Review of The Witch’s Heart, by Genevieve Gornichec

Fantasy, Fiction Review, Starred Review 0

The Witch’s Heart

by Genevieve Gornichec
read by Jayne Entwistle

Penguin Audio, 2021. 12 hours, 5 minutes.
Review written July 23, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I put this audiobook on hold because of how much I loved the author’s later-written book, The Weaver and the Witch Queen. This was also set in old Norway, but this time we got the old Norse myths of Asgard, as seen through the eyes of a witch who was involved in so many of the great events.

The book starts after Angrboda has been burned by the gods a third time – this time because she wouldn’t use her power to tell Odin the future, about Ragnarok. But as she’s reawakening, Loki, another from the race of giants, but blood brother to Odin, brings her back her heart.

Angrboda lives hidden from the gods. Her reinserted heart falls in love with Loki and she becomes his wife, even though he goes back to Asgard from time to time. And after one of his tricks gone wrong, the gods force him to take a wife there, or so Loki says. So he divides his time between the two families.

The book covers most of the stories of Norse mythology covered in Neil Gaiman’s book by that name, so I was prepared for their strangeness. This was a far more personal look at them, through the eyes of Angrboda, in love with Loki despite how her friend Skadi the Huntress feels that Angrboda’s husband should be around more often.

The strangeness gets even greater when Angrboda gives birth to three children of Loki who are by no means ordinary. But Angrboda loves them, and any who would dare call them monsters will have to deal with her. But then her visions of the future also show her children involved in Ragnarok.

That feels like a poor summary, because the story is immersive and evocative. Yes, it’s also strange, but we come to care about this ancient witch and root for her to outwit the gods and protect those she loves.

genevievegornichec.com

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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of Yulu’s Linen, by Cao Wenxuan, illustrated by Suzy Lee

Contemporary, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

Yulu’s Linen

by Cao Wenxuan
translated by Helen Wang
illustrated by Suzy Lee

Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2026. 44 pages. Originally published in South Korea in 2020.
Review written September 30, 2026, from my own copy, sent to me by the publisher.
Starred Review

My favorite thing about this picture book is the luxurious feel of its pages. Let me explain:

Yulu’s Linen is about an eight-year-old girl who has been encouraged in her love for art since she was small. Her own father wanted to be an artist, but opened a fabric shop instead. He has gotten tutors and famous artists to teach Yulu, and now she is ready to make her first self-portrait.

When they go to the art store, the shopkeeper shows them a piece of the highest-grade canvas, already cut to portrait size.

It’s yu-lu-ma – rain-dew linen,” said the shopkeeper.

It was Yulu’s turn to smile. “That’s my name.”

The shopkeeper fetched the piece of rain-dew linen.

Yulu stroked it gently. “Dad, I like this one,” she said.

The canvas was originally ordered by a master in oil painting, but he moved away before picking it up.

Yulu happily takes the canvas home. She’s a little afraid to start painting, but she spends a week painting, and her parents are so happy with it, they invite their friends and Yulu’s art teacher to come see it.

But in the night, the paint runs and the painting is a mess.

Yulu does seven more tries, trying various things. Her mother throws away the canvas at one point, but Yuli recovers it. She’s determined. Apparently the canvas doesn’t want to be the background for a beginner.

With every try, Yuli drapes one of her father’s beautiful fabrics over the painting. But the final time, she tries something different.

And through the whole book, we only see the ruined paintings – until the final page, when Yulu’s self-portrait is smiling back at us.

This is an odd story. I’m not sure it has a message except persistence. But the art is beautiful and varied – with different angles on the painting and the characters in each scene. And the paper! I couldn’t find a note on what kind of paper they used, but it feels like linen, with even a feeling of a weave on the pages. The cover, too, is made of this luxurious high-fabric-content paper. It’s the perfect accompaniment to this story. I kept running my hands along the pages, and was haunted (in a good way) by the story when I closed the book.

