Review of 365: How to Count a Year, by Miranda Paul & Julien Chung

Children's Nonfiction Review, Contemporary, Delightfully Silly, Mathematical, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

365

How to Count a Year

by Miranda Paul & Julien Chung

Beach Lane Books, 2023. 44 pages.
Review written October 26, 2023, from a library book.
Starred Review

365 is a wonderful kid-friendly picture book about different units of time and how many of them make up a year. It’s bright and colorful and gives examples that will make kids laugh.

The start is basic:

It takes the Earth 365 days to spin around the sun.

But the book quickly gets more creative:

That’s 365 “Good mornings,”

365 “Good nights,”

and, hopefully, 365 clean pairs of underwear.

Then it goes on to talk about things that might happen 52 times in the 52 weeks of a year.

And next are groups of 12 things that happen monthly. Like cleaning the fish tank or getting a magazine.

And if 365, 52, and 12 are too big for you, it all comes back to 1 year, which, of course, is best measured in birthdays.

But that’s not all!

And right after that party is over,
you’ll probably start asking …

how long until next year’s celebration?

The answer —
8,760 hours —
might seem like forever.

And then they go on to minutes and seconds in a year.

A spread at the end tells us:

But the good news is that you can group those
seconds into minutes and minutes into hours and hours into sunsets and sunrises and good mornings and good nights and clean (or dirty) underwear, flavors of the day, Friday night spills, or Saturday sleep-ins, so the countdown simply becomes…

1 marvelous collage of 1 year in the life of you.

How will you count your year?

It’s all colorful and fun and directly relates the somewhat abstract concept of time to kids’ lives. There’s a bonus page at the back telling how much time or how many times certain things happen in a year.

A beautiful introduction to the mathematics of time for young children.

mirandapaul.com
julienchung.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 Painting Wonder, by Katie Wray Schon

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Painting Wonder

How Pauline Baynes Illustrated the Worlds of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien

by Katie Wray Schon

Waxwing Books, 2025. 44 pages.
Review written May 20, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review

Painting Wonder is a picture book biography of Pauline Baynes, the illustrator who gave us the iconic illustrations in The Chronicles of Narnia. This book told me she also illustrated Tolkien’s books. I didn’t think I’d seen those editions – and then last night I was reading my reviews from my 2003 Sonderbooks Stand-outs (as part of my #Sonderbooks25 celebration), and came across this line in the review of Smith of Wooton Major and Farmer Giles of Ham: “I like the drawings, by the same person who illustrated the original editions of The Chronicles of Narnia.”

I was happy to learn more about that person, Pauline Baynes, by reading this book.

Pauline was born in India to British parents, but was sent to boarding school in England when she was five years old. The book shows how she found refuge from gray skies and bullies in the pages of books full of adventure. She eventually went to art school, but her art career was interrupted by World War II. During the war, she used her art skills to make maps for the navy – which turned out to be perfect preparation for making maps of fantasy worlds.

The book talks about how she submitted her art to publishers, but then had a long wait.

More years go by,
as she’s busy with teaching art
and caring for family
and making new friends
and waiting
and drawing
and waiting.

But all at once,
the slow years of waiting end.

A famous author,
J. R. R. Tolkien,
sees her pictures in a pile.

He wants her to draw dragons
and knights and gnarled trees
for his new book, and she does.

It was probably Tolkien who gave her name to C. S. Lewis – which resulted in her wonderful illustrations for all seven Narnia books.

That’s the basic story in these pages, but it’s told poetically, and with illustrations reminiscent of Pauline’s own. Four pages of back matter fill in the details. I love this window into the life of an illustrator whose art I truly love.

katiewrayschon.com
WaxwingBooks.com

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Review of Patterns Everywhere, by Lisa Varchol Perron

Children's Nonfiction Review, Mathematical, Science, Starred Review 0

Patterns Everywhere

by Lisa Varchol Perron

Millbrook Press, 2023. 32 pages.
Review written November 22, 2023, from a library book.
Starred Review

Patterns Everywhere is a beautiful nonfiction book for primary-grade kids that will get them noticing many kinds of patterns in nature.

