2book

Romance

New arrivals, new love, bad timing

Feature by Carole V. Bell

People say that timing is everything in romantic relationships. It’s a well-worn aphorism, but one endorsed (at least partially) by psychologists, life coaches and parents alike. Romances that center unexpected babies therefore have massive conflict built in. Bringing new life into the world is always a monumental task, but doing so while you’re forging a new connection with another human being amps up the degree of difficulty to 10. While unplanned parenting would be a game changer for any couple, characters with already challenging lives in both Life’s Too Short by Abby Jimenez and Knit, Purl, a Baby and a Girl by Hettie Bell meet new partners at the most inopportune time, and fall inexorably in love nonetheless.

Soapy rather than frothy, Abby Jimenez’s first two novels, The Friend Zone and The Happy Ever After Playlist, seamlessly combined romance, comedy and drama. Life’s Too Short, in which a globe-trotting YouTube star with a deadly neurodegenerative disease becomes guardian of her sister’s baby and falls in love with her workaholic neighbor who’s afraid to fly, further showcases Jimenez’s masterful blend of genres and tone.

For Vanessa Price, “yolo” (you only live once) is more than a catchy slogan; it’s the philosophy she lives by. At 28 years old, with a family history of ALS, she’s seen what the disease can do firsthand—the survival time from onset of symptoms averages just three years—and she’s determined to make the most of the time she has. Vanessa roams the world as a travel YouTube star, broadcasting her latest adventures and donating the bulk of her hefty earnings to ALS research. Neither settling down in one place nor long-term romantic commitments are part of the plan. And parenting is out of the question. So when her younger sister drops her infant daughter, Grace, on Vanessa's doorstep, Vanessa is very believably not equipped to take on the parental role. 

One particularly challenging night, help arrives in an unexpected package. Grace won’t stop wailing and her meltdown brings Vanessa’s sexy next-door neighbor, Adrian, to her door. Their first meeting demonstrates Jimenez's flair for character and conflict. A thoroughly lovely hunk, Adrian is smart, supportive and just a little wounded, coming off a yearlong relationship with a woman he didn’t realize was married. He’s as buttoned up and controlled as Vanessa is spontaneous and risk-taking, but he’s a natural baby whisperer and they make a great team. Though her chaotic family sees Adrian as a “Fancy Hall Cop,” Vanessa gawks admiringly at his calming effect on Grace—a “sorcery” that makes her “clutch a hand over [her] heart.” Impulsive jetsetter meets attorney who’s afraid to fly works well as an effective and creative variation on the idea that opposites attract, but the angst could easily be overwhelming. Instead, Jimenez successfully plays up the contrasts for welcome comic relief, as seen here in Vanessa’s first thought about Adrian:

"This is the hottest guy in my building. Maybe the hottest guy on my block. He is so attractive that if he rolled up on me in an alley in a windowless white van, wearing rubber gloves and waving duct tape, claiming he had candy—I’d get in."

Adrian and Vanessa's vibrancy, paired with Jimenez’s funny and irreverent writing, carry the reader through. The banter, mutual adoration and chemistry between Adrian and Vanessa are more than enough to trigger a swoon. These are irresistible characters, and Life’s Too Short will win readers over with its charm.

In Knit, Purl, A Baby and a Girl, single mother-to-be Poppy Adams’ life is much less glamorous than Vanessa’s. But they have one essential thing in common: becoming a parent was not part of their plan. Poppy is not in a good place emotionally, even before she learns that she’s pregnant. The 22-year-old is insecure, isolated and struggles with negative self-talk and self-loathing. Finding out that she’s pregnant after a drunken round of sex with her ex is the last thing she needs. After drugstore tests come up positive, she goes to Planned Parenthood almost set on having an abortion (though she’s internally unsure as to why), but comes out encouraged and determined to have the baby. Impending motherhood also leads her to join a knitting group where she runs into the very cute and supportive Rhiannon, who also happens to have been her kindly clinic escort.

In her first contemporary romance, Canadian author Hettie Bell (who also writes as Heidi Belleau) creates a sensitive, information-rich portrait of the experience of visiting a Planned Parenthood clinic in the early stages of pregnancy and all the factors that affect what happens next. As Poppy arrives at Planned Parenthood, Bell describes the gauntlet of protest many clients have to face just to get to the front door, the clinic escorts who help them navigate it and the counselors inside who clearly outline the options. Though she is strongly pro-choice, the conclusion Poppy arrives at is this: It’s time to grow up, and she wants to be a parent.

This is a particularly big step since a lifetime of harsh parental criticism has left Poppy with a damaged sense of self, and she struggles with social comparisons and a kind of failure to launch syndrome as a result. You know someone's not in a good place with their family when an innocuous declaration that she’s taking up knitting triggers the response of “Yeah sure, good luck with that” from her sister. Bell paints a consistently convincing portrait of Poppy as someone whose biggest challenge is psychological well-being and maturity. But Poppy also recognizes that she has the fundamental stability needed to take care of a child. Though she beats herself up for being a college dropout, that’s largely due to her family’s expectations. Financially, she’s doing ok. She has a small but comfortable home and a reliable job with health insurance. Similarly to how director/writer Gillian Robespierre’s rom-com Obvious Child normalized abortion, Knit, Purl shows the experience of choosing to become a young, single mother in a complex, loving, but still pro-choice way.

Maturity and a combination of family and pregnancy-related complications end up being the biggest barriers to Poppy’s relationship with the wonderfully sweet and hot Rhiannon, who leads the knitting group. There’s no question that they’re drawn to each other, and Rhiannon likes and appreciates Poppy from the start. They enjoy undeniable sexual chemistry, which Bell brings to vivid life on the page, but Rhiannon is understandably cautious about jumping into a committed relationship with a pregnant woman she’s just met and committing to being part of a child’s life. They’re mulling over the potential for co-parenting before they’ve even begun to formally date. The primary push-pull centers on the complexities of forging a new relationship under those circumstances and Poppy’s instinctual desire to make Rhiannon an instant partner.

Poppy’s loneliness and insecurities are palpable and vividly rendered. But she’s given no support system outside of the new knitting group and her girlfriend Rhiannon. All the spotlight is on the emotional growth of this one character whose near total isolation and alienation are confusing given her personality. As a result, Bell’s romance is largely a coming-of-age story about a woman on the cusp of adulthood as much as it’s a love story between Poppy and Rhiannon.

Knit, Purl, a Baby and a Girl is an imperfect but original and emotionally engaging story that is worth reading for its messy but realistic portrayal of unplanned pregnancy and a young woman coming into her own.

Bringing new life into the world is always a monumental task, but doing so while you’re forging a new connection with another human being amps up the degree of difficulty to 10.

Children's & YAPicture Book

Magical, marvelous mothers

Feature by Alice Cary

It’s always important to let Mom know how much you love her. Two picture books celebrate what makes moms magnificent, putting Mom on the proper pedestal. One sings of the sacred connection between mother and child, while the other is packed with sass, silliness and ceaseless devotion.

