Review of Homeschooled, by Stefan Merrill Block

Audiobooks, Nonfiction Review, True Stories 0

Homeschooled

by Stefan Merrill Block
read by the Author

Harlequin Audio, 2026. 7 hours, 10 minutes.
Review written July 6, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.

Ouch. This true story had me doing lots of cringing for the author’s past self – as well as for some of my younger siblings who were homeschooled.

To be fair, he puts a detailed note at the end that every homeschool is different, as every family is different. He doesn’t at all advocate for abolishing home schooling, though he does think that for the sake of the kids, there should be more regulation and supervision to make sure kids aren’t sitting alone in their rooms reading comic books and not seeing other people – like he did.

This is his story of being homeschooled, from fourth grade through eighth grade. He went back to school in ninth grade, and after extremely difficult adjustment learning to take tests and write papers, he did well in high school.

His homeschooling happened in Texas when laws had recently been changed to pave the way for home schooling. His mother essentially wanted to keep him her little boy and have him with her at all times. She took him out of school ostensibly because school was crushing his genius. It wasn’t religious homeschooling, but the “unschooling” movement. The idea was that he would “follow his passions” and “learn to learn,” but in practice, the only curriculum he followed was math and Brain Quest cards.

To be fair, he did end up as an author – writing in his room, just as he had done in homeschool. But still, the picture he paints isn’t what you’d want for a child, and included long stretches of loneliness.

But the story itself is absorbing and compelling. It’s a story not only of being homeschooled, but also about his relationship with the complex person who was his mother. And trying to find out who he was apart from her – when him being apart from her was the last thing she ever wanted.

stefanmerrillblock.com

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Review of Together We See, by Ari Tison

Contemporary, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Together We See

by Ari Tison

Farrar Straus Giroux, 2026. 310 pages.
Review written July 24, 2026, from my own copy, sent to me by the publisher.
Starred Review

I suspect the publisher sent me Ari Tison’s new book because I was on the 2024 Morris Award Committee that chose her debut novel, Saints of the Household, as a finalist, and they knew I’d love it. They were right. I was already a huge fan of Ari Tison’s work, and I think she’s gotten even better with her second novel.

Ulá lives with her mother in Wisconsin, making plans for after high school. She’s excited to see her brother, coming home from time in Costa Rica, but is less than thrilled when their dad shows up along with him.

Their dad lives on Bribri territory in Costa Rica after years as an activist. As far as Ulá is concerned, he’s got a long history of not keeping his promises, and that’s reinforced when he gets a flight back to Costa Rica after only two days.

But then they get the news that he died of a heart attack only a couple days after going back. Ulá and her brother go to attend his funeral, in keeping with the Bribri ways. But then things turn up that suggest maybe his death wasn’t from natural causes as the police believe.

We end up with a gripping mystery, and a story about family and community, with plenty of historical background information about injustices against indigenous people in general, and Bribri people in particular.

There are chapters interspersed from the perspective of Ulá’s ancestors, watching over her, seeing what’s happening on the land.

And all of this is told about characters you quickly care about, with relationships that are complicated, as in real life.

And yes, as the cover hints, there are venomous snakes in this book.

aritison.com

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Review of My Bicentennial Summer, by G. Neri, illustrated by Corban Wilkin

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, History, Starred Review 0

My Bicentennial Summer

True Adventures from the Most Epic Family Road Trip of All Time

by G. Neri
illustrated by Corban Wilkin

Candlewick Press, 2026. 88 pages.
Review written July 21, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

First, sorry about not getting this read before the Semiquincentennial.

As he did in My Antarctica, G. Neri makes his own travels the center of this nonfiction story, illustrated with plenty of photos, but also illustrations drawn over them. However, this time the travels happened when he was a kid. His family took six weeks and drove and camped all across America in honor of the Bicentennial in 1976.

Now, I was twelve years old in 1976. (It looks like the author is just a bit younger than me.) I remember all the hype about the Bicentennial. It makes me a little sad that not nearly as much happened for the 250th. But our family didn’t do an epic road trip like this, and it was super fun to read about and remember the hype.

I love the way the author points out the people and the cool things they saw as they drove through so many states. He talks about the history behind the Bicentennial, the ideals of democracy that we’re still striving toward, and brings it together with fun things about his own experiences in a pop-up camper with his family.

