Review of 107 Days, by Kamala Harris

Biography, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review, True Stories 0

107 Days

by Kamala Harris
read by the Author

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2025. 9 hours, 58 minutes.
Review written January 27, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

This audiobook made me wistful, nostalgic, and deeply sad for what might have been, but by the end filled me with hope and determination.

The content of the book is simple to describe: Kamala Harris tells about her 107 days running for president, from the day Joe Biden called to tell her he was dropping out to the night she got the news she had lost the election.

It renewed all my wishes that she had won. She cares about people and about trying to make government work for people. In her description of her days and her thoughts and emotions, she feels like a real person – a real person who is trying to do her best with what she has.

I think I relate to Kamala because she’s only a few months younger than me. (And Tim Walz only a few months older.) She’s also a likable person – down-to-earth and genuinely trying to use government power to defend those who need help and to bring fairness to our system.

I’ve seen criticism of this book that she didn’t take responsibility for the loss. But I think she did her best with the time she had. She does admit to some mistakes, and she points out mistakes by others (perhaps more than she should have, but it feels fair). This book shows how she gave it her best shot.

I still find myself wishing she’d had a little more investigation happen to irregularities in swing states’ voting machines, but she was determined to reinstate a peaceful transfer of power and not deepen the nation’s mistrust in voting results. And that was a powerful and hard thing she did. She said that only three other vice presidents have had to certify their own defeat – and Hubert Humphrey refused and had the president of the Senate do it in his place.

And she does hold out hope at the end. This was written before ICE moved so many troops into Minneapolis, so she focuses on the midterms and reminds us that the people still have power. May that be so. And may we as the people of these United States remember that we are the foundation of this government and make our voices known.

kamalaharris.com

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Review of (S)Kin, by Ibi Zoboi

Audiobooks, Paranormal, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

(S)Kin

by Ibi Zoboi
read by Bahni Turpin and Robin Miles

Versify (HarperCollins), 2025. 6 hours, 16 minutes.
Review written January 31, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
2025 National Book Award Finalist

This paranormal novel in verse features two viewpoint characters. Marisol and her mother have moved from the Caribbean islands to New York City, and it’s the new moon – time for Marisol to shape shift. She sheds her skin and shifts into a fireball witch who flies through the night and wreaks vengeance on the person her mother directs her to. Her mother and the mothers before them have shapeshifted for generations, and they thought that in New York City, where no one believes the old stories, they might find it easier to be human, not treated as monsters.

Also in New York City, Genevieve, with darker skin from an unknown mother, lives with her white father and white stepmother. She’s got a terrible skin condition – some kind of allergy or eczema, always burning. Her father studies folklore, and she wonders if her mother was some kind of mermaid.

But when a woman shows up to tend her baby siblings who can soothe her skin, Gen wonders what kind of magic is happening.

Ibi Zoboi takes actual Caribbean legends and shows us what it might be like to be one of those mythical creatures – and dream of better things in America. How might that work out for teens who only want to be normal humans, blending in with their peers?

A powerful story of kinship and identity.

ibizoboi.net

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Review of The Nine Moons of Han Yu and Luli, by Karina Yan Glaser

Audiobooks, Award Winners, Children's Fiction Review, Historical, Starred Review 0

The Nine Moons of Han Yu and Luli

by Karina Yan Glaser
read by Sira Siu and Brian Nishii

HarperCollins, 2025. 10 hours, 1 minute.
Review written January 31, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
2026 Newbery Honor Book

The Nine Moons of Han Yu and Luli tells two stories, 1200 years apart. Han Yu is a boy living in China in the year 731, during the Tang dynasty. He sells steamed buns in the market with his father. But when his entire family gets put into isolation because of his sister’s case of the illness sweeping the countryside, Han Yu decides to accept the commission intended for his father and travel along the trade routes later known as the Silk Roads to deliver the goods and make more money than his family can make in a year.

Alongside that story, with alternating chapters, we learn about Luli, who lives in 1931 Chinatown in New York City. Luli’s family owns a restaurant that used to be bustling and busy, but now hard times have fallen and business is slow, and they are in danger of losing the building that houses their restaurant and their home.

The parallels in the story are skillfully executed, though the children’s lives are so far apart in time and space. Both children start selling steamed buns to help their families. Both face difficulties and hardships with a parallel flow through the alternating chapters. Despite the cliffhanger chapter endings, I never found myself annoyed to switch characters, because I was equally interested in each character’s adventures.

Han Yu has a way with animals that they come to him and turn to him. And rumors say that a tiger protects him. Along the way, he meets a young poet who becomes his best friend. Luli, too, has a dog who protects her, and friends who help. Her whole class visits the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and they also visit the Chinese art treasures that Luli’s neighbor keeps in their building at the gift shop.

