Review of Violet and the Pie of Life, by Debra Green

Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Mathematical, Starred Review 0

Violet and the Pie of Life

by Debra Green

Holiday House, 2021. 279 pages.
Review written December 13, 2023, from a library book.
Starred review
2024 Mathical Honor Book, Ages 11-13

When Violet’s best friend Mackenzie wants to try out for their middle school’s production of The Wizard of Oz, Violet only joins in because it would be fun to go to rehearsals with Mackenzie. Never mind that Ally, the popular girl Mackenzie says is terrible, does a wonderful audition for Dorothy.

But when Violet gets the part of the Cowardly Lion, and Mackenzie gets the part of a flying monkey, Violet has to decide if she’ll stick with it when her friend quits. And would it be disloyal to be friends with Ally, who really doesn’t seem so bad?

Meanwhile, while Violet’s navigating all this friendship stuff, her parents fight and her Dad moves out. And doesn’t answer her emails. Maybe now she has a part in the play, she can get both her parents to come and remember how much they love each other.

Through all of this, Violet looks to math as something she can count on. The pages of this book are filled with charts she makes, laying out the problems of her life like math problems — from a chart of the intensity of her parents’ fights to flow charts of her plans to email her Dad. I especially liked when her affinity for math helped her quickly understand how much commission her realtor Mom would make after selling a home in Laguna Beach.

This kids’ novel is no math text book, but it’s math-friendly, featuring a middle school kid with relatable problems who thinks in mathematical ways.

HolidayHouse.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 East, by Edith Pattou

Audiobooks, Fairy Tale Variant, Fantasy, Sonderbooks25, Stand-outs, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

East

by Edith Pattou
read by a Full Cast

Listening Library, 2005. 10 hours, 48 minutes.
Review written May 21, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Original Review written December 6, 2003.
Starred Review
2003 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #2 Young Adult Fantasy

As part of #Sonderbooks25, celebrating my 25th year of writing Sonderbooks, my plan was to choose one book to read from each year’s Sonderbooks Stand-outs. But then reading all the reviews, I remembered how much I love these books… And then I discovered several of my favorites available or with a short wait as eaudiobooks with my library… And I’m rereading a lot more than one book per year.

And I love East as much as ever! It’s still a weird fairy tale – “East of the Sun, West of the Moon” – but I love the way the author fills the book with family and friends who help Rose along the way. It ends up being a book about relationships with family and friends and about not giving up despite impossible odds.

I’m also pleased that after I finished this, I’m able to start right into listening to the follow-up, West, for more about Rose and her White Bear. I read West the year I was on the Newbery committee, so I didn’t have the luxury of rereading East before I did. This time, I get to read them one after the other.

I’m not going to write new reviews for every book I reread during #Sonderbooks25. But I like having a pretty new review in place of the ones I wrote before 2006, before I made the new format and added the blog. So here’s a new review for East, but I’ll let the old one stand for West.

If you love fairy tale retellings, as I do, pick up this atmospheric tale about a girl who’s prone to wander, and who goes with a white bear to help her family. After her curiosity causes disaster to strike, she’s determined to make things right for the white bear – and ends up helping other people, too.

Oh, and this is a lovely Full Cast production audiobook, with separate voices for each character who gets viewpoint chapters – Rose, her brother Neddy, her father, the White Bear, and the Troll Queen.

edithpattou.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 My Antarctica, by G. Neri, illustrated by Corban Wilkin

Award Winners, Children's Nonfiction Review, Science, Starred Review 0

My Antarctica

True Adventures in the Land of Mummified Seals, Space Robots, and So Much More

by G. Neri
illustrated by Corban Wilkin

Candlewick Press, 2024. 94 pages.
Review written February 21, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review
2024 Cybils Award Winner, Elementary Nonfiction

What would it be like to travel to Antarctica? This children’s author got a grant from the National Science Foundation to do just that, and this book shows you his journey.

The highlight is the photographs. The large format highlights them and the otherworldly landscape. The illustrator has added a cartoon character of the author on most pages.

