Alice Cary

NonfictionMemoir

The Trouble of Color

Review by Alice Cary

As Martha S. Jones gave a halting presentation about Franz Fanon in an undergraduate Black sociology course, her classmate, the leader of the Black Student Union, interrupted her, saying, “Who do you think you are?” The exchange startled and haunted her: “Never before had someone so openly demanded, goaded, and nearly shamed me into explaining who I thought I was.” Jones’ father was descended from enslaved people, while her mother came from German, Austrian and Irish immigrants. She notes that her genes were “expressed in skin too light, features too fine, hair too limp. I am the heir of misunderstanding, misapprehension, and mistaken identity.”

It’s not surprising that Jones became a historian of how American democracy has been shaped by Black Americans. In The Trouble of Color: An American Family Memoir, she traces her father’s side of the family back five generations, writing with precision, grace and loving insight into how color affected their lives. “As far back as I can know,” she writes, “my people have been caught up along the jagged color line. . . . We’ve skipped, hopped, and danced an awkward two-step. . . . We played possum and trickster, stood wide-eyed and defiant, while tragedy in its many guises tracked us, looking to take us out.”

Read our Q&A with Martha S. Jones, author of ‘The Trouble of Color.’ 

Relying on years of extensive research, family records and interviews, Jones constructs a moving narrative, bringing her ancestors to life. She begins with her great-great-great-grandmother Nancy Bell Graves, born in 1808 in Danville, Kentucky, whose maiden name, “Bell,” was the same as the family who enslaved her. Graves’ photograph shows that her skin was not “ebony or deep brown” but “closer in tone to the white bonnet on her head.” While it’s probable that Nancy’s father was a member of the enslaving family, Jones notes that “so much of the historical record was written with silence.” That silence continued to stymie her when, for instance, a Danville librarian discouraged her research. “What you’re saying implicates some of Danville’s most important families,” she warned.

Jones’ writing, both in skill and subject matter, is reminiscent of Tiya Miles’ biography of Harriet Tubman, Night Flyer, and her National Book Award-winning All That She Carried. The Trouble of Color is a genealogy with staying power that will change the way readers understand race.

 

Martha S. Jones’ moving memoir, The Trouble of Color, traces her family’s history back five generations and will change the way readers understand race.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

The Gift of the Great Buffalo

Review by Alice Cary

The Gift of the Great Buffalo is a thrilling adventure story and an excellent history lesson about Métis-Ojibwe culture all wrapped up in one. The author of We Are the Water Protectors, Carole Lindstrom, who is Métis and an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe, explains in an author’s note that although she grew up enjoying Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books, “being portrayed as a ‘savage’ in a book where I felt an actual kinship to Laura Ingalls was very difficult for me to understand. It felt as if I were being hurt by a friend.”

Lindstrom wrote The Gift of the Great Buffalo to let readers know that “before there was a little house on the prairie, there was a little tipi on the prairie.” The book follows Rose, a young Métis girl accompanying her family to a big gathering for a twice-a-year buffalo hunt. Readers will be fascinated to see how the group hunt is organized, with “strict laws that were enforced by the captains, to ensure order and fairness.” Lindstrom skillfully incorporates other historical context as well, noting that European settlers had already eliminated most of the buffalo.

Aly McKnight’s illustrations capture the close relationship between Rose and her family, the sense of community fostered by the hunt, and the excitement of the big gathering. She wonderfully depicts tangible objects, like a steam locomotive—an invention that hastened the demise of the buffalo—as well as the spiritual connections Rose and her family have to the land and the animals they hunt. In a moving spread, readers see Rose listening to the voice of the buffalo spirit as a giant herd grazes amidst the green prairie grasses.

When Rose’s father, who is a captain, and others have trouble finding buffalo, Rose takes matters into her own hands in a daring show of female empowerment. While the story is both compelling and satisfying, the actual hunt is not portrayed—which is understandable, although its omission feels somewhat glaring, with only a single line mentioning, “It was a good hunting day.” Overall, The Gift of the Great Buffalo offers a meaningful look at Métis-Ojibwe history, and will have broad appeal for young readers.

