Hello, dear readers! As requested, in honor of my 20th blogging anniversary, I’m reblogging my top posts. Rather than going with the posts with the overall highest hits, I’m going with the ones with the highest hits by age to even out the recent popular ones. This post, first published on June 30, 2020, has gotten 415 views in the about 4 years it’s been in the world, for about 104 views per year.
This year, especially with my most graphic novel-loving kid still home on break when the finalists were announced, I decided to check all of the middle grade graphic novel finalists out at once. While they’re all excellent books, since you can read the full blurbs on the Cybils site and I have an enormous backlog of books I want to share with you, I thought I’d try doing super-short reviews here. Let me know what you think!
First Time for Everything by Dan Santat. First Second, 2023. ISBN 978-1626724150. Read from a library copy.
The summer before high school, Dan joined a class trip to Europe filled with firsts that changed his life. It doesn’t shy away from even the parts that seem shocking now. Dan Santat previously won the Caldecott Medal and this book won the National Book Award for Young People – it shows. This spoke especially to me, as it was not so many years later that I first went to Europe myself – but the spirit of allowing oneself to explore the inner world at the same time as the outer is one that still resonates today.
Frizzy by Claribel Ortega and Rose Bousamra. First Second, 2022. ISBN 978125025622. Read from a library copy.
Marlene has been forced to take boring and humiliating weekly trips to the salon to get her hair straightened ever since her mother decided she was old enough to be a young lady. With encouragement from her best friend Camilla and help from her beloved Tia Ruby, Marlene learns how to embrace and care for her curls. Even though this focuses closely on the hair, exploring how Marlene is treated by family members and at school shines a light on the deep beliefs about hair both in Latinx and broader American cultures. My kid read this one twice.
Lo and Behold by Wendy Mass. Illustrated by Gabi Mendez. Random House Graphics, 2023. ISBN 9780593179635. Read from a library copy.
Addie’s stubbornly stayed on her own, abandoned by her friends since her mother’s serious health issues. She’s uninterested when her father moves them to a college campus for the summer, where’s he’s working on virtual reality. At first she rebuffs the friendly advances from the only other kid her age on campus, Mateo – but gradually allows him in and comes up with ideas to extend the use of AI. This deals gently with the damage an addiction in the family can cause, while staying rooted in the perils of developing friendship and the excitement of the new technologies. The art bursts from straightfoward panels into exuberance as the lines of reality are blurred with the VR. This was my kid’s second favorite of the batch, read at least three times.
Things in the Basement by Ben Hatke. First Second, 2023. ISBN 9781250836618. Read from a library copy.
Ben Hatke’s beautiful art style and creative imagination are on full display in this minimal-text graphic novel. A young boy, coded as Afro-Latino, moves into a big Victorian house with his mother and twin baby siblings. When a baby’s sock goes missing, he follows the critter who’s stolen it into the basement – finding layer upon layer of hidden rooms filled with one adventure after another. The shadowy watercolor art in muted tones really enhances this secret world. Beings kind and malevolent, and adventures both exciting and terrifying, fill the world of the basement. This is one I wanted everyone else in the family to read.
Mexikid by Pedro Martín. Dial Books, 2023. ISBN 9780593462287. Read from a library copy.
This is a rich addition to the catalog of graphic memoirs for kids. Here, the author shares his story of growing up in a large Mexican-American family in the 70s and the summer they drove from California down to Mexico to bring his grandfather home. The drawings and colors bring the places and time vividly back, while family tragedies are balanced with hijinks and truly kid-friendly disgusting things. (Read the review at a Fuse #8 Production for many more details!)
Dungeons & Dragons: Dungeon Club: Roll Call. by Molly Knox Ostertag, illustrated by Xanthe Bouma. HarperAlley, 2022. ISBN 9780063039247. Read from a library copy.
Can D&D save the middle school experience? Jess and her best friend Olivia have been playing just the two of them for ages, where Jess plays the brave lone knight Sir Corian. Now Olivia wants more people to join the campaign – but Jess, who doesn’t fit gender norms well enough to fit in socially in general, is afraid. Maybe her safe space will be destroyed, or maybe having someone even lower on the social ladder than she is join will make her a target again. Scenes in middle school alternate with the unfolding D&D adventure – complete with an art style shift – in a story that works well on multiple levels. This was my D&D-loving kid’s absolute favorite of the whole list, one they read at least half a dozen times before we returned it.
Saving Chupie by Amparo Ortiz. Illustrated by Ronnie Garcia. HarperAlley, 2023. ISBN 9780062950284. Read from a library copy.
