Review of The Lost Dreamer, by Lizz Huerta, read by Elisa Melendez and Inés del Castillo

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Lost Dreamer

by Lizz Huerta
read by Elisa Melendez and Inés del Castillo

Macmillan Audio, 2022. 10 hours, 52 minutes.
Review written November 5, 2022, from a library eaudiobook

The Lost Dreamer says on Amazon that it’s book one of a duology, so fair warning that there’s not much resolution at the end of this book — it feels like half of a story.

But what we do have is full of rich world-building. Chapters alternate between two different teenage girls. Both of them are dreamers — at night, they experience “The Dream,” a world inhabited by spirits, where they learn truths about the waking world. When someone dies, they say they “returned to the Dream.”

Indir, the first featured character, is part of a family of Dreamers, and she serves at the Temple of Night in the capital city. But after she dreams to answer a question for the king on his deathbed, her ability to enter the Dream disappears. Is she still a Dreamer? And then when the new king brings fire warriors to the city and seems hostile to Dreamers, they all fear that he’s ushering in chaos.

Our alternating featured character is Saya. Nobody knows she’s a dreamer, because her mother won’t allow her to tell anyone. In fact, her mother uses Saya’s gift to act as a seer in the villages where they travel. But Saya begins to want to come into her own.

Both of the girls’ stories increase in danger. The way they come together toward the end of the book surprised me.

The Dream is fantastical, and both characters spend plenty of time there. The author does a good job conveying how the Dream and the world about it works. As well as making us worry about what’s coming to that world.

lizzhuerta.com

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Review of May the Best Player Win, by Kyla Zhao

Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Starred Review 0

May the Best Player Win

by Kyla Zhao

G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2024. 225 pages.
Review written October 28, 2024, from a book sent to me by the publisher.
Starred Review

May the Best Player Win is about a middle school student named May who loves playing chess. As the book opens, she wins a trophy for being the top girl player at the State Middle School competition.

That gets her lots of attention from her school, and even from the media – but also prompts some jealousy from her competition on her own team. She thought Ralph was her friend, and they tied at the competition, but he tells her she’s not really that good and is only getting the attention because she’s a girl. So that starts a bet between them over which one will be named team captain when they compete at Nationals.

Meanwhile, her school’s doing a publicity campaign, and they pair May up with Mario, a soccer star, who turns out to be nice as well as athletic. But May needs to keep working on her chess game, and her friend Becca (who’s also on the team) wants time with her, and the school schedules picture-taking with Mario. When May starts telling little white lies to keep her schedule straight, Becca feels hurt.

This book does a great job of portraying middle school concerns and middle school pressures. We’re with May in her struggles to prioritize it all. And I like the natural way she gets to thinking about regaining her joy in playing chess that she had when she started playing at six years old, when she wasn’t thinking so much about winning.

The book gives each chapter a title that’s a chess term, with its definition, and they all fit remarkably well. It does a nice job of giving us the feel of what goes into being a serious chess player without getting lost in the details. It also felt like a genuine explanation of the game without hand-waving or magical abilities that just make the player “good” – I suspect because the author reveals at the back that she learned to play chess at six years old, like May – but later dropped out after encountering discrimination and criticism of girls and feeling pressured to win. I love that she’s got May facing those same obstacles and overcoming. May this be true for more and more girls today.

I love her letter to the reader at the back of the book (and the story is strong enough to carry it), which ends like this:

I hope May’s adventures inspire you to hold on to the joy of playing – in chess or in any activity you choose. Don’t let the weight of expectations dim the sparkle of your love for the game. Don’t let others tell you whether you are or aren’t good enough, because the only thing that should matter is your passion and determination. So, keep playing, keep dreaming, and most importantly, enjoy every moment on and off the chessboard.

KylaZhao.com

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Review of The Lost Wonderland Diaries, by J. Scott Savage

Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy 0

The Lost Wonderland Diaries

by J. Scott Savage

Shadow Mountain, 2020. 344 pages.
Review written September 6, 2022, from a library book

The Lost Wonderland Diaries is a wonderful tribute to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as a great-great-niece of Lewis Carroll discovers his lost diaries and gets pulled into Wonderland with her friend.