The Gift of the Great Buffalo offers a meaningful look at Métis-Ojibwe history, and will have broad appeal for young readers.
FictionLiterary FictionFamily Drama

Dream State

Review by Alice Cary

From the very first pages of Dream State, Eric Puchner draws readers right into the seemingly charmed world of a multigenerational summer lake house in the imaginary town of Salish, Montana—a house graced with outdated carpet, board games, bric-a-brac on every windowsill, Adirondack chairs, apple orchards, raspberry bushes and cherry trees. “Fingers stained red,” Puchner writes, “bloated with fruit, you’d run across Route 35 and jump into the lake to clean off, whooping lustily at the cold, feeling like a character in a Russian novel.” The year is 2004, and the cottage belongs to the Margolis family, who are ready to celebrate the wedding of anesthesiologist Charlie Margolis and his fiancée, Cece, a medical school dropout who “was sure she had something great to offer the world, something big and pure-hearted and indispensable. If only she could figure out what it was.” 

Into this scene walks Charlie’s best friend, Garrett, an airport baggage handler who is hiding from life, tending to his dying father and struggling with the fallout from the accidental death of their mutual college friend, for which he feels responsible. This is a packed saga of the very best kind, spanning from the characters’ college days through their old age, examining a multitude of themes that include friendship, betrayal, marriage, parenting, aging—and also the road not taken, climate change and addiction. Not many authors could successfully pull off such a sprawling, multifaceted chronicle, but Puchner excels at both the big picture and the small details, creating funny, believable dialogue throughout and using characters’ expertise to enrich the plot (such as Charlie’s medical knowledge or Garrett’s later career as an environmental scientist specializing in wolverine protection). 

“If you look for a meaning, Tarkovsky once said, you’ll miss everything that happens,” a character says near the end of the novel, citing the Soviet filmmaker. Happily, however, this novel overflows with both meaning and intriguing plot, layer by layer, year by year, and even doubles back on itself in an artful way, returning to the Margolis wedding at the very end. 

Although very different books, Dream State shares remarkable similarities with Louise Erdrich’s The Mighty Red: They both skillfully and humorously center on a wedding and a young love triangle, a tragic accidental death, and concerns about climate change and the ways humans damage the environment. Don’t miss Dream State, whose memorable characters leave readers with plenty to contemplate about life’s most vital aspects.

Dream State is a packed saga of the very best kind, full of funny, believable dialogue and memorable characters who will leave readers with plenty to contemplate about life’s most vital aspects.
Children's & YAMiddle GradeChildren's

Cassi and the House of Memories

Review by Alice Cary

Dean Stuart makes a stellar debut with Cassi and the House of Memories, a graphic novel about a girl whose beloved grandfather suffers from dementia. It’s not only a sensitive, informative portrayal of how the disease might affect a loved one—especially for young people—but it’s also an exciting adventure story.

Cassi and her grandfather enjoy time together in his garden, but she is puzzled by some of his behaviors, especially when he suddenly doesn’t seem to recognize her. He confesses, “Sometimes I find myself in the dark” and “alone and confused.” Cassi’s grandmother further explains the situation with a helpful visual demonstration that compares falling dominoes to memories, adding, “Sometimes Grandpa goes to places that are familiar only to him. We can’t see them, but they are very real inside his head.” Cassi’s exuberant personality and Stuart’s dynamic illustrations keep things lively, even during these contemplative moments.

When her grandfather wanders off, Cassi begins to search but suddenly finds herself in a mysterious place, which turns out to be what Grandpa calls “his memory palace.” Cassi finds herself rambling through Escher-like structures of stairways, windows, and doors, and also a huge portrait gallery that allows Cassi access to events from her grandfather’s life. When certain scenes disintegrate, Cassi notes, “This must be his memory falling apart!”

Stuart’s distinctive illustrations are painterly in the very best way—distinct from the comic-book styles found in many other middle grade graphic novels—and full of both action and beauty. He cleverly distinguishes between the present, Grandpa’s memories and the haze of confusion that sometimes overtakes Grandpa’s brain.  Stuart’s use of color and pattern is particularly adept. Many colors that should be bright are muted throughout, accentuating the book’s exploration of fading memory. Cassi’s striped dress helps readers keep track of her in each scene, as does the red sweater Grandpa wears in his old age. Throughout, an elusive, colorful blue butterfly helps steer Cassi through the chaos. In an afterword, Stuart explains that his own father suffered from dementia, and that his goal with Cassi and the House of Memories “was to make a story about connecting.” Cassi learns to appreciate the many dreams, disappointments and events of her grandfather’s life—aspects such as his musical talent—and even manages to alter a past tragedy during an action-packed circus episode. Cassi and the House of Memories is a moving depiction of a grandparent and grandchild’s enduring love and continued understanding in the face of dementia.

