Review of Violet Made of Thorns, by Gina Chen

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Violet Made of Thorns

by Gina Chen
read by Emily Woo Zeller

Listening Library, 2022. 11 hours, 5 minutes.
Review written December 11, 2022, from a library eaudiobook
Starred Review

Violet has been a seer for the kingdom of Aveny since the day six years ago when she was ten and she used what she learned in a vision to save the young prince’s life.

Since then, she’s learned to please the king by lying about her visions and telling people what they want to hear and what the king wants them to hear. This pleases the king, but doesn’t please Prince Cyrus, and they’ve got a prickly relationship.

When the previous seer died, she prophesied a curse on Cyrus that can only be lifted with the help of his bride, but Cyrus has been slow about choosing a bride. The king wants him to hurry up about it.

And then Violet dreams that if Cyrus doesn’t die before the end of the summer, she will burn. And a way is given for her to kill him. But meanwhile, there’s a masked ball and a noble lady from the neighboring kingdom. The king wants Violet to convince Cyrus this lady is his true love.

But that lady is not what she seems. And on the night of the ball, beasts appear, and they go after Cyrus and Violet. Why does Cyrus protect Violet, endangering himself?

This book is full of plots and counterplots. Violet’s dreams are full of visions, but what do they mean and what should she do? There’s also sizzling sexual tension — in a relationship that doesn’t seem like a good choice for anybody, but seems impossible to stop.

It all barrels along with twists and turns to a bloody and surprising conclusion. We’ve got court intrigue, romantic tension, uncontrolled magic, confusing visions, fairy glamours, and the fate of nations in a novel that you won’t want to stop listening to.

actualgina.com

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Review of Across So Many Seas, by Ruth Behar

Audiobooks, Award Winners, Children's Fiction Review, Historical, Starred Review 0

Across So Many Seas

by Ruth Behar
read by Allison Strong, Victoria Villarreal, Sol Madariaga, and Frankie Corso

Listening Library, 2024. 5 hours, 53 minutes.
Review written February 15, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review
2025 Newbery Honor Book
2025 Sidney Taylor Silver Medal
2025 Capitol Choices Selection

Across So Many Seas is an intergenerational family saga for kids – featuring four 12-year-old girls, each of whom crossed a sea.

The book starts in 1492 with the expulsion of Jews from Spain under Ferdinand and Isabella. Their families had been there for centuries, but all Jews were told to leave, convert, or be executed. Benvenida and her family travel by foot to the port, her father carrying the Torah, and then travel across the sea to Constantinople.

Even in Turkey, they remember the language and customs of Spain, but the next girl featured is Reina, 450 years later, 12 years old in 1923, a descendant of Benvenida. After Reina disobeys her father and goes out at night with a boy to a party celebrating revolution in Turkey, she is sent in disgrace to Cuba as a companion to her aunt. In three years when she is 15, she will marry another Sephardic Jew her father has chosen for her and make a home in Cuba.

Next we meet her daughter Alegra, who is 12 years old in 1961, after Castro has come to power in the Cuban revolution. She joins the volunteer team of children who go out to the countryside to teach folks to read, and is proud and happy with her role – but is suddenly pulled back to Havana by her parents. They inform her that her father is not allowed to continue his business of selling shirts and they are being watched by the government. So they are sending Alegra to America, because it’s easier to get children out of the country first. They hope to follow soon.

And then we meet Alegra’s daughter, born in America, now 12 years old in 2003. And things come full circle when she travels on vacation to Spain with her mother and grandmother and they visit a museum in Toledo about the Sephardic Jews who were expelled in 1492.

Throughout the book, certain songs, foods, and customs link the girls together. I loved that the narrators sang the song that all the girls knew, about a girl in a tower in the sea. An interesting and lengthy historical note from the author came after the end of the book – it’s all based on her own family’s history. Even without such a family connection, it made me want to visit the museum in Toledo and think about the hundreds of years of history.

ruthbehar.com

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Review of Field Notes for the Wilderness, by Sarah Bessey

Christian, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 2

Field Notes for the Wilderness

Practices for an Evolving Faith

by Sarah Bessey

Convergent Books, 2024. 235 pages.
Review written February 11, 2025, from my own copy, purchased via Amazon.com
Starred Review

Field Notes for the Wilderness is for people whose faith is evolving. Perhaps you’ve grown up, like me, with certainty – faithful church attendance in evangelical churches, memorizing Scripture, singing in the choir, attending small group Bible studies. But something disrupts what you always knew as true.

