Review of Love at Second Sight, by F. T. Lukens

Audiobooks, Paranormal, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Love at Second Sight

by F. T. Lukens
read by Kevin R. Free

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2025. 11 hours, 41 minutes.
Review written May 29, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I love F. T. Lukens’ books! An Kevin R. Free reading them has gotten me feeling like I’m listening to a story told by a lovable friend.

Love at Second Sight is set in a world just like ours – except magic and paranormal abilities are completely normal. And so is being queer. In fact, queer is probably not the right term to use, because nobody bats an eye at Cam, our protagonist, having a crush on another boy. And everybody is fine with Cam’s best friend Al using they/them pronouns. People are cool with Al’s two moms.

But paranormal abilities, though all around them, are not quite as accepted by people like Cam’s parents. They’re hoping that for Cam’s Sophomore year of high school, he’ll make some new friends and spend less time with Al, who’s a witch. Cam doesn’t tell them about his crush on a werewolf. He’s starting at a new high school that has a much higher percentage of paranormal students than his old one.

And that first day of Sophomore year does not go well. First some little things go wrong, and then he gets stuck in the middle of a large fight between werewolves and sprites in the middle of a hall. He gets thrown against some lockers, and while he’s out cold, he has a vision of a girl who’s been stabbed and seems to be dying, and Cam in the vision is holding a bloody knife in his hands.

As things develop, it turns out that Cam has a paranormal gift that’s incredibly rare – he’s a clairvoyant who gets true visions of the future when someone touches him.

But that brings up the questions: Who touched him in the hallway? Who is the bloody girl? Can he warn her and save her life? And can he keep his parents from finding out?

After a video of Cam having another clairvoyant vision goes viral, Cam gathers a hodgepodge team of friends who help him deal with his new fame and help him identify the girl and try to save her. At the same time, all the various paranormal guilds and factions want to recruit him to form an exclusive relationship with them and give them an advantage over any adversaries.

There are plenty of obstacles and angst along the way, as well as time with that werewolf Cam has a crush on. The book is full of suspense with a mystery to solve, but plenty of humor to go along with it. And you can’t help feeling for a kid who thought he was a normal human suddenly having paranormal powers everybody wants a piece of.

Although the book is completely absorbing as a story and was not written as a parable, there are some parallels between how Cam is treated with paranormal abilities and how queer people are treated in our world. Those added resonance and made some horrible reactions feel all too believable. This also made me all the more satisfied with the lovely happy ending. This book left me smiling.

ft-lukens.com

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Review of The Black Mambas, by Kelly Crull

Children's Nonfiction Review, Science, Starred Review 0

The Black Mambas

The World’s First All-Woman Anti-Poaching Unit

by Kelly Crull

Millbrook Press, 2025. 42 pages.
Review written May 11, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

The story told in this nonfiction picture book (for upper elementary school readers) is just plain cool.

The Black Mambas are a group of women park rangers who protect the wildlife of the Olifants West Nature Reserve in South Africa’s Greater Kruger National Park.

The book explains the problem of poachers and how and why animals living in the reserve were being killed. Then it talks about local young women being recruited and learning the job – and the training and physically hard work they do to detect signs of poachers and stop them. Women are empowered to protect their communities.

This book is super informative and lavishly illustrated with photographs. It’s also inviting to young readers. Right at the front, there are head shots of twenty members of the Black Mambas, with their first names and the question, “Can you find all of us in the book?” They have little quizzes like identifying animal tracks and thinking how you would patrol given a map where poacher tracks have been found. (Note: Some of the quizzes seem a little too hard. On the page asking you to find “all four snares in this area,” I couldn’t find them at all and didn’t see a place with answers. Other simpler quizzes, like the one matching tracks, did have answers on the page.)

I especially liked the page with the Code of Honor. The reader is asked to “Stand proud and say these words with us.” The Code of Honor begins:

I am a Mamba hear me clear,
Poachers be warned, I have no fear.
Fauna and flora I pledge to protect,
There is always something to detect.
Eyes and ears serve the ground,
Here and there and all around.
From dusk to dawn, this promise I keep,
Protect the voiceless while they sleep.

