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Science Fiction & FantasyHistorical FantasyFantasy

The Bright Sword

Review by Ralph Harris

Arthur is dead and the Round Table lies shattered in The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman, author of the bestselling Magicians trilogy. The story begins with Collum of the Isle of Mull, a character who does not appear in Arthurian legend, embroiled in a duel with an unnamed knight. The knight spits uncouth insults about Collum’s mother, and at the end of their brawl, Collum makes his first (extremely messy) kill of the book. This resolution to a duel outlines how most plot points are resolved in The Bright Sword: Someone inevitably dies, and no one is happy.

Once Collum gets to Camelot, none of the remaining knights are particularly happy either. After a few chapters about Collum, a new knight of the Round Table is introduced, and, as if remembering the reader may not know anything about this person, Grossman suspends the main story to relate how the knight arrived at Camelot. These consistently shifting perspectives, combined with an extremely loose approach to time and distance, creates a dreamlike vibe, suggestive of a story told around a campfire by a narrator who keeps getting distracted. Those with little patience will likely find The Bright Sword frustrating, but readers willing to savor the book over many nights will find each chapter a neatly arranged, miniature adventure of its own.

Traditionally minimal side characters in the story of Arthur—like Sir Bedivere, Sir Palomides and even Dagonet the Fool—receive intricate, deep backstories that erase the mythological buildup around each figure, viewing them instead in a far more human and often more modern light. In many older tales, Palomides is a Middle Eastern stereotype, used entirely as a foil to elevate Sir Tristan’s status as an honorable and just knight. But in Grossman’s story, Palomides is a prince and explorer who is wildly misunderstood by his knightly peers, with his own journey of self-discovery and growth.

At once full of desperate hope and grievous loss, The Bright Sword is a moody reflection on Arthur’s tale. This saga is not marked by optimism, but instead a dignified cynicism. Collum and his endearing band of Round Table Rejects (album out soon) simply live and persevere, knowing that if they do not try to bring peace to the now-fractured Britain, no one else will.

At once full of desperate hope and grievous loss, Lev Grossman’s The Bright Sword is a moody reflection on the tales of King Arthur and the Round Table.
NonfictionHistoryCultural History

Stowaway

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

“Rat stories are like ghost stories: everybody has one,” writes British author Joe Shute at the start of Stowaway: The Disreputable Exploits of the Rat. Shute’s own original rat story involves going to an alley to watch a ratcatcher and his trained dogs at work. The rats escaped down a sewer, sparing the author the carnage of a rat versus dog encounter. 

Still, it was unsettling. After all, as Shute points out, rats have long loomed as fearsome creatures in our imaginations. “We are obsessed as a society with the notion of rats mustering in the gloom and waiting to invade our lives,” he writes. That’s not surprising, given history. Although it’s now thought that the 14th-century bubonic plague was spread by lice and fleas, rats still shoulder the blame for the death of millions.  

To challenge his own biases and overcome his fears, the author purchased two dumbo rats, Molly and Ermintrude. In the early days of their relationship, Shute walked a “tightrope between disgust and fascination,” but as he continued his “rat therapy,” he was amazed by their social habits and how responsive the rats were to his touch. In fact, Shute interviewed a neuroscientist who, while exploring the impact of the COVID-19 lockdown and the loss of touch on humans, studied—wait for it—how tickling rats impacted their behavior and hormone levels. (Conclusion: Touch helps both humans and rats build resistance against stress.)

One fascinating section delves into how rats help humans in unexpected ways. Shute traveled to Tanzania to learn about Apopo, an organization that trains rats to detect landmines as well as tuberculosis. Magawa, an African giant pouched rat, was awarded a Dickin medal for sniffing out landmines in Cambodia. “Not for the first time,” writes Shute, “rats are cleaning up humanity’s mess.” And, of course, rats have been used since the 1800s in laboratories that study human diseases. That use has accelerated, in part because, as Shute points out, almost all human genes associated with disease have counterparts in the rat genome. 