Violeta Rubio loves her abuela and is excited to go to Puerto Rico for the first time to help restore and reopen the restaurant that her Abuela ran before the hurricane. She’s disappointed and bored when her family refuses her help, and disgusted when the only kids her age she meets are interested in looking for the legendary chupacabra – who would believe those fairy tales? But when Violeta actually finds an adorable baby chupacabra, she’ll do anything in her power to keep it safe. Can she bring herself to trust her new friends enough to help?
I started this blog Livejournal quite casually, just posting short summaries of books I’d read for my existing online friends, with no concept of trying to build an audience. It’s rather astounding to find myself still here 20 years later, still not great at self-promotion, but with a broader audience, more in-depth reviews, and having discovered so many like-minded people through book blogging and the Cybils Awards! Thank you so much to all of you who make up this book-loving community!
Here is my annual list of books that I rated at 9 or above. I rate most books I really enjoy as 8, but since that list would be over 100 books, I feel the need to limit myself. I do find it very curious that I rated so many more of my adult reads highly than my middle grade reads – maybe I’m just more critical of the middle grade because I read more of it, or because I’m trying to evaluate things for the Cybils even when I’m not reading directly for the awards? And despite this, I reviewed only two of those adult favorites, and none of the teen favorites. In any case, here is a small selection of the books I loved last year.
Here is my standard disclaimer about rating books:
“I have never liked doing a public scale rating of books – the librarian in me would rather describe what’s in the book and let you decide if it sounds good for you. But I do give books number ratings on my own private spreadsheet. I shamelessly borrowed the Book Smugglers’ 10-point rating system for this, where 0 is “I want my time and my money back”, 5 is “meh” and so on. For my purposes, 7 is a book I enjoyed, 8 is one I loved and 9 is one I really, really loved. 10 only gets given out retrospectively to books I find myself re-reading and thinking about a lot – a true personal classic.”
No Time Like Now
by Naz Kutub
Bloomsbury, 2024
ISBN 9781547609284
Review copy kindly sent by the publisher.
16-year-old Hazeem has spent this year following his father’s death wallowing in depression, getting out of bed to make sure his mom eats and to visit his grandmother. His grief has given him a superpower – adding years to people’s lives. He’s used it to add years to his hamster, Mary Shelley – his only remaining friend now that he’s saved the lives of his three former best friends, and now none of them will talk to him anymore.
When he tries to save the life of one more beloved person, Time shows up with a golden chronosphere, wearing an orange jumpsuit and looking like a young Sandra Bullock. They say that he’s now given away more years than he has and is about to end the world if he can’t take them back from someone. Though Time wants Hazeem to make a quick and easy choice, Time also has no sense of what it means to be human and why Hazeem cares to much. Surely if Hazeem visits his friends in the past, it will both help him to figure out what to do and help Time to understand him. With Mary Shelley in her hamster front-pack, they set out to look at the past and potential futures. These are moments he’d rather never think about again – the embarrassing scene where Hazeem confessed his love to his long-time crush, and separate averted tragedies with his overly-sheltered friend Holly and his proudly nonbinary friend Yamany, whom I pictured looking like a brown Jonathan van Ness.
For those who are fans of time travel – for most of the book, Hazeem is watching the past and brief glimpses of futures without being able to change anything, though there is a bit of him trying one day multiple ways. There are a lot of enormous, hard feelings here – and lots of Hazeem realizing that he really wasn’t as great a friend as he thought he was. While there is a lot of sadness, I appreciated that neither he nor his friends were perfect, all of them finding ways to reach for their true dreams and selves. Time’s goofiness and little Mary Shelley keep the book from wallowing as much as Hazeem does at the beginning. The ending is cathartic and hopeful. This is perfect for teens looking for stories of real people with a semi-magical push towards solving their problems.
Every year since 2014, I’ve tried to do an audit of my reading, as well as a list of my favorite books of the year. It’s my way of keeping myself accountable,
2023 Overview
What I Read
The Authors
The Characters
I’ve been doing these graphs for ten whole years now – here they are from 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, and 2014. I think I should do some sort of retrospective! As always, if you know of any middle grade or teen books, especially fantasy books, that would help me round out the diversity of my reading, please let me know! And if you have thoughts on these stats or other things you’d like to see, let me know in the comments.
It’s time to celebrate Multicultural Children’s Book Day again! I’m reviewing this book here – be sure to head over to the website for lots of book giveaways, hundreds of reviews, and for information about the online party.
