#Sonderbooks25 – 2007 Stand-outs and I’m a Librarian!

Sonderbooks25 0

First, Happy 25th Birthday to Sonderbooks!

Yes, it was August 5, 2001, that I sent out my first Sonderbooks email newsletter! So the actual 25th birthday is this week!

But I’ve been celebrating the 25th year for quite some time with #Sonderbooks25. I’m reading all my old reviews, year by year, and revising the old Stand-outs pages into the new phone-friendly format.

It turns out that, as I was hoping, this is much easier to do once I hit 2007 – when I switched to the new format and an accompanying blog instead of the old email newsletter format with separate “issues” that I posted at the same time. It took me only a half-hour to convert my 2007 Sonderbooks Stand-outs page to a phone-friendly format instead of the few hours it took with the older reviews that were set up completely differently.

I’m afraid it also helped that I didn’t get a lot of reviews posted in 2007. 2007 was the year I was in library school, getting my Master’s in Library Science. I finished at the end of the year. I also got a job in May as a half-time youth services assistant at Sterling Library for Loudoun County Public Library – and if I had ever given up writing Sonderbooks, that would have been the year.

I also went over my Project 52 posts that covered 2007:

First, the last half of the Welcome to Virginia post, as I was still settling in to Virginia. We actually moved to Virginia on August 18, 2006, so I’m coming up on the twentieth anniversary of that.

Then I’m a Librarian! covered finishing my Master’s in Library Science. I got a job as a librarian in February 2008.

I took a class on Web Design as part of my degree – so that was when I switched the format of Sonderbooks. Yes, that means it’s 20 years old, and I should think about updating it, but I was able to fairly easily convert that set-up to a design that will adapt to phones, so I will probably stick with this format. Anyway, I still like the colors I chose.

However, with all that going on in 2007 – the majority of 2007 Sonderbooks Stand-outs I never did write a review for. So several are on my list to reread, and if I reread one that doesn’t have a review yet, it’s time to write one. Let me mention some highlights:

I did recently reread Shannon Hale’s Book of a Thousand Days. It is also featured in many of my Sonderling Sunday posts, and the last time I did that, I got sucked right back into the story and kept reading until I finished it. Still one of my all-time favorite books.

I’m also already planning to reread Shannon Hale’s Austenland (not reviewed yet), because she revised it this year for modern times – and I bought the new edition.

Our library owns Enchantment, by Orson Scott Card on eaudio, so it’s in my queue, and I’m really looking forward to hearing that again.

I remember Jane Austen in Boca, by Paula Marantz Cohen, and Home to Italy, by Peter Pezelli, both as delightful reads, so I’d like to try them again and write a review this time.

For nonfiction, I think I’ll revisit Sacred Choices, by Christel Nani.

I’ve long been planning to reread Inda, by Sherwood Smith, write a review, and then tackle the rest of the series that it begins.

And The Gaslight Effect, by Dr. Robin Stern, I probably won’t reread (because, thank God, I don’t need it right now), but I do still strongly recommend to people in relationship difficulties. And it somehow strengthened me to read the detailed review and remember that no, you don’t argue with people who are trying to tell you you are the one in the wrong if you were hurt when they cheated on you. (Just as a wild example.)

I’m still a little sad about all those good books that never got reviewed. But it’s been fun to remember them by reading the reviews. Because I got so few written in 2007, first I went through all reviews posted on the blog in 2007, then all the reviews of Stand-outs that I hadn’t covered yet.

Next up: Reviews from books read in 2008, when I was working full-time as a librarian!

Review of This Book Made Me Think of You, by Libby Page

Fiction Review, Romance, Starred Review 0

This Book Made Me Think of You

by Libby Page
read by Zadeiah Campbell-Davies

Books on Tape, 2026. 10 hours, 26 minutes.
Review written June 25, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I loved this book in so many ways.

Six months after her young husband died of cancer, Tillie gets a phone call from a bookshop. The man on the phone tells her he has a package for her – from her husband.

It turns out that Tillie’s husband Joe, before he died, purchased twelve books for Tillie. He wrote a note for each one and left instructions for the bookshop to give her one each month for a full year.

At first, Tillie is resistant. She asks them to give her all the books at once, but Alfie, the bookstore owner, refuses. Tillie has always loved to read, but since Joe got sick, she hasn’t been able to focus.