It’s too bad this book isn’t eligible for the Caldecott Medal, but it should be eligible for the Batchelder Award, given to translated books originally published in another country. I’d love to see it on the list in January!

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

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Review of Birdy, by N. West Moss

Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Starred Review 2

Birdy

by N. West Moss
illustrations by Carrie Shyrock

Christy Ottaviano Books (Little, Brown and Company), 2026. 282 pages.
Review written October 9, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

First, a great big thank you to Colby Sharp. His heartfelt recommendation was what got me to check this book out again and put it on the top of my pile of books to be read this time.

And this is a heart-warmer and an eye-mister. The story follows the tradition of classics Anne of Green Gables, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, and Pollyanna but with a modern update. As the book opens, newly orphaned eleven-year-old Birdy and her little brother Mouse are going from New York City (where they’d been staying with a neighbor since their mother’s funeral) to live with an elderly couple in the country. The social worker has said this will only be for six months, on a trial basis, so of course their fate is hanging in the air the whole time.

This couple is related somehow, but Birdy (whose real name is May) doesn’t know quite how. They arrive on the day the man, who goes by Shadow, has broken his foot, and his wife Mitzi is in a flutter about it. But she welcomes the kids and they start getting to know their new environment.

Birdy is deeply shy and has learned how to not be noticed. But that strategy doesn’t work in some of the new situations she faces. And then the kids’ Uncle Clay turns up – their mother’s little brother they didn’t even know she had. He brings a pet raccoon and a goat and he’s only planning to stay a couple weeks. So Birdy is afraid to get too close.

Is there some neurodivergence going on with Birdy? Possibly. Or maybe she’s a kid who’s recently gotten through traumatic events just trying to protect her heart from more loss.

It’s all exquisitely told from Birdy’s perspective. I agree with Colby Sharp – This book has Newbery potential, and whether or not it gets recognition that way, I recommend experiencing it for yourself. These characters will win your heart.

nwestmoss.com
christyottavianobooks.com
lbyr.com

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#Sonderbooks25 – 2009 – Coming into My Own

Sonderbooks25 0

I’ve been celebrating #Sonderbooks25 – 25 years of writing Sonderbooks – for quite some time now.

It’s my own fault. My original idea was to choose one book to reread from each year’s Sonderbooks Stand-outs. That led to revising the Stand-outs page to fit the new phone-friendly format. That led to rereading each review of the Stand-outs. That led to deciding to reread all the reviews I’d written, beginning in 2001. That led to wanting to reread a lot more than one book per year. Once I got to the years I added blogs, it also led to rereading all my Sonderquotes and Sonderjourneys posts. And I’d already been reading the Project 52 posts about the years I was writing Sonderbooks.

So – things have gotten out of hand! But the truth is, I’m having a lot of fun revisiting my old writings and wonderful books I’d recommended. I will probably stop calling it #Sonderbooks25 when I hit my 26th anniversary next August, but whether I’ve finished or not (I hope I will have!), I will probably want to keep going, because this is a treat.

So now for my report on 2009 with its fresh Sonderbooks Stand-outs page.

This time, I really did reread one of the books before I posted this – The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, and it was every bit as wonderful as I’d remembered. I’ve also been rereading some of the books from earlier Stand-outs, like Enchantment, by Orson Scott Card, from 2007, and I enjoyed both of those so much – in audio form this time – that I’m tempted not to place holds for any new audiobooks and just keep rereading.

But I think the biggest treat when revisiting 2009 was remembering what I was going through. The Sonderquotes posts from that year were about letting go, forgiveness, and finding joy. Sonderjourneys posts reminded me that things were not going well with my husband. He continued to tell me I was a horrible person, and negotiations about a divorce settlement were not going well. I was slowly coming to terms with the idea that it would be okay – maybe a good thing – to file for divorce myself.

