Review of Birdlore: The Iridescent Life of Florence Merriam Bailey, written by Jess Keating, illustrated by Devon Holzwarth

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Birdlore

The Iridescent Life of Florence Merriam Bailey

written by Jess Keating
illustrated by Devon Holzwarth

Alfred A. Knopf, 2025. 40 pages.
Review written July 21, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review

I love it when picture book biographies tell me about a person who lived a remarkable life and changed the world – but whom I’d never heard of before. This is one such book.

In 1889, Florence Merriam Bailey wrote the first field guide to American birds ever published. She talked about the wonders of birdwatching and popularized it for everyone.

This picture book tells her story with gorgeous art – as befitting a book about beautiful birds. (As a bonus, at the back, there’s a spread showing Florence’s favorite bird species and asking if you can find all these birds in the pages of the book.) It begins with her childhood in the countryside, when she would delight in finding them. When she got old enough to study birds as a scientist, she didn’t like the normal method at the time of examining dead birds and making them into specimens. So she would take notes on living birds in the outdoors.

When she went to university, Florence made friends with other women interested in birds and showed them her method of taking notes on birds in the wild. The women were scandalized together at the common fashion choice of the time – wearing dead birds on ladies’ hats.

It began a quest to share with people the wonder of birds in the wild – and helped pass the Lacey Act in 1900 that protected birds from illegal trade.

The way the story is told lifts your hearts with the birds and will add to your own appreciation. A lovely book about a woman who helped protect these lovely creatures.

jesskeating.com
devonholzwarth.com
rhcbooks.com

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Review of Pedro and Daniel, by Federico Erebia

Historical, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Pedro and Daniel

by Federico Erebia

Levine Querido, 2023. 425 pages.
Review written July 28, 2023, from a library book.
Starred Review

The author gives us a hint of what we’re in for in an Introduction:

This novel is a work of fiction based on my memorable relationship with Daniel, my brother. Other characters, and some scenes, are composites, and/or fictional. All other names are fictional.

We know from the start how the book will end:

After Daniel’s death in 1993 at age thirty, the seeds of this novel were planted within the fertile grounds of the controlled chaos of my mind, where they germinated – constantly calling out for the light of day, to be written down, to be shared with others.

Yes, this is the story of two brothers, Pedro and Daniel, close in age and close in spirit. They have a frighteningly abusive mother, who especially targets Pedro with her physical and verbal abuse.

I’m going back and forth thinking whether this book is an epic tapestry of the lives of two brothers, or if it’s a slightly self-indulgent set of memories that were only partly shaped into a novel. It’s interesting that it’s marketed for young adults, because there’s more about the brothers’ childhood and after-college years than the time they spent in high school and college, when they were separated.

But as I reflect, I’m leaning more toward thinking of it as an epic tapestry. I remember how I eagerly began, but bogged down in the middle where it got a little slower, a little more meditative. We feel their bond, and the different ways the two of them approach life. Both are gay, though Pedro took longer to admit it to himself. Daniel wants to be a priest, and Pedro wants to be a doctor. This becomes poignant when Daniel contracts HIV which progresses into AIDS, and Pedro knows medically what he’s going through, but still didn’t have any effective treatment to help him.

I enjoyed the Dichos that Daniel loves – Mexican proverbs. They’re given throughout the book, with translations. An index at the back is fun to read through. I have to say that he caught many biblical references, but I did find four biblical proverbs that were listed as “Origin unknown.” Oh well, if Daniel had been the one writing the book, he probably would have known.

This is not an action-packed novel. It’s a literary novel that covers the boys’ entire lives, with plenty of social commentary along the way. They were born about the same time as me, and I appreciated the little details that reminded me of my very different childhood. Give this to teens who like to read and think deeply. And I hope that gay boys who read it will find kindred souls in Pedro and Daniel.

