Review of Adventures in Math, written by Carleigh Wu, illustrated by Sean Simpson

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

Adventures in Math

How to Level Up Your Math Game

written by Carleigh Wu
illustrated by Sean Simpson

Kids Can Press, 2025. 80 pages.
Review written January 5, 2026, from a book sent to me by the publisher.
Starred Review
Mathical Book Prize Honor Book, Grades 6-8

I love what the author is doing here. Instead of giving you specific techniques for solving certain math problems, this book tells you how to think about doing math and gives you techniques based on psychological research for approaching math problems successfully.

There are five chapters, each giving a simple principle and busting a myth about math. And short biographies are given of mathematicians whose lives bust the myths.

The first myth is that you have to be born with a math brain to be good at math. The truth is that everyone can work at it to get better, and the author explains a growth mindset. We learn about great mathematicians who didn’t start out good at math.

Next they tackle the myth that you should be able to solve math problems by yourself.

Math is social. It’s better together.

The mathematicians here worked with collaborators. One of the tips in this section is about an interesting study done that if you physically move closer to a problem, it will seem more difficult, but if you take a step back, it will seem easier. This encourages kids to see the big picture.

Another myth tackled is that if you make mistakes, you’re not smart. A whole chapter emphasizes how important mistakes are to help you learn. They give an example of astronauts who need to make zero mistakes in space – so they train in simulations on earth, where they can make lots of mistakes and perfect their techniques. Another example that most kids can relate to is video games. Most kids don’t think they’re bad at video games if they lose a life quickly the first time they play. They keep playing, and get better each time. Other fields – including math – are like that, too.

And there’s much more in this book. There’s discussion of using diagrams to solve problems, thoughts on how there are usually multiple ways to solve math problems, how creativity can help with math problems, and an example of out-of-the-box thinking about a contest to design toilets without plumbing or electricity.

This book makes me think of The Willpower Instinct, except for kids, because it’s about how to think about math in order to get better at doing it. I’d love to give this to a kid who doesn’t think they’re “good at” math.

carleighwu.com
seansimpsonillustration.com

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Review of The Nine Moons of Han Yu and Luli, by Karina Yan Glaser

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

The Nine Moons of Han Yu and Luli

by Karina Yan Glaser
read by Sira Siu and Brian Nishii

HarperCollins, 2025. 10 hours, 1 minute.
Review written January 31, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
2026 Newbery Honor Book

The Nine Moons of Han Yu and Luli tells two stories, 1200 years apart. Han Yu is a boy living in China in the year 731, during the Tang dynasty. He sells steamed buns in the market with his father. But when his entire family gets put into isolation because of his sister’s case of the illness sweeping the countryside, Han Yu decides to accept the commission intended for his father and travel along the trade routes later known as the Silk Roads to deliver the goods and make more money than his family can make in a year.

Alongside that story, with alternating chapters, we learn about Luli, who lives in 1931 Chinatown in New York City. Luli’s family owns a restaurant that used to be bustling and busy, but now hard times have fallen and business is slow, and they are in danger of losing the building that houses their restaurant and their home.

The parallels in the story are skillfully executed, though the children’s lives are so far apart in time and space. Both children start selling steamed buns to help their families. Both face difficulties and hardships with a parallel flow through the alternating chapters. Despite the cliffhanger chapter endings, I never found myself annoyed to switch characters, because I was equally interested in each character’s adventures.

Han Yu has a way with animals that they come to him and turn to him. And rumors say that a tiger protects him. Along the way, he meets a young poet who becomes his best friend. Luli, too, has a dog who protects her, and friends who help. Her whole class visits the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and they also visit the Chinese art treasures that Luli’s neighbor keeps in their building at the gift shop.

What ties the two stories together? There’s a piece of silk that has been handed down in Luli’s neighbor’s family for generations. It has a poem written on it in Chinese characters. So we’re ready to hear the story of how it came to be.

I have to say that both characters have some awfully good luck that keeps disaster averted – but in a children’s story, I think we all have more tolerance for that. (I certainly needed those kids to get a happy ending!) And the kids themselves both have plenty of opportunities to display courage and resourcefulness.

