Review of Catfish Rolling, by Clara Kumagai, read by Susan Momoko-Hingley

Audiobooks, Science Fiction, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Catfish Rolling

by Clara Kumagai
read by Susan Momoko-Hingley

Clipper Audiobooks, 2023. 9 hours, 17 minutes.
Review written October 19, 2023, from a library eaudiobook

Catfish Rolling is an intriguing speculative fiction debut novel set in Japan after a series of earthquakes that also were timequakes.

Sora and her parents were visiting family in Japan from Vancouver when the first timequake hit years ago. They lost her mother in one of the zones where time was faster or slower and stayed in Japan to try to find her. Sora’s father is a scientist and made his career out of studying the time anomalies, but now he often seems confused, and traveling into the time-disrupted zones can’t be good for him.

That doesn’t stop Sora from traveling there herself to keep looking for her mother. Can people survive there? Sometimes she sees shadows. After graduating from high school, she sticks around their village to watch over her father but also to keep searching herself. She’s better than anyone at feeling the difference in the rate of time flow in the zones, and starts a black market business of taking people into the zones.

Now, I got hung up on some of the details occasionally. Seasons are caused by the tilt of the earth’s axis. So how could there be a zone on the same planet where in one place it’s Spring while nearby it’s Winter? They’re all on the same planet.

But Clara Kumagai’s skill was such that most of the time I could suspend my disbelief as Sora and her father took a scientific approach to the zones, trying to learn how they worked. They approached it as a serious scientific phenomenon, so as a reader it was easy to go along with that.

This book was engaging and fascinating, looked at as a dangerous scientific phenomenon that was hard to understand. So it’s a speculative fiction book about dealing with the unknown, but all bound up in grief and risk. I am looking forward to seeing more from this author.

clarakumagai.com

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Review of The Tears of Things, by Richard Rohr

Christian, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

The Tears of Things

Prophetic Wisdom for an Age of Outrage

by Richard Rohr

Convergent Books, 2025. 173 pages.
Review written July 5, 2025, from my own copy, purchased via amazon.com
Starred Review

Richard Rohr has done it again! His latest book helps me see the prophets with new eyes – and see how the themes speak to us today.

Since prophets are looking at injustice and suffering, of course they’re applicable today, and give Richard Rohr gives us insights for approaching those things. I like the way he points out a pattern of growth in the prophets:

My favorite thing about the prophetic books of the Bible is that they show a whole series of people in evolution of their understanding of God. Like most of us, the prophets started not only with judgmentalism and anger but also with a superiority complex of placing themselves above others. Then, in various ways, that outlook falls apart over the course of their writings. They move from that anger and judgmentalism to a reordered awareness in which they become more like God: more patient like God, more forgiving like God, more loving like God.

I love that he points out that God’s abundant love and compassion is found over and over again in the Old Testament, and yes, even in the prophets.

The title of the book comes from a quotation from Virgil, which he expands on in the first chapter:

Prophets and mystics recognize what most of us do not – that all things have tears and all things deserve tears. They know that grief and sadness are doorways to understanding life in a non-egocentric way. Tears come from both awe and empathy, and they generate even deeper awe and deeper empathy in us. The sympathy that wells up when we weep can be life-changing, too, drawing us out of ourselves and into communion with those around us. This is continuously exemplified in the writings that we have received from the Hebrew prophets.

So the prophets begin by looking at what’s wrong with the world. They don’t flinch from the truth of the world. But Rohr emphasizes that they don’t stop there.

By following the prophets’ full journey from anger to sadness and beyond, we can mature in belief, as they had to do themselves. All the prophets started with anger, or even rage, at all the right things: injustice, oppression, deceit, misuse of money, power, even religion itself. But with only a couple exceptions (Nahum and Obadiah, who remained angry), they did not stop there. They were not just reformers; they were also mystics who were captivated by the wholeness and beauty at the heart of reality at the same time as they were confronting injustice. I hope to make those distinctions clear in this book. We miss the point when we confuse prophets with mere liberal humanists.

That gives you an idea of where the author is going with this book. He claims that for a mature prophet, it’s all about God’s unconditional love – and the journey to get us there presents ideas I’d never considered before.