The end result is that as well as reading a fun story that’s surprising in many places – and true – you also come away proud to be part of this great big, quirky, and diverse country. We’ve come a long way in fifty years, but we’re still an incredibly diverse bunch of people with interesting local traditions in every part.

gregneri.com

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Review of This Story Might Save Your Life, by Tiffany Crum

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Fiction Review, Mystery, Starred Review 0

This Story Might Save Your Life

by Tiffany Crum
read by Julia Whelan and Sean Patrick Hopkins

Macmillan Audio, 2026. 10 hours, 39 minutes.
Review written July 15, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

This audiobook had me riveted from start to finish. I was in the middle of things last night, and when I woke up in the morning, my first thoughts were about this book. I made sure I found times to snatch a listen until it was done.

The book is a tale of two best friends who run a podcast called “This Story Might Save Your Life.” One of Joy or Benny introduces a life-threatening situation, based on a true tale of survival, and the other one ad-libs ideas for what they would do to survive. With banter and lots of humor at the terrible ideas. They finish when the person who researched the story tells how the actual person survived or what experts say you should do to survive in such a case. The podcast is crazy popular because listeners can sense the spark of devoted friendship and respect between Joy and Benny, who met not long after college.

We can tell the book begins on a momentous day, because they call it “Day 1.” The sinister Santa Ana winds are blowing, and they do the start of a podcast together. Joy slips Benny a note to come back and talk with her alone, but we don’t find out why. The next day, Joy and her husband Xander, the producer of the podcast, are missing.

The mystery is this: Where are Joy and Xander? What happened to them? We’re fed information in an exquisitely suspenseful way. Alternate chapters go back in time by giving us excerpts from a memoir Joy was writing with Benny about their friendship. I don’t dare say anything about the crucial developments in the story, because the author so expertly feeds us background and current information at exactly the right pace.

I will say some things we learn right at the start. Joy has narcolepsy, and has had it since high school. She takes a wide variety of medicines to manage it, but she still is known to fall asleep anywhere. This human failing of Joy’s makes her all the more likable from the beginning.

We also learn that the previous year has been tough. Their podcast is wildly popular, and Xander’s trying to arrange a lucrative deal with a production company. But Joy has had a stalker. She hasn’t left her house in six months. There are references to difficult things that happened, but we don’t get the details right away.

And Benny feels terribly guilty about what he said to Joy when they met at her house the night before she disappeared. What did he say? Does it have to do with her disappearance? And where are they now? And why is he hiding Joy’s computer from the police?

I wish I could say more! But when the plotting is just so very good, I don’t want to risk messing it up. I read in Libby that there are some extras on the audio version – the podcast that came at the end of the book is a fun bonus. And there are some nice sound effects thrown in. They include different people’s voices calling in to a Tipline about the missing people. So I’m going to recommend listening to this book if you get the chance.

tiffanycrum.com

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Review of Let Them Stare, by Jonathan Van Ness and Julie Murphy

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Teen Fiction Review 0

Let Them Stare

by Jonathan Van Ness and Julie Murphy
read by Jonathan Van Ness and Jeremy Arthur

Storytide (HarperCollins), 2025. 10 hours, 5 minute.
Review written July 1, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.

Let Them Stare is a light-hearted romp about a queer teen with a haunted handbag – with serious overtones about the history of how queer people were treated and how they fought back.

As the story opens, Sully is having a high school graduation party and looking forward to leaving Hearst – a small town near Pittsburgh – the very next day for the glamour of New York City as a junior assistant to an influencer. When their uncle misgenders and insults them while pretending to give them a gift, Sully is all the more ready to put it all behind them. They sell their car to Brad, the only gay guy in town, with a small last-minute make-out session to seal the deal.

But in the morning, the influencer decides to go to Tahiti and sends Sully notice that they won’t be needed after all. So Sully’s left with no job, no money, and no car – stuck in Hearst. However, when they go back to the thrift shop to try to get their job back, they don’t succeed – but they do score a vintage handbag worth potentially tens of thousands of dollars – enough to go to New York after all! Trouble is, when Sully takes it home and gets the lock open – a ghost comes out of the bag.

Rufus, the ghost, is a flamboyant drag performer (or, as he calls it, “female impersonator”) from Hearst in the 1950s. Rufus and Sully instantly recognize their similar ways of being. But Rufus doesn’t remember what happened to him or how he died young. And Sully can’t sell the bag with a ghost living in it. So Sully takes on the quest of researching Rufus and their history. Since they don’t have a car, they get rides with Brad, and Rufus is eager to give advice on Sully’s love life.