And it turns out that Wonderland is in trouble! They’ve been expecting an “Alice” to come and put it to rights. Celia is very sure she’s not the one. Her friend Tyrus, though, is an avid reader, and would love to be the hero of a story.

I probably should have remembered that I’m not really a fan of Alice in Wonderland before I picked up this book. The chaotic way the magic works, and Alice’s seemingly random progression through the story never made much sense to me, and this book is similar in that.

Now, there are some fun mathematical puzzles sprinkled through the books. I really liked Celia and Tyrus — even though they represent one of my pet peeves — the idea that “numbers people” and “books people” are wholly separate things.

Though in Celia’s case, she’s dyslexic, so it seemed fair that she’d have trouble with words and reading. (I wonder if she has trouble telling apart 9s and 6s.) I appreciated that she was shown to be intelligent despite her dyslexia. And Tyrus’s love for books and references to great children’s books was a lot of fun. I appreciated that both of them solved some of the puzzles with their own strengths.

But a little more problematic for me was the idea that the Queen of Hearts is all about logic and the King of Hearts all about imagination — as if those two things are opposites. I don’t buy it. Yes, the story showed that you need both, but I just don’t think they’re as fundamentally opposed as this book implies.

I suppose it’s all because two of my biggest passions are math and reading. And I actually think those things go together.

All that said, this was a well-written book and a good story. And yes, we need both imagination and logic! Fans of Lewis Carroll will especially enjoy it.

shadowmountain.com

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Review of The Wood Between the Worlds, by Brian Zahnd

Christian, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

The Wood Between the Worlds

A Poetic Theology of the Cross

by Brian Zahnd

InterVarsity Press, 2024. 206 pages.
Review written October 21, 2024, from my own copy, purchased via Amazon.com.
Starred Review

Here’s another book about the theology of the cross. This one, as seen in the title, takes a poetic approach. Here’s how he puts it in the first chapter, as he tells about a walking trip in Spain where he entered every church along the way and paid attention to the crucifixes:

For six weeks I saw different crucifixes every day, and as I walked, I meditated on what it meant that when the Son of God came into the world he was nailed to a tree. I heeded the Spirit’s admonition to resist a quick answer. This is the bane of tidy atonement theories. The idea that we can sum up the meaning of the crucifixion in a sentence or two borders on the blasphemous. Atonement theories have an unfortunate tendency to reduce the crucifixion to a single meaning. This is an enormous mistake. If you’re going to dabble in atonement theories, at least keep it plural. Reducing the cross to a single meaning quarantines the cross so it doesn’t touch too many areas of our lives.

So this book is more of a meditation on the cross than it is an explanation of the cross. There is an inset of color pictures of crucifixes from all over the world and from many different time periods.

Here’s another way he puts that thought:

The meaning of the cross is not singular, but kaleidoscopic. Each turn of a kaleidoscope reveals a new geometric image. This is how we must approach our interpretation of the cross – through the eyepiece of a theological kaleidoscope. That the word kaleidoscope is a Greek word meaning “beautiful form” makes this all the more apropos. I believe it is safe to assume there are an infinite number of ways of viewing the cross of Christ as the beautiful form that saves the world. In this book I seek to share some of the beautiful forms I see as I gaze upon the cross through my theological kaleidoscope.

But one thing you will not find here is any teaching that Jesus saves us from God.

The cross is not what God inflicts in order to forgive; the cross is what God in Christ endures as he forgives. This is an essential and enormous clarification! At the cross the Son does not act as an agent of change upon the Father. Orthodox theology has always insisted that God is not subject to change or mutation. Rather, God is immutable. Thus the cross is not where Jesus changes God but where Jesus reveals God. On Good Friday Jesus does not save us from God; Jesus reveals God as Savior! We don’t have to imagine the Son pacifying an angry Father in order to understand Good Friday as the epicenter of forgiveness.

Instead, Jesus shows us what God is like.

