Review of The Weight of Blood, by Tiffany D. Jackson

Contemporary, Paranormal, Stand-outs, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Weight of Blood

by Tiffany D. Jackson

Katherine Tegen Books (HarperCollins), 2022. 406 pages.
Review written December 15, 2022, from a library book
Starred Review
2022 Cybils Finalist, Young Adult Speculative Fiction
2022 Sonderbooks Stand-out, #4 Teen Paranormal Fiction

I’m usually not a fan of horror novels, but I read this one for the Cybils, and had to admit it’s wonderfully executed.

The author warns you right from the start that there’s going to be carnage. Chapter 1 begins with an excerpt from a podcast called “Maddy Did It,” and that begins with sworn testimony from “The Springville Massacre Commission.” That testimony from a mother ends this way:

Only two kids survived Prom Night at that country club. Cole was one of them. They say when you go through something like that, your instincts kick in. So his mind must’ve told him to come on home. He walked over two miles through the mud with one shoe, covered in the blood of other children.

When I asked him what happened . . . he just kept mumbling, “Maddy did it.”

Then we go back in time to May 2014. Maddy Washington is horrified that in gym class she has to run in a sudden rainstorm that has come up, despite her checking the forecast three times, as her Papa demands. Sure enough, when her hair gets wet, her hair expands into an Afro, and the entire school learns that her mother was Black.

It’s a small southern town. They don’t think they’re racist, but they’ve always had two separate proms, one for white kids and one for Black kids. And when Maddy suddenly sprouts an Afro, kids laugh and throw pencils into her hair, marveling that she doesn’t even notice.

Maddy’s always been an outsider. She keeps to herself and doesn’t say much in class. She lives alone with her Papa who makes her pray for hours in a closet with pictures of beautiful white women on the walls that her sin will not come out. She wishes she could be like normal kids.

But when she’s humiliated in class, something strange happens. The chairs float, there’s some kind of earthquake, cellphones quit working, and all the kids get terrible headaches.

Before the cellphones quit working, someone filmed the taunting and posted it on the internet. Now everyone’s talking about the racist small town in Alabama.

Wendy is a senior who feels guilty about it all. She’s not the ringleader of the group bullying Maddy, but her best friend is, and Wendy went along with it. Wendy’s boyfriend is Kenny, the star of the football team. He’s Black, but doesn’t hang out with the other Black kids. Wendy doesn’t like how he’s sticking up for Maddy, and she doesn’t like how she comes out looking like a racist, too.

So Wendy gets the bright idea of combining the white prom and the Black prom. She wasn’t going to go anyway, but she’s organizing the whole thing. And what could be more noble than asking her boyfriend, the town all-star, to take Maddy to the prom?

Of course, we know from the podcast excerpts that open the chapters that this decision will lead to disaster. And meanwhile, Maddy is learning about the power of telekinesis. Could this power have come from her missing Mama?

This book is a hard one to put down. The author shines a light on racism that pretends it’s not racism and gets you firmly on Maddy’s side, despite knowing that something terrible is about to happen. That mild-mannered, socially backward recluse was the wrong person to bully!

A truly masterful story of a downtrodden girl coming into her power.

writeinbk.com
EpicReads.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 Those Kids from Fawn Creek, by Erin Entrada Kelly, read by Ramon de Ocampo

Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Stand-outs, Starred Review 0

Those Kids from Fawn Creek

by Erin Entrada Kelly
read by Ramon de Ocampo

HarperAudio, 2022. 6 hours, 17 minutes.
Review written September 5, 2022, from a library eaudiobook
Starred Review

There were twelve kids in seventh grade in the small town of Fawn Creek, Louisiana. That is, there were twelve until the day that Orchid Mason showed up.

Usually the twelve seventh graders were careful to leave their faces blank and expressionless. No one wanted to be the first to admit they were excited about anything. But this — a real-life new student, a real-life new anything — was far more interesting than any science experiment. People from Somewhere Else just didn’t come to Fawn Creek. Certainly not unannounced. The next closest thing was Mr. Agosto, who was born in Venezuela and was the only non-white face in almost every room. But he had moved to Fawn Creek when he was three years old, because his dad got a job at Gimmerton, and — like Greyson, Dorothy, and virtually everyone else — he had never traveled outside of south Louisiana since then. The farthest he’d gone was Baton Rouge to go to Louisiana State, and that was just two hours away. Small towns are like magnets, Greyson’s mother once said. They pull you in and don’t let go.

