No Place Like Home - Linh S. Nguyen

Initial Draw: ☆☆☆☆
Character Development: ☆☆☆☆
Plot/Writing Style: ☆☆☆☆☆
Overall: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"Lan, a teenager who recently came to Canada from Vietnam, spends every day searching for a sense of belonging. Books are the only things that make her feel at ease. But it comes as a shock when a mysterious wind whisks her right into the pages of her latest fantasy read. More shocking still is the fact that she herself summoned this wind!

Plunged into the magical world of Silva, Lan realizes she has much to offer protagonists Annabelle and Marlow. Once a homesick reader and bystander rooting for the very characters that now stand before her, Lan is a budding witch who suddenly has the power to help their quest. Somewhere inside her lies the ability to not only save Annabelle and Marlow's home, but also to shape a familiar tale into something new. 

As Lan faces off against tree guardians, moving corn mazes, heart-eaters, and thoughtless kings, she finds that Silva is not so different from Toronto: new homes can be messy. Now, torn between several places at once, Lan begins to confront an important question: how do you redefine a lost home?"

📚📚📚 

Reading this book was kind of like making a peanut butter sandwich with chunky peanut butter when you're expecting smooth. You expect the story to unfold smoothly, spreading across the page, and then you're like wait...this isn't...hold on... Is this a weird metaphor? Yeah, it is, but that happened to me recently, so it was what came to mind. What I'm saying is that some of the transitions between action and the plot development were a little clunky. It's fine, it was still a good book, it just took some getting used to.

Aside from that, I enjoyed the story. I wish there was a little more natural, gradual character progression, but their adventures were exciting, and I loved the time they spent with the centaurs and the dryads. Part of my issue with the pacing and the way things unfolded was that the story jumped from one adventure into the next relatively quickly, and I kind of wanted the story to be a little longer, so we could get more detail and more development. Admittedly, though...this is a kid's book, and the quick movement from one challenge to the next might keep them more interested. So, take my reaction with a grain of salt.

Pet - Akwaeke Emezi

Initial Draw: ☆☆☆☆☆
Character Development: ☆☆☆☆☆
Plot/Writing Style: ☆☆☆☆☆
Overall: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"There are no monsters anymore, or so the children in the city of Lucille are taught. Jam and her best friend, Redemption, have grown up with this lesson all their life. But when Jam meets Pet, a creature made of horns and colors and claws, who emerges from one of her mother's paintings and a drop of Jam's blood, she must reconsider what she's been told. Pet has come to hunt a monster - and the shadow of something grim lurks in Redemption's house. Jam must fight not only to protect her best friend, but also uncover the truth, and the answer to the question - how do you save the world from monsters if no one will admit they exist?"

📚📚📚 

Wow, how to even talk about this book. It clocks in at just over two hundred pages, so while it's heavy, it also went by in a blur. I think that was equal parts the length and the writing style - like their main character, Akwaeke Emezi doesn't mince words. The world is introduced and established quickly, Pet emerges from the painting, and the hunt begins. There's no meandering, no side quests. ONLY the hunt. 

I thought that directness was very suitable for the story being told, and I also really appreciated the way what the monster has done was made clear without actually saying "this is what you did, how dare you?" It's difficult to write about sensitive topics like this and strike the right tone/balance, and too often it almost veers into voyeuristic territory. I know it isn't intentional, and it's not like I think authors are out here relishing writing about such terrible things, it's just that sometimes the quest to paint the picture becomes...too much. This was an expert demonstration of how to tell a vivid, heartrending story without spelling out every little detail.

I also love how effortlessly inclusive this book was. Jam, the main character, is trans and chooses not to voice often (extra snaps for specifying VOICING and not SPEAKING), instead preferring to use sign language. Others in her life have learned sign in order to communicate with her, including the town's librarian, who is a wheelchair user, and her best friend, who lives in a three parent household. All of these details are woven into the story with no fanfare. It isn't something different or unusual, it's just life. It's how things are. That's so unusual in the majority of books, and we need more of it. Just...all around, such an incredible book. 