Of course, along the way, he tells the reader about the amazing science work being done in Antarctica. And he answers curious questions such as “What is a mummy seal?” “Is Antarctica really a desert?” and “Did that pickax really belong to Shackleton?”

So we do pick up lots of amazing facts, but mostly it’s the story of what it’s like to go to Antarctica – and I have a feeling it’s going to inspire many kids to follow in his footsteps some day.

gneri.com
corbanwilkin.com
candlewick.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 Bird of a Thousand Stories, by Kiyash Monsef

Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy, Starred Review 0

Bird of a Thousand Stories

by Kiyash Monsef

Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2025. 340 pages.
Review written March 20, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review

Bird of a Thousand Stories is a sequel to Once There Was, which was a Morris Award Honor Book in 2024, the year I was on the committee, so of course I was delighted to hear about a sequel. The Morris Award is for best young adult debut books, and this book is shelved in our library’s juvenile section, but it walks the line between both. Our protagonist, Marjan, is in high school and lives on her own after her father’s death, but the plot and situations fit well with middle grade novels. There’s not even any romance in this book, more of an adventurous chase around the world to find and free the Bird of a Thousand Stories.

You don’t have to have read the first book to enjoy this one, but my advice is not to miss it! I do think that the author’s craft is a bit better in this, his second novel. It feels more unified, as the main story is about the same quest throughout the book.

As with the first book, folk stories are woven through the book, and this time there’s a continuing story about the Bird of a Thousand Stories – the bird Marjan feels compelled to find. An Author’s Note shows us that he seriously researched this story to include it.

Filling in a little bit, in the first book, Marjan’s father died, and she discovered he had a business helping magical creatures – which were very real. Marjan discovered she’d inherited the gift of being able to communicate with them mind-to-mind with just a touch. However, she also gained the attention of a powerful family who made a business of selling off magical creatures for money. As this book begins, she has an uneasy alliance with them.

Also in the first book, Marjan acquired a roommate who’s a cheerful runaway and a witch – a witch who’s spells are hit-or-miss. In this book this friend has some kind of powerful spirit helping her – but is it really help? Something new in this book is that Marjan discovers an uncle who kept himself separate from the family is an heir to the same magic, but gave it up to trust it to her father. So Marjan isn’t alone in her quest, but there are questions throughout about trusting the right people to help and not trusting the wrong people. And who is which?

It all adds up to a magical adventure traveling to many different parts of the world, trying to do right by magical creatures.

kiyash.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 Nine: A Book of Nonet Poems, by Irene Latham, illustrated by Amy Huntington

Children's Nonfiction Review, Poetry, Starred Review 0

Nine

A Book of Nonet Poems

by Irene Latham
illustrated by Amy Huntington

Charlesbridge, 2020. 36 pages.
Review written November 29, 2023, from my own copy.
Starred Review
2024 Mathical Book Prize Honor Book, Ages 8-10.

Here’s a fun idea: Nonet poems about things we associate with the number Nine!

What’s a nonet poem? It’s a poem using syllable count. There are nine syllables in the first line, eight in the second, seven in the third, and so on down to one syllable in the last line. Or it’s done in reverse order, starting with one syllable and ending with nine syllables.

These are kid-friendly poems, with an introductory poem explaining nonets, and then eighteen poems, each getting its own spread or at least its own page. The topics are related to the number Nine, including baseball, a cat’s nine lives, the ninth president (William Henry Harrison), a nonagon, the Little Rock Nine, Pluto, Cloud Nine, and Dressed to the Nines, with a special highlight for the poem on Page Nine.

Of course the natural follow-up to this book is to try writing some nonet poems yourself. This book is a light-hearted approach to poetry – and the number Nine. It was a fun choice for a Mathical Honor Book, showing that a book about numbers can also be poetic.

irenelatham.com
amyhuntington.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 365: How to Count a Year, by Miranda Paul & Julien Chung

Children's Nonfiction Review, Contemporary, Delightfully Silly, Mathematical, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

365

How to Count a Year

by Miranda Paul & Julien Chung

Beach Lane Books, 2023. 44 pages.
Review written October 26, 2023, from a library book.
Starred Review

365 is a wonderful kid-friendly picture book about different units of time and how many of them make up a year. It’s bright and colorful and gives examples that will make kids laugh.