Orchid says she was born in New York City and moved to Fawn Creek from Paris. She wears a flower in her hair. Nobody knows what to make of her.

Then the two kids with the lowest social standing, Greyson and Dorothy, invite Orchid to eat with them. Orchid suggests the wildly innovative idea of taking their lunches outside. She tells the other kids stories of her travels and about her boyfriend, Victor, and her adventures with him in Paris.

But at least one kid isn’t happy about Orchid’s inclusion in their class. Janie used to be the most important seventh-grader in Fawn Creek, since her father ran the plant. And Janie’s best friend Renni isn’t happy, even though she moved from Fawn Creek to the much larger Grand Saintlodge. She’s used to knowing everything about everyone and deciding who’s important and who’s not. When Janie tells Renni that the boy she broke up with is going to ask the new girl to the dance, Renni is not happy.

But Orchid’s the most interesting person Greyson and Dorothy have ever known. They’ve known everyone in their class forever, and they have no surprises. But Orchid looks at things differently and helps them see things differently.

But it’s not good to make an enemy of Renni.

When this book started with a story of how mean Greyson’s older brother had been, pinching him and calling him a girl for not wanting to go duck hunting, I wasn’t sure I’d like it. Erin Entrada Kelly is skilled at showing just how cruel families can be to one another. But in this book, although there were some painful episodes, I like the way things worked out and were resolved.

Both I and those kids from Fawn Creek are better off from having known Orchid Mason, a girl who is both imaginative and kind.

erinentradakelly.com
harpercollinschildrens.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.

What did you think of this book?

Review of Garlic & the Vampire, by Bree Paulsen

Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy, Graphic Novel, Stand-outs, Starred Review 0

Garlic and the Vampire

by Bree Paulsen

Quill Tree Books (HarperCollins), 2021. 154 pages.
Review written January 9, 2022, from a library book
Starred Review

Garlic and the Vampire is a fun graphic novel suitable for early elementary school kids. The book opens with bulb of garlic with a body oversleeping and being teased by her friend Carrot when she’s late. They’re part of a whole group of sentient vegetables made by kindly Witch Agnes. Garlic and her friends help Agnes tend her garden and sell the produce in the village market. They happily interact with the people in the village.

Garlic has some anxiety about doing her job well. Witch Agnes tries to reassure her and encourage her that she’s doing fine.

But then somebody moves into the castle overlooking the valley. Agnes’s magic mirror shows them that a vampire has returned. The vegetables go into a panic. What about the people in the village?

But everybody knows that vampires are afraid of garlic, so they decide that Garlic should confront the vampire.

Witch Agnes gives her tools to help her, but it takes all Garlic’s courage to do the job.

And things turn out like no one expects – in a fun and child-friendly way.

A delightful, quirky, and very sweet story about a little bulb of garlic being brave.

harperalley.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fiction/garlic_and_the_vampire.html

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.

What did you think of this book?

Review of From Dust, a Flame, by Rebecca Podos

Paranormal, Stand-outs, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

From Dust, a Flame

by Rebecca Podos

Balzer + Bray, 2022. 400 pages.
Review written November 12, 2022, from a library book
Starred Review

Wow. This is one of those books I can only describe as intricately woven.

The story begins simply enough. It’s the eve of Hannah’s seventeenth birthday, and what she wants is to get to go to summer school to improve that one B she got. But her mother insists they can’t afford it, even though she’s dragged them all around the country until Hannah got into Winthrop Academy. Then her big brother Gabe lets down their birthday tradition by not staying awake until her birthday hits. But those annoyances fade to insignificance when, on her birthday, Hannah wakes up with yellow eyes, slitted like a snake’s.

But before they can do anything, the next day she wakes up with a new deformity, ranging from fins to scales to claws. They always go away in the night, and she always wakes up with something new.

Hannah’s mother takes the problem to heart. She says she knows a specialist who can fix the problem, and Hannah and Gabe should stay in their apartment. She’ll be back in a few days.

Instead, their mother is gone for weeks. So when they get a mysterious note telling them about their grandmother’s death — a grandmother they didn’t know existed — they show up to sit shiva with a big Jewish family they knew nothing about.