Each spread is dominated by a large photograph of something in nature, a simple rhyme about it with the rhyme scheme AABB (another pattern!) and a factual paragraph with more detail. It’s attractively presented and shows a wide variety of things. Here’s the introductory first spread:

Step outside. Let’s find designs —
branching, cracking, spirals, lines.
Search the earth, the seas, the air.
Patterns, patterns everywhere.

WHAT IS A PATTERN?
A pattern is a sequence that repeats in a predictable way. Nature is full of them! Some of nature’s patterns are made of repeating geometric shapes. Other patterns are created by color or spacing.

The spreads after that show leaf veins, ridges and valleys, sand dunes, meandering rivers, corals, wave ripples, sea foam, layered earth, basalt columns, snowflakes, mud cracks, and spiral plants and animals. There are two pages of more information at the back, including some activities.

This is a simple introduction to patterns, attractively presented, and will open kids eyes to the patterns around them.

lisaperronbooks.com
lernerbooks.com

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Review of Bearsuit Turtle Makes a Friend, by Bob Shea

Delightfully Silly, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

Bearsuit Turtle Makes a Friend

by Bob Shea

Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2025. 40 pages.
Review written May 20, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review

This book is. So. Silly. I love it!

This is a book with a bizarre situation, played straight. You really do have to read it yourself (or in story time!) to fully appreciate it. But I’ll give you the idea.

The main character is in a bear suit with a very large mouth. You can see a green head centered in the mouth. We figure out from the title this is Bearsuit Turtle.

As the book begins, Bearsuit Turtle is sitting on a swing, hanging still. We see another turtle coming out of the trees, and Bearsuit Turtle says, “Hey, gimme a push.”

But when we turn the page, we get this exchange:

Be careful, I’m a for-real bear. Scary, right?

No way! I’m a for-real bear expert, and you are NOT a for-real bear.

But Bearsuit Turtle has evidence!

Oh yeah? Got any honey?

No.

That’s because I ate it.

Other evidence includes climbing a tree to the top and back to the bottom while the other turtle’s eyes are closed (because bears don’t like to show off).

The turtle is still skeptical, since he could be a super-round squirrel, but then Bearsuit Turtle hibernates on command.

So then they start doing things that the for-real bear expert says bears like to do – foraging (getting ice cream at a truck), bicycling, and smashing pumpkins.

But when something comes up that the expert doesn’t know if bears like – they both make a confession.

I hope I’m not destroying the suspense if I quote my very favorite page:

It’s okay. I also have something shocking to share.

Look, there’s no good way to say this, but I’m not just a for-real bear. I’m pretty sure I’m maybe also a turtle.

A WHAT? This day has been a roller coaster. I don’t even know what to believe anymore.

But one thing the new friends do know – they truly enjoy doing things together.

So much fun. So silly. Try this one out with a kid.

BobShea.com
abramsbooks.com

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Review of Not Nothing, by Gayle Forman

Audiobooks, Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Starred Review 0

Not Nothing

by Gayle Forman
read by Dion Graham

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2024. 6 hours, 4 minutes.
Review written April 15, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review

Wow. This audiobook is powerful. I was hooked from the first sentence in the voice of a 107-year-old Polish man called Josey by his friends.

He was telling about Alex, a twelve-year-old boy who had to spend his summer doing community service at Shady Glen, the senior living facility, because of something he did that was truly terrible. Alex was living with his aunt and uncle, who clearly didn’t want him. And he’s dreading another hearing at the end of the summer that will determine whether he can stay with his aunt and uncle or have to go to juvenile hall.

Alex was not at all happy to work at Shady Glen, thinking the residents were zombies who smelled bad. And a girl named Maya-Jade who was also volunteering bossed him around and made him scrub surfaces with bleach. But then there’s a lockdown when Maya-Jade doesn’t show up, but Alex does. He starts bringing the residents meals in their rooms, and begins seeing them as people. And then Josey, who hasn’t spoken since he came to Shady Glen, begins telling Alex his story.