It’s all told with lots of humor. Sully has always been over-the-top, and they get into some comical situations when talking to the ghost in their bag. Rufus slowly remembers more and more of his life, leading them to various locations around Hearst to find out more. And along the way, the full story comes out of how queer people historically had to hide – and were punished severely if they didn’t.

The plot borders on melodramatic – complete with a nefarious politician who wants to sell off historical parts of the town. But the whole thing is as flamboyant as Sully, and this only adds to the fun. I appreciate how, even with such serious historical material to deal with, the authors keep it light and give everyone a happy ending. The good guys – or good people – win in this one.

jonathanvanness.com
imjuliemurphy.com

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Review of Zebra and Yak: The Backwards Alphabet Book, by Paul Friedrich

Delightfully Silly, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

Zebra and Yak

The Backwards Alphabet Book

by Paul Friedrich

G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2025. 48 pages.
Review written May 4, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

This picture book is the kind of clever idea that makes you surprised you haven’t seen it before.

The book begins, “Are you ready to start the alphabet? Let’s go!” When you turn the page, you see “Z is for Zebra.”

There’s a cartoon picture of Zebra on a lounge chair. He throws what I think is a table and a glass (might be a phone), and a speech bubble says “What?” On the opposite page are four comic book panels of Zebra asking why he didn’t hear the cue of X for Xylophone.

The book continues with the narrator’s words in very serious type, and the rest in comic book format with hand-drawn speech bubbles. After Zebra explains how things should go, the narrator says:

Apple wasn’t around.
We’re starting with Z instead.

Zebra’s response: “This is ridiculous! We need to find Apple!”

On the next page, Yak, too, isn’t ready, because he hasn’t seen the x-ray machine.

The two of them wander through the alphabet backwards, with plenty more silly situations. At the start of the alphabet, they’re wondering what took so long.

When they finally get to Apple, he’s very upset that he thought this was happening next week, so he went on vacation. An Alligator deals with him.

So this is one of those silly books that benefit from looking at something old in a new way. It will be better for kids who already firmly know their alphabet – I’d hate to really mess up any future library pages being able to shelve books. (They should also be old enough to be okay with a sentient apple getting eaten.)

I found the book when I saw Zebra and Yak are featured next in a Backwards Counting Book. That doesn’t feel as unusual, but I’m guessing it will still be silly.

paulfriedrich.com

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Review of Angry Girls Will Get Us Through, by Rebecca Traister

History, Teen Nonfiction 0

Angry Girls Will Get Us Through

by Rebecca Traister
read by Cynthia Farrell

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2026. 6 hours, 52 minutes.
Review written July 20, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.

This book takes Rebecca’s 2018 book for adults: Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger, updates it for 2026, and directs it to teen girls, to encourage them to use their anger to fight injustice.

Angry Girls Will Get Us Through points out that the Declaration of Independence was fueled by anger – as evidenced by the list of grievances it includes. But that anger – from white men – has always been more acceptable than anger coming from women or any other group.

From there, this is a book of history, a history of how women channeled their anger, through all the years of American history, to make a difference.

An obviously large topic was the fight for women to get the vote, but women of the time also worked for abolition and for temperance. The author makes the point that the temperance movement was mainly to protect women from alcoholic husbands – and outlawing alcohol was a more feasible goal at the time than changing the laws around marriage that gave men complete control over their wives.

But then the book looks at more modern times, at the first women to run for president and be in Congress. How even in modern times, a woman shedding tears, even angry ones, could ruin her chances of winning elections, and how Hillary Clinton and women like her had to always be careful of how they expressed what in a man would be called “passion.”

And then it brings us to the present day, including the second election of Donald Trump. We get the encouraging news that Hillary Clinton’s defeat and the Women’s March prompted a new wave of women entering politics. We hear about the effects of Black Lives Matter and the Me Too Movement. I was disappointed that the Epstein files were not mentioned, but that is even still unresolved, so I can understand leaving it out.

By the end of the book, despite my upbringing that anger is an emotion good people avoid, I was convinced: Anger at injustice can lead to good things, good that can reach many more people.

