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

Audiobooks, Paranormal, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Love at Second Sight

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ft-lukens.com

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Review of The Black Mambas, by Kelly Crull

Children's Nonfiction Review, Science, Starred Review 0

The Black Mambas

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

by Kelly Crull

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

kellycrull.com
transfrontierafrica.org/blackmambas

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Review of The Favorites, by Layne Fargo

Audiobooks, Award Winners, Contemporary, Fiction Review 0

The Favorites

by Layne Fargo
read by Christine Lakin and a full cast

Books on Tape, 2025. 14 hours, 41 minutes.
Review written March 9, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
2026 Alex Award Winner

The Alex Awards are given to ten books every year for the best books published for adults of interest to teens. I placed holds on the ones that our library had in eaudiobook form, and this was one.

This book is the story of a fictional Olympic ice dancing pair whose story is full of scandal as well as pathos. This book is set up to be a documentary of their real story, produced ten years after their final appearance skating together.

As a mock documentary, this was perfect for audiobook. They did use a full cast, so it feels like the actual people – friends, rivals, and officials who knew the pair – commenting on the big events in their lives.

Katarina Shaw and Heath Rocha met when they were children in a small town north of Chicago. When Kat was 9 years old and had just lost her mother, she saw Sheila Lin win gold in the Olympic games as an ice dancer. Kat wanted nothing more than to be just like her. Then Heath Rocha, an orphan in foster care, came along and learned to skate so he could be her partner. They operated on a shoestring budget until they were 16 years old and got the attention of none other than Sheila Lin – and got to train with her one summer in her academy in Los Angeles.

And so their notorious career began. They were recruited to stay on in order to push Sheila’s children to greater heights, the twins Bella and Garret Lin.

This book reads like a gossip magazine. Kat and Heath were obsessed with one another – but not necessarily good for each other. Their relationship, as well as their ice dancing, has many ups and downs as the book goes on.

I’ve never actually been a fan of gossip magazines, and the book felt long (I’m spoiled by reading a lot of children’s books.) – but I still never seriously considered quitting listening. It did have me hooked. Since I started reading it right after the Winter Olympics, it felt timely. (Though I found myself wishing I’d started it before – I would have paid more attention to ice dancing.)

There’s plenty of drama here. Love and obsession. The question of which is more important: people or gold medals? Manipulators out for their own purposes. But by the end, we do see growth and even some wisdom in the characters. I did like reading this after hearing Alysa Liu talking about skating for the love of the art. I think Kat and Heath got there by the end. And the journey is quite a ride.

laynefargo.com

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Review of Everything We Never Had, by Randy Ribay

Audiobooks, Award Winners, Historical, Teen Fiction Review 0

Everything We Never Had

by Randy Ribay
read by Ramón de Ocampo, Jesse Inocalla, Manny Jacinto, and J. B. Tadena

Listening Library, 2024. 6 hours, 42 minutes.
Review written April 29, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
2025 Asian/Pacific American Award for Young Adult Literature Winner
National Book Award Longlist

Everything We Never Had is a story of four generations of Filipino-American men. The first was Francisco, who came after World War II and tried to make money to send home to his family – but found instead prejudice, hatred, and low wages.

Francisco’s son Emil hated the way his father was never home, always traveling to organize the farm workers. He chose a different path and planned to go to college and make something of himself.

Emil’s son Chris wanted to play football and study history. But his father wanted him to focus on studies that would get him a good job some day.

And Chris’s son Enzo is dealing with anxiety. There’s talk of a pandemic, and his father asks him if he will give up his room so Lolo Emil can stay with them instead of in the retirement community. Enzo knows that Chris doesn’t like being with his father, and Emil doesn’t like being with them, but they can’t let him get sick and die.

I liked the way this book gives us insights into the things each generation had to deal with, including lots of history – and how it led to misunderstandings. The stories are interwoven a bit at a time, so I didn’t get the insights on most until after I’d already seen ways they weren’t a very good father. So this is an interesting exercise in learning to see from new perspectives.

Each man as a father tries to give his son everything he never had. Some are more successful than others. In the present-day pandemic, three generations need to learn to get along.

randyribay.com

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

Contemporary, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

Sometimes We Pray

by Mary Wagley Copp
illustrated by Felishia Henditirto

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But we keep praying, wherever we are.

