School Stories: Booked and Spirit Week Showdown

Posted on September 10, 2016 by Katy K.

bookedBooked by Kwame Alexander. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016.
In Alexander’s second sports-and-life novel in verse after Newbury-winning The Crossover, middle schooler Nick loves soccer more than anything.  Except possibly his best friend Coby, now playing on a rival team, and his crush, April.  His parents are also going through a divorce, and that makes everything wrong.  There are also some serious issues with bullies, but help comes in the form of a hip male school librarian, Mac.

I loved The Crossover so, so much – but my feelings about this were much more mixed.  To start with the bad parts: too much of the poetry seemed like just sentences split up into short lines, rather than the amazing attention to word sound and different forms in The Crossover. It’s great that a librarian saves the day, but it grates to have it be yet another Cool Male Teacher vs. clueless females – see Fish in a Tree and Blackbird Fly for more examples of this.  Also, bullying is a serious issue, and this book offers old-school rather than current research-supported advice: punch the bully, and everything will sort itself out.  It’s really painful to see adults telling a kid that they won’t help him get his stolen bike back because he needs to man up and solve the problem himself.  All of that being said, the book still made me cry.  The characters were convincing and I was held by the story, despite my own personal lack of interest in sports in general.  We desperately need more engaging books for the kids who love sports and don’t think they love books, so this is still important to have.  Just follow it up with some real bully-proofing tactics.

I really loved Alexander’s recent article on race in children’s literature in the New York Times – take a look!

Spirit Week Showdown by Crystal AllenSpirit Week Showdown. Magnificent Mya Tibbs 1 by Crystal Allen. Balzer + Bray, 2016.
Mya (rhymes with papaya) Tibbs is a nine-year-old cowgirl, who lives with her big brother Nugget, her very pregnant mother, and her father, the owner of a feed & Western store.  Spirit Week is the biggest event at her Texas school, and Mya has made a pinkie promise to be partners with her new BFF, Naomi.  But it’s done by drawing, and her chosen partner, Mean Connie Tate, refuses to switch.  Now Naomi is telling everyone that Mya is a promise breaker and calling her “Mya Tibbs Fibbs.”  Even her big brother hears and gives Mya a hard time for being a liar!  Can Mya win Naomi back?  And is Connie as mean as Naomi’s always said she is?

 

I found this book while looking for books to add to my lists of books starring girls to read aloud to younger elementary classes (to match my Girl-Led Read-alouds for 4/5 Grade).  This is so much friend drama that I’m not sure it would have the general appeal I’m looking for.  That being said, I know from talking to teachers that friend drama is a huge issue among girls.  This is a really good treatment of it – Mya makes great but believable strides as a character, and there is a nice balance of fun with the drama.  Bonus – nobody dies or even gets divorced!  Crystal Allen is a veteran author, and this book looks to be the opening of a series that should be a staple in elementary school and classroom libraries.

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Diversity on the Shelf – August Update

Posted on September 7, 2016 by Katy K.

I’m participating (or trying to!) in the Diversity on the Shelf Challenge hosted by Akilah at the Englishist.

As I mentioned in my last update, I was camping the first two weeks of August.  I didn’t finish even one book on this vacation – the only time I really sat down to read anything but the event’s paper was at the Laundromat. I only finished seven books total, way below my usual.  One of these was by an author of color:

The Game of Silence by Louise Erdrich

  • The Game of Silence. Birchbark House Book 2 by Louise Erdrich.

Two more were by white authors with narrators of color

  • Poison is Not Polite. Wells & Wong #2 by Robin Stevens (Arsenic for Tea in the U.K.)
  • Delilah Dirk and the King’s Shilling by Tony Cliff 

Two more yet had main characters of color who weren’t the narrator, though I won’t count them officially for the challenge:

Cupcake Cousins by Kate Hannigan. I read this aloud to my daughter – we’re now on the second book, Spring Showers, where the African-American cousin, Delia, is the narrator.

The Left-Handed Fate by Kate Milford, in which the little brother of one of the narrators is Chinese, and saves the day multiple times.

That puts me at 36 books total books by authors of color this year, and an additional 23 books by white authors with main characters of color.  I’ll need to read 9 books by authors of color this month to catch up to my goal!

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Little Robot

Posted on September 2, 2016 by Katy K.

I finally made it to Ben Hatke’s last graphic novel – just in time for his next one, Mighty Jack, to come out on September 6.