After they get to the home of relatives, we start getting occasional chapters telling us about what happened when Hannah’s mother was seventeen and why she left her mother’s house, never to return. And that story has to do with her mother’s mother, the one who recently died, and her history in Prague before the war, as well as stories she brought with her, and maybe something more tangible.

There are stories within stories here, and ultimately deep danger to Hannah and everyone she loves. This book is wonderfully woven and involves golems and sheydim and amulets from Jewish folklore.

rebeccapodos.com
epicreads.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.

What did you think of this book?

Review of How to Keep House While Drowning, by KC Davis, LPC

Nonfiction Review, Personal Growth, Stand-outs, Starred Review 0

How to Keep House While Drowning

A Gentle Approach to Cleaning and Organizing

by KC Davis, LPC

Simon Element, 2022. 152 pages.
Review written January 8, 2023, from a library book.
Starred Review
2022 Sonderbooks Standout:
#2 General Nonfiction

Oh, how I wish this book had existed when I was a young wife and young mother!

Now? Well, I’m not drowning so much as I was then — but I still have some mental hang-ups around housework, and this book helps soothe them, even though that soothing isn’t quite as desperately needed.

And this book is so soothing! And so gentle! And so soul-feeding!

The basic message of this book is this: “Care tasks are morally neutral.”

And underlying that message is calling them “care tasks” instead of “chores” — thus taking away a sense of duty.

I also love that she doesn’t try to shame you into getting your space more organized. She doesn’t prescribe a certain way of doing things and acknowledges that everyone is different and what’s functional for you is what works.

When I viewed getting my life together as a way for trying to atone for the sin of falling apart, I stayed stuck in a shame-fueled cycle of performance, perfectionism, and failure.

When will we learn that shame and scolding and punishment is not a good way to improve? This book is full of gentleness that will inspire you.

Doing care tasks is not a duty, but a kindness to future you. All part of self-care.

And the book is full of kind tips for helping yourself do those care tasks and live a functional life.

The way the author ends the Introduction is beautiful and healing, and will give you an idea of what you’ll find in this book:

I’ll say it again: you don’t exist to serve your space; your space exists to serve you.

In this book, I’m going to help you find your way of keeping a functional home — whatever “functional” means for you. Together, we are going to build a foundation of self-compassion and learn how to stop negative self-talk and shame. Then, and only then, can we begin to look into ways to maneuver around our functional barriers. I have so many tips for how to clean a room when you are feeling overwhelmed, how to hack motivation for times when you feel like doing nothing, how to organize without feeling overwhelmed, ideas for getting the dishes and the laundry done on hard days, and lots of creative hacks for working with a body that doesn’t always cooperate. And we are going to do it without endless checklists and overwhelming routines.

As you embark on this journey I invite you to remember these words: “slow,” “quiet,” “gentle.” You are already worthy of love and belonging. This is not a journey of worthiness but a journey of care. A journey of learning how we can care for ourselves when we feel like we are drowning.

Because you must know, dear heart, that you are worthy of care whether your house is immaculate or a mess.

I highly encourage you to check out this book if you have any level of emotional baggage with care tasks.

strugglecare.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.

What did you think of this book?

2022 Sonderbooks Stand-outs — Books for Kids

Children's Fiction Review, Children's Nonfiction Review, Picture Book Review, Stand-outs 0

Tonight I’m going to post my third and final batch of 2022 Sonderbooks Stand-outs — with Children’s Fiction and Nonfiction and Picture Books.

Sonderbooks Stand-outs are my personal favorite books from those I read this year. I’m not judging by literary merit, but simply by fondness. How much did these books warm my heart?

The ranking is very subjective, and I make multiple categories when it’s hard to decide. I split Children’s Fiction into Speculative Fiction and everything else, and I split Picture Books into Silly Fun and everything else. It seems like an awful lot of books, but I read even more.