Stowaway may not be an obvious choice as a gift for a family member who loves animals. But it will undoubtedly be enjoyed. Be prepared, though: You may end up with your own rat experiment. In Shute’s family, Molly and Ermintrude were joined by Aggy and Reyta, forming a rat colony. In getting to know the rat better, Shute did not find a creature with no redeeming qualities, but “empathy, cooperation, mischief, fun, loyalty and resilience.”

In the entertaining Stowaway, Joe Shute explores and exalts the resilient, cooperative, derided and, ultimately, misunderstood rat.
NonfictionWomen's HistoryHistoryCultural History

Swimming Pretty

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

It’s been 40 years since synchronized swimming was accepted as an Olympic discipline, and Vicki Valosik’s Swimming Pretty: The Untold Story of Women in Water is an excellent way to celebrate the anniversary. 

In her introduction, the author—a masters synchronized swimmer herself—recounts her own history with the sport. Curiosity drew her to a class at her local pool, and there she found swimmers several decades her senior who “were all as graceful as mermaids and generously set about teaching me, the beginner, the foundational body positions and propulsion techniques of synchronized swimming.” As her lung capacity increased, her confidence grew and the central question of Swimming Pretty surfaced: “Are we athletes first or are we performers? Is what we are doing a sport or is it entertainment?” 

Esther Williams may have been the best known synchronized swimmer thanks to her groundbreaking Hollywood career, but in this captivating, multifaceted book, Valosik reveals that Williams was preceded (and followed) by a long line of skilled and talented women. Together, these women helped to change everything from safety practices to swimsuit design, embodying women’s strength and artistry along the way.

Just a couple centuries ago, Valosik explains, swimming was only for men, including Benjamin Franklin, who practiced “scientific swimming” in the early 1700s. In the 1800s, women were permitted to join the water scene when “ornamental swimming” in tanks became popular entertainment. Australian swimming champion and stuntwoman Annette Kellerman became famous in early 1900s American vaudeville and has often been called “the mother of synchronized swimming.” 

Interest in the sport remained strong through the decades, surging after exhibitions in various 1930s world’s fairs and Williams’ midcentury “aquamusicals.” When synchronized swimming debuted at the Los Angeles Summer Olympics in 1984, it was a cause for celebration and, competitors hoped, a turning point. Valosik writes, “they had finally made it and were eager to show the world not what synchronized swimming once was, but what it had become.” 

Although the sport has since gone global, areas of debate remain, including its 2017 name change to “artistic swimming” and the addition of male competitors in 2024. Thanks to Valosik’s extensive research and gift for illustrating the ways in which her titular women in water have influenced history, culture and athletics, readers surely will be inspired to view synchronized swimming in a new light—and perhaps even attempt a “rocket split bent knee twirl hybrid” themselves.  

Vicki Valosik’s captivating Swimming Pretty charts the evolution of women’s swimming and aquatic performance.
Children's & YAYA FictionYA

Sleep Like Death

Review by Tami Orendain

Armed with well-honed combat skills and a magical connection to nature, Princess Eve wants nothing more than to defeat the Knight, a mysterious figure who’s been preying on the people of her kingdom. But just as Eve is about to turn 17, her mother, the Queen, secludes herself in her room, mumbling to a mysterious mirror. Eve decides that the time has come to fulfill her destiny and sets out to defeat the Knight once and for all, a journey that leads to treachery, battles, and answers about who the Knight really is—and who Eve really is, too.

Kalynn Bayron once again puts an inventive twist on a classic fairytale in Sleep Like Death. This time, she turns Snow White into a story of morally complicated characters and twisted legends. There’s a meta layer, too, as Eve collects tales of the Knight and observes how they change over time, allowing Bayron to explore how truth distorts into rumor and how that could lead to the birth of a fairy tale.

Sleep Like Death expands the world of Snow White into a universe of gray morality and ulterior motives. The Queen, for example, isn’t a jealous villain with clear motives; she’s a mother torn between her duty and her love for her daughter. The mirror isn’t just a soulless tool, it’s also a way for the characters to talk to the Knight’s charismatic and mysterious liaison, Nova. And Eve isn’t a dreamer, she’s a warrior—one whose passion grows into a balance of wisdom and experience.