Josey’s story is a riveting part of this book. He was a young Jewish man in love with a Gentile in Poland when Hitler took over. He tells how he and his parents resisted leaving Poland because they didn’t think it would ever get so bad. (That part was really hard to listen to this particular weekend.)

Obviously, Josey lived to tell about it, but the story of how he survived and how his wife-to-be made sure that happened illuminates for Alex how people can rise to the occasion of our lives and how we are much more than our worst mistake.

It adds up to a powerful story, beautifully told.

gayleforman.com

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Review of Friend of Numbers, by Priya Narayanan, illustrated by Satwik Gade

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

Friend of Numbers

The Life of Mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan

written by Priya Narayanan
illustrated by Satwik Gade

Eerdmans Books for Young Readers, 2023. First Published in India in 2019. 36 pages.
Review written November 17, 2023, from a library book.
Starred Review
2024 Mathical Book Prize Winner, ages 8-10

I’ve already read a wonderful picture book biography of the great mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, but this one is special because it was written by an Indian for children of India.

This one is also geared a little younger, making Ramanujan’s ideas understandable to kids by presenting them as patterns only he could see.

It talks about his childhood in India and how he didn’t fit in, and then the changes he had to make to his hair and clothes to move to England to work on mathematics. It tells some stories about Ramanujan that are legendary among mathematicians, like this one:

Another day, Professor Hardy happened to mention that the taxi he had just come in had quite a boring number — 1729.

“No! It is a very interesting number,” Ramanujan shot back. His sharp memory drew out something he’d read about long ago, and on a piece of paper he scribbled:

1729 = (12 x 12 x 12) + (1 x 1 x 1)
1729 = (10 x 10 x 10) + (9 x 9 x 9)

“Look at the pattern!” he exclaimed.

Numbers were his friends. He could remember special things about them, the way that one remembers a friend’s birthday.

There are eight pages of notes at the back, including some ideas for readers to explore further. (Make a magic square using your birth date!)

A delightful introduction for kids to the life of this great man.

priyanarayanan.in

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Review of This Here Flesh, by Cole Arthur Riley

Christian, Musings, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

This Here Flesh

Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories that Make Us

by Cole Arthur Riley

Convergent Books, 2022. 203 pages.
Review written May 13, 2025, from my own copy, ordered via amazon.com.
Starred Review

I feel at a bit of a loss to describe this book. I read it a chapter at a time as part of my devotional times, and noted lots of passages to post on my Sonderquotes blog, and finished each chapter inspired and uplifted. But I’m not sure I can adequately describe what you’ll find here.

I like to call this kind of book “Musings,” and these are Christian musings mixed with family stories and questions and thoughts about life.

Let me copy sections from her Preface, in hope this will give you the flavor of this contemplative book. I’m just going to show you a few pieces – but I hope it will pull you in to read the entire book.

My spirituality has always been given to contemplation, even before anyone articulated for me exactly what “the contemplative” was. I was not raised in an overtly religious home; my spiritual formation now comes to me in memories – not creeds or doctrine, but the air we breathed, stories, myth, and a kind of attentiveness. From a young age, my siblings and I were allowed to travel deep into our interior worlds to become aware of ourselves, our loves, our beliefs. And still, my father demanded an unflinching awareness of our exterior worlds. Where is home from here? What was the waitress’s name? Where do we look when we’re walking? If a single phrase could be considered the mantra of our family, it would be Pay attention….

I used to think that Christian contemplation was reserved for white men who leave copies of C. S. Lewis’s letters strewn about and know a great deal about coffee and beard oils. If this is you, there is room for you here. But I am interested in reclaiming a contemplation that is not exclusive to whiteness, intellectualism, ableism, or mere hobby. And as a Black woman, I am disinterested in any call to spirituality that divorces my mind from my body, voice, or people. To suggest a form of faith that tells me to sit down alone and be quiet? It does not rest easy on the bones. It is a shadow of true contemplative life, and it would do violence to my Black-woman soul….

And as we pay attention, we make a home out of paradox, not just in what we believe but also in the very act of living itself. Stillness that we would move. Silence that we would speak. I believe this to be a spirituality our world – overtaken with dislocation, noise, and unrest – so desperately needs….