The book includes photos of things they recovered at a poacher camp, as well as close-ups of the animals they protect (which are still dangerous).

They also have an educational component, teaching the children of surrounding villages to protect and take pride in their animal neighbors.

This is a gorgeous book about a group of women doing powerful and valuable work.

kellycrull.com
transfrontierafrica.org/blackmambas

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Review of Sometimes We Pray, by Mary Wagley Copp, illustrated by Felishia Henditirto

Contemporary, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

Sometimes We Pray

by Mary Wagley Copp
illustrated by Felishia Henditirto

Charlesbridge, 2026. 36 pages.
Review written April 20, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

Here is a simple and inclusive book about how all kinds of people from all over the world in all kinds of situations and all kinds of ways all pray.

The book is simple – it doesn’t talk about who or what different groups pray to. Instead, it talks about what we have in common – we pray. And it does show the variety of ways that happens.

I love the story at the back of why the author wrote the book:

One day, in the middle of an ELL (English language learners) class, two of my Syrian students stood up with their prayer rugs, went to a corner of the room, and knelt in prayer. Another student, a former pastor from Burundi, suggested that we sit silently as they prayed. The class obliged. A student from Haiti made a sign of the cross and others bowed their heads, as we sat in silence. When the class resumed, a lengthy conversation ensued – as best we could with the variety of languages we spoke – of what prayer meant to each of us. The curiosity of the students, coming from vastly different cultures, was heartening. In making space for, listening to, and hearing different perspectives, we found connection and discovered many shared values. Sometimes We Pray is inspired by that class. It is an offering to initiate similar explorations. During my research, many people shared their perspectives and practices, and I am grateful for their generous and open spirit.

The main text of the book stays simple, suitable to read to a child:

Sometimes we kneel.
Sometimes we bend and bow.
Or lie flat.

We might pray with each step. [Here there’s a picture of Buddhist monks walking in a labyrinth.]
strumming each string,
inspecting each incredible leg, [Here there’s a picture of a child looking at a praying mantis.]
or maybe…
marveling at a star.

The book goes on to talk about positions of prayer, what we do with our hands, times we pray, ways we pray, places we pray.

I like the part at the end that does include praying in difficult times:

Sometimes we wonder if prayer works.
Someone we love gets sick…
and doesn’t get better.

Someone is hungry or
doesn’t have a home.
The rain doesn’t stop or
never
comes.

But we keep praying, wherever we are.

We might be praying the same prayer,
sowing the same seeds, or…
marveling at the same star.

The beautifully painted pictures accompany a few lines on each spread. They portray people of many different cultures and religions, from many different parts of the world – and viscerally show us how much we are all alike in this way.

This isn’t a book I’d use to introduce a child to prayer. As a Christian, I’d use the tried-and-true “Prayer is talking to God.” But once a child has seen how their own family prays, this book is a glorious way to point out that others may do it differently, but so many others of us here on earth do pray.

marywagleycopp.com
felishiahenditirto.com

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Review of How the Word Is Passed, by Clint Smith, adapted by Sonja Cherry-Paul

History, Starred Review, Teen Nonfiction 0

How the Word Is Passed

Remembering Slavery and How it Shaped America

by Clint Smith
adapted for young readers by Sonja Cherry-Paul

Little, Brown and Company, 2025. 305 pages.
Review written May 27, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

I’m going to put this on my Teen Nonfiction page of the website, but it’s appropriate for upper elementary school on up. I didn’t feel talked down to when I was reading it, and it was interesting and engaging all the way.

This is a book about how we tell the story of slavery. And I’m afraid there were many eye-opening facts I didn’t know. The author visits seven historic sites and talks with the curators there about the history of slavery at that place – and how it’s smoothed over or how people are trying to confront it. He tells us about each visit and the people he met, and the book is a fascinating melding of the past and the present – helping the reader better understand just how much slavery underpins our lives today.