And then Joe’s first book gets her reading again. And the second book gets her cooking for herself. And later there are books about camping and about running and about going to Paris. And little by little, Tillie starts living life again. As well as evaluating what she wants the rest of her life to look like, now that her original dream has died.

And yes, the book is a romance. Tillie develops a friendship with that bookstore owner. But she is not over Joe yet, and it feels wrong to have feelings for anyone else. And naturally, there are several other complications and misunderstandings. At the same time, the bookshop, which Alfie inherited from his father, is having trouble staying in business.

It’s all wonderfully and beautifully done. As it happened, I started this audiobook on a flight to a vacation in France, where I learned that hearing aids make listening to an audiobook while dining alone a much less obtrusive pleasure than bringing a physical book. I just finished the book on the last day of my trip, and it has been a joy accompanying me. More than just the great story, it felt symbolic. While death is very different from divorce, and while my divorce is long past – on this trip, I revisited the Abbaye de Royaumont – a place where I went on a writers’ retreat with dear friends in 2005, one week after my husband told me he was divorcing me. On the writer’s retreat twenty years ago, I thought about writing, but also planned to get my Master’s in Library Science and become a librarian. It was satisfying and special to go back to the abbey and say to my past self, “That worked out really well.”

So this trip, in many ways, was celebrating how my life has gone after the death of my marriage, and celebrating how much joy is still left in my life, and how I’ve been able to chart my own course. So Tilly’s journey, while different, resonated with me.

Also, there are book recommendations from Alfie at the start of each chapter. I think I need to buy a copy of this book so I can try to read them all.

libbypage.co.uk

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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 The Scarlet Pimpernel, by Baroness Orczy

Adventure, Fiction Review, Historical, Old Favorites, Sonderbooks25, Stand-outs, Starred Review 0

The Scarlet Pimpernel

by Baroness Orczy
read by Geoffrey Howard

Blackstone Publishing, 2006. 8 hours, 20 minutes. Book originally written in 1905.
Review written July 14, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
Original review written October 24, 2001.
2002 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #4, Fiction Rereads

As part of #Sonderbooks25, my celebration of my 25th year of writing Sonderbooks, I’m rereading many of my old reviews – at least one from each year’s Sonderbooks Stand-outs. I’ve also found that many of my favorites have an eaudiobook version with my current library – so I’m rediscovering a large number of them as audiobooks. In addition, when those books I’m rereading were reviewed in my first five years of writing Sonderbooks, I’m giving them a new review in the new phone-friendly format.

First, let me say that I love this book. Romance! Adventure! Cleverness! Strategic rescues! Outwitting the bad guys! Clever misdirection! I first read the book in high school and ate it all up. I have lost track of how many times I’ve read the book, but let’s just say that not one word of the audiobook was a surprise. It’s a novel about a band of Englishmen and their daring leader who rescue aristocrats from the guillotine during the French Revolution.

However, writing in 2025, I need to list a few caveats and warnings to other readers. The book was written in 1905. There are several issues.

The biggest one is some frightful antisemitism. A Jewish character is portrayed as despised and contemptible, and pretty much deserving of that. I do have to say that any retelling I’ve ever read and the movies I’ve seen have taken that out. But it’s in the book and is not pretty.

The author was a baroness, so it’s not really a surprise she has deep reverence for the nobility – and some veiled disrespect for the “lower classes.” English working-class are seen as maybe not so bright, but loyal and good-hearted, but French peasants are dirty and despicable for revolting against the nobility.

As for women – well, many things are said about the power of a beautiful woman. But such a woman is frail and delicate, and that power is about her beauty and wit. Yes, our heroine in this book takes action after she unwittingly causes danger to someone she loves – but she can only do so by enlisting the help of men.

At this point, let me note that both retellings that I have enjoyed and reviewed did a gender swap to give a woman the swashbuckling, adventurous role of the Scarlet Pimpernel: Across a Star-Swept Sea, by Diana Peterfreund, and Rook, by Sharon Cameron.

Who is the Scarlet Pimpernel? He’s a master of disguise and a brilliant strategist for rescuing aristocrats from the guillotine. At the start of the book, we don’t know who he is, but we get to see a daring rescue executed before the book ends, with the odious French official utterly fooled.

The writing is full of sentimentality, which I didn’t mind in high school, and have to admit I still don’t mind today. But it also brilliantly begins in the middle of the action, setting up the situation by starting the book with a scene of aristocrats being cleverly smuggled out of Paris. Then we meet the pertinent characters at an inn on the coast in Dover. Even the romance is shown to us in the middle of a misunderstanding that’s six months old. Baroness Orczy knew how to take us right into the middle of the action and shows us back story as it’s pertinent and interesting.

