Review of Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers, by Jesse Q. Sutanto, read by Eunice Wong

Audiobooks, Fiction Review, Mystery, Starred Review 0

Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers

by Jesse Q. Sutanto
read by Eunice Wong

Books on Tape, 2023. 10 hours, 40 minutes.
Review written July 26, 2023, from a library eaudiobook
Starred Review

Here’s a delightful cozy murder mystery with a modern Miss Marple as the sleuth. But instead of knitting, Vera Wong is an expert in teas. She lives alone in San Francisco’s Chinatown above the tea shop she established with her late husband, “Vera Wang’s World-Famous Tea House.” She gets up at 4:30 every morning, texts her lawyer son, and goes for a brisk walk before spending her day in the shop. Unfortunately, Vera only ever has one customer, a lonely old man whose wife is bedridden. But Vera always concocts the perfect tea for him.

Then, one morning, there’s a dead body in her shop, with the shop window broken. Vera calls the police and leaves things as she finds them — well, aside from cleaning up the broken glass. And drawing an outline around the body. And, well, taking a flash drive out of the dead man’s hand.

The police don’t do anything like Vera has seen happen on CSI. They don’t seem to take the murder seriously at all. They don’t even take fingerprints or look for DNA evidence! So Vera figures she’s going to have to investigate herself. She cleverly puts an obituary in the paper right away, being sure to mention that the body was found at Vera Wang’s World-Famous Tea Shop. Sure enough — the next day four people show up at the tea shop, and Vera has her suspects.

This is where the unsolicited advice comes in. Vera meets the dead man’s wife and daughter, as well as his twin brother. And two young people who claim to be journalists. And, naturally, she gets to know them, serves them tea, and gives them unsolicited advice.

What follows is a delightful story as a lonely and interfering old lady investigates a murder – and finds a family. Except there’s that little problem that one member of her new family is likely the murderer. Which one? Vera is certainly clever enough to find out!

I had given up expecting murder mysteries to be amazingly heartwarming! This one’s delightful.

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of Banned Book Club, by Kim Hyun Sook and Ryan Estrada, art by Ko Hyung-Ju

Biography, Graphic Memoir, History, Teen Nonfiction 0

Banned Book Club

written by Kim Hyun Sook and Ryan Estrada
art by Ko Hyung-Ju

Iron Circus Comics, 2020. 198 pages.
Review written September 22, 2020, from a library book

I didn’t realize until I’d finished the book that this is a graphic memoir, not a graphic novel. Even thinking it was a novel, I realized I had no idea that free speech had been suppressed in South Korea in 1983. This book points out that I need to separate out nonfiction for teens from my children’s nonfiction page – this has gritty and difficult material, more suitable for teens and adults than children. [Note: I’m posting this much later, and did, in fact, make a page for Teen Nonfiction.]

The setting is South Korea, 1983. Yes, that’s South Korea, not North Korea. I had to go back and check. Hyun Sook was a teen wanting to start college. Her mother didn’t want her to go because there had been student protests, which were being stopped by the government. Her father was supportive, so she does head off to school, trying to separate herself from the protesters.

Sure enough, when Hyun Sook gets to college, she tries to stay out of trouble. She even joins a Masked Folk Dance Team to do something that’s not political. But she learns that they do folk dances with stories that have political ramifications and are a cover for protests. Then the friends she makes on the team pull her into a Banned Book Club with a contact at a bookstore who gets them banned books.

I was amazed at the range of books that they were not permitted to read. Both western literature and Communist literature from North Korea were on the list. There is a spy in the group, and some of her friends get arrested and beaten and she herself gets interrogated by police and I won’t say more about the plot to not give spoilers. I will say that I was shocked by basic freedoms that were violently repressed.

The book ends with a reunion of the Banned Book Club in 2016. We learn about the history of fascism in South Korea when one of her friends outlines the protests he’s been part of since 1983. In 2016, they were protesting for the removal of a president who was the daughter of the dictator they protested against in 1983.