If you’re searching for the perfect gift for someone’s first Mother’s Day, look no further than I Sang You Down From the Stars. Rooted in Indigenous traditions and cultures, it beautifully expresses a mother’s hopes, dreams and love for her newborn.

A Cree and Trinidadian writer living in Manitoba, Canada, author Tasha Spillett-Sumner conveys much with few words, particularly in the lines that open and close the book: “I loved you before I met you. Before I held you in my arms, I sang you down from the stars.” A pregnant woman addresses her unborn child as she collects items such as an eagle feather and a river stone for a medicine bundle. It’s “something that the child can carry and lean on through their life journey,” Spillett-Sumner explains in an author’s note.

Exquisite illustrations by 2021 Caldecott Medalist Michaela Goade (We Are Water Protectors) contain a blend of earthly and ethereal touches. As we see the mother prepare for her child’s birth and then hold her newborn, and as friends and family welcome the new arrival, Goade surrounds each scene with a starry “swoosh” that depicts the “flow of energy that connects all living things.” This understated but omnipresent magical swirl leads readers from page to page. Rich, saturated shades of blue, purple, green and vermillion lend worldly weight to the text’s celestial themes.

I Sang You Down From the Stars marvelously conveys not only the bonds between mother and child but also the multitude of connections that await every child—connections to family, community and Earth itself.

What happens when that newborn bundle of joy grows up to become a real, live kid? What does it take to be a modern mom? Your Mama is an exuberant ode to supermoms everywhere. Author NoNieqa Ramos transforms “your mama” jokes into a series of poetic tributes from a daughter to her mom. For instance, “Your mama so strong, she like a marine. Up three flights of stairs, carries the groceries.”

Indeed, this cool mama is as comfortable showing her daughter how to fly a drone as she is wearing a flowing dress and high heels at parents’ night at school. She can sew costumes, plan spectacular parties and become a tour guide on rip-roaring road trips. Her adoring daughter knows all too well that this mama is her “A-Team.”

Ramos never forgets to include reality amid all the adulation. Even after the daughter messes with her mother’s makeup, uses the couch as a trampoline and makes her mother “cray cray,” her mama is still “so forgiving, she lets you keep on living.” Mama also instills important values in her daughter, taking her along every time she votes and reminding her that true wealth means “rollin’ in” friends, family and “you, her gold.”

Jacqueline Alcántara’s illustrations are as lively as Ramos’ text. They burst with bright colors, strong outlines and movement, whether Mama is marching into the library with a stack of books or jumping sky-high on the couch with her daughter. Humor and happiness fill every page, from a scene of highway karaoke with a hairbrush microphone to a spread in their kitchen in which Mama offers her daughter a lick from the cake mixer as Ramos muses, “She’s the cinnamon to your tembleque, the tres leches to your cake.”

Your Mama hits the perfect note of sweetness, without an ounce of treacle.

It’s always important to let Mom know how much you love her. Two picture books celebrate what makes moms magnificent, putting Mom on the proper pedestal.

NonfictionMemoirMedicine

Good advice for grads entering the new normal

Feature by Carly Nations

When I graduated from high school in 2008, the U.S. was plummeting into a financial collapse that tanked the rest of the world’s economy as well. By the time I graduated from college in 2012, the descriptions of most entry-level positions began, “Must have at least five years of relevant experience.” And no one really had any advice about what to do with the massive, overwhelming problem that was and is student debt.

In 2021, as graduates face not only economic hardship but also the pandemics of poverty, racism and COVID-19, good advice is equally hard to find. The past year has taught them that stability is the illusion, while change and upheaval are the norm. Facing an uncertain future means figuring out how to navigate big changes.

In Letter to a Young Female Physician: Notes From a Medical Life, author Suzanne Koven explores her own personal crises and growth, weaving them within the story of her practice as an internist, or doctor of internal medicine. Koven discusses her struggles with image, identity, sexuality and weight and sees these things as inextricably tied to her desire to be someone important: a doctor. Yet, what Koven discovers is that despite succeeding and becoming a doctor, she failed to overcome the impostor syndrome that plagued her even before she held others’ lives in her hands.

In this way, Koven’s story speaks to the impostor in all of us. Koven writes that “even the most blameless patient, the victim of an accident or a random illness in no way related to anything that person did and in no way preventable by them, feels shame.” We’re all victims of senseless suffering—an economic collapse, a pandemic. These shared traumas reveal our shame; but Koven advises us not to ignore or try to defeat it but rather to allow it to shape us into better, more empathetic people.

By contrast, Your Turn: How to Be an Adult by Julie Lythcott-Haims falls into the more traditional, practical advice category. With frank, straightforward counsel and to-do list chapter titles, Your Turn gives advice that all of us—adults, young adults and children—need to hear.

Citing the work of bestselling psychology researchers and writers like Lori Gottlieb and Brené Brown, Lythcott-Haims’ book advises young people to take chances and find what makes them happy, rather than following a prescribed path to success. Perhaps the most moving passages are the “don’t just take it from me” stories collected from various friends, acquaintances and pen pals. In a world that feels so isolating, reading these deeply intimate stories reminds us why we long to live in community with one another and how doing so truly helps us survive and thrive.

The greatest takeaway from both of these books isn’t the advice they provide but their acknowledgement that we all need each other. Alone, we’re more susceptible to our own shame and self-doubt. Yet here we are, longing not for some sort of undefinable success but simply to be in each other’s presence again. To be sure, many obstacles still stand in the way of our ideal lives; for example, no one envisions a pandemic as the perfect start to adulthood. But sharing our stories is the first step forward, as these tender, inspiring books make clear.

The greatest takeaway from both of these books for burgeoning adults isn’t the advice but the acknowledgement that we all need each other.
Children's & YAPicture Book

Tips for Teachers: Leaving home, finding home

Feature by Emmie Stuart

Tips for Teachers is a monthly column in which experienced teacher and children’s librarian Emmie Stuart shares book recommendations and a corresponding teaching guide for fellow elementary school teachers.

One of my favorite movies is John Crowley’s 2015 film, Brooklyn, adapted for film by Nick Hornby from Colm Tóibin’s novel of the same name. It’s the story of Eilis Lacey, a young woman played by Saoirse Ronan, who leaves her home in a small Irish village for a new life in New York City in the early 1950s. It’s tender, unassuming and deeply moving.

In the final lines of the film, Eilis gives some advice to another young woman who’s making the same journey that she did from Ireland to America:

"You'll feel so homesick that you'll want to die, and there's nothing you can do about it apart from endure it. But you will, and it won't kill you. And one day the sun’ll come out. You might not even notice straight away, it'll be that faint. And then you'll catch yourself thinking about something or someone who has no connection with the past, someone who’s only yours. And you’ll realize that this is where your life is.”

These lines, delivered in Ronan’s Irish brogue, kept running through my mind as I read these books aloud with my students.