I hope that young women who read or listen to this book will take that message to heart. For that matter, I hope I will take this message to heart and not be as quick to stuff down anger at injustices I hear about in the news.

rebeccatraister.com

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Review of Midsummer Sisters, by Niki Smith

Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Graphic Novel 0

Midsummer Sisters

by Niki Smith

Graphix (Scholastic), 2026. 270 pages.
Review written July 11, 2026, from a library book.

This graphic novel makes you feel the summer breezes at the beach.

Quinn and Kenzie have been stepsisters pretty much as long as they can remember. But the book starts when their parents are fighting, and together they’re trying to block out the noise. The next day their Gramma (technically, Kenzie’s grandmother) comes to take them to the Outer Banks, so their parents can have some time alone and work things out.

Quinn and Kenzie are in middle school or upper elementary (not entirely clear which), and Quinn’s more upset to leave her friends behind than Kenzie is. Gramma is a veterinarian who keeps an eye on the local herd of wild horses that inhabit the islands, so the girls are excited to go kayaking in the nearby waters and spot the horses – and a newborn foal.

So this graphic novel is about summer fun – and the pictures make you feel like you’re there. But there’s an undercurrent of what are the girls going to do if their parents split up?

This is a lovely story and a quick read – with horses!

niki-smith.com
scholastic.com

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#Sonderbooks25 – 2006 Stand-outs and Big Changes

Sonderbooks25 0

Happy 25th year of Sonderbooks! I’m celebrating #Sonderbooks25 by rereading all my reviews and changing the format of my Stand-outs pages to display better on phones.

And I’m up to 2006! I had suspected that this whole project would get easier after I passed 2005, and I was absolutely right. The big reason is that in 2007 – when I made the 2006 Stand-outs page – was when I took a website development class in grad school and revamped my website and added a blog. Before 2006, to convert the format, I had to pretty much rewrite the whole page, but to redo the 2006 page, I only had to substitute in a new frame – the basic format was the same. So it took me less than an hour instead of several hours.

On top of that, there weren’t as many reviews to read. 2006 was my last year before I started posting all reviews on this blog, and I was still posting them as separate “webzine” issues. But it was also my Year of Upheaval, so the only issues I posted were Sonderbooks 105 in March, Sonderbooks 106 in April, Sonderbooks 107 in June, and Sonderbooks 108 in December. In addition, some of the books that appear in my 2006 Sonderbooks Stand-outs didn’t actually get reviewed until 2007. (But I’m going to reread the reviews along with the year they were posted.)

What was keeping me so busy that I wasn’t posting reviews? Well, you can read about that in my Project 52 posts –
Getting Back on My Feet – About starting the year in a German hospital with surgery for uterine adhesions, and my husband making plans to move to Japan so he could get away from me
Goodbye to Germany – about the wonderful going-away party my Sembach Base Library colleagues threw for me and the poem Elfriede wrote for me
Truth and Trauma – About the day the movers came, and my husband finally confessed it had been an affair all along (but now she’d broken up with him because he found out she was cheating on him) – but also that in the past he’d had a plan to kill me and bought the weapon
Welcome to Virginia – About moving to Virginia to be near two childhood best friends, being taken in by their church, starting a Master’s in Library and Information Science program, and starting to heal.

So yeah, it was a big year.

I also read some amazing books that year.

The two most life-changing books of that year I will not be rereading, but they were exactly what I needed at the time. I read NOT “Just Friends”, by Dr. Shirley Glass, before I knew my husband was having a physical affair, but that book helped me understand that it was completely fair to call him seeing the other woman behind my back an emotional affair. And it was empowering to be told that’s a traumatic revelation – because then I didn’t feel as bewildered by the symptoms I was having of obsessive thoughts and flashbacks. It helped me have compassion on myself and thus be able to heal.

The other life-changing book was Steven Stosny’s You Don’t Have to Take It Anymore, which has since been retitled Love Without Hurt. This book helped me stop beating myself up when my husband’s words were tearing me down. It also helped me stop reacting to his anger and resentment with my own anger. It sounds trite – but Steven Stosny includes practical ways to direct your thoughts so you can build compassion for yourself and your spouse instead of resentment. Even if that’s one-sided. I needed this book the next several years as I had to keep interacting with my husband. (The divorce didn’t happen until 2010, and we were still navigating child visitation until 2012.)

Oh, and another good relationship one that I didn’t review until 2007 but is on the 2006 Stand-outs list is Forgive for Good, by Dr. Fred Luskin. This book helped me see that if I could forgive, it would stop my husband from continuing to have space in my mind and continuing to hurt me. (Though I also had to learn that you can’t pre-forgive, and I had plenty of new hurts to navigate.)