Cassi and the House of Memories is a moving depiction of a grandparent and grandchild’s enduring love and continued understanding in the face of dementia.
NonfictionMemoir

Bibliophobia

Review by Alice Cary

In February 2019, Sarah Chihaya wrote to a colleague, “So sorry, I’m going through a weird medical thing (nothing to worry about) and am going to try and take a few days completely off!” What she omitted was that she had just been released from the psychiatric unit of a New York City hospital. In her excellent debut memoir, Bibliophobia, she writes, “Reader, it was the books that did it.”

Chihaya has the gift of being both dryly funny and searingly honest about her innermost thoughts. The result feels like having a long, intimate conversation with a particularly close friend. Before being hospitalized, Chihaya was working on her dissertation in literature and hoping to get tenure at a major university, but she couldn’t complete her manuscript. She had attempted suicide three times between the ages of 10 and 18; was diagnosed with depression, bulimia and obsessive compulsive disorder; and had long believed she was destined to die at her own hand. “It wasn’t a surprise that I ended up in the hospital,” she writes. “The main surprise was how long it took me to get there.” The crux of the memoir is in a confession she makes in chapter one: “Since I was a child, I have secretly believed that if I read enough, one day the right book would come along and save me. It is perhaps the closest thing I’ve ever had to a religious faith.” Yet for a period after being hospitalized, Chihaya found herself unable to read.

Read our Q&A with Sarah Chihaya, author of ‘Bibliophobia.’

The compelling title of her memoir comes from a recent realization that her “relationship to books has become, or perhaps has always been, an uncomfortable but necessary vacillation between love and terror—between bibliophilia and bibliophobia.” She tells her life story through this prism in artful prose, beginning with a lengthy list of meaningful texts, which range from Tana French’s The Secret Place (which she read in the hospital) and The Joan Baez Songbook to Balzac and Virginia Woolf.

Born in Canada and of Japanese descent, Chihaya felt out of place in Shaker Heights, Ohio, where her family moved. Her father was depressed, “scary and always unpredictable,” and the first books she remembers reading were the Anne of Green Gables series. In high school, when assigned Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, she realized, “My encounter with the novel made it harder to maintain my willful, pernicious blindness to the way that people saw me—and the way they talked about race around me—that I’d cultivated for so long.” On a lighter note, she read Anne Carson’s “The Glass Essay” every day during a breakup, and calls it “indisputably the greatest breakup poem ever written,” adding, “Don’t try to argue with me on this.”

Chihaya is a probing, entertaining narrator who dissects her mental illness with poignant insights and, eventually, a degree of hope: “I cannot in good conscience tell you that I have totally let go of either the suicide plot or the reading-for-salvation plot—for what is this book if not a version of that? But these are no longer the only possible outcomes.” Brave and perceptive, Bibliophobia is equal parts astute literary analysis and moving memoir.

 

Sarah Chihaya always thought books could save her from suicide. Her perceptive debut memoir, Bibliophobia, examines why.
Children's & YAYA NonfictionYA FictionYA

Banned Together

Review by Alice Cary

Banned Together: Our Fight for Readers’ Rights is a vibrant, invaluable handbook for young adults about book bans, why they’re happening, and how they can be challenged. Editor Ashley Hope Pérez, whose novel Out of Darkness became one of the most banned books in the United States, has assembled an expertly curated collection of personal essays, poems, graphic art and fiction from numerous award-winning YA authors and illustrators. 

Early on, a list of frequently asked questions about book bans notes that “from July 2021 to June 2023, PEN America documented a total of 5,894 book bans across 41 states and 247 public school districts. These book bans restricted access to the work of 2,598 authors, illustrators, and translators.” Pérez writes in her introduction, “This collection says NO WAY. We’re bringing those writers’ voices back to readers.” 