Leaving home is hard and, as Eilis experienced, many immigrants feel caught between two places and struggle to define what home means. As they validate how challenging adjusting to a new home can be, these three picture books offer hope for children who have immigrated to a new country and light for all those still in the opening chapters of their life’s story. 

Home Is in Between
By Mitali Perkins
Illustrated by Lavanya Naidu  

“Goodbye, home!” Shanti shouts as she waves to her grandmother, Didu, and the familiar surroundings of her village in India. When her plane lands, she discovers that her new home is “a town with cold rain / And orange and yellow leaves.” Adjusting is challenging. Shanti celebrates Indian traditions and customs and learns new American ones, always “remembering the village. Learning the town. Again and again. In Between.” At first, Shanti skips buoyantly through new experiences, such as Hollywood movies and Halloween, but eventually Shanti becomes exhausted from traversing between two cultures. “Where was she from? Village? Town?” she wonders. Resting in this question restores Shanti’s spirit and reminds her that perhaps the best home is actually in between. Accessible and sincere, Shanti’s story shines a light on the challenges and joys of inhabiting, embracing and celebrating two cultures. 

  • Illustration conversations

Discuss the concept of a picture book’s gutter, the vertical seam between the left (or verso) and right (or recto) pages formed by the book’s binding. Share examples of books that effectively use the gutter to extend the narrative or to add meaning to the story. I used Chris Raschka’s Yo! Yes?, Matthew Cordell’s Hello! Hello!, Jon Agee’s The Wall in the Middle of the Book and Suzy Lee’s Wave. 


Reread Home Is in Between and let students articulate how Naidu uses the gutter to differentiate between the two cultures depicted in the book. Naidu places Shanti’s apartment, full of keepsakes and reminders of her life in India, on the left side of the gutter, while on the right are Shanti’s experiences in her new American town. Ask students, “What do you notice about Shanti’s position on the pages? What does this tell us about Shanti’s thoughts about her two homes?”

  • Classroom celebrations

Shanti calls her family in India on the day of the Holi festival. Read aloud an informational book about Holi and invite students to share ideas for how Holi could be celebrated in the classroom. Next, divide students into small groups and provide books or online resources that explain a variety of cultural celebrations and holidays. Each group will choose a celebration to present to the class. Presentations must include information about the history of the celebration and where and how it is celebrated. Each group will also plan two to three ways to acknowledge the celebration in the classroom and choose a date that the celebration will occur. 

  • Goodbye pictures

When Shanti leaves India, Shanti tells her grandmother goodbye, but she also waves goodbye to “warm monsoon rains. And the green palm trees of her village.” Before dismissing children for the day, gather them together and tell them that their homework is to notice what they especially love about their community, town or geographical region. Show them a few pictures of places that are significantly different from your area (I used pictures of the Arizona desert and the Australian coast). Ask them to draw on their five senses and brainstorm about what they know and love about their corner of the world. What are two things they would miss if they had to move away from this area? The next day, invite students to share their brainstorming and provide paper for them to write and illustrate their goodbyes on. 


Watercress
By Andrea Wang
Illustrated by Jason Chin 

A young girl is annoyed when her parents pull their car over to the side of the road in the middle of an Ohio corn field to gather watercress. The uncomfortable, tedious process transforms the girl’s annoyance into disgust and embarrassment. When the watercress is served at dinner that night, she crosses her arms and refuses to eat. But when her mother shares the heartbreaking story of the famine that took her brother’s life during her childhood in China, the girl views the watercress on her family table with new understanding and deep appreciation. Using a single event to illustrate the misunderstandings that can happen between first-generation immigrants and their children, Watercress illuminates the importance of knowing, embracing and valuing cultural heritage. 

  • Food recollections

Watercress is much more than just a vegetable to the girl’s mother. It brings back memories and is a “delicate and slightly bitter” symbol of her childhood in China. Invite students to consider a food or dish that symbolizes a family tradition or holds strong memories. Give them time to free write, then guide them through turning their thoughts into a short essay rich with sensory language. This exercise is a good opportunity for teaching students how to incorporate figurative language into narrative writing. 


  • Word meanings

The girl’s mother praises watercress for being free, but to the girl, “Free is bad. Free is hand-me-down clothes and roadside trash-heap furniture and now, dinner from a ditch.” Lead students in a discussion about the word free. Based on the mother’s story and the history of China, what do they think free symbolizes for her? Write the word at the top of a piece of chart paper and make a T-chart. Making inferences from the book's text and illustrations, fill one column with the mother’s definition and thoughts about the word and the other column with the daughter’s ideas and connotations.

  • At home with culture

Though the family lives in Ohio, the girl’s parents are intentional about honoring their Chinese heritage. Take a picture walk through the book and ask students to identify specific details in the illustrations that signify the family’s heritage. My classes found several examples in the dining room scenes. Encourage students to notice cultural elements present in their own homes or in the home of relatives. Invite older students to journal about the ways their home decor or family routines reflect their heritage or their family’s values. If time allows, read books that contain pictures of homes around the world and discuss similarities and differences.  


ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our starred review of Watercress.

Coquí in the City
By Nomar Perez  

Miguel loves his life in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He loves flying kites by el Morro, the old fort; playing baseball with his friends at the park; buying quesitos, his favorite treat, from the bakery; and listening to his abuelo’s stories. Most of all, he loves his pet frog, Coquí, who accompanies him on all of these activities, because he is “part of the familia.” When Miguel’s parents tell him that they will be moving to the U.S. mainland, Miguel worries about missing all his favorite things, but most of all, he knows he will miss Coquí, who must stay behind. When Miguel and Mama venture into their New York City neighborhood for the first time, Miguel is overwhelmed by “the newness of everything.” His spirits lift when they find a park and he discovers familiar sights and sounds, including a pond with several frogs. On the journey home, they pass a bakery selling quesitos. Drifting off to sleep that night, Miguel realizes that San Juan will always be a part of him. Though some things are “definitely different in New York,” other things are “just the same.” 

  • Venn diagram

This book offers a wonderful opportunity to introduce young students to Venn diagrams. As a class, create a Venn diagram that compares Miguel’s life in San Juan and New York City. Be sure to leave enough room in the overlapping section in the center to list similarities. Use the diagram to spark a conversation about similarities and differences between cities around the world. If any of the students in your class are immigrants themselves, invite them to share experiences and traditions they remember from their home cities and to reflect on which experiences are different and which are “just the same” as their experiences in the United States.



  • Further reading

There is an abundance of wonderful books about children who leave home and move to another place. Extend Miguel’s experience by sharing more immigration stories with students. My favorites include Junot Díaz and Leo Espinosa’s Islandborn, Aliki’s Marianthe’s Story, Riki Levinson and Diane Goode’s Watch the Stars Come Out and Thrity Umrigar and Khoa Le’s Sugar in Milk. For older readers, I recommend Jasmine Warga’s Other Words for Home and Bette Bao Lord and Marc Simon’s In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson.

