Today I’m honored to be part of the blog tour for John David Anderson’s latest book, ONE LAST SHOT. Scroll all the way to the bottom for a giveaway of a signed hardcover copy and the other stops on the tour!
The beloved author of Ms. Bixby’s Last Day and Posted returns with a humorous, heartwarming story of family, friendship, and miniature golf. Continue reading
For this week’s hoopla list, I’m featuring books to celebrate Asian-Pacific-American Heritage month. While I did make a graphic with adult books for the library to use, I confess I made it just based on hoopla’s own list, where for the lists here, I searched hoopla for Asian- and Pacific-American authors I have read and enjoyed myself. I found some 2020 releases I’m really excited about in addition to older favorites!
Asian-Pacific Heritage Titles for Kids on Hoopla
Asian-Pacific Heritage Titles for Teens on Hoopla
For more Asian-Pacific-American titles, check out my Asian-American Graphic Novels 2019 list.
Here are two more graphic novels, one thoughtful Cybils finalist (read in print from the library and on my official Cybils TBR Readdown list) and one sprightly superhero comic read on hoopla, because I found it there and like Shannon and Dean Hale’s work in general.
Operatic by Kyo Maclear and Byron Eggenschwiler. Groundwood Books, 2019.
Charlotte Noguchi (aka Charlie) has friends, but never quite felt she fit in middle school. This dreamy story follows Charlie as she wonders about the sensitive and much-teased boy who’s been missing from school for two weeks, and as the home room teachers plays all sorts of different music for the class as part of an assignment for them to find the music that truly expresses who that person is at that point in time. Charlie discovers the opera singer Maria Callas, known for her passion rather than her perfection. There are also explorations of what it might mean to be perceived as gay in middle school and how to be an ally. It’s all illustrated in what looks to me like colored pencil, with a limited palette that shows what’s going on – the main storyline in gold and black, memories of when Luka was still in school in blue and black, and stories of Maria Callas in red and black. The color shading work beautifully to convey emotion. For kid testing, my daughter read it somewhat reluctantly, said she enjoyed it, but hasn’t gone back to it. But this is very much a character study, and my daughter prefers more plot-driven books. I thought it was beautiful.
Diana: Princess of the Amazons by Shannon Hale and Dean Hale. Illustrated by Victoria Ying. DC Comics, 2020. ISBN 978-1401291112. Read on Hoopla.
Young Diana lives on an island that’s paradise – baby cheetahs to find, oceans to jump into – but though she has many aunties, there are no other children on the island, and her mother the queen is often too busy to play with her. Remembering that she herself was made out of clay, Diana makes a girl out of sand to be a playmate. At first, she and Mona have lots of fun together and Diana is thrilled. But as time goes on, Mona encourages her to do things that are increasingly disturbing – skipping class, stealing, and more – while at the same time forcing her to confront questions about whether Diana really is wanted and a true Amazon. With clear line drawings and a soft but strong palette, this is full of appeal for young superhero fans. It didn’t have quite the depth of Rapunzel’s Revenge, but hopefully if it’s a series, they’ll be able to put more in further volumes.
Here’s one from my official Cybils Awards TBR Read Down pile, one of the 2019 Cybils Young Adult Speculative Fiction nominees.
We’d just finished a family viewing of the Avatar series over many pizza Fridays when my daughter saw this at the library the last time she was there before it closed and insisted we check it out. It tells the story of one of the Avatars that we see Ang interacting with, but about whom we didn’t have any information previously. That means we’re learning a whole new set of characters.
The Rise of Kyoshi by F.C. Yee with Avatar co-creator Michael Dante DiMartino. Amulet Books, 2019. ISBN 978-1419735042. Ebook on Libby.