For the first stop at Monticello, the author went on a tour specifically about Thomas Jefferson’s relationship with slavery. This book doesn’t have a lot to say about Jefferson’s relationship with Sally Hemings – probably because it’s a children’s book. But it still has plenty to say about the contrast between Jefferson’s words in the Declaration of Independence and the way he treated his slaves.

Though Jefferson understood the devastating impact that selling an enslaved person to another plantation could have on the rest of the enslaved population, he still sold more than one hundred people over the course of his life. He separated children as young as thirteen from their parents by sale, he bought children as young as eleven, and he separated children under ten from their families by transferring them between his own properties or giving them to his own family members as gifts.

Jefferson believed that he might free himself from any guilt over the brutality of slavery by avoiding its most extreme forms of physical violence. But as an enslaver, there was no such thing as avoiding the violence of slavery – to own an enslaved person was itself to make yourself a participant in the inherent violence of the institution. Additionally, when he felt it necessary to maintain the order that made his life possible, Jefferson did engage in some of the very brutal practices he claimed to so deeply loathe.

When an enslaved man who worked in Monticello’s nail factory was caught a year after he escaped, Jefferson wrote, “I had him severely flogged in the presence of his old companions.” Although he attempted to create distance between himself and the abuse by assigning the whipping to an overseer, Jefferson knew, just as slave holders throughout the South knew, that the spectacle of public assault was a means of both asserting authority over, and maintaining order among, enslaved workers.

The other places the author visits include Whitney Plantation, where they attempt to show what plantation life was like for the enslaved people; Angola Prison, where mostly Black men are incarcerated, and where they try to smooth over the history of enslavement in that place; Blandford Cemetery, where Confederate soldiers are honored with beautiful stained-glass windows but don’t talk about what the Confederacy stood for; Galveston Island, where they reenact the story of Juneteenth, when enslaved people in Texas first learned they’d been freed; New York City, where enslaved people were auctioned off, and where a Black settlement was leveled to create Central Park; and finally Gorée Island in Senegal, where human beings were shipped across the ocean, passing through the Door of No Return.

I like the way the book is filled with facts, but it’s told as an absorbing story. He interacts with people who live in each place and talks with them about what that history means to them.

This ends up being a powerful book. I’m glad this information has been put in a form accessible and interesting to children, because this is an important part of our national history, and shouldn’t be glossed over. So far, I’m going to recommend this book to kids from about fifth or sixth grade up – but also to adults. Is this more concisely told than the adult version? I’m going to put that one on hold to see, but so far this one is packed with a satisfying amount of information, told in an absorbing way.

clintsmithiii.com
sonyacherrypaul.com
lbyr.com

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Review of Tall Water, by SJ Sindu and Dion MBD

Contemporary, Graphic Novel, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Tall Water

by SJ Sindu and Dion MBD

HarperAlley, 2025. 248 pages.
Review written February 17, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review
2026 Asian/Pacific American Literature Award, Young Adult Honor

Nimmi hasn’t seen her mother since she was a baby. Now she’s applying to universities to be a journalist, like her father. Her parents met when he was covering the war in Sri Lanka, and when his press pass expired, he took their baby to the United States, but her mother wasn’t able to get a visa to come join them.

Now after many years, her father’s press pass has been renewed, so he’s going to Sri Lanka. He says it’s too dangerous for Nimmi to come, but she takes matters into her own hands and joins him, because she wants to meet her mother.

Once there, Nimmi indeed sees some tough things. Her mother’s working at a UNICEF orphanage, being a mother to kids who need her.

And then the “Tall Water” of the title hits.

