Review of The Girl Who Sang, by Estelle Nadel and Sammy Savos

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

The Girl Who Sang

A Holocaust Memoir of Hope and Survival

by Estelle Nadel
with Sammy Savos and Bethany Strout
art by Sammy Savos

Roaring Brook Press, 2024. 264 pages.
Review written February 18, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review
2025 Sidney Taylor Gold Medal, Middle Grades
2025 Sibert Honor Book
2025 Best Children’s Graphic Novels Top Ten

The Girl Who Sang is a memoir about the Holocaust in graphic novel form. And yes, rather amazingly, the author makes it a story of hope and survival.

Enia was the youngest of five kids living on a farm in a village in Poland. But then the Germans came, and they had to go into hiding. Enia ended up hiding in different attics from when she was five to when she was ten. And she lost all but two of her brothers during the war.

But she makes this book about the good people who helped save their lives along the way, and about the joy of being free after the war and building a new life in America.

And through all of it, she has always loved to sing.

This book did tear my heart into pieces, and I sure didn’t think the little girl would survive in spots. But this tells the story from a child’s viewpoint, and can be a way to tell children about that dark time in history.

sammysavos.com
mackids.com

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Review of Big Jim and the White Boy, by David F. Walker and Marcus Kwame Anderson

Award Winners, Fiction Review, Graphic Novel, Historical, Starred Review 0

Big Jim and the White Boy

An American Classic Reimagined

by David F. Walker
and Marcus Kwame Anderson
Color by Isabell Struble

Ten Speed Graphic, 2024. 282 pages.
Review written February 18, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review
2025 Alex Award Winner

The Alex Awards are given each year to ten books published for adults that will be of interest to teens. I couldn’t resist the title of this graphic novel – a reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

It’s been a very long time since I read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, so I’m not sure how many incidents from this book came from that one (I don’t think a whole lot), but it begins by illustrating a passage from that book – which is then interrupted by a 101-year-old Jim himself in 1932 Nicodemus, Kansas, telling stories to Black children alongside an old Huckleberry Finn. Jim says about the words Samuel Clemens put in his mouth, “Who talks that kind of gibberish?” And then he tells stories of what really happened.

Another part of the frame is a professor at Howard University in 2022 talking about the historical people and events behind Mark Twain’s stories – and how he whitewashed it to make slavery in Missouri not seem so bad. She’s believes that Jim was based on her own great-great-great-grandfather.

So with these two frames giving commentary – Old Jim and Old Huck bantering with each other and the professor giving historical notes – we hear about the adventures Jim and Huck had. Jim was looking for his wife and children, sold down the river by Huck’s father – and he told his story everywhere he went, so that word would get to them that he was looking. Meanwhile, he rescued enslaved people and fought their enslavers.

Big Jim made a name for himself (and got his face on big, scary posters) helping with the Underground Railroad, in the border wars when there was a question if Kansas would be a slave state or a free state, and during the Civil War, fighting for the Union.

And through all the adventures, Jim and Huck save each other’s lives, though, honestly, Huck is more of a sidekick in this tale. This book reveals more about their relationship, and I love that they end up together, with friendly bickering and storytelling.

As a graphic novel, this is a much quicker read than the original, and as a bonus you don’t have to wade through all that dialect. An epic historical tale.

davidfwalker.com
tenspeed.com

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Review of Popcorn, by Rob Harrell

Award Winners, Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Starred Review 0

Popcorn

by Rob Harrell

Dial Books for Young Readers, 2024. 270 pages.
Review written February 27, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review
2025 Schneider Family Award Winner, Middle Grades

Popcorn is about a kid named Andrew who has OCD and Anxiety – who has a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. And it’s so awful it’s funny – but the story is told with compassion, so we are feeling it along with Andrew – and both Andrew and the reader come through it all encouraged.

It’s School Picture Day. Andrew’s wearing his favorite shirt (a new one, which isn’t easy for his Mom to afford), and his Mom even thinks to have him pack an extra one. Mom is starting her first day on a new job, and a friend of the family is staying with Andrew’s grandmother, who has Alzheimer’s.