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Review of All the Colors of the Dark, by Chris Whitaker

Contemporary, Fiction Review, Starred Review 0

All the Colors of the Dark

by Chris Whitaker
read by Edoardo Ballerini

Books on Tape, 2024. 14 hours, 37 minutes.
Review written September 15, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I don’t remember where I found the recommendation that prompted me to put this eaudiobook on hold, but I laughed when I recognized the cover. It turns out, I heard the author speak at ALA Annual Conference 2024, and received a free copy of the print book, signed by the author. But it’s still easier for me to get around to reading it if it’s in my eaudiobooks holds queue. (What can I say? Books I own don’t have a due date, and I can listen while I’m doing other things.)

In the middle of this book, I was going to report that it’s a super sad book, with lots of people making bad choices. But almost unbelievably, it turns out to all come to a satisfying conclusion at the end. I’m saying that up front to encourage other readers to persevere.

It’s a sweeping saga beginning with an unusual boy and girl from small-town America who are each other’s only friend. Patch has only one eye, and his mother helped him deal with that by encouraging him to embrace the identity of a pirate. Patch sometimes steals things, and he’s not popular with the other kids. But when he’s the only person who answers a girl named Saint’s open invitation to visit her beehives – using someone else’s invitation – the two become friends.

But when they’re thirteen, Patch sees a man attacking the girl who’s the queen bee of their class. Patch intervenes, and the girl gets away – but Patch disappears. The only one who continues to look for him – without regard for her own safety – is Saint. Over months, she follows every lead, insistent that Patch is still alive and out there somewhere.

Patch, on his part, is being kept in a completely dark room. He can’t see anything. But there is also a girl there – a girl who tells him how to stay alive, unlike the other girls who were there before him. And in the many hours they’re alone together, she paints pictures in his mind of places she’s been. Her name is Grace, and she is his tether to reality.

But when Saint finally finds Patch, the person who captured him isn’t found – presumed dead, because there’s a fire. But Grace is also missing.

The doctor tells Patch’s mother – who lost the ability to cope with life while Patch was missing – that his mind invented Grace while he was imprisoned in the dark. But that wouldn’t explain all the places Grace described that Patch had never seen before. And it turns out, there are missing girls from those places. So Patch sets out on a quest to find Grace – and the other missing girls as well.

The story’s a saga, and there’s lots more to the book than that. Most of our characters make some bad choices along the way, and fall in love with the wrong people. We follow Patch and Saint across years of searching and years of dealing with the things life throws at them.

And I was surprised how satisfied I was with the ways it all comes together in the end! Believe it or not, even telling you that much, I don’t think I’m giving anything away – that’s just the beginning of how their lives’ courses are set.

So read this book when you’re ready for a saga about friendship and love and persistence and guilt and punishment and protection and painting and the mind’s eye.

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Review of Truth Is, by Hannah V. Sawyerr

Award Winners, Contemporary, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Truth Is

by Hannah V. Sawyerr

Amulet Books, 2025. 474 pages.
Review written September 23, 2025, from an Advance Reader Copy signed by the author.
Starred Review
2025 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature Longlist

I’m definitely biased about this book, since it came with a hug! Hannah Sawyerr was one of the debut authors who was a Morris Award Finalist the year I was on the Morris committee, and we got to have lunch with the authors after the award ceremony. So when I was in line at ALA Annual Conference this year to get this Advance Reader Copy, Hannah recognized me at once and gave me a hug! It had me smiling all day because she is a genuinely great author, and being on the Morris feels like we’re discovering authors – even though the Walter Award committee and the Cybils committee also recognized her first book, All the Fighting Parts.

So I was thrilled when her second book showed up on the National Book Award Longlist. I had just gotten around (finally) to reading the ARC. It shows that I may be biased, but I am certainly not wrong in thinking that her writing is good!

Truth Is is about a girl named Truth Bangura who is a slam poet in Philadelphia, starting her Senior year, and trying to decide what to do after she graduates.

And then she discovers she’s pregnant by her ex-boyfriend. She wrestles with the decision, but chooses an abortion. That brings consequences especially in her relationship with her best friend. But it doesn’t bring regret.

