Review of My Daddy Is a Cowboy, words by Stephanie Seales, pictures by C. G. Esperanza

Award Winners, Contemporary, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

My Daddy Is a Cowboy

words by Stephanie Seales
pictures by C. G. Esperanza

Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2024. 40 pages.
Review written February 11, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review
2025 Caldecott Honor Book
2025 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award Winner

This is a story of together time for a girl and her Daddy.

The book starts when he wakes her up before the sun. They get ready and ride a motorcycle to the “ranch” in the city – a regular house, with a backyard that has “stalls and stalls of horses.”

They get their horses ready – Daddy’s mare Power, and the girl’s pony Clover, and she feeds them the apple slices she brought.

And then they ride around the city neighborhood together. Daddy took her early so they wouldn’t have to worry about cars and trucks and things. Everyone who sees them smiles.

Later, Daddy will ride around the city with the other cowboys, and the girl will ride at the ranch with the other kids, but this is precious “just us” time, when she gets to be a cowboy like her Daddy.

It’s a good story about something I never guessed could happen in a big city – but what pushes it over to exceptional are the bright, vibrant, joyful, colorful illustrations.

Daddy says riding helped him feel stronger, safer, and happier.

I know what Daddy means because I feel that way when I ride.
Tall. High as the clouds.
Strong as a horse’s back.

stephanieseales.com
cgesperanza.com

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Review of Dispatches from Parts Unknown, by Bryan Bliss, read by Joy Nash

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Dispatches from Parts Unknown

by Bryan Bliss
read by Joy Nash

Greenwillow Books, 2024. 7 hours, 19 minutes.
Review written February 10, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
Odyssey Award Honor Audiobook, Young Adult

I don’t think I can adequately express how much I loved this sweet audiobook. Because my favorite thing about it sounds hokey – and it simply wasn’t.

It’s been three years since Julianna’s father died, and she’s still grieving him all the time. She’s given up explaining to therapists about the voice of the old retired professional wrestler she hears in her head all the time. And that! That is the awesome thing about this book. The narrator reads the running commentary from The Masked Man with a gravelly voice that is always easy to distinguish from Julie’s thoughts and carries lots of humor about the situations she finds herself in – like what he really thinks of the yoga instructor her Mom is dating.

The Masked Man encourages Julie to hang out in the Mall of America after school at the Orange Julius where her best friend Max works. She gets an extra orange julius for The Masked Man. Max’s parents are long-time friends of Julie’s parents, so he knows what she’s been going through. And he’s also a wrestling fan, so he understands how she misses watching wrestling with her dad.

So Julie’s carrying on, outwardly getting by okay, when her favorite teacher twists her arm into being on the prom committee – and she makes a new friend, Bri. And typical high school things ensue, with the hilarity of two skater boys trying to switch the prom theme from “Enchanted Gardens” to “Top Gun Prom.” And Max and Bri get interested in each other, and her mother’s boyfriend shows his cracks. And the Legend is making a grand wrestling comeback in the Mall of America on Prom Night!

And – it’s all just SO sweet, tender, and so much fun. I don’t feel like that description adequately expresses how much. I think it did help me understand how my own adult child has gotten interested in Japanese wrestling, because Julie’s doing an extended essay on the stories of wrestling and what they mean to believers and how it helps them deal with reality. As well as the sheer joy of a shared fandom.

I do recommend listening to this book because the commentary in the voice of The Masked Man is just plain charming. (I continue to be convinced that Odyssey Honor Audiobooks are always good.)

bryanbliss.com

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Review of One Perfect Couple, by Ruth Ware, read by Imogen Church

Contemporary, Fiction Review, Mystery, Starred Review, Suspense 0

One Perfect Couple

by Ruth Ware
read by Imogen Church

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2024. 14 hours, 25 minutes.
Review written January 31, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Okay! With this book I’ve read all of Ruth Ware’s existing work – and this one felt like something new and had me hanging on every word.

Yes, this one is a thriller like all the others, and it’s going to end with the female main character in great danger. There’s always some question about who she can trust and where the danger lies, though in this case, that came to be obvious before the dangerous confrontation – it was more a question of would she survive the confrontation. (Though I will put it in “Mystery” along with the others.)