Jianzhu and Kelsang were both part of the Avatar Kuruk’s team, so when he passes after a less-than-spectacular run as Avatar, they are on the hunt for the new one. But none of the usual ways seem to be working…
A decade later, Kyoshi has grown up from the street kid who ran away halfway through Kelsang’s Avatar test and is now working as an assistant to Avatar-in-training Yun. She’s still given a hard time by the farmer’s kids who remember the street kid she used to be, even though she lives in the grand estate that Jianzhu had built for the Earth Kingdom Avatar. Yun is busy learning from all the bending experts, talking with sages and emissaries from around the world, displaying amazing diplomacy skills. Someday soon, he should be able to actually bend more than earth, right? He, Kyoshi, and his bodyguard Rangi, the daughter of Yun’s fire bending tutor, are a secretly tight trio of friends, being the same age, despite their different social roles.
That’s why he invites Kyoshi along as a witness when Jianzhu takes Yun on a diplomatic trip to broker a peace treaty with a pirate queen who’s been raiding up and down the coast. But when things go wrong, Kyoshi’s massive bending skills are suddenly on display and she’s receiving a lot of unwanted attention. And if people start to doubt that Yun is the Avatar, all the diplomatic work he’s worked so hard on will come undone.
I confess, I had a little trouble getting into this at the beginning – it felt a little slow, but things are having a harder time getting my attention in general these days, so it could just be me. Once they visited the pirates, though, the pace picked up rapidly. This turned into a compelling tale that made some tough choices that I really wasn’t expecting. There is a sweet bit of romance and plenty of humor to balance it out. Though of course we know from the beginning that Kyoshi will be the Avatar, her place isn’t yet won. I know her place, when she finally comes into it, will be hard-earned. I’m looking forward to The Shadow of Kyoshi, due out in July.
We have this in the teen department at the library, and there is a pretty high body count, so I’d use caution giving this to younger Avatar fans. Hopefully soon I’ll be able to review F.C. Yee’s The Epic Crush of Genie Lo, which I listened to in February. If tales of an Asian-inspired mythic past sound appealing, I also recommend Serpentine and Sacrifice by Cindy Pon.
In my on-going series trying to keep kids without access to physical libraries in books, here are some graphic novels that my kids and I enjoy that are available for download from hoopla through your library (if it subscribes to hoopla, of course.) Links to my reviews where available.
Stand-alone Graphic Novels for Kids on Hoopla
Graphic Novel Series for Kids on Hoopla
For a brief couple of years, my town had a second-hand book and video game store. We went in, jubilantly, when it opened, and I bought the second two books in this series, which was all they had. I never quite got around to reading them, but our first quarantine purchases were the first book in this series (though it ended up being cheaper to purchase the one-volume edition) and Whales on Stilts, another missing first book, that one lent out years ago and never returned. I have been deliberately reading Terry Pratchett’s prodigious work just one or two a year, saving them for hard times. A pandemic definitely counts as time to pull out the comfort reads!
This was in my Cybils Awards TBR ReadDown pile, though it’s old enough never to have been eligible for a Cybils Award.
The Bromeliad Trilogy by Terry Pratchett. HarperCollins, 2003. 978-0060094935. Truckers originally published 1989; Diggers and Wings 1990.
Truckers opens with a discussion of nomes and the faster passage of time they experience. Our hero is Masklin, the only remaining hunter and de facto leader of much-diminished nome colony. Desperate to save the remaining nomes, he hatches a plan to hitch a ride on a truck and leads the whole group to the truck’s nest – a department store called Arnold Bros (est. 1905). There they discover that the Store is home to a large nome population, one which worships Arnold Bros as a divine being and believes that the Outside is mythical. The first nome they meet, though, Angalo, is agnostic and fascinated with trucks.
The official leader of the outside nomes has with him a black box called the Thing, passed from generation to generation. In the store, it suddenly comes to life and starts talking, telling stories of the nome’s past and warning of imminent danger. But if the spiritual leader of the store nomes refuses to acknowledge the existence of the outside nomes because Outside is mythical, how can they pass on a warning? And if the Store they worked so hard to get to isn’t a safe refuge after all, where on earth could they go?
