Winners Galore!

Award Winners 0

It’s Book Award Season! I’m doing a program to highlight some of my favorite books from 2021 that have been honored with awards this year, as well as highlighting the many awards out there. This post will give links to the award lists so you can find even more great books, along with featuring the books I plan to highlight. Books I’ve reviewed will have links to the review.

This year, I got to be part of three groups that selected outstanding books:

Committee to select the Mathical Book Prize, “an annual award for fiction and nonfiction books that inspire children of all ages to see math in the world around them.”

Round 2 Panel to select one winner for the Cybils Award (Children and Young Adult Bloggers’ Literary Awards) in Young Adult Speculative Fiction from seven Finalists. Something great about the Cybils Awards are the many categories and the lists of Finalists — if a kid is asked to read an award-winning book, they can certainly find something they like among the Cybils Finalists. There’s somethiing for everyone.

Capitol Choices. This is a DC-area group of children’s literature librarians and other professionals who meet monthly to choose 100 of the best children’s and young adult books each year.

I’m going to talk about books from these committees as well as other favorites that were honored with the many ALA Awards. From the “Youth Media Awards” page, you can find a brief description of each award and links to the pages with current and past winners. Here’s the press release for all this year’s winners.

On my blog every year, I also post a list of Sonderbooks Stand-outs, my personal favorite books read that year. This year it just so happened that three of my #1 Sonderbooks Stand-outs were honored with multiple ALA awards. That didn’t even happen the year I was on the Newbery committee!

For this award tasting, I’m going to mention favorite books and tell the awards and honors they’ve won. I’m going to start with books for the youngest children and move to older children and teens. I am going to try to cover lots of different awards along the way, and I’ll tell about the awards as they come up.

For Youngest Readers

2022 Mathical Winner, PreK:
1 Smile, 10 Toes, by Nelleke Verhoeff

2021 Cybils Finalist, Board Books:
2022 Mathical Honor Book, PreK:
Circle Under Berry, by Carter Higgins

For Preschoolers

The Randolph Caldecott Medal is given to “the illustrator of the most distinguished American picture book for children” that year. This is given for the art.

2022 Caldecott Honor Book:
Mel Fell, by Corey R. Tabor

2022 Caldecott Honor Book:
Have You Ever Seen a Flower?, by Shawn Harris

2022 Caldecott Honor Book:
Wonder Walkers, by Micha Archer

The Schneider Family Book Awards honor books “that embody an artistic expression of the disability experience for child and adolescent audiences.”

2022 Schneider Family Award Winner, Young Children:
My City Speaks, by Darren Lebeuf, illustrated by Ashley Barron

The Coretta Scott King Book Awards go to “outstanding African American authors and illustrators of books for children and young adults that demonstrate an appreciation of African American culture and universal human values.”

2022 Coretta Scott King Honor for Illustration:
We Wait for the Sun, by Dovey Johnson Roundtree and Katie McCabe, pictures by Raissa Figueroa

For Early Elementary School

The John Newbery Medal is given to “the author of the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children.” This is given for the text.

The Asian/Pacific American Awards for Literature “celebrate Asian/Pacific American culture and heritage,” given for literary and artistic merit.

The Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards are given to outstanding children’s and young adult books based on a calendar that goes from June to May.

2022 Caldecott Medal Winner:
2022 Newbery Honor Book:
2022 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature Winner, Picture Books:
2021 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award Honor Book, Picture Books:
2021 Cybils Winner, Fiction Picture Books:
2021 #1 Sonderbooks Stand-out, Picture Books:
Watercress, by Andrea Wang, illustrated by Jason Chen

The Sydney Taylor Book Awards “recognize titles for children and teens that exemplify high literary standards while authentically portraying the Jewish experience.”

2022 Sidney Taylor Award Gold Medal, Picture Books:
2021 #2 Sonderbooks Stand-out, Picture Books:
The Passover Guest, by Susan Kusel, illustrated by Sean Rubin

Fun fact: Susan Kusel is a local librarian, and a past chair of the Sydney Taylor committee!