Truth is hiding a lot of things from her mother, including her pregnancy and abortion, but also her participation on the slam poetry team. So when her performance of a poem goes viral – about the abortion and about how she’s scared to tell her mother – her mother is not happy.

I love the Author’s Note at the front of the Advance Reader Copy (I hope it will be in the finished book!), especially this part:

Truth Is is a pro-choice novel in every sense of the phrase. Truth’s choice to move forward with an abortion is made early on in the novel, and the majority of the novel focuses on her life and her choices after the abortion. My intention behind this was always to show readers that life continues after big decisions.

For young people who decide to read Truth Is, it is important to me that you know that, like Truth’s poetry, life is filled with many deliberate choices and a whole lot of revision. A lot of questions and heartbreak. But a lot of gain and victories too. You have the power to make new decisions every day and can always choose to revise and write a new story.

Hannah Sawyerr beautifully pulls off this theme, as besides navigating her senior year and her relationships, Truth is learning to be a slam poet. We see the three poems Truth ends up taking to the slam poetry competition at the end of the year – and how Truth revises them along the way.

The book takes us through three trimesters of the school year, and Truth’s choice at the end about what she should do next. Like All the Fighting Parts, this story is told with power and beauty.

hannahsawyerr.com

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Review of Some of Us, by Rajani LaRocca, illustrated by Huy Voun Lee

Children's Nonfiction Review, History, Starred Review 0

Some of Us

A Story of Citizenship and the United States

by Rajani LaRocca
illustrated by Huy Voun Lee

Christy Ottaviano Books (Little, Brown), 2025. 32 pages.
Review written September 24, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review

Some of Us is a simple explanation, in picture book form, of what it means to be an American citizen and how people can become American citizens. The writing is easy to understand, suitable for early elementary age children, and lovely and lyrical.

Here’s the beginning, which covers three spreads, accompanied by pictures of a wide variety of people:

Some of us are born American.
Some choose.

We may come from across the world,
or quite nearby.
Some of us are babies, carried in hopeful arms;
some are six, or sixteen, or sixty.

We leave the countries of our birth and come here
by boat, and plane,
and car,
and train,
and foot.

The book talks about different reasons people come, including some pictures of notable immigrants, but also covering those fleeing war, oppression, and poverty. It talks about the food and culture immigrants bring with them, and the good things they do to contribute to their new communities.

Then it covers the process of becoming a naturalized citizen for those who choose to do so, and the difficult process of studying, with a test and an interview.

And then we take an oath –
not to the president,
not to Congress,
but to the ideals of the United States:
freedom, justice, peace, equality.

She then talks about the rights and responsibilities of citizenship and concludes with fireworks in the background:

Some of us are born to it.
Some of us choose.
And we are all American.

In the five pages of back matter, the author tells how she became a naturalized citizen when she was fifteen. There are links to more information, but also a page titled “Beyond Citizenship: The Rights of All People,” quoting the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

I wish this book weren’t so needed right now – but it is a lovely resource for any time period. It helps children understand, simply and clearly, what citizenship is, how people get it, and what it means.

rajanilarocca.com
LBYR.com

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Review of James, by Percival Everett, read by Dominic Hoffman

Audiobooks, Fiction Review, Historical, Starred Review 0

James

by Percival Everett
read by Dominic Hoffman

Books on Tape, 2024. 7 hours, 49 minutes.
Review written September 2, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I put James on hold shortly after reading the graphic novel Big Jim and the White Boy, by David F. Walker and Marcus Kwame Anderson. And then, when my hold was only a couple weeks away from coming in, I accidentally canceled the hold when I meant to cancel a different hold – and then had several more months to wait. Anyway, that gave me more time between the two books, which are essentially doing the same thing – retelling the story of Huckleberry Finn, this time from the perspective of Jim.

I honestly enjoyed Big Jim and the White Boy a little more. It was more light-hearted and cast Jim as essentially a superhero, telling something of a tall tale about his exploits. A lot of fun to read.

