Review of Airports: Behind the Scenes, illustrated by Maxim Usik

Children's Nonfiction Review, History 0

Airports

Behind the Scenes

by Anna Ridley
illustrated by Maxim Usik
consultant Laurence Hardisty

Thames and Hudson, 2026. 48 pages.
Review written June 1, 2026, from a library book.

Taking a trip with kids? Here’s a detailed and fascinating in-depth look at what goes on behind the scenes. I still recommend The Airport Book, by Lisa Brown, for very young children and preschoolers. But for kids who are reading on their own and love poring over detailed pictures, this oversized book will be ideal preparation. Okay, it’s really too big to conveniently carry with you – but kids will enjoy it so much in preparation for a trip, it’s worth it.

The book goes through the different parts of an airport – ticketing, security, baggage conveyor systems, through activity on the ground around the plane, air traffic control, and how things work inside the plane.

There are kid-centered questions throughout the book: “Do suitcases get mixed up?” “Why can’t I ride on the luggage carousel?” “Can I take snakes on a plane?” “Can a body scanner see me naked?” “Why is that airplane being towed?” “Who flies the plane when the pilot needs to go to the bathroom?” “How many planes are in the air at one time?” “Why can’t we fly with the windows open?” and “Why do I feel like farting?”

The whole book is filled with detailed pictures, answers to questions like those above and lots more, and plenty of information even I hadn’t known before I read this book. (So it wasn’t just that I ate the wrong thing before the flight!)

I like that this is a modern book, with modern scanners and security requirements, likely to match what a child will see at the airport today.

Interesting and informative, and a great way to get thinking about my upcoming trip to France!

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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 Black History Is Your History, by Taylor Cassidy

History, Teen Nonfiction 0

Black History Is Your History

by Taylor Cassidy
illustrated by Adriana Bellet

Atheneum, 2025. 192 pages.
Review written May 17, 2026, from a library book.

Taylor Cassidy is a popular TikTok creator of the series “Fast Black History.” She’s in her early twenties and already very popular. This book is a compilation of bios of Black people who did notable things, told in a conversational style. Let me note right up front that I’m an older white lady, and I am not in the intended audience! She takes a very casual tone, as I’m sure works beautifully on her TikTok channel, talking firsthand with teens.

In every chapter, she includes a sort of sidebar with a different color background and the heading “Tay Story.” She tells about something in her own life that relates to what the person featured in that chapter went through – and how she learned from them and you can, too.

I’m not very near to the trials of high school, so I wasn’t as interested in those parts as in the bios they were interrupting, but I think teens will relate to most of the things she describes. And that got me thinking about something in my life, so it seems only fair to insert this:

Sondy Story

Last summer, I went to a Christian writers’ conference, and one of the editors who was speaking said that everybody’s first Christian book is a memoir.

And I had to plead guilty. I have a book about Psalms (and I recently signed with a literary agent!) – and I illustrate each type of Psalm by telling my own story and how different types of Psalms were helpful at different times.

But the editor continued. It’s okay to include your own story if it illustrates something bigger. Strangers don’t necessarily care about your life – but if you can use it to illustrate something bigger, that can work and add a personal touch. I think I’ve managed that in my Psalms book.

***

And I also think Taylor has managed it in her book. Her stories show teens how the qualities found in these Black heroes can inspire you to get through difficulties in your own life. I wouldn’t want to read a straight memoir from Taylor – She’s so young! But a series of profiles of Black heroes peppered with personal experiences that relate? It ends up being an interesting and readable book.

As a librarian, I’d like some notes in the back as to her sources, but she did try to include in the text where she got a lot of the information. This is Black History that is the opposite of a textbook, and I think kids from middle school up will enjoy her fresh take – and probably learn even more on her TikTok channel.

simonandschuster.com/teen

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Review of Stealing Little Moon, by Dan SaSuWeh Jones

Audiobooks, History, Teen Nonfiction 0

Stealing Little Moon

The Legacy of the American Indian Boarding Schools

by Dan SaSuWeh Jones
read by Shaun Taylor-Corbett

Scholastic Audio Books, 2024. 6 hours, 10 minutes.
Review written April 8, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.