This graphic novel tells a powerful story with moving illustrations, gorgeously drawn. I read it in about a half-hour, and then I had to sit with it for a bit, because it that quickly got into my heart.

sjsindu.com
dionmbd.com

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Review of Growing Up Under a Red Flag, written by Ying Chang Compestine, illustrated by Xinmei Liu

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Growing Up Under a Red Flag

A Memoir of Surviving the Chinese Cultural Revolution

written by Ying Chang Compestine
illustrated by Xinmei Liu

Rocky Pond Books, 2024. 40 pages.
Review written April 17, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

Growing Up Under a Red Flag is a memoir in picture book form, which makes it easy for children to grasp what’s going on. It’s geared to upper elementary kids.

The book begins with the author a little girl in China in the 1960s. Her parents were both doctors, and her father taught her English and told her stories of America and corresponded with a doctor in San Francisco.

My mother wasn’t always pleased with me because I didn’t behave like a traditional Chinese girl – speaking in a low voice, playing piano, and learning the fan dance. But my father loved my curiosity and strong spirit. He answered my endless questions and clapped with me when I sang English folk songs at the top of my lungs.

But then the Cultural Revolution came. They couldn’t speak English inside their home and listened to Voice of America in secret. And then a soldier moved into her father’s study.

They ended up burning all their English books and notes – but it wasn’t enough, and her father was arrested anyway.

The book shows the hardships of the years that followed, the scarcity of food and necessities, and the struggles without her father.

I did love that by the end of the book, her father was released, and she finishes with the whole family gathered years later in San Francisco. That way, despite the difficulties depicted, readers are left with the way things turned out good in the end. Which makes for a cheerier picture book. Kids can grasp the injustice of the hard times that happened, but the story ends on a happy note.

Yingc.com

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Review of Hemlock & Silver, by T. Kingfisher

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Fiction Review, Starred Review 0

Hemlock & Silver

by T. Kingfisher
read by Jennifer Pickens

Macmillan Audio, 2025. 11 hours, 50 minutes.
Review written April 17, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

So far, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed every T. Kingfisher book I’ve read. This one has the added bonus of a self-described “middle-aged” heroine, and that’s always nice for a change. This is cozy fantasy with a dash of creepiness – if mirrors in the dark already spook you, this could make it worse.

Anja is a specialist in poisons and studies them looking for antidotes. She keeps a venomous snake and regularly milks its venom to use to speed up the heart as an antidote for other poisons. Of course she tests it on herself – after roosters, but before trying it on patients.

And then, one day, the king walks into her workshop.

The king believes that his daughter Snow is being poisoned and wants Anja to find a cure. Snow has been unwell since the day the king killed the queen – when she was cutting their other daughter’s heart out.

Anja doesn’t feel skilled in working with people, and especially not 12-year-old girls. But she is good at solving mysteries and figuring out poisons. So she goes with the king to the palace where Snow is staying, along with two bodyguards, in case the poisoner doesn’t want to be found out.

Anja finds Snow eating a strange-looking apple. Naturally, she tests it on herself – and then falls through a mirror into another, reflected world. It stirs her scientific heart, but there’s still a lot of work to be done to figure out why Snow would effectively poison herself. And how does the mirror world work.

I wouldn’t call this a retelling of “Snow White” – but many of the elements are there, and it does have that fairy tale feel. There’s a dash of romance thrown in as well, along with some mystery and danger. I blame this book for me staying up far too late the other night while working on a jigsaw puzzle.

redwombatstudio.com

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Review of The Heart of the World, by Amie Kaufman

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Heart of the World

by Amie Kaufman
read by Nikki Patel, Homer Todiwalla, Suzie Rai, Vidish Athavale, Mela Lee, and Steve West

Listening Library, 2024. 11 hours, 22 minutes.
Review written March 25, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I have to say that I love the new trend of writing duologies instead of trilogies. There’s still some suspense waiting for the next volume, but you don’t have to do it all over again and wait for a third volume.

The Heart of the World finishes the story begun in The Isles of the Gods, about a prince and a sailor girl involved in international politics, doing magic, and meddling with the gods.

There’s no way to really set up this book without giving away what happens at the end of the first book, so let me speak in general terms. You’ve got five main viewpoint characters all voiced with different narrators. In this book, the gods find a way to show up in the human world, channeling some of their power through our protagonists and antagonist. And the gods are spoiling for a fight.