What do I see when I look upon Christ in death with a pierced side? I see that a soldier’s spear has opened a window into the heart of God. As I gaze into the heart of God I discover that there is no wrath, no malice, no threat, no vengeance; only compassion, mercy, and forgiveness. Jesus said, “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Mt 12:34). Jesus dies, not with a curse upon his lips, but with a plea for pardon. To see Christ upon the cross is to see into the very depths of the heart of God. Where once in our distant pagan past we imagined there lurked monstrous intent threatening harm, we now discover there is only tender compassion. On the cross we encounter a God who would rather die than kill his enemies. When we look through the riven side of Christ into the heart of God, we gaze upon a vast cosmos filled with galaxies of grace.

I like the way he also reaches for poetry, literature, music, and art to help us understand the centrality of the cross – as you can see in the title from C. S. Lewis.

The cross of Christ is the wood between the worlds – the world that was and the world to come.

Or you can see it in the chapter using images from Tolkien’s writings.

Just as Middle-earth could not be saved, only enslaved, by the Ring of Power, so Christianity cannot save the world by political power; it can only be corrupted by it. Jesus Christ crucified is the everlasting indictment on those who forsake the way of the cross to reach for the ring of political power. The power we are promised by our Lord is the power of the Holy Spirit – the power to love, forgive, and heal. If we try to wield the Ring of Power (or Caesar’s sword), it will only corrupt us.

There’s lots more in this book. I think I’m giving up on summarizing it and will be content that the quotations I’ve pulled out will give you an idea of what’s here. I recommend this book as an aid to meditating on the cross of Christ, the wood between the worlds.

brianzahnd.com
ivpress.com

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Review of Isla to Island, by Alexis Castellanos

Children's Fiction Review, Graphic Novel, Historical, Starred Review 0

Isla to Island

by Alexis Castellanos

Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2022. 192 pages.
Review written September 20, 2022, from a library book
Starred Review

Isla to Island is a historical graphic novel about a young Cuban girl named Marisol who gets sent to New York City as part of Operation Peter Pan in 1960, an operation to rescue children of Cubans who feared they would be imprisoned under Castro for their political beliefs, and their children with them.

The graphic novel story is mostly done with pictures, and it’s beautifully done. Scenes of Marisol in Cuba with her family are bright and colorful. The only text (and there’s not a lot) is in Spanish, including a rooster that crows, “Qui qui ri qui.” Already in Cuba, we see that Marisol loves flowers and books.

When she says a sad good-by to her parents, she lands in a New York City that is cold and gray and in the middle of winter. Her caretakers there are kind, but the colors are gone. At school, people laugh at her, and she doesn’t understand what the teacher is saying and gets failing grades.

But then she discovers the library. Books are the first things that are full of color, so much so that streams of color waft from them. And through the books she chooses, her caretakers discover her love of flowers and bring her to the greenhouse in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, where she sees familiar flowers from Cuba.

The graphic novel is great at visually representing Marisol’s dawning hope. An Author’s Note at the back explains about Operation Peter Pan and the author’s family connections to Marisol’s story.

This is a quick read with so much presented visually, so a short time spent gives you a lovely and uplifting story.

alexiscastellanos.com
simonandschuster.com/kids

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Review of Sunrise Nights, by Jeff Zentner and Brittany Cavallaro

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Romance, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Sunrise Nights

by Jeff Zentner and Brittany Cavallaro
read by Alexandra Hunter and Michael Crouch

Quill Tree Books, 2024. 7 hours, 28 minutes.
Review written October 30, 2024, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Sunrise Nights is a sweet young adult romance described by the publisher as a “novel in verse and dialogue.” Since I was listening to it, I didn’t realize the verse was there until I got to a few spots that were artistically poetry. Most of the book read as the girl and the boy describing their night.

And the book takes place during three all-night parties at the end of a summer camp for the arts. Florence is there for dance, and Jude is there for photography. They don’t meet until the last night – Sunrise Night – of their first year in the program. They go out on the town, and they hit it off in ways that are delightful to witness. Then they make a pact not to contact each other until the next Sunrise Night the following year.

