Review of We Are Big Time, written by Hena Khan, illustrated by Safiya Zerrougui

Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Graphic Novel 0

We Are Big Time

written by Hena Khan
illustrated by Safiya Zerrougui

Alfred A. Knopf, 2024. 233 pages.
Review written October 9, 2024, from a library book.

This graphic novel opens as Aliyah and her family are moving from Tampa to Milwaukee, to be near her grandparents. Aliyah’s not happy about it. She misses the beaches, her school, her friends, her neighborhood, the sunshine, and her basketball team.

In Milwaukee, everything is bigger – bigger house, a bigger job for her dad, and a bigger family with their grandparents and other relatives. But it makes Aliyah feel small.

And it turns out that her school is bigger, too. It’s a private Muslim school, Peace Academy. And they have a girls’ basketball team! Historically, though, they’ve always been pretty bad.

From there, this becomes a classic sports graphic novel. The school has hired a new coach who’s not Muslim but has great basketball skills. Aliyah’s named as co-captain, even though she’s a Freshman new to the school, and she has a lot of self-doubt.

But something interesting about this team is that all the girls wear a hijab. Their uniforms cover their arms and legs. And that seems to be what other people pay attention to.

So when they start turning things around and winning ball games, they get some media attention – and they seem surprised that Muslim families are supportive of their girls playing basketball, and that the girls can play just fine with longer uniforms and head scarves.

This graphic novel gets you cheering for these girls, who learn to work together as a team, represent their community, and have a whole lot of fun.

henakhan.com
safiyaz.com
rhcbooks.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 Well-Trained Wife, by Tia Levings

Biography, Christian, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review, True Stories 0

A Well-Trained Wife

My Escape from Christian Patriarchy

by Tia Levings

St. Martin’s Press, 2024. 289 pages.
Review written October 18, 2024, from my own copy, purchased from Amazon.com
Starred Review

A Well-Trained Wife is a memoir from Tia Levings about her life in Christian fundamentalism, her abusive marriage, and how she finally got the courage to leave. Here’s an excerpt from the Prologue:

Allan screamed every night at the demons in the walls. He clutched at my neck as often as he tore his hair seeing those fiery red eyes. He swore he’d kill me. Or he’d take the kids “forever.” Finally, I begged him to see a doctor. I called him “unwell,” too afraid to call it insanity.

The church called Allan’s demons spiritual warfare. Seeing demons pointed to spiritual truth, not illness. Allan didn’t need medicine – I needed correction. They told me to submit more. Go to church more. And anyway, Allan refused doctors. That settled that.

And I was supposed to turn the other cheek. Divorce wasn’t allowed any more than doctors. Now, my long hair hid the scars resulting from my vows to love, honor, and obey. “Till death do us part” could mean by his hand, but who cared?

The Prologue tells us where the story is going, and then Tia’s story shows us how she got there. She starts out with her background in a fundamentalist church and her earnest desire to please God – as well as the boy her friend introduced her to who tried to molest her. And then guilt for that, and plenty of teaching about how a woman’s role is to get married and please her husband and have his babies. One of her best friends in high school was a guy she was afraid was gay – and believed that meant he’d go to hell if it were true.

And then she meets Allan. He is also looking for the woman God has for him. And he moves quickly. Tia relates their story with all the red flags that she didn’t realize were red flags at the time. They get married and get involved in increasingly more conservative churches. Both of them get discipled by people who tell them that Allan needs to be the one in control – complete with “disciplining” Tia and not letting her post anything online he hasn’t approved.

Tia’s story includes five kids and the excruciating story of an infant who gets heart surgery – and then passes away when only nine weeks old. Through it all, her husband is controlling and abusive – and Tia keeps thinking that if she does better, is more obedient, more pleasant, she can change things for them.

Until finally she realizes her life and her children’s lives are in danger, and she escapes in the night.