And at the same time, I was indeed coming into my own! 2009 was my first full year working as a full-fledged librarian, and I was loving it. 2009 was when I discovered other kidlit blogs and did my first 48-Hour Book Challenge and attended my first KidLitCon. Also, my obsession with the Newbery Medal had started, and I took an online class about it. I applied to attend the Morris seminar and to be a CYBILS judge and did not get either one, but did not give up. I was completely loving having found my calling as a librarian.

At the same time, budget cuts were looming – but they didn’t hit my job until 2010. I hadn’t realized until I reread these blogs that this was the year my father had his first heart attack and my mother got her first dementia diagnosis (at only 68 years old). (They passed away within two months of each other ten years later, my father from a heart attack, my mother from Alzheimer’s.)

But most of the posts are about learning to live on my own as a single mom (with one kid at home in 9th grade) and as a librarian. My sense looking back is that life had opened up and I was thriving.

And my goodness, I read some wonderful books! As I read the reviews I jotted down way too many that I’d like to reread. Instead of listing them all out, let me encourage you to take a look at the list of 2009 Sonderbooks Stand-outs. Read some reviews and see what calls out to you! It turns out that for the most part, good books are still good books.

Happy Reading!

Review of Jesus: A Pilgrimage, by James Martin, SJ

Christian, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

coverJesus

A Pilgrimage

by James Martin, SJ

HarperOne, 2014. 538 pages.
Review written June 6, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

Jesus: A Pilgrimage is the story of Jesus’ life as told in the gospels, but seen through the lens of Fr. Martin’s trip to the Holy Land. This makes it a beautifully personal way of looking at the stories.

I know a lot about Jesus’ life – I’ve actually memorized all four gospels. But this book was packed with new insights gleaned from the author being in the actual places where the events occurred. At the same time, I think it would give anyone new to the gospel story an introduction that would draw them in. I’d love to go through this book with my church small group, but the catch is that it’s much longer than most books we use. So I’d probably want to start in the Fall and use it the entire year – but we have already selected a book for next Fall, so we’ll see.

James Martin is a Jesuit priest. I’m not sure how I found this book, but I’ve read some of his others, so I was probably checking if our library had any more books by him and found it. I’m also reading his book Work in Progress that was published this year, so maybe searching for it, I found this one. But however it happened, I have been riveted by this book – mostly telling a tale I already know, but full of the stories of what are in the sites now and what it looks and feels like to be there.

He tells about the places and events in the order they happened in Jesus’ life, not in the order he visited them. So after explaining how he happened to spend time in the Holy Land, he begins with the Annunciation to Mary that she would have a baby – which happened in Nazareth. He ends with the place where Jesus ascended into heaven – or at least where tradition says it happened.

In the Introduction, he explains that this isn’t a scholarly book or a book of theology.

So what is this book?

It is a look at Jesus, as he appears in the Gospels, through the lens of my education, experience, prayer, and most recently a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. And through the lens of faith.

He explains his basic approach, as well as how personal it all is.

As we arrive at significant “places” in Jesus’s life, I’ll share stories of what I saw at those sites during my pilgrimage. In this way I hope to bring you into that trip as I experienced it. Also, I’ll offer reflections on what particular episodes in Jesus’s life might have to say to us today.

Each chapter, then, will include some travel narrative, some study of the text, and some spiritual reflection. At the end of the chapters I will include the corresponding Gospel passages, to encourage you to experience these parts of the Bible for yourself.

As someone who already loves Jesus, I feel like Fr. Martin succeeded in bringing me along on his pilgrimage and deepening that love. As he puts it:

So I would like to invite you to meet the Jesus you already may know, but in a new way. Or, if you don’t know much about Jesus, I would like to introduce him to you. Overall, I would like to introduce you to the Jesus I know, and love, the person at the center of my life.

I believe he succeeds in this goal, and I highly recommend this book.