Stealing Little Moon is a story about American Indian Boarding Schools, but also a family story. Dan SaSuWeh Jones’s grandmother was taken from her family at gunpoint when she was four years old. Her name was Little Moon There Are No Stars Tonight. She arrived when Chilocco Indian Agricultural School had just opened – and the author was a maintenance worker after the school closed. In between, four generations of his family attended the school.

I expected a story of horrific abuse in the Indian Boarding Schools. I had no idea that children as young as four years old were taken, which adds to the horror, but I wasn’t exactly surprised by stories of abuse, poor nutrition, hard work, lack of medical care, and a refusal to let the children speak their own languages – yes, horrified, but not surprised. (The Witness Blanket, by Carey Newman and Kirstie Hudson, gave me a powerful overview of what happened in the schools.)

However, this book contained much more than that. The author would often digress, telling about notable people who attended the Indian schools, telling about legislation that tried to erase them, and also telling about steps taken to fight back and reclaim the schools as a positive force in Indian lives. It was after Native Americans themselves were in charge of the schools that they were forced to close. But their legacy lives on, in both good and bad ways.

Listening to this book as an audiobook, it felt pretty unorganized because of all the digressions. I think if I’d had the book in front of me and the chapter headings in mind, it would have felt less so. But still, the digressions were all very interesting. They often had a personal touch with the author’s family. I did like how he pointed out that by bringing children from many different Indian nations together, they gained new solidarity with one another and this shared experience – traumatic in many ways, but also with some positives.

Above all, he demonstrates how the United States government tried to wipe out the indigenous people and make them assimilate – but they failed in that goal.

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Review of A World Without Summer, by Nicholas Day with art by Yas Imamura

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

A World Without Summer

A Volcano Erupts, a Creature Awakens, and the Sun Goes Out

by Nicholas Day
with art by Yas Imamura

Random House Studio, 2025. 294 pages.
Review written February 17, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review
2026 Sibert Honor Book
2026 YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award Finalist

A World Without Summer won Honor in the nonfiction award from both the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) and the Association for Library Services to Children (ALSC) – which highlights that here is a nonfiction book perfect for middle school students. It also gives me a dilemma where to post the review – on the Teen Nonfiction page or the Children’s Nonfiction page? Recently, I’ve started leaning toward putting any nonfiction longer than a picture book on the Teen Nonfiction page, but since I put Nicholas Day’s debut book and Sibert winner, The Mona Lisa Vanishes, on the Children’s Nonfiction page, and they are very much alike, I’m going to post this one there, too – but be aware that the sweet spot for this book is middle school and upper elementary.

Because I read an adult fantasy novel called Without a Summer, by Mary Robinette Kowal, I already knew that it snowed in Washington, D. C., in July 1816 because of a volcano that erupted in another part of the world. This book told me much, much more.

The author keeps the conversational tone he used in The Mona Lisa Vanishes and starts off by telling the reader about Tambora, a volcano in Indonesia that erupted in 1815 – and just how utterly enormous that eruption was. He talks about the people who died in that eruption – and the thousands who died in the aftermath. But the later thousands who died as a direct result of that eruption didn’t even know it was because of the eruption.

After talking about the original eruption, Nicholas Day takes us to Europe, where the oddities began with yellow and brown snow, which nobody knew was from the ash of the volcano. As it turned out, summer never came in places across the globe – and neither did harvest.

But besides talking about gruesome deaths that were a result of Tambora, the author also tells us the story of Mary Godwin, who became Mary Shelley – and wrote Frankenstein the same year the climate was all out of whack. We get the whole story of her elopement and trip to Switzerland – and just how much they complained about the weather.

Nicholas Day is exceptionally good at bringing the reader into the story, getting them thinking with questions, and helping them see the connections between that past world, disrupted by climate shock, and our present world, which has some new technologies (like forecasting weather) thanks to the disruptions of Tambora, but is still vulnerable to global events.

I’m going to go ahead and quote from a closing section, because it shows where he goes with this story, and I don’t think it’s a spoiler in nonfiction.

While Mary Shelley was writing the great novel of catastrophe, people across the world were working in wholly new ways to prevent catastrophe. These were governments, and they were ordinary people, too. They were working on behalf of a simple idea, a new idea: that those who were suffering could survive – that they should survive – that they deserved to survive.

That there were things that could be done and should be done.

