Review of One Coin Found, by Emmy Kegler

Christian, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

One Coin Found

How God’s Love Stretches to the Margins

by Emmy Kegler

Fortress Press, 2019. 209 pages.
Review written June 4, 2023, from my own copy, purchased via amazon.com
Starred Review

What a beautiful book! I bought it years ago and meant to read it, but recently read something the author wrote in A Rhythm of Prayer, edited by Sarah Bessey, and was reminded that I’d been meaning to read it. So I took it on vacation and was thoroughly blessed by its words.

The book is the author’s life story and how she found grace and love from God even when some churches failed her.

Emmy grew up in church and felt called to be a preacher. But when she realized she was queer, that was an even bigger obstacle than being a woman. The story of how the Lord’s calling kept after her is a story that she compares to the parable of the woman who loses a coin and keeps searching until she finds it.

Also along the way, she teaches beautiful principles about interpreting Scripture which tied in well with a book I was also reading, Godbreathed, by Zack Hunt.

Here’s a beautiful passage in the introductory chapter, where she talks about the “Lost” chapter of the Bible, Luke 11, which has the parable of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son:

What I think, my fellow second sons, is that we were told the truth. The story is for us. We are the prodigal son. But too we are lost and hungry sheep. We have gone unfed, walked without rest, been chased by wolves, and our friends and leaders did not see our pain. But God, in big and little ways, has donned a shepherd’s cloak and come running after us. God, in big and little ways, has clambered over rocks and climbed down cliffs. God has found us, hungrier and more hurt and terrified, and cradled us close to say: No matter why you left or where you went, you are mine.

We too are lost and dusty coins. We have gone unnoticed, rusted from others’ indifference, misspent and misused, and our friends and leaders did not see our neglect. But God, in big and little ways, has picked up a woman’s broom and swept every corner of creation. God, in big and little ways, has tucked up her skirts and flattened herself on the floor, dug through dust bunnies and checked every dress pocket. God has found us, dustier and rustier and without any luster, and held us up to the light to say: No matter how you rolled away or what corner you were dropped in, you are mine.

The book is more theology laced with memoir, and her writing is beautiful, and it builds to this conclusion that mirrors the beginning:

We are, beloved, the impossibilities of God. We have dared to believe the stories of Scripture. Not the verses easily slung like stones from a condemning hand, but the stories that are real, and make us real, and bring us home. We have faced near-insurmountable boundaries between us and God. We have had the treasured stories of Scripture torn from us by those too bound in fear to see the beauty of our witness. We have been pushed to the edges again and again, our voices silenced, our cries mocked. And every time, the love of God has gone out after us. God has put on callused feet and taken up a knobbly staff to crawl down crevices and call us back to pastures full of lush love, nourishing and sweet. God has taken up a broom and cleared each corner, untucked and retucked each sheet and quilt, turned over pitcher after pitcher to see where we have landed. And God has paced the flagstones of a farm porch, eyes always on the horizon, wondering and wanting, a seat still empty at the table, heaven incomplete until all the family is home.

We have been and are and will be found in such a myriad of ways, but always, always, always love is seeking us.

Dare to be found.

I highly recommend reading about Emmy Kegler’s journey, with its beautiful picture of what our faith can be.

emmykegler.com
fortresspress.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 Reader, I Murdered Him, by Betsy Cornwell, read by Elisabeth Lagelee

Historical, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Reader, I Murdered Him

by Betsy Cornwell
read by Elisabeth Lagelee

Blackstone Publishing, 2022. 8 hours, 20 minutes.
Review written May 29, 2023, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Oh, I love this book so much!

Mind you, as a teen, I listed Jane Eyre as one of my favorite books. So romantic! But rereading it years later as an adult, I noticed some things that disturbed me about the romance. Retellings, such as the science fiction Brightly Burning or the fantasy My Plain Jane more clearly pointed out some of the problematic details.

But this one! Oh, how it turns the story on its head, but feels so right in doing so.

The viewpoint character of this book is Adele, Mr. Rochester’s ward, the daughter of a dancer and prostitute in Paris. We start with Adele’s happy life in Paris, but then her mother, who is dying of consumption, gives her over to Mr. Rochester to make her English and one day be well cared for.