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of Rose Daughter, by Robin McKinley

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Old Favorites, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 2

Rose Daughter

by Robin McKinley
read by Bianca Amato

Recorded Books, 2015. 12 hours, 47 minutes.
Review written September 11, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I’ve been rereading (or listening to) Robin McKinley old favorites because they came up in my #Sonderbooks25 celebration of 25 years of writing Sonderbooks – when I also realized that there are several that I read before I started Sonderbooks, so they don’t have a review.

Rose Daughter is Robin McKinley’s second retelling of the fairy tale “Beauty and the Beast.” I like Beauty, the first retelling, a little better because it is shorter and has more of a fairy tale feel. But both versions are wonderful.

I do love that in both books, Beauty comes from a loving and happy family. Yes, Beauty’s sisters pull her away from the Beast at a crucial time, but it’s because of their great love for one another.

In Rose Daughter, Beauty is a gifted gardener. But she has never seen roses, which can only be grown by sorcery or love. So when there are thorny bushes all over the cottage deep in the woods that the family inherits from an unknown old woman, she doesn’t recognize them until they burst into bloom.

The Beast also has a rose garden, but his garden is dying. When Beauty comes to stay in his palace, she gains a task to revive the roses, and she thinks that’s the reason he brought her to his realm.

This book twists the ending a bit, similar to what happens in Spindle’s End, but from start to finish you’ve got Robin McKinley’s magic spinning a world where love makes roses bloom.

robinmckinley.com

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48-Hour Book Challenge – Finish Line

48-Hour Book Challenge 0

Tonight I finished my 48-Hour Book Challenge! As usual, I found that it’s not as much time as I think it is.

I spent 11 hours and 40 minutes of the last 48 hours reading, and 6 hours and 55 minutes listening to audiobooks, for a total of 18 hours and 35 minutes.

I spent 6 hours and 10 minutes doing book-related things like blogging and writing reviews, with 1,561 words written on blog posts or reviews.

All this is a grand total of 24 hours and 45 minutes, so over half the time. This isn’t really close to my best time in a 48-Hour Book Challenge, but it also isn’t my worst, and I like that I did over half the time. Sleeping late and taking walks was probably worth it, though I kind of regretted it when I saw the stats!

As for books read, I don’t want to say too much, because I especially focused on reading backlist books we’re considering for the Mathical Book Prize. The Mathical Prize is interesting in that only books nominated by the publisher are eligible to win the Prize for the current year, but books published in previously years can be suggested by others and are eligible for Honors (as well as current books nominated by the publishers).

I also was confronted with the fact that I am currently slowly reading (a chapter a day) an excessive number of nonfiction books. It’s gotten way out of hand! I managed to finish one of them, and I added in a bunch of graphic novels so I would actually finish books, but this skews my numbers.

Final stats: 1,669 pages read (Remember, lots of graphic novels.)
8 books finished (5 of which were started from the beginning).
17 other books read partially. (See what I mean about it’s getting out of hand?)
2 Sonderbooks reviews written
5 Mathical evaluations written

So – it was super nice to get lots of reading done, but it’s always disappointing what a small dent it makes in the books I want to read! And yes, I made good progress on the Mathical backlist – but this weekend we were given the Mathical frontlist (This year’s books nominated by the publishers), so I need to get serious about reading those. (We each read in one age band, then we’ll narrow down to a shortlist that everyone will read.)

However, this year, alas, the CYBILS award has been discontinued, so at least I’m not trying to read CYBILS books – though I do want to read one more Capitol Choices nominee before next week’s meeting.

I whine a little bit about needing to do this reading, but I love it! It’s just daunting to realize afresh that one 48-Hour Book Challenge doesn’t mean my task is anywhere near done.

And the best part? I spent as many hours as I could reading on my balcony, and the weather was perfect for it.

The book pictured is my favorite of this year’s 48-Hour Book Challenge, and one of the reviews I wrote – Birdy, by N. West Moss. I was completely charmed.

