (not that there is anything wrong with that – my first novel, See No Color, is a YA novel of this variety. But this approach just was not going to work for this particular project). I needed to inhabit the voice of a disaffected teenage Liberian refugee, a 19thcentury African American single mother, a young Liberian revolutionary in Monrovia in 1980, and a modern-day young, queer, African and American writer. I needed all these voices to be distinct, yet compelling, and I needed them to also somehow fit together in the contours of a larger story. Needless to say, my content comfort zone was also deeply challenged in the writing of the book. I am not Liberian, but African American, and balked at the prospect – and responsibility – of representing Liberians on the page. But I realized that this was actually the topic of the novel itself: The chasms and connections between Liberians, Liberian Americans, and African Americans. In my quest to tell this story, I had to attempt to cross these chasms by doing intensive bibliographic and interpersonal research. I read everything I could get my hands on about the colonial period in Liberia; went to Monrovia and interviewed government officials and everyday people about the 1980 coup; and interviewed two gentleman who were generous enough to share their stories of being “sent back” to Liberia from the U.S. by their parents, in their eyes, to save their lives. While I am quite sure that there are still plenty of errors in the book, its formal challenges required me to reach for a new level of excellence in its content – a phenomenon I think may be more common than we realize.

Shannon Gibney is a writer, educator, activist, and the author of See No Color (Carolrhoda Lab, 2015), a young adult novel that won the 2016 Minnesota Book Award in Young Peoples’ Literature. Gibney is faculty in English at Minneapolis Community and Technical College, where she teaches critical and creative writing, journalism, and African Diasporic topics. A Bush Artist and McKnight Writing Fellow, her new novel, Dream Country, is about more than five generations of an African descended family, crisscrossing the Atlantic both voluntarily and involuntarily (Dutton, 2018).

Dream Country is available for purchase.

[ruinedchildhood]

[vkelleyart]

Sorry this is so enormous and likely clogging up your feed this morning. Before I forget, ”No one’s seducing a vampire” is still in production. It’s definitely a difficult adaptation (hello 12 panels of victorian bedroom), so it’ll be a while yet before I’m finished with that one. But anyhoo…

About the art: Chapter 62 was the second most requested portion of Carry On for adaptation into a graphic novel format. However, rather than pull swaths of text from the chapter, I decided to zero in on one little snippet:

(His cross is on the other side of the room now.; Snow took care of it himself this time.) 

- Baz, Chapter 62, Carry On by Rainbow Rowell

Given how Simon had used the cross earlier in the novel to drive separation between him and Baz, I like to think that taking it off himself was, in part, a romantic gesture - a symbolic dismantling of that last wall between them. 

That said, artistically, I tried to evoke the sensation of falling in love. For this reason, I largely left words out of it and tried to render the format in a way that makes it feel like you’re… descending. The colors deepen. The panels get smaller. And the last page shows Simon and Baz falling into each other’s arms out of frame, with flames dominating the end shot. (*wink* See what I did there?)

Anyway, I hope you guys enjoy it as much as I loved drawing it. <3

PS: Baz’s hair is based on my husband’s when we were married. It’s short now, but I can live vicariously through Simon for a bit…

[lgbtqreads]

Guest Post: Black Wings Beating Author Alex London on the Rise of Queer YA SFF

Guest Post: Black Wings Beating Author Alex London on the Rise of Queer YA SFF

It’s fabulous to have Alex London back on the site today, talking about the rise of queer YA SFF to celebrate the launch of his incredible new gay YA fantasy, Black Wings Beating!

***

I don’t write portal fantasy, but I know that every book is a doorway to another world, and for queer teens, for a long time, the other worlds our fantasy books took us into were shockingly straight places. Fantasy…

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[wellredlibrarian]

Crown of Thunder by Tochi Onyebuchi

I received an advanced reader’s copy from NetGalley in return for an honest review. 

Please note, this review contains spoilers for Beasts Made of Night by Tochi Onyebuchi.

Crown of Thunder picks up shortly after the events in Beasts Made of Night. When our story opens,  Taj is still reeling from the betrayals of both Karima and Bo, and has sketchy memories at best of exactly what happened when he pulled the inisisa from his own body and seemingly peeled away the shadows on it. The rebels are trying to regroup after the arashi attack on Kos, when Karima and Bo find them and attack with a new weapon; Karima and her algebraists have figured out how to attach metal plates to inisisa and are using them as armored infantry.  Taj and Aliya become separated from the rest of the rebels and now find themselves on the run from Karima and her forces. Karima has also put a bounty on Taj’s head and he’s pretty much fair game to anyone who can catch him and drag him back to Kos, which is making finding shelter and help a little difficult. Their only choice is to head west, away from Kos, to try to find aid, and maybe some answers as to what exactly Taj did with that inisisa in the woods. While Taj is grappling with his guilt about Bo, and leaving Kos behind, Aliya seems to be hiding some secrets of her own.