At Thornfield, Adele meets Bertha, the woman locked in the attic, who sometimes roams the house at night, but learns never to speak of her. And then Jane Eyre comes to Thornfield and into both Mr. Rochester’s and Adele’s lives. She is the closest thing to a mother Adele has had in years, and takes her into her heart. And she begins writing to Mr. Rochester’s 13-year-old cousin in Jamaica to improve her English, and gains a confidant.

After Jane leaves, Adele has a bad experience at a boarding school, but after her return, Jane does the work to find an excellent one for her. There at Webster school most of this book takes place. But at a party, when Adele comes across a man molesting one of her classmates on a balcony, she becomes a murderess. But because a young man speaks up for her, the story that this is an accident takes hold.

And then, through an interesting set of circumstances, when Adele is unsettled by what she’s done and upset by the power of ruthless young men, she makes a connection with a girl of the streets, a pickpocket and thief named Nan. She asks Nan to teach her some skills, and they work together in the style of Robin Hood, giving some of the worst young men their comeuppance, fashioning herself as a protector of her friends at school. And as they are doing that, she falls in love with Nan.

And that takes you quite far into the book, so I’m going to have to stop. But let me say that I completely loved things that happened past that point in the book, how Adele’s story played out, and the further insights we got into the characters we’d met in Jane Eyre.

Yes, there are some sex scenes, and the title itself warns you about the violence. Perhaps I shouldn’t like this book as much as I do?

Here is a happily ever after indeed.

betsycornwell.com

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Review of Make Way, written by Angela Burke Kunkel, illustrated by Claire Keane

Art, Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, History, Starred Review 0

Make Way

The Story of Robert McCloskey, Nancy Schön, and Some Very Famous Ducklings

written by Angela Burke Kunkel
illustrated by Claire Keane

Random House Studio, 2023. 44 pages.
Review written June 13, 2023, from a library book.
Starred Review

This is a story of the duckling statues in Boston Public Garden. But deeper than that, it’s the story of two artists — Bob McCloskey, who created the classic book Make Way for Ducklings, and Nancy Schön, who made sculptures of Mrs. Mallard and her eight ducklings Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Ouack, Pack, and Quack, for the Boston Public Garden.

I love those sculptures and visit them every time I go to Boston. In the front of my family’s copy of Make Way for Ducklings, I taped a photo of my firstborn at two years old, happily posing on the back of Mrs. Mallard.

So you need to read your child Make Way for Ducklings first. But after that, after your kid knows about the story, here’s a child-friendly story of how it was created.

It talks about both artists going through hard times before their art was acknowledged in any way. It tells how Bob brought ducks home in order to draw them from life. Later, Nancy purchased a duck foot from a butcher to learn how it was put together. (Wait a second. That’s not as charming a story. But it works in this picture book.)

After the book was created, a friend’s family visited Nancy in Boston. When they visited the Public Garden, the kids asked, “Mommy, where are the ducks?” Nancy decided that would be her next sculpture project.

The pictures of her working on the ducks are wonderful. I always did think she chose the most delightful poses. And they mirror the ducks in the books so well — in three dimensions.

But she didn’t have any permission for this project before she worked on it. So we’ve got a spread showing Bob and his wife looking over her small-scale models.

My favorite page, though, is after she made a full-scale Mrs. Mallard and three ducklings. Bob thought they might be too large. So she brought them outside.

And as Bob stands, quietly observing, three children run — quack, quack, quacking — to come and pat the ducks.
Bob looks at Nancy.
And she knows she has her yes.

I love that page because I’ve seen for myself that children can’t resist those wonderful ducks.

This book owes its brilliance to the original amazing children’s book Make Way for Ducklings, but it is still brilliant. Fans of the original will love learning the story behind the story, and any family traveling to Boston should give it a read.

angelakunkel.com
claireonacloud.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 Ride On, by Faith Erin Hicks

Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Graphic Novel 0

Ride On

by Faith Erin Hicks
colors by Kelly Fitzpatrick

First Second, 2022. 220 pages.
Review written May 9, 2023, from a library book.

Ride On is a sweet graphic novel about making friends – and riding horses.