Like the tale it’s based on, Sleep Like Death is a moving, memorable story about love, revenge and triumph. But it gives its characters room to breathe, letting them grow. Eve’s story strikes that delicate balance between classic and inventive: Bayron honors the heroine she takes inspiration from while maintaining the originality of her own character. It’s fun to recognize callbacks to Snow White while seeing how Bayron repositions familiar tropes and characters in new, innovative ways, turning the fairy tale on its head without betraying its heart and soul. 

Full of heroism, romance and wisdom, Sleep Like Death is a wonderful coming-of-age fantasy that will delight readers searching for a robust fairy tale retelling.

Full of heroism, romance and wisdom, Sleep Like Death is a wonderful coming-of-age fantasy story that will delight readers searching for a robust fairy tale retelling.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

Sour Apple

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

A lone green apple on a tree full of vibrant reds is the only one left behind after picking season begins in Linda Liu’s stylish Sour Apple. 

The dejected little apple sits alone in the orchard and wonders what failings could have caused the rejection. It utters laments in clever rhyming couplets that are at once plaintive and amusing, rife as they are with allusions to popular apple-centric figures and sayings that will appeal to kids and adults alike. “Am I too ordinary to make or break your day? / Or not extraordinary enough to keep the doctor away?” the distraught fruit muses as it imagines plopping on Sir Isaac Newton’s head, being offered by the Evil Queen to the Seven Dwarfs, and uncomfortably wending its way through the human digestive system. Vivid watercolor-and-digital paintings add to the fun thanks to striking geometric shapes, finely rendered patterns and texture, and Liu’s knack for clever composition and expressive humor.

Sadly, the apple’s distress sinks it so low that it frustratedly offers itself to ravenous insects, who carry it off into underground darkness. But what if that’s not the end for the apple? What if there’s something waiting just around the corner that’s even more amazing than getting picked? Is it possible there’s joy to be found in not being like everyapple else?

As in her sparkling debut, Hidden Gem, Liu has created a charming and emotional protagonist to whom readers of all ages will relate: After all, recognizing and appreciating our own unique potential is an ongoing process. It’s a delight to follow along as this apple’s outlook changes from sour to sweet, eventually undergoing an astonishing transformation that celebrates the wonder of a new perspective and a hopeful future.

As in her sparkling debut, Hidden Gem, Linda Liu has created a charming and emotional protagonist to whom readers of all ages will relate. After all, recognizing and appreciating our own unique potential is an ongoing process.
FictionLiterary Fiction

Same as It Ever Was

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Julia Ames is shopping for her husband’s 60th birthday party, on the hunt for ingredients that were out of stock at her regular grocery store. It seems like an ordinary task, traveling two towns over for crab meat—until Julia spots in the aisles the one woman whom she intended to avoid for the rest of her life.

Helen Russo was a volunteer at the botanic garden when the two women met about 20 years earlier. At the time, Julia was struggling to find ways to fill the days with her young son. She had never felt completely at ease in life, although meeting her husband made her feel tethered in a way she didn’t feel with her mother, who had raised Julia on her own. After becoming a mother herself, Julia  loved her son madly, but she felt the impact of her early loneliness: “She’d never had a proper set of tools, but it had mattered less before; now there were others involved.”

Since giving birth, Julia had been adrift, and everything seemed too much. Helen—older than Julia by two decades, more experienced as the mother of five grown sons—recognized what the younger woman needed and quickly befriended her.

Now, running into Helen in the grocery store sends Julia’s mind racing back to those early days of motherhood and decisions that nearly destroyed her marriage. Told in chapters alternating past and present, Same as It Ever Was explores the challenges of motherhood and of being mothered. As in her New York Times bestselling debut, The Most Fun We Ever Had, novelist Claire Lombardo dives deeply into her characters’ lives to mine the family dynamics that shaped them.