Most of all, I’m taking this as a reminder that it’s a treat to take the time to read. I should do it more often!

Review of The Music Inside Us, written by James Howe, illustrated by Jack Wong

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

The Music Inside Us

Yo-Yo Ma and His Gifts to the World

written by James Howe
illustrated by Jack Wong

Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2025. 48 pages.
Review written March 24, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

The Music Inside Us is a picture book biography of cellist Yo-Yo Ma, which makes it a wonderful book even if it were an ordinary one.

Yo-Yo Ma began playing the cello as a four-year-old in Paris. The book shows him playfully enjoying music even as a small child. His family moved to New York City when he was seven and got him world-class teachers. He and his sister performed for large audiences even when they were very young.

But this book is special because it goes deeper. It talks about his quest to learn technique to make his cello sing. It talks about his questions of identity as a teen when he wondered if he was really meant to be a cellist.

In college, Yo-Yo studied anthropology and discovered that every group of people in the world makes music.

Yo-Yo decided that he would spend his life not only performing for others,
but learning from others about their musical traditions
and finding ways to bring cultures together through the music they make.

The book shows him connecting with people from all over the world, as well as with children.

I like the way the book finishes up with questions for the reader:

We are all born with gifts inside us,
our own music inside us.

And we can all ask the same kinds of questions
Yo-Yo Ma has never stopped asking.

Who am I?
Who are we?

How can we use the gifts inside us
to bring people harmony and joy
and make the world a better place
because we have been here?

jameshowe.com
jackwong.ca
abramsbooks.com

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Review of The Librarians, by Sherry Thomas

Contemporary, Fiction Review, Mystery, Suspense 0

The Librarians

by Sherry Thomas
read by Louisa Zhu

Books on Tape, 2025. 13 hours, 45 minutes.
Review written March 24, 2026, from a library book.

Can I resist a book with this title and a picture of a smoking gun (with a face in the smoke) on the cover? No, I cannot.

Yes, this is a thriller with the main location being a small branch library in Austin, Texas. When two of the library’s patrons turn up dead on the same night as a library board game program, four of the library workers are embroiled in the mystery. No, not all of those four workers are actual librarians with a master’s in library science, but someone blithely states early on that it’s all the same to the public.

Usually when I read a book set in a library among librarians, I quickly notice many strange details. This one wasn’t too bad that way except for how much people blithely showed up to work when they weren’t scheduled. (Who does that?) They also didn’t seem to have any volunteers or Friends of the Library groups. Honey, that’s who should deal with piles of book donations, not library staff – and absolutely not on their time off.

But that didn’t bother my enjoyment of the book. Maybe they just weren’t good at using volunteers. The prologue shows us a man who’d embezzled millions of dollars going through books in this same library, and hints that his widow will turn up there. Then we flash to the present day and meet the four featured library workers.

Sophie is the branch manager. She’s Black and the single mother of an accomplished teen and she holds herself apart from her coworkers. Jonathan is a gay man who’s big and sturdy and a great help to the other library staff with his solid presence. He grew up in Austin. Blonde Astrid speaks with a Swedish accent. Six months ago, she had a fling with a library patron who then ghosted her, and she’s still sore over it. And Hazel is brand-new to the library. She came to live with her grandmother, whose health isn’t what it once was, but her grandmother urged her to get a job so she wouldn’t be in her hair at all hours.

We quickly learn that all four of these people are keeping secrets. The author consistently uses flashbacks all the way through the book to tell us about those secrets and other relevant developments. When two patrons turn up dead the same night the library hosted a board games program, it turns out that all four featured library staff were embroiled in some way with the victims or with the suspects of the crimes.

And that’s where the believability was strained for me. The connections between them mount, and it seems like that would require some big huge coincidences. Yes, some of them being in Austin are directly because of that embezzled money – but not all, and that doesn’t cover all of the interconnections.

