Review of A Snake Falls to Earth, by Darcie Little Badger

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

A Snake Falls to Earth

by Darcie Little Badger

Levine Querido, 2021. 372 pages.
Review written February 14, 2022, from a library book
Starred Review
2021 National Book Award Longlist
2022 Newbery Honor Book

Because Darcie Little Badger’s debut novel, Elatsoe, was one of my favorite books I read in 2021, I had this book all checked out ready to read as soon as I finished reading for the Cybils Awards. So I felt like I’d won the jackpot when it won Newbery Honor, and I already had it checked out.

Like Elatsoe, this book features an older teen protagonist and is on the Young Adult shelves at my library, but has no sex or graphic violence and will appeal to middle school readers as well as older teens. Also like Elatsoe, A Snake Falls to Earth is steeped in Native American tales from the author’s Lipan Apache Tribe of Texas.

This book follows two stories. One is the story of Nina, a sixteen-year-old Lipan girl who lives in Texas and is worrying about a hurricane headed for her Grandma’s house. That house is on land that has long been in their family, and Grandma gets sick if she leaves it. The story her dying great-grandmother told Nina might shed some light on the reasons why, if Nina can manage to translate it.

The other story is about one of the animal people in the Reflecting World. In his true form, Oli is a cottonmouth snake. In his false form, he’s a boy with scales in place of eyebrows. When we first meet Oli, his mother has sent him away from home, and Oli has adventures looking for a place of his own. He makes friends along the way, and when one of those friends gets in trouble, Oli is willing even to make the dangerous journey to Earth to help.

And of course those stories come together in unexpected and delightful ways when Oli makes it to Earth.

Something I loved about Elatsoe was that kids didn’t hide magical events from the adults in their lives, and that’s true in this book, too. There’s a strong sense of community, including parents and elders. Altogether, this is a magical adventure that feels like a yarn you could hear at a storyteller’s feet.

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/snake_falls_to_earth.html

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.

What did you think of this book?

Review of Classified, by Traci Sorell, illustrations by Natasha Donovan

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

Classified

The Secret Career of Mary Golda Ross, Cherokee Aerospace Engineer

by Traci Sorell
illustrations by Natasha Donovan

Millbrook Press, 2021. 32 pages.
Review written January 5, 2022, from a library book
Starred Review
2022 Mathical Book Prize Honor Book, Grades 3-5
2022 American Indian Youth Literature Award Honor Book, Picture Books

I’m so happy about a recent burst of picture book biographies of distinguished women mathematicians and engineers! They would have inspired me as a child, and they inspire me as an adult.

This book tells the story of Mary Golda Ross, a member of the Cherokee nation, who excelled in math, even though she was surrounded by boys in her classes. The book portrays her as always learning. She became a teacher after graduating from college, but during World War II got a job working on fighter jets for Lockheed Aircraft Corporation. That job led her to take engineering classes at a local university to become Lockheed’s first female engineer. After the war, she worked in a classified group developing space travel and satellites.

I like the way Cherokee values are introduced at the beginning and throughout the text we’re told how she demonstrated them: “gaining skills in all areas of life, working cooperatively with others, remaining humble when others recognize your talents, and helping ensure equal education and opportunity for all.”

A whole spread at the end is devoted to Mary’s work helping others not have to face the barriers she did:

Although her work was classified, Mary still had much to share. She never stopped recruiting American Indians and young women to study math and science and helping support them to become engineers.

Mary’s work and her legacy of service have helped many others become trailblazers, too.

I learned in the timeline at the back that she helped found the Los Angeles section of the Society of Women Engineers and later a scholarship was established in her name.

A lovely book about a remarkable woman I’m glad to now know about.

tracisorell.com
natashadonovan.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Nonfiction/classified.html

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.

What did you think of this book?

Review of Vespertine, by Margaret Rogerson

Fantasy, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Vespertine

by Margaret Rogerson

Margaret K. McElderry Books (Simon & Schuster), 2021. 387 pages.
Review written January 24, 2022, from a library book.
2022 Cybils Young Adult Speculative Fiction Winner
Starred Review

Vespertine is set in a version of medieval Europe troubled by spirits of the dead. Artemisia, a girl with the Sight, lives at a convent in Loraille, training to be a Gray Sister who cleanses the bodies of the deceased so that their spirits won’t possess the living. Before Artemisia came to the convent, she was possessed by an Ashgrim, a spirit that had died in fire. The nuns are helping her trauma heal, and she only wants to live a quiet life in the convent.

Then the convent is attacked by an army of possessed soldiers. They need to use the relic of Saint Eugenia, which holds a powerful revenant. But when the wielder of the relic dies in the fight, someone must take control of the relic and save the convent. Artemisia is the person it falls to.