In both style and substance, Banned Together is full of appeal. Each piece opens with a portrait of its contributor by illustrator Debbie Fong (whose Next Stop was one of BookPage’s Best Middle Grade Books of 2024), followed by a short bio. These smiling portraits reinforce the feeling of a shared conversation between readers and writers. Many of the pieces are moving and personal, guaranteed to help struggling teenagers and deepen empathy and compassion. Elana K. Arnold, for instance, writes about a sexual assault she endured in college and how it affected an old friendship decades later. Equally moving is Bill Konigsberg’s essay about how he was groomed  for several years by his high school English teacher. He notes, “What I wouldn’t have given, as a teenager, to encounter a single book that explored the feelings of another gay teen. To have known that I wasn’t alone in how I felt, and to have read a story where Mr. Thomas’s conduct was called out for what it was: predatory behavior.”

Banned Together is also chock-full of resources, including suggested reading lists on topics such as Black History and “Anthologies Book Banners Don’t Want You to Read.” Book Banning tactics are not only explained, but also countered with “A Teen To-Do List: Fight Book Bans,” which suggests strategies such as attending school board meetings, voting, writing letters and making a Little Free Library featuring banned books. High school activists are profiled, such as Christopher Lau, who started a YouTube channel, “Unban Coolies,” to advocate for diverse books when one of his favorites was targeted—Coolies, a picture book about Chinese railroad workers in 1865. 

This is a must-have anthology for libraries, as well as an invaluable personal resource for high school readers. 

Banned Together is a must-have anthology for libraries, as well as an invaluable personal resource for high school readers.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

3 picture books illuminating remarkable lives

List by Alice Cary
STARRED REVIEW
February 6, 2025

3 picture books illuminating remarkable lives

These portraits of greatness illuminate the lives of brilliant Black artists, showing young readers a few sets of footsteps they might follow.
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Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

And She Was Loved

Review by Alice Cary

And She Was Loved: Toni Morrison’s Life in Stories features the teamwork of two award-winners at the top of their game: writer Andrea Davis Pinkney and Caldecott Honoree Daniel Minter. The result of their collaboration is a truly exquisite picture book that, as Pinkney explains in her author’s note, is “a love letter to an outspoken sparrow” whose writing changed the lives of many, including Pinkney herself, who struggled in school and had a hard time identifying with classroom reading lists until “like a glistening key that unlocked my soul’s need to see myself, Toni Morrison’s storytelling came into my life.”

Both the author’s and illustrator’s passion for their subject shines on every page, providing young readers with an inspiring introduction to Morrison’s life and works, urging them to use their own imaginations and “make your mark on the tar. Stitch your story.” Readers learn how Morrison, born Chloe Ardelia Wofford, based her debut novel on her childhood in Lorain, Ohio, and how she wrote before dawn as a young mother. A timeline provides additional helpful details.

Minter’s art does justice to this literary star, conveying Morrison’s energy, magic and inspiration in a variety of bright, glowing palettes, beautifully melding biographical facts in illustrations such as that of the home Morrison grew up in, or a gorgeous childhood portrait referencing The Bluest Eye, with the spiritual effect of her presence and accomplishments. In a particularly informative, fascinating artist’s note, Minter aptly calls the book “a praise poem,” while directly addressing the late author to “look closely at the lines, because some of them might resemble characters that could have lived in your novels.”

While several excellent children’s biographies of Morrison already exist, And She Was Loved is a welcome addition, bound to be treasured, just like the author herself.

While several excellent children’s biographies of Toni Morrison already exist, And She Was Loved is a welcome addition, bound to be treasured, just like the author herself.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

Go Tell It

Review by Alice Cary

Go Tell It: How James Baldwin Became a Writer is exceptional, a master class of a picture book biography overflowing with energy-infused words and pictures. Quartez Harris is a compelling storyteller, summarizing Baldwin’s early life in evocative scenes, especially his struggles with his fury-filled preacher stepfather. Harris describes, for instance, how Baldwin wrote Go Tell It on the Mountain: “As he typed, his fingers dug into his Harlem childhood and the old church songs he sang in the pews of his past. Then he pounded his typewriter like an organ thundering from a storefront church.”