Finally, since I can't end this without saying something about him, Ube is the best example of what a librarian should be. Welcoming, inclusive, and a believer that even if someone is a kid, they deserve access to the truth and to accurate information. They deserve to be given the tools they need to make their own educated decisions. I aspire to be like Ube.

A Taste of Magic - J. Elle

Initial Draw: ☆☆☆☆
Character Development: ☆☆☆☆☆
Plot/Writing Style: ☆☆☆☆☆
Overall: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"Twelve-year-old Kyana has just found out the family secret--she's the first witch in her family for generations! Which means mandatory lessons every Saturday at Park Row Magic Academy--a learning center hidden in the back of the local beauty shop. Kyana can't wait to learn some spells to help out at home. The only downside is having to keep her magic a secret from her connected-at-the-hip BFF Nae.

But then the magic school loses their funding, forcing the students to pay a hefty tuition at the school across town or have their magic stripped. Determined not to let that happen, Kyana enters a baking competition with a huge cash prize. After all, she's learned how to make the best desserts from her Memaw. But will Kyana be able to keep up her grades in both magic school and real school while preparing for the competition and without revealing her magic? And what happens when a little taste of magic works its way into her cupcakes in the first round of competition?"

🧁🧁🧁

 Oh, this was such a delightful read. Kyana is enthusiastic, creative, and passionate, both Nae and Ashley are so earnest and sweet, and Memaw is wonderful. Some highlights for me were the nuanced take on the boy that Kyana doesn't get along with (I goofed and already added the book to my school library's collection, so I don't have it with me to reference), the first round of the baking competition, and the public library being featured as a place Kyana regularly goes (what can I say, library shout-outs will always get a thumbs up from me). 

The one not-positive I have to say is that I don't think including Kyana's struggle with her math grade was necessary - it came up pretty early, but after that there was so much other drama going on that it almost seemed to be inserted as an afterthought. Like "oh shoot, I forgot I brought up that her math grade was low, better say something about that" instead of an actual part of the plot. That aside, I thought the story was great. The way J. Elle wove magic into the real world was delightful, and I loved the way Kyana dove into finding a solution to their school losing its funding. Her determination and refusal to quit really tugged at my heart, and seeing her pull multiple communities together to try and make magic happen was amazing.

Very solid read! I highly recommend it, and I hope my students enjoy it as much as I did.

Read Harder - January Edition

Starting the year off strong!

Hahaha not really, it took me until halfway through the month to even check out my first book (Pet) from the library. And then it was an ebook, which I'm pretty notorious for forgetting about because I never use my kindle, so it's usually tucked away, often with the battery almost dead. So it took even longer for me to actually start reading it. Once I did...it's not an easy read, but it's also hard to put down, so I finished it very quickly. And good god. It packs a punch, and it teaches an important lesson. I've got a review coming for this one.

For The Aurora Circus, I had a hard time finding it and finally had to fold and buy it on Kindle. TWO ebooks? Excessive. Neither I nor my kindle's battery have the stamina for that. Charged both batteries, though, and got into it, and...eh. I'm about a quarter of the way through, and it is not pulling me in. I had to double check that I hadn't accidentally picked the second book in a series, because we're dropped into the middle of so much unexplained stuff, which is fine, IF you give context as things progress, but that isn't really happening. I'll keep chipping away, maybe it'll get more engaging and I'll finish it, maybe I'll give up and DNF.

Anyway, February picks!

#3 - Read a middle grade horror novel: Oh yay, my favorite genre! Honestly, though, good challenge, because my students are always asking for more scary books, so this will give me some ideas. I'm going with Omega Morales and the Curse of El Cucuy by Laekan Zea Kemp. I don't know if it really counts as horror, but I don't care.

#4 - Read a history book by a BIPOC author: Oh, I have so many options for this on my TBR. After some deliberation, I'm going with Not a Nation of Immigrants: Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz.

