Review of The Library of Unruly Treasures, by Jeanne Birdsall

The Library of Unruly Treasures

by Jeanne Birdsall
read by Sorcha Groundsell

Listening Library, 2025. 7 hours, 51 minutes.
Review written March 16, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.

Like The Penderwicks series by the same author, The Library of Unruly Treasures is a sweet and old-fashioned story. There’s magic hidden in the everyday world that only the kids can see.

The Prologue starts with a tale of a girl going with her brother across the sea from Scotland to America, and convincing the Lahdukan of her clan to come along. The Lahdukan are small people with wings. Only children under the age of six – and the Calban of the clan – can see them. The current Calba is responsible for protecting them, and it’s passed down to girls of the clan on their 11th birthday.

Then we come to the present, and Gwen MacKinnon comes to stay with her great-uncle Matthew while her neglectful parents are off on separate adventures. There’s a library in town named after her family, and the small children there talk about small flying people. Before long, they show themselves to Gwen, too – and it looks like they expect her to be their next Calba.

But the Lahdukan are in trouble. The library is going to be renovated and upgraded very soon, and their nests are sure to be disturbed. They will find a prophecy to find out where they need to go next, and they will need Gwen’s help to get there.

Before I comment further, let me say this is a sweet and enjoyable story. Lots of fun, and Gwen and her Uncle Matthew – and the Lahdukan and other characters – are all wonderful people to spend time with.

However, many of the obstacles and trials in the book were based entirely on the prophecies the Lahdukan told Gwen about, and that felt pretty artificial after a while. I suppose it was a cute trait of the Lahdukan that they relied so much on prophecies, but the charm wore off for me. Also, I work in a library and am currently involved in reopening a renovated branch – and I simply could not believe the haphazard job portrayed in this book. The one librarian working there wasn’t even sure when the workers would come and apparently didn’t have a chance to move her own things, and there was no talk of a temporary location, and I just find the lack of bureaucracy over a major renovation extremely hard to believe. (It also gave me new appreciation for bureaucracy, as I wondered how safe it all was for children and other visitors to the library.)

However, most kids won’t care about these persnickety details and will simply enjoy the fun of Gwen helping out these winged people that only children can see.

jeannebirdsall.com

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Review of Soundtrack, by Jason Reynolds

Soundtrack

by Jason Reynolds
performed by a full cast

Listening Library, 2025. 6 hours, 29 minutes.
Review written February 16, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
2026 Odyssey Honor Audiobook

I always listen to Odyssey Award Winners and Honorees, because they are without exception excellent productions. Even knowing that, I was blown away when I listened to this book.

Jason Reynolds wrote this as an original audiobook – they’re coming out with the novelization next month, but the audiobook came first. It’s about a kid fresh out of high school forming a band in New York City and then playing in subway stations and gaining a following. And the audiobook production is incredible. It’s got a full cast (and a large one), with full sound effects. When they’re talking in a group, you hear them as if they’re talking in a group, there’s crowd noise and sounds of objects they refer to – and music!

Throughout the entire production this story about a young band is accompanied by the sounds of a band jamming to music. It’s astonishingly good.

For a minute there, I was astonished on this audiobook’s behalf that it had “only” won Odyssey Honor, because I was misremembering which one won the award. Then I remembered that the actual winner was Trans History, also with a full cast and full sound effects, and including the actual voices of present-day trans folks – and I understood the decision better. Still, this audiobook is incredible, and together these books have raised the bar on what an audiobook production can be.

Our main character in this book, Stuy, is the drummer, and his mother was a drummer before him, who dropped out of her band when she gave birth to Stuy and his father left. But now Stuy’s mom’s boyfriend throws his drum set into a corner, and Stuy goes to stay with his Uncle Lucky – where he meets a kid who plays the guitar. That leads to finding the rest of their band, and the whole adventure is tremendous fun – though with some serious undertones (fair warning).

It was a truly engaging story – and the music and the cast made the whole thing into an experience.

jasonwritesbooks.com

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Review of A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping, by Sangu Mandanna

A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping

by Sangu Mandanna
read by Samara MacLaren

Books on Tape, 2025. 9 hours, 53 minutes.
Review written February 23, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I think this audiobook was suggested to me after I finished Sarah Beth Durst’s latest. If so, the recommendation was spot-on. This is also a cozy fantasy story with all kinds of feel-good vibes.

At 15 years old, Sera Swan was one of the two most powerful witches in Britain. But she was an outsider because she wasn’t from a long-standing British magical family. So when she uses up her magic to bring her great-aunt back from death, instead of other witches helping her get it back, she’s put in exile from all magic society.