My church went through this book, using it as a springboard for three meetings of “holy conversations.” We didn’t really study the book, but it got us talking to one another in fascinating ways.

I recently finished going through Richard Rohr’s book The Universal Christ with my small group, and we all agree that his books are not light reading, but they’re full of good things. This book is the same. He is a mystic, and his books are filled with mysticism, and my rational mind can’t always keep up. But I do know that I like the way he gets me looking at the world. And I love his affirmations of God’s love – even though the world is full of tears.

cac.org
convergentbooks.com

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Review of Under the Same Stars, by Libba Bray

Audiobooks, Historical, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Under the Same Stars

by Libba Bray
read by January LaVoy, Jeremy Carlisle Parker, and Major Curda

Macmillan Young Listeners, 2025. 16 hours, 31 minutes.
Review written June 10, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Under the Same Stars is a skillfully crafted historical novel about resistors in three time periods – 1941 Germany resistance, 1980s divided Berlin punk bands, and the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement. As the three stories progress, we learn that the stories are intertwined and there are returning characters.

One of those returning characters shows up early – the Bridegroom’s Oak, a tree in the forest outside Kleinwald Germany known for its magical matchmaking powers. We’ve also got a fairy tale about the tree, with forest magic woven through the tales.

Dear friends Sophie and Hanna start out by sending their own letters through the tree – which makes a cover for later using the tree to pass along forged documents to rescue people from Nazi Germany.

In 1980s West Berlin, Jenny, the young daughter of a diplomat isn’t at all happy about spending her summer away from her friends in Dallas. But when taking pictures of the city, she meets some punks and starts playing with their all-girl band, behind her parents’ back. And then she starts falling in love with her band mate, which would also horrify her parents. This girl is originally from East Berlin, and Jenny learns that the band’s music is an act of resistance.

And then in 2020, Miles is in isolation while one of his mothers got stuck overseas and the other is working around the clock in a New York City hospital. When his friend Chloe – who hadn’t been speaking to him – gets in touch, he starts working on the mystery of her grandmother’s partial story about a magical tree. Thinking about resistance helps him break out of isolation when the Black Lives Matter protests start up.

As usual, my summary doesn’t convey how well these stories are interwoven and the strong message that resistance is a loving and hopeful act. It’s something you do not for yourself, but because you have hope of a better world. It also conveys the message that the need for resistance is unfortunately very common.

I wish that message weren’t as timely as it is.

Even without the powerful message, this is a set of three gripping stories of folks who put their lives on the line.

libbabray.com

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Review of Jella Lepman and Her Library of Dreams, by Katherine Paterson, illustrated by Sally Deng

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Jella Lepman and Her Library of Dreams

The Woman Who Rescued a Generation of Children and Founded the World’s Largest Children’s Library

by Katherine Paterson
illustrated by Sally Deng

Handprint Books (Chronicle), 2025. 104 pages.
Review written June 9, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review

This book has the large shape of an ordinary picture book biography, but there are more words on each page and many more pages, so this is suitable for older children than the usual picture book biography crowd, kids who can read more in-depth information. The book does have all the beauty and added interest of illustrations on every page.

I hadn’t heard of Jella Lepman before reading this book – but I had heard of the International Youth Library when I lived in Germany, and had long meant to go visit. I’m now all the more disappointed that I never did manage it – will have to visit Germany again to do so!

I’ve also heard of IBBY, the International Board of Books for Young People, which always has events at ALA Annual Conference – and was very happy to read a book about one of the founders.

So I knew about some of the things Jella Lepman established, but hearing her story helped me learn her wonderful motivation – helping children after war.

Jella was a German Jew who had fled Germany after Hitler rose to power. But she came back after the war, working for the U.S. Army. Her job was to be an “adviser on the cultural and educational needs of women and children” in the part of Germany under American occupation. She agonized about whether to accept the assignment.

Even if Jella could not help the adults, couldn’t she do something for suffering children? “I found it easy to believe that the children all to soon would fall into the wrong hands if no help came from the world outside,” she wrote. “Were not Germany’s children just as innocent as children all over the world, helpless victims of monstrous events?”