It’s not every author who can tie together two stories of children from 1200 years apart who never meet and have it work beautifully. This story, steeped in actual history, gives the reader a deep appreciation for Chinese culture along with the joy of a story well-told.

karinaglaser.com

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Review of We Deserve Monuments, by Jas Hammonds

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

We Deserve Monuments

By Jas Hammonds

Roaring Brook Press, 2022. 375 pages.
Review written January 26, 2023, from a library book
2022 Capitol Choices Selection
2023 Coretta Scott King John Steptoe Award for New Talent
Starred Review

We Deserve Monuments is about a Black lesbian teen named Avery who suddenly got uprooted from her home in DC at the start of her senior year of high school. Avery’s grandmother is dying of cancer in rural Georgia, and her mother decided that the family needed to be with her – never mind that the last time they visited was when Avery was five.

Mama Letty doesn’t even seem glad to see them. She calls Avery “Fish” because her lip ring makes her look like a fish on a hook. She’s prickly and isn’t exactly grateful for the family swooping down because she’s dying.

But other things go surprisingly well for Avery. The girl next door and her white friend take her under their wing, and she’s quickly got better friends than she had in DC, including the girlfriend she recently broke up with.

But there are complications. Avery learns for the first time about her grandfather who was killed by Klan members before her mother was born. And then it turns out those Klan members are related to her new white friend. And she is attracted to the girl next door, but has no reason to think those feelings are returned.

All this is going on while she’s trying to get to know Mama Letty, but learns about family trauma and hurt. And why can’t her mother and grandmother ever have a conversation without fighting?

I like the way the author shows us a family with lots of flaws but also lots of love.

Jashammonds.com
Fiercereads.com

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Review of The Corruption of Hollis Brown, by K. Ancrum

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

The Corruption of Hollis Brown

by K. Ancrum
read by Andrew Gibson

HarperCollins, 2025. 8 hours, 20 minutes.
Review written January 7, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
National Book Award Longlist

This book begins with Hollis Brown getting beat up. He starts fights on purpose – knows how to say what will set people off – but this one got him hurt pretty bad. His only friends are two other seniors, Annie and Yulia, but they’ll be going off to college at the end of this year. They live in a small town with a defunct factory where everyone’s too poor to leave. Hollis’s own father is rarely home because he’s working in the city.

And then something strange happens when the seniors decide to spend the night in the abandoned part of town that’s reportedly haunted. Annie’s ex-boyfriend, whom she just broke up with, gets stabbed. And Hollis gets blamed for it because the guy was mad he was there with Annie, and Hollis was the only one with enough presence of mind to take him to the hospital. At that point, I thought the book was going to be about whatever mysterious thing was going on in the abandoned part of town.

And then – after Hollis cries in the woods about the unfairness of it all – he meets a strange boy who appears to be homeless and gives the boy his coat. After Hollis agrees to meet the guy again – a spirit comes out of the stranger’s dead body and inhabits Hollis’s body.

Hollis can’t control his body at all. He can talk to the spirit and tell him to wipe his shoes before he goes into the house and faces Hollis’s mother. But nothing else.

The spirit – whose name is Walt and turns out to have grown up in the same town a long time ago – has ideas about how Hollis should dress and act. He even gets Hollis making new friends. But at night, when Walt is asleep, Hollis works on controlling his own hand. If he can just reach his phone without waking up Walt….

But things from there continued to not go as I expected. As Hollis and Walt slowly come to know and understand one another, situations change.

Ultimately, this is a book about love and friendship and hope. But comes at it with an approach like nothing I’ve ever read before.

kancrum.com

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Review of All the Blues in the Sky, by Renée Watson

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

All the Blues in the Sky

by Renée Watson

Bloomsbury Children’s Books, 2025. 182 pages.
Review written January 27, 2026, from my own copy, given to me at ALA Annual Conference and signed by the author.
Starred Review
2026 Newbery Medal Winner

I was happy when the Newbery Medal Winner was announced – and it was a book sitting by my bed in one of my TBR piles, signed by the author. And yes, I’d heard the author speak before I got it signed at ALA Annual Conference, and I was very excited about reading it.

I was disappointed in myself that I hadn’t read it yet. (So many books, so little time! I wanted to read it right away, but there are so many books in those piles, plus award reading, plus I just blew it.)

However, the good side was that it made perfect Snow Day reading. In between walks in the snow, I lounged by the fire, and as a novel in verse, it wasn’t long before I had this beautiful book read.

Here’s the first page of the text:

I didn’t know
best friends could die.

Yes, this is a book about grief. The narrator is Sage, and on her thirteenth birthday her best friend was walking to her house and was hit by a car and died.