2022 Mathical Book Prize Winner, Grades K-2:
Uma Wimple Charts Her House, by Reif Larsen and Ben Gibson

The Theodor Seuss Geisel Award is given to the “most distinguished American book for beginning readers.”

2022 Geisel Award Winner:
2021 Cybils Finalist, Easy Readers:
Fox at Night, by Corey R. Tabor

2022 Geisel Honor Book:
Beak & Ally: Unlikely Friends, by Norm Feuti

The American Indian Youth Literature Awards are given every two years for the best writing and illustrations that “present Native American and Indigenous North American peoples in the fullness of their humanity in present, past and future contexts.”

2022 American Indian Youth Literature Award Honor Book, Middle Grades:
JoJo Makoons, The Used-to-Be Best Friend, by Dawn Quigley, illustrated by Tara Audibert

2022 Schneider Family Award Honor Book, Middle Grades:
Stuntboy, Volume 1, In the Meantime, by Jason Reynolds, drawings by Raul the Third

For Upper Elementary

The Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal is given to the most distinguished American informational book.

2022 Coretta Scott King Author Winner:
2022 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Winner:
2022 Caldecott Honor Book:
2022 Sibert Honor Book:
2021 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award Honor Book, Nonfiction:
2021 Cybils Finalist, Middle Grade Nonfiction:
2021 Sonderbooks Stand-out, #1 Children’s Nonfiction:
Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre, by Carole Boston Weatherford, illustrated by Floyd Cooper

2022 Mathical Winner, Grades 3-5:
2021 Sonderbooks Stand-out, #10 Children’s Nonfiction:
Maryam’s Magic: The Story of Mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani, by Megan Reid, illustrations by Aaliya Jaleel

2022 Mathical Honor Book, Grades 3-5:
2022 American Indian Youth Literature Award Honor Book, Picture Books:
2021 Cybils Finalist, Middle Grade Nonfiction:
Classified: The Secret Career of Mary Golda Ross, Cherokee Aerospace Engineer, by Traci Sorell, illustrations by Natasha Donovan

2022 Mathical Honor Book, Grades 3-5:
Molly and the Mathematical Mysteries, by Eugenia Cheng

2022 Sibert Honor Book:
2021 Sonderbooks Stand-out, #5 Children’s Nonfiction:
The Great Stink: How Joseph Bazalgette Solved London’s Poop Pollution Problem, by Colleen Paeff, illustrated by Nancy Carpenter

2022 Sidney Taylor Silver Medal, Middle Grades:
The Genius Under the Table, by Eugene Yelchin

The Mildred L. Batchelder Award is given to the most outstanding book originally published in another language in another country and translated into English.

2022 Batchelder Honor Book:
The Sea-Ringed World: Sacred Stories of the Americas, written by María García Esperón, illustrated by Amanda Mijangos and translated by David Bowles

For Middle School

The Pura Belpré Award is given to “a Latino/Latina writer and illustrator whose work best portrays, affirms, and celebrates the Latino cultural experience in an outstanding work of literature for children and youth”

2022 Newbery Medal Winner:
2022 Pura Belpré Award Author Winner:
2021 Cybils Finalist, Elementary/Middle Grade Speculative Fiction:
The Last Cuentista, by Donna Barba Higuera

The Stonewall Book Award – Mike Morgan & Larry Romans Children’s & Young Adult Literature Award is given to “English-language works of exceptional merit for children or teens relating to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender experience.”

The National Book Award for Young People’s Literature is given to an American author, on a publishing year that runs from December to November.

2022 Newbery Honor Book:
2022 Stonewall Award Winner, Children’s Literature:
2021 National Book Award Finalist:
2021 Cybils Finalist, Elementary/Middle Grade Speculative Fiction:
Too Bright to See, by Kyle Lukoff

The Michael L. Printz Award is given to “a book that exemplifies literary excellence in young adult literature.”

2022 Printz Honor Book:
2021 Cybils Finalist, Poetry:
2021 Sonderbooks Stand-out, #5 Children’s Fiction:
Starfish, by Lisa Fipps

The Walter Dean Myers Award for Outstanding Children’s Literature is sponsored by We Need Diverse Books and celebrates diversity in children’s literature.