This is a book of contemplative storytelling. The pages you hold are where the stories that have formed me across generations meet our common practice of beholding the divine. Feel now, they are wet with tears. Look how they glisten like my skin in sun, and they bear the grooves of many scars. As you cradle these pages, it is my sincere hope that they might serve as conduits for mystery, liberation, and the very face of God.

Yes, that’s what you’ll find here – contemplative storytelling. Cole Arthur Riley tells stories of her family and weaves them through with contemplation – and it all shines with light.

colearthurriley.com
convergentbooks.com

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Review of The Brilliant Calculator, by Jan Lower, illustrated by Susan Reagan

Award Winners, Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

The Brilliant Calculator

How Mathematician Edith Clarke Helped Electrify America

by Jan Lower
illustrated by Susan Reagan

Calkins Creek, 2023. 40 pages.
Review written November 14, 2023, from a library book.
Starred Review
2024 Mathical Book Prize Honor Book, Ages 8-10.

There’s no way I won’t love it: A picture book biography that has “Mathematician” in the title!

This picture book tells the story of Edith Clarke, America’s first female electrical engineer, whose long and varied career helped produce the technology that keeps power lines from losing power over distance.

That’s the most easily understandable of her achievements. This author does a good job of explaining that she was brilliant, that she used mathematics, that she proved herself when men didn’t want to hire her, and that she created inventions that made calculations easier and ultimately make our lives better today.

I like that even though her accomplishments were technical, the author and illustrator presented them in a way kids can understand. I also liked the quotes from Edith sprinkled throughout the book, with this one at the end of the main text, before the six pages of back matter:

There is a future for women in engineering, and some day the only limitation will be their own lack of ability, as we are fast approaching an age in which men and women will be measured by their worth as individuals.

May it be so.

janlower.com
susanreaganart.com

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Review of All Better Now, by Neal Shusterman

Audiobooks, Science Fiction, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

All Better Now

by Neal Shusterman
read by Greg Tremblay and Neal Shusterman

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2025. 14 hours, 10 minutes.
Review written May 9, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Neal Shusterman knows how to write epic dystopian series. I still think the Arc of a Scythe series is unmatched, but All Better Now is a promising beginning.

The scenario: In the near future, there’s another pandemic. This one is deadlier than COVID-19, but for those who recover – all their problems are over, as far as they’re concerned. They’re happy and content and they care about others.

This gets people in power concerned. The Recoverees aren’t motivated by fear or greed. They get things secondhand, give things away, open their homes to strangers. Economies across the world will collapse if this happens to too many people. Another downside: If a Recoveree sees someone in trouble, they rush to help – forgetting to check if they are actually capable of helping. This results in multiple deaths if the situation is dangerous enough.

The main characters of the book are three teens. Mariel has been living in her car with her mother. When her mother catches the virus, nowhere will take her except a community of Recoverees at the Pier, and Mariel becomes a part of that community. Rón is the son of a billionaire with a pretentious accent in his name. He’s always been prone to depression and has survived suicide attempts, so when his father wants to cloister their family to protect them from the virus, he decides getting the virus is the right choice for his mental health, whether his father likes it or not. And Morgan has always been ruthless, doing what it takes to get ahead. So she’s recruited by the head of a charitable foundation who has gotten the virus. The woman is afraid she’ll give all the money away – so she gives Morgan charge of the money and a commission to work on a vaccine and change the world. Sure enough, when the woman recovers, she wants to thwart those plans. But Morgan’s in control now. Or is she?

The greater forces at work in the world of the novel are certainly going to change humanity. Recoverees have found peace and happiness – and they want to pass those things on. But powerful folks have too much to lose, and they’ll take drastic steps to stop the virus, ethical or not. Meanwhile there’s plenty of tension and danger as our three main characters interact in this scenario. And I won’t say how the book ends – but let’s just say the story isn’t finished.

I read Book 2 of The Arc of a Scythe, Thunderhead, the year I was reading for the Newbery Medal Committee – and I still maintain that book had the best plotting of any book I read that year. (It’s not really a book for children in my opinion, which is another discussion. But the plotting is incredible!) This book also had a set up of many different threads in a grand tapestry.