The start is basic:

It takes the Earth 365 days to spin around the sun.

But the book quickly gets more creative:

That’s 365 “Good mornings,”

365 “Good nights,”

and, hopefully, 365 clean pairs of underwear.

Then it goes on to talk about things that might happen 52 times in the 52 weeks of a year.

And next are groups of 12 things that happen monthly. Like cleaning the fish tank or getting a magazine.

And if 365, 52, and 12 are too big for you, it all comes back to 1 year, which, of course, is best measured in birthdays.

But that’s not all!

And right after that party is over,
you’ll probably start asking …

how long until next year’s celebration?

The answer —
8,760 hours —
might seem like forever.

And then they go on to minutes and seconds in a year.

A spread at the end tells us:

But the good news is that you can group those
seconds into minutes and minutes into hours and hours into sunsets and sunrises and good mornings and good nights and clean (or dirty) underwear, flavors of the day, Friday night spills, or Saturday sleep-ins, so the countdown simply becomes…

1 marvelous collage of 1 year in the life of you.

How will you count your year?

It’s all colorful and fun and directly relates the somewhat abstract concept of time to kids’ lives. There’s a bonus page at the back telling how much time or how many times certain things happen in a year.

A beautiful introduction to the mathematics of time for young children.

mirandapaul.com
julienchung.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 Painting Wonder, by Katie Wray Schon

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Painting Wonder

How Pauline Baynes Illustrated the Worlds of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien

by Katie Wray Schon

Waxwing Books, 2025. 44 pages.
Review written May 20, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review

Painting Wonder is a picture book biography of Pauline Baynes, the illustrator who gave us the iconic illustrations in The Chronicles of Narnia. This book told me she also illustrated Tolkien’s books. I didn’t think I’d seen those editions – and then last night I was reading my reviews from my 2003 Sonderbooks Stand-outs (as part of my #Sonderbooks25 celebration), and came across this line in the review of Smith of Wooton Major and Farmer Giles of Ham: “I like the drawings, by the same person who illustrated the original editions of The Chronicles of Narnia.”

I was happy to learn more about that person, Pauline Baynes, by reading this book.

Pauline was born in India to British parents, but was sent to boarding school in England when she was five years old. The book shows how she found refuge from gray skies and bullies in the pages of books full of adventure. She eventually went to art school, but her art career was interrupted by World War II. During the war, she used her art skills to make maps for the navy – which turned out to be perfect preparation for making maps of fantasy worlds.

The book talks about how she submitted her art to publishers, but then had a long wait.

More years go by,
as she’s busy with teaching art
and caring for family
and making new friends
and waiting
and drawing
and waiting.

But all at once,
the slow years of waiting end.

A famous author,
J. R. R. Tolkien,
sees her pictures in a pile.

He wants her to draw dragons
and knights and gnarled trees
for his new book, and she does.

It was probably Tolkien who gave her name to C. S. Lewis – which resulted in her wonderful illustrations for all seven Narnia books.

That’s the basic story in these pages, but it’s told poetically, and with illustrations reminiscent of Pauline’s own. Four pages of back matter fill in the details. I love this window into the life of an illustrator whose art I truly love.

katiewrayschon.com
WaxwingBooks.com

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of Patterns Everywhere, by Lisa Varchol Perron

Children's Nonfiction Review, Mathematical, Science, Starred Review 0

Patterns Everywhere

by Lisa Varchol Perron

Millbrook Press, 2023. 32 pages.
Review written November 22, 2023, from a library book.
Starred Review

Patterns Everywhere is a beautiful nonfiction book for primary-grade kids that will get them noticing many kinds of patterns in nature.

Each spread is dominated by a large photograph of something in nature, a simple rhyme about it with the rhyme scheme AABB (another pattern!) and a factual paragraph with more detail. It’s attractively presented and shows a wide variety of things. Here’s the introductory first spread:

Step outside. Let’s find designs —
branching, cracking, spirals, lines.
Search the earth, the seas, the air.
Patterns, patterns everywhere.