She had made up her mind. The fate of these children was too important. She would accept the military assignment.

After she arrived in Germany, I love the part where she decided to promote world peace through children’s books. She solicited books from countries across the world. It started with an International Exhibition of Children’s Books. The books were sent to the children of Germany as messengers of peace.

At first the show traveled around the country, but eventually Jella worked to give it a permanent home in the International Youth Library.

And that was only the beginning of her efforts toward peace through children’s books. To this librarian reading this, her story was uplifting and gratifying and beautiful.

katherinepaterson.com
chroniclekids.com

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Review of Wooing the Witch Queen, by Stephanie Burgis

Fantasy, Fiction Review, Romance, Starred Review 0

Wooing the Witch Queen

by Stephanie Burgis
read by Amanda Leigh Cobb

Macmillan Audio, 2025. 8 hours, 33 minutes.
Review written June 12, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I’ve long enjoyed Stephanie Burgis’s books for kids – fun fantasy stories with imagination and heart. They always make me smile. So it was something of an adjustment to listen to a sexy romantasy for adults from her – but in the end, it, too, has imagination and heart and made me smile.

The set-up is that Archduke Felix from the ever-expanding Empire has been controlled and abused for most of his life by his father-in-law. He’s not even allowed to study governance, but kept busy with literature and poetry. But now that his beloved wife has died, he knows that his father-in-law is laying plans to kill him. So he has nothing to lose. He’s going to go to the neighboring country where the Witch Queen Saskia has overcome her evil uncle and taken control – because she is the one person who’s successfully stood up to the Empire’s forces so far.

He grabs a dark cloak and is surprised when no one stops him, and he’s apparently welcomed to an audience with Saskia. What he doesn’t know is that she recently placed an ad for a dark wizard to put her magic library in order – her uncle left it in disarray. And as Felix is waiting at the door, he hears her telling her allies how happy she would be to execute Archduke Felix – because of all his father-in-law has done in his name. So when she mistakes him for a librarian, he takes the job.

And it turns out that studying literature and poetry is perfect training for being a magical librarian. And Saskia finds him surprisingly kind and careful – unlike any other dark wizard she’s ever met.

But of course he can’t just settle down and stay a librarian. He’s going to have to tell Saskia the truth at some point, and hopefully before the Empire finds a way to take down Saskia’s magical wall and annex her kingdom.

This book starts a trilogy that includes Saskia’s allies, the other two “Queens of Villainy.” I’m going to want to read them all.

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Review of Beauty Reborn, by Elizabeth Lowham

Fantasy, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Beauty Reborn

by Elizabeth Lowham

Shadow Mountain Publishing, 2023. 200 pages.
Review written June 27, 2023, from a library book.
Starred Review

This is a sweet retelling of Beauty and the Beast. It reminded me a little more of the Disney version than of the original fairy tale, since there’s a library in the castle and a Gaston-like villain and a scene with wolves in the forest. But I always love retellings of this story, and this was no exception.

In this version, the villain raped Beauty before she went to the castle. She feels like it was her own fault because she’d been in love with him. But when she said No, he got angry, and ended up taking what he wanted. Beauty took her father’s place at the castle, almost hoping the Beast would finish her.

But then… I like the way the relationship between Beauty and Beast develops, with him at first afraid to let her see him, and Beauty at first getting triggered by any touch. I love the way the others in the story, beginning with Beast, do not turn from her in disgust (as she expects) when they find out what happened to her.

I’m still a bigger fan of Robin McKinley’s two retellings, Beauty and Rose Daughter, but you simply can’t have too many retellings! I loved what this one brought to the story as to why the hero became a Beast – and I like the resolution at the end. This was a love story I could believe in and got completely behind.