When we remember Tambora, what stands out is the bleak and the strange: the skeletal figures, the sawdust bread, the boils on the face of the sun. The disease. The distress.

But we should remember this part, too.

Without this idealistic work – without the invention of this idealistic idea – far more would have suffered. Far more would have perished. Tambora was a warning.

But hidden inside it is this deeply hopeful truth: We can act.

Read this book to learn, to hear a good story, and to think about the ways we earthlings are connected.

bynicholasday.com

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Review of Rebels, Robbers, and Radicals, by Teri Kanefield

Children's Nonfiction Review, Current Issues, History, Starred Review 0

Rebels, Robbers, and Radicals

The Story of the Bill of Rights

by Teri Kanefield

Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2025. 216 pages.
Review written March 4, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

First, a note that this is not picture book nonfiction. I’ll put it on the Children’s Nonfiction page, but this is targeted to middle school and upper elementary students who can read longer material.

I love Teri Kanefield’s legal writing. Her calm voice on her blog is long where I’ve gone to understand present-day legal issues. So of course I checked out this book for children on the Bill of Rights.

And I’d had no idea how interesting that topic could be. She explains her approach at the back of the book:

I hit on the idea of presenting the material the way the law is presented to law students – through actual court cases. The case method avoids abstract principles and tedious explanations. Instead, the law is presented through the stories and struggles of actual people. The principles and laws are woven into the fabric of the case the way morals are woven into fables.

Stories of real people involved in real struggles are always livelier than dry explanations, particularly when those stories include bank robbers like Bonnie and Clyde, high school students challenging violations of their rights, rebels who refuse to obey laws they believe to be unjust, and people considered radical because they want to entirely remake the government. The statement “you have the right to a jury trial” will have little relevance to most people. But when we read about the Zenger trial and see that juries were devised to guard against the kind of tyranny that early Americans experienced under British rule, the right to a jury takes on a real-world meaning.

Teri Kanefield achieves these goals in a book that’s interesting every step of the way. She goes through each one of the first ten amendments and gives examples showing how the interpretation of each amendment affected people’s lives – and still affect them today. She talks about how things have changed over time, about the conflict between states’ rights and federal rights, and about things like how the “right to privacy” isn’t mentioned in the Constitution, and how it’s a question of the ninth amendment whether the federal government can rule on that.

Although this book is completely suitable for upper elementary age readers, I can testify that it’s great reading for adults, too. As always with Teri’s writing, I learned things about the law of our land that I hadn’t known I didn’t know.

terikanefield.com

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Review of Trans History, by Alex L. Combs & Andrew Eakett

Audiobooks, Graphic Novel, History, Starred Review, Teen Nonfiction 0

Trans History

From Ancient Times to the Present Day

by Alex L. Combs and Andrew Eakett
read by a full cast

Listening Library, 2025. 3 hours, 36 minutes.
Review written February 10, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
2026 Odyssey Award Young Adult Winner

The Odyssey Award is given each year for the best audiobook production, and I always make sure to listen to the winners and honor books, because they are without fail wonderful. As it happened, I already had the print graphic novel version of this book checked out, and I always wonder how audiobook producers can pull off converting a graphic novel to an audiobook.

Let me tell you, these folks went all in. They used music and sound effects to help enhance your understanding of what was going on. And when they say “Full Cast” – I don’t see an indication of how many different voices they used, but I have no doubt the number is high. (I think they read off names at the end of the audiobook, so they weren’t without credit.) Especially meaningful was that the last chapter features twelve modern-day trans folks, and these people spoke their own words on the audiobook.

I did take a look at the graphic novel – and I think that both formats offer something unique. But the audiobook production was so deserving of the award, don’t miss that version!

If you ever thought that transgender people are a recent phenomenon, this book will put that idea to rest. They cover trans history, yes, beginning in ancient times – with the caveat that the historical people they talk about would have used different words and wouldn’t necessarily have called themselves trans if they had lived today. But they make a clear point that diversity of gender expression has been around as long as humans have.

The chapters cover the ancient world, Europeans and colonialism, the rise of Sexology, the history of trans people in the United States, and then present day voices from the trans community.