The book starts with a new girl at the riding stable, named Victoria. At first, she rebuffs the overtures of one of the regulars. We learn that she had a falling-out with her best friend at the other stable because Victoria decided to have a gentler summer and not focus on competing in shows. So now, she hopes to just focus on horses and not mess with human friends.

But humans have a way of getting into your heart. The book has lots of interactions with people and with horses. My heart was warmed by an adventure at the end with Victoria and her new friends.

Graphic novels are always popular with their accessible story-telling, and this one will especially appeal to horse lovers.

faitherinhicks.com
firstsecondbooks.com

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Review of Seen and Unseen, by Elizabeth Partridge and Lauren Tamaki

Award Winners, History, Starred Review, Teen Nonfiction 0

Seen and Unseen

What Dorothea Lange, Toyo Miyatake, and Ansel Adams’s Photographs Reveal About the Japanese American Incarceration

by Elizabeth Partridge
illustrated by Lauren Tamaki

Chronicle Books, 2022. 124 pages.
Review written February 26, 2023, from a library book
Starred Review
2023 Sibert Award Winner

Seen and Unseen won the Sibert Award for the best informational book for children published in 2022. The book tells the story of the imprisonment of Japanese Americans during World War II, especially looking at the testimony of three photographers.

Here’s the beginning of Dorothea Lange’s section:

In the San Francisco Bay area, Dorothea Lange was asked to photograph the roundup and forced relocation of all Japanese and Japanese Americans on the West Coast. Officials wanted documentary photos to show it was being carried out in a humane, orderly way.

Dorothea was horrified by the government’s plan. The prisoners would be held without charges filed against them and without the right to a trial. That was illegal in the United States. But there was a war on, and Japanese Americans’ rights were suspended.

Dorothea could have refused, but she ws eager to take the job. She wanted her photographs to show what the government was doing was unfair and undemocratic.

We see many of the pictures she took in the pages that follow, along with descriptions of what was going on. But most of the ones we see are labeled “Impounded” — they were withheld from the public during the war, to try to hide the brutal conditions of the imprisonment of American citizens.

Meanwhile, photographer Toyo Miyatake was imprisoned in the camps. He smuggled in his camera lens and took photos, giving a starker and more realistic picture of life in the camp.

Later in the war, he was asked to open an official photography studio to document special events like weddings and funerals. But in a silly and humiliating bit of red tape, they wouldn’t let him press the button on the camera and they hired a white American to do that.

The final photographer featured is Ansel Adams. He came in 1943, paid by the government, to support “loyal” Japanese Americans being resettled in other parts of America. They showed him happy faces — not necessarily the true story.

This book as a whole shows how a terrible national tragedy was presented to the public in general at the time. The book is full of illustrations as well as photographs and vividly presents what happened.

I thought this page was particularly striking, with a picture of a father talking to a little boy:

“I don’t know what’s going to happen to your mother and me,” future US Congressman Norman Mineta’s Issei father told him and his four siblings. “But just remember: All of you are US citizens and this is your home. There is nothing anyone can do to take this away from you.”

He was wrong.

elizabethpartridge.com
laurentamaki.com
chroniclekids.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 Big, by Vashti Harrison

Contemporary, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

Big

by Vashti Harrison

Little, Brown and Company, 2023. 60 pages.
Review written June 13, 2023, from a library book.
Starred Review

This gorgeous picture book successfully symbolizes how people’s words can make a kid feel too much, and shows her healing and coming into her own.

The book begins with an adorably chubby brown baby girl.

Once there was a girl
with a big laugh and a big heart
and very big dreams.

The pictures show her growing and learning. And being called a big girl is a good thing.

But she grows as a ballerina, wearing pink like the others, but towering over them. It starts to seem like being a big girl is no longer a good thing.

Then one day, she gets in a swing with a seat, like her friends do, and she gets stuck. Her friends laugh, and when a teacher helps her out, she says, “Don’t you think you’re too big for that?”

It made her feel small.

The pictures from there show her in many situations looking like a giant, feeling exposed and out of place. On the dance stage, she’s too big for the flower costumes, so they have her wear a dark grey costume as a mountain towering above everyone else.

Then a wonderful and moving series of images shows the girl growing as the space she’s in (the book’s trim size) closes in around her.

She’s sad, and even then people in her mind say, “Aren’t you too big to be crying?”