I absolutely LOVED this book, and I liked it about 300% more than I liked the first one. First of all, Aliya, and the other females in this book, are way more fleshed out than in BMoN; part of that, I think, stems from Taj’s growth as a character, as he becomes less self-involved over the course of book 2. I also loved the way Onyebuchi explored the themes of guilt and sin, and how the two concepts are entertwined with forgiveness and absolution. Crown of Thunder also gives us a better look into how math and the algebraists tie in with this worlds religion, which was only sort of alluded to in BMoN.

My only complaint is that I felt the book ended really abrubtly with little in the way of a denouement.

This is a perfect read for anyone who likes Black Panther, Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor, and/or Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi.

Crown of Thunder hits shelves on Tuesday, October 16th.

[lgbtqreads]

Fave Five: Queer Indigenous Fiction

Fire Song by Adam Garnet Jones Drowning in Fire by Craig S. Womack Love Beyond Body, Space, and Time ed. by Hope Nichols The Way of Thorn and Thunder by Daniel Heath Justice Jonny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead

[ya-pride]

World Mental Health Day

Today is World Mental Health Day. One of the main purposes of World Mental Health Day is reducing the stigma surrounding seeking help for mental health worries or crises. If you are in crisis, please know immediate help is a call or a text away. LGBTQIAP+ youth can contact The Trevor Project through their 24/7 Lifeline at 866-488-7386 or chat online here. International resources are available here. Further, trans people can also contact the Trans Lifeline at 877-565-8860. 

[penguinteen]

Books that offer understanding to the refugee experience

In a time when understanding and empathizing with the plight of refugees is vitally important, these reads offer insight and experience. From a World War II tragedy to the very recent Syrian refugee crisis, these books are important additions to your shelf.

A Land of Permanent Goodbyes by Atia Abawi

Narrated by Destiny, this heartbreaking — and timely — story of refugees escaping from war-torn Syria is masterfully told by a foreign news correspondent who experienced the crisis firsthand.

City of Saints and Thieves by Natalie C. Anderson

In the shadows of Sangui City, there lives a girl who doesn’t exist. After fleeing the Congo as refugees, Tina and her mother arrived in Kenya looking for the chance to build a new life and home. But then a murder sets Tina on a dangerous path of revenge and atonement.

Game Seven by Paul Volponi

Julio Ramirez Jr. lives in the shadow of his famous father. Not just because Julio Senior is a pitcher for the Miami Marlins and famous for his scorching fastball, but because he defected from Cuba, leaving Julio and his sister and mother branded as the family of a traitor.

Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys

Winter 1945. WWII. Four refugees. Four stories. Each one born of a different homeland; each one hunted, and haunted, by tragedy, lies, war.

Audacity by Melanie Crowder

A gorgeously told novel in verse written with intimacy and power, Audacity is inspired by the real-life story of Clara Lemlich, a spirited young woman who emigrated from Russia to New York at the turn of the twentieth century and fought tenaciously for equal rights.

[fiercereadsya]

TFW you try and convince yourself the very sad book you’re reading is going to have a happy ending

[beckyalbertalli]

Your Official Guide to Becky and Adam’s Ultimate Preorder Grand Prize Giveaway

What If It’s Us hits shelves on October 9th, and we’ve been blown away by your support and enthusiasm. To say thanks, we’re thrilled to announce that four winners will each receive a cardboard box full of treasures related to What If It’s Us and our previous books. On October 8th, we’ll pick two winners from the US *and* two winners from outside the US. All you have to do is preorder ANY format of What If It’s Us and follow the instructions below. 

How it works:

1. Preorder any format of What If It’s Us (this includes hardcover, audio, ebook, any translated edition, etc.). 

2. Take a photograph or screenshot your receipt/proof of purchase. 

3. Email Arthur at [email protected]. Your email must include the following components:

- Subject line must be either “INTERNATIONAL” or  “USA” (depending on whether you are entering the USA or international giveaway).

- Proof of purchase must be attached to your email. 

