Before the Ever After is a beautifully written middle-grade novel about a 12-year-old boy whose father, a professional football player, is suffering from CTE. The book occurs in a time before anything was widely known about CTE and its effects on many athletes. Zachariah, or ZJ, is in the dark about what’s happening to his father, and…
Angeline Boulley is a former co-worker of mine, and though I don’t know her well, I was excited for her first novel to come out, and even more excited to receive an advanced review copy. I hoped I wouldn’t be disappointed, and I wasn’t. In fact, this book was everything I could ask for, with…
This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic is actually something I’ve thought a lot about: books I wish I’d read as a child. There’s something so completely different about reading a book as a child — really falling into the story and characters and making them your own. Reading as an adult simply can’t replicate that. …
I have a list of recent Austen adaptations I want to read, like Ayesha at Last, Unmarriageable, and Pride, Prejudice and Other Flavors. I’d seen great reviews of Pride by Idi Zoboi and was happy to find the audiobook narrated by Elizabeth Acevedo. I thought her reading was terrific and I really appreciated Zoboi’s fresh look at…
I absolutely loved this children’s book about a girl from a Cuban-Jewish family living in New York who is seriously injured in a car accident and ends up in a full body cast. It’s a perfect book for children in about 3rd-4th grade who have ever felt left out – and what kid hasn’t? I…
These books share a lot of similarities and both were fantastic, so I’m reviewing them together. Both are about teenagers dealing with racial identity, religion, friendship, and family. Both are gifted poets struggling to express themselves. Both love their families but find themselves hiding more and more of themselves. On the Come Up is Angie…
You might not expect Heidi to be one of my childhood favorites, but it is. I tended to love books that were grittier and darker. I preferred flawed or “prickly” characters (think Mary Poppins, Ramona, and Harriet the Spy) and I loved stories that scared me and those that had fantastic elements. Written in 1880,…
Author Andersen has just released the third book in this series, and when she asked me to read it, I asked if I could start with the first instead. This was an interesting, well-written YA dystopian novel. It builds on concepts you’ve already seen frequently in dystopian novels, but with a nice amount of detail…
I loved this book by Irish author L.J. Sedgwick about a teenager who moves to Ireland with her transgender dad, her artist stepmother, and her younger sister Laura. It’s an unusual story, but one that’s told with humor and sensitivity. Jessie loves her family and her family clearly loves her. Yet she’s hit with a…
Dr. Seuss has always been a hero of mine. I’ve been a huge Seuss fan since the day I could read, and probably earlier. I have a portrait of the man, several biographies, and a lithograph of the Lorax graces my walls. When I was in the hospital at fourteen my family brought me a…
I received a copy of Riven from author Belinda Crawford. Last year I reviewed Hero, the first in the series, and loved it. I didn’t enjoy Riven quite as much, but I still want to see where the series goes. The Hero Rebellion is a science fiction, young adult series that takes place on the…
Next in my exploration of children’s classics written by women are The Railway Children and All-of-a-Kind Family, both set around the turn of the century, although The Railway Children was actually published near that time, while Family was published in 1951. Both novels are written by women about families that are struggling economically. Both have…
The Book Stop 