All of these books are highly recommended and much loved:

Children’s Speculative Fiction

  1. Little Monarchs, by Jonathan Case
  2. The Ogress and the Orphans, by Kelly Barnhill
  3. Garlic and the Vampire, by Bree Paulsen
  4. The Last Mapmaker, by Christina Soontornvat
  5. Amari and the Night Brothers, by B. B. Alston

More Children’s Fiction

  1. The Secret Battle of Evan Pao, by Wendy Wan-Long Shang
  2. Merci Suárez Plays It Cool, by Meg Medina
  3. The Boys in the Back Row, by Mike Jung
  4. Those Kids from Fawn Creek, by Erin Entrada Kelly
  5. Different Kinds of Fruit, by Kyle Lukoff
  6. Answers in the Pages, by David Levithan
  7. Attack of the Black Rectangles, by Amy Sarig King
  8. Stuntboy #1: In the Meantime, by Jason Reynolds and Raúl the Third
  9. Premeditated Myrtle, by Elizabeth C. Bunce

Children’s Nonfiction

  1. Marshmallow Clouds, by Ted Kooser and Connie Wanek, illustrated by Richard Jones
  2. Before Music, by Annette Bay Pimentel, illustrated by Madison Safer
  3. Bake Infinite Pie with X + Y, by Eugenia Cheng, illustrated by Amber Ren
  4. Washed Ashore, by Kelly Crull
  5. The Tide Pool Waits, by Candace Fleming, pictures by Amy Hevron
  6. Molly and the Mathematical Mysteries, by Eugenia Cheng, illustrated by Aleksandra Artymowska
  7. Galloping Gertie, by Amanda Abler, illustrated by Levi Hastings
  8. Sylvie, by Sylvie Kantorovitz
  9. Make Way for Animals!, by Meeg Pincus, illustrated by Bao Luu
  10. Blips on a Screen, by Kate Hannigan, illustrated by Zachariah OHora

Silly Fun Picture Books

  1. Monsters in the Fog, by Ali Bahrampour
  2. A Spoonful of Frogs, by Vera Brosgol
  3. This Book Is Not For You!, by Shannon Hale, illustrated by Tracy Subisak
  4. How to Be Cooler Than Cool, by Sean Taylor, illustrated by Jean Jullien
  5. The Three Billy Goats Gruff, by Mac Barnett, illustrated by Jon Klassen
  6. Zero Zebras, by Bruce Goldstone, illustrated by Julien Chang
  7. The Legend of Iron Purl, by Tao Nyeu
  8. How to Be on the Moon, by Viviane Schwarz
  9. Too Many Pigs and One Big Bad Wolf, by Davide Cali, illustrated by Marianna Balducci
  10. Here We Come!, by Janna Matthies, illustrated by Christine Davenier

More Picture Books

  1. Berry Song, by Michaela Goade
  2. Like, by Annie Barrows, illustrated by Leo Espinosa
  3. A Seed Grows, by Antoinette Portis
  4. I’ll Go and Come Back, by Rajani LaRocca, illustrated by Sara Palacios
  5. Gibberish, by Young Vo

I’ll post all the missing reviews as soon as I can. I hope you get a chance to try some of these books!

And here’s my permanent webpage for all my 2022 Sonderbooks Stand-outs!

Happy Reading!

2022 Sonderbooks Stand-outs — Books for Teens

Stand-outs, Teen Fiction Review, Teen Nonfiction 0

It’s taking me so long to post my Sonderbooks Stand-outs this year! But at last, I have no tooth pain and I’ve finished reading for the Cybils Awards and the Mathical Book Prize — and a long weekend coming up. I hope to get the whole set posted here and on a webpage before the weekend is done.

Again, Sonderbooks Stand-outs are simply my favorites — the books that stand out in my mind after a full year of reading. I don’t choose them for literary merit or any deeper criteria, but simply go with my heart — which books most warm my heart when I think of them?

The ranking is very subjective and goes back and forth a bit. Please take the ranking as secondary, because I love all of these books.

Many of these do not have their reviews posted yet, especially the ones I read for the Cybils. After I make a page for the Stand-outs, my next priority will be getting all these reviews posted.

Books for Teens were especially difficult this year, because I read more than I have in years. At the start of the year, I was a judge for the 2021 Cybils second round in Young Adult Speculative Fiction, and at the end of this year I was a panelist for the 2022 Cybils first round in the same category. I also think that I’ve had a delayed reaction to being on the 2019 Newbery committee, and for the last couple years have been less interested in reading middle grade books. I still read plenty, but I enjoyed binge-reading for award committees the older level books.