What ties the two stories together? There’s a piece of silk that has been handed down in Luli’s neighbor’s family for generations. It has a poem written on it in Chinese characters. So we’re ready to hear the story of how it came to be.

I have to say that both characters have some awfully good luck that keeps disaster averted – but in a children’s story, I think we all have more tolerance for that. (I certainly needed those kids to get a happy ending!) And the kids themselves both have plenty of opportunities to display courage and resourcefulness.

It’s not every author who can tie together two stories of children from 1200 years apart who never meet and have it work beautifully. This story, steeped in actual history, gives the reader a deep appreciation for Chinese culture along with the joy of a story well-told.

karinaglaser.com

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Review of How to Read a Book, by Monica Wood

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Fiction Review, Starred Review 0

How to Read a Book

by Monica Wood
read by Eileen Stevens

HarperCollins, 2024. 10 hours, 18 minutes.
Review written January 28, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

First, a great big thank you to my friend Eileen, who recommended this book. I loved it so much!

I mean, what’s not to like? It starts out in a book club in a women’s prison. Violet, who’s 22 years old and was in prison for manslaughter, is remembering how the meetings used to go. The women would find fault with most of the books, but got a lot of satisfaction out of even that.

Then Violet gets out of prison. Her sister picks her up, but shows her an apartment in the city, rent paid for with inheritance money after their mother’s death – which the whole family blames Violet for. Her family doesn’t want her to even come back to their small town.

But in Portland, Maine, Violet runs into Harriet, the lady who ran the book club, in a book store – and also encounters Frank, the man whose wife died when Violet was driving drunk.

One thing leads to another – also involving a job taking care of highly intelligent parrots – and I was super interested all the way, enjoying the company of these kind and wise people. (Well, Violet doesn’t always act wisely, but Harriet and Frank are there to help.)

And of course it’s a book about the power of books to connect people and transform lives. And a book about second chances. And standing up for yourself even after you make bad mistakes.

It’s also the sort of book that expands your heart.

monicawood.com

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Review of We Deserve Monuments, by Jas Hammonds

Award Winners, Contemporary, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

We Deserve Monuments

By Jas Hammonds

Roaring Brook Press, 2022. 375 pages.
Review written January 26, 2023, from a library book
2022 Capitol Choices Selection
2023 Coretta Scott King John Steptoe Award for New Talent
Starred Review

We Deserve Monuments is about a Black lesbian teen named Avery who suddenly got uprooted from her home in DC at the start of her senior year of high school. Avery’s grandmother is dying of cancer in rural Georgia, and her mother decided that the family needed to be with her – never mind that the last time they visited was when Avery was five.

Mama Letty doesn’t even seem glad to see them. She calls Avery “Fish” because her lip ring makes her look like a fish on a hook. She’s prickly and isn’t exactly grateful for the family swooping down because she’s dying.

But other things go surprisingly well for Avery. The girl next door and her white friend take her under their wing, and she’s quickly got better friends than she had in DC, including the girlfriend she recently broke up with.

But there are complications. Avery learns for the first time about her grandfather who was killed by Klan members before her mother was born. And then it turns out those Klan members are related to her new white friend. And she is attracted to the girl next door, but has no reason to think those feelings are returned.

All this is going on while she’s trying to get to know Mama Letty, but learns about family trauma and hurt. And why can’t her mother and grandmother ever have a conversation without fighting?

I like the way the author shows us a family with lots of flaws but also lots of love.

Jashammonds.com
Fiercereads.com

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Review of Liturgies for Resisting Empire, by Kat Armas

Christian, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Liturgies for Resisting Empire

Seeking Community, Belonging, and Peace in a Dehumanizing World

by Kat Armas

Brazos Press, 2025. 205 pages.
Review written January 24, 2026, from my own copy, purchased via Amazon.com
Starred Review

I’ve been reading this book slowly, a section at a time, as part of my devotionals over the last several weeks. I’m not sure I grasped everything, but I like the way it opened up my thinking and showed me how much of the way I look at the world is shaped by empire-building.

At the front and back of the book, there’s a liturgy, with an Invocation and Benediction – and prayers, reflections, and readings in between. Each chapter begins with an Invocation and Reflection – a folk tale from an indigenous people group – and ends with a Prayer of Resistance and a Benediction. Each chapter is about something in Empire to reject, and something in Christianity to embrace. For example: “Rejecting Lies, Embracing Reality,” “Rejecting Hierarchy, Embracing Kinship,” “Rejecting Dualism, Embracing Paradox,” “Rejecting Sameness, Embracing Wholeness,” “Rejecting Dominance, Embracing Connection,” and “Rejecting Violence, Embracing Peace.”