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

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

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

marywagleycopp.com
felishiahenditirto.com

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

History, Starred Review, Teen Nonfiction 0

How the Word Is Passed

Remembering Slavery and How it Shaped America

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

clintsmithiii.com
sonyacherrypaul.com
lbyr.com

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Review of Dream On, by Shannon Hale and Marcela Cespedes

Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Graphic Novel 0

Dream On

written by Shannon Hale
illustrated by Marcela Cespedes
colors by Lark Pien

Roaring Brook Press, 2025. 236 pages.
Review written May 26, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

I always love it when a children’s book features a big family. We kids from big families are underrepresented, because all those characters are hard to keep track of. This is a graphic novel about a middle school kid named Cassie who’s dealing with friendships and family relationships – so pretty much your classic middle school graphi novel. It reminds me very much of Shannon Hale’s autobiographical Real Friends series, because Cassie, too, is imaginative and not willing to give up pretend play as quickly as her friends are.

One of the features of this book is that early on, Cassie opens a letter that tells her she’s “already won” three fabulous prizes. So she keeps the mailer and thinks about what she’ll do with the prizes when she gets them. And she doesn’t order magazines – it says “No Purchase Necessary” – and doesn’t enclose any money, but she does put stickers for the magazines she likes in the spots on the order form.

The magazines start coming. What will her mother say when she finds out Cassie sent that in? That’s scarier than thinking about what she’ll say when they all get into their new car so they don’t have to go places in two shifts.

So at home, Cassie dreams about that – and finally getting attention from her mother. (The reader doesn’t have to try to keep track of the siblings in her family. There are a lot.) At school, there’ a new girl who’s coming between Cassie and her long-time best friend. And the new girl thinks Cassie’s favorite teacher is weird. Is she maybe right about that? It’s so hard to tell.

I like Cassie’s character because I was an imaginative kid, too – though I’d pretty much stopped admitting to it by middle school. But I also remember the fascination of those “YOU may HAVE ALREADY WON!!!” letters in the mail. My older siblings were quick to disillusion me, but I may have, well, ordered some magazines when I was a young adult. And daydreamed at least a little about what I’d do if I won. So Cassie’s predicament was easy to imagine.

This book came out in 2025, but our order was a casualty of Baker and Taylor going out of business, and it accidentally didn’t get reordered and the holds have piled up. But I’m happy it’s arrived just in time for summer reading, and the second book in the series, coming out in August.

shannonhale.com
mackids.com

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Review of The Heart of the Psalms, by James C. Howell

Christian, Nonfiction Review 0

The Heart of the Psalms

God’s Word to the World

by James C. Howell

Abingdon Press, 2025. 125 pages.
Review written May 25, 2026, from my own copy, purchased via Amazon.com

I’ll be honest. I purchased and read this book to have a “Competitive Title” on my book proposal for my own Psalms book. (Which is currently being submitted to publishers by my recently signed-with literary agent! I’m so excited!) I heard about it when I had mentioned my book to a friend from church, and they said that their own small group had just begun a study of Psalms, using this book.

So first, the good news is that the books complement each other, taking different approaches to Psalms. So that particular small group won’t need to skip my book because they’ve already studied Psalms. Instead, each book has a different way of showing readers the riches found in Psalms.

James Howell’s deep love for Psalms shines in this book. His Introduction talks about how that love developed and how much the Psalms mean to him. This book isn’t so much a study of the book of Psalms as a riff on six particular Psalms. He has a chapter for each of Psalms 8, 27, 51, 73, 90, and 116. In each one, he dives into that particular Psalm and all the side trails that it may bring up, showing us how rich the Psalms are in emotion and in application.

Here’s a paragraph from the Introduction:

What are the Psalms? Just a long collection of prayers that cry out, give thanks, plead, ponder, praise, and speak with God in surprising and profound ways. Most were sung, and from memory. Thankfully, they landed in the Bible, not because they are about God, but because they are directed to God. And when we read and speak them aloud now, they reveal to us what we’d never noticed or what we’d feared to notice about ourselves. I could deliver a lecture on what the Psalms were and are. But there’s no substitute for reading them, slowly and quietly.

It’s easy to see in this author the same desire I have – to get people reading and savoring the Psalms, knowing they’ll end up loving them, too.

How is my book different? Instead of looking at Psalms individually, I divide the Psalms into ten types and talk about what each type has in common – so the reader can pray their own psalms, using those patterns. So the two books can go together, with my book giving more of an overview, and this book looking at six particular Psalms, giving examples of five of the types.

And both of us hope that you will glimpse God’s heart toward us by taking a closer look at Psalms.

abingdonpress.com

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Review of Tall Water, by SJ Sindu and Dion MBD

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

Tall Water

by SJ Sindu and Dion MBD

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

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

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

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

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

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

sjsindu.com
dionmbd.com

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

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Growing Up Under a Red Flag

A Memoir of Surviving the Chinese Cultural Revolution

written by Ying Chang Compestine
illustrated by Xinmei Liu

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yingc.com

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