[For me, it was a long process. I thought I could still attend my same church when I came to believe that the Bible teaches God will save everyone. Then I started believing that maybe LGBTQ people aren’t sinning… and my daughter came out as transgender (I’m still so very glad it was in that order). It wasn’t until my church decided to officially change their constitution to declare that LGBTQ people were sinning (so they could keep from renting out their new building for gay marriages, I think) – and the extreme lack of openness to discussion about it – that I finally realized I should look for a different church. And I was blessed that the first church I tried ended up being affirming, had a fabulous choir to join, and ended up being far more open to my theological ideas. But not everyone’s story progresses so happily.]

Here’s a section from the Introduction about why Sarah Bessey prefers the term “evolving faith” to “deconstruction”:

To me, an evolving faith is never simply about “deconstruction.” It has proven to be about the questions, the curiosity, and the ongoing reckoning of a robust, honest faith. An evolving faith brings the new ideas and ancient paths together. It’s about rebuilding and reimagining a faith that works not only for ourselves but for the whole messy, wide, beautiful world. For me, this has proven to be deeply centered in the Good News of Jesus. An evolving faith is sacramental, ecumenical, embodied, generous, spirit-filled, truthful, and rooted in the unconditional, never-ending love of God. It isn’t a linear experience of one and done and dusted. An evolving faith is a resilient and stubborn form of faithfulness that is well acquainted with the presence of God in our loneliest places and deepest questions. And an evolving faith has room for all the paths you may navigate after our time together in these pages.

Anyone who gets to the end of their life with the exact same beliefs and opinions they had at the beginning is doing it wrong. Because if we don’t change and evolve over our lifetime, then I have to wonder if we’re paying attention to the invitation of the Holy Spirit that is your life. Lisa Sharon Harper says that pilgrimage is about transformation. An evolving faith is a form of pilgrimage, and so yes, you are being transformed.

So you don’t have to be going through a crisis to enjoy this book, but if you are, I think it may help. The chapters are, essentially, about living a life of faith and walking on when things don’t necessarily go as planned. I haven’t particularly felt like I’m going through the Wilderness lately – and I still resonated with this book, marking more than a dozen passages for future Sonderquotes posts.

She talks about the “wilderness” as a place away from certainty and rules and only one way to do things. But being in that place helped her walk with Jesus, who promises rest for the weary.

The God I met in the wilderness reawakened me, recovered me, restored me to the Gospel of Love. This is the Gospel as I learned it at the feet of Jesus, hanging on to the hem of his humble garment. The width, length, height, and depth of God’s love is not fearful or restrictive or small or dull. It is a wide-open, sharp love that sets us free. It is a love that never steals, kills, or destroys us – it came that we might have life, and life that is more abundant. It is this love that brings us rest, that lifts burdens, that restores souls, that opens hearts, and changes lives.

And here’s why she calls the book a “Field Guide”:

This isn’t much of a rule book – rules rarely belong in the wilderness – but more of a field guide, a companion of sorts. Even theologically, I won’t have a lot of answers here for you; there are many good guides on the particulars of what you’re grappling with – from how church should or shouldn’t look to how to raise your kids, from rearranging your thoughts on sex to finding a new path for faith. I encourage you to honor your search for specifics; what I’m offering you is mostly companionship, the hope to help you adapt and survive in your journey even if it differs from my own.