Anyway, I read so many speculative fiction books for teens, I decided to use three categories for teen books: Fantasy (a fantasy world), Paranormal (magic or paranormal activity in our world), and everything else. Here’s how I ranked them in those categories:

Teen Fantasy Fiction

  1. Little Thieves, by Margaret Owen
  2. A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking, by T. Kingfisher
  3. Moira’s Pen, by Megan Whalen Turner
  4. Vespertine, by Margaret Rogerson
  5. The Excalibur Curse, by Kiersten White
  6. Year of the Reaper, by Makiia Lucier
  7. The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea, by Axie Oh
  8. So This Is Ever After, by F. T. Lukens

Teen Paranormal Fiction

  1. The Mirror Season, by Anna-Marie McLemore
  2. A Snake Falls to Earth, by Darcie Little Badger
  3. From Dust, a Flame, by Rebecca Podos
  4. The Weight of Blood, by Tiffany D. Jackson
  5. Lakelore, by Anna-Marie McLemore
  6. Bad Witch Burning, by Jessica Lewis

More Teen Fiction

  1. Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, by Benjamin Alire Sáenz
  2. Aristotle and Dante Dive Into the Waters of the World, by Benjamin Alire Sáenz
  3. A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, by Holly Jackson
  4. Good Girl, Bad Blood, by Holly Jackson
  5. As Good as Dead, by Holly Jackson
  6. All That’s Left in the World, by Eric J. Brown
  7. The Many Half-Lived Lives of Sam Sylvester, by Maya MacGregor

Teen Nonfiction

  1. Grand Theft Horse, by G. Neri, illustrated by Corban Wilkin
  2. Gone to the Woods, by Gary Paulsen
  3. Revolution in Our Time, by Kekla Magoon
  4. Welcome to St. Hell, by Lewis Hancox
  5. Punching Bag, by Rex Ogle

I guarantee some good reading with any of these books! Enjoy!

And here’s my permanent webpage for all my 2022 Sonderbooks Stand-outs!

2022 Sonderbooks Stand-outs – Books for Adults

Stand-outs 0

Well, it’s time to announce my 2022 Sonderbooks Stand-outs! Way past time, in fact!

I like to post Stand-outs on January 1st, but this year a terrible toothache absorbed my attention. After getting a root canal and temporary crown, I’m ready to proceed.

To give you an idea of my difficult task, here are the numbers of books I read in 2022:

Adult Fiction: 11 books
Adult Nonfiction: 30 books
Teen Fiction: 56 books
Teen Nonfiction: 7 books
Children’s Fiction: 57 books
Children’s Nonfiction: 113 books (counting many picture books)
Fiction Picture Books: 283 books

Let’s say the children’s nonfiction books are all picture books, even though they’re not. That would be grand totals of

396 picture books
161 longer books

Grand total: 557 books read in 2022.

So if I have chosen 93 stand-outs (and I have), you see that I’m actually making difficult choices.

My list of Stand-outs come from all the books I read in a year and they are my personal favorites. I’m not ranking them by literary merit — I’m listing the books that I enjoyed the most.

As an example of a quirky choice, my Sonderbooks Stand-out #9 in General Nonfiction is Carotid and Vertebral Artery Dissection, by Jodi A. Dobbs and Amanda P. Anderson – simply because I had a vertebral artery dissection that caused a stroke eleven years ago, and at last I have a source of information validating my experiences with that. Definitely a Stand-out for me!

This year was extra difficult in the Teen Fiction category, because I was a second round judge for the Young Adult Speculative Fiction category last January and a first round panelist for the same category this Fall. And read lots in between. So as usual, I decided to solve that difficulty by breaking things up into multiple categories.

Many of the books do not have reviews posted yet, especially the ones I read for the Cybils (before we chose our Finalists), so my next priority will be getting the reviews for all these books posted.

It also turns out that it’s taking me a long time to get the books listed with links to the reviews, so I’m going to break this post up to get more titles out sooner.