2022 Newbery Honor Book:
2022 Walter Award Winner, Younger Readers Category:
2021 Cybils Finalist, Poetry:
Red, White and Whole, by Rajani LaRocca

2022 Mathical Book Prize Winner, Grades 6-8:
AfterMath, by Emily Barth Isler

2022 Mathical Honor Book, Grades 6-8:
2021 Sonderbooks Stand-out, #8 Children’s Fiction:
In the Red, by Christopher Swiedler

2022 Sidney Taylor Gold Medal, Middle Grades:
How to Find What You’re Not Looking For, by Veera Hiranandani

2022 American Indian Youth Literature Honor Book:
2020 Cybils Young Adult Speculative Fiction Finalist:
2020 Sonderbooks Stand-out, #5 Teen Speculative Fiction:
Elatsoe, by Darcie Little Badger

2022 Newbery Honor Book:
2021 National Book Award Longlist:
A Snake Falls to Earth, by Darcie Little Badger

The YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults is given to “the best nonfiction book for young adults.”

2022 YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Finalist:
2022 Capitol Choices selection:
In the Shadow of the Fallen Towers, by Don L. Brown

2022 Mathical Book Prize Honor Book, Grades 6-8:
It’s a Numbers Game: Baseball

For High School

The William C. Morris YA Debut Award “honors a debut book published by a first-time author writing for teens.”

2022 Printz Medal Winner:
2022 Morris Award Winner:
2022 American Indian Youth Literature Honor Book:
2022 Walter Award Winner, Teen Category:
2021 Cybils Finalist, Young Adult Fiction:
2021 Sonderbooks Stand-out, #1 Teen Fiction:
Firekeeper’s Daughter, by Angeline Boulley

2022 Cybils Young Adult Fiction Winner:
2021 Sonderbooks Stand-out, #2 Teen Fiction:
The Girls I’ve Been, by Tess Sharpe

2022 Cybils Young Adult Speculative Fiction Winner:
Vespertine, by Margaret Rogerson

2021 Cybils Young Adult Speculative Fiction Finalist:
The Mirror Season, by Anna-Marie McLemore

2022 Printz Honor Book:
2021 Cybils Young Adult Fiction Finalist:
Concrete Rose, by Angie Thomas

2022 Sidney Taylor Gold Medal, Young Adults
2021 Cybils Young Adult Speculative Fiction Finalist:
The City Beautiful, by Aden Polydoros

2021 Cybils Young Adult Speculative Fiction Finalist:
Bad Witch Burning, by Jessica Lewis

2022 Printz Honor Book:
2022 Coretta Scott King Author Honor Book:
2021 National Book Award Finalist:
Revolution in Our Time: The Black Panther Party’s Promise to the People, by Kekla Magoon

2022 YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Honor Book:
The Woman All Spies Fear: Codebreaker Elizebeth Smith Friedman and Her Hidden Life, by Amy Butler Greenfield

Review of 1 Smile 10 Toes, by Nelleke Verhoeff

Animal Characters, Award Winners, Good for the Very Young, Mathematical, Picture Book Review 0

1 Smile 10 Toes

by Nelleke Verhoeff

Barefoot Books, 2021. 24 pages.
Review written December 10, 2021, from my own copy, purchased via amazon.com
Starred Review
2022 Mathical Book Prize Winner, PreK

1 Smile 10 Toes is now one of my favorite board books. As with many board books, this one is part toy. All the pages except the last one are split in two, featuring a friendly imaginary animal all the same width in the middle. So you can turn parts of pages to mix and match the tops and bottoms and create many different kinds of creatures.

But the learning part is that each half-page has something to count. The only text is a numeral with the body part being featured. Some examples on top are 8 Feathers, 7 Curls, 3 Beaks, 5 Eyelashes, 4 Ears, 10 Spikes. Some examples on the bottom are 8 Toes, 9 Claws, 4 Feathers, 10 Hooves, 2 Thighs, 9 Fingers.