The book sets up with Lila, a research virologist, fretting over data that doesn’t give the results she wanted. And then her actor boyfriend Nico gets a big opportunity and wants her to come with him on a new reality TV show called “One Perfect Couple.” Five couples are going to be taken to a tropical island and given tasks to achieve. People will get eliminated after each task, and the producers will be encouraging some remixing of the couples.

Lila isn’t thrilled about the whole thing. But Nico is very much hoping it will be his big break as an actor. Their plan is that Lila will get knocked out early, and if Nico’s encouraged to spend time with other women, he assures her it will purely reflect his acting abilities – only for the camera.

But during all this set-up, the book begins each chapter with a radio distress call of someone from the island in the future, not too far ahead. They’re stranded, their water is running out, and people are dead and injured – so we’re fully warned that things are going to go terribly wrong.

And they do go terribly wrong. The island hosts a resort in construction and not yet open to the public. Their first night – after one person is eliminated – an enormous storm takes out power and the desalination plant. The boat where the staff of the show were staying had left to take the eliminated contestant back to the mainland – and it doesn’t return.

The storm kills a couple people, and then the group has to figure out how to survive until a boat comes – but that turns out to be much longer than they hope. So they need to ration food and medicine – and let’s just say there are power struggles and more people start dying.

And my goodness it had me avidly listening! Perhaps it’s not the most pleasant story to spend my time with, but I did like the characters and there were even some interesting insights into toxic relationships. But mostly, it was a thrilling story that got me wondering what I would do in that situation – and tremendously glad I’ll never get in that situation.

[It’s probably just me, but does anyone else wonder why someone on a tropical island wouldn’t try to make their own small desalination scheme by trying to evaporate sea water and catch the condensation? I understand you probably wouldn’t get a lot, but every little bit would help, and it seems easier than scaling coconut trees. Why didn’t they even try? That was my only niggling question – but I also had it when reading a different book about drought in California, so it was a persistent thought.]

ruthware.com

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Review of Chooch Helped, by Andrea L. Rogers, illustrated by Rebecca Lee Kunz

Award Winners, Contemporary, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

Chooch Helped

by Andrea L. Rogers
illustrated by Rebecca Lee Kunz

Levine Querido, 2024. 48 pages.
Review written February 5, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review
2025 Randolph Caldecott Medal Winner

Chooch Helped wasn’t on my radar except to order library copies – until it won the Caldecott Medal. The Caldecott Medal is given to the artist for the illustrations, but it’s an award for the picture book, so the story is always wonderful, too. It’s not hard to see why this book was chosen this year.

The story is about a big sister and her baby brother. Here’s how it begins:

This is the baby.
We call him Chooch.

The word for boy or son in Cherokee is atsutsa (ah-choo-ja)

However, the plot thickens on the next page, when we read:

Chooch isn’t really a baby, anymore.
We just celebrated his second birthday.

Still, whenever Chooch makes a mess, everyone says,
“He’s just usdi (oos-dee). Let him help.”

It seems to me, Usdi Chooch
just gets away with everything.

From there, each spread shows Chooch “helping” another member of the family. Each family member’s name is given in Cherokee, and most of the time, we can see that Chooch’s help is distinctly unhelpful. At the back of the book, the author tells how the different tasks they are doing are part of Cherokee culture.

Finally, when Chooch messes up the clay pot Sissy is making, she yells at him. So he cries, and her parents yell at her, “Shouting is no help!”

But when Sissy goes to her room and cries, Chooch helps her feel better. He really does help! And the parents apologize before the end, too. And there are lessons about how when she was usdi, her help was a lot like Chooch’s. And it all ends with Sissy helping Chooch to make his own pinch pot.

The two spreads of back matter (not too common in a picture book) reveal the Cherokee traditions woven throughout the story and art of this beautiful book, as well as instructions for making a pinch pot, and more on the Cherokee words used.