- If you have purchased more than one book, you’ll be entered more than once, but you must indicate this in your subject line. For example, if you live outside the US, and you preordered two books, your subject line should read, “INTERNATIONAL x 2″. If you live in the US and preordered three books, your subject line should read “USA x 3″. This will help us stay organized and ensure that you are entered multiple times for this giveaway. Your proof of purchase must reflect that you preordered the name number of copies as indicated in your subject line. 

- All emails must be received by Monday, October 8th at 11:59 pm EST. Even if the book releases later in your country, your entry for this giveaway must be received on or before the October 8th deadline.

4. Once you’ve entered, you should receive an auto-reply from Arthur. Please don’t expect an additional reply (we want to make this giveaway as inclusive as possible, which means we’re unfortunately unable to provide personalized responses to each entry). If (and only if) you do not receive the autoreply from Arthur’s email address, email Matthew at [email protected]. He’ll be able to confirm receipt and make sure we have your entry. 

5. We will choose winners via a random number generator, and respond to the winners directly via email during the week of October 9th. Once we’ve made contact with all four winners, we will announce on Instagram that the contest is closed. 

6. Again, two winners will be from the United States, and two will be from outside the United States. 

7. Please note: this giveaway is completely separate from the preorder button giveaway being run by Epic Reads. US residents can (and should) enter both giveaways, and it’s fine to use the same proof of purchase. Follow the instructions in this link. 

Okay, so what’s in the box? 

We’re so glad you asked! Here’s a full list of items, followed by pictures:

- Signed, personalized first edition US hardcover of What If It’s Us (We know you preordered, because you’re amazing, but maybe your unsigned copy could go to a friend for a buddy read?)

- Love, Simon Blu-Ray + DVD + Digital (our research showed that this was the most likely format to work on international players, but we can’t guarantee that this DVD will play in every region. Fingers crossed!)

-They Both Die At The End 4 x 6″ studio pouch by Allarica.

-They Both Die At The End 3.0 x 3.4″ sticker by X .

-Simon Vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda 3.0 x 3.1″ sticker by grayskyluna.

-Leah on the Offbeat 1.7″ x 3.7″ sticker by pamleonie.

-More Happy Than Not Leteo Institute brochure

- Leah on the Offbeat small square magnet by mavilez.

- Love, Simon magnet by emlalaly.

-The Upside of Unrequited postcard by Dee.

-What If It’s Us mini cover sticker.

- Two What If It’s Us signed bookplates (one Arthur and one Ben)

-Levain Bakery reusable shopping bag and postcard. 

-Simon Vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda square button by Hannara.

-Double-sided More Happy Than Not/ History Is All You Left Me prints (INTERNATIONAL only) 

-History Is All You Left Me brochure (US only)

-What If It’s Us Arthur and Ben rubber bracelet.

-”What Would Becky Do” rubber bracelet.

-”Thanks, Silvera” sticker.

-Because You Love To Hate Me postcard 

Crossing all our fingers for you. Thank you for being so unbelievably awesome. 

Love,

Adam and Becky

[wellredlibrarian]

Revenants everywhere!

It’s Tuesday, and you know what that means? New book releases!!!

Two books hit the shelves of bookstores everywhere today that I am particularly excited about (and somehow they’re both about revenants?). I stayed up past midnight to finish the ARCs for both of these titles (and y’all know I love my sleep!).

The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein by Kiersten White wins top prize for Most Disturbing Thing I’ve Read This Year. 

Elizabeth Lavenza is sold (yes, SOLD) at the age of 5 or 6 to the Frankenstein family as a companion for their son, Victor, and so Elizabeth grows up spending all her time trying to learn how to keep Victor happy and seemingly normal so that she’s not kicked out onto the streets. Such a life will do dark things to a girl’s psyche, not to mention cause her to do some pretty strange things. Eventually, Victor grows old enough to be sent off to University, and Elizabeth is left at the Frankenstein Manor to run the household and hope that she’s tied Victor’s feelings to her enough that he’ll eventually come back and marry her. Unfortunately, her machinations don’t work out quite as planned, and she is forced to go in search of Victor after losing contact for nearly two years. As this is a retelling of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, I’m sure you all can guess what Victor has been up to. Unfortunately for Elizabeth, she doesn’t seem to know Victor quite as well as she thought, but her obsession with him is definitely returned in full.

What follows is a glorious story in the best gothic tradition, full of dark deeds and moments of heartstopping brutality that asks the question, “Just how far would a person go to feed their obsession?” 

I loved Give the Dark My Love by Beth Revis for so so so many reasons! The diverse cast, the political intrigue, the way that this universe uses alchemy for healing. So much goodness in here!