This is another book I’ve marked up with quotes for Sonderquotes. It’s full of food for thought, challenging assumptions I’d carried and didn’t even realize I was holding. Let me type out a few examples to give you the flavor, rather than trying to summarize:

But the Bible itself reveals a truth often overlooked: Divine wisdom is not confined to one culture or people. Many of the sayings in the Bible’s wisdom literature echo the insights of neighboring ancient societies. Take Proverbs 22:17-24:22, which parallels the Instruction of Antenemope, an Egyptian wisdom text dating back to at least the twelfth century BCE that offers guidance on how to live with humility, integrity, and care for the vulnerable. The Hebrew authors did not reject these principles but instead wove them into their sacred texts.

In doing so, they remind us that wisdom transcends boundaries, that truth can be found in unexpected places, even beyond our own traditions. This is a quiet decentering of exclusivity, a recognition that knowledge belongs to no single people. Instead, it is a gift to be shared and honored across cultures. Perhaps this is the heart of wisdom itself: an openness to learning from the “other,” without fear, in a sacred exchange that resists the grasping hand of empire.

The last chapter especially shows us how Jesus brought the opposite of empire.

When empire used the cross to subdue, Jesus used it to restore. This is restorative justice: healing through relationship and repair. In Christ, justice is not the hammer of empire but the mending of what is broken – the gathering of the lost, the lifting of the fallen, the restoration of dignity where it has been stripped away. The cross does not demand allegiance through fear but invites transformation through love.

And in this sacred reversal, reconciliation finds its true meaning. Enemies are no longer enemies; the estranged are drawn into belonging, woven into a community where love breathes life into existence. Christ’s self-giving redefines our very identity, calling us into a peace that heals and binds and makes whole. Here, in the shadow of the cross, we step into divine reality – a place where love transforms empires and grace redraws the boundaries of what it means to belong. Here, we find shalom.

I’m going to hold onto this book to read again – hoping more will sink in each time I read it. This book acknowledges that the Way of Christ is not the Way of Empire and helps us see the difference.

katarmas.com

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Review of The Corruption of Hollis Brown, by K. Ancrum

Award Winners, Paranormal, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Corruption of Hollis Brown

by K. Ancrum
read by Andrew Gibson

HarperCollins, 2025. 8 hours, 20 minutes.
Review written January 7, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
National Book Award Longlist

This book begins with Hollis Brown getting beat up. He starts fights on purpose – knows how to say what will set people off – but this one got him hurt pretty bad. His only friends are two other seniors, Annie and Yulia, but they’ll be going off to college at the end of this year. They live in a small town with a defunct factory where everyone’s too poor to leave. Hollis’s own father is rarely home because he’s working in the city.

And then something strange happens when the seniors decide to spend the night in the abandoned part of town that’s reportedly haunted. Annie’s ex-boyfriend, whom she just broke up with, gets stabbed. And Hollis gets blamed for it because the guy was mad he was there with Annie, and Hollis was the only one with enough presence of mind to take him to the hospital. At that point, I thought the book was going to be about whatever mysterious thing was going on in the abandoned part of town.

And then – after Hollis cries in the woods about the unfairness of it all – he meets a strange boy who appears to be homeless and gives the boy his coat. After Hollis agrees to meet the guy again – a spirit comes out of the stranger’s dead body and inhabits Hollis’s body.

Hollis can’t control his body at all. He can talk to the spirit and tell him to wipe his shoes before he goes into the house and faces Hollis’s mother. But nothing else.

The spirit – whose name is Walt and turns out to have grown up in the same town a long time ago – has ideas about how Hollis should dress and act. He even gets Hollis making new friends. But at night, when Walt is asleep, Hollis works on controlling his own hand. If he can just reach his phone without waking up Walt….

But things from there continued to not go as I expected. As Hollis and Walt slowly come to know and understand one another, situations change.

Ultimately, this is a book about love and friendship and hope. But comes at it with an approach like nothing I’ve ever read before.

kancrum.com

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Review of All the Blues in the Sky, by Renée Watson

Award Winners, Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Starred Review 0

All the Blues in the Sky

by Renée Watson

Bloomsbury Children’s Books, 2025. 182 pages.
Review written January 27, 2026, from my own copy, given to me at ALA Annual Conference and signed by the author.
Starred Review
2026 Newbery Medal Winner

I was happy when the Newbery Medal Winner was announced – and it was a book sitting by my bed in one of my TBR piles, signed by the author. And yes, I’d heard the author speak before I got it signed at ALA Annual Conference, and I was very excited about reading it.

I was disappointed in myself that I hadn’t read it yet. (So many books, so little time! I wanted to read it right away, but there are so many books in those piles, plus award reading, plus I just blew it.)

However, the good side was that it made perfect Snow Day reading. In between walks in the snow, I lounged by the fire, and as a novel in verse, it wasn’t long before I had this beautiful book read.