The Mirrorwood - Deva Fagan

Initial Draw: ☆☆☆☆
Character Development: ☆☆☆☆☆
Plot/Writing Style: ☆☆☆☆☆
Overall: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"Fable has been cursed by a twisted magic that villagers call the Blight, which forces her to steal and wear the faces of others or risk oblivion. To find her true self, she'll have to enter the treacherous Mirrorwood and free it from the demon-prince who has ruled it for centuries. Thankfully, she has her faithful - but opinionated - feline companion, Moth, by her side.

Pursued by Vycorax, a fierce apprentice Blighthunter who is determined to destroy her, Fable plunges through the thorny forest into a world that is trapped in time and rife with peril. There, she encounters a boisterously chatty skull, a library full of flying books, and a beast so powerful it tears at the fabric of reality, leaving nothingness in its wake. Fable will soon discover that, in the Mirrorwood, nothing is quite like the stories say."

 📚📚📚

The Mirrorwood, ruled by a mysterious demon-prince, is separated from the rest of the kingdom(?) by an impenetrable wall of thorns, but that doesn't mean the prince's blights can't slip through. Everyone outside the thorn wall is terrified of the demon-prince and his blights, so blight hunters prowl the land, throwing any blighted individuals into prison or murdering them. Fable, blighted at a young age, is protected by her family, who keep her blight a secret and let her borrow their faces so she won't fade away, but after a rare slip-up, blighthunters show up at their house as part of an investigation.

Fable spins a tale that leads the blighthunters off, and she thinks she's in the clear, but as she wanders through a birch grove near their home the next day, she runs into them again. It turns out they didn't believe her story and have been waiting to prove that one of her family was blighted - and now they have. The only way to escape the hunters is by entering the Mirrorwood, and miraculously, a path opens up to let her in, sealing her - and Vycorax, one of the blighthunters who pursued her - inside. The pair reluctantly team up, determined to break the demon-prince's curse, and set off on their seemingly impossible quest. Along their journey they encounter the Subtle Powers, a timespun town reliving the same day over and over, a terrible beast known as the Withering, and even the talking skeleton of a long-dead bard.

As Fable learns more about the world inside the Mirrorwood, she begins to question what she knows about the curse. The stories told outside the thorn wall seem less and less true the more time she spends in the cursed kingdom, and the situation with the demon-prince is more complicated than she could ever have anticipated. Vycorax likewise has begun to question her training as a blighthunter and wonder if the blighted truly are the evil creatures she grew up hearing about. Will the partners...and reluctant friends...be able to put aside their assumptions about the Mirrorwood and work together to solve the mystery of the cursed kingdom and break the curse?

This book is pretty solid! I loved the characters, the adventure was exciting, the pace was great, and I really enjoyed how everything wrapped up. Also, despite his name, Moth has my heart forever. "It is wet, Fable. There is mud...I will find you when it is dry again." 😹 He was a delight from the first page to the last. I'll be adding this book to my school library, and I hope my students love it as much as I did!

What the River Knows - Isabel Ibanez

Initial Draw: ☆☆☆☆☆
Character Development: ☆☆☆☆☆
Plot/Writing Style: ☆☆☆☆☆
Overall: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"Bolivian-Argentinian Inez Olivera belongs to the glittering upper society of nineteenth century Buenos Aires, and like the rest of the world, the town is steeped in old world magic that’s been largely left behind or forgotten. Inez has everything a girl might want, except for the one thing she yearns the most: her globetrotting parents—who frequently leave her behind.

When she receives word of their tragic deaths, Inez inherits their massive fortune and a mysterious guardian, an archeologist in partnership with his Egyptian brother-in-law. Yearning for answers, Inez sails to Cairo, bringing her sketch pads and a golden ring her father sent to her for safekeeping before he died. But upon her arrival, the old world magic tethered to the ring pulls her down a path where she soon discovers there’s more to her parent’s disappearance than what her guardian led her to believe.