So this book ends up being a beautiful tribute to Cherokee culture – but also a classic story of a “helpful” younger sibling that any big sibling in the world will be able to relate to. Truly a distinguished picture book. (And wow! I see from the back flap that this is the illustrator’s debut picture book. You go! Awesome!)

treeoflifestudio.net
andrealrogers.com

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Review of On the Bright Side, by Anna Sortino

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

On the Bright Side

by Anna Sortino
read by Jesse Inocalla and Elizabeth Robbins

Listening Library, 2024. 8 hours, 41 minutes.
Review written January 17, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
2024 CYBILS Award Finalist, Young Adult Fiction
2025 Schneider Family Honor Book, Teens

This is now the third Young Adult Fiction CYBILS Finalist I’ve read and oh my goodness, the second-round judges are going to have a difficult decision. I read Anna Sortino’s first book, Give Me a Sign, in 2023 for the Morris Award, and although it wasn’t a Finalist, let’s just say that I remembered it and wouldn’t have guessed it was a debut if I hadn’t been specifically reading debut novels.

That first one was about a group of deaf kids. This one features one deaf girl, Ellie, and begins when her boarding school that had immersive American Sign Language is being shut down – right before her Senior year of high school.

Ellie had gone to that school since she was twelve, and she’d been dating her boyfriend since then. But now he’s moving to the other side of the state, and he doesn’t want to try to keep things going long distance. So Ellie has to go to a school with hearing kids, and she’s been torn away from everything she’s used to.

And her home isn’t a refuge. Ellie has a hearing aid and cochlear implants and she reads lips, so her parents never bothered to learn sign language. Her hearing sister is heading off to college, so her parents are stuck with her, and it feels to Ellie like they’re obviously settling for the less preferred daughter. So she’s got a lot she’s not happy about that first day of high school.

Our other narrator is Jackson. He was on the soccer team last year, and just as he was about to kick the ball and win the state championship, his leg went numb and crumpled on him. He was fine afterward, so everyone thought he just choked. But more and more weird things happen to him. His parents are both health nuts who urge him to work through anything.

And he’s a nice guy, involved in lots of things at the high school. So the guidance counselor asks him to help make the new deaf student comfortable and give her a tour of the school.

The book is about their budding relationship, but meanwhile, Jackson is having more and more weird things going on with his body – numbness, vertigo, fatigue, and more. On a day that he’d planned to go to a museum with Ellie for extra credit, he ends up with severe vertigo and vomiting. His parents take him to Urgent Care, where he’s given a CT scan, which is normal. By the time the doctor sees him, the vertigo has passed. So they tell him it’s probably benign positional vertigo and give him some exercises to do.

My goodness I wasn’t prepared for how hard that scene would hit me! The thing is – back in 2011, when I was 47, I had severe vertigo and vomiting – and the E.R. did a CT scan, but by the time I saw the doctor, I felt better. They told me my migraines had changed and sent me home – and it turned out to have been a stroke, which we learned when I had another worse one a couple days later. So I was just cringing for Jackson when I heard this scene. No! Don’t send him home!

And Jackson continues to have strange symptoms – and in the present day, I’ve been having a set of strange symptoms – not exactly like Jackson’s, but including vertigo – and that part just built tension in me. Especially with his parents urging him to “shake it off” and not be lazy.

I won’t tell you his diagnosis, but it’s all described so vividly that I wasn’t surprised when the author said in a note at the end that this is a condition she shares.

The book is an excellent story about two teens getting to know each other and dealing with some hard things – but it’s also a great look at disability and how it’s not obvious when you’re looking at someone that they have a disability. And it’s also not their fault. Sometimes life throws hard things at a person, but you keep your identity. Ellie is good at giving Jackson perspective on his new disability, and it all unfolds in a realistic way as they navigate what it means for their relationship.

annasortino.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 Strong Like the Sea, by Wendy S. Swore

Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Starred Review 0

Strong Like the Sea

by Wendy S. Swore

Shadow Mountain, 2021. 295 pages.
Review written September 26, 2024, from a library book.
Starred Review

Set in Hawaii on the island of Oahu, this is the story of 12-year-old Alexis, who loves to do puzzles and wants to win her school’s history project competition, but who is currently afraid of the ocean because of a bad experience. Alexis’s dad teaches diving lessons, but her mother is a codebreaker who’s currently deployed on a submarine somewhere far away. But Mom has left intriguing puzzles and codes for Alexis, leading to a prize.