There’s a reason this book has lasted 120 years.

Now, at the time, Baroness Orczy wrote a multitude of sequels. I’ve reviewed several. I found four in a used bookstore one day – and then since their copyright has long passed, I found several more on Amazon print on demand. Most are not as good as the original, but they reliably give swashbuckling adventure and tender romance – and I should read some more before I’m done with #Sonderbooks25.

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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 When I’m a Moshom, by David A. Robertson and Corrie Hill

Contemporary, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

When I’m a Moshom

written by David A. Robertson
illustrated by Corrie Hill

Tundra, 2026. 36 pages.
Review written July 9, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

This beautiful, soothing, and inspiring book will leave you with a warm and happy feeling. It’s from the creators of On the Trapline, written after the death of the author’s father. Told from the perspective of his young son, it’s a wonderful homage to the boy’s Moshom (grandfather).

Each section is headlined by a word in Swampy Cree with the English translation in parentheses. [And I apologize – I put the Swampy Cree words with the correctly accented letters into this post, but my blog didn’t recognize those characters and when I came back to it, they’re replaced with question marks. Instead of getting it wrong, I will simply list what they mean in English.] Some examples are “teacher,” “love,” and “your home.” Then the text starts with these lines:

When I’m a moshom,
A long, long time from now, . . .

And we get gentle descriptions of the things the moshom will do with his grandchildren… “Because that’s what Moshom used to always do.”

When I’m a moshom,
A long, long time from now,
I will go to all my grandchildren’s activities,
Just like Moshom did.

Those activities will include dancing, swimming, gymnastics, playing hockey.

Because moshoms bring the best luck,
Especially when they watch their grandchildren play.

The child’s Moshom taught them things, like words in the Cree language. He did things with them. He told them stories. He showed them his community.

My favorite section is probably the one headed by the word for Love:

When I’m a moshom,
A long, long time from now,
I will tell my grandchildren I love them,
Just like Moshom did.

I’ll say I love you when I visit them,
And they’ll jump into my arms and knock the wind out of me.

I’ll say I love you when they visit me,
And I’ll swing them around in a great, big circle.

I’ll say I love you when they call,
And they’ll hug their phone tight to their chests.

When ever they say, “Moshom, I love you,”
I’ll say “kisâkâhitin.” I love you, too.

Because that’s what Moshom used to always do.

An incredibly touching book for talking with a child about their grandparents. What things will your child do when they are a grandparent?

darobertson.ca
corriehill.com

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Review of A Kid Like Me, by Norm Feuti

Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Graphic Novel 0

coverA Kid Like Me

by Norm Feuti

HarperAlley, 2026. 268 pages.
Review written July 16, 2026, from a library book.

I’ve long been a fan of graphic novels about middle school. It’s a good way to show the angst, the friendship drama, the worries, the wide range of emotions. This has all of that, with some additional insights as to what it’s like for a kid from a poor family when his classmates are wealthy.

Ethan and his friend Ricky are concerned about snobby people at his new school. Ethan found some Battle Bio cards at a yard sale, but Ricky’s more into wrestling. They don’t have any classes together, and the new friends Ricky brings to their table at lunch think Ethan’s a nerd for liking Battle Bio.

And then there’s the stuff. Ethan’s mom does get him a new phone – but it’s a flip phone that doesn’t even connect to the internet. His backpack’s falling apart, and so are the shoes they bought at the discount store. His mom’s trying her best, but how can Ethan fit in when they simply don’t have the money?

When he does make friends at a Battle Bio club, a friend’s mom is afraid to let her son visit Ethan’s home in the trailer park.

The free lunch is handled well at the middle school – kids just type in their ID number, so no one knows who’s paying what, but it turns out that if he gets extra cookies or snacks after lunch, and just types in his number – his mother gets a bill.

Something I like about this book is that, while it does present a bunch of challenges, you feel like Ethan mostly manages to get past them in a healthy way. Ethan and Ricky’s friendship is strained during the book, but they’re friends at the end, and that feels realistic and healthy.

The story kept me reading, and enjoying time with a good kid who doesn’t have as much money as many of his classmates, but is still worth knowing.

normfeuticartoons.com

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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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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 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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