You can tell from the examples, the author didn’t worry about being conventional. I imagine that adults will get tired of counting things for kids long before a child will get tired of looking at these pages. I remember as a small child being fascinated with mix-and-match books, and this one has the additional bonus of teaching counting.

There’s no order to the number of things featured – all the numbers between 1 and 10 are featured, but in random order, which works well with the mix-and-match theme. You might want to wait to use it with a kid who knows that having 4 ears is silly.

No matter what, it’s a lovely way to give a small child endless things to count.

barefootbooks.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 Dr. Seuss’s Horse Museum, illustrated by Andrew Joyner

Art, Children's Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Dr. Seuss’s Horse Museum

illustrated by Andrew Joyner

Random House, 2019. 77 pages.
Starred Review
Review written September 13, 2019, from a library book.

This fascinating picture book look at Art is based on manuscript notes and sketches found in Dr. Seuss’s files. I haven’t been completely impressed with some of the other things dug out of his collections after his death – but this book is a delightful way to get kids thinking about Art.

Here’s how the book begins:

ART.
What’s it all about?

This is what ART is about…
ART is when an artist looks at something…
… like a horse, for instance…
… and they see something in that horse that excites them…
so they do something about it.
They tell you about it…
… in any one of a number of ways.

Artists have been excited by horses for as long as there have been artists. But what an artist tells us about horses and how they tell us is different for every artist.

What an artist sees in a horse depends on many different things – their background, likes and dislikes, you name it.

So come with me…

Let’s look at how different artists have seen horses. Maybe we can find some new ways of looking at them ourselves?

The pages that follow incorporate 35 different pieces of art that include horses. They talk about what the artist may have seen in a horse to express it that way. The book goes through different time periods and styles of art as well – all looking at horses.

The result is brilliant – lots and lots of artwork, all expressing horses, and all looking completely different.

There is extensive back matter, with more information about each piece of art and details about Dr. Seuss and his relationship with art (He was self-taught.) and the manuscript and sketches for this book and how they went from there to completion.

Future artists should read this book.

Seussville.com
rhcbooks.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 I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. 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 Lintang and the Pirate Queen, by Tamara Moss

Adventure, Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy 0

Lintang and the Pirate Queen

by Tamara Moss

Clarion Books (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), 2019. 360 pages.
Review written October 15, 2019, from an advance reader copy

Lintang lives on the Twin Islands, not part of the United Republic, and she’s known as a storyteller and a troublemaker. Lintang wants nothing more than to see the world.

When the Pirate Queen comes to their island, she needs an islander on board to get past the giant mythie Nyssamdra, the island’s guardian. Lintang is thrilled when she gets chosen.

But when she discovers a stowaway, her best friend Bayani, she has to decide if she will risk the Pirate Queen’s trust and tell her about the stowaway or be loyal to her friend. To make matters worse, Bayani won’t tell her why he wants to get to the island of Zaiben so badly.

The fantasy world of this story is inhabited by “mythies,” and most chapters are preceded by an entry from The Mythie Guidebook — and then that particular mythie shows up in the chapter. It begins with a tiny pixie – known for mischief – and continues through giant and fearsome creatures such as dragons and sirens.

The existence of sirens is the reason that most ships are crewed by women – who aren’t affected by the call of the siren. I do love that this book included a transgender man – who was in fact affected by the siren, though some thought he wouldn’t be.

It turns out that Bayani knows a secret about mythies that changes everyone’s perspective on them and can shake up the world. But will anyone believe him?

This is a fun fantasy adventure story about an impulsive girl seeing the world, learning to think before she acts, and loyally helping her friends.

I do have a few little issues about the way the fantasy world works, but I doubt that those issues will bother most readers.

Not everything is neatly wrapped up in this book, so I suspect and hope there will be more to come.

tamaramoss.com.au
hmhbooks.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 I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. 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 AfterMath, by Emily Barth Isler

Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Starred Review 0

AfterMath

by Emily Barth Isler

Carolrhoda Books, 2021. 266 pages.
Review written December 1, 2021, from my own copy
Starred Review
2022 Mathical Book Prize Winner, Grades 6-8

I just finished an audiobook written in 2021 that was also about families torn apart after a school shooting. That one, too, had a main character whose brother had done the shooting and who was ostracized by her classmates. How much do I hate it that this topic is timely in America today? However, I love it that kids can process these timely issues in the safe space of fiction written for them.