Fifteen years later, Sera is making do with only a tiny bit of magic. She’s running the inn with her great-aunt, protected by the spell she performed as a child – only allowing those who truly need the inn to find it. They’ve assembled a hodge-podge family of sorts – an overeager elderly lady, a young man who works at the Renaissance Fair and calls himself her knight, and Sera’s young cousin Theo who is learning the fundamentals of magic – and letting Sera read the more advanced texts he checks out. And then there’s Clemmie, the witch who turned herself into a fox when a curse backfired. She wants Sera to regain her power and restore her as well.

And now it looks like Sera may be able to restore her power. With the help of the powerful Restoration spell – and the handsome librarian who has shown up at the inn, needing a place for his young sister, who is a witch but is also autistic and doesn’t always follow the rules. But then there’s the matter of figuring out the ingredients of the spell.

This is a delightfully cozy story with a clear progression of tasks for Sera, but some setbacks and plot twists along the way. I found myself loving the assortment of characters at the inn – while hating the villain who is indeed despicable but powerful. I wish I could find my way to this magical inn, but enjoying through the book was perfect.

sangumandanna.com

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Review of The Magician of Tiger Castle, by Louis Sachar

The Magician of Tiger Castle

by Louis Sachar
read by Edoardo Ballerini

Books on Tape, 2025. 7 hours, 17 minutes.
Review written February 12, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Louis Sachar has written a book for adults!

Louis Sachar is the Newbery-winning author of Holes and the Wayside School books, both of which I read before I started writing Sonderbooks. (I do have a review up of his 2010 book, The Cardturner.) From those books, I already knew he’s especially good at intricate, clever plots – and yes, that’s a way this book shines as well.

By the time my hold came in on this audiobook, I’d forgotten it was for adults, and just saw it was a Louis Sachar book. So I was a bit surprised when the main character was a man in his forties. After said main character was surprisingly frank about some bodily functions (nothing crude, just surprising if you thought it was a children’s book) – I remembered it was his first novel for adults.

The book begins with Anatole sipping tea at a cafe in front of a castle that keeps a tiger in the moat. As he talks about what the tour guide is saying to a group, we begin to realize he knows a lot more about the castle than he should. And then he launches into the story of how the first tiger came to the castle in the 16th Century as a betrothal gift to the princess of Esquaveta (which was the small country the castle ruled then) in preparation for the wedding of the century.

Anatole was then the royal magician. He didn’t cast spells, but he was exceptionally skilled at mixing potions. As the wedding approached, Princess Tullia declared that she was not going to marry the prince of a neighboring country because she’d fallen in love with her tutor. The tutor was now in the dungeon, and the king tasked Anatole with making the princess go through with the marriage and saving Esquavita from the neighboring kingdom’s powerful army.

And that’s the story that follows. At first, Anatole simply plans to fulfill the king’s command. He’ll make a potion to make the two lovebirds forget all about each other. But he needs to get close to the prisoner in order to get a heartfelt tear for the potion – and that involves getting to know him. And things get much more complicated than they seem at first.

So this is a fantasy story – Anatole is very good at making potions, and we appreciate all the work and experimentation he puts into making it just right. This is no romantasy – but we do come to care about the princess and the prisoner, and there is definitely a romantic subplot – even if their love must first be thwarted. As I mentioned, this author is particularly good at plotting, and he had me intent on the story every step of the way.

Yes, adults who read and loved Holes as kids are going to love this, too. It’s a completely different story, but it does appeal to the same part of my brain that loves a tightly constructed plot with characters you can’t help but care about.

louissachar.com

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

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
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Review of (S)Kin, by Ibi Zoboi

(S)Kin

by Ibi Zoboi
read by Bahni Turpin and Robin Miles

Versify (HarperCollins), 2025. 6 hours, 16 minutes.
Review written January 31, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
2025 National Book Award Finalist

This paranormal novel in verse features two viewpoint characters. Marisol and her mother have moved from the Caribbean islands to New York City, and it’s the new moon – time for Marisol to shape shift. She sheds her skin and shifts into a fireball witch who flies through the night and wreaks vengeance on the person her mother directs her to. Her mother and the mothers before them have shapeshifted for generations, and they thought that in New York City, where no one believes the old stories, they might find it easier to be human, not treated as monsters.

Also in New York City, Genevieve, with darker skin from an unknown mother, lives with her white father and white stepmother. She’s got a terrible skin condition – some kind of allergy or eczema, always burning. Her father studies folklore, and she wonders if her mother was some kind of mermaid.