The fun of this book is that there are some truly cool puzzles for Alexis to follow. There’s also a cipher in the book for the reader to solve (with the code spelled out in the back). Alexis does her history project on Mavis Batey, a codebreaker from World War II, which ties in with the other puzzles.

Along the way, Alexis must deal with her father’s schedules (will there be enough time to make an awesome project *and* solve Mom’s puzzles?) and her own fear of the ocean. And then there’s a typhoon in the Pacific and Mom doesn’t connect for their weekly call.

This is a fun book for budding code breakers and puzzle solvers, with a nice taste of Oahu thrown in.

wendyswore.com

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Review of Shut Up, This Is Serious, by Carolina Ixta, read by

Award Winners, Contemporary, Teen Fiction Review 0

Shut Up, This Is Serious

by Carolina Ixta
read by Frankie Corzo

Quill Tree Books, 2024. 10 hours, 19 minutes.
Review written January 22, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
2025 Morris Award Finalist
2025 Pura Belpré Young Adult Author Award

Shut Up, This Is Serious is about a high school senior named Belén whose life seems like it’s falling apart. Her best friend Leti is pregnant, and Leti’s going to love that baby – but she hasn’t yet dared to tell her racist parents that her boyfriend, the baby’s father, is Black.

As for Belén – she stopped caring about classes last year when her father left them and took her mom’s savings. Belén feels like no one even sees her anymore. So when she finds a college guy who’s willing to have sex with her, she doesn’t let herself notice all the things that are wrong with that, because it makes the heaviness lift for a little while.

But when she learns she has to complete one major English assignment in order to save her grade and graduate, she’s also paired with a partner whose hopes of going to the college of his choice are riding on it, too.

And that description doesn’t do justice to all the ways the pressures on Belén are portrayed and interwoven. She does lots of coping in bad ways, but let me say that the story does end with a hopeful note, and it’s an earned hope through the novel.

I was on the Morris Award committee a year ago, so it’s fun to see what they’ve discovered this year. I’ll admit it wasn’t my favorite read – a little too painful to read about the ways she wasn’t coping well. But wearing my committee hat, I do want to say that this is an outstanding debut novel, with nuanced characters and situations, and I hope the first of many more to come from this author.

carolinaixta.com

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Review of Give Me a Sign, by Anna Sortino, read by Elizabeth Robbins

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Give Me a Sign

by Anna Sortino
read by Elizabeth Robbins

Listening Library, 2023. 9 hours, 21 minutes.
Review written September 23, 2023, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Give Me a Sign is a story about Lilah, a 17-year-old who’s hard of hearing and looking to find her place in both Hearing culture and Deaf culture. Her school friends seem to get tired of repeating themselves when Lilah doesn’t understand, but they also aren’t careful about letting her see their lips when they talk so she can use lip-reading to help. When Lilah lands a summer job at a camp for the Deaf and Blind that she once attended as a camper, she looks forward to increasing her American Sign Language fluency – but when she arrives, she wishes she could pick it up more quickly.

There’s not a whole lot of plot to this book, but there’s enough to keep it going. Will the potential summer romance with that cute Deaf counselor work out? Will the camp get enough funding to continue, or will this be its last year of existence?

What drives the book, though, is Lilah’s interactions with the world around her. And that window into her world is fascinating enough to make this book a great read (or listen). She has some hearing, so she struggles whether she’s even “allowed” to call herself Deaf. And her family never taught her to sign, so can she learn, or should she continue to just try to fit in with the hearing folks around her?

Lilah encounters people from many different backgrounds in this book, and there’s a strong message that people have different responses to their own hearing loss, and each person should get to make their own choice about how they want to live in the world, whether hearing aids or cochlear implants or sign language, or some combination of all of the above. She also learns to speak up for herself and not be ashamed of being Deaf and to tell her friends what she needs.