But the book does come to a lovely conclusion. The giant girl scoops up the unkind words that are puddled in her tears — and she gives them back to the people they belong to, saying “These are yours. They hurt me.”

Mind you, “Not everyone understood or even listened.”

But the girl, wearing pink again, has remembered that she likes the way she is, and she is good.

Now, once again, my description isn’t adequate. This is one to check out and hold in your hands and marvel. Most of the message is done through symbolism, which not all picture books can handle — but this one pulls it off completely. Honestly, this book is already my favorite for Caldecott this year. We’ll see….

vashtiharrison.com
lbyr.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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X + Y, by Eugenia Cheng

Current Issues, Mathematical, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

X + Y

A Mathematician’s Manifesto for Rethinking Gender

by Eugenia Cheng

Basic Books, 2020. 272 pages.
Review written May 9, 2023, from a library book.
Starred Review

I love this book so very much! And I’m so glad I finally got it read — had meant to ever since it came out. I’m going on vacation this week and decided to finish it before I left — and Wow! — it’s full of transformative concepts.

Now, if you’re not a math-lover like me, please don’t be put off by the fact that this book is written by a mathematician. She works with Category Theory, a branch of mathematics that doesn’t necessarily deal with numbers, but about relationships and how things interact with other things.

In this book, she uses category theory to take on gender. And wow! What a lovely job she does.

Now, she starts with something I related to completely — the lack of women in higher mathematics. I started a PhD program in math at UCLA immediately after college. I was one of only 5 women out of 120 new math graduate students that year. Three of the other women were in master’s programs, not doctoral — and I ended up dropping out a year and a quarter later with my Master’s. So I am very aware that there’s a gender disparity in mathematics.

The first part of the book looks at difficulties with even talking about gender disparities. She looks at problematic arguments about nature or nurture.

And then she takes us to another dimension. She takes the gendered dimension out of the discussion and defines some new terms.

We need new, ungendered language in order to separate character traits from gender and have less divisive conversations in which people don’t have to get defensive about “not all men” or “not all women” being a certain way. Because indeed men are not the same, and neither are women. Not all men are aggressive, competitive, risk-taking, and unempathetic. And even those who do behave in those ways might only do so because of social pressure and the idea, perpetuated by social norms, that this is how to be successful in society. When certain behavior is rewarded by society many people will strive to behave in those ways even if at some deeper level it makes them unhappy.

The ungendered language she comes up with are the terms “ingressive” and “congressive.” Ingressive behavior focuses on the individual, and congressive behavior focuses on the group. Here are her definitions:

ingressive: focusing on oneself over society and community, imposing on people more than taking others into account, emphasizing independence and individualism, more competitive and adversarial than collaborative, tending toward selective or single-track thought processes

congressive: focusing on society and community over self, taking others into account more than imposing on them, emphasizing interdependence and interconnectedness, more collaborative and cooperative than competitive, tending toward circumspect thought processes.

This is not a clean dichotomy even though some aspects sound like exact opposites of each other. It’s not a classification of people into two camps. It’s a way to evaluate behavior in a flexible and dynamic way to reflect the fact that people are flexible and dynamic day by day and also over the course of their lives, not fixed and rigid.

She goes on to talk about spaces that are more ingressive and spaces that are more congressive. Interesting to me, she left her position at a university and began a career teaching math at an art school. Yes, she found many more women at the art school, but she can go beyond gender and talk about how it’s much more set up as an ingressive space. And she’s happier working in that space.

She describes examples of other people, both women and men, who gave up more ingressive careers (after achieving success) for more congressive roles.

And she talks about how math education is set up to reward ingressive behavior, with lots of testing and competition. This was interesting to me, because at first I thought, oh, I must be mostly ingressive because I love competition, and really enjoyed math competitions when I was a student.

But then I think about my happy switch from teaching college math to becoming a librarian. I’ve said many times, “In the library, I still get to help people learn, but now I’m on their side! As an instructor, I had to test them, and I felt like their adversary. Now I get to show kids the fun side of math.” So I have to stand as another example of someone who turned out to be much, much happier in a more ingressive career path.