Lombardo peels away years of secrecy to reveal the choices that led Julia to—and then away from—her defining friendship with Helen. The reader gets to know Julia not only as a nearly 60-year-old mother of adult children and earlier as a struggling new mother, but also as a teenager with her own difficult, tumultuous mother. As Lombardo draws back the curtain on Julia’s past, the parallels to her present life become clear. Same as It Ever Was is an engrossing story of maternal complexity and a reminder of the myriad ways the past can quietly inform the present.

Claire Lombardo finds “difficult characters much more interesting”: Read our Q&A with the author about Same as It Ever Was.

As in her New York Times bestselling debut, The Most Fun We Ever Had, novelist Claire Lombardo dives deeply into her characters’ lives to mine the family dynamics that shaped them, delivering an engrossing story of the challenges of motherhood.
Mystery & SuspenseSuspense

Shanghai

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

Internationally bestselling author and Edgar Award-winner Joseph Kanon is known for his elegantly written, impressively immersive World War II thrillers, and Shanghai is no exception. 

In his fascinating and tautly suspenseful 11th novel, the author transports readers to 1939 Shanghai, where his characters, still reeling from Kristallnacht, are seeking safety in the only port city that doesn’t require a visa (and which ultimately offered a haven to some 20,000 European Jewish refugees during WWII).

As the story begins, Daniel Lohr, a German Jew, is traveling first class on the SS Raffaello, a luxury liner departing from Italy. So is Leah Auerbach, as well as hundreds of other Jewish passengers seeking a new start after the world they knew crumbled around them. When the ship first left shore, “For a second [Daniel] felt a stab of panic, no country, no money, but then as the boat began to slide away relief swept through him. Europe was going to destroy itself and he’d escaped.” 


Joseph Kanon didn’t tell anyone he was writing his first book.

While at sea, Daniel and Leah disappear into a passionate love affair that helps them push aside their pain and grief. But reality knocks in the form of their menacing fellow passenger Colonel Yamada, a higher-up in the Nazi-allied Japanese military police occupying Shanghai, as well as Leah’s conviction that survival in the metropolis is not assured. Daniel’s fate is more assured than most, though: His uncle Nathan, a jazz club and casino owner, has guaranteed him work and lodging in his new city. 

Alas, while Nathan is charming and clever, he’s also heavily involved in the criminal underworld, and Daniel soon finds himself contending with gang violence and wrestling with his uneasy moral compass. As he gains power in Shanghai, is he losing himself? Sure, as Uncle Nathan says, “The first rule was to survive,” but at what cost? 

Kanon conjures up the city’s veneer of glamour, and the danger and desperation festering beneath, with his trademark skill and verve. Shanghai artfully balances violence, romance and edgy suspense in a layered and compelling tale of an extraordinary place and time in human history.

Joseph Kanon’s artful and compelling new thriller transports readers to 1930s Shanghai, the only city to let in Jewish refugees without a visa.
Children's & YAYA FictionYA

Ready or Not

Review by Tami Orendain

Cassie, Marcy, Aaron and Nico have been best friends since birth, and now that senior year’s done, they have one last summer together before moving on to the next step. Marcy’s moving across the country to pursue art, Aaron’s preparing for law school, Nico’s moving to London, and Cassie? Cassie isn’t sure what she’s doing next. So in an attempt to have one final, epic summer together, she ropes her friends into a game of Risky Slips: a contest of dares they used to play as kids.

Andi Porretta’s debut graphic novel, Ready or Not, dances on the edge between youth and adulthood. Its characters are vibrant and fun, but they’re also facing a lot of change—which lets the story explore the joy, pain and chaos of growing up. Porretta’s expressive, colorful art style lends itself well to the emotional ups and downs of this charming story.

Porretta gives her characters real, resonant challenges, like struggling with grief, anxiety or high expectations from parents. As recent high school graduates and new adults, they’re just learning what it means to have responsibility over their rapidly changing lives. There are also interpersonal conflicts between them, born out of the natural transition from a shared childhood into college and long-distance friendship. How do you stay friends when you’re in different states—and different countries? What does friendship mean for adults? What does it mean to grow apart?