Leaving home is hard and many immigrants feel caught between two places and struggle to define what home means. As they validate how challenging adjusting to a new home can be, these three picture books offer hope for children who have immigrated to a new country and light for all those still in the opening chapters of their life’s story.;

NonfictionCrafts, Hobbies & HomeArts & CultureAging

Lifestyles: June 2021

Feature by bookpagedev

This month’s new lifestyles books are an eclectic mix that make quite a splash—from menopause advice to wild patterns of wallpaper to whimsical nudges to try new things.

★ What Fresh Hell Is This?

Remember Gen X? No? That’s fine, no one does. But hey, we’re out here, and we’re heading into midlife and its many crises. Good thing we have Heather Corinna with us along for the bumpy ride, like the whip-smart, sardonic friend you used to hang with at punk shows who’s now armed with a metric ton of hard-earned wisdom about the endocrine system, advice for vasomotor freakouts and edibles. A longtime champion of feminist health, Corinna has previously written books for teens and tweens about bodies, sexuality and relationships. Their new book, What Fresh Hell Is This?, is a brilliantly irreverent and disruptive addition to the menopause survival/triumph category. Corinna writes forthrightly about their own experience, describing it as “not great in the way that, say, the 2016 US presidential election was not great.” They put their activist mojo to use in a guide that argues forcefully for new thinking about perimenopause, with a lot of laughs—and comics and Mad Libs!—along the way. Game changed.

Jungalow

Have you always been a sucker for luscious displays of color, pattern and texture in your personal space? Or, after a year of staying home, are you fed up with your minimalist, white-walled temple and ready to splash bright shades and wallpaper everywhere? Maybe you just need a gorgeous, aspirational coffee-table book to page through while you wait for the takeout to arrive. If your answer to any of these possibilities is yes, then the new Justina Blakeney will be your jam. Fans of her wildly successful The New Bohemians (I am one) will swoon over Jungalow: Decorate Wild. Never afraid to go big on a multiplicity of patterns, Blakeney asserts that “mixing is magic” and shows us how it’s done. Biophilia gets a loving nod here, too, with a chapter on how to work houseplants into your wild style. Prepare to be dazzled.

A Year of Weeks

Seven days is a short but solid amount of time to try something new—too brief, perhaps, to lead to a new habit, but sure to bring a sense of accomplishment, or at least satisfied amusement. Can you commit to doing one new thing for a single week? Sure you can, says Erica Root in A Year of Weeks. Cute as can be, this fully hand-drawn interactive workbook contains 52 prompts, from whimsical to practical, nudging us to draw, put on our thinking caps, be kind, follow our curiosity and so on. Show gratitude, notice everyday beauty, clean one thing, help someone or write someone a note. Design seven new socks or bookmarks or coffee mugs or hairstyles! In each case, you’re aiming for seven consecutive days of trying out your selected task, and Root’s drawings invite you to record evidence of your efforts right in the book. Pick up two copies: one for you and one for a pal or family member, because a little friendly accountability will only make the challenges sweeter.

This month’s new lifestyles books are an eclectic mix that make quite a splash—from menopause advice to wild patterns of wallpaper to whimsical nudges to try new things.
Romance

Romance: June 2021

Feature by Christie Ridgway

The myth of Hades and Persephone gets a sexy, modern update in this month’s romance column.

★ Neon Gods

The Hades-Persephone myth gets a modern spin in Katee Robert’s imaginative retelling, Neon Gods, the first book in the Dark Olympus duology. In this clever and sexy tale, Persephone is a socialite forced into an unwanted engagement to the murderous Zeus. In her flight from the announcement party, she runs across the River Styx and into the arms of Hades. She thought he was dead, or a myth, but he’s very much alive, attractive and determined to hate Zeus. They make a mutually beneficial bargain to enter into a (sometimes very public) sexual relationship, hoping to humiliate the man they both despise. But the brooding Hades finds the sweet and sunny Persephone appealing in other ways, and they soon find common ground, along with a fiery passion. They don’t believe it can last, and Robert conveys the sense of impending doom looming over their uncommon, forbidden love. Peppered with sizzling erotic scenes, Neon Gods is dangerous, fun and difficult to put down.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Why Katee Robert's written not one, but two romances inspired by Hades.

Heart and Seoul

In Heart and Seoul by Jen Frederick, 25-year-old Hara Wilson heads for South Korea to seek out her birth parents after a lifetime of feeling ambivalent about her cultural identity. Apprehensive but ready for adventure, she steps off the plane and right into a meet cute with a young businessman, Choi Yujun. Discovering her roots takes precedence over a fling, of course, but then Yujun makes himself available as tour guide and explainer of Korean culture. Hara finds herself fascinated and enchanted with it all—including Yujun. Frederick shows Hara’s burgeoning appreciation for her birth country through lush descriptions of the food and sights of Seoul. But as Hara’s search for her roots begins to pay off, she’s left feeling more muddled about her place in the world. And the vacation romance is splendid until the ties that bind Hara and Yujun are revealed to be more tangled than they could imagine. Heart and Seoul is bittersweet (don’t worry—there’s a sequel set for later this year), but Hara and Yujun are a swoon-worthy couple, and there’s longing, loss and love on every page of their story.

How to Survive a Scandal

A lady marries a commoner to avert destructive gossip in How to Survive a Scandal, the first book in Samara Parish’s Rebels With a Cause series. Lady Amelia leads Regency society as an accomplished beauty and has recently become engaged to a duke. But when she’s discovered in a compromising position with Benedict Asterly, a brash but successful manufacturer of steam locomotives, that engagement is off. Amelia finds herself married instead to the unpolished Benedict and living in a large but neglected house far, far from her previous life in London. The pair is like the proverbial oil and water and must grapple with matters of class, wealth and power on their path to love. Amelia and Benedict are an appealing pair, and watching them become their better selves—the heartbeat of all satisfying romances—is delicious and thoroughly gratifying.

The myth of Hades and Persephone gets a sexy, modern update in this month’s romance column.

NonfictionLGBTQ+

Accompaniment for LGBTQ+ fellow travelers

Feature by Jessica Wakeman

Queer culture has a rich history of elders mentoring younger folks and guiding them through a way of being that’s still far too stigmatized. The millennial authors of these books are hardly elders, but neither had the LGBTQ+ resources they needed until college. Now their books leave a path of breadcrumbs toward authenticity for their less experienced peers, or any individuals seeking insight, solidarity and guidance.

If you started reading John Paul Brammer’s advice column in the Grindr digital magazine INTO, consider yourself lucky. The column, “¡Hola Papi!,” now exists on the platform Substack, as well as between the pages of his first book, ¡Hola Papi!: How to Come Out in a Walmart Parking Lot and Other Life Lessons, where new readers can fall in love with Brammer’s writing for the first time.