“Fun” isn’t the word I’d use to describe James. Though it was certainly more realistic, and gave you some insights about what would happen if a slave ran away with a white boy and floated south down the Mississippi River.

In both books, James doesn’t talk in the ridiculous way Mark Twain portrayed him talking. In this book, it’s quite a theme that among themselves, slaves speak “proper” English, but deliberately sound ignorant and childlike if any white people are around. James knows how to read and has spent hours in Judge Thatcher’s library reading philosophy. He dreams about people like Voltaire and has discussions with them about their defense of slavery. Throughout the book, it’s just plain comical how disconcerted white folks are if they hear Jim speaking without using slave speech. There’s a funny scene where the elders are teaching kids how to speak to white folks. The trick is to always play dumb and let the white folks figure things out for themselves.

Mostly the book is a series of adventures and tight spots, some with Huck and some without. James wants to be free and wants to purchase the freedom of his wife and daughter. And along the way, he acquires a pencil and also wants to write his story. There’s plenty of insight and commentary on slavery in the days just before the Civil War began. A very powerful and moving story that does shine light on an evil time in our nation’s history.

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Review of My Father, the Panda Killer, by Jamie Jo Hoang

Historical, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

My Father, the Panda Killer

by Jamie Jo Hoang
read by Quyen Ngo

Listening Library, 2023. 10 hours, 17 minutes.
Review written November 3, 2023, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

My Father, the Panda Killer is the story of Jane, an American teen living in San Jose in 1999, the daughter of Vietnamese refugees. Jane’s mother left their family four years before, leaving Jane to go through high school as the mother of her little brother, then three years old. As well as giving her the responsibility to spend most of her time helping her father run their family convenience store. And bearing the brunt of her father’s unpredictable wrath and violent beatings.

Now it’s the summer after Jane’s senior year. She’s been accepted to UCLA, but doesn’t know how her father will respond to the news that she’s leaving. And she doesn’t know how to even begin to tell her brother that she won’t be there any longer to shepherd him through life and protect him from their father.

But alongside Jane’s story, we also hear the story of her father’s harrowing journey as a 13-year-old refugee from Vietnam. That part of the story is horrific with lots of death and life-threatening situations. But as Jane pieces together her father’s history, including a trip to Vietnam where she meets her grandparents for the first time, she begins to understand him better. As she understands her father better, she’s better able to understand herself and her heritage.

One little problem with this? I’m not sure I actually wanted Jane to come to terms with her father’s abuse in that way. I was reminded very strongly of the nonfiction book What My Bones Know,, by Stephanie Foo, and her C-PTSD and journey to come to terms with it through therapy as an adult. This book implies that even calling it abuse is a violation of Vietnamese culture. It left me feeling uneasy.

However, it certainly gave you sympathy and understanding for Jane’s father. In view of the horrors he endured, you can understand his ways of coping much better. So I was left not wanting to judge – but I still don’t think the beatings his daughter received are okay. Understandable, but not okay.

Anyway, the author’s note at the end said that the next book will be about the little brother – and his mother. I definitely want to read more. The interweaving of the father’s journey with the daughter’s conflicts was a big strength of the book. The front of the book says, “THIS IS NOT A HISTORY LESSON,” but at the same time the author points out that there aren’t many narratives of the Vietnam War told from the perspective of the Vietnamese people. At the very least, this book is valuable for filling that gap.

heyjamie.com

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Review of Oh Dear, Look What I Got! by Michael Rosen, illustrated by Helen Oxenbury

Delightfully Silly, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

Oh Dear, Look What I Got!

by Michael Rosen
illustrated by Helen Oxenbury

Candlewick Press, 2025. 36 pages.
Review written September 16, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review

Looks to me like we’ve got a new storytime classic here! Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury, the creators of We’re Going on a Bear Hunt have teamed up for this new picture book.