And so begins Artemisia’s story. When she wakes from the battle, she’s bound and being taken to the capital city to have the revenant exorcised and sent back to the finger bone of Saint Eugenia. But the revenant doesn’t want to go back. And Artemisia doesn’t want to be exorcised. They come to an agreement. But they also discover that Old Magic is being used in the capital city and many people may be killed and devoured. Can Artemisia save the country?

Artemisia is a wonderful and flawed heroine. She got intense social anxiety and can’t handle being around people, but she’s hailed as a saint. The world-building in this book is fascinating and we gradually learn the different orders of spirits and the rules for dealing with them. And the conversations between Artemisia and the revenant inhabiting her mind are wonderful, full of spice as they each try not to be controlled.

My plan as soon as my Cybils reading is done is to read Margaret Rogerson’s other books. It had wonderfully crafted fantasy with all the details holding together and making sense. (I always appreciate that!) And the characters made me want to spend more time in this world. (Well, not actually – I wouldn’t want to live in a world with all those spirits of the dead. But I enjoyed reading about it.)

MargaretRogerson.com
Simonandschuster.com/teen

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/vespertine.html

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.

What did you think of this book?

Review of Wait, Rest, Pause: Dormancy in Nature, by Marcie Flinchum Atkins

Children's Nonfiction Review, Science, Starred Review 0

Wait, Rest, Pause

Dormancy in Nature

by Marcie Flinchum Atkins

Millbrook Press, 2019. 32 pages.
Starred Review
Review written October 22, 2019, from a library book

Here’s a children’s picture book about science simple enough to use in Preschool Storytime – yet it taught me some things.

The book looks at six creatures that go dormant for some amount of time. Each one gets two spreads, the first about what happens when they are dormant, and the second about what happens when they are active again. The language is simple and repetitive between creatures, and the spreads are filled with big, beautiful pictures.

Here’s an example:

If you were a dormant ladybug, you would…
fatten up,
pile up,
stiffen up.

You would swarm into a ladybug pile, sharing warmth together.

You would pause.

In spring you…
wiggle awake,
feast,
flit away.

The dormant creatures featured include trees, ladybugs, Arctic ground squirrels, chickadees (dormant for a few hours on cold winter nights), alligators, and earthworms (dormant when it’s too dry).

Here’s how the book finishes off:

If you were dormant, you would be…
silent,
still,
waiting,
just waiting,
until…

maybe the spring,
maybe the warmth,
maybe the rain
helps you…
stir,
burst,
appear!

This is a simple and clear science presentation for very young learners. There are more details at the back, including different types of dormancy.

marcieatkins.com
lernerbooks.com

Buy from Amazon.com

This review is only on the blog.

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 I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. 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.

What did you think of this book?

Review of Dr. Seuss’s Horse Museum, illustrated by Andrew Joyner

Art, Children's Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Dr. Seuss’s Horse Museum

illustrated by Andrew Joyner

Random House, 2019. 77 pages.
Starred Review
Review written September 13, 2019, from a library book.

This fascinating picture book look at Art is based on manuscript notes and sketches found in Dr. Seuss’s files. I haven’t been completely impressed with some of the other things dug out of his collections after his death – but this book is a delightful way to get kids thinking about Art.

Here’s how the book begins:

ART.
What’s it all about?

This is what ART is about…
ART is when an artist looks at something…
… like a horse, for instance…
… and they see something in that horse that excites them…
so they do something about it.
They tell you about it…
… in any one of a number of ways.

Artists have been excited by horses for as long as there have been artists. But what an artist tells us about horses and how they tell us is different for every artist.

What an artist sees in a horse depends on many different things – their background, likes and dislikes, you name it.

So come with me…

Let’s look at how different artists have seen horses. Maybe we can find some new ways of looking at them ourselves?

The pages that follow incorporate 35 different pieces of art that include horses. They talk about what the artist may have seen in a horse to express it that way. The book goes through different time periods and styles of art as well – all looking at horses.

The result is brilliant – lots and lots of artwork, all expressing horses, and all looking completely different.

There is extensive back matter, with more information about each piece of art and details about Dr. Seuss and his relationship with art (He was self-taught.) and the manuscript and sketches for this book and how they went from there to completion.

Future artists should read this book.

Seussville.com
rhcbooks.com

Buy from Amazon.com

This review is only on the blog.

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 I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. 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.

What did you think of this book?

Review of AfterMath, by Emily Barth Isler

Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Starred Review 0

AfterMath

by Emily Barth Isler

Carolrhoda Books, 2021. 266 pages.
Review written December 1, 2021, from my own copy
Starred Review
2022 Mathical Book Prize Winner, Grades 6-8

I just finished an audiobook written in 2021 that was also about families torn apart after a school shooting. That one, too, had a main character whose brother had done the shooting and who was ostracized by her classmates. How much do I hate it that this topic is timely in America today? However, I love it that kids can process these timely issues in the safe space of fiction written for them.