With her guardian’s infuriatingly handsome assistant thwarting her at every turn, Inez must rely on ancient magic to uncover the truth about her parent’s disappearance—or risk becoming a pawn in a larger game that will kill her."

 Before we get into the book, I'm just going to say it. This is classified as young adult, but it is fucking not young adult. Publishers, just because a book is fantasy, written by a woman, and has a female main character DOESN'T MEAN IT'S YA! Stop with that shit.

Anyway, now that that's out of the way, I am glad this book was included in my FUCKING YA subscription box even though IT IS NOT YA, because it probably wouldn't have been on my radar otherwise, and HOLY SHIT was it good. For starters, the cover is gorgeous. The dust jacket is beautiful and has a hidden illustration on the inside, there are incredible sprayed edges, the inside covers are illustrated...I mean, any one of those things and I would have been swooning. All of them together? How was I to resist?

Add to that Inez's determination and grit, her curiosity and unwillingness to settle for what others told her she should be doing with her life, and I'm sold on this main character. Then there's the incredible descriptions of Egypt, the inscrutable and mysterious Whit, the fact that you don't know who you can trust, or if you can even trust anyone, and I'M SORRY, WHAT IS HAPPENING?! This book had me on the edge of my seat the entire time, and I'm sorry that this review is rambly and unspecific and all over the place, but I literally just finished reading and am still reeling. I need the next book to be out, like, NOW, because I have so many questions, and I need all of them answered. WOW, what a journey I've just been on. I'm still on. If anyone needs me, I'll be thinking about this book.

Daughter of the Deep - Rick Riordan

Initial Draw: ☆☆☆☆☆
Character Development: ☆☆☆☆☆
Plot/Writing Style: ☆☆☆☆☆
Overall: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"Ana Dakkar is a freshman at Harding-Pencroft Academy, a five-year high school that graduates the best marine scientists, naval warriors, navigators, and underwater explorers in the world. Ana's parents died while on a scientific expedition two years ago, and the only family's she's got left is her older brother, Dev, also a student at HP. Ana's freshman year culminates with the class's weekend trial at sea, the details of which have been kept secret. She only hopes she has what it'll take to succeed. All her worries are blown out of the water when, on the bus ride to the ship, Ana and her schoolmates witness a terrible tragedy that will change the trajectory of their lives.

But wait, there's more. The professor accompanying them informs Ana that their rival school, Land Institute, and Harding-Pencroft have been fighting a cold war for a hundred and fifty years. Now that cold war has been turned up to a full broil, and the freshman are in danger of becoming fish food. In a race against deadly enemies, Ana will make amazing friends and astounding discoveries about her heritage as she puts her leadership skills to the test for the first time."

I've been waiting to read this standalone (for now, at least?) middle-ish grade fantasy/sci-fi novel inspired by 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea for a while, and I finally got to it. The synopsis is so vague while still being compelling and the reveals were so staggering as I read that I don't want to say a lot about what happens throughout the book and ruin anything...but I need people to know that it's a good read. The relationship between Ana and her friends was delightful, I loved seeing the freshman class work together, and even the twists that I guessed still knocked me on my ass. 

The only thing that made me scratch my head was the decision to make Gemini Twain Mormon. Probably just a blip on the radar for people who don't have any connection to or experience with Mormonism, but for someone who knows how problematic the corporation (sorry, I mean church) is, it seemed like quite a strange choice to make the only featured Black character LDS, given Mormonism's long and storied history of racism. My best guess, since Rick Riordan makes a concerted effort to write inclusive books, is that he wanted to feature a religious character...but I don't know that the best choice in the name of inclusion was to feature a religion that actively discriminates against multiple groups of actually marginalized and excluded people.

Questionable character detail aside, the story was solid - good pace, better characters, and Nautilus and Romeo were two of my favorites. Very interesting idea for a book, and excellent execution.