These serious conflicts contrast with the tenderness of their friendship and the whimsy of their dares. The characters race through train stations and perform flashy songs and dances in a public park. They good-naturedly egg each other on, encouraging their friends through every dare. As their summer dwindles down, they reminisce about their childhoods and wonder about their futures. Readers will have a blast following their schemes—and will also be satisfied as they tackle more serious topics together.

Ready or Not is a refreshing graphic novel that doesn’t ignore the real challenges of growing up. It gives Cassie and friends moments of play and moments of reflection, asking them to take control of their changing lives while also remembering what they truly value. It’s a great life lesson for all ages: Just because you’re growing up doesn’t mean you can’t have fun.

Andi Porretta’s debut graphic novel, Ready or Not, dances on the edge between youth and adulthood. Its characters are vibrant and fun, but they’re also facing a lot of change—which lets the story explore the joy, pain and chaos of growing up.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

Prunella

Review by Sara Beth West

Prunella tells the story of a young girl who develops a passion for unusual and often unloved plants, but struggles to find her place with other kids. Bestselling author Beth Ferry partners with artist Claire Keane to create a picture book with a color palette and style as unique as Prunella herself. From the cover through every page, the illustrations root Prunella in a lush but heavily shaded green space, populated by such “persnickety plants” as the obscure bladderwort, the better-known Venus flytrap or even the familiar yet hated poison ivy, with brief scientific descriptions accompanying drawings of each plant on the book’s endpapers. Readers are introduced to Prunella as an infant, child of two master gardeners and born with a purple—rather than the customary green—thumb. As she grows, her fascination with strange plants grows along with her, and though her parents “didn’t always understand Prunella’s choices . . . they completely understood her passion. And they fueled it!” 

Though Prunella has the unconditional support of her family, making friends does not come easily for her, and she takes solace in her garden. Despite its comforts, she feels left out until the day her neighbor Oliver (and soon his sister Clem) arrives, which plants “a tiny, hopeful friend-shaped seed.” Ferry makes use of nature-related words to tell this sweet story of finding your place, noting the “bouquet of botanists” and the group of young scientists who “wormed their way into Prunella’s heart.” To bring this world fully to life, Keane draws on a varied set of visual tools, sometimes breaking the page into vertical or horizontal segments like soft-edged comics panels and other times spreading out across two pages with rich and exuberant drawings. Besides the plant life, Keane is especially skilled at rendering facial expressions, giving visual voice to each character even if they never speak. Couple Ferry’s clever wordplay with Keane’s detailed illustrations, and you’ve got a book that is sure to resonate with young readers, especially those who have ever felt they didn’t fit in.

Couple Beth Ferry’s clever wordplay with Claire Keane’s detailed illustrations, and you’ve got a book that is sure to resonate with young readers, especially those who have ever felt they didn’t fit in.
NonfictionHistoryBlack HistoryAmerican History

Night Flyer

Review by Alice Cary

National Book Award-winning author Tiya Miles has tackled a variety of tough, intriguing subjects in books like Wild Girls and All That She Carried. She felt stymied, however, as she approached the life of the legendary Harriett Tubman. As one friend told her, “No one could catch her then. It’s going to be hard to catch her now.” 

And yet that is exactly what Miles so beautifully achieves in Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People. One of the biggest hurdles Miles faced was Tubman’s illiteracy, which meant her life experiences were all documented by others—“typically white, middle-class, antislavery women who recorded her speech and told her story.” Despite the roadblock of such “swamped sources,” often “submerged in the perspectives and biases of others,” Miles applauds a number of existing traditional biographies. As she explains, her goal was not to replicate these, but rather to explore Tubman’s eco-spiritual worldview. 