And all of this is wrapped up in a fun story of summer camp, so its strong message doesn’t feel like medicine, but like an interesting window into someone else’s world. I also imagine that for many Deaf teens out there, it may provide the delightful experience of seeing someone like themselves as a protagonist. The author reminds us at the end that Lilah’s experience isn’t representative of every Deaf person’s experience. But the book itself does a lovely job reminding us that we are all individuals and we should all be able to make our own choices.

annasortino.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 New From Here, by Kelly Yang

Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Starred Review 0

New From Here

by Kelly Yang

Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2022. 361 pages.
Review written September 12, 2022, from my own copy, received at ALA Annual Conference and signed by the author.
Starred Review

Here’s a pandemic book that tells a bigger story.

Knox is the middle child in an American family living in Hong Kong to be near their grandparents in China. But when Covid-19 begins to spread in China, his parents decide that they will move the kids back to America, to live in the house where they usually spend summers, inherited from their other grandparents. After all, surely they’ll be safe from the disease in America! (There were several places where as a reader I cringed, knowing what was coming.) Their mother goes along with them, thinking she’d work remotely, but loses her job with the distance, so their father still in Hong Kong is trying to support them.

They get into American schools, glad that they can attend school in person instead of remotely from Hong Kong. Knox has ADHD, and sometimes his impulsive choices don’t turn out the best, though I love the way he and his friend learn that ADHD includes a super-focusing ability. They simply have to be interested, and then they can focus better than anyone.

Their mother is busy looking for work in America, but the kids want to get their family back together. They decide to make a Linked In profile for their dad and surprise him by finding him a job.

Once the virus starts spreading in America, anyone who finds out they came from Hong Kong doesn’t want anything to do with them. That’s why they explain they’re “New from here.” After all, they were born in America!

I like the way they decide to help out their friend’s Chinese restaurant by delivering food on their bicycles for tips (to bring their dad to America), and they decide to wear full-body dinosaur suits to protect themselves from the virus.

The interactions between Knox and his family are all spot-on. And the particularity of the situation all rings true. When I finished the book, I learned that the author based it on their own family and what they had done to unsuccessfully try to escape the pandemic. No wonder all the details seemed right. And I appreciate that though the mother is an important part, the perspective is firmly with Knox.

kellyyang.com
simonandschuster.com/kids

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Review of Icarus, by K. Ancrum

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Icarus

by K. Ancrum
read by Kirt Graves

HarperTeen, 2024. 8 hours, 32 minutes.
Review written January 14, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
2024 CYBILS Award Finalist, Young Adult Fiction

Oh my goodness. After the CYBILS Award Finalists were announced, I put all the books on hold (I do a program for other librarians about award winners, and this *probably* gives me a head start for ALA award winners), and this was one of the first audiobooks to come in. And it is amazingly good! If the other Finalists are anywhere close, the second round judges are going to have a difficult time.

This isn’t a retelling of the Greek myth, but it borrows themes from the myth. Our hero is indeed Icarus, a teen who lives alone with his father, but he lives in modern times. He and his father are both expert artists – but they’re also expert thieves. Icarus has been trained all his life to steal objects of art from the mansion of Angus Black and replace them with forgeries. And now that his father’s hands have begun to shake, all the active work falls on Icarus.

At school, Icarus makes a point of having one friend in each class – so that he’s not part of a friend group that expects him to do things with him after school. He’s never had anybody over to his house, and he never can have anybody over to his house. His goal is to stay under the radar.

But then some of those classroom friends start noticing that he can’t stay awake. They seem to care, which Icarus isn’t sure he can handle.

At the same time, Icarus gets spotted when stealing in the Black mansion – Angus Black’s son is there, with no phone and no internet and a cuff to keep him in place. They develop a friendship that looks like it’s going toward romance – and as the reader, I got awfully worried about how it would turn out once it was revealed that the son’s name is Helios. Because I know how that story ends.

So there’s lots and lots of tension in this book, and teens in tough situations – but there are also beautiful portrayals of friendship. Icarus learns how to be a friend and how to accept friendship. And all of the interactions and character growth make this book shine brightly – while keeping up the tension throughout the whole book. And yes, tender romance. Oh, and the audiobook is wonderfully done, too. This book will linger with me for a long time to come.

kancrum.com

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