Little Robot by Ben HatkeLittle Robot by Ben Hatke. First Second, 2015
This nearly wordless graphic novel follows a round young girl, who explores the area around her trailer park after the school bus takes away all the older children.  She’s wearing what looks to be an adult t-shirt many sizes too large for her, but though she looks short on outside help, she’s very resourceful.  Her first step is to find a tool bag she’s hidden in the dump, before heading off to explore nature and tinker with machines.  When a robot falls off a passing truck, she’s able to put it together and get it working, building a friendship with the little robot of the title.  But soon outside forces come to threaten the little robot…

Our heroine, the little robot, and all of their friends are just as adorable as we’ve come to expect from Ben Hatke’s work.  It’s also wonderful to see a girl of color shown as so matter-of-factly scientifically minded.  It can be tricky to keep wordless stories moving and making sense, but Hatke absolutely succeeds here.  All four members of my family read and very much enjoyed this story of friendship and loyalty.

If you haven’t yet read Hatke’s Zita the Space Girl books, you should definitely do so. Those looking for more graphic novels about kids and science could also try Secret Coders by Gene Luen Yang and The Secret Science Alliance and the Copycat Crook by Eleanor Davis.

 

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Highly Anticipated: The Raven King and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

Posted on August 31, 2016 by Katy K.

Here are two books so momentous in my anticipation that I was sure from the beginning that I wouldn’t be able to give a fair review to them. Both being books where one wants to #KeeptheSecrets makes things even more of a challenge. So, just a brief taste of both of these books.

Raven King by Maggie StiefvaterRaven King by Maggie Stiefvater. Read by Will Patton. Scholastic, 2016.
This is the final book in the Raven Cycle, one of my very favorite teen series to come out lately, and one which I’ve listened to all the books (except this one) at least twice at this point. So many questions here: Can our team find Glendower? Will Gansey make it out alive? Will our crew make it to some kind of future past high school, even if they can survive the vast supernatural forces arrayed against them? And what about the various adults stuck in uncomfortable positions as well? Stiefvater does so many things so very well – the friendships and the beginnings of romance, the adults who are real people with their own complicated lives even when the teens are the focus, the building tension and the underlying magic, both beautiful and creepy. There was one point near the end that I felt utterly betrayed the preceding story, which I would be happy to discuss with others who have read the book. I will need to listen to again, to get more of the complex layers and to see if there’s any way I can get that one piece to work for me.

Harry Potter and the Cursed ChildHarry Potter and the Cursed Child by Jack Thorne, John Tiffany and J.K. Rowling. Arthur A. Levin, 2016.
Ah, Harry Potter! How I love you, despite your flaws! Of course we had to buy this book and read it, even if it’s only approved by J.K. rather than written straight out by her. Feelings: mixed but mostly positive. On the one hand, I loved seeing our major characters again, so many of them feeling like themselves. It was wonderfully realistic to see Harry having difficulty being a dad, and also good to see sympathetic characters put in Slytherin. The scenes are short, short, short. I also have to agree with Melissa of Book Nut that Thorne and Tiffany only wrote one aspect of Ron’s personality. I was going to say that it showed that it’s written by a playwright, in that I feel that large amounts of the characterization was left for the actors to fill in rather than being written out in the text. Then I saw Akilah’s post at the Englishist about how of course plays are meant to be read as well as watched. Well… I can see her point – but then maybe that means that this is still a lot of fun, worth reading once, but not something that has quite the level of depth and re-readability of the original books. I would dearly love to see it live, if I could hope for it to come close enough and be affordable.

Finally (not being able to hear the play’s score), I am left with “Time Plot” by Tom Smith running through my head.

Did you read these?  Agree/disagree with me?

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Top 10 Fantasy Authors I’ve Never Read for Top 10 Tuesday

Posted on August 31, 2016 by Katy K.

Top 10 Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by the wonderful book-lovers at the Broke and the Bookish.  The topic this week is a free entry on school-related books.  But I’ve had last week’s topic that I didn’t participate in kicking around in my head all week.  That topic was officially books that have been on my TBR since I started blogging.

Top Ten Tuesday

To be honest, I don’t remember what was on my TBR before I started blogging 12 years ago, except for The Book of the City of Ladies by Christine de Pisan, a medieval classic which I don’t think I get enough sleep to read just now.  But since I’ve been blogging I have built up quite a list of authors that I’m sure I’d like but have never gotten around to reading during that time – not one book (not including the many, many authors where I’ve read some of their work and want to read much, much more.) Continue reading →

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Cybils Call for Judges and Kidlitcon

Posted on August 29, 2016 by Katy K.