In Diggers, the nomes have indeed left the Store and are trying to survive in the wild, facing great hardships. They think they might have a plan – and Grimma is left on her own, basically leading a group of nomes who don’t want to see her as a leader, both because she’s female and because outside nomes are still not fully accepted by the former store nomes. Wings rewinds to cover basically the same time period from Masklin’s point of view as he goes off on a mission set by the Thing. Will he make it back, and will the nomes ever find true safety?
The characters are recognizably Pratchett, especially including the outspoken Grimma, close friends with Masklin who still calls him out whenever he does anything particularly boneheaded and flat-out ignores the store nomes telling her that girl’s brains will melt if they try to read, becoming the first and best of the outside nome readers. Granny Morkie always knows best and finds a way to make that happen, even while telling the men who think they’re in charge that they are of course in charge. There are words of wisdom that felt classic Pratchett and which I wish I had marked to share with you. Fans of the Wee Free Men will also enjoy seeing very different small people, though this series is less popular and harder to find on Libby than his Discworld books and more recent middle grade to young adult offerings.
Sheets by Brenna Thummler. Lion Forge Comics, 2018. ISBN 978-1941302675. Read on hoopla.
13-year-old Marjorie Glatt has been running a small laundromat by herself ever since her mother died, while going to school and caring for her younger brother. Her father has been too depressed to take on any of this. Marjorie is teased by the other kids at school and tormented at the laundromat by the creepy Mr. Saubertuck, who lets himself in even when it’s closed to clean it and to put up flyers for the yoga resort he’s planning to open in the space. Meanwhile, Wendell is a kid in ghost training in a nearby town where ghosts are supposed to learn how to follow the rules to keep their sheets. He comes up with outrageous stories to explain his death, but his fear of washing his sheet tells us that there’s something more going on.
This is a mostly sad story, but it’s leavened by some humor – the villain is so over-the-top he’s hilarious, and the ghosts in sheets with their accessories are also funny. The art is more angular and colorful in the regular world, as opposed to the softer lines and colors used in the ghost world. This will appeal to kids who love ghost stories, though I preferred the author’s adaptation of Anne of Green Gables.
Lola: A Ghost Story by J. Torres & Elbert Or. Oni Press, 2009. 978-1934964330. Available on hoopla.
Jesse going back to the Philippines for his Lola’s funeral – older cousin Maritess – Filipino legends and monsters (some sounding similar to those in The Jumbies) – slow realization that there is a ghost present – twist at the end that made L insist that I read it so we could talk about it: scary end to a not-scary ghost story. 4/19/20
Jesse is going back to the Philippines from Canada for his Lola’s funeral. He can see ghosts and monsters, and there are many more of them in the Philippines, related to the stories his Lola told him. As he’s going around with his older cousin Maritess, the reader slowly comes to realize that one of the people we’ve been seeing is a ghost. Though the ghost isn’t scary, the folk tales, some of them about monsters that sound very similar to those in The Jumbies, are. It’s beautifully illustrated in soft sepia tones with crisp lines. It has a scary, cliff-hanger end that didn’t quite jibe with the rest of the story and had my daughter insisting that I read it right away so we could talk about it. She’s read it at least once a day for the last week, another high compliment.
Our copy of this was a gift from Raina Telgemeier at A2CAF one glorious year when she gave every kid at her keynote a graphic by a creator of color, and it seems a very happy accident that we wound up with one to connect my kids with stories of their heritage.
Here are two more books from my Cybils TBR Read Down pile. As the partner of someone who was usually one of just a few people of color at the local sci-fi conventions, I was so happy to see two books for young nerds of color like his younger self!
My Life as an Ice Cream Sandwich by Ibi Zoboi. Read by the author. Dutton/ Listening Library, 2019. ISBN 978-0399187353 ASIN B07W4X7LDY. Listened on Libby.