Also, neither of the dead patrons was killed with a gun, but I assure you that the promise of the cover picture is fulfilled – at least one gun goes off before the end of the book.

So, yes, the book strained believability, but it was still a whole lot of fun. I liked the characters, I enjoyed their love interests, and it was fun reading about the secrets in their pasts. The murder mystery was solved with a thrilling conclusion. Of course, it then took two more hours of the audiobook to wrap up the details – but it was still a fun ride.

sherrythomas.com

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48-Hour Book Challenge Starting Line!

48-Hour Book Challenge 0

It’s time for a 48-Hour Book Challenge!

I’ve been rereading old blog posts in honor of #Sonderbooks25, my 25th anniversary of writing Sonderbooks. I’m currently reading posts from 2009 – and it turns out that was when I did my first 48-Hour Book Challenge. And it’s time for another one!

The first one was the brainstorm of Pam Coughlan, who blogged at Mother Reader, and years later in 2020 started working in the same library as me. At the beginning she revved up the whole large kidlit blogging community (the Kidlitosphere) to get involved. The idea: Take a 48-Hour period and see how much of it you can spend reading.

2009 was before I had been on any award committees, but wanted to be. And spending hours reading still felt like a guilty pleasure. Doing the 48-Hour Book Challenge helped me shed any guilt – because that was what I *should* be doing for 24 hours.

In 2026? I no longer ever have any guilt for spending hours reading. But I do have a much too large TBR (To Be Read) pile(s). And besides, I went to Wild Goose Festival over Labor Day weekend and have otherwise been busy – and I want a concentrated time to read. And besides all that, Columbus Day used to be one of my favorite holidays of the year simply because the weather tends to be wonderful and it’s a good time for a break. We lost that day off when we were given Juneteenth (which is also a wonderful time to be off) – so I’m giving myself a long weekend for Indigenous People’s Day and taking both Friday and Monday off. My plan is to read for Friday and Saturday, have a regular Sunday with choir and church and tabletop games, and then try to do some much-needed home decluttering on Monday.

I’ve been doing my own 48-Hour Book Challenges ever since Mother Reader stopped. So I get to make my own rules. What I’m keeping is that the goal is time. How much time can I spend reading and blogging during the 48 hours from 9:50 pm tonight (Thursday) to 9:50 pm on Saturday?

I will allow myself to count listening to audiobooks when I’m doing things like preparing food or doing laundry. (I got off to a late start because I did my Friday night bill-paying tonight instead, plus my usual Thursday night grocery shopping.)

I’m going to allow blogging (like this), and writing and posting reviews. I want to write reviews of any books I finish that I like well enough. (Just finished an audiobook that I don’t like well enough. It does happen.) I will also count posting to Sonderquotes and working on #Sonderbooks25. I’m almost ready to post the summary post for 2009!

As of today, I may allow one other activity – writing. Today I got another very kind rejection for my book, Praying with the Psalmists, which my agent is submitting to publishers. We got the feedback we’ve gotten before – too much memoir for what that publisher does. So for a while now, I’ve been planning to write a proposal for a series of books looking at how you can use patterns from Psalms in prayer, but without so much memoir. They’d be a series of devotional books, featuring two types of Psalms in each book, beginning with Laments for Lent. They’d be a great follow-up to my original book. But they might work on their own if I can’t sell the original book.

All that is to say, I’m going to allow myself some writing time in there.

But my plan is to spend at least half the time reading. So after tonight – when I do want to do my usual postings – I’m going to try to never do more time at the computer than I have already done reading.

I am thinking that I’ll still try to sleep late the next two days, and I hope to also go for walks. But I’m hoping even with that, I can get a nice chunk of time reading.

Oh, and that picture at the top of this post? That’s the t-shirt I’m planning to wear tomorrow – the one full day of reading in the middle of the 48 hours.

And no matter how many hours I check off, I am sure that I will achieve the main goal – a wonderful 48 hours doing lots of reading! What a treat!