One of the very best things that blogging has brought to me is conversations with other book lovers.  And the most intense discussions I’ve had about books and exposure to the breadth of great books published in a year have come through serving as Cybils judge.  Now in their 11th year, the Cybils Awards  pick the best in a wide variety of categories in children’s and young adult fiction.  I’ve served as a judge on the round one panel for the Middle Grade Speculative Fiction for the past two years, and it has been a great experience.  Why do I mention this?  Because the awards cannot exist without judges, and you too (if you are a book blogger) could apply to serve as a judge! Cybils 2016

More information on the Cybils website – applications are open through September 14.

The Cybils are organized by the Kidlitosphere, which also organizes Kidlitcon .  I went for the first time last year and am getting ready to go this year in Wichita.  It is such a great small conference where I got to talk to almost everyone who came, including sitting down to lunch with authors right after their sessions.  This year, I’ll be part of panel discussion on blogging middle grade with Charlotte of Charlotte’s Library and Casie Hermansson of Parental Guidance Ratings.  Check out the whole Kidlitcon program( put together by Charlotte)!  And I hope to see you in Wichita!Kidlitcon 2016 in Wichita

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Escape from Wolfhaven Castle. The Impossible Quest 1.

Posted on August 24, 2016 by Katy K.

A while back, Kane Miller wrote me to ask if I would like to read these books, originally published in Australia, which they were publishing for the US market.  And seeing as how I am always looking for shorter fantasy books to appeal to my son, as well as fantasy from outside the US, I said, “yes, please.”

Escape fr0m Wolfhaven Castle by Kate Forsyth Escape from Wolfhaven Castle. The Impossible Quest 1. By Kate Forsythe. Kane Miller, 2015.
This is the first book of a five book series, each of them short enough not to be overwhelming to new readers, while still having enough depth of plot and character not to be underwhelming to struggling or reluctant middle grade readers.  As the story opens, Tom, the cook’s son, is out in the forest when the wild man of the woods warns him that danger is coming.  The difficulty is finding anyone who will listen to a warning from a lowly pot boy.  But things do go badly wrong, and three other young people – the witch’s apprentice Quinn, the lord’s daughter Elanor, and the squire Sebastian – are thrown together, trying to escape a castle that’s suddenly under siege from within.  Elanor isn’t used to making decisions on her own, and Sebastian’s natural world order is being seriously threatened by having a peasant be the one with the most information and therefore making decisions.

I read the first two books in this series, and my slow-reading son finished the first book in record-for-him time.  I appreciated that the characters do not develop instant friendship, and all of them have room for character growth. There are enough standard fantasy elements that this may not have the adult crossover appeal of some other series.  That being said, the tropes are used well, the magic draws solidly on herb lore and British mythology, and the language is very good.  This is an excellent introduction to fantasy, both for independent and family reading.

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A Thousand Nights, Court of Fives, Keeper of the Mist

Posted on August 23, 2016 by Katy K.

Here are three recent teen fantasies I’ve read with two things in common: I loved all of them, and they all feature brown-skinned heroines.

A Thousand Nights by E. K. JohnstonA Thousand Nights by E.K. Johnston. Hyperion, 2015.
Lo-Melkhiin has married 300 girls, each from a different village, and each of them has been found dead the next morning.  When news comes that Lo-Melkhiin is coming to the village of our unnamed narrator, she knows that her sister is the prettiest and most likely to be chosen.  “She that he chose of us would never be forgotten. She would still be dead.” She puts on her sister’s purple bridal dishdashah, embroidered in black and secrets, to make sure that she is chosen. She will turn shifting sand into a plan as hard as glass to find a way to do what the men will not, and stop Lo-Melkhiin.  Her sister, too, plans to pray to make her a smallgod and give her the power she needs.  All the characters besides Lo-Melkhiin are identified only by their relationships to each other, which together with the language, gives the story a powerful mythic feel.  Our narrator is particular, but also universal, famous and yet unknown in a story about the secret power of women, found in women’s work, songs and talk. Captivating, beautiful, and powerful.  Spindle, set in the same world, is coming out in December.  And if you haven’t yet, you should also read her Story of Owen. Continue reading →

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Forest of Wonders, Pax, Fridays with the Wizards

Posted on August 22, 2016 by Katy K.