Tia Levings tells her story well. There’s lots of detail so we understand where she is coming from, and she speaks with compassion for her past self who went through so much and just wanted to please God. She talks about the many lifelines who helped her gain perspective, helped her even think about leaving, and helped her get her feet on the ground after she did leave.

I like these words of perspective in one of the later chapters:

But that’s the thing about puritanical high-control religion. All those God-rules had numbed the entire human experience. The good and the bad, the joy and the pain. The rules said there wasn’t more and I was wrong to thirst for it. Now here was reality, offering me drink.

And of course the book makes me reflect. Because I grew up in a conservative Christian home. I have described it before as not as extreme as those who were home schooled and deep into Bill Gothard’s teachings. We weren’t as extreme as what she describes here.

But then I think, hold on, the only reason my parents weren’t as extreme is that the churches they attended weren’t quite that extreme. But I attended Bill Gothard’s “Institute in Basic Youth Conflicts” many times. I think the only reason we didn’t go to the Advanced seminar (and maybe my oldest brother did?) was that it wasn’t happening nearby, and we’d never pay for plane flights.

I was third of thirteen children. We went to church twice on Sundays and on Wednesday nights as well. We went to Christian schools. Or at least we older kids did – the later kids were homeschooled. I went to a Christian university and married a young man I met there who had his own notebook from Bill Gothard’s Advanced Seminar.

I’ve long told myself that we had a good marriage for many years – until my husband let chronic resentment get in and had an affair and left me. But this book made me wonder how much I was fooling myself. I had wanted to be a stay-at-home Mom, but we couldn’t afford that and I worked part-time for most of the time we were married – and felt a little resentful about that. I happily followed his job around the country and the world – but I wonder if there would have been a better way to approach it. And of course, I knew absolutely nothing about sex when I got married. I always thought it was beautiful to learn together – but well, this book made me think more about those kids hurrying into marriage and thinking they knew “God’s right way” to do things. I’m just not sure I was any more clear-eyed than Tia was.

All that is to say that this book is compelling and well-written. And it made me think about what makes a good marriage – and that it’s perhaps not as clear-cut as my pastors used to try to make me believe.

I love this statement on the very last page:

I have a new spiritual practice now. One that is fluid and deeply private. There are no gurus or holy books of rules. My mycorrhizal network underground communicates through poetry, gratitude, compassion, reality, and supreme love. I’m a tree rooted to the deep with arms reaching for the sky. I’m a woman. A mother writer artist hiker friend, but more than any role. I am not half of another. Nor the completion of their aching soul. I don’t owe anyone my body or service. Training is for dogs. I’m a human soul on a journey home and I belong to me.

That makes me believe that Tia Levings is going to go on to live a good and joyful life. Not a perfect one, but a rich and lovely one, with plenty of joys and sorrows. And I believe that I am doing so, too.

Thank you for sharing your story, Tia! Here’s to a life free of rules but full of love and joy.

tialevings.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 Unbecoming, by Seema Yasmin

Contemporary, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Unbecoming

by Seema Yasmin

Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2024. 352 pages.
Review written October 21, 2024, from a library book.
Starred Review

Unbecoming is just barely speculative fiction – may it continue to be speculative! It’s about a near-future United States where abortion is illegal, and so is any and all type of hormonal pill. So birth control pills are illegal, as is hormone replacement therapy and IVF.

Our two teen protagonists, Laylah and Noor, are seniors in high school living in Texas in a Muslim community. Laylah is active with the mosque youth group, but Noor has been staying away for a couple years. They are working together to write an online website called “A Texas Teen’s Guide to Safe Abortion.”

But as the book opens, Laylah is in a sketchy mobile clinic disguised as a taco truck – and learns that she is pregnant.

This does not fit with her plans to go to medical school and become a doctor. She would like to take the abortion pill within 70 days since her last period – the time when it’s effective – but that clinic is out of them and says they’re impossible to find in Texas.