I was also fascinated by her ideas to make education – yes, even mathematics education — more congressive. She suspects that could attract more people to the field who might be turned off by the current more ingressive way it tends to be taught. I loved when she started elaborating on that idea:

Congressive math is what I have been teaching to art students for several years. I think it’s also what is introduced to children at the very beginning of school, when it’s all about play and exploration with blocks and toys and other things they can touch and feel. It comes back around to being like this at a research level, but by that time I think we’ve already put off far too many congressive people with the phase in between.

I think math should be congressive all the way through. We really don’t need to train people to be human calculators anymore, now that we have actual calculators with us more or less all the time (for example, on our phones). So math could be more congressive by being about exploration and processes. It could be more about ways of thinking than about knowledge.

I would like to see a non-cumulative curriculum so that each stage doesn’t depend on the previous stage. The traditional model is more like a series of hurdles that get higher and higher and are specially designed to weed people out at each level. Not only is this ingressive, it’s also counterproductive, as we are not weeding out the right people.

But I shouldn’t go on so much about math, because that was a side point. The really beautiful thing about this book was how it took gendered language out of discussions about our society. I suspect you could also use these ideas in discussions about race.

I believe that the new dimension of ingressive and congressive traits can help us overcome bias that can’t be addressed on the dimension of gender alone. I think this is how we can deal with implicit bias in the system that comes from our association of character with gender, and how we can deal with indirect bias that comes from favoring ingressive behavior. But I think it will also have an effect on explicit bias, as it is a way for everyone to escape one-dimensional gendered thinking in their heads and think more clearly about what contributions to society we want to see. With every individual who escapes that thinking, the hold of both implicit and explicit gender bias will be lessened.

And the book finishes up with a vision of what things could be like in a society that encourages congressive behavior — and offers tips on ways to be more congressive in your personal life and perhaps in your personal environment (such as her math classrooms in art school). There’s even a helpful appendix at the back that demonstrates how you can respond to personal attacks with congressive statements instead of ingressively attacking back.

Now I’ll admit, I was predisposed to love this book having been a woman working in the field of mathematics, even if it was at a lower level than Dr. Cheng. But I’m also delighted with and impressed by her ideas. May we work together, in our lives and in our communities, to make the world a more congressive place. I highly recommend this book, and would love to discuss it with others who have read it.

eugeniacheng.com
basicbooks.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 Painted Devils, by Margaret Owen

Fantasy, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Painted Devils

by Margaret Owen
read by Saskia Maarleveld

Macmillan Young Listeners, 2023. 14 hours, 42 minutes.
Review written June 6, 2023, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Wow, these books by Margaret Owen are so incredibly good. And fair warning: There’s going to be a third book. Though this trilogy is done the way I like a series to be, with each book telling a satisfying story.

As the book begins, Vanya has chickened out on her plans with Emeric, and she didn’t go to meet him. She wants to make something of herself first. And she wants to find her family. But then, she accidentally starts a cult.

In this empire where low gods get power from the faith of people, Vanya borrows a character from a ballad to trick the townspeople into helping her pick the rubies she dropped out of the river. No one’s more surprised than she is when that character manifests as a low god. But when the Scarlet Maiden claims Emeric as her servant, and they learn the servant is going to be a human sacrifice, that’s a problem.

There seems to be a way around the problem – if Vanya can collect a drop of blood from seven brothers. But at the same time, Emeric is the Prefect Aspirant assigned to investigate the emergence of a new god. Was Vanya guilty of Profane Fraud? Emeric’s proctor seems convinced that it’s all Vanya’s doing. Though first they need to figure out how to save Emeric’s life. And go on that quest to find the seven brothers. And it just so happens that Vanya figures out how to right some wrongs and take down someone powerful along the way.

There are many plot threads in this book, expertly interwoven. (And I just have to say that because like Vanya I’m from a family of 13 children, I spotted something about her family before she did.) The relationship between Vanya and Emeric is beautifully drawn. She’s someone with every reason to be distrustful and to think herself worthless. Watching Emeric begin to change that is beautiful.

Fair warning: She’s also someone who never had someone to teach her about sex, so she gets some teaching along the way. And the two of them don’t rush directly into intimacy. This seems far more realistic than many books, but my warning is that teens who read this book will probably learn a thing or two about sex in a respectful and loving relationship as well. And as Vanya and Emeric waited until they were ready, some teens may want to wait until they’re ready.