If any of this sounds good to you, I recommend giving this book a try. I read it over a couple of weeks, and each time I dipped into it, I came away encouraged and uplifted in my own journey. Because fundamentally she communicates a belief that God is good, and God loves you and is walking with you.

sarahbessey.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 Life After Whale, by Lynn Brunelle, illustrations by Jason Chin

Children's Nonfiction Review, Science, Starred Review 0

Life After Whale

The Amazing Ecosystem of a Whale Fall

by Lynn Brunelle
illustrations by Jason Chin

Neal Porter Books, 2024. 48 pages.
Review written February 7, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review
2025 Robert F. Sibert Medal Winner
2025 Capitol Choices Selection

Life After Whale tells about blue whales, the largest creatures on earth. It starts by showing us how enormous they are, how with one gulp they swallow enough tiny krill to fill a school bus, and how they migrate each year. (Did you know that they have wax rings in their ear canals that are like rings of a tree?)

But after the whale dies, a whole new series of events happen. At first, the whale will float because of gases inside its body, and get bites taken from sharks and fish below and from seabirds above. But once those gases dissipate, over weeks the whale’s body will sink to the bottom of the ocean.

There on the ocean floor, the whale’s body will be the site of a whole new ecosystem, in four overlapping phases. The first phase is the mobile scavenger phase, where mobile creatures eat the whale’s flesh. The second phase is the enrichment opportunist phase, where bone-sucking worms pull nutrients out of the skeleton and other creatures feed on the surrounding sediment. Then comes the sulfophilic phase, where bacteria release hydrogen sulfide from the bones, and sulfur-loving organisms feed on that. And finally comes the reef phase, where organisms like anemones and sponges anchor themselves on the bones and feed on particles in the surrounding water.

And then in a great big circle, the nutrients from the whale’s bones that have mingled with the water get swept upward seasonally – and feed the krill in the upper layers of the ocean, and the krill in turn feed living whales.

All this is explained in meticulous detail with glorious illustrations from Jason Chen. It’s easy to see why this book won the Sibert Medal for the best children’s nonfiction book of the year. I had known nothing about all this, and the author makes it all fascinating – with back matter to explore further.

lynnbrunelle.com
HolidayHouse.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 How the Boogeyman Became a Poet, by Tony Keith Jr.

Audiobooks, Biography, Starred Review, Teen Nonfiction 0

How the Boogeyman Became a Poet

by Tony Keith Jr.
performed by the Author

Katherine Tegen Books, 2024. 5 hours, 4 minutes.
Review written February 4, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
2025 Odyssey Award Winner, Young Adult

I try to listen to all Odyssey Award winners and honor books, because they’re specifically given for the best audiobooks, and the quality is always outstanding. This book was no exception.

How the Boogeyman Became a Poet is a memoir from a Black poet and spoken word artist about his years in high school and starting college when he was coming to terms in his own heart and mind with being gay.

And he tells the story himself, with many poems included and performed. There are sound effects adding to the production, and this is a powerful audiobook.

The story starts his senior year of high school. He’s missed deadlines to apply to college and is taking the SAT for the third time, but gets a chance to apply. He’s got a girlfriend, but somehow is never in the mood to “do business” with her, and he doesn’t dare tell anyone that he thinks he might be gay – that fear is a boogeyman that he sees in the mirror and hiding in his closet – but he works out a lot of his thinking and feeling by writing poems and playing with language.

He was known as a poet in high school, writing love poems for his friends to give to their girlfriends on Valentine’s Day to make a little money, and performing in the student talent show. In college, he found that open mic nights with all their acceptance were better for him than competitive poetry slams. But always, poetry was where he turned with his feelings that he didn’t always understand.

I think my favorite poem was about the joy he got out of singing in youth choir. Yes! It’s a lovely expression of what singing in a choir can be. Unfortunately, it was also at church that he was taught that being gay would send him to hell, and why he resisted so hard admitting what was going on inside.

This book is a true coming-of-age story, told in an award-winning audio package. When I looked up the author’s website, I was delighted to learn that he went on to earn a PhD. Not bad for the first person in his family to go to college! Listeners are honored to get to share in his journey.

tonykeithjr.com

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Review of The Great Mathemachicken: Hide and Go Beak, by Nancy Krulik, illustrated by Charlie Alder

Animal Characters, Beginning Chapter Books, Children's Fiction Review, Mathematical, Starred Review 0

The Great Mathemachicken

Hide and Go Beak

by Nancy Krulik
illustrated by Charlie Alder

Pixel + Ink, 2022. 88 pages.
Review written May 6, 2022, from a library book
Starred Review

Here’s a silly and fun book about a chicken named Chirpy who wants to go beyond the coop. When she gets the chance to sneak out, she follows the children Randy and Andy onto the big yellow bus to go to school. Once there, she catches a ride on a rolling backpack.