Sage is in a grief group after school with four other kids. Two of them lost a loved one suddenly, and two lost a loved one slowly, after a long process. Sage feels like that’s not the same, since she didn’t get a chance to say good-by.

But there are ups and downs after loss. And sometimes the sadness and happiness come at the same time. Sage wants to be a pilot, and she’s going to a program about learning to be one, and she thinks about all the different shades of blue in the sky – and all the different shades of grief.

The poetry in this book is beautiful. We feel with Sage, grieve with her, but also rejoice with her. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself shedding some tears while reading it. (Especially at the rejoicing with her part.) And the book brings us to a place where we know she’ll be able to carry on, feeling all the emotions.

An Author’s Note at the back tells us that Renée Watson lost fifteen people she loved, including her mother, in the space of two years. This didn’t surprise me, because she brings authenticity to the story. And ultimately, hope. She ends the Author’s Note and the book like this:

I hope this book gives every reader permission to feel real emotions, to admit when life is hard.
I hope this book reminds every reader that in the midst of sadness and grief, there can be joy and goodness.

And Renée models that – because out of her own deep loss, she brought forth this wonderful book.

reneewatson.net

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2026 Youth Media Awards!

Award Winners 0

Today the American Library Association’s Youth Media Awards were announced!

For the last couple years, I’ve done a program for other Youth Services librarians in February, highlighting award winners – so for this month I’m going to try to madly read the winners I’ve missed. But I did want to take a moment to celebrate the wonderful books I did read and love before they got their due recognition.

The picture above is the wonderful way I spent a bit of my snow day – reading the Newbery Medal winner, All the Blues in the Sky, by Renee Watson. I was given a signed copy last June at ALA Annual Conference, and fully meant to read it, but it didn’t have a due date! So that way it was all ready for me to read today.

But which ones did I catch? First, I love that I had a review of the Sibert Medal Winner, Alberto Salas Plays Paka Paka con la Papa, by Sara Andrea Fajardo and Juana Martinez-Neal, all queued up to post today.

Another book that I only recently discovered was Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor Book, André: André Leon Talley – A Fabulously Fashionable Fairy Tale, written by Carole Boston Weatherford and Rob Sanders, illustrated by Lamont O’Neal.

But how did my 2025 Sonderbooks Stand-outs do?

First, I’m super happy about the success of my #3 Stand-out in Teen Speculative Fiction, Legendary Frybread Drive-in, edited by Cynthia Leitich Smith. This book won the Michael L. Printz Award and the American Indian Youth Literature Award for Best Young Adult Book and an Odyssey Honor for audiobooks.

Another triple winner was Candace Fleming. Not only did she win the YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award for her latest book (My #2 Stand-out in Teen Nonfiction), Death in the Jungle, she won YALSA’s Margaret Edwards Award for lifetime achievement in writing for young adults and ALSC’s Children’s Literature Legacy Award for a substantial and lasting contribution to literature for children.

And a double winner was Whale Eyes, by James Robinson, my #1 Stand-out in Children’s Nonfiction, which won the Schneider Family Young Adult Award and an Odyssey Honor for audiobooks. (Since a strength of that book was how he showed you what it’s like to see the way he does – I really wonder how they pulled that off in an audiobook.)

Another double winner was my #2 Sonderbooks Stand-out in More Teen Fiction, Sisters in the Wind, by Angeline Boulley, which was a Printz Honor Book and an American Indian Youth Literature Award Honor Book.

The rest of my Stand-outs that won things won only one thing each. Let me go by category:

Last year’s #8 in Speculative Teen Fiction, Sheine Lende, by Darcie Little Badger, was also an American Indian Youth Literature Award Honor Book. (These are given in even years.)

Another Printz Honor went to Song of a Blackbird, by Maria van Lieshout, a book I reviewed and loved but didn’t quite make my Stand-outs list.

#5 in Children’s Speculative Fiction, The Undead Fox of Deadwood Forest, by Aubrey Hartman, was a John Newbery Medal Honor Book.

#2 in More Children’s Fiction, The Teacher of Nomad Land, by Daniel Nayeri, was also a John Newbery Medal Honor Book.

#3 in More Children’s Fiction, The Incredibly Human Henson Blayze, by Derrick Barnes, was a Coretta Scott King Author Honor Book.

#9 in Children’s Nonfiction, The Book of Candles: Eight Poems for Hanukkah, written by Laurel Snyder, illustrated by Leanne Hatch, won a Sydney Taylor Silver Medal for Picture Books.