And as soon as he gets to school, things happen to mess up Andrew’s appearance. A ripped shirt. A black eye. The things are only loosely Andrew’s fault – I mean, he could have let the bully copy off his paper, but we’re definitely feeling for him. Then we think he’s safe because the shirt gets mended, but no, Andrew is never safe! The things that happen to mess up his appearance only get worse.

And in the middle of the day, he learns that his grandma has gone missing, and they weren’t able to reach his Mom by phone. This is not a good thing to hear for someone who has anxiety. Andrew has a gauge like a popcorn kernel – the heat builds up until he knows he’s going to pop.

Andrew’s had two panic attacks in the past, but one of his greatest fears is having one at school. And that fear itself for sure doesn’t help.

The whole thing adds up to a story told with humor and compassion about a kid watching what he thought was the worst possible thing actually happen – and he gets through it, and friends and teachers help him through.

The story of how that all happens is a fun ride indeed.

robharrell.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 A Plate of Hope, by Erin Frankel, illustrated by Paola Escobar, read by Luis Carlos de la Lombana

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

A Plate of Hope

The Inspiring Story of Chef José Andrés and World Central Kitchen

by Erin Frankel
illustrated by Paola Escobar
read by Luis Carlos de la Lombana

Dreamscape Media, 2024. 15 minutes.
Random House Studio, 2024. 48 pages.
Review written January 31, 2025, from a library book and eaudiobook.
Starred Review
2025 Odyssey Winner, Children’s Audiobook
2024 Cybils Finalist, Elementary/Middle Grade Nonfiction

I don’t normally listen to 15-minute audiobooks. But I do make a point of trying to listen to all the Odyssey Award Winners and Honor books. The award is given for the best children’s and young adult audiobooks, and they are always outstanding. Even knowing that, I was impressed with this short but amazing audiobook.

The original book is a picture book biography of the life of Chef José Andrés, how he grew up in Spain loving to be part of making food and feeding people, went on to work in an innovative kitchen, and was taken with the promise of America. Of course, it especially looks at how he developed World Central Kitchen to step in with good food immediately after a disaster. He gets folks in quickly after a crisis making good, local food when folks have lost so much else.

And the audiobook has music playing in the background throughout the whole book with judicious use of sound effects, such as sizzling food and chirping birds. The narrator’s Spanish accent combined with the music gives the story a lilting and joyful feeling. Of course, I recommend checking out both the audiobook and the print book so you can enjoy the pictures as well.

erinfrankel.com

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Review of A Little Like Magic, by Sarah Kurpiel

Award Winners, Contemporary, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

A Little Like Magic

by Sarah Kurpiel

Rocky Pond Books (Penguin Random House), 2024. 44 pages.
Review written February 28, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review
2025 Schneider Family Award Winner, Younger Children

Here’s a gorgeous picture book that features a kid in a wheelchair.

The child and their mother (probably a little girl, but the gender is never specified) are headed to an ice festival to watch the sculptors work, but they don’t want to go.

I don’t like heavy coats
or itchy hats
or boots that don’t let me bend my ankles.
I don’t like cold wind
or icy roads.
Most of all, I don’t like going places that I’ve never been before.

Still, they go, bringing a special toy horse in their pocket. They watch the sculptors work, using chainsaws, drills, chisels, picks, torches and steaming irons.

They watch until they are too cold, then have hot chocolate together. The child isn’t convinced it’s worth it to make sculptures that are going to melt anyway.

And to their dismay, the little horse is no longer in their pocket when they get home.

But then the next day they go back after dark. Now the sculptures are finished, and they’re magical and wondrous.

The cold and crowd melt away. There is only light and ice and stars and Mom and me.

And, yes, they find their toy horse – along with a special surprise. That’s the best part of all.

In the end, they realize that even though the sculptures melted, they never really went away because they’ll always remember their magic.

This is one of those quiet, lovely, wonderful books that you love more each time you read it.

sarahkurpiel.com

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Review of Trajectory, by Cambria Gordon

Award Winners, Historical, Mathematical, Teen Fiction Review 0

Trajectory

by Cambria Gordon

Scholastic Press, 2024. 285 pages.
Review written January 24, 2025, from my own copy, sent to me by the publisher.
Winner, Mathical Book Prize, High School

My committee just selected this as a Mathical Book Prize Winner, so I’m going to post a review. It’s historical nonfiction about a teenage girl named Eleanor who gets selected to work as a human computer calculating firing tables during World War II.