Chirpy rolled into a room full of kids.
Which made her wonder:
At home kids stayed outside the coop.
Chickens stayed inside the coop.
Could school be a kid coop?
If someone saw Chirpy in a kid coop, would they make her leave?
Hmmm. . . .
Chirpy needed a hiding place, just like when the chicks played hide and go beak in the coop.

While Chirpy is hiding in the classroom, she learns basic principles of simple machines.

And when she goes home, those principles may be exactly what the chickens need to catch a fox!

The author and illustrator weren’t going for plausible in this book, but it sure is fun to read. Chirpy the curious chicken, excited about learning everything she can, earns her title of Mathemachicken.

At the back of the book, there are instructions for making your own simple machine, a Whirly-Swirly Wheel-and-Axle Toy. While following Chirpy’s adventures, kids may learn things themselves. The book is marked as Book One, so I’ll be watching for more.

realnancykrulik.com
PixelandInkBooks.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 The Calculus of Friendship, by Steven Strogatz

Mathematical, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review, True Stories 0

The Calculus of Friendship

What a Teacher and a Student Learned about Life While Corresponding about Math

by Steven Strogatz

Princeton University Press, 2009. 166 pages.
Review written September 9, 2021, from a book ordered via Amazon.com
Starred Review

This book is the story of the correspondence the author – a professor of Mathematics at Cornell University – carried on with his high school calculus teacher for over thirty years.

Here’s how he introduces the book:

For the past thirty years I’ve been corresponding with my high school calculus teacher, Mr. Don Joffray. During that time, he went from the prime of his career to retirement, competed in whitewater kayak at the international level, and lost a son. I matured from teenage math geek to Ivy League professor, suffered the sudden death of a parent, and blundered into a marriage destined to fail.

What’s remarkable is not that any of this took place – such ups and downs are to be expected in three decades of life – but rather that so little of it is discussed in the letters. Instead, our correspondence, and our friendship itself, is based almost entirely on a shared love of calculus.

It never occurred to me how peculiar this is until Carole (I’m happily remarried now) teased me about it. “You’ve been writing to him for thirty years? You must know everything about each other.” Not really, I said. We just write about math problems. “That is such a guy thing,” she said, shaking her head.

This Prologue is more honest than the subtitle. This is a book about awesome insights into and about calculus – clever, insightful, and challenging problems – and the beauty of math. It doesn’t say a whole lot about life lessons – and yet their friendship and personalities do shine through.

And there’s some lovely mathematics here, well-explained – at least I think so. I am sad to say that in many places, the math went over my head. I’m a former math major with a master’s degree in math who taught college math for ten years – but I didn’t remember things about infinite series and infinite integrals and other things discussed here. And I’m a little appalled with myself that I didn’t have the desire to go look up what I didn’t understand.

I am, however, wishing that this book existed when I was a young hot-shot calculus student. It would have showed me that math is not a finite subject and that even lofty math professors still find plenty of ideas to play with, going far beyond textbooks.

And yes, there are some lovely insights about the friendship between a teacher and his student. The correspondence began when Steven Strogatz started sending interesting math problems to his former teacher and then explained them. He shares an insight at the back of the book about what his teacher gave him:

He let me teach him.

Before I had any students, he was my student.

Somehow, he knew that’s what I needed most. And he let me, and encouraged me, and helped me. Like all great teachers do.

Hmmm. I do know of a young math major who just started at Virginia Tech. I think he’d be among the ideal audience for this book – reading about how, for those who love it, math never runs out of fascinating beauty.

Oh, and full disclosure: I was disposed to like this book because the author found my mathematical knitting posts and talked about them on Twitter. So now I’m happy to promote his book – both things are about the beauty of math.

stevenstrogatz.com
press.princeton.edu

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