#2 in Picture Books, the brilliant Every Monday Mabel, by Jashar Awan, was a Randolph Caldecott Medal Honor Book. (I got a signed copy of that at ALA!)

#8 in Picture Books, Chooch Helped, by Andrea L. Rogers, illustrated by Rebecca Lee Koonz, won last year’s Randolph Caldecott Medal, and this year’s American Indian Youth Literature Award for Best Picture Book. (These are given every other year.)

And my Stand-outs are not selected for the art alone, so I am indeed delighted with this year’s Randolph Caldecott Medal Winner, my #9 Sonderbooks Stand-out in Picture Books, Fireworks, by Matthew Burgess, illustrated by Cátia Chien.

Yes, I did need a moment of silence for my Sonderbooks Stand-outs that did not win any awards today – but all of them have my deep love. And all of the choices are truly wonderful. So it’s worth taking time to celebrate these amazing books. Huzzah!

And for the next month, you can expect to see more reviews of award winners – and they may well show up on next year’s Sonderbooks Stand-outs.

Review of Kareem Between, by Shifa Saltagi Safadi, read by Peter Romano

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

Kareem Between

by Shifa Saltagi Safadi
read by Peter Romano

Listening Library, 2024. 3 hours, 22 minutes.
Review written February 15, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
2024 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature Winner
2024 CYBILS Award Winner, Novels in Verse
2025 Capitol Choices Selection

Kareem Between is about a child of immigrants born in America who loves football and wants to play on his middle school team. But when his best friend moves away on the day of tryouts, he doesn’t do his best and doesn’t make the team.

So when the coach’s son – who did make the team – promises to put in a word with his dad if Kareem will do his homework, Kareem thinks it’s probably worth it just this once. But it turns out that it becomes an expectation.

Now, I’m too much of a rule-follower to have a lot of sympathy for Kareem as he dug himself into a deeper and deeper hole. But then his mother goes to Syria to try to bring her ailing parents back with her to America. His doctor father can’t go, because any Syrian man will be conscripted into the army during war time. It’s the start of 2017, and I remembered what a bad time that was to travel to Syria.

Meanwhile, with his mother gone leaving the whole family on edge, a Syrian refugee family has moved to their neighborhood with a boy Kareem’s age named Fadi, and Kareem is asked to help him at school. But when the coach’s kid starts bullying Fadi, Kareem doesn’t want to get caught in that negative attention.

Well, thankfully Kareem does finally get pushed to the edge and figures out he needs to try to make things right. But as that is happening, Trump’s Muslim ban goes into effect, causing great pain and heartache, and they can’t even reach Kareem’s mother in Syria.

This book is far too timely right now, putting a face and heart to a story of a child of immigrants feeling in between both cultures – and being part of what truly makes America great.

shifasafadi.com

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Review of The Teacher of Nomad Land, by Daniel Nayeri

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

The Teacher of Nomad Land

A World War II Story

by Daniel Nayeri
read by Daniel Nayeri

Listening Library, 2025. 3 hours, 23 minutes.
Review written December 12, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
2025 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature Winner

Ahhhh. The Teacher of Nomad Land is my favorite Daniel Nayeri book so far. And he’s already won the Printz Award and Newbery Honor. Traditionally, it usually turns out that the winner of the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature does not win the Newbery Medal. Will this year break the pattern?

But about the book. As the subtitle indicates, this is a World War II story, and it’s set in Iran. Iran wasn’t the main stage in World War II and was officially neutral – but that made it a place where people from all over the world could meet one another – with lots of room for misunderstandings.

Our story begins in Isfahan when Babak’s father has recently been killed by the Russian army. His father had been visiting the nomads in their summer home, teaching their children, and the army fired at them, thinking they were insurgents. Babak promises his little sister Sanna that even though they are orphans, he won’t let them be split up, but their relatives don’t give them any choice.

So Babak works as an errand boy for a year, trying to save money to take Sanna away with him so they can be together. They will ask the nomads to take them in before they leave for their winter home.

After a year of saving, the money doesn’t work out, but Babak and Sanna set out anyway. Babak brings along his father’s blackboard, rigged with leather straps to carry on his back. He offers to teach the nomads’ children and tries to be as good a teacher as his father was, but his first attempt isn’t enough for the chief of the nomads.