So the book is about Laylah trying to pretend nothing is wrong and that she’s researching for the Guide – but trying to find a way to get the abortion pill before she runs out of time. Her adventures include a couple of dangerous scenarios, and the clock is ticking the whole time. (If she has to get a surgical abortion, she’s told she’ll have to go to Mexico.)

Meanwhile, Noor is working to become an investigative journalist, and she’s convinced the wife of the iman and leader of the mosque’s youth group is up to something shady with mosque funds. But she doesn’t want to tell Laylah, because Laylah trusts the woman. And on top of this there are family expectations, not to mention the expectations of all the ladies in their community. So both Laylah and Noor have secrets from each other and feel guilty about it.

This is a good book to read before the election – may it never come true!

Now, if you believe abortion is murder (as I once did), this might be hard to read. Laylah doesn’t give a thought to the beginning life inside her and can be taken as an example of someone who forgot to use birth control and now is paying the price. (It didn’t help that the birth control pill is illegal, but her partner didn’t use a condom, either, and she’s kicking herself.)

But hold on. Even if you believe that, this book illustrates the exact thing that made me stop being a one-issue voter about abortion. Why would banning abortion work any better than Prohibition did? If you pass a law that the majority do not feel is right – it’s going to become a matter of pride and virtue to help people get around that law. All the mobile clinics, including the sketchy ones, the teen guide – you’d better believe a whole network would rise up to subvert the law. It would end up being only the people with the most resources and connections who could find safe treatment, but definitely a movement would rise up.

Either way, you’re going to have sympathy for a teen who made one bad decision, knows she did, and now must deal with the consequences. Seema Yasmin tells a good story about interesting characters. Oh, and there’s a historical story in this book about her grandmother in India who almost got involuntarily sterilized by her government in the 1970s. (I had no idea that happened.) Controlling people’s reproductivity has a long history.

This book gives you a good story, but it also makes you think.

seemayasmin.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 The Fabulous Fannie Farmer, by Emma Bland Smith, pictures by Susan Reagan

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

The Fabulous Fannie Farmer

Kitchen Scientist and America’s Cook

by Emma Bland Smith
pictures by Susan Reagan

Calkins Creek (Astra Books for Young Readers), 2024. 40 pages.
Review written October 18, 2024, from my own copy, sent to me by the publisher.
Starred Review

The Fabulous Fannie Farmer is, yes, about the writer of cookbooks. What I didn’t know is that she was the one whose cookbook – first published in 1896 – established using standard measurements in cookbooks.

Here’s how the author puts it, talking about Fannie’s childhood:

If Fannie had asked, “How much salt should I put in this soup?” her mother might have answered, “Oh, a goodly amount.”

The reply to “And how much butter?” might have been “The size of a chicken’s egg.”

“How long should I cook it?”

“Why, till it’s done, of course!”

Women weren’t supposed to need exact measurements and instructions – cooking was all about feminine instincts, after all!

The book tells about Fannie’s life, her setback of being laid up for years because of polio, and her eventually finding a place at the Boston Cooking School, first as a student, then as an assistant, and eventually as the principal.

As a teacher at the Boston Cooking School, she continued to perfect her skills and learned – and taught – about the science behind cooking food. She eventually took on the project of rewriting the school cookbook, testing every recipe until she reached perfection.

A fun twist is that the publisher didn’t believe it would sell many copies, so they required Fannie to pay the cost of printing. She agreed, for most of the profits – which ended up being a great deal for her, as editions of the book are still in print more than a hundred years later.

Cookbooks have never been the same.

Here’s what the author says when she tells about Fannie enrolling in the Boston Cooking School:

Let us take a moment to be grateful. If she hadn’t enrolled, we might all still be tossing in carefree pinches of baking powder and crossing our fingers that our Boston cream pie wouldn’t come out flat as a pancake.