A note on the final page tells us what happened after the close of this book:

In March 2017, President Park Geun-Hye was impeached, removed from office, and imprisoned for corruption. The final vote was struck by her own judges, many of whom she had personally placed in office. A special election was held, and the new president was Moon Jae-in.

This book is frightfully timely and tells a true story of fascism that is not from 1930s Germany. It makes the reader value their freedom to read and freedom to speak up. May we never let those go. Please don’t tolerate book banning, whatever the excuse.

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

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

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

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of Simon and the Better Bone, by Corey R. Tabor

Animal Characters, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

Simon and the Better Bone

by Corey R. Tabor

Balzer + Bray, 2023. 40 pages.
Review written July 27, 2023, from a library book
Starred Review

This picture book utterly charmed me. It may be my favorite picture book of the year so far. An Author’s Note at the front says that it’s based on an Aesop’s fable, “But Simon gets a happier ending (he is a good boy, after all).”

From the start, we know this book is different, because you turn the book on its side to have the picture right side up. Then the pages turn from bottom to top instead of the usual side-to-side.

On the title page, we see a sweet brown tail-wagging dog digging something up. There’s a pool reflecting the picture on the lower page (the bottom half of the spread), with some water bugs skating on top of the water, so you clearly understand there’s water there.

As the book begins, now the pond page has the reflection and a few ducks (still reinforcing that there’s water in the bottom half of the spread) and on top (reflected), the dog is proudly carrying a bone and still wagging his tail happily.

Simon was out playing by the pond when he found a bone. If there was a better bone in all the world, Simon hadn’t seen it.

But then Simon spots something in the pond!

It was another bone.
A better bone.

There was a dog holding the bone. But it was a scrawny little dog.
Certainly no match for Simon.

So you can guess how the story goes — lots of facing off with that other dog and his better bone. Posturing, challenging, growling…. Meanwhile, pond critters and other cues remind kids reading that this is Simon’s reflection he’s facing off with.

Finally, there’s a pounce!

But yes, Corey Tabor cleverly finds a sweet way to give Simon a happy ending. Such a good dog!

Part of why I loved this book so much is that I’m a Big Sister – who did a lot of babysitting my younger siblings. (I was third of thirteen kids.) One of my favorite Big Sister Tricks was something a bunch of us discovered. We had a long mirror with a wide shelf in front of it. If you sat a baby in front of the mirror with a ball — the baby will try to get the Other Baby’s ball. Every time. They have an identical ball. But they want the Other Baby’s ball. This greatly amused us older siblings.

And putting this story into this delightful picture book will give kids the joy of knowing what’s really going on. I see an instant storytime classic in this book. So much fun!

coreyrtabor.com
harpercollinschildrens.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Picture_Books/simon_and_the_better_bone.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of Butt or Face? by Kari Lavelle

Children's Nonfiction Review, Science, Starred Review 0

Butt or Face?

Can you tell which end you’re looking at?

by Kari Lavelle

Sourcebooks Explore, 2023. 36 pages.
Review written July 27, 2023, from a library book.
Starred Review

I’ve now been Youth Materials Selector for my library system of 22 branches for a full year — and have gotten more requests that we purchase this book than any other nonfiction book.

What is it? Extreme close-up pictures of fourteen unusual animals. And those close-ups are either taken from their front end or their rear end. Turning the page reveals which one.

Like I said, most of these animals are a little unusual. Several insects and arachnids, and more than a few animals from Australia. I definitely was fooled more than once when I read through it.

After you turn the page, you get a more about the animal and where it lives, including little boxes with fun facts headlined either “Face the Facts” or “Beyond the Backside.” A chart at the back tells “Where they rest their BUTTS” and “What goes in their FACES.”

It’s kind of a shame this book came out in the middle of the summer, because it’s tailor-made for booktalking in the schools. I’m sure many librarians will choose to booktalk it next year, but I’ll be surprised if a lot of kids won’t have already seen it. I ordered 22 copies, and they all went to fill holds, with 5 people still having to wait their turn. (This is unusual for a children’s nonfiction picture book.)