Although ostensibly an assemblage of advice columns, ¡Hola Papi! reads more like an essay collection. Each submitted question becomes an entry point for Brammer to share a story from his life as a young queer writer and artist. Growing up in rural Oklahoma, Brammer learned to live a small life so he wouldn’t attract attention. Middle school classmates tortured him with homophobic bullying, so much so that he harbored a desire for suicide in the eighth grade. Branded by this trauma, Brammer remained closeted until college.

But coming out doesn’t provide all the answers. If anything, looking for love and connection on apps like OkCupid and Grindr can make life more confusing. In each essay, Brammer explores his negotiations with himself and others to exist as a queer, biracial man and the universal struggle of wanting to be accepted. Anyone who has grappled with their own identities will relate to Brammer as he wrestles with insecurities and forges ahead through the haze of depression.

Brammer’s talent as a storyteller lies in extracting profound meaning from seemingly minor events and feelings. One particularly tender essay, for example, revisits the time a former middle school bully hit him up on a gay dating app when they were adults. ¡Hola Papi! is a testament to turning past struggles and humiliations into fuel for a brighter future, and to owning your experiences by reframing the narrative and finding agency in the retelling.

The Ex-Girlfriend of My Ex-Girlfriend Is My Girlfriend: Advice on Queer Dating, Love, and Friendship is based on a zine that author Maddy Court created in grad school. Now in book form, her advice is accompanied by lively Day-Glo art and comics by illustrator Kelsey Wroten. Court primarily explores the experiences of women who are lesbian and bisexual, as well as those of people whose genders have been historically marginalized. But her advice—gentle nudges toward therapy or research about attachment theory—could help anyone who needs a compassionate ear.

Of course, there are the usual advice column staples—heartbreak, rejection and jealousy—but Court also addresses problems as varied as painful sex, being new to polyamory and coming out at a Christian college. She’s sensitive and loving as she addresses questions from people who are still in the closet, like how to find closure with people you never actually dated. And when she’s not the best person to provide counsel about a particular issue, she calls in advice from others, such as Le Tigre musician JD Samson and Wow, No Thank You. author Samantha Irby.

Court makes clear that finding queer community and consuming queer media are vitally important, because of how crucial it is to see yourself represented. By its very existence, The Ex-Girlfriend of My Ex-Girlfriend Is My Girlfriend accomplishes this, too, as it assures us that our problems are not so uncommon and we’re all less alone than we think.

Two collections of advice leave a path of breadcrumbs toward authenticity for LGBTQ+ folks, or any individuals seeking insight, solidarity and guidance.
YA FictionYA

Radiant rainbow reads

Feature by Heather Seggel

Three young adult novels put inclusive queer representation in the spotlight and capture how contemporary teens connect both in person and online. Although the storytelling styles vary, the emotions in these novels run as deep as love itself.

Meet Cute Diary

Noah is a blogger who’s built a huge following by publishing made-up stories of trans romances that his readers believe are anonymously submitted by real people. But a disgruntled reader has called Noah out, putting his online reputation at risk. To win over the skeptics, Noah embarks on a fake romance with Drew, an older guy who seems too good to be true. Could going along with his own romantic hoax cost Noah a chance at the real thing?

Emery Lee’s Meet Cute Diary is a charming cautionary tale about the limits of online fame. Noah is so overly invested in his blog that he’s often rude to his friends and family. Though he has moments of self-awareness, he soon reverts back to the same behavior. Then he grudgingly takes a summer job that leads to a sweet relationship with a fellow camp counselor. As he and Devin get to know one another, Noah’s need for clicks and likes begins to lose its luster, and he starts to understand that being honest with the readers he once lied to, albeit under the guise of offering them hope, is the responsible thing to do.

Meet Cute Diary has some elements of a rom-com but can feel downbeat on the way to its happy ending. The fact that many trans teens don’t experience the same enthusiastic support that Noah and Devin receive from their families hangs heavy in the background. One of the novel’s best touches is the clear message that there’s no single path to transitioning and no set of pronouns that’s right for everyone. Witnessing Lee’s characters undertake the challenging work of figuring themselves out is inspiring.

Some Girls Do

Some Girls Do captures how two girls with little in common navigate a come-here-now-go-away kind of love. Morgan is a new student, an elite runner embroiled in a lawsuit against her old Catholic school. To Morgan, being out and proud is as necessary as breathing. Ruby is scraping by to make ends meet and running herself ragged on the pageant circuit, where her mother insists she’s on track to become the next Miss America. They meet cute when Ruby almost runs over Morgan with her beloved Ford Torino, and mixed into their mutual anger is an undeniable spark. Morgan would like to coax it to flame, but Ruby’s life depends on her extinguishing it as quickly as possible, and therein lies the dilemma.

Author Jennifer Dugan wisely lets readers spend time inside each girl’s head through chapters that alternate between their perspectives. They are both busy, overworked students, but their shared obsession quickly builds and spills over into a furtive romance. The demands of parents, teachers and friends weigh on each of them differently. For Morgan, being demonstrative and declarative about things in public makes them real; were Ruby to do that, she’d risk being kicked out of her home. Navigating that divide is messy, but Dugan describes it with empathy. The girls’ occupations and relationships feel real and add to the sense of high school as a pressure cooker, especially in what seems like the ultimate small-town setting, where a rumor can make or break a reputation. 

Ruby’s and Morgan’s stories unfold in tandem, intersecting and separating as events progress and both girls grow and change. Some Girls Do is a sweet novel that offers plenty of rough edges and no easy answers.

The Sky Blues

Robbie Couch’s beautifully realized and heartwarming debut novel, The Sky Blues, hinges on the countdown to a high school rite of passage: asking someone to the prom. Sky Baker is gay and a major introvert; this “promposal” is a chance to leave his comfort zone and ask out his crush, Ali Rashad, so Sky and his friend Bree have been scheming up great ideas together. Then a hacker leaks their plans to the whole school, along with a racist, homophobic message that targets both Sky and Ali, and gives Sky a new priority: finding the culprit.

Chapter titles track the number of days remaining until the promposal, and even as plans go awry well before the day arrives, this structure cleverly keeps the story organized and flowing. Ever since Sky’s mom kicked him out of the house for being gay, he’s been living with Bree, with Sky’s older brother serving as an ineffective go-between. Sometimes the weight of Sky’s abandonment sinks him into a heavy depression, which will resonate with anyone who has ever felt the same. It’s touching to see him receive support from classmates and one teacher in particular, and to see him thrive on their care. And there’s good humor to be found in how everyone’s crushes and intentions seem to point in the wrong direction at one time or another. 

A group of students works together to find the source of the email hack, and their teamwork eventually bears fruit, but there’s no simple justice to be had. It’s a painful lesson, but one that underscores Sky’s resilience and growing maturity. The Sky Blues reminds us that deep kindness can carry those we care about through hard times.

Three young adult novels put inclusive queer representation in the spotlight and capture how contemporary teens connect both in person and online.

Children's & YAPicture Book

Tips for Teachers: The creative spirit

Feature by Emmie Stuart

Tips for Teachers is a monthly column in which experienced teacher and children’s librarian Emmie Stuart shares book recommendations and a corresponding teaching guide for fellow elementary school teachers.