Thank you, Fannie Farmer! And thank you, Emma Bland Smith and Susan Reagan, for bringing her story to life.

emmabsmith.com
susanreaganart.com

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Review of Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands, by Heather Fawcett

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Fiction Review, Starred Review 0

Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands

by Heather Fawcett
read by Ell Potter and Michael Dodds

Books on Tape, 2024. 12 hours, 5 minutes.
Review written October 10, 2024, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Oh, I love these Emily Wilde books so much! And Ell Potter gets her voice exactly right – a scholarly British accent with multiple diversions into the historical background of things she encounters or similar tales of encounters with the Fae.

For Emily is a distinguished dryadologist in this alternate version of Cambridge, England, where faeries are real and interact with our world – and people study them.

After her adventures in the Otherlands in the first volume, Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries, where she was rescued by her colleague, Wendell Bambleby, a faerie king in exile, Emily is now working on a new book – a Map of the Otherlands. And she also vows that as her next adventure, she’ll save Wendell’s life for a change.

And she gets an opportunity to do that all too soon. His stepmother, the same one who usurped his throne, poisons him on his birthday and then sends assassins into Cambridge to finish him off. After fighting them off, Emily convinces him to go on an expedition to the Alps. She thinks she has a lead on finding a doorway to his kingdom.

But it’s not a romantic trip for two. The department head insists on going along because of the research and in exchange for not reporting Bambleby’s falsifying research in the past. And Emily’s niece Ariadne also plans to come along. She’s been working as Emily’s overeager and overly talkative assistant for some time, and can’t be dissuaded, but she does show signs of having what it takes to be a good dryadologist.

Most of their research involves trying to track down a dryadologist who went missing some fifty years before and may have found a door between multiple faerie realms. But there’s plenty of research and exploration to do in order to find her, and plenty of adventures that show that something about that poison is still affecting Wendell. So when things all come together, it’s up to Emily to take a quest into Faerie to get what’s needed to save his life. But can she stay safe from the current queen?

Again, I can’t even express how much I love listening to these books – the scholarly tone of one who has read everything ever written on the topic of the Faerie realm and remembers it all is just perfect. I love Emily’s extreme capability and her nerve when in a tight place, plus her care and attention for the smaller creatures of Faerie, who tend to get scorn from many.

Altogether just an absolutely brilliant series, and I’m thrilled to discover that there’s one more book coming out in February. Even though I’m listening to it first, this set is one I’d like to own to be able to come back to.

heatherfawcettbooks.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 Blue Floats Away, by Travis Jonker, pictures by Grant Snider

Fantasy, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

Blue Floats Away

words by Travis Jonker
pictures by Grant Snider

Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2021. 40 pages.
Review written July 26, 2022, from my own copy, signed by the author
Starred Review

Full disclosure: Travis Jonker is a librarian friend. I served on a committee with him at one point and say hello at conferences, all after I followed his blog, 100 Scope Notes. It made me happy when ALA Annual Conference was finally in person again to get a welcoming smile along with the signed book.

The book is a simple story of an iceberg calf named Blue who suddenly breaks off from the iceberg where he lived with his parents. All the characters are expressed by iceberg shapes with three dots for their faces.

The words are simple, and the pictures really make it special. They are also simple, done with what looks like collage and torn paper, but it’s colorful and beautiful. Blue floats away and sees new things. Beautiful things.

Just after he’s made friends who helped him figure out how to get back, he melts away —

But Blue wasn’t gone.
He was changing.

Blue mixed with the ocean water,
evaporated,
condensed,
and was transformed.

Now Blue sees more new things. And learning about air currents, he finds away to get back to his parents in the North.

“Were they ever surprised.”

This is a simple and happy story that would work great in storytime, but there’s also a note in the back about how Blue’s story illustrates the water cycle. So you’ve got some very simple science to go with it.