The atmospheric illustrations by Caldecott honoree Gordon C. James draw young readers right into James Baldwin’s world, showing, for example, how Baldwin traversed the streets of Harlem, seeing words everywhere. On one spread, Baldwin walks amid jump-roping children and chatting bystanders, the scene covered with words swirling through the young man’s head. Later, similarly styled words surround Baldwin’s typewriter as he begins to write his first novel.

A thoughtful afterword further explains Baldwin’s accomplishments, which is especially helpful for young readers not yet ready for his writing. Go Tell It is an inspiring look at one of America’s most important writers.

Go Tell It is an inspiring look at one of America’s most important writers.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

Dream a Dress, Dream a Poem

Review by Alice Cary

Dream a Dress, Dream a Poem: Dressmaker and Poet, Myra Viola Wilds introduces young readers to Myra Viola Wilds, a Kentucky woman who lived during the Jim Crow era and left her home in the hills for “the city” to become a dressmaker. Eventually, she lost her vision—which the book attributes to eyestrain—and then became a poet. Although biographical details are sparse, Wilds is an admirable, intriguing creator.

Nancy Johnson James tells Wilds’ story in verse, highlighting historical notes in an afterword. She focuses on Wilds’ unending creativity, urging readers to follow her example: “Dream a dream when you struggle, between a painful past and a hopeful tomorrow. Remember when light began to fade, Myra’s art could still be made.”

Diana Ejaita’s fanciful artwork steals the show here. Bold patterns and colors fill each page, reminiscent of Matisse’s splashy shapes. She also uses linework to evoke the weave and intricate stitchwork of the dresses Wilds made. She skillfully introduces the color black into the illustrations to portray Wilds’ descent into blindness.

Dream a Dress, Dream a Poem offers a world of inspiration for young creators of many kinds.

Dream a Dress, Dream a Poem offers a world of inspiration for young creators of many kinds.

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These portraits of greatness illuminate the lives of brilliant Black artists, showing young readers a few sets of footsteps they might follow.
NonfictionMemoirEssays

Sweet Nothings

Review by Alice Cary

“Candy is about happiness in the moment—this exact moment, each subdivided microsecond of melt, each deliriously destructive chomp,” writes Sarah Perry in Sweet Nothings: Confessions of a Candy Lover. Her wonderful, near-encyclopedic ode to confectionery sweets is a collection of microessays, organized by candy color and accompanied by line drawings, including everything from Pop Rocks and Pixy Stix to wax lips and Lindt truffles. It’s quite the contrast to her first book, After the Eclipse, about her 30-year-old mother’s murder by a stranger in their home when Perry was 12. “I was so tired of darkness,” Perry writes. “Maybe my next book, I told my friends, should be about kittens and rainbows. I didn’t know how accurate that joke would prove to be.”

A supremely serious connoisseur, Perry notes, “For some, it’s sports, yoga, gardening, or sex; for me it’s candy—and sex, though not at the same time.” Indeed, her writing can be sensual, as in her description of an Aero bar: “Hold a section in your mouth and feel it break down, chamber by chamber, your saliva flooding it like the compartments of the Titanic.” She’s often humorous, noting, for instance, her love of Vitafusion melatonin gummies: “I’m candy dependent even when unconscious.” Interesting history emerges as well, such as the fact that candy bars were first popularized “as a ‘nourishing lunch’ for hungry men and rations for exhausted soldiers in World War I.”

What’s perhaps most fun are Perry’s strong opinions. She calls cotton candy “an edible cloud, the purest possible form of sugar, a miracle of physics, and still, I hate it.” Of Necco wafers, she confesses, “I just cannot believe that anybody truly likes these. Like refined Tums.” And Junior Mints are “the most candy of the mints, total perfection all around.”

This is much more than a book about sweets, however. Perry uses the subject to delve into many aspects of pop culture, politics, emotion and her past and present life, including her polyamorous relationships. Throughout, she draws sharp, poignant connections between her musings about candy, and memories and loss of her mother: “There’s a satisfaction in learning the real meaning behind any childhood moment, even if that meaning is sad or scary. It takes these floating, isolated memories and pins them to the fabric of your life story, allowing you to better retain them within a greater context.”

Dip in and out of these essays as you would your favorite treat. Sweet but never saccharine, Sweet Nothings is a book worth savoring.