In AfterMath, twelve-year-old Lucy has just moved to a new town, not far from the one she left, but with a whole new school. Her parents couldn’t bring themselves to stay in the home where her little brother Theo died at five years old from a heart defect.

Her parents choose to move from Maryland to a town in Virginia where there was a school shooting three years ago. A house is for sale at an inexpensive price (one of the kids who died lived in that house), and they think Lucy will be comforted to be around other grieving people – or something?

Everything at her new school is shaped by the shooting. People introduce themselves by telling Lucy where they were during the shooting. And they aren’t very welcoming. There’s only one table in the lunchroom with empty seats, and later people tell Lucy that she shouldn’t sit with Avery. It turns out that Avery’s half-brother was the one who did the shooting.

But Lucy finds a friend in Avery. And an environment where she’s not the freak because her brother died. People don’t even know about Theo.

Lucy’s favorite class has long been Math, finding that to be something that has certainty in an uncertain world. So she loves it when someone starts sending her math jokes such as:

What kind of angle should you never argue with?
A 90-degree angle. They’re ALWAYS right.

And when her math teacher tells her about an after-school class in mime, she somewhat reluctantly signs up. It turns out that learning to express yourself without words also helps you express yourself with words.

I thought this book approached a tough subject with nice balance. Because Lucy’s an outsider, she can see things about the shooting survivors that an insider might not see. But because she’s grieving herself, she has a more vulnerable outlook. I like the way her parents are portrayed – clueless and making many mistakes in some areas, but loving and genuinely trying to do what’s best for Lucy.

Lucy, her friends, and her parents all show character growth in this book.

The one downside is I’m not sure who I’d give this beautiful book to. Except that impulse comes from thinking kids aren’t already thinking about school shootings. Here’s me fervently hoping someday this will be a historical curiosity.

P.S. I’m posting this on February 10, 2022, and now I can freely say how happy I was to help choose this book as our 2022 Mathical Book Prize Winner for grades 6-8! The math aspect is a fundamental part of the book, and readers can see math actually helping with healing and coping.

emilybarthisler.com
lernerbooks.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fiction/aftermath.html

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.

What did you think of this book?

Review of Just Like Beverly, by Vicki Conrad, illustrated by David Hohn

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Just Like Beverly

A Biography of Beverly Cleary

by Vicki Conrad
illustrated by David Hohn

Little Bigfoot (Sasquatch Books), 2019. 52 pages.
Starred Review

Here’s a delightful picture book biography of Beverly Cleary. I’ve read her own story of her life, and this book does a great job of pulling out details that would be interesting to children.

I love the way the illustrator makes Beverly look very much like Ramona.

The book focuses on Beverly’s childhood. She struggled with reading, because she had smallpox while the other children in her class were learning to read. But then a wonderful teacher came along and helped Beverly catch up, and she discovered the joy of reading. Later teachers encouraged her in her writing ability.

Beverly studied to become a children’s librarian, and eventually worked to write stories especially for the boys who came into her library. They wanted stories about “kids like us” – exactly what Beverly had wanted when she was their age. The book points out how she used her own childhood experiences in her books.

There are eight pages of back matter, where I found a listing of some of her accomplishments and honors, including the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, the Newbery Medal, the National Book Award, and the Living Legend Award from the Library of Congress. National Drop Everything and Read Day was established in her honor on her ninetieth birthday, and there’s a Beverly Cleary Sculpture Garden in Portland, Oregon, where she grew up. Beverly Cleary is still alive, though the book wisely doesn’t make much of this fact, and simply mentions that she celebrated her hundredth birthday on April 12, 2016. ***Note: Beverly Cleary has died since I wrote this review. She lived to be 104. I think I wrote this review in 2019 and decided to finally just post it!

This book is a wonderful tribute to a great author, written at the level of children ready for her books.

beverlycleary.com
sasquatchbooks.com

Buy from Amazon.com

This review is exclusive to the blog.

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 I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. 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.

What did you think of this book?

Review of Playing the Cards You’re Dealt, by Varian Johnson

Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Starred Review 0

Playing the Cards You’re Dealt

by Varian Johnson

Scholastic Press, 2021. 309 pages.
Review written December 29, 2021, from a library book
Starred Review

Playing the Cards You’re Dealt is about ten-year-old Ant, who plans to compete in the big Spades tournament this year with his friend Jamal. He wants to redeem himself from last year’s disaster, and maybe impress his father as much as his older brother Aaron did when he won the tournament.

But there are complications. First, Ant and Jamal get beaten at Spades by a new girl who knows how to stack the deck. Then something’s going on at home. Should Ant keep his dad’s secrets? And when he needs a new partner, does Ant dare ask that cute girl?

This is all woven into a story about competition and friends and family and above all — dealing with trouble when those are in the cards you’re dealt.