This book has no sex scenes, despite Beauty having triggers because of the previous rape. This is refreshing – I’m starting to feel like sex scenes are obligatory in YA novels – and makes the book extra nice for younger teens or for older teens who don’t actually want sex scenes in everything they read. I hope I don’t sound judgmental! I mostly enjoy the sexy YA novels. But it was nice to read a solid YA romance set in medieval times that realistically had them waiting for the wedding (as they most likely would have done in medieval times). This is one that I could believe the two fell in love with each other and that they will indeed live happily ever after.

elizabethlowham.com

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Review of Fireworks, words by Matthew Burgess, pictures by Cátia Chien

Contemporary, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

Fireworks

words by Matthew Burgess
pictures by Cátia Chien

Clarion Books, 2025. 40 pages.
Review written July 15, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review

The world needed a truly excellent picture book about the Fourth of July, and now we have one. Though in fact, the book doesn’t mention the name of the holiday, so we had a bit of discussion whether to shelve it with holiday books here in the library. But books for Independence Day are few and far between – and this one begins with a hot summer day, so it definitely fits.

And the book is so evocative! It begins as two brown-skinned siblings wake up and venture out “across steamy city sidewalks.” The impressionistic pictures by Cátia Chien make you feel the steam – and feel the joy when later the kids play in a fire hydrant that sprung a leak.

Besides the wonderful illustrations, the descriptions are full of onomatopoeia. We’ve got “plip plop plip” on this page with an illustration full of juice and joy:

And in the thirsty afternoon
we watch the knife slice
the great green watermelon
into shining red wedges.

Chins drip sweet drips.

We also hear sounds from street performers playing music and Grandma cooking dinner in a pan.

But no surprise that the highlight of it all is when the kids climb to the rooftop of their building and see fireworks streak across the sky.

We’ve got all sorts of firework sounds and now an accent of florescent pink that we saw on the cover and the endpapers. And the kids dancing with joy far below. It brings you right into a fireworks display.

Then there’s a close-up on the kids’ wide-eyed faces before a fold-out page gives you the Finale.

And it ends like every good picture book – snug in bed – but this time with visions of fireworks dancing in their heads.

This is for sure destined to become a summertime classic. And don’t miss the opportunity to explain to little ones how fireworks shows will go before they experience their first. They’ll know to expect bright lights and loud sounds – and exuberant joy.

matthewjohnburgess.com
catiachien.com

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Review of The Gate, the Girl, and the Dragon, by Grace Lin

Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy, Starred Review 0

The Gate, the Girl, and the Dragon

by Grace Lin

Little, Brown and Company, 2025. 340 pages.
Review written July 4, 2025, from my own copy, purchased at ALA Annual Conference and signed by the author.
Starred Review

Grace Lin’s new book has the hallmarks of her other award-winning works: Beautifully illustrated by the author (one of the few people to win both Caldecott Honor and Newbery Honor) and woven through with Chinese mythology. This one, rather than being set in a mythical land, is set in a modern city’s Chinatown.

I got to hear Grace Lin speak about this book, and the reason she likes to make beautiful books is that when she was a child, she loved lavish, beautifully illustrated editions of Grimms’ and other European fairy tales. But she had one book of Chinese fairy tales, and it was ugly with sparse black-and-white pictures and stilted translations, giving her as a child the impression that Chinese fairy tales weren’t as good. No child will ever get that impression from Grace Lin’s books!

And the special edition of the book I got at ALA is a stunningly beautiful book with sprayed edges showing a dragon and a lantern. Inside the book, there’s a picture for each chapter and frequent full-color images. When a tale within the story is told (and there are several), the tale is set off with a colored border.

But besides the beautiful look of the book, the story is a perfect tale for younger readers ready to listen to a chapter book – I hope this book is featured in many, many classroom read-alouds for years to come.

The main characters of the book are Gongshi – spirits of stone.

It is impossible to tell just by looking at a stone if it is a Gongshi. But, eventually, the right kind of human will feel the spirit’s dream like one feels the sun after it rains. And that human will take the sleeping stone and carve it. And the stone becomes a statue.

That is when the Gongshi awakens.

It turns out that the elaborate City Gate leading to Chinatown is a portal to the magical home of the Gongshi. They go out into the world and protect and help humans. But when they take a break, they go home through the gate. Those gates normally feature two lions, the Lion and the Lioness. The Lion holds a ball – the Sacred Sphere – and the Lioness holds a Lion Cub. In the spirit world, that lion cub is named Jin, and he becomes the hero of this story.