In the preface, the authors say they have three goals for the book:

1. Help dispel the myth that trans people are a “new thing.”

2. Demonstrate that what it means to be trans varies greatly among trans people.

3. Empower trans people by helping them learn about trans history.

They met these goals well, and they also presented a fascinating history I hadn’t known much about, in an entertaining way. The production of this audiobook is stunning and the stories were riveting. May this super informative and helpful look at trans history break down myths and stereotypes and fight marginalization.

alexlcombs.com
candlewick.com

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Review of If Looks Could Kill, by Julie Berry

Audiobooks, History, Paranormal, Teen Fiction Review 0

If Looks Could Kill

by Julie Berry
read by Jayne Entwistle

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2025. 15 hours, 24 minutes.
Review written November 14, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

This brilliant novel is Medusa vs. Jack the Ripper! But not a Greek Medusa. Instead, Medusas are something like vampires, getting created by a kind of infection. But then they stand against those who would prey on vulnerable women.

The setting of the book is the Bowery in New York City in 1888. Jack the Ripper, the Whitechapel Killer, is fleeing London after a very strange encounter with his last victim. Meanwhile, in New York, 18-year-old Tabitha Woodward is adjusting to her new life in the Salvation Army and her annoying partner, Pearl. Tabitha and Pearl visit the saloons and bars, selling the Salvation Army’s newsletter and coaxing people to come hear the preaching. They meet the people in the city and see a girl get pulled into the orbit of a notorious madam.

And I don’t want to give anything away, but yes, the story ends up being Medusas vs. Jack the Ripper. With the innocent and earnest Salvation Army girls in the middle of it.

I appreciated the long historical note at the back reflecting the author’s deep research. She chose a likely suspect for Jack the Ripper who actually came to New York after the murders. She even gave him a plausible motive, using the theosophical teachings popular at the time to use almost-living organs to try to cure his own illness. She honored his victims, who may not have been prostitutes at all. And I especially love the way she also researched the early Salvation Army and showed Tabitha and Pearl’s deep faith and desire to help people in trouble in the slums of New York. I was afraid when they showed up that they’d be a caricature, but they were the opposite of that.

And I do love a story where the helpless become powerful! But these Medusas don’t blindly use their power. It’s not a matter of one look turns the viewer to stone – they have to mean it. And they grapple with the meaning of that power. There are scary moments, and a few in-the-nick-of-time rescues, but it all adds up to a fascinating historical story with lots of suspense. There’s even a developing sweet romance.

I heard about this book at ALA Annual Conference last June, but wasn’t able to get an Advance Reader Copy, so I was looking forward to its publication ever since and got on the holds list for the audio the first day I purchased it for the library. I knew to expect good things from Julie Berry, and I was not disappointed.

julieberrybooks.com

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Review of Zero! The Number That Almost Wasn’t, by Sarah Albee, illustrated by Chris Hsu

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

Zero!

The Number That Almost Wasn’t

by Sarah Albee
illustrated by Chris Hsu

Charlesbridge, 2025. 40 pages.
Review written July 11, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review

Fun fact: When Europeans set up the calendar we use today, they did not include a Year Zero. The year after 1 BC was 1 AD. Of course, they were given these names long, long after they happened. But because Europeans didn’t understand zero when they developed the calendar – the Twenty-first Century didn’t actually start until the year 2001. I tried to wrote a short article about this and tried to sell it to children’s magazines in 1999 and 2000, with no success. And I have to admit that switching from 1999 to 2000 feels much more momentous than switching from 2000 to 2001, even if it wasn’t actually the new century yet.

Anyway, all my thinking about when the century started sprang from the moment I learned that Europeans didn’t adopt the symbol zero or even the concept of zero until well past the Middle Ages – and that’s what this book is about.

This picture book explains the history of Zero in a way children can understand. (Yes, without touching on questions of what that means about the start of centuries.) It talks briefly about the concept of Nothing and the concept of Place Value, but it’s mostly about the history of writing numbers.

We hear about the Babylonians – who did use a place value and a mark for an “empty” place. We hear about the Greeks, who were especially strong in astronomy and geometry. The Mayans developed zero earlier than anyone else – but their knowledge was lost when Spanish invaders destroyed their records. Roman numerals came along next, which was difficult for doing complex calculations. But during the Dark Ages in Europe, mathematics thrived in India, where an unknown mathematician invented a symbol for zero.