This is a funny and playful way to learn about some of the amazing variety in the animal kingdom. Can you tell which end you’re looking at?

karilavelle.com

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

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of You Could Make This Place Beautiful, by Maggie Smith

Nonfiction Review, Starred Review, True Stories 0

You Could Make This Place Beautiful

A Memoir

by Maggie Smith

One Signal Publishers (Atria), 2023. 314 pages.
Review written July 18, 2023, from a library book.
Starred Review

Oh my goodness. This book was hard to read. But so evocative. So perfectly expressing something awful — what it’s like to go through divorce.

The book is a series of essays, vignettes, poems, thoughts — all about the time period after the author learned her husband was cheating on her.

But it’s not so simple as that. Not by a longshot.

And that’s what I loved about the book. Because, I, too, learned my husband was cheating on me. For me, it was Dalmatian hair on his socks, not a pine cone. And nothing, but nothing, was simple after that. I love the way she captures the oh-so-complicated emotions and thoughts and heart-pangs involved.

It also made me feel like some of the things I was slightly ashamed of — Oh, someone else did that, too!

For example, I didn’t tell my family and friends at first — because I didn’t want to hurt their relationship with him. (And that was a lonely, horrid, place to be.) I, too, went to counseling with my husband, where we didn’t talk about my husband seeing another woman, but about what I was doing wrong. For me, too, the hardest thing to forgive was when he moved to the other side of the world from our children, in order to get away from me. The second-guessing. The weird dreams. So much about her experiences reminded me of my own.

I very much liked the way she told the story in essentially a nonlinear way. Because I’ve tried to tell my story in linear ways, and it inevitably leaves so much out. Not that this includes everything, but I like the way it expresses the wounds within wounds, but also how it’s all tied up in someone you once loved with your whole heart and it’s tangled up in beautiful memories and what does your life mean now and all the bundle of questioning and pondering and trying to keep moving.

And I already loved Maggie Smith’s Keep Moving book. Her divorce happened many years after mine, and as thoroughly happy as I am with my life now — this will always still strike a chord.

Yes. It’s the story of the end of a marriage and moving on after it and somehow coping with parenting and adulting and making a living with a completely unexpected life — all beautifully told.

Thank you, Maggie Smith. This book is beautiful.

maggiesmith.substack.com
@MaggieSmithPoet
SimonandSchuster.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/you_could_make_this_place_beautiful.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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48-Hour Book Challenge – July 2023 – Finish Line Post

48-Hour Book Challenge 2

Ah, it always happens when I wind up a 48-Hour Book Challenge. As usual, I learn that 48 hours isn’t all that long.

And because I didn’t set my alarm, I slept late, and in the afternoon, doing lots of reading makes me sleepy, so I took naps, too. But any time is better than no time, right? And I definitely got more reading done than on an ordinary weekend.

Here are my stats:

Total time spent on the 48-Hour Book Challenge from 8:30 pm Thursday to 8:30 pm Saturday: 24 hours, 40 minutes.

First, the non-reading:
Emailing (I decided to allow that, for reasons): 1 hour, 50 minutes
Spreadsheets and housekeeping: 1 hour
Blogging: 1 hour, 10 minutes
Reviewing: 25 minutes
Posting: 1 hour, 50 minutes
Total non-reading time: 6 hours, 15 minutes

Reading time:
Reading Morris-eligible books: 8 hours, 20 minutes
Reading other books: 5 hours, 5 minutes
Listening to a Morris-eligible book: 5 hours
Total Reading time: 18 hours, 25 minutes.

Okay, that’s a good amount of time….

Total pages read was 1255 (not counting the audiobook).
Total words written (blogs and reviews, but not emails) was 1257.

Books finished: 6
Reviews written: 2
Complete books read: 4
Partial books read: 10
(Explanation: I tend to read nonfiction a chapter at a time. I also have a half-dozen books I read in daily for my devotional time.)

Unfortunately, of the 4 books I finished today, I haven’t written any reviews yet, so that still needs to happen.

All in all, it was a lovely use of my time, but makes me want to spend more time at it!