WHAT IS A PATTERN?
A pattern is a sequence that repeats in a predictable way. Nature is full of them! Some of nature’s patterns are made of repeating geometric shapes. Other patterns are created by color or spacing.

The spreads after that show leaf veins, ridges and valleys, sand dunes, meandering rivers, corals, wave ripples, sea foam, layered earth, basalt columns, snowflakes, mud cracks, and spiral plants and animals. There are two pages of more information at the back, including some activities.

This is a simple introduction to patterns, attractively presented, and will open kids eyes to the patterns around them.

lisaperronbooks.com
lernerbooks.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 Bearsuit Turtle Makes a Friend, by Bob Shea

Delightfully Silly, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

Bearsuit Turtle Makes a Friend

by Bob Shea

Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2025. 40 pages.
Review written May 20, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review

This book is. So. Silly. I love it!

This is a book with a bizarre situation, played straight. You really do have to read it yourself (or in story time!) to fully appreciate it. But I’ll give you the idea.

The main character is in a bear suit with a very large mouth. You can see a green head centered in the mouth. We figure out from the title this is Bearsuit Turtle.

As the book begins, Bearsuit Turtle is sitting on a swing, hanging still. We see another turtle coming out of the trees, and Bearsuit Turtle says, “Hey, gimme a push.”

But when we turn the page, we get this exchange:

Be careful, I’m a for-real bear. Scary, right?

No way! I’m a for-real bear expert, and you are NOT a for-real bear.

But Bearsuit Turtle has evidence!

Oh yeah? Got any honey?

No.

That’s because I ate it.

Other evidence includes climbing a tree to the top and back to the bottom while the other turtle’s eyes are closed (because bears don’t like to show off).

The turtle is still skeptical, since he could be a super-round squirrel, but then Bearsuit Turtle hibernates on command.

So then they start doing things that the for-real bear expert says bears like to do – foraging (getting ice cream at a truck), bicycling, and smashing pumpkins.

But when something comes up that the expert doesn’t know if bears like – they both make a confession.

I hope I’m not destroying the suspense if I quote my very favorite page:

It’s okay. I also have something shocking to share.

Look, there’s no good way to say this, but I’m not just a for-real bear. I’m pretty sure I’m maybe also a turtle.

A WHAT? This day has been a roller coaster. I don’t even know what to believe anymore.

But one thing the new friends do know – they truly enjoy doing things together.

So much fun. So silly. Try this one out with a kid.

BobShea.com
abramsbooks.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 Not Nothing, by Gayle Forman

Audiobooks, Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Starred Review 0

Not Nothing

by Gayle Forman
read by Dion Graham

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2024. 6 hours, 4 minutes.
Review written April 15, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review

Wow. This audiobook is powerful. I was hooked from the first sentence in the voice of a 107-year-old Polish man called Josey by his friends.

He was telling about Alex, a twelve-year-old boy who had to spend his summer doing community service at Shady Glen, the senior living facility, because of something he did that was truly terrible. Alex was living with his aunt and uncle, who clearly didn’t want him. And he’s dreading another hearing at the end of the summer that will determine whether he can stay with his aunt and uncle or have to go to juvenile hall.

Alex was not at all happy to work at Shady Glen, thinking the residents were zombies who smelled bad. And a girl named Maya-Jade who was also volunteering bossed him around and made him scrub surfaces with bleach. But then there’s a lockdown when Maya-Jade doesn’t show up, but Alex does. He starts bringing the residents meals in their rooms, and begins seeing them as people. And then Josey, who hasn’t spoken since he came to Shady Glen, begins telling Alex his story.

Josey’s story is a riveting part of this book. He was a young Jewish man in love with a Gentile in Poland when Hitler took over. He tells how he and his parents resisted leaving Poland because they didn’t think it would ever get so bad. (That part was really hard to listen to this particular weekend.)

Obviously, Josey lived to tell about it, but the story of how he survived and how his wife-to-be made sure that happened illuminates for Alex how people can rise to the occasion of our lives and how we are much more than our worst mistake.

It adds up to a powerful story, beautifully told.

gayleforman.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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