The last time the gods fought, an entire country was turned into a barren wasteland. Can our heroes stop the gods? Do they even want to, or is the gods’ influence too great?

A nice touch in this volume is that Selly is able to help Leander bear the load of the goddess’s power.

The audio production for both books is outstanding, with all the narrators excellent, and my all-time favorite audiobook narrator, Steve West, voicing the prince. The characters I was getting tired of in the first volume got more interesting when empowered by a god and when planning a double cross. Oh, and there’s a scholar who tries to save the world through research – with several great lines about how awesome librarians are.

This is a tale well-told of magic and power and love. May our characters keep the world from getting blown apart.

amiekaufman.com

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Review of Now You Know Your ABCs… (Or Do You…?) written by Caspar Salmon, illustrated by Matt Hunt

Delightfully Silly, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

Now You Know Your ABCs…

(Or Do You…?)

written by Caspar Salmon
illustrated by Matt Hunt

Nosy Crow, 2026. 32 pages.
Review written April 20, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

Hooray! The creators of the amazing How to Count to One (And don’t even THINK about other numbers) have created another interactive and utterly silly parody of a basic concept book – this time taking on the alphabet.

The book begins simply enough with A is for Apple, B is for Ball, and C is for Castle. But when the narrator starts in and tries to do D is for Dog – the “dog” turns out to be a wolf – a Dangerous, Dangerous wolf!

So what are you to do but cry out EEEEEEEEEEK in fear and run all the way to France?

The nearest French person is no help, because they do not speak your language, so you Go and seek shelter inside a tree house.

The adventure that follows gets zanier and zanier as you try to outwit the wolf and get back home – all the way through the alphabet.

It all adds up to an extremely silly book that begs to be read aloud, preferably with a group that indeed already knows their ABCs so they will appreciate the surprising ways each next letter is brought into the story.

matthuntillustration.com
nosycrow.us

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Review of Casters and Crowns, by Elizabeth Lowham

Fantasy, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Casters and Crowns

by Elizabeth Lowham
read by Nick Mondelli and Jess Moran

Shadow Mountain Publishing, 2024. 12 hours.
Review written April 14, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Casters and Crowns is a sweet young adult fantasy and romance novel. I think of “Romantasy” as having sex scenes, so I’m not going to call it that, but there’s love across obstacles.

The setting is a kingdom where magic users are scorned and literally branded. And if shapeshifters are discovered, they are killed on the spot – though it is believed that they only turn up once every hundred years, so killing a shapeshifter forty years ago should have saved the kingdom for another sixty years.

There was one Caster in court – the widow of a nobleman. After her son is killed as a spy, she starts causing trouble against the king. Crown Princess Aria wants to prove herself as ready to rule, so she decides to visit the widow and negotiate peace. And then she gets cursed for her trouble. If she doesn’t find a way to break the curse in one hundred days – without being able to talk about it to anyone – she and all her family will die.

There was one other Caster at court, Guillaume Reeves, the other viewpoint character of this audiobook. His father recently died, but the king hasn’t yet allowed him to officially take his father’s position – because how could they allow such an honor to a Caster? Especially with the widow stirring up trouble?

But Aria meets Guillaume and wonders if she can learn from him enough about casting and curses to break the one on herself. Never mind that he’s handsome and kind. But both of them are keeping secrets from one another.

The book does have the trope of the harsh king with an heir who wants to turn things around. But I did find it refreshing that this time the heir was a young lady and the romantic interest oppressed by the king was a nobleman in his own right. (I’ve seen some with the opposite gender situation and it starts to feel like an abuse of power. None of that here.)

The characters are the kind you like to be around, with motivations like Aria wanting to prove herself and Guillaume wanting to protect his younger brothers. I like the thought given – even in a fantasy kingdom – to how governing should work. I enjoyed this one thoroughly.

elizabethlowham.com

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