I’d had no idea such work happened, and that part was super interesting. Later, Eleanor gets selected to go to a desert base and help figure out how to improve the Norden bombsight. And she meets a handsome pilot while she’s there.

The setting is fascinating, based in historical fact that I’d known nothing about, and it’s always lovely to find a book that features a mathematician.

I did have some reservations. Her mathematical “gift” is portrayed as a rather mystical thing that comes and goes, and I didn’t like that portrayal. And I’m skeptical of the details about the Norden bombsight (the kind of development done seems to have mostly happened in the 1930s) and completely failed to suspend disbelief for a climactic scene where they needed a mathematician to save the day.

But – that’s why we choose winners via committee! The vast majority reminded me that this is historical fiction. And mathematics certainly go into bomber technology. And female mathematicians certainly did important work during World War II. And is it so terrible to read about a female mathematician saving the day with her mathematical skills, even if it feels a tiny bit implausible to me?

So anyway, I’m proud of our winner. You might need to suspend disbelief a bit, but there’s a good tale here about using math to win the day. And this year had more high school titles to consider than any other year I’ve served on the Mathical committee, which was a wonderful milestone.

cambrialgordon.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 Daddy Is a Cowboy, words by Stephanie Seales, pictures by C. G. Esperanza

Award Winners, Contemporary, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

My Daddy Is a Cowboy

words by Stephanie Seales
pictures by C. G. Esperanza

Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2024. 40 pages.
Review written February 11, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review
2025 Caldecott Honor Book
2025 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award Winner

This is a story of together time for a girl and her Daddy.

The book starts when he wakes her up before the sun. They get ready and ride a motorcycle to the “ranch” in the city – a regular house, with a backyard that has “stalls and stalls of horses.”

They get their horses ready – Daddy’s mare Power, and the girl’s pony Clover, and she feeds them the apple slices she brought.

And then they ride around the city neighborhood together. Daddy took her early so they wouldn’t have to worry about cars and trucks and things. Everyone who sees them smiles.

Later, Daddy will ride around the city with the other cowboys, and the girl will ride at the ranch with the other kids, but this is precious “just us” time, when she gets to be a cowboy like her Daddy.

It’s a good story about something I never guessed could happen in a big city – but what pushes it over to exceptional are the bright, vibrant, joyful, colorful illustrations.

Daddy says riding helped him feel stronger, safer, and happier.

I know what Daddy means because I feel that way when I ride.
Tall. High as the clouds.
Strong as a horse’s back.

stephanieseales.com
cgesperanza.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 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 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 Shut Up, This Is Serious, by Carolina Ixta, read by

Award Winners, Contemporary, Teen Fiction Review 0

Shut Up, This Is Serious

by Carolina Ixta
read by Frankie Corzo

Quill Tree Books, 2024. 10 hours, 19 minutes.
Review written January 22, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
2025 Morris Award Finalist
2025 Pura Belpré Young Adult Author Award

Shut Up, This Is Serious is about a high school senior named Belén whose life seems like it’s falling apart. Her best friend Leti is pregnant, and Leti’s going to love that baby – but she hasn’t yet dared to tell her racist parents that her boyfriend, the baby’s father, is Black.

As for Belén – she stopped caring about classes last year when her father left them and took her mom’s savings. Belén feels like no one even sees her anymore. So when she finds a college guy who’s willing to have sex with her, she doesn’t let herself notice all the things that are wrong with that, because it makes the heaviness lift for a little while.

But when she learns she has to complete one major English assignment in order to save her grade and graduate, she’s also paired with a partner whose hopes of going to the college of his choice are riding on it, too.

And that description doesn’t do justice to all the ways the pressures on Belén are portrayed and interwoven. She does lots of coping in bad ways, but let me say that the story does end with a hopeful note, and it’s an earned hope through the novel.

I was on the Morris Award committee a year ago, so it’s fun to see what they’ve discovered this year. I’ll admit it wasn’t my favorite read – a little too painful to read about the ways she wasn’t coping well. But wearing my committee hat, I do want to say that this is an outstanding debut novel, with nuanced characters and situations, and I hope the first of many more to come from this author.

carolinaixta.com

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