But oh my goodness what a magnificent book this is! The romance is one part of that, but also finding her wonderful family, running a heist to help the powerless, even riding with the Wild Hunt – there’s so much to delight in here. And Saskia Maarleveld again does a perfect job with Vanya’s somewhat snarky voice and Emeric’s patient steadiness. I plan to reread both books in print form after I finish with the Morris committee — wish I could do that right away, but it’s something to look forward to for now. And to help tide me over before Book Three comes out!

margaret-owen.com

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Review of Just Jerry, by Jerry Pinkney

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Just Jerry

How Drawing Shaped My Life

by Jerry Pinkney

Little, Brown and Company, 2023. 146 pages.
Review written 3/23/23 from a library book.
Starred Review

Caldecott Medalist Jerry Pinkney had the words to this book almost completely written before his death in 2021, but the pictures were only in sketch form. However, Jerry’s sketches still make wonderful illustrations for a book, so the editors took what he had made and put it together. And what he made includes at least one sketch for almost every page. The print is in a font that’s easier with kids with dyslexia to read, something Jerry wanted in particular.

This book tells the story of a kid growing up in a Black neighborhood in Philadelphia, surrounded by friends and having adventures. However, he wasn’t so happy about school, because he had dyslexia before it was common to get a diagnosis. He only knew that he had trouble reading.

But a wonderful and understanding teacher noticed how much he loved to draw and let him get extra credit by drawing pictures for the class. And that was the first of many ways adults noticed his passion and encouraged him.

The summer before eighth grade, he got himself a job selling newspapers across from an art supply store. He spent his first earnings on a sketchpad and started sketching in between customers. Before long, he was selling his sketches along with the papers. And that led to meeting an artist who drew a comic in the very papers he was selling. With encouragement from people like these, he began to envision his art as a way to make a living some day, despite his difficulties with reading.

I love the way the book ends. It’s not a spoiler alert if you know that Jerry went on to a distinguished career illustrating and writing children’s books.

I couldn’t even begin to dream of my art being shown in a place like the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I’d never even been to a museum.

But all that time I’d put into drawing, I was drawing my dream. And one day, more than fifty years later, the Philadelphia Museum of Art mounted a solo exhibition titled Witness: The Art of Jerry Pinkney.

Mother had turned out to be right. She had always said that I would make something of my name.

I had the privilege of hearing Jerry Pinkney speak more than once, and every time he left me with a smile. This book does the same, making me happy that the boy we read about went on to make so many other children happy with his wonderful art.

justjerrypinkney.com
lbyr.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 Odder, by Katherine Applegate

Animal Characters, Beginning Chapter Books, Children's Fiction Review, Starred Review 0

Odder

by Katherine Applegate
with illustrations by Charles Santoso

Feiwel and Friends, 2022. 274 pages.
Review written January 15, 2023, based on an advance reader copy I got at ALA Annual Conference
Starred Review
2022 Cybils Award Finalist, Novels in Verse

Katherine Applegate does it again! Like The One and Only Ivan, this novel in verse for young animal-loving chapter book readers takes the perspective of a wild animal and completely wins readers’ hearts.

Odder is a young sea otter living in a slough near Monterey Bay off the coast of California. When Odder gets a little too adventurous and ventures into the bay, she’s bitten by a shark and needs the assistance of the scientists at the Monterey Bay Aquarium — the same people who nurtured her when she was an orphaned pup — to recover and survive. This is Odder’s story.

Along the way, we learn about this endangered species and how humans are learning to care for them so their numbers can increase. Odder’s story is based on actual sea otters helped at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

The story is mostly told from Odder’s perspective. And she’s a sea otter — there’s nothing cuter! Her perspective is all about adventure and play. The accompanying illustrations are of course adorable, and this book will oh-so-easily win kids’ hearts.

The story is told in verse, so it’s a much quicker read than it might appear at first. I think the final version may have more cute drawings than my advance reader copy does, but my hold was taking a long time to fill, so I’ve needed to order the library more copies. This book will bring smiles wherever it goes.

katherineapplegate.com
montereybayaquarium.org
mackids.com

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