But when a woman shows up to tend her baby siblings who can soothe her skin, Gen wonders what kind of magic is happening.

Ibi Zoboi takes actual Caribbean legends and shows us what it might be like to be one of those mythical creatures – and dream of better things in America. How might that work out for teens who only want to be normal humans, blending in with their peers?

A powerful story of kinship and identity.

ibizoboi.net

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Review of The Nine Moons of Han Yu and Luli, by Karina Yan Glaser

The Nine Moons of Han Yu and Luli

by Karina Yan Glaser
read by Sira Siu and Brian Nishii

HarperCollins, 2025. 10 hours, 1 minute.
Review written January 31, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
2026 Newbery Honor Book

The Nine Moons of Han Yu and Luli tells two stories, 1200 years apart. Han Yu is a boy living in China in the year 731, during the Tang dynasty. He sells steamed buns in the market with his father. But when his entire family gets put into isolation because of his sister’s case of the illness sweeping the countryside, Han Yu decides to accept the commission intended for his father and travel along the trade routes later known as the Silk Roads to deliver the goods and make more money than his family can make in a year.

Alongside that story, with alternating chapters, we learn about Luli, who lives in 1931 Chinatown in New York City. Luli’s family owns a restaurant that used to be bustling and busy, but now hard times have fallen and business is slow, and they are in danger of losing the building that houses their restaurant and their home.

The parallels in the story are skillfully executed, though the children’s lives are so far apart in time and space. Both children start selling steamed buns to help their families. Both face difficulties and hardships with a parallel flow through the alternating chapters. Despite the cliffhanger chapter endings, I never found myself annoyed to switch characters, because I was equally interested in each character’s adventures.

Han Yu has a way with animals that they come to him and turn to him. And rumors say that a tiger protects him. Along the way, he meets a young poet who becomes his best friend. Luli, too, has a dog who protects her, and friends who help. Her whole class visits the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and they also visit the Chinese art treasures that Luli’s neighbor keeps in their building at the gift shop.

What ties the two stories together? There’s a piece of silk that has been handed down in Luli’s neighbor’s family for generations. It has a poem written on it in Chinese characters. So we’re ready to hear the story of how it came to be.

I have to say that both characters have some awfully good luck that keeps disaster averted – but in a children’s story, I think we all have more tolerance for that. (I certainly needed those kids to get a happy ending!) And the kids themselves both have plenty of opportunities to display courage and resourcefulness.

It’s not every author who can tie together two stories of children from 1200 years apart who never meet and have it work beautifully. This story, steeped in actual history, gives the reader a deep appreciation for Chinese culture along with the joy of a story well-told.

karinaglaser.com

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Review of How to Read a Book, by Monica Wood

How to Read a Book

by Monica Wood
read by Eileen Stevens

HarperCollins, 2024. 10 hours, 18 minutes.
Review written January 28, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

First, a great big thank you to my friend Eileen, who recommended this book. I loved it so much!

I mean, what’s not to like? It starts out in a book club in a women’s prison. Violet, who’s 22 years old and was in prison for manslaughter, is remembering how the meetings used to go. The women would find fault with most of the books, but got a lot of satisfaction out of even that.

Then Violet gets out of prison. Her sister picks her up, but shows her an apartment in the city, rent paid for with inheritance money after their mother’s death – which the whole family blames Violet for. Her family doesn’t want her to even come back to their small town.

But in Portland, Maine, Violet runs into Harriet, the lady who ran the book club, in a book store – and also encounters Frank, the man whose wife died when Violet was driving drunk.

One thing leads to another – also involving a job taking care of highly intelligent parrots – and I was super interested all the way, enjoying the company of these kind and wise people. (Well, Violet doesn’t always act wisely, but Harriet and Frank are there to help.)

And of course it’s a book about the power of books to connect people and transform lives. And a book about second chances. And standing up for yourself even after you make bad mistakes.

It’s also the sort of book that expands your heart.

monicawood.com

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Review of The Lost Bookshop, by Evie Woods

The Lost Bookshop

by Evie Woods
read by Avena Mansergh-Wallace, Olivia Mace, and Nick Biadon

One More Chapter (HarperCollins), 2023. 12 hours, 1 minute.
Review written December 26, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.

I put a hold on The Lost Bookshop because of how much I enjoyed the author’s The Mysterious Bakery on Rue de Paris. This one was very similar, and I also enjoyed it. In both, we’ve got one historical thread combined with a romance in the present, and the perspectives of both the man and woman involved in the romance, plus the perspective of the character in history whose actions affect the present.