In her trademark deeply researched, thoughtful and exquisite prose, Miles successfully avoids popular depictions of Tubman as a superwoman “prepackaged in a box of stock stories and folksy sayings” among other “abolitionist avengers.” Instead, she places her firmly within the realm of Black female faith culture, noting that she was “one of a kind—singularly special and part of a cultural collective.” To illuminate Tubman’s spiritual purview, Miles delves into several memoirs written or dictated by Black women evangelists of Tubman’s time, writing that their relationships with the divine mandated “challenging entrenched social systems of racial and gender subjugation at the risk of [their] own safety, health, and social acceptance”

Calling her “arguably the most famous Black woman ecologist in U.S. history,” Miles also brings to life the haunting sights, sounds and dark, bewildering moments that Tubman experienced as she led herself and others to safety through the night wilderness. Tubman studied the plants, animals and stars as a matter of necessity for survival, believing that these god-given guides were proof of the need for spiritual and political liberation. 

Often, when Tubman told her story to biographers, she touched the writer, as if “by laying her hand on this person, her feelings may be transmitted.” With Night Flyer, Tiya Miles seems to transmit the weight of her subject’s hand and heart.

With the exquisite Night Flyer, Tiya Miles looks at Harriet Tubman from an entirely new perspective: her spirituality.
Children's & YAMiddle GradeChildren's

Pizza Face

Review by Alice Cary

“The big ‘P’ is the worst,” according to Rex Ogle’s Pizza Face, a spot-on graphic novel featuring the talented, prolific author as a scrawny 12-year-old suffering through the onset of puberty in seventh grade puberty. It’s a welcome sequel to Four Eyes, which chronicled Rex’s sixth grade year.

Middle grade readers will readily identify with Rex, whose acne erupts like a “volcano on my forehead” on the first day of seventh grade. “I’m a mutant, but without any cool superpowers,” he laments, his angst readily transmitted through Dave Valeza’s emotion-filled illustrations, which showcase Rex’s ongoing mortification via facial expressions, body language and onomatopoeia—especially the dreaded early morning beep of Rex’s alarm clock, and Rex’s frequent foot stomping.

Ogle and Valeza effectively spotlight brief scenes from Rex’s unfolding school year, including the horrors of first-period gym, where Rex, the smallest and least sporty, is often picked last. “You’re like our wittle baby,” one girl tells him. Things get worse day after day, week after week, as friendships unravel and misunderstandings multiply, especially with his best friends Scott and Kennedy (who is also sort of his girlfriend). Rex faces several bullies, and starts hanging out with a troublemaker when his friends desert him, ratcheting up the action. Each heartfelt scene draws readers into Rex’s misery as he longs for a growth spurt and a deep voice like the other boys.

Rex’s supportive but exhausted, constantly working parents can’t afford acne cream or deodorant, adding to Rex’s frustrations. His Abuela comes to the rescue, sending Zit-Zapper cream, offering helpful advice and taking Rex to a dermatologist.

This book has broad appeal, showing a variety of characters with different challenges. A boy named Brody, for instance, has the opposite problem of Rex, confessing, “Look at me. I’m a hairy, oversized monster. I’m thirteen and look like I’m almost twenty.” Meanwhile, female characters are teased and feel self-conscious, while both a wealthy and a popular boy grapple with their own issues. As Rex concludes, “It took all year to realize most kids are going through the same things as me.” Pizza Face is a fresh take on an age-old crisis and will help adolescents feel more empathetic and less alone while navigating their own physical and emotional changes. Here’s hoping Rex’s misadventures continue in future installments.

Pizza Face is a fresh take on the age-old crisis of puberty that will help adolescents feel more empathetic and less alone while navigating their own physical and emotional changes.
NonfictionSocial ScienceEnvironment

The Nature of Our Cities

Review by mónica teresa ortiz

Soil sensors prevent trees from dying in a college town in the Netherlands. A Boston arborist digitally tracks the city’s urban forest, helping efforts to maintain and preserve the canopy. A Silicon Valley entrepreneur develops an app to alert residents of wildfires. In The Nature of Our Cities: Harnessing the Power of the Natural World to Survive a Changing Planet, author and ecological engineer Nadina Galle sprints from one environmental challenge to the next, studying—and sometimes offering—possible ways to repair urban ecosystems in a time of urgent climate disaster. 