But then the adventure really begins. As Babak and Sanna try to find their way back to Isfahan, staying together no matter what, they encounter a ruthless Nazi spy who takes all their food. Later, they meet the Jewish refugee boy from Poland that the German is looking for. Together, they try to make their way to somewhere safe, but there’s lots of misunderstanding along the way, not to mention the need for food and water.

The most brilliant scene of all is when Babak figures out how to facilitate communication between the nomads, British soldiers, and Russian soldiers – using I think it was five different languages.

Along the way, Babak learns to emulate his father and think like a teacher, gleaning plenty of wisdom as he does so.

I also love that the book isn’t overindulgent in its length, despite the heavy topic of war time – under four hours in an audiobook! – just right for a children’s book. Yes, it’s about war time, so there are dangerous and scary situations, but the kids at the center of it come through brilliantly.

danielnayeri.com

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Review of Home, by Isabelle Simler

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

Home

by Isabelle Simler
translated by Vineet Lal

Eerdmans Books for Young Readers, 2024. Originally published in France in 2022. 68 pages.
Review written February 5, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review
2025 Mildred Batchelder Award Honor Book

The Batchelder Award is given to the publishers of the best books published in English, originally published in a country other than the United States and in a language other than English. I’m impressed that a book of poetry won, because I would think that poetry is hard to translate. No, it’s not rhymed poetry, but still, the translator did a beautiful job, and the original illustrations in this book are stunning.

This is a book of poetry – about animal homes. Each spread features a different species and the type of home they live in, narrated by the creature, and telling how they construct their distinctive home.

Some interesting homes featured include the straw apartment complex of the sociable weaver (generations of birds live in these giant nests!), bubble house of the diving bell spider, cactus cabin of the elf owl, foam hiding place of the foam-nest tree frog, and tubular condo of the European fan worm. Many more are featured, and all have beautiful illustrations of their home – with more facts in the back.

A lovely book to browse through and wonder over. We truly have an amazingly varied world.

eerdmans.com

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Review of Truth Is, by Hannah V. Sawyerr

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

Truth Is

by Hannah V. Sawyerr

Amulet Books, 2025. 474 pages.
Review written September 23, 2025, from an Advance Reader Copy signed by the author.
Starred Review
2025 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature Longlist

I’m definitely biased about this book, since it came with a hug! Hannah Sawyerr was one of the debut authors who was a Morris Award Finalist the year I was on the Morris committee, and we got to have lunch with the authors after the award ceremony. So when I was in line at ALA Annual Conference this year to get this Advance Reader Copy, Hannah recognized me at once and gave me a hug! It had me smiling all day because she is a genuinely great author, and being on the Morris feels like we’re discovering authors – even though the Walter Award committee and the Cybils committee also recognized her first book, All the Fighting Parts.

So I was thrilled when her second book showed up on the National Book Award Longlist. I had just gotten around (finally) to reading the ARC. It shows that I may be biased, but I am certainly not wrong in thinking that her writing is good!

Truth Is is about a girl named Truth Bangura who is a slam poet in Philadelphia, starting her Senior year, and trying to decide what to do after she graduates.

And then she discovers she’s pregnant by her ex-boyfriend. She wrestles with the decision, but chooses an abortion. That brings consequences especially in her relationship with her best friend. But it doesn’t bring regret.

Truth is hiding a lot of things from her mother, including her pregnancy and abortion, but also her participation on the slam poetry team. So when her performance of a poem goes viral – about the abortion and about how she’s scared to tell her mother – her mother is not happy.

I love the Author’s Note at the front of the Advance Reader Copy (I hope it will be in the finished book!), especially this part:

Truth Is is a pro-choice novel in every sense of the phrase. Truth’s choice to move forward with an abortion is made early on in the novel, and the majority of the novel focuses on her life and her choices after the abortion. My intention behind this was always to show readers that life continues after big decisions.

For young people who decide to read Truth Is, it is important to me that you know that, like Truth’s poetry, life is filled with many deliberate choices and a whole lot of revision. A lot of questions and heartbreak. But a lot of gain and victories too. You have the power to make new decisions every day and can always choose to revise and write a new story.

Hannah Sawyerr beautifully pulls off this theme, as besides navigating her senior year and her relationships, Truth is learning to be a slam poet. We see the three poems Truth ends up taking to the slam poetry competition at the end of the year – and how Truth revises them along the way.

The book takes us through three trimesters of the school year, and Truth’s choice at the end about what she should do next. Like All the Fighting Parts, this story is told with power and beauty.

hannahsawyerr.com

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