In AfterMath, twelve-year-old Lucy has just moved to a new town, not far from the one she left, but with a whole new school. Her parents couldn’t bring themselves to stay in the home where her little brother Theo died at five years old from a heart defect.

Her parents choose to move from Maryland to a town in Virginia where there was a school shooting three years ago. A house is for sale at an inexpensive price (one of the kids who died lived in that house), and they think Lucy will be comforted to be around other grieving people – or something?

Everything at her new school is shaped by the shooting. People introduce themselves by telling Lucy where they were during the shooting. And they aren’t very welcoming. There’s only one table in the lunchroom with empty seats, and later people tell Lucy that she shouldn’t sit with Avery. It turns out that Avery’s half-brother was the one who did the shooting.

But Lucy finds a friend in Avery. And an environment where she’s not the freak because her brother died. People don’t even know about Theo.

Lucy’s favorite class has long been Math, finding that to be something that has certainty in an uncertain world. So she loves it when someone starts sending her math jokes such as:

What kind of angle should you never argue with?
A 90-degree angle. They’re ALWAYS right.

And when her math teacher tells her about an after-school class in mime, she somewhat reluctantly signs up. It turns out that learning to express yourself without words also helps you express yourself with words.

I thought this book approached a tough subject with nice balance. Because Lucy’s an outsider, she can see things about the shooting survivors that an insider might not see. But because she’s grieving herself, she has a more vulnerable outlook. I like the way her parents are portrayed – clueless and making many mistakes in some areas, but loving and genuinely trying to do what’s best for Lucy.

Lucy, her friends, and her parents all show character growth in this book.

The one downside is I’m not sure who I’d give this beautiful book to. Except that impulse comes from thinking kids aren’t already thinking about school shootings. Here’s me fervently hoping someday this will be a historical curiosity.

P.S. I’m posting this on February 10, 2022, and now I can freely say how happy I was to help choose this book as our 2022 Mathical Book Prize Winner for grades 6-8! The math aspect is a fundamental part of the book, and readers can see math actually helping with healing and coping.

emilybarthisler.com
lernerbooks.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 Just Like Beverly, by Vicki Conrad, illustrated by David Hohn

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Just Like Beverly

A Biography of Beverly Cleary

by Vicki Conrad
illustrated by David Hohn

Little Bigfoot (Sasquatch Books), 2019. 52 pages.
Starred Review

Here’s a delightful picture book biography of Beverly Cleary. I’ve read her own story of her life, and this book does a great job of pulling out details that would be interesting to children.

I love the way the illustrator makes Beverly look very much like Ramona.

The book focuses on Beverly’s childhood. She struggled with reading, because she had smallpox while the other children in her class were learning to read. But then a wonderful teacher came along and helped Beverly catch up, and she discovered the joy of reading. Later teachers encouraged her in her writing ability.

Beverly studied to become a children’s librarian, and eventually worked to write stories especially for the boys who came into her library. They wanted stories about “kids like us” – exactly what Beverly had wanted when she was their age. The book points out how she used her own childhood experiences in her books.

There are eight pages of back matter, where I found a listing of some of her accomplishments and honors, including the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, the Newbery Medal, the National Book Award, and the Living Legend Award from the Library of Congress. National Drop Everything and Read Day was established in her honor on her ninetieth birthday, and there’s a Beverly Cleary Sculpture Garden in Portland, Oregon, where she grew up. Beverly Cleary is still alive, though the book wisely doesn’t make much of this fact, and simply mentions that she celebrated her hundredth birthday on April 12, 2016. ***Note: Beverly Cleary has died since I wrote this review. She lived to be 104. I think I wrote this review in 2019 and decided to finally just post it!

This book is a wonderful tribute to a great author, written at the level of children ready for her books.

beverlycleary.com
sasquatchbooks.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 I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. 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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Catching Up

General 0

I am writing reviews faster than I can post them.