Here’s the first page of the text:

I didn’t know
best friends could die.

Yes, this is a book about grief. The narrator is Sage, and on her thirteenth birthday her best friend was walking to her house and was hit by a car and died.

Sage is in a grief group after school with four other kids. Two of them lost a loved one suddenly, and two lost a loved one slowly, after a long process. Sage feels like that’s not the same, since she didn’t get a chance to say good-by.

But there are ups and downs after loss. And sometimes the sadness and happiness come at the same time. Sage wants to be a pilot, and she’s going to a program about learning to be one, and she thinks about all the different shades of blue in the sky – and all the different shades of grief.

The poetry in this book is beautiful. We feel with Sage, grieve with her, but also rejoice with her. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself shedding some tears while reading it. (Especially at the rejoicing with her part.) And the book brings us to a place where we know she’ll be able to carry on, feeling all the emotions.

An Author’s Note at the back tells us that Renée Watson lost fifteen people she loved, including her mother, in the space of two years. This didn’t surprise me, because she brings authenticity to the story. And ultimately, hope. She ends the Author’s Note and the book like this:

I hope this book gives every reader permission to feel real emotions, to admit when life is hard.
I hope this book reminds every reader that in the midst of sadness and grief, there can be joy and goodness.

And Renée models that – because out of her own deep loss, she brought forth this wonderful book.

reneewatson.net

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Review of Alberto Salas Plays Paka Paka con la Papa, by Sara Andrea Fajardo, illustrated by Juana Martinez-Neal

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Alberto Salas Plays Paka Paka con la Papa

by Sara Andrea Fajardo
illustrated by Juana Martinez-Neal

Roaring Brook Press, 2025. 40 pages.
Review written January 23, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review
2026 Robert F. Sibert Medal Winner

I checked out this book because it was listed on Horn Book Magazine‘s Calling Caldecott blog as a possible contender for the Caldecott Medal (which will be announced on Monday, January 26). And wow! I’d be delighted if it shows up as an honoree (even if my personal favorite is still Cat Nap, by Brian Lies).

Edited on January 26 to add: Hooray! Today this book won the Robert F. Sibert Medal for most distinguished informational book for children! (I’m a little sad Cat Nap didn’t show up in the awards – but very happy about this one.)

This is a picture book biography, and the illustrations, done by a previous Caldecott honoree, are wonderful, making us feel like the featured Alberto Salas is a friendly uncle, foraging through a beautiful countryside.

But his story is also amazing. Alberto Salas was on a decades-long quest to find wild potatoes (papas) in the Andes mountains of Peru before they were gone. Since he was from the mountains himself and spoke both Spanish and Quecha, he could ask locals for help and was better than anyone else at finding specimens.

Alberto brings specimens to the International Potato Center genebank.

Scientists study each papa’s superpowers and create new varieties that can grow everywhere, from salty swamps to icy mountain peaks, maybe even one day on Mars.

But potatoes are under threat. Temperatures are rising, bringing insects and diseases that devour them.

Alberto’s goal is to find them all – and protect them – before they’re lost for good.

The main story is told simply, explaining the importance of these potatoes and Alberto’s skill. Then eight pages of back matter fill in details.

And have you guessed? “Paka Paka” is hide-and-seek. Alberto keeps a playful spirit and plays hide-and-seek with the native potatoes – and everyone wins.

sarafajardowrites.com
juanamartinezneal.com

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Review of The Queen’s Secret, by Jessica Day George

Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy, Starred Review 0

The Queen’s Secret

Rose Legacy, Book Two

by Jessica Day George

Bloomsbury Children’s Books, 2019. 250 pages.
Starred Review

This is the second book in a planned trilogy about a land of exiles where people can communicate with horses. And our heroine, Anthea, has an especially strong bond, able to communicate with all the horses, not only Florian, the stallion who’s bonded to her.

I enjoyed this book more than the first one. In that one, the set-up of magical telepathic communication with horses seemed a little bit too much like generic wish-fulfillment.

In this book, the set-up is done, and I enjoyed seeing the people and horses trying to work together. The horse communication seems horsey, not just the thoughts of people attributed to horses.

The Horse Brigade has the favor of the queen – but the king is not so easily won over. As the book opens, they are trying to prove themselves by carrying messages and trying to be useful in the king’s service. However, as things develop, it appears that someone is working against them.

Then an outbreak of illness starts – in the exact places where the horses had been. For a country that already thought horses bring disease, trying to win support for the Horse Brigade just became much more difficult.

The book does end on a disastrous note. We will have to wait for the next book to see how Anthea and the horses of Last Farm can overcome a major setback.

These books are perfect for fantasy-lovers who also love horses. It takes the idea of becoming one with your horse to the next level.

jessicadaygeorge.com
Bloomsbury.com

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