The concept of zero spread to Baghdad, the center of the Muslim Empire – and writings from Arabic mathematicians took advantage of the concept, developing the field of Algebra.

The book chronicles all this, plus how long it took Europeans to adopt the concept. Sadly, some Christians were even then opposed to an advance of knowledge:

A few Christian leaders actually banished zero. They argued that God had created everything, so something that represented nothing must be the work of the devil.

Finally, the invention of the printing press helped the Hindu-Arabic number system spread as people came to appreciate how much it facilitates doing mathematics.

All that is present in this picture book, with engaging cartoon illustrations. There are even notes at the back about historical details present in the illustrations.

Those who read this book will get a grasp on the mind-blowing fact that Zero had to be invented, and was actually invented much later than you’d think it was. You’ll never take Nothing for granted again.

sarahalbeebooks.com
chrishsu.net

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Review of A Dangerous Idea, by Debbie Levy

History, Starred Review, Teen Nonfiction 0

A Dangerous Idea

The Scopes Trial, the Original Fight over Science in Schools

by Debbie Levy

Bloomsbury Children’s Books, 2025. 278 pages.
Review written October 8, 2025, from a copy I was given at ALA Annual Conference, signed by the author
Starred Review

Lest we think that controlling what kids are taught is a new idea, A Dangerous Idea lays out for teens the media circus that happened in 1925 over a few lines about evolution in a high school biology textbook.

Debbie Levy lays out the whole case from roots to verdict and aftermath. She gives us the background of the two big-shot lawyers who faced each other in the Scopes trial. John Scopes was simply a young high school biology teacher who agreed to be a test case after Tennessee passed a law forbidding the teaching of evolution. The real media attention came because of the lawyers – William Jennings Bryan, who had run for president three times and drew huge crowds on the lecture circuit, versus Clarence Darrow, who had publicly challenged Bryan already and had taken famous cases trying to bring down the death penalty.

Although I’d heard of the case, (Of course I had!) I’d had no idea how much was involved and how huge it was in the attention of the entire country – even in the days before television. Thousands of journalists descended on the small town of Dayton, Tennessee, and spread the word about the trial.

So Debbie Levy is able to bring us a multitude of photographs from the time and newspaper clippings and editorial cartoons, and plenty of other material to illustrate the story and help it come alive. It turns out the jury didn’t even hear most of the trial, because much of it was the argument that evolution isn’t actually contrary to Scripture – but the judge ruled all that mattered was if the law was broken.

I do like the way the author connects the dots between the Scopes trial and backlash against science today. This is from the Epilogue:

Today, complaints about science in the classroom go well beyond evolution. Some parents and lawmakers don’t want schools to teach about climate change. They don’t want laws and policies to address climate change, either, because they think it’s a hoax or not caused by human activity. This is contrary to scientific evidence. Cimate-change deniers found a friend in the White House in President Donald Trump. “I don’t believe it,” he said in 2018. “One of the problems that a lot of people like myself, we have very high levels of intelligence but we’re not necessarily such believers” in climate change.

The COVID-19 pandemic, starting in 2020, also spurred epic resistance to science among large swaths of the American public and their leaders. When leading scientists – the preeminent experts on infectious and viral diseases – tried to guide the public on how to protect themselves from the novel coronavirus, President Trump called them “idiots.”

And so, hgere are two persistent threads lifted from the pattern woven a century ago. First: ridicule. Anti-evolutionists at the time of the Scopes trial made fun of scientists because, as Will Bryan scoffed, “They cannot agree with each other.” Will’s mockery was a cheap shot – just as it was a cheap shot, a century later, to mock scientists for altering their advice, in response to new and evolving discoveries, on how to protect against getting sick or dying from the coronavirus. That is what happens in science as a result of ongoing observation, experimentation, and, yes, disagreement among scientists: knowledge evolves.

And second: lumping together science and belief, by couching science as something you “believe” in, or not. Forcing, or even strongly urging, people to “believe” in a creed (science) that doesn’t appeal to them – that’s a bad thing to do, isn’t it? It’s un-American, isn’t it? But science isn’t a religious creed. And religion isn’t science.

I like that this book is aimed at teens – exactly the age of people the original Tennessee law was trying to protect. Give them the full story – and we may find teens are more discerning than adults think they are.

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