The months of May and June are greeted with joy and relief by teachers and students alike, because they mean that summer break is just around the corner. As spirits and temperatures rise, so too does students’ energy. Every school year eventually reaches a point where typical classroom routines become a thing of the past, when attempting to stick to focused lessons is a recipe for frustration.

I like to capitalize on this restless year-end energy with art projects, nature walks and library scavenger hunts, but these activities are far more than mere time fillers. They are always extensions of a book. I’ve spent much of the past week cleaning our library tables after art activities, and my white cardigan is now dotted with green and blue. My students’ colorful tissue paper collages (inspired by Eric Carle’s The Tiny Seed), watercolor and pastel nature scenes (inspired by Barb Rosenstock and Mary GrandPré’s Mornings With Monet) and colored pencil flowers (inspired by Shawn Harris’ Have You Ever Seen a Flower?) fill my heart with happiness.

These three picture books introduce women who used their artistic gifts to showcase the simple things in life, raise awareness about important issues and add beauty to the world. I can’t wait to share their stories with my students and invite them to share in that beauty through creative projects.

And I Paint It by Beth Kephart book coverAnd I Paint It: Henriette Wyeth’s World
By Beth Kephart
Illustrated by Amy June Bates

“Wherever in our world / we want to go, we go— / Pa and me,” declares young Henriette Wyeth, the oldest child of illustrator N.C. Wyeth. In lyrical first-person prose, author Beth Kephart narrates a day that Henriette spends outdoors with her father. The pair slips away from the rest of their family to explore the land around their Pennsylvania farmhouse, taking time to notice and paint the foliage, creatures and vistas. Pa encourages Henriette to sense deeply and “love the object for its own sake.” Gentle and reflective, this poetic book introduces students to a renowned family of artists and showcases the power of noticing nature’s unassuming beauty.

  • Nature still life

Take students on a nature walk around the school grounds. Encourage them to collect pieces of nature that they find beautiful. When you return to the classroom, read the page from the book where Pa reminds Henriette to “love the object for its own sake.”

Give each student a small stack of index cards. Provide many different art mediums, such as crayons, graphite pencils, markers, watercolors, washable paint and colored pencils. Invite students to depict their object in as many ways as possible. Encourage them not just to use different mediums but also to vary their approaches to perspective, color, symmetry, line and so on.

  • Wyeth family art study

Read aloud Kephart’s author’s note, which identifies Pa as N.C. Wyeth, who was an American painter and one of the most well-known illustrators of the golden age of illustration. Discuss the story’s historical time period and look at Wyeth’s iconic illustrations of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe’s Kidnapped and more. Display an illustration and ask students to describe what they see and then ask them to write a short one-paragraph story about the illustration. This exercise helps students understand that illustration is a narrative art, filled with story.

Provide oversize books that showcase Wyeth’s artwork or create a slideshow of some of his most recognizable paintings. Take a picture walk through And I Paint It and see whether students can identify settings or landscapes that are drawn from Wyeth’s paintings. Finally, look at paintings from all five of the Wyeth children and encourage students to articulate similarities and differences between them.

Make Meatballs Sing by Matthew BurgessMake Meatballs Sing: The Life & Art of Corita Kent
By Matthew Burgess
Illustrated by Kara Kramer

As a child, Frances Elizabeth Kent loved to sneak away from her five siblings to draw and daydream. After college, she decided to pursue a religious life as a nun. Now known by her monastic name, Sister Mary Corita, she began teaching art at Immaculate Heart College, where she encouraged her students to “see the sacred in the everyday.” Her work soon became inspired by new techniques and perspectives, such as screenprinting, mass media and advertising, and she used her art to bring awareness to injustice, including poverty and racism.

Illustrator Kara Kramer’s bright, graphic, neon-hued illustrations reflect Corita’s bold art style and add energy to this story of a nun’s relentless pursuit of justice. Unexpected, inspiring and fun, Make Meatballs Sing is a joyful account of Corita’s life that captures how art can create awareness, spark change and convey messages of goodness, beauty and truth.

  • Cardboard finders

In one of her art classes, Corita “asked her students to cut a small window into a piece of cardboard to make a FINDER.” She led her students down Hollywood Boulevard and encouraged them to use their finders to see the beauty and detail in ordinary things.

Use thick card stock and a square punch to make finders. Give students time to decorate their finders, then take them on a walk around the school grounds. When you return to the classroom, ask students to draw or share the details their finders revealed in ordinary objects.

  • Word art

Corita was inspired by the words and imagery found in billboards, magazine ads and street signs. She often made art by rearranging shapes, text and colors into something new. Provide old magazines and other ephemera for your students and let them create art with the words and images that inspire them. Inspired by Kramer’s illustrations in the book, I gave my students graph paper to use as their canvas.

  • Postage stamps

In 1985, the United States Postal Service commissioned Corita to design a postage stamp. She created a rainbow that symbolized love, hope, kindness and unity. Invite students to consider what message they would want to share with the world through a small postage stamp and give them time to experiment with various designs. After they have settled on their design, let them create a polished, colorful version. Once every student has shared their stamp, display the stamps together on a bulletin board.

Unbound by Joyce Scott book coverUnbound: The Life and Art of Judith Scott
By Joyce Scott with Brie Spangler and Melissa Sweet
Illustrated by Melissa Sweet

Joyce and Judith are sisters who do everything together. Their mom even says they’re “two peas in a pod.” But when it is time to begin kindergarten, Judy must stay at home because she has “what will come to be known as Down syndrome.” Joyce is devastated when Judy is sent to an institution and visits her faithfully for years. When saying goodbye becomes too hard, Joyce arranges for Judy to come live with her family in California. Joyce enrolls Judy in a local art class, and after her initial disinterest, Judy begins creating sculptures out of fiber, yarn, wood and other found objects. Exquisitely illustrated, Unbound is a tender, moving and personal tale of sisterhood that depicts the power and importance of loyalty and individual expression.

  • Found object art

Judith’s art incorporated many found objects, or items not normally considered to be art. Ask students to articulate why they think these items are classified this way. Invite them to collect found objects from their homes or the classroom. Allow them time to share their objects with a small group or the class.

Provide a variety of found objects and other supplies, such as tape, yarn, fibers, stationery, paper, cardboard, colored pencils, pastels and so on, so that students can create their own works of art. Display photographs of Judith Scott’s sculptures on a bulletin board, and display students’ sculptures on a table or shelf nearby.

  • Sculpture study

Read more about Judith’s life and art, as well as about the Creative Growth Art Center in Oakland, California, where she created her art. Make a slideshow of her sculptures. Show them to the class one by one and generate discussion by asking open-ended questions that encourage and foster visual literacy. Here are some examples of questions you can ask:

  • What do you see here?
  • What else do you notice?
  • What do you wonder?
  • How does this make you feel?
  • What do you think is going on here?
  • What do you notice about color, line, symmetry and size?
  • Do you think a story influenced this sculpture? What is it?