Here’s a bit from the beginning:

When Ant was younger, he’d liked his nickname. After all, ants were kinda cool as far as insects went. Super strong for their size. Only now that everyone at school — even the girls — had shot up past him in height, it didn’t feel so good anymore. And no one, including his brother, seemed to want him to forget that.

This story has plenty of humor with the realistic conflict, and a kid you’re going to root for.

varianjohnson.com
scholastic.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fiction/playing_the_cards_youre_dealt.html

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.

What did you think of this book?

Review of Dragon Hoops, by Gene Luen Yang

Graphic Memoir, History, Starred Review, Teen Nonfiction 0

Dragon Hoops

From Small Steps Great Leaps

by Gene Luen Yang
color by Lark Pien

First Second, 2020. 446 pages.
Review written May 26, 2020, from a library book
Starred Review

This is a graphic novel memoir about a notable high school basketball season at Bishop O’Dowd High School in Oakland, California, when the author was a teacher there. It was the 2014-15 season, and Mr. Yang had just had a graphic novel published on which he’d been working for six years. He puts himself into the story as he finds out all the hopes and dreams of the students and teachers were centering on finally winning a California state championship with their nationally ranked players. The school had previously had teams go to the championship game many times, but had never actually won.

And so we get the story of the season. The starting players and the coaches are featured. Key games are dramatized. We even get the history of basketball and why Catholic schools have a good record in this sport.

The author keeps the theme of “From Small Steps to Great Leaps” going by highlighting many small steps throughout – as people take a step into something new, and big things result. In Mr. Yang’s own life, he was trying to decide whether to quit teaching and switch to writing comics full-time, as he negotiated an offer to write for Superman.

But with basketball, you don’t know if the “good guys” win. And by making that point early in the book, we didn’t know how the season was going to turn out. The final game is well-dramatized and had me shouting at the end. Yes, shouting at a graphic novel as if it were a live game.

Now, the women’s basketball team at Bishop O’Dowd won the state championship that same year, so I found myself wishing there had been more coverage of that. (There was some, but mostly talking about the older sister of one of the players on the men’s team.) Though to be fair, the book was long enough as it was, and that might have made it unmanageable. Not to mention the difficulty the author might have had trying to get to both teams’ games.

I also wasn’t sure I liked the author writing himself into the story. But by the end, I appreciated it. It added a personal touch and emphasized that these were real kids caught up in big events.

I’m not a sports fan. (Though I was, in fact, a big fan of my high school’s basketball team and took stats for it.) But I am a fan of Gene Luen Yang’s writing, and I enjoyed this book thoroughly. The pacing was good; the history was interesting; and the competition was dramatic.

firstsecondbooks.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teen_Nonfiction/dragon_hoops.html

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.

Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

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.

What did you think of this book?

Review of One By One, by Ruth Ware, read by Imogen Church

Audiobooks, Fiction Review, Mystery, Starred Review 0

One By One

by Ruth Ware
read by Imogen Church

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2020. 13 hours and 8 minutes.
Review written November 13, 2021, based on a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

One By One is a mystery and thriller designed with nods to Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. The setting is a ski chalet in the Alps. Soon after a ski outing where a guest goes missing, there’s an avalanche that cuts them off from civilization.

The guests this week are from Snoop, a U.K.-based app that lets you listen to the music other people are listening to. But Snoop’s in trouble financially, and they have to decide whether to take a buyout offer or try to turn things around with new technology. Tension is high because of that decision, and millions of dollars are at stake.

But the new technology is location-based and using it shows them the missing founder is in the bottom of a gorge. And may not have landed there by accident. When deaths follow that are definitely not accidental, we know that a killer is stuck in the chalet with them.

As is traditional, we start the book with ten people in the chalet — eight from Snoop, plus the two staff for the chalet, Erin the hostess and Danny the chef. We get alternating perspectives from Erin and from Liz, who was once a personal assistant at Snoop, and is now the smallest shareholder with two shares. But that means she’s the deciding vote for whether the company should take the buyout or not, which puts her under lots of unwanted pressure.

We get a window into the complicated relationships among the Snoop coworkers from Liz, who thought she’d left it behind long ago. Erin has an outsider’s perspective, but we get hints of some secrets of her own.

As time goes by, their phones have no connection, their power goes out, the temperature drops, the snow keeps falling, and the police fail to come. All while more deaths happen and tension builds.

I wasn’t surprised by Whodunit — I’ve read enough Agatha Christie mysteries to suspect this person — but I still thoroughly enjoyed the way it was unveiled. And yes, as is traditional with thrillers, figuring out the solution puts the one who figures it out in terrible danger.

I had to find things to do that would let me listen to this book to finish it as quickly as possible. Too much suspense to set it aside! Wonderful!

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Fiction/one_by_one.html

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.

What did you think of this book?