As Galle moves from region to region, the book finds its emotional center through the different people she works with. One of the most instrumental connections she makes is with Richard Louv, the 73-year-old bestselling author of Last Child in the Woods and an advocate for fostering relationships between children and nature. On a hike outside San Diego, Louv shares his belief that technology should be used “to restore our equilibrium with nature,” noting that “The right tech gets us outside, enriching our experience. The wrong tech locks us into a screen.” The conversation prompts Galle to study kid-friendly apps that draw people out of their homes, like Pokémon GO and iNaturalist, while also noting that “nature’s value should not be reduced to what it does for us.” 

The Nature of Our Cities is an approachable and easily digestible read for anyone interested in learning more about the convergence of technology in urban landscapes from a social science perspective. However, the optimistic, accessible tone means that the book skates over directly naming systems like capitalism or colonialism as the causes of vulnerability in our most critical infrastructures. Instead, Galle tends to stick to the small picture, calling out “planners and municipal leaders who subscribed to an ill-fated ambition to sever our connection with the ecosystems around us.” 

Galle visits lands recovering from disaster, such as Paradise, California, an area left scorched by wildfires. In this chapter, the author makes a rare nod to the land management skills of Indigenous people, acknowledging the “bounty of plant and animal life” that European and American settlers encountered in the Pacific Northwest. “They believed it to be a perfect representation of an unspoiled, permanent landscape rather than a delicate equilibrium in everlasting flux.” More research into Indigenous land management and technology would have deepened the narrative and provided a less Eurocentric lens. 

Galle, who grew up in a once heavily forested part of southern Ontario, is a naturalist in the way of Ralph Waldo Emerson, writing, “The longer I stay in the woods, the more I change.” The Nature of Our Cities shows her deep enthusiasm for finding ways that technology can support ecosystems in crisis, and will be of use to those interested in such innovations. 

An ecological engineer travels the world to learn how technology can address urban eco-crises in the approachable The Nature of Our Cities.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

Millie Fleur’s Poison Garden

Review by Nicole Brinkley

In Garden Glen, every building is the same except for the “tumbledown house” that now belongs to Millie Fleur La Fae and her mother. The barren yard needs some love, so Millie decides to fill it with her favorite poisonous plants: sore toothwort, fanged fairymoss, tentacled tansy and a dozen other curious flowers and herbs.

Unused to something so new and weird, the people of Garden Glen protest outside Millie’s fence, but Millie and her mother know that the garden is just misunderstood. Millie invites her new neighbors to tour the garden, where they find themselves “astonished,” “grossed out” and “at times, a little nervous.” Can Millie’s neighbors learn how charming her creepy plants can be?

Time to throw away summer plans: Kids will want to spend all their time digging in the dirt after reading Millie Fleur’s Poison Garden. This charming picture book from author-illustrator Christy Mandin (The Storytellers Rule) pays homage to classic and beloved creeps like those featured in Frankenstein and The Addams Family while simultaneously creating its own—in the form of original plants. From curdled milkweed to witches wort, the abundant puns are sure to please kids who love a joke, as well as those who enjoy fantastical imagery.

The heart of Millie Fleur’s Poison Garden is, of course, Millie Fleur. Young readers will leave inspired by Millie’s refusal to hide what she loves, no matter how weird it may be. Backmatter includes information on different easy-to-care-for plants and the real history of poison gardens. This plant-filled tome will be a great pick for parents and teachers looking for an educational moment on embracing identity and rebuking bullying, or a quirky gardening lesson.

Millie Fleur’s Poison Garden is made for the oddballs, who will love it. Pair with Flavia Z. Drago’s Gustavo the Shy Ghost and Jess Hannigan’s Spider in the Well.

Time to throw away summer plans: Kids will want to spend all their time digging in the dirt after reading Millie Fleur’s Poison Garden.

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