A really lovely picture book with a happy ending.

travisjonkerbooks.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 The Invocations, by Krystal Sutherland, read by Kit Griffiths

Paranormal, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Invocations

by Krystal Sutherland
read by Kit Griffiths

Listening Library, 2024. 13 hours, 7 minutes.
Review written October 20, 2024, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

First, fair warning: This book is much darker than the books I usually review, closer to horror than the cozy kind of fantasy I usually enjoy. But even I have to admit that this book is skillfully written, building suspense throughout and tying multiple threads together in a satisfying way.

This is a world like ours, but where women can do magic by tattooing an invocation on their skin that gives a demon a small piece of their soul in exchange for power, and tethering that demon to the person for the rest of her life.

This book has three main characters: Zara is in high school and is trying to find reliable books on necromancy. Because she’s determined to bring her sister back to life. Her sister was killed almost one year ago, and the books all say that after a year, there’s not enough of the person left to reliably bring them back. If Zara can’t do it, she’d like to find a witch who can.

Jude is the daughter of a billionaire, but she’s been sequestered away from the family ever since she messed up her life by accidentally cursing herself. She found a spell book and thought she’d mess with it – and did a terrible job of tethering a demon to herself. The wound is rancid – and so is Jude’s soul. She tried two more invocations to try to help deal with the consequences, but they didn’t work as hoped for, and Jude is looking for a witch with real power.

How does Jude look for a witch? She throws money at things, and she pays a detective to see the crime scenes of a serial killer who’s killing women with spells on their bodies – and removing the skin where the curse was tattooed. It turns out that Zara’s also visiting crime scenes, since her sister was the first victim of the serial killer. Well, they find a business card at a crime scene, which leads them to Emer.

Emer is hiding out at Oxford, pretending to be a student so she has access to the library and ways to get food. Ten years ago, her entire family of nineteen other witches was slaughtered by witch hunters, when she was only seven years old. It turns out that all of the serial killer’s victims had shortly before their deaths gotten a spell from Emer.

So now they have a new agenda – to find the serial killer. Emer feels a responsibility to the women who turned to her for help. And is there a connection between the serial killer and the witch hunters who killed her family? She tells Jude that she can’t break the tether with the demon who’s tormenting her, but Jude is persistent, and she has money and connections to help Emer find the killer. Zara, too, is told that Emer wants nothing to do with necromancy – but let’s just say that Zara is a very determined girl. (And this is yet another book where I’m screaming at the character who wants to raise the dead: “That’s a really bad idea!” But I do believe that she would do it.)

And yes, it all comes together in a truly horrifying way. And yet it’s satisfying. How is that possible? Well, you’ll have to read it to find out. We’ve got a mystery – figuring out the serial killer. We’ve got light romance – attraction between two of the girls. We’ve got misogyny against women with power, and we’ve got a terrifying final showdown where we’re not sure anyone’s going to survive.

No, that doesn’t sound like something I’d normally pick up. It happened to be the first YA Speculative Fiction book nominated for the Cybils where my audiobook hold came in. But it had me riveted all the way. Before long, I was rooting even for the rich girl with the festering soul, so that shows you Krystal Sutherland is a skillful writer indeed.

krystalsutherland.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 The Grace of Wild Things, by Heather Fawcett, read by Aven Shore

Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy, Starred Review 0

The Grace of Wild Things

by Heather Fawcett
read by Aven Shore

Balzer + Bray, 2023. 8 hours, 29 minutes.
Review written June 1, 2024, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Here’s another one I loved oh, so much! This is Anne of Green Gables, if Anne were a witch child! It’s even set on Prince Edward Island.

The world is somewhat different from ours, though. Our orphaned heroine, Grace, has a natural gift for magic and the strange heartbeat that marks out witches — so she leaves the orphanage and finds a witch to apprentice herself to.

The witch lives in a beautiful cozy house by a brook, but she doesn’t want an apprentice and tries to bake Grace in her oven. Once Grace gets out of that she convinces the witch to make a pact with her. If Grace can perform all one hundred and a half spells in the witch’s grimoire before the cherry trees bloom, she can stay and become the witch’s apprentice. Otherwise, Grace must give up her magic.