Three picture books introduce women who used their artistic gifts to showcase the simple things in life, raise awareness about important issues and add beauty to the world.

NonfictionFood & DrinkCrafts, Hobbies & Home

Lifestyles: July 2021

Feature by Susannah Felts

Whether you’re brightening up your space or toning it down, you’ll need a sandwich after all that hard work. These three lifestyles books have you covered on all fronts.

★ The Afrominimalist’s Guide to Living With Less

Christine Platt never imagined herself as a minimalist. A deal-hunter? A clotheshorse? Yes and yes. But when circumstances demanded she pare down, Platt found that a conscious, intentional approach to consumption had its pleasures—and didn’t have to mean white paint everywhere and surfaces whisked free of treasured belongings. In The Afrominimalist’s Guide to Living With Less, Platt, who has amassed more than 50,000 followers on Instagram, shares her story and espouses living with less, starting with doing the tough work of examining one’s deeply ingrained feelings about spending, saving, self-worth and joy. Another aspect that makes this a standout in the world of minimalism guides: Platt speaks directly to and for her fellow Black readers in sections throughout the book labeled “For the Culture.” As she notes, the “simple life” has been projected as white for too long—in more than one way.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: For the audiobook edition, Christine Platt’s calm, careful narration is both relatable and reassuring.

Just a Few Miles South

Who doesn’t love a really good sandwich? At Wallace Station, the Windy Corner Market and others in the Ouita Michel family of Kentucky restaurants, guests come back again and again for the life-changing sammies, and now they can create them at home. Just a Few Miles South features next-level fixings such as pimiento blue cheese, bourbon white cheddar cheese spread, Benedictine (a Kentucky staple) and bourbon mayo, sure to jazz up even the most desultory work-from-home lunch. Also in these pages are recipes for biscuits and gravy, po’boys, burgers, quiche, quick breads and other sweets, as well as for the sandwich bread itself. Brenna Flannery’s line drawings make this a strikingly beautiful book in black and white, but it’s also as deliciously down-to-earth as can be.  

A Room of Her Own

A Room of Her Own is something of a fever dream dance through luxurious trappings, a lush portraiture of the “personal and professional domains” of 20 extraordinary women, all of them powerhouse artists who “share a drive to infuse all aspects of their lives with their creativity.” With author and photographer Robyn Lea as your guide, step into their colorful palaces, ateliers, closets and studios. Gasp quietly at wall murals, enormous picture windows, rococo furnishings, gardens and courtyards. Imagine yourself into these rarefied settings in Milan, London, New York, Florence and Auvergne. This is a look at great privilege, to be sure, as much as it is a showcase of artists’ habitats, though many of these women have lived through great trauma, some facets of which are revealed in short narratives. The book’s feast of visuals—pattern, color, texture, light, symmetry, juxtaposition—suggests, in the end, the regenerative energy of the creative spirit.

Whether you’re brightening up your space or toning it down, you’ll need a sandwich after all that hard work. These three lifestyles books have you covered on all fronts.
Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Of magic and mayhem

Feature by Kevin Delecki

In two middle grade fantasy novels, each set against a mythology-inspired backdrop, girls battle monsters that are bent on destroying everything they love. These books are perfect for readers who dream of worlds far beyond what we can see with our own eyes.

In Josephine Against the Sea, Barbadian author Shakirah Bourne introduces 10-year-old Josephine Cadogan. Josephine lives in the small town of Fairy Vale with her father, Vincent, who works as a fisherman. Still reeling from the loss of her mother five years ago, Josephine spends her time playing with her best friend, Ahkai, who has autism, dreaming of glory on the cricket pitch and running off any of her father’s potential new “friends.” She’s successful, too, until her father meets Mariss.

Mariss is beautiful, elegant and charming, and everyone instantly loves her—even Ahkai, who is normally pretty shy. Josephine doesn’t initially suspect anything unusual about Mariss, despite how many unexplainable events seem to surround her. A deep cut on Mariss’ hand vanishes without the trace of a scar. One night, Josephine is mysteriously unable to wake Vincent until Mariss does it with a single word. And Ahkai’s cuddly cat, who is only ever aggressive toward a tuna can, tries to attack Mariss every time he sees her. But when a cricket ball headed straight for Josephine’s bat stops in midair and changes direction during a match Mariss is watching, Josephine can’t ignore the signs. She and Ahkai must unravel the truth about who Mariss really is and what she wants with Vincent and Fairy Vale before it’s too late.

Josephine is a grounded and realistic heroine. She’s still grieving her mother’s death and is blindingly possessive of her father’s love. She’s also incredibly stubborn and willing to go to extreme lengths to have her way. In a hilarious scene, Josephine uses a well-aimed cricket ball and a bucket of fish entrails to let Vincent’s latest “friend” know exactly what he smells like when he comes home from a long day of fishing. But her loyalty to her father, her friends and her town is touching and the driving force behind this emotional story. Debut author Bourne skillfully draws on Barbadian folklore to create a suspenseful adventure that will keep readers guessing until the very end.

Josephine’s story is firmly planted on Earth, but Kiki Kallira’s is out of this world. The 11-year-old heroine of British author Sangu Mandanna’s first middle grade novel Kiki Kallira Breaks a Kingdom crashes into a world of her own creation, where she discovers that her actions could either save or destroy everyone in it.

Kiki’s anxiety is getting worse, and her fixation on worst-case scenarios is becoming overwhelming. Sketching is the only thing that helps her clear her mind. She’s deep into a series of drawings based on the defeat of Mahishasura, a demon from a book of Indian folklore her mom gave her. In the story, Mahishasura becomes so powerful that no man or god can kill him. He conquers the beautiful kingdom of Mysore but then is defeated and banished by a goddess.

As Kiki keeps drawing, strange things begin happening in her London home, and one night, she awakens to her desk on fire and a demon standing in her room. When she chases after it, Kiki meets Ashwini, the heroine of her drawings, who tells her that her art has created a world that allowed Mahishasura to escape. Ashwini pushes Kiki through her sketchbook and into the kingdom of Mysore, where only Kiki has the power to stop Mahishasura. Kiki must fight against forces inside her mind as well as in Mysore to rescue the kingdom and return home.

Kiki, like Josephine, struggles with the relatable disconnect between who she truly believes herself to be and who she thinks she needs to be in order to win her battles. Mandanna, who has written several science fiction novels for teens, excels at depicting how Kiki navigates feelings of fear, anxiety, mistrust and, eventually, self-awareness. Kiki Kallira Breaks a Kingdom is a breathtaking rush through Kiki’s growing understanding of herself and the worlds, both real and fantastical, around her. Any kingdom that springs from the mind of an 11-year-old is sure to contain twists and surprises, and Kiki’s does not disappoint.  

In two middle grade fantasy novels, each set against a mythology-inspired backdrop, girls battle monsters that are bent on destroying everything they love.