I did have a caveat that held me back from complete enjoyment – I couldn’t bring myself to believe that every single person who recovered from the virus would have the same exact effect. I’m willing to buy the premise that some kind of brain damage could do that to you – maybe – because some stroke victims have reported feeling one with all mankind – so maybe? But after seeing COVID-19 have so many different effects on so many different people – it’s hard to believe that a new coronavirus would affect everyone who recovers from it in the same way. Also, nothing was said about variants, and people were sure they couldn’t get it a second time – and that all was harder for me to believe after coming through our last pandemic.

I also didn’t really believe in the idea of an alpha spreader – someone who could still shed virus after they’ve recovered. And never stopped shedding the virus, in fact. The existence of this possibility makes the book more interesting – but it’s still hard to believe.

But given the premise, the book presents an intriguing situation. What would happen to humanity if we all became happy and altruistic? Would our current governments and economies collapse? But might it not be true that something better would arise to take its place? If it happened, would you want to get the virus, despite the 4% fatality rate? Recoverees say that at least those who die, die happy.

I definitely believed the part about people stirring up propaganda against the Recoverees and starting conspiracy theories against them. And it was funny when ruthless folks trying to stop the virus got thwarted by the kind, altruistic folks. Because after all, what they have is good for humanity! I also felt like the author realistically showed people’s motivations changing – but their keeping their main personality and still being able to make choices, sometimes against their new instincts.

So as usual, besides an entertaining ride, Neal Shusterman gave me plenty of philosophical questions to mull over. Now the only problem is waiting for the next book to come out.

storyman.com

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Review of The Power of Snow, by Bob Raczka, illustrated by Bryony Clarkson

Children's Nonfiction Review, Mathematical, Starred Review 0

The Power of Snow

by Bob Raczka
illustrated by Bryony Clarkson

Millbrook Press, 2023. 36 pages.
Review written November 9, 2023, from a library book.
Starred Review

This book is a very simple picture book that demonstrates exponents with snowflakes — on each page, the number of snowflakes doubles.

The main text is simple rhymes. The first few spreads go like this:

Two flakes play.

Four flakes sashay.

Eight flakes twirl.

Sixteen flakes swirl.

On the opposite page from the main text, we’ve got the number of snowflakes expressed with numerals and equations, like this:

27 = 2 to the seventh power

2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 = 128

The scenes behind the snowflakes look like suburban backyards, with at least one animal visitor on each page.

The most wonderful thing about this book is that the illustrator worked to get exactly the right number of snowflakes on each page. Here’s what she says in a note at the back:

Creating the art for The Power of Snow presented one tricky problem: how to show the correct number of snowflakes on each page. For this book, it was important to get the math right! Of course, the first few pages were easy. But as the quantity of flakes increased, it became much harder to count them all. So I worked out a plan. The images were created using different layers, kind of like clear sheets with different parts of the art on each one. I created a certain number of flakes on one layer. Then I duplicated this layer, flipping, scaling, and rotating it to give a natural look. Duplicating the layer allowed me to multiply the exact number of flakes as I worked. I could then add the more detailed snowflakes, counting these out individually to get to the total number. As with real snow, once the flakes became tiny and overlaid, some appear to blend together — but they are all there!

The effect is that you won’t be able to count all 16,384 flakes on the page for 214, but you can definitely get the idea.

Okay, my first reaction to this book is that it’s for a young reader — primary grades or even preschoolers who haven’t learned to multiply yet, so why are they illustrating exponents to such young readers? I do wish the word “doubled” was used, instead of relying on the multiplication notation.

But then I think about the things I showed my own kids when they were young, and I’m sure that kids exposed to this book will have an easier time understanding exponents later. In fact, hmmm, this might be a wonderful gift for my four-year-old nephew who has two big sisters. When they read it to him, they will pick up the ideas… and he will think exponents are the most natural thing in the world when it finally comes time to learn about them in school.

Yeah, I think I’m won over. Doubling before your eyes!

bobraczka.com
bryonyclarkson.com
lernerbooks.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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