 

Sweet but never saccharine, Sarah Perry’s collection of essays about candy, Sweet Nothings, is a book worth savoring.
FictionLiterary FictionDebut Fiction

Going Home

Review by Alice Cary

Téo Erskine is a Londoner in his 30s with an orderly, if somewhat aimless, life. As Tom Lamont writes in his smart, warm-hearted debut, Going Home: “He had been careful to arrange a life in which he could leave obligations at the door of his flat, next to the coins he saved for Ben’s poker nights and his shoes that were comfiest for driving.” Téo’s life is completely upended, however, during a weekend back home in his North London neighborhood. He offers to babysit the toddler son, Joel, of his childhood friend Lia, a single mom for whom he has longed for ages, in hopes that his chivalry might gain him favor. Instead, however, an unimaginable tragedy occurs, and Téo suddenly finds himself Joel’s reluctant, bewildered guardian.

The novel focuses on the ongoing question of Joel’s permanent guardianship while showing how the young boy changes the lives of those in his orbit. There’s Téo, of course, who blunders his way through car seat and nappy issues, wondering, “Was it water you did give small children or never gave them?” Téo’s father, Vic, whose life is now shrinking due to the advancing effects of Parkinson’s disease, quickly becomes smitten with Joel, especially since he himself grew up in an orphanage. Téo leans on his best friend, Ben, for support, but because of Ben’s wealth and self-centeredness, they don’t always see eye to eye—especially after Ben informs Téo that he had a brief fling with Lia. Rounding out this exceedingly well-drawn cast is rabbi Sibyl Challis, who is on probation with her congregation, and questioning her faith in the wake of Lia’s tragedy.

Comparisons to Nick Hornby’s About a Boy are inevitable and well deserved. Going Home overflows with heart, and its characters feel real with their multitude of dreams, fears, serious self-doubts and fierce loyalties. Over the course of a year, Lamont paces events with precision and humor, asking life’s big questions regarding family and friendship, duty and devotion. Going Home marks the debut of a gifted writer whose readers will find themselves feeling better, somehow, about the world.

Going Home marks the debut of a gifted writer whose readers will find themselves feeling better, somehow, about the world.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

Go Tell It

Review by Alice Cary

Go Tell It: How James Baldwin Became a Writer is exceptional, a master class of a picture book biography overflowing with energy-infused words and pictures. Quartez Harris is a compelling storyteller, summarizing Baldwin’s early life in evocative scenes, especially his struggles with his fury-filled preacher stepfather. Harris describes, for instance, how Baldwin wrote Go Tell It on the Mountain: “As he typed, his fingers dug into his Harlem childhood and the old church songs he sang in the pews of his past. Then he pounded his typewriter like an organ thundering from a storefront church.”

The atmospheric illustrations by Caldecott honoree Gordon C. James draw young readers right into James Baldwin’s world, showing, for example, how Baldwin traversed the streets of Harlem, seeing words everywhere. On one spread, Baldwin walks amid jump-roping children and chatting bystanders, the scene covered with words swirling through the young man’s head. Later, similarly styled words surround Baldwin’s typewriter as he begins to write his first novel.

A thoughtful afterword further explains Baldwin’s accomplishments, which is especially helpful for young readers not yet ready for his writing. Go Tell It is an inspiring look at one of America’s most important writers.

Go Tell It is an inspiring look at one of America’s most important writers.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

Dream a Dress, Dream a Poem

Review by Alice Cary

Dream a Dress, Dream a Poem: Dressmaker and Poet, Myra Viola Wilds introduces young readers to Myra Viola Wilds, a Kentucky woman who lived during the Jim Crow era and left her home in the hills for “the city” to become a dressmaker. Eventually, she lost her vision—which the book attributes to eyestrain—and then became a poet. Although biographical details are sparse, Wilds is an admirable, intriguing creator.

Nancy Johnson James tells Wilds’ story in verse, highlighting historical notes in an afterword. She focuses on Wilds’ unending creativity, urging readers to follow her example: “Dream a dream when you struggle, between a painful past and a hopeful tomorrow. Remember when light began to fade, Myra’s art could still be made.”

Diana Ejaita’s fanciful artwork steals the show here. Bold patterns and colors fill each page, reminiscent of Matisse’s splashy shapes. She also uses linework to evoke the weave and intricate stitchwork of the dresses Wilds made. She skillfully introduces the color black into the illustrations to portray Wilds’ descent into blindness.