Here are the books for grown-ups that I especially loved in 2022:

Fiction

  1. The Golden Enclaves, by Naomi Novik
  2. Black Cake, by Charmaine Wilderson
  3. The Murder of Mr. Wickham, by Claudia Gray
  4. The 100 Years of Lenni and Margot, by Marianne Cronin
  5. The Reading List, by Sara Nisha Adams

Christian Nonfiction

  1. Miracles and Other Reasonable Things, by Sara Bessey
  2. Wholehearted Faith, by Rachel Held Evans
  3. The Whole Language, by Gregory Boyle
  4. Freeing Jesus, by Diana Butler Bass
  5. Learning to Pray, by James Martin, S.J.
  6. Open and Unafraid, by W. David O. Taylor
  7. Braving the Thin Places, by Julianne Stanz

Other Nonfiction

  1. What My Bones Know, by Stephanie Foo
  2. How to Keep House While Drowning, by KC Davis
  3. Conversations with People who Hate Me, by Dylan Marron
  4. The Choice, by Edith Eva Eger
  5. Collective Wisdom, by Grace Bonney
  6. Invisible Acts of Power, by Caroline Myss
  7. Call Us What We Carry, by Amanda Gorman
  8. Playing with Myself, by Randy Rainbow
  9. Carotid and Vertebral Artery Dissection, by Jodi A. Dodds & Amanda P. Anderson

Here are my 2022 Sonderbooks Stand-outs for Teens.
And here are my 2022 Sonderbooks Stand-outs for Children.

And here’s my permanent webpage for all my 2022 Sonderbooks Stand-outs!

Review of In the Red, by Christopher Swiedler

Children's Fiction Review, Science Fiction, Stand-outs, Starred Review 0

In the Red

by Christopher Swiedler

HarperCollins Children’s Books, 2020. 277 pages.
Review written October 22, 2021, from a library book
Starred Review

In the Red takes place on a Mars colony with a kid who grew up there. His parents took him out on the surface many times – but when he was ten and tried to pass his Basic Certification, he had a panic attack and failed. Ever since then, he can’t even get to the airlock.

Now Michael is twelve, and determined to prove himself. He’s sure his parents are disgusted by his “condition” and way too protective, so he schedules a test without telling them. When he gets put with the Advanced Test, he impressively calculates directions in his head without using the nav computer, but still has a panic attack when he’s almost gotten back to the dome. Will he never succeed?

Soon after, at night, his best friend Lilith shows him a secret way to get out of the dome. They steal a slightly damaged rover and go on a joyride. When everything is going well, Michael rashly decides to pay his father a visit, six hours away at the magnetic field station at the polar ice cap.

It would have worked, if the station didn’t suffer a major disaster that took down the magnetic field. Now all the humans on Mars need to take cover before the sun comes up with its deadly radiation and no protection from the magnetic field. Trouble is, where will Michael and Lilith find protection out on the surface?

That’s just the beginning of their troubles. Communication is also down, and no one knows they’re out on the surface. In the tradition of a good thriller, solving one problem is only a temporary respite before the next life-threatening situation comes up. The author has them working with reasonably imagined future technology that does have major constraints as they try to survive on a planet that could easily kill them.

This book reminded me of The Martian, but for kids. The dangerous situations and solutions all sounded plausible as well as terrifying. Michael’s practical genius with math had a counterweight in the devastating panic attacks that always put him at further risk.

A science fiction story that feels like it could be telling the future. Kid vs. Nature in a setting that is more hostile than anything on earth.

christopherswiedler.com
harpercollinschildrens.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fiction/in_the_red.html

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.

What did you think of this book?

Review of A Song of Flight, by Juliet Marillier

Fantasy, Fiction Review, Stand-outs, Starred Review 0

A Song of Flight

by Juliet Marillier

ACE (Penguin Random House), 2021. 446 pages.
Review written October 23, 2021, from my own copy, preordered from amazon.com
Starred Review
2022 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #12 Fiction

A Song of Flight culminates another wonderful fantasy trilogy by Juliet Marillier, the Warrior Bards trilogy.

A new problem has arisen. The prince of Dalriada has disappeared, after he and Liobhan’s brother Galen were attacked by strangers and Crow Folk. Galen is frantic to find him, and the warriors of Swan Island are called on to help.

At first Dau is sent without Liobhan, because she is too personally involved. But Liobhan has more experience with the Uncanny, so her skills will be needed.

At the same time, her brother Brocc and his baby daughter have been expelled from the Other World, because he was too compassionate toward the Crow Folk. But then an unscrupulous person sees his connection with them and forces him to help her with some sinister plans.

All these plot threads get woven together in satisfying ways, answering questions that were opened up since the beginning of the series.

Do read the other two books in the trilogy first. After you do, you’ll be as eager as I was to once again get immersed in this magical world.

julietmarillier.com
penguinrandomhouse.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Fiction/song_of_flight.html

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.

What did you think of this book?