Children's & YAPicture Book

Journeys of imagination

Feature by Alice Cary

All aboard! Anchors aweigh! These inventive picture books are your tickets for two fantastic voyages as they capture the fun of transforming your world using nothing but your imagination.

A girl escapes onto a make-believe train in Michael Emberley and Marie-Louise Fitzpatrick's I Can Make a Train Noise, which creatively sweeps readers right alongside her on an adventure that’s bursting with rhythm and energy.

As she enters a city coffee shop with her family, the girl spots a commuter train rushing by on an elevated track. Intrigued, she quietly says, “I can make a train noise.” Once inside, she repeats her statement a bit louder. No one notices, so she stands up on her chair and adds an emphatic “NOW!” In the next spread she leaps off her chair and plunges into her own imagination. 

A swoosh of brown and white paint signifies that the girl is transforming the coffee shop into a traveling train, with herself as its engineer and her family and other customers as its passengers. Tabletop condiments and salt and pepper shakers become skyscrapers that the train speeds past before heading into the countryside. The red train and blue sky provide splashes of color amid muted sepia spreads, emphasizing the shifting landscape and giving readers a sense of change and motion.

Through the book's exquisitely minimal text and repeated titular refrain, readers feel the clickety clacks of the train's acceleration, as variations in lettering size and layout highlight changes in momentum and direction. “TRAIN-NOISE-TRAIN-NOISE-TRAIN-NOISE . . .” appears in a small, straight line across a spread that shows the train chugging through a grassy prairie. And “Now!” becomes the train’s whistle, at one point appearing in huge letters on a curved baseline—"NOOOOW!!"—as the train whooshes through a tunnel.

The result is a fully choreographed, immersive journey. Readers will see and hear the train rumble along the tracks, then feel it stop abruptly with a jumble of passengers when it pulls into the station. The book ends with an enticing invitation that breaks the fourth wall in irresistible fashion. Deceptively simple, I Can Make a Train Noise is a perfect choice for reading aloud. Young readers will eagerly hop aboard again and again. 

All it takes is a sturdy wooden crate for a determined red-haired girl to turn an uneventful afternoon into a grand adventure in I Want a Boat!. Through a series of spare declarative statement pairings, the girl dreams up an exciting sea voyage and sets sail right from her bedroom. 

“I have a box. / I want a boat,” the girl announces on the first page as she stands before an empty wooden box, hands on her hips. On the next page, she declares, “I have a boat. / I want a rudder,” while seated inside the box, smiling. The action continues to build in this fashion as she uses ordinary objects to fulfill her seafaring needs. Stuffed animals become her crew, and a toy whale swims beside her in the imaginary ocean. The girl also yearns for and creates excitement, including the danger of a raging storm, the peril of stuffed-animal sailors gone overboard and the thrill of a safe return—happy, tired and ready for dinner. 

Author Liz Garton Scanlon’s step-by-step approach to the story doesn’t just create an effective narrative arc that’s perfect for preschoolers. It also provides a road map for young readers inclined to envision their own imaginative expeditions. 

Kevan Atteberry’s cheery and animated illustrations practically leap off the pages. He’s a master of using simple strokes to convey great emotion, whether it’s the girl’s exuberance as she sails the high seas or her stuffed animals’ astonished expressions as she sets off. 

In tandem with the story’s exciting ebbs and flows, white margins frame each page, becoming slimmer as the girl grows more engrossed in her voyage. When the girl declares, “I have the wind. / I want the world,” the margins give way to full-bleed spreads, only to reemerge as she returns home. It’s a wonderful homage to a similar technique employed by Maurice Sendak in his ultimate imaginative adventure story, Where the Wild Things Are.

In I Want a Boat! dynamic illustrations and tightly focused prose combine for a boatload of high-seas fun.

All aboard! Anchors aweigh! These inventive picture books are your tickets for two fantastic voyages as they capture the fun of transforming your world using nothing but your imagination.

Mystery

Cozies: July 2021

Feature by Heather Seggel

A cab driver, a Regency widow and the owner of a milkshake emporium find their lives disrupted by murder most foul in this month’s cozy column.

Death of an Irish Mummy

Expat Megan Malone is back behind the wheel at Leprechaun Limos, this time driving a fellow Texan, Cherise, who thinks she’s heir to an ancient Irish earldom. Cherise is later found dead, just as her three squabbling daughters arrive in Dublin from the States to support their mother’s quest. Megan must find out what happened, partly because she was involved from the start, but also, in a truly hilarious touch, because her boss is beginning to think she’s cursed, given that dead bodies keep popping up around her, Megan must find out what happened. Catie Murphy’s Death of an Irish Mummy is a bright new installment in a consistently delightful series. Megan’s a staunch ally to her limo service co-workers, and when times are tough, it’s nice to see how people have her back in return. She’s slyly conscious of the fact that  drivers are viewed as “the help,” members of the invisible servant class with whom people will sometimes speak too freely, and she uses this to her advantage, accumulating useful information. Murphy balances grief and family secrets with a hunt for buried treasure, keeping things realistic even as the story flirts with the fantastical.

Pint of No Return

Trinidad Jones is determined to make a fresh start after getting divorced, and to avoid her ex-husband Gabe’s two other ex-wives and his protective sister. Fortunately, she received a storefront in rural Oregon in the breakup, and she moves in with plans to turn it into a homemade ice cream and milkshake emporium. When she finds a neighboring business owner dead and one of Gabe’s exes is charged with the crime, Trinidad must change her priorities and see justice done. Dana Mentink’s series starter, Pint of No Return, takes place in a neighborhood common to cozies: a nice town full of good people, if you don’t count all the lying, theft and murder. Noodles, Trinidad’s service-dog dropout who knows he should help but does so in adorably wrong ways, is likely to become a fan favorite.

Silence in the Library

Katharine Schellman’s Silence in the Library is a welcome return to the Regency world of recently widowed Lily Adler. She finds herself saddled with her ailing father as an unexpected houseguest, and he’s in such a foul temper that Lily must escape by visiting Lady Wyatt, who has married Sir Charles, an old family friend. It’s a shock when Sir Charles is found dead, and Bow Street constable Simon Page thinks the fall that caused his death was staged to appear like an accident. Soon enough, Simon and Lily are working in tandem to find the truth. The mystery is complicated by Arthur, one of Sir Charles’ sons, who is autistic. His wealth and privilege have allowed him to escape being institutionalized, but his family has kept him hidden from public view and are quick to blame him in the search for the killer. A touching subplot about Lily tentatively coming out of mourning to embark on a newly independent life—and her father’s subsequent fury at this change—illustrates the tightrope that women had to walk to gain even the smallest bit of freedom. Schellman’s meticulous research puts the reader right in the heart of Regency London, and the hunt for a killer is tense and frightening.

A cab driver, a Regency widow and the owner of a milkshake emporium find their lives disrupted by murder most foul in this month’s cozy column.

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