It’s 1984, and 12-year-old Ebony-Grace is flying alone from Huntsville, Alabama, where her grandfather works as one of the Negro engineers for NASA, to stay with her father in Harlem. Ebony-Grace works hard to overcome her airsickness so that she can play out her role as Cadette E. Grace Starfleet of the Starship Uhura, from the ongoing story shared with her grandfather. Ebony-Grace has her eyes on the stars and dreams of going to Space Camp and being the first kid in space. So when she gets to Harlem, with its loud noises, graffiti, and kids doing what looks like a “breaking bones dance”, she’s certain she’s landed on the foreign planet of No Joke City. Her former friend Bianca is dancing with a crew called the Nine Flavas, who call Ebony-Grace an ice cream sandwich because of her open nerdiness and lack of “flava.” Continue reading
I just remembered it’s Muslim Heritage Month (I’ve been a little distracted!) So, in my ongoing series of books you can download from your library if it subscribes to hoopla, I present the following. Unfortunately, I have read only a couple of these books – if you have read them, let me know!
Here’s a moving adventure from the author of the Above World trilogy, reviewing as part of the #CybilsReadDown. Thanks to Charlotte of Charlotte’s Library (link to her review) for the review copy!
A Game of Fox and Squirrels by Jenn Reese. Henry Holt Books for Young Readers, April 2020. ISBN 9781250252562. Read from ARC – Ebook on Libby.
It’s Samantha’s eleventh birthday, and she feels like a failure. She and her sister Caitlin, who has a broken arm, are moving to their Aunt Vicky and her wife’s house – whom they have never met – near Portland, Oregon from Los Angelos. Aunt Vicky lives near the woods and has chickens, including a favorite named Lady Louise to whom Sam is instantly attracted.
Despite liking all these things, Sam really wants to get back home. Still, when Aunt Vicky gives her Aunt Vicky’s own favorite game, A Game of Fox and Squirrels, she can’t help opening the box and looking at the beautifully illustrated cards – a dashing fox, lady and knight squirrels – and reading the rules, which are interspersed between chapters and are delightful:
Winter isn’t the only thing the squirrel must plan for; there is also the Fox. The Fox can appear at any time.
The Fox might be happy. (Happy foxes are a joy!)
The Fox might be charming. (Charming foxes are hard to predict!)
But sooner or later…
The Fox will be hunting.
Then, a real fox, Ashander, dressed just like the fox in the game appears in Sam’s room. He’s happy and charming, promising that if she follows his instructions exactly, she can complete the Quest for the Golden Acorn and prove her loyalty to him, and he will be able to return things to the way they were before. She’s always wanted to be a hero – but even the adorable squirrels who are helping her become more and more nervous as the tasks continue.
Over the course of the story, Sam also remembers her parents and the happy times they had, bonding over National Geographic maps and ice cream. But she’s circling around the incident that sent them to Oregon, remembering in little bursts that she tries to suppress. We as readers never do get the full incident start to finish, and Lucas, the son of Aunt Vicky’s work partner Armen, realizes the full consequences much sooner than Sam does.
Though I’ve been telling you about Sam and her journey, the other characters here are all strong. Caitlin relaxes from her perfect older sister role. Aunt Vicky is doing her best to provide the safe environment she knows the girls need, even though it brings up memories of her own trauma. Her wife, Hannah, is both very supportive and busts stereotypes of rule-focused Chinese-Americans by cheerfully tells them of the daredevil exploits of her youth. Lucas has his own journey, though I loved that he has long hair like my own son and knits.
The clear parallels between Ashander and Sam’s father make this a little more metaphorical than I usually prefer my fantasy, but it comes together very well. The Golden Acorn is real, and so is the danger that Sam puts herself in to get it. Even knowing more or less what situation Sam was coming from, I kept reading to find out how Sam’s quest would end.
I’ve been writing about the serious aspects so far, but there is also whimsy in the carefully dressed squirrels, and humor throughout both the real and the fantasy aspects of the book. New family and friends old and new provide the support needed to make this a quietly triumphant story of rewriting the rules and making a new life after trauma.
For those looking for more books on this topic, Fran Wilde’s Riverland also uses fantasy to address issues of abuse for middle grade readers.
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