And the good part is that since I started keeping track of time I’m spending on Morris reading, my total for the week is twice as big as any other week. So that makes it time well-spent.

Until next time….

Review of The Lost Year, by Katherine Marsh

Audiobooks, Children's Fiction Review, Historical, Starred Review 2

The Lost Year

by Katherine Marsh
read by Anna Fikhman, Christopher Gebauer, and Jesse Vilinsky

Macmillan Young Listeners, 2023. 9 hours, 5 minutes.
Review written July 9, 2023, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

This book begins with Matthew, a boy bored at home during the start of the Covid pandemic. His 100-year-old great-grandmother, Gee-Gee, has come to stay with him and his mother, so they are being extra careful to keep the virus away.

Yes, that’s a slow start. But when Matthew’s mother takes away his video games and assigns him to help Gee-Gee go through boxes, he uncovers the stories of two other girls from 1933. And an old picture of two little girls makes Gee-Gee start crying — because she says there should have been three girls.

And what unfolds is a story of Ukraine during the Holodomor — a famine during which millions of Ukrainians died. We get this story from the perspective of Mila, whose father is a high-ranking Communist party member, and from Helen — a Ukrainian girl living in America.

Mila lives a life of privilege, believing that Papa Stalin and her own Papa will take care of her. And believes the stories her father tells her that any problems are caused by the dirty peasants in the countryside who refuse to collectivize their farms. So when a malnourished girl shows up at their doorstep claiming to be her cousin who says her whole family starved to death, Mila doesn’t want to believe her.

Meanwhile, in class in America, Helen’s teacher reads an article from the New York Times from a correspondent in Moscow saying that no one is starving in Ukraine. But Helen’s family has gotten a letter from their Ukrainian cousin begging for help, and she knows other Ukrainian American families who have received similar letters. So she collects stories and writes to the Times, but they tell her she needs first-hand accounts. That her reporting isn’t good enough.

Of course, one of these three girls is Gee-Gee, and we also know that one of the three is not going to make it to America. The book snowballs in tension as it progresses, telling the gripping story of a tragedy the Soviet Union covered up for decades, one that readers won’t know much about. (I certainly didn’t.) It’s unfortunate how timely it is, as the author had this book written before the attack on Ukraine brought the country back into the headlines. I hope that will lead more kids to pick up this book.

katherinemarsh.com

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of The Minus-One Club, by Kekla Magoon

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Minus-One Club

by Kekla Magoon
read by Dion Graham

Recorded Books, 2023. 7 hours, 7 minutes.
Review written July 11, 2023, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

The Minus-One Club is a book about grief, about bullying, and about coming out.

It begins with grief. Fifteen-year-old Kermit’s older sister Sheila, who had gone off to her first year of college, recently died in a car accident caused by a drunk driver. When Kermit finally manages to make it back to school, he gets invited to the “Minus-One Club,” a secret group of fellow students who all lost someone close to them. The club members are all there for one another, but they don’t talk about those deaths.

Also in the club is the guy Kermit’s long had a crush on. Matt is the only gay person in their high school who’s out. Kermit is very much not out, but as he starts doing things with Matt, they very clearly fall in love with each other. And since Kermit’s parents are happy he’s doing things with friends again, he can spend the night at Matt’s — as long as he doesn’t miss church in the morning.

Kermit used to be as involved in church youth group as you can get. But since Sheila’s death, he’s full of questions — and it’s all magnified by the way his parents and youth group leaders talk about how gay people are sinning. He knows it’s not safe to come out to them.

And as time goes on, Kermit starts to think Matt isn’t perhaps as happy and well-adjusted as he has always appeared. Navigating all of this makes a compelling story, which does end on a hopeful note.

I do appreciate that being Black was not one of the difficult issues Kermit was navigating. I’m sad that coming out to Christian parents was a big issue. And I have to admit that it’s still going to be an issue for many LGBTQ teens. I like that Matt told Kermit about the church he used to attend (before his mother died) that was fully accepting of LGBTQ folks — so it was correctly not presented as something every Christian church will be against.