The situation is simple and silly, illustrated on the first few pages:

I went to the shop
to get me a carrot.

Oh dear, they gave me . . .

a parrot!

Oh dear,
look what I got!

Do I want that?

No, I do NOT!

This text repeats six times, each time with a different object and a different rhyming animal. It builds to delightful chaos, and then all the shopkeepers come, bringing the correct object, and are pictured leading away the animals.

Does it make any sense? Could this ever happen? Not really.

Do I want to read it aloud?

YES, I DO!

Maybe it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but I predict you can get a whole roomful of preschoolers chanting along with the fun.

Check it out, and see if you aren’t charmed!

michaelrosen.co.uk
helenoxenbury.co.uk
candlewick.com

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Review of The Undead Fox of Deadwood Forest, by Aubrey Hartman

Animal Characters, Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy, Starred Review 0

The Undead Fox of Deadwood Forest

by Aubrey Hartman
read by Marisa Calin

Hachette Audio, 2025. 6 hours, 28 minutes.
Review written September 19, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I was not prepared for how charmed I would be by this story of an undead fox. But yes, this book has all the cozy delight of an old-fashioned animal story with a motherly narrator – this one perfectly voiced by Marisa Calin, who has a British accent. Never mind that the main character, Clare, a fox with a lavender tail – isn’t quite dead but also isn’t alive.

Yes, Clare had been killed when run over by a car. But before he found his way to one of the four realms of the Afterlife (Pleasure, Progress, Peace, or Pain), he was offered a chance to train as the next Usher of Deadwood Forest. Since that happened six years ago, Clare has helped wandering souls find their way to the realm where they belong. He is kind and helpful to all souls – though he has a strong prejudice against badgers.

And then the soul of a wandering badger comes to his door – and she fails to make her way to any of the four realms. Her name is Gingersnipes, and she keeps on turning up at his door. Clare is afraid it has something to do with the premonition about him announced by Hersterfowl, a visionary grouse who lives in the neighboring wood. He goes to see her and doesn’t like what he hears, and decides that he will figure out a way to change his fate – which is all going to come to a crisis on All Hallow’s Eve, when all the realms are open, and he usually huddles in his cabin.

But all along the interaction between Clare and Gingersnipes is simply delightful as we learn about their pasts, how they died, and the things they still care about. Clare has a deep fear that, as the local children like to sing, he is a monster. But we come to agree with Gingersnipes that he is a truly good soul.

I’m not sure I can really communicate how much fun this book is. Who knew that an undead fox who raises mushrooms with great care and is kind to every soul who comes to him would make such a lovable character?

aubreyhartman.com

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Review of Somadina, by Akwaeke Emezi

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Somadina

by Akwaeke Emezi
read by Nene Nwoko

Listening Library, 2025. 9 hours, 47 minutes.
Review written September 2, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Somadina is a powerful fantasy novel about a girl with magical powers on a quest to rescue her twin. The story is completely rooted in an African cultural world, a refreshing change from the usual white medieval-based fantasy stories I read.

It’s been many years since the Split – when to protect themselves in a war, the magic-users in the community did such powerful magic, the earth split open – and everyone who survived ever since gets a magical gift when they come of age. But Somadina and her twin Jayaike are slow to get their gifts and slow to develop physically, confirming to some in the village that twins are inherently evil and should have been left to die.

But then when their gifts do manifest, they’re surprisingly powerful. When Somadina uses her gift to protect her friend being raped, the result revives the village’s fear that she is evil. Her own mother calls her an abomination. As if that weren’t enough, her twin brother is taken by a man who has appeared in Somadina’s dreams, telling her he’s going to eat their power. Her brother is like another part of her, and Somadina is compelled to find him, which brings its own adventures.

I was glad I listened to this book, because I love the narrator’s African accent that helped me feel immersed in that world. The story is full of mythic elements and comes to a wonderfully satisfying conclusion after the big showdown at the end.

A powerful fantasy tale that is definitely not the same old thing.

akwaeke.com

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