Our characters in this book start with Opaline, in the early twentieth century, whose brother was forcing her to marry a man she hadn’t even met after their father died. Opaline flees to Paris, and there starts working with Sylvia Beach in the famous Shakespeare & Co. bookshop. She later moves to Dublin and starts her own bookshop – until her brother gets her committed to an insane asylum.

In the present, we’ve got Martha, who’s fleeing her abusive husband and looking for a job in Dublin. She lands a job as a housekeeper for an eccentric old woman in a historic home. Then one day she sees Henry scrutinizing her windows and thinks he’s a peeping Tom. But he is looking for a bookshop with an address right next to her house – that doesn’t seem to exist. But Henry is a rare book dealer and has a letter that says that bookshop has Emily Bronte’s lost second manuscript.

One thing leads to another, and you can tell where it’s going – but it’s fun. Opaline’s story – in Paris and especially in the insane asylum – is riveting.

I have to say that this book had more paranormal elements than The Mysterious Bakery on Rue de Paris – and for me this one crossed the line into unbelievability. It wasn’t only the bookshop that only appears to those who need it (or true believers? or something), but also mysterious otherworldly messages, and several more things.

However, despite a few too many paranormal bits for my taste – I still enjoyed these characters. Henry always seems to say the wrong thing, but he’s earnest and kind. Martha fleeing a truly horrible abusive situation had all my sympathy as well. (I saw my ex-husband for the first time in a decade when I was in the middle of listening to this book and was reminded of how we program ourselves to love someone, and that’s hard to turn off, even when their behavior means they don’t deserve or want your love any more. Not that mine was as bad as Martha’s husband. But still, she had my sympathy.) And Opaline’s situation was also fascinating in an awful way, tying in with what I’d read in Ten Days a Madwoman, by Deborah Noyes. It wasn’t all that long ago that men could lock women up in insane asylums.

Fortunately, this story ends happily for all our main characters. This is a feel-good romance, a little too enthusiastic with the paranormal elements, but you can be sure that all the stars align for them in the end.

eviewoods.com

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Review of The Sirens’ Call, by Chris Hayes

The Sirens’ Call

How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource

by Chris Hayes
read by the author

Books on Tape, 2025. 8 hours, 55 minutes.
Review written January 15, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

This is a book about attention and the Attention Economy. Sirens were developed to seize our attention. And Odysseus resisted the sirens of mythology only by being tied to a mast. Today the world has found ways to produce sirens that seize our attention – and we carry them around in our pockets.

At first, I expected a version of “Our attention spans are much shorter because we use our phones so much.” But I got a much more thoughtful, much more nuanced work. Chris Hayes kept talking about himself as being “in the attention business” as a host for MSNBC. And he explores far more aspects of attention than I had even realized existed – and how things have changed over time.

Did you know that when cars were first built, people thought having a radio would be too distracting? Or that spam (with different names) has been a problem for centuries – including too many posters on the streets of Paris? Or that google started as a way to save people time by getting pertinent search results – which gave them people’s time and attention – which they sold to advertisers = which makes their search results less pertinent?

I did think it was funny that while he talked about people commonly watching more than one thing at a time (picture in picture or simply looking at one’s phone while watching TV), he never mentioned listening to audiobooks while doing other things. So it was amusing that I listened to this entire book while doing other things that didn’t require much brain power – driving, cleaning, and other mechanical tasks. Attention is a limited resource, and there are more things clamoring for it than ever.

And yes, he did discuss Donald Trump’s particular skill at gaining attention. Most politicians want attention, but also want to be liked. Donald Trump seems to only care about the attention part of that. And he’s very good at getting it.

It was also interesting to hear from a newscaster’s perspective that they feel like they are chasing attention rather than controlling it. It’s common to blame the media for what people have heard about, but to a large extent they are chasing attention themselves. If they talk about boring things, no one will listen to them, after all.

He also contrasted today’s sound bite world with the Lincoln-Douglass debates, where the candidates each talked for 90 minutes on substantive issues. Audiences wouldn’t stand for that today even if a person existed who could talk about issues that long.

I never feel like I do a good job summarizing nonfiction audiobooks, because I can’t refer back to the points made. However, this one explored all kinds of aspects of attention, put everything into historical context, and helped me notice when people are trying to manipulate my attention. All done in an interesting way. I didn’t regret giving the book, if not my full attention, at least a large portion of my attention while I was doing other boring things.

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