Though he doesn’t start out as the hero. In anger, he kicks his zuqiu ball in the house, and it knocked over the pedestal holding the Sacred Sphere, which rolled away. Jin was not able to stop it, and it rolled right out the gate. Then a man took it from him. And when Jin tried to go back through the gate to his mother, the gate was closed!

On the other side, all the Gongshi are trapped as well by the closed gate. So they can’t come out to help. Jin must somehow find the Sacred Sphere and open the gate. And yes, that quest involves a girl he meets – a girl who can see and speak with him – and a dragon – a dragon who currently has the form of a worm.

The story weaves together several tales and perspectives from both sides of the closed gate. Every tale has a part in the eventual resolution, and it’s a wonderfully woven story of young ones rising to the occasion and making the world better, against enormous odds.

gracelin.com
lbyr.com

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Review of Always the Almost, by Edward Underhill

Contemporary, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Always the Almost

by Edward Underhill

Wednesday Books, 2023. 307 pages.
Review written July 21, 2023, from my own copy, sent by the publisher.
Starred Review

Always the Almost is a sweet teen romance about a gay trans boy during his senior year of high school. He came out as male last year, changing his name from Melissa to Miles, and his long-time boyfriend broke up with him soon after. If only Miles can show Shane that he’s still the same person inside, maybe he can win back his heart.

The title refers to Miles’ habit of coming second place in the big annual Tri-State Piano Competition. For years, he’s come in second place to Cameron Hart. This year, Miles’ teacher says he needs a new teacher to help him do his best in this his last chance to win. The new piano teacher, instead of working on technique, asks Miles questions about who he is and what his competition piece means to him – questions that Miles is only beginning to know how to answer.

But while Shane isn’t paying much attention to Miles, there’s a new kid at their high school who is. Eric immediately asks his pronouns and seems to see Miles for who he is. Maybe he can help get over Shane? Meanwhile, Miles’ long-time best friends, Rachel and Paige, have started dating each other, which is great when everyone is happy. But makes Miles miss being part of a couple.

The story is wrapped up in the piano competition, and I love the way Miles deepening his understanding of the Tchaikovsky piece also deepens his understanding of his own identity, and that’s explained on the page in a way we can understand it, even without hearing the music. (I’d love to hear this in an audiobook with classical music accompaniment!) Miles and his friends make some mistakes along the way, but they’re very human and understandable mistakes, and the reader feels for both sides. The relationship between Miles and Eric is portrayed with plenty of authenticity, and we feel for what it might be like for someone just beginning to show the world who they truly are also try to show one person more deeply who they truly are.

This sweet trans romance didn’t strike any wrong notes. Reading it left me with a smile.

edward-underhill.com
wednesdaybooks.com

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Review of A Woman of No Importance, by Sonia Purnell

Audiobooks, Biography, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review, True Stories 0

A Woman of No Importance

The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II

by Sonia Purnell
read by Juliet Stevenson

Books on Tape, 2019. 13 hours, 54 minutes.
Review written July 8, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I wish I remembered what prompted me to put this amazing nonfiction audiobook on hold, because it was a great tip. I don’t do a great job of reading big thick nonfiction tomes, but as an audiobook, it kept my interest all the way.

The author researched one of the most important spies of World War II, Virginia Hall. Yes, she was American, from Baltimore – but most of the time she did her spying for the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) before the United States even entered the war.

Not only did Virginia Hall face obstacles and being underestimated and dismissed because she was a woman – she was also disabled, an amputee with a wooden leg. Those things kept her from getting to go far in the U.S. diplomatic corps, so when World War II started, she found work with the SOE.

She was in “free” France under the Vichy government for most of the war, building more and more networks in the Resistance, sending more and more information to the Allies, and helping the cause more and more. She was the sort who wouldn’t let them send her back to safety, even when it became apparent the Germans were figuring out who was causing them so much trouble.

All along the way, she faced frustrations because her assessments and requests weren’t given the weight due her experience – because she was a woman. But still, her expertise and skills made her incredibly effective and helpful for the Allied cause.

The story is riveting – especially the bulk of it where she is working in war-time France. It’s truly amazing how much she accomplished right under the noses of her enemies. This book helped me understand that her many years of service and the wide variety of ways she helped the Allied cause.

soniapurnell.com

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