In this graphic novel memoir, Alison Bechdel explores her relationship with her father, who later admitted to being homosexual; his suicide; her childhood; and her early years after coming out as a lesbian. I really kind of hate reviewing these kinds of books. They’re so intensely personal. Who am I to judge the work of […]
Linda, an overweight girl in fifth grade, gives a report about whales one day. Someone passes around a note that “Blubber is a good name for her” and Linda has a new nickname. The other kids start to tease and harass her and just generally make her life miserable. Our narrator, Jill, watches all this […]
Anytime kids gather together in the dark, scary stories are inevitably told. Alvin Schwartz gathered a good selection of the most popular and published them in this anthology. I kind of think this scared me when I was little but I don’t actually remember ever checking it out from the library. My theory is that […]
Our young British protagonist and his Norwegian grandmother know something that we don’t: Witches are real and they live among us. They look like sweet neighbor ladies but they’re keeping a lot of secrets. Chief among them? They want to wipe out the children of the world. When Grandmamma and Grandson (do we ever learn […]
Young Mickey hears a noise deep in the night and finds himself falling into the Night Kitchen, where he has to help the cooks get the milk into the batter. What a fun little book! I never read much Sendak when I was little for some reason, so this was completely new to me. The […]
Captain Will Laurence and his dragon, Temeraire–or is it the other way around?–are in something of a bind. Temeraire was meant to be a gift from the Chinese emperor to Emperor Napoleon. The Chinese people are not happy when they find out that Temeraire is a mere captain’s pet and he’s being used to wage […]
Now that the immediate danger to Camp Jupiter has been averted, Percy, Jason, and friends must set out to fulfill the Prophecy of Seven. Unfortunately, there was a…misunderstanding… in the camp and the friends must also dodge the Roman soldiers who are hunting for them. Gaea is coming more fully awake and her sons are […]
Chronicling the lives of Japanese brides coming to America, Buddha in the Attic is deceptively slim. Almost every sentence begins a new story that is only hinted at, yet I saw at least the broad strokes of an entire life in just those few words. There is no main character and the book is told […]
His Majesty’s Dragon begins when Captain Will Laurence’s ship has just overpowered a French ship. Napoleon is slowly conquering Europe, so any defeat of the French, no matter how small, is a big deal. As Will’s crew is inventorying the French ship’s cargo, they find something unusual: a dragon egg. But complications arise when they […]
Ceony Twill has put herself through magic school in only a year when most people take two. She’s a smart girl and she’s hoping that her magic will be based on metal. She wants to design weapons and machines and things that matter. Instead, she gets paper. Boring old, get-it-wet-and-it-falls-apart paper. She’s crushed. She hopes […]
Ursula Todd is born on a cold winter’s night in England in 1910…over and over again. Sometimes she is stillborn, other times she makes it through, only to die later and start over at the same place. Each time, something is a little different and her life takes drastically diverging paths as a result. Someone […]