Dream a Dress, Dream a Poem offers a world of inspiration for young creators of many kinds.

Dream a Dress, Dream a Poem offers a world of inspiration for young creators of many kinds.
Mystery & SuspenseMystery

Dead Money

Review by Alice Cary

“This isn’t a buddy cop movie,” FBI agent Jameson Danner tells corporate fixer Mackenzie Clyde, who’s been called in to help investigate the murder of Trevor Canon, the CEO of a Silicon Valley tech startup called Journy—“the biggest, buzziest startup on the planet.” “We don’t partner with amateurs,” Danner adds. “Especially not a [venture capital] lawyer with zero criminal training.” 

That’s the initial standoff—the first of many—in Jakob Kerr’s fast-paced debut mystery, Dead Money. Kerr’s background as a lawyer and communications exec (he was one of the first Airbnb employees) lends a glamorous, galling and sometimes humorous authenticity to Dead Money’s exploration of high-stakes finance. At a Warriors basketball game, for instance, Mackenzie observes “rich white people of every size and shape . . . a parade of expensive labels and exposed ankles. Outside of Danner and the players on the court, Mackenzie couldn’t find a single man who appeared to be wearing socks.” 

Mackenzie works for Roger Hammersmith, Journy’s biggest investor, who could lose every cent he poured into the startup now that Canon’s been shot between the eyes in his private office. To make matters even more uncertain, Canon changed his will shortly before his death, inserting a “dead money” provision that freezes his company’s assets until someone is tried for his murder. 

Only the company’s board of directors, it seems, had access to Canon’s sanctum. As Mackenzie and Danner examine their potential motives and alibis, the pair’s divergent upbringings emerge. Danner is the son of the Senate minority leader, while Mackenzie was raised by a single mom. At 6-feet-2-inches, she towers over many of her peers both in height and intelligence. She has blazed a bold path for herself, and she’s not done yet. Kerr skillfully increases readers’ knowledge of Mackenzie’s past by interspersing chapters that not only reveal her background, but shed tantalizing light on her ultimate goals. 

As the danger and tensions rise, Dead Money is full of creative and timely surprises—along with numerous plot twists—leading up to a helluva concluding action scene that plays out in a memorably dramatic setting.

Author Jakob Kerr’s Silicon Valley background lends a glamorous, galling and sometimes humorous authenticity to his debut mystery, Dead Money.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

And She Was Loved

Review by Alice Cary

And She Was Loved: Toni Morrison’s Life in Stories features the teamwork of two award-winners at the top of their game: writer Andrea Davis Pinkney and Caldecott Honoree Daniel Minter. The result of their collaboration is a truly exquisite picture book that, as Pinkney explains in her author’s note, is “a love letter to an outspoken sparrow” whose writing changed the lives of many, including Pinkney herself, who struggled in school and had a hard time identifying with classroom reading lists until “like a glistening key that unlocked my soul’s need to see myself, Toni Morrison’s storytelling came into my life.”

Both the author’s and illustrator’s passion for their subject shines on every page, providing young readers with an inspiring introduction to Morrison’s life and works, urging them to use their own imaginations and “make your mark on the tar. Stitch your story.” Readers learn how Morrison, born Chloe Ardelia Wofford, based her debut novel on her childhood in Lorain, Ohio, and how she wrote before dawn as a young mother. A timeline provides additional helpful details.

Minter’s art does justice to this literary star, conveying Morrison’s energy, magic and inspiration in a variety of bright, glowing palettes, beautifully melding biographical facts in illustrations such as that of the home Morrison grew up in, or a gorgeous childhood portrait referencing The Bluest Eye, with the spiritual effect of her presence and accomplishments. In a particularly informative, fascinating artist’s note, Minter aptly calls the book “a praise poem,” while directly addressing the late author to “look closely at the lines, because some of them might resemble characters that could have lived in your novels.”

While several excellent children’s biographies of Morrison already exist, And She Was Loved is a welcome addition, bound to be treasured, just like the author herself.

While several excellent children’s biographies of Toni Morrison already exist, And She Was Loved is a welcome addition, bound to be treasured, just like the author herself.

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