Their first night together, Jude has a girlfriend. So that keeps them both from acknowledging their attraction. The second Sunrise Night, Florence has a boyfriend. But, well, the discussion between the two of them makes her rethink that.

And still, despite Jude saying he’s not going to let a simple misunderstanding make this like a teen rom com, they still don’t talk about their attraction until the third Sunrise Night.

I like that Florence and Jude are nuanced characters. Florence is losing her ability to dance because she has a deteriorating eye condition that destroys her balance. Jude is the first person besides her parents that she’s talked with about it. Jude has OCD that is undiagnosed until he takes Florence’s suggestion to see a therapist. He only knows the first year that his thoughts spiral. He’s also hurting because his parents recently split up, and he’s afraid that he drives away love.

It all adds up to a sweet story of two teens who are open with one another and find a listening ear when they need it most. But then they go a year between these times of connection. Which builds exactly the right amount of romantic tension.

jeffzentnerbooks.com
brittanycavallaro.com

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Review of Ode to Grapefruit, by Kari Lavelle, illustrated by Bryan Collier

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Ode to Grapefruit

How James Earl Jones Found His Voice

by Kari Lavelle
illustrated by Bryan Collier

Alfred A. Knopf, 2024. 48 pages.
Review written November 8, 2024, from a library book.
Starred Review

Ode to Grapefruit is an exquisitely illustrated picture book biography of James Earl Jones, the actor who gave us the voice of Darth Vader and Mufasa and so many other memorable characters.

The book begins with a scene of James in school, hoping the teacher won’t call on him, and then kids laughing when his words “get stuck.” We learn that James could speak just fine to the animals on the farm at home, but around people, whatever he tried wouldn’t get the words out. So he decided not to talk, just to listen. He was quiet for years.

In high school, he had a professor who loved poetry. He urged James to write his own poetry, and recite it aloud – and it turned out that when he was speaking in the rhythm of poetry, his stuttering wasn’t a problem.

While still a student, James went on to do public speaking in the theater and in debate and won a college scholarship. He still stuttered sometimes, but the main text of the book finishes this way:

After eight years of silence,
James found his voice,
low and booming,
beyond the dark side of fear.

With patience and practice,
the legendary sound
of James Earl Jones
would soon be known
around the world.

I love the way this book uses simple language that younger kids can understand to tell this inspirational story. The text and pictures focus in on key episodes instead of trying to give a grand overview, and that serves the message well of all that James Earl Jones overcame.

This picture book has a large size, and I love the way James Earl Jones’ eyes, almost as distinctive as his voice, hold the gaze of the reader even when he was young. Oh, and “Ode to Grapefruit” was the name of that first poem James wrote and recited – the poem that changed everything for him.

karilavelle.com
rhcbooks.com

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Review of The It Girl, by Ruth Ware, read by Imogen Church

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Fiction Review, Mystery, Starred Review, Suspense 0

The It Girl

by Ruth Ware
read by Imogen Church

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2023. 17 hours, 9 minutes.
Review written August 9, 2024, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Well, I have to confess – as I began listening to this audiobook, I was sure right from the start that I knew who the killer was and that I’ve been listening to too many Ruth Ware books. Reader, I was wrong. I’ll say no more except that she can still keep me guessing! And even when I thought I knew the solution, the story still kept me listening.

The It Girl is about a murder that happened ten years ago at an Oxford college to April Clarke-Cliveden, the roommate of Hannah Jones, at the end of their first year.

April was everything Hannah wasn’t, beautiful and rich and popular. She did have a habit of playing practical jokes that edged on mean-spirited, and she obviously wasn’t faithful to her boyfriend Will – a guy Hannah had a crush on – but April was vibrant and alive and drew a circle of friends around them.

As the book opens in the present, the man who was convicted for April’s murder, the creepy porter of their college, has died in prison, still maintaining his innocence. It all makes Hannah very uneasy, since she gave the evidence that put him away. Could she have been wrong?