Cruzita and the Mariacheros
by Ashley Granillo
Lerner, April 2, 2024
ISBN 979-8-7656-0850-0
Review copy kindly provided by the publisher through Netgalley.
Cruzita, a second-generation Mexican-American, is more comfortable with the American side of her heritage. She can’t speak Spanish and doesn’t really care for the traditional music her family sometimes plays. She and her best friend Kelli, who is white and lives in a gated neighborhood, share a dream: to go to the big music theme park near them, Encore Island, and win the pop music contest there. She and Kelli have big plans for her to sing one of her favorite 90s songs there.
But Cruzita and her family are also reeling from the recent loss of Cruzita’s great-uncle, Tio Chuy. Tio Chuy ran the family bakery, now struggling without his baking, and was also the adult that Cruzita felt closest to. Now Cruzita is expected to spend her summer helping out in the bakery instead of having fun – learning to roll tortillas by hand and greeting the Spanish-speaking customers – all while her cousins are off on vacation in Mexico. She’s even more crushed when her frustrated mother takes away her beloved CD player and tablet and grounds her to punish her for her bad attitude – and says they can’t afford to go to Encore Island at all.
Her Grandmother attempts to come to her rescue by making an arrangement for Cruzita to take free mariachi lessons, using the family violin. Thrown in with a group of much more experienced kids, all of whom can sing the Spanish words to the songs, Cruzita is horrified. Eventually, though, she learns to enjoy the music and makes friends with some of the other kids in the class. Together, they might be able boost her grandmother’s spirits and find a way to save the bakery – if Cruzita can figure out where her loyalties lie. Because Kelli is jealous of Cruzita’s new friends and dismissive of the music – and how can Cruzita give up on her oldest friend?
I personally have always liked traditional music more than pop music, but I’m guessing that most kids will have a lot of sympathy for Cruzita. There were some tough parts here when Cruzita was getting negative feedback from her parents and aunt and from her best friend at once – but I appreciated her improving her relationship with her parents and building new friendships at the mariachi school. I really enjoyed the vivid descriptions of the baked goods and the fragrant little citrus grove outside the bakery, something I would love to experience in real life. Her struggles trying to fit into Mexican-American culture when she doesn’t speak Spanish were reminiscent of those in Marcus Vega Doesn’t Speak Spanish by Pablo Cartaya. This is a solid choice for kids who dream of stardom, as well as shining a light on the difficulty of growing up between cultures.
Here are some of my previous MCBD posts:
Dear readers, I am so excited to once again be part of the blog tour for Anne Ursu’s latest book! This is one braids together a realistic middle school story with one of unease and slowly developing horror.
The house seemed to sit apart from the others on Katydid Street, silent and alone, like it didn’t fit among them. For Violet Hart — whose family is about to move into the house on Katydid Street — very little felt like it fit anymore. Like their old home, suddenly too small since her mother remarried and the new baby arrived. Or Violet’s group of friends, which, since they started middle school, isn’t enough for Violet’s best friend, Paige. Everything seemed to be changing at once. But sometimes, Violet tells herself, change is okay.
That is, until Violet sees her new room. The attic bedroom in their new house is shadowy, creaky, and wrapped in old yellow wallpaper covered with a faded tangle of twisting vines and sickly flowers. And then, after moving in, Violet falls ill — and does not get better. As days turn into weeks without any improvement, her family growing more confused and her friends wondering if she’s really sick at all, she finds herself spending more time alone in the room with the yellow wallpaper, the shadows moving in the corners, wrapping themselves around her at night.
And soon, Violet starts to suspect that she might not be alone in the room at all.
Anne Ursu is the author of acclaimed novels The Troubled Girls of Dragomir Academy, The Lost Girl, Breadcrumbs, and The Real Boy, among others. Her work has been selected as a National Book Award nominee, a Kirkus Prize finalist, and as a best book of the year by Parents Magazine, Publishers Weekly, Amazon.com, and School Library Journal. She lives in Minneapolis with her family and an unruly herd of cats. Find Anne online at anneursu.com.
Not Quite a Ghost by Anne Ursu. Walden Pond Press, 2024. ISBN 978-0062275158. Read from an e-ARC.
“Perhaps [the house] was wary of the other houses, or perhaps it was the other houses that wished to keep their distance from it. If only houses could talk, then one of them could tell us which it was. Of course, if houses could talk, they could also lie.”