So the stakes are high. But Grace is gifted and Grace is imaginative — and she chatters on about her imaginings just like Anne of Green Gables. Fortunately, Grace has a knack of making friends, and once she finds a best friend at the neighboring farm, she gets some help at figuring out the grimoire.

This is not a retelling but a reimagining, so the parallels are quite loose — though I did enjoy the way magic got Grace’s best friend tipsy and the witch told her mother she’d mistaken currant wine for raspberry cordial. The magic in that world is playful and fun, and I enjoyed the boy who offends Grace early – rather like Gilbert – but is actually a fairy who makes all the humans forget about him.

Anne loves poetry, and she loves to read poetry to Wind Weaver, her familiar (who is a crow). So each chapter begins with poetry from that time period, and I was surprised how many appropriately flowery poems the author found.

Completely delightful! I highly recommend this book to any fan of Anne of Green Gables. Revisit Prince Edward Island — with a little magic.

heatherfawcettbooks.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 Say More, by Jen Psaki

Audiobooks, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review, True Stories 0

Say More

Lessons from Work, the White House, and the World

by Jen Psaki
read by the Author

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2024. 5 hours, 55 minutes.
Review written September 23, 2024, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

This book isn’t so much a tell-all as it is a self-help book on how to be a better communicator, peppered with super interesting anecdotes from the author’s years working in the halls of power.

Now, I didn’t read the book for the communication tips, fervently hoping that my days of public speaking are behind me, but I did still pick up some good tips for general communication, such as facing up to your mistakes sooner rather than later, and what to do when a communist dictator starts negative propaganda about you. (Okay, I definitely hope I’ll never need that tip.)

Still, reading this for the stories will definitely carry you through. There were lots of interesting glimpses into the characters of her particularly famous bosses John Kerry, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden. But there were also heartwarming stories involving her husband and kids, as well as stories from her path to those high-profile jobs. The stories are entertaining and interesting, and you get plenty of examples as to why her communication principles will help you in every aspect of your life.

I like reading books by political figures that show me their heart for public service. Here’s one more example of a young woman doing her bit to do good things in the world – and the audiobook ended up being uplifting and inspiring.

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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 Our Divine Mischief, by Hanna C. Howard

Fantasy, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Our Divine Mischief

by Hanna C. Howard

Blink, 2023. 371 pages.
Reviewed October 16, 2024, from a library book.
Starred Review

Here’s a sweet young adult fantasy with a touch of romance set on an island where every young person makes a trip to Yslet’s Island to meet the goddess and learn what apprenticeship they will get. Áila is almost eighteen, and it’s time for her to make her pilgrimage. But when she goes, the goddess is not there – instead she finds a dog, a dog named Orail.

The village elders don’t know how to respond when Áila has nothing to show for her trip to the island but a dog. So they have her live in isolation and prepare for five Ordeals. If she passes the Ordeals, she will be allowed to try again to voyage to Yslet’s isle. The only human she’s allowed to talk to is Hew, a young man who is considered Unblessed because Yslet gave him a blank pendant. His work cutting peat is so unimportant, he can be spared to run errands for Áila.

But while Áila is preparing for the Ordeals, it becomes obvious that Orail is no ordinary dog. She can grant wishes, especially Áila’s wishes. And Hew is observant enough to find out something is going on. Best of all, Orail’s thoughts are given to the reader in poetry form.

But there’s another man who’s interested in helping Áila, and he has the approval of the priests – a handsome visiting scribe and his sister. Is there a reason Orail doesn’t trust him? It’s probably just that he doesn’t like dogs.

As events start taking place that affect far more than their island, Áila and Hew face huge obstacles to try to make it right.

A big part of the charm of this book is the wonderful dog character, and the love between Orail and Áila. I won’t give anything away, but I also love what we learn at the end about those who are thought to be “Unblessed.” A feel-good story with a whole lot of charm.

hannachoward.com
BlinkYABooks.com

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