We are introduced to Nedra with two immediately juxtaposing points of view. In the prologue, she’s seen at the head of a zombie army as the Emperor’s Guards try to arrest for treason. At the beginning of Chapter 1, though, we do a quick rewind to six months prior, the day before Nedra is supposed to head out from her small village to university as a scholarship student to train to be a medical alchemist. So what could lead Nedra from a promising future as a medical professional to leader of a revenant army? Could it have something to do with Grey, the only student at the school who seems to want to really get to know her? What about the plague that seems to be sweeping the countryside? Does she get pulled into the impending rebellion against the crown? I guess you’ll just have to read to find out!

[wellredlibrarian]

Review - Dream Country by Shannon Gibney

“Then he came back out on the porch and sat there for hours, watching the sun rise. Wondering if his own history was just a dream-loop folding back on itself over and over again, in endless variation and repetition, always in search of a place to rest.” - Dream Country (page 321).

Dream Country tells the story, in alternating voices, of five generations of a black family stretching from pre-Civil War era America to 20th century Liberia, and back to present day America. It begins with Kollie Flomo, a Liberian born immigrant now living in Minnesota with his family. He is at once too black for the white people in his neighborhood and not black enough for his African-American peers. Finding no place of belonging, he fosters a lot of anger until one day he can’t hold that anger in any more, and his parents make the decision to send him back to Liberia to live with relatives. The story then jumps to Togar Somah, on the run in the Liberian bush from a government who wants to enslave him to back-breaking work on state-run plantations, then to early 1800s Virginia and Yasmine Wright and her children, who will be one of the descendents of African American slaves to colonize Liberia with the help of the American Colonization Society. The story then moves to Kollie’s father, trying to escape the Liberian Civil War in the 1980s.

This amazing and epic journey unpacks several heavy themes such as racism, white supremacy, power dynamics between the oppressed and the oppressors, and the trauma of enslavement and colonialism on indigenous people and their descendants. I’m going to at TW for: police violence on black people, incidents of gross racism (everything from use of the n-word to lynching), and sexual assualt and rape.

This is a book that’s going to stay with me for a while. It was extremely engrossing, and as heartbreaking as parts of it were, I couldn’t put it down; in fact, I stayed up till nearly 1am to finish it. If you’re looking for a book that’ll give you all the warm fuzzies, look elsewhere my friend. This is a hard read, and it’s going to leave you with some uncomfortable feels. You should read it anyway.

Dream Country goes on shelves tomorrow, Tuesday, September 10th.

[wellredlibrarian]

NonFiction Review: Steal This Country

If you’re looking for a good book for your budding teen activist, this is a great place to start.

Author Alexandra Styron has created this amazing primer on activism, what it is, how to go about it, what issues we’re facing, and although it’s aimed at teens, it has some excellent advice for anyone looking to make a bigger impact on social change.

Subtitled “a handbook for resistance, persistence, and fixing (almost) everything, the books takes a jack-of-all-trades approach to activism, giving a little information on a wide range of issues, rather than doing a deep dive on one particular issue.

The book is organized into four major sections: The Why, The Who, The What, and The How. They Why gives an overview as to what the impetus was for the book. The Who gives short bios on various activists throughout American history, starting with the Boston Tea Party and moving up through present day with the DAPL protests at Standing Rock. The What is probably the meatiest part of the book, going into detail on what exactly activism is and spotlighting six major issues activists are fighting for today. Finally, The How covers exactly what actions you can take to facilitate change both in your local community and on a national level.

The What was probably my favorite part of the book. I really enjoyed the way Styron weaves comics, helpful hints on interviews, and facts together to give comprehensive overviews of 6 major issues that activists face today: climate change, immigration, LGBTQIA+ rights, racial injustice, religious understanding, and women’s rights. Styron even includes information on intersectionality and its importance in activism.

The How is the beautiful and logical conclusion to this activists’ primer, with myriad ways in which readers can take all this newfound information and put it into practice: contacting members of congress (there’s a script!), types of protests to participate in, how to write petitions, etc. There is even information on how to talk to family members on these issues and how to keep your sensitive info private on social media while still using it as a tool for activism.

Readers who are hoping for a deeper dive into some of the issues mentioned will not be disappointed, as a list of books, documentaries, and organizations is included for those desiring future research.

All in all, I think this book will be an excellent addition to the TBR piles of anyone looking to take on activism rolls both big and small, loud and quiet.