But here are some other books I plan to put in my still-growing pile of books from #Sonderbooks25 that I want to reread:

How We Choose to Be Happy, by Rick Foster and Greg Hicks – a nice reminder that our happiness can flow out of choices we make.

Waking the World – Fairy tales from around the world about women in midlife.

Diary of a Medical Intuitive, by Christel Nani – It was super interesting to read about emotional and physical connections when I had gynecological surgery shortly after my husband left me.

The Canterbury Papers, by Judith Koll Healey – wonderful historical fiction

Jane Austen in Scarsdale, by Paula Marantz Cohen – Read when I was just beginning to discover how much fun Austen-inspired fiction can be.

The King of Attolia, by Megan Whalen Turner – It’s probably time to give that whole amazing series a reread.

But yes! It was surprisingly lovely to reread reviews from that tumultuous year. (I wrote some very long ones back then.) I had forgotten about some of the other books that helped me through that time and some of the other books that diverted me when I needed cheering up.

So now I encourage you – Take a look at my reviews! I still consider all of the titles Stand-outs. So if there are some you missed – think about giving some of them a try! Good books don’t expire.

Review of Better Ways to Read the Bible, by Zach W. Lambert

Christian, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Better Ways to Read the Bible

Transforming a Weapon of Harm into a Tool of Healing

by Zach W. Lambert

Brazos Press, 2025. 202 pages.
Review written July 15, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

Better Ways to Read the Bible is full of beautiful wisdom – beautiful in the sense that it promotes love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, and other fruit of the Spirit, as Zach says our Bible interpretation should do.

He starts by pointing out that everybody who reads the Bible interprets it. We don’t speak the same language or come from the same culture or time as when the Bible was written, so we can talk about “the plain reading of Scripture” – but we’re actually reading a translation during a time far removed from the original writers.

Everyone who reads and interprets the Bible does so with a set of assumptions about what the Bible is and how it’s supposed to work. This set of assumptions functions like a filter or a lens through which the reader attempts to make meaning. Although everyone reads the Bible through a lens (or set of lenses) – there is no neutral or unfiltered way to read it – many people are unaware that they’re doing so and have never stopped to take stock of the assumptions they bring to the text and how those assumptions impact interpretations.

I’m going to insert some of my own comments here. I accidentally learned about this back in the 1990s. I was reading books by George MacDonald and it dawned on me that George MacDonald, a man who clearly loved the Bible and knew it well, believed that hell is not forever. How could he possibly believe that? That’s not what the Bible says! And then I read the whole New Testament removing that filter – thinking Could this possibly be true?, and I saw how I could read passages completely differently. And focus on different passages, which with a fresh filter seemed to plainly say that all will be saved.

Or even when I was a teen and memorized John 9, where Jesus heals a blind man. The religious leaders say to the blind man, “This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.” Even as a teen, I saw that those leaders were “proving from Scripture” – or their understanding of Scripture – that Jesus was not from God. It made me forever after be willing to question my interpretation.

And this book gives the reader tools for questioning their interpretations. He asks the reader to question the lenses they’re bringing to reading the Bible. He starts with lenses that cause harm (and he has plenty of examples from real people): “The Literalism Lens,” “The Apocalypse Lens,” “The Moralism Lens,” and “The Hierarchy Lens.”

And then he talks about four lenses that promote healing: “The Jesus Lens,” “The Context Lens,” “The Flourishing Lens,” and “The Fruitfulness Lens.” And yes! These chapters fill me with the joy of recognition. Back to applying it to where I first diverted from my Evangelical upbringing, I was told that believing in universal salvation was just wishful thinking, too good to be true. But isn’t our faith supposed to be good news? The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

And yes, he applies that to people who have been rejected by churches. That doesn’t fit any of the healing lenses above.

The Bible has always been the church’s book. It belongs to the people and is best interpreted within a healthy and diverse community. That’s how I know that the lenses I’ve been talking about promote healing rather than inflicting harm. Not because a scholar said so or because I cracked some code, but because I’ve seen them bring healing, wholeness, and flourishing to our community at Restore for a decade.

So I highly recommend this book. If you’ve ever been harmed by someone’s use of the Bible, there’s healing here. And if you love the Bible, you’ll find reasons to love it more.

zachwlambert.org

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