We get the story told us “Before” and “After” – the story leading up to April’s death, their happy days at Oxford, and in the present, ten years later, with Hannah happily married to Will and expecting their first child. But a reporter who’s friends with one of their friends from Oxford gets under Hannah’s skin with the idea that maybe that porter wasn’t guilty after all.

And yes, Ruth Ware managed to surprise me. She tells a story so engaging it’s hard to stop listening, with characters you feel like you know, and then she adds a compelling mystery with of course danger to the main character when she learns too much, too late.

There are still some Ruth Ware books I haven’t read, and let’s see how long I can stand to wait before putting the next one on hold.

ruthware.com

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Review of How Do You Spend? by Cinders McLeod

Animal Characters, Mathematical, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

How Do You Spend?

A Moneybunny Book

by Cinders McLeod

Nancy Paulsen Books (Penguin Random House), 2024. 32 pages.
Review written October 31, 2024, from a book sent to me by the publisher.
Starred Review

How Do You Spend? is a perfectly pitched introduction to spending money for very young children.

Here’s how it begins:

Carrots are money in Bunnyland,
and Bun has saved a lot!

How will Bun spend her carrots?

The following spreads show how Bun spends her carrots. Each page has the format across the top, “Sometimes Bun spends…” with an adjective. The picture shows that day’s spending, and across the bottom you have in a child’s print: “Today I spent x carrots.” with the x filled in with the number spent. I appreciate that on every page, you can see and count the carrots spent.

I appreciate that the book starts with adjectives a young child is more familiar with – Fast (and a picture of Bun running with a shopping cart that is filling up) and Slow (and Bun taking a ride on one of those stationary rides in front of a grocery store).

But the book does go on to pairs like Expensive and Cheap, Ordinary and Exciting. And I like the pairs For Tomorrow (showing piano lessons that cost 2 carrots per month and 24 carrots for a year) and For Today (buying Bunny Hop tickets), and On Herself (ice cream), and On Others (flowers she gives to another bunny).

It’s just a super simple conversation-starter for a young child, ending with the question, “How do you like to spend?” So simple, but so engaging. Basically, you can talk about feelings or the physical act of spending or about numbers – or anything that enters a child’s head.

This book is part of a series. Our library already has one, and I’m planning to order the rest.

Moneybunnies.com
CindersMcLeod.com

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Review of Gwen & Art Are Not in Love, by Lex Croucher, read by Sarah Ovens and Alex Singh

Fantasy, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Gwen and Art Are Not in Love

by Lex Croucher
read by Sarah Ovens and Alex Singh

Macmillan Young Listeners, 2023. 10 hours, 48 minutes.
Review written October 26, 2024, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Okay, this one is just lots of fun. It’s set in England a few hundred years after Arthur Pendragon. Gwen’s father, a descendant of Arthur Pendragon, has moved the capital to Camelot to try to hold onto the kingdom. He’s also made an alliance when Gwen was a baby to win over the cultists, and betrothed her to Arthur, now 19 years old and also a descendant of Arthur Pendragon.

Gwen and Art have despised each other since they were children and Gwen broke Art’s arm and Art put a toad in her bed. Now? Well, as it happens, Gwen spots Art kissing a boy, but then Art discovers Gwen’s diary and learns she’s in love with Lady Bridget, the only female knight in the kingdom, who is currently competing in the big tournament in Camelot.

And then Art starts falling for Gabriel, Gwen’s brother and the heir to the throne. But both Gwen and Gabriel thought that someone in their position wasn’t allowed to be happy. But maybe Gwen and Art should go through with their engagement, because who could understand them better?

I’m calling this Fantasy because it’s a fantasy England where Arthur was real, and many in the story believe in magic, but no actual magic happens in the book (that we can be sure is magic, anyway).

The story has lots of hijinks and laughs and scrapes, but there’s a serious side because there is unrest in the kingdom. The narrators are lovely (I always like British accents!) and this is one I’m sure I enjoyed all the more from listening to it. Just plain fun.

lexcroucher.co.uk

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