From Not Quite a Ghost by Anne Ursu
It’s clear here that the house is hiding a secret… most especially in the attic room that Violet’s older teen sister, Mia, deemed too creepy and therefore leaves for Violet to sleep in. Yet any supernatural elements here are suspicions, and mostly improbably suspicions at that, so that after this introduction, the story carries on with mostly realistic elements until it’s suddenly very much no longer realistic. Still, the delicious language keeps that element constantly in mind, as in this phrase describing Mia’s newly pale skin: “…maybe she had absorbed so much light from her computer monitor that her skin itself now gave off an uncanny glow.”
Violet’s bumpy transition to middle school coincides with an illness that mysteriously refuses to go away, aligning her unseen malady with the barely-seen shadow in her new bedroom, both becoming more and more frightening as the story continues. This forces Violet to reach far out of her comfort zone on multiple levels and leads to a gripping final action scene. Though the title and the cover focus on the shadow in the room, Violet’s friend and family relationships are also shifting and very important, with plenty to appeal to readers of realistic fiction, and very satisfying conclusions to the multiple plotlines. It shines a light on the insidiousness of invisible illnesses – as well as making it seem like there might be something lurking in the older house around the corner from you.
January 16 Nerdy Book Club @nerdybookclub
January 17 A Library Mama (@librarymama)
January 18 Charlotte’s Library (@charlotteslibrary)
January 21 Teachers Who Read (@teachers_read)
January 22 Bluestocking Thinking (@bluesockgirl)
ReadWonder (@patrickontwit)
January 23 A Foodie Bibliophile In Wanderlust (@bethshaum)
January 25 Satisfaction for Insatiable Readers (@grgenius)
This is the last book I read for the Cybils this year – and it’s a lovely play on standard magic school tropes. It’s from Nigerian-British author Isi Hendrix, and has a lovely UK cover as well.
Adia Kelbara
and the Circle of Shamans by Isi Hendrix
Balzer + Bray, 2023
ISBN 978-0063266339
Read from a library copy.
In this story set in a Nigerian-inspired fantasy world, 12-year-old orphan Adia has been miserable ever since her cousin, the one person who was kind to her, disappeared while they were at the lake together. Now her aunt and uncle blame her for his death and are pretty sure that she is an ogbanje, a demon-possessed child. Adia’s main goals are to find a way to lift this curse, and not to be forced to join the cult of the Bright Father, which ritually drugs its followers as well as urging them to be as white as snow – which Adia feels is ridiculous in a country of dark-skinned people. Her solution has been to find a placement for her year of practicality in the kitchens at the Academy of Shamans – the Academy itself being only for rich people. She flees – followed by her cat Bubbles – after an especially unfortunate incident with the missionaries at her village.
Once at the Academy, though, it’s immediately obvious that the Academy itself is in trouble. The revered Academy itself is in a state of dreadful disrepair, with mismatched building pieces, and walls and furniture that try to throw the students and teachers out. Though she doesn’t know how, Adia is able to tell immediately that everyone there is a fraud, only pretending to have the shamanic powers they’re supposed to be studying. Adia might be good at her kitchen work, if only she didn’t keep getting sabotaged by the snootiest student in the school and waylaid by the building itself directing her to places she’s not supposed to be.
On one of these trips, she finds herself overhearing a secret meeting of the Alusi, the gods of the traditional religion of her people. They’re discussing a demon problem much worse than Adia’s. Adia’s only hope is to make herself useful to the goddess Gentle Ginikanwa – who turns out to have a fiery temper. Because maybe if Adia can save the world, Ginikanwa will help her save herself.
This story has a sparkling sense of humor, exciting adventure, and a snarky heroine who is remarkably self-possessed despite believing things about herself that we as readers are sure from the beginning can’t be true. There’s also a strong pushback against colonizers and cultural appropriation, epic fantasy-style. I couldn’t quite figure out the time period, as it seems to exist in a world where the cities have a much higher technology level than Adia’s home village. It has a smart, contemporary sensibility that should appeal to lots of readers.
I plan to make a full list of Nigerian-related fantasy books soon, but in the meantime, here are a few other middle grade fantasy novels with similar settings, both historical and contemporary.
Here is my mostly-annual post about the seven fantastic books my fellow Elementary/Middle Grade Speculative Fiction Cybils panelists and I chose, narrowing down from nearly 100 nominees. As always, while I truly love the books we chose, and I do see the need to have a shorter list, there are lots of titles that I loved that got missed, so I’m including those as well.
If by some chance all of these are new enough that they’re all checked out at your library, you can also take a look at my Ones that Got Away posts from previous years: 2022, 2021, 2020, 2018 , 2017, and 2015.
alibrarymama 