I am doing shorter reviews of these three recent middle grade fantasy and dystopian books because I am once again reading much, much faster than I’m able to write reviews. The first I found earlier this year when I was looking hard for new middle grade fantasy by authors of color.

wingandclawforestForest of Wonders by Linda Sue Park. Harper Collins, 2016. 
Newbery-award winning author Linda Sue Park returns with a classic medieval fantasy that has a more modern sensibility as regarding the movement of peoples around the world.  Our hero, young Raffa Santana, dark of hair and eye, is the child of immigrants who have nevertheless stayed in their village long enough to feel established. They are apothecaries working with powerful botanicals to create medicines both typical and a little bit magical.  When Raffa’s best friend and cousin Garith leaves with his parents to work in the Commons, the most important part of Gilden, the capital of Obsidia, Raffa is very upset and decides to follow along.  Naturally, he takes with him the bat that has turned purple-eyed and started talking since Raffa treated it with his homemade botanicals.  As he reaches the city, he finds that things are more complicated than he was expecting.  He befriends both blond, pale-skinned Trixin, a poor city girl supporting her entire family, and dark-skinned Kuma, a solitary country girl suspicious of all except her companion bear Roo.  There are plenty hijinks, narrow escapes, and secrets to uncover as well as underlying meditations on ethics.  This is a solid and highly enjoyable book, especially for kids who enjoy stories of talented kids and adorable animals. You can tell by the cover that it’s the first of a series, and I am looking forward to reading more entries.

paxPax by Sara Pennypacker. Performed by Michale Curran-Dorsano. Harper, 2016.
In the not-too-distant future, the fox Pax has been Peter’s constant companion ever since Peter found the orphaned kit soon after his own mother’s death.  Seven years later, Peter’s father joins the military in its ongoing battle over water.  He tells Peter that Pax must be returned to the wild while Peter is sent to his grandfather’s house, 500 miles away.  This tear-jerker of a story is told in alternating perspectives as Pax tries to live on his own for the first time while Peter, on crutches and trying to stand up for himself for the first time, attempts to walk the 500 miles to find Pax.  Pennypacker’s inventive language use is fully on display, but here used to be stunningly, lyrically beautiful rather than the quirky humor of her Clementine books.  There are very clear statements on the evils of war, as well as tougher lessons on the appropriate times for, and uses of anger.  I think I read this too close to the 1000 Black Girl Books campaign as despite its beauty, there was a largeish part of me that felt that this was another Newbery-bait, tear-jerking book about a white boy and his dog, even if the dog was a fox this time.  If you or a kid in your life are in the mood for really sad (I had a young patron come in asking for it because he wanted sad), this is a great choice.  I myself prefer Clementine, with her serious life lessons told through humor.

fridayswiththewizardsFridays with the Wizards by Jessica Day George. Bloomsbury, 2016.
Princess Celie returns in this fourth book in the series that began with Tuesdays at the Castle.  The evil wizard Arkwright has escaped from the castle dungeons, and the hunt for him is on.  The castle is clearly upset, and Celie is trying her best to figure out what the castle wants.  Arkwright seems to be wandering in secret passages and coming out for stealthy attacks on people in the castle.  Meanwhile, the castle gives Celie the pieces of an old boat, which it’s decided – without her input – will be rebuilt and given to Prince Lulath and his kingdom as a gift to celebrate the engagement of Lulath and Lilah.  None of this sits well with Celie – but just as she’s feeling fed up with everyone underestimating her and doing things that affect her without her input, it’s up to her to save the day again.  This is another lovely entry in this series, perfect for younger fantasy readers.

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Diversity on the Shelf- July Update

Posted on August 21, 2016 by Katy K.

What? It’s not early August anymore?  I know – I was offline for a couple weeks and am only very slowly getting caught up again. Here’s my update for the Diversity on the Shelf challenge hosted by Akilah at the Englishist.

I read 24 books in July.

5 of these were by authors of color, and all middle grade except as noted:

  • The Birchbark House by Louise Erdrich 
  • Good Luck, Anna Hibiscus and Have Fun, Anna Hibiscus by Atinuke (somewhere between early chapter and middle grade)
  • Inside Out & Back Again by Thanhha Lai
  • Unidentified Suburban Object by Mike Jung

 

Three more featured main characters of color:

  • Keeper of the Mist by Rachel Neumeier (YA)
  • Black Dog Short Stories by Rachel Neumeier (YA)
  • Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie (adult)

 Bonus: An adorable green-skinned goblin deals with violent prejudice in this picture book from the author of Zita the Space Girl:

nobodylikesagoblin

  • Nobody Likes a Goblin by Ben Hatke

This puts me at 35 books by authors of color in 2016, and an additional 21 books by white authors with main characters of color. Now to write some reviews!

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