This audiobook was compelling, and I found reasons to be able to keep listening. I may have spent a little more time on a jigsaw puzzle in order to finish the book.

keklamagoon.com

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

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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48-Hour Book Challenge July 2023 – Starting Line

48-Hour Book Challenge 4

I’m doing it! I took tomorrow off work, and I’m starting a 48-Hour Book Challenge.

These challenges were started many years ago by Pam Coughlan, then blogging as Mother Reader. (And I’m happy to say that although Pam is no longer blogging, she’s finished her Master’s in Library Science and is doing an awesome job working in libraries, still bringing great books to kids.)

Pam was way more organized than me about it. She organized it as a group effort. She got people to donate prizes. She added a little competition. The question to answer: In one 48-Hour period, how much time can you spend reading or blogging?

I am not very motivated about organizing large groups of people. But I really enjoyed the 48-Hour Book Challenges I participated in. They allow me to completely silence that voice inside me telling me I need to be productive and shouldn’t be reading.

Well, now I’m on the Morris Award committee – trying to help choose the best debut young adult book of the year. And it’s much much less that’s eligible than reading for the Newbery — but there’s still more reading than I could possibly do in a year, and I still need to read as much as I possibly can — and I feel like I’m getting behind.

At the same time, I recently made a list of tasks of things I want to polish up on my website. But who has time?

Another contribution is that recently I saw a weekend retreat I was very tempted to attend, but decided I shouldn’t spend that much money until I’ve finished paying for my last vacation. But the idea of taking a long weekend got into my head.

So — I asked for a Friday off, and I’m going to do a 48-Hour Book Challenge.

I make up my own rules. I’m not going to go crazy and set an alarm and cut into my sleep or anything. I plan to go for a walk both mornings and take showers. But I do think I’ll listen to an audiobook while preparing food and doing laundry.

But I’m going to spend as much time as I can with three things:
Reading
Writing Reviews
Working on my Website

And “Working on my website” counts posting reviews and blog posts (like this), but also any of the tasks I listed recently to make the website look better or work better.

So! I started tonight (Thursday) at 8:30 pm. I will continue until Saturday at 8:30 pm and see how many hours I can put in, and if I can get any more Morris-eligible books read.

With these starting line posts, I do like to post this theme song for my declared Reading Time:

And hey, I know I didn’t post this with any notice – but if anyone wants to join me, post in the comments!

Review of To Boldly Go, by Angela Dalton, illustrated by Lauren Semmer

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

To Boldly Go

How Nichelle Nichols and Star Trek Helped Advance Civil Rights

by Angela Dalton
illustrated by Lauren Semmer

Harper, 2023. 40 pages.
Review written March 14, 2023, from a library book.
Starred Review

This is a simple picture book biography of Nichelle Nichols, who played Lt. Uhura on the original Star Trek television series.

The book tells more about her life, including that she danced ballet when she was younger and faced racial discrimination. She also sang and toured with Duke Ellington when she was sixteen.

But the focus of this book is on the inspiration she brought to Black families by appearing on screen on equal footing with other crew members of the Starship Enterprise.

Nichelle Nichols did face discrimination in Hollywood when she worked on the show. They didn’t give her her fan mail and they cut many of her lines. She was ready to quit when she met an important fan — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He encouraged her to keep on.

“You have opened a door that must not be allowed to close,” he said. “Don’t you see that you’re not just a role model for Black children? You’re important for people who don’t look like us. For the first time, the world sees us as we should be seen, as equals, as intelligent people.”

The book does rest heavily on that one incident, but it ends up being a story that children will readily understand. There’s a bonus in the back matter as we learn that Nichelle helped recruit minorities and women to NASA.

There was one thing that struck me as odd. In all the pictures from Star Trek, instead of the distinctive Star Trek vaguely A-shaped logo, the actors were wearing a star and crescent moon. At first, I thought the illustrator simply got it wrong, but now I suspect that maybe they were not able to get permission to use the logo.

angeladalton.com
laurensemmer.com

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

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

What did you think of this book?