The result is that I always feel behind and don’t like to let a day go past when I don’t get a review posted — and I’m still not going to catch up.

This is not sustainable.

I have the illusion that I can catch up — because in 2018, when I was on the Newbery committee, I did!

But how did I catch up? By not posting any new reviews for a full year! Or at least no reviews of Newbery-eligible books.

And even posting zero new reviews, it did take me the entire year to catch up on posting back reviews!

I currently have 219 reviews waiting to be posted. And I keep writing reviews faster than I can post, so I’m getting more and more behind.

Now, when I say “write” a review — I’m using drafts on the blog to keep reviews ready to post. When I say “post” a review — I mean make a webpage for my main sonderbooks.com site. And then I add the new title to the index, add links to books by the same author, and update “Previous Book” and “Next Book” links for the books before and after it. All this takes me 30-45 minutes per review.

Now, I recently revised my website to be more mobile-friendly — *and* to make it easier to post new reviews. However, I’ve already got a few thousand reviews posted, and until they get moved to the new format (takes about five minutes each) — it still takes a good amount of time to post a new review.

So, I need to change my habits.

My first thought was after a review is a year old, I need to just delete it and forget about it. But that makes me sad.

And then I realized that all it takes to publish the reviews on the blog is hit the Publish button. So instead of deleting the old reviews, why don’t I simply publish them on the blog? I can make getting a review page on my main site a little more exclusive.

In fact, it would be nice to get to the place where I write reviews and immediately post them to the blog — then simply make webpages for my favorites as time permits. Though I’d have to really keep a good list of what’s posted and what’s not.

So — let’s see if I can catch up on those 219 back reviews! Going forward, I’m going to try to publish one blog post per day, starting with the ones I wrote the longest time ago. I will also keep trying to post review pages on my main site, but I hope that will take off some of the pressure.

Meanwhile, happy reading!

Review of Playing the Cards You’re Dealt, by Varian Johnson

Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Starred Review 0

Playing the Cards You’re Dealt

by Varian Johnson

Scholastic Press, 2021. 309 pages.
Review written December 29, 2021, from a library book
Starred Review

Playing the Cards You’re Dealt is about ten-year-old Ant, who plans to compete in the big Spades tournament this year with his friend Jamal. He wants to redeem himself from last year’s disaster, and maybe impress his father as much as his older brother Aaron did when he won the tournament.

But there are complications. First, Ant and Jamal get beaten at Spades by a new girl who knows how to stack the deck. Then something’s going on at home. Should Ant keep his dad’s secrets? And when he needs a new partner, does Ant dare ask that cute girl?

This is all woven into a story about competition and friends and family and above all — dealing with trouble when those are in the cards you’re dealt.

Here’s a bit from the beginning:

When Ant was younger, he’d liked his nickname. After all, ants were kinda cool as far as insects went. Super strong for their size. Only now that everyone at school — even the girls — had shot up past him in height, it didn’t feel so good anymore. And no one, including his brother, seemed to want him to forget that.

This story has plenty of humor with the realistic conflict, and a kid you’re going to root for.

varianjohnson.com
scholastic.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 Dragon Hoops, by Gene Luen Yang

Graphic Memoir, History, Starred Review, Teen Nonfiction 0

Dragon Hoops

From Small Steps Great Leaps

by Gene Luen Yang
color by Lark Pien

First Second, 2020. 446 pages.
Review written May 26, 2020, from a library book
Starred Review

This is a graphic novel memoir about a notable high school basketball season at Bishop O’Dowd High School in Oakland, California, when the author was a teacher there. It was the 2014-15 season, and Mr. Yang had just had a graphic novel published on which he’d been working for six years. He puts himself into the story as he finds out all the hopes and dreams of the students and teachers were centering on finally winning a California state championship with their nationally ranked players. The school had previously had teams go to the championship game many times, but had never actually won.

And so we get the story of the season. The starting players and the coaches are featured. Key games are dramatized. We even get the history of basketball and why Catholic schools have a good record in this sport.

The author keeps the theme of “From Small Steps to Great Leaps” going by highlighting many small steps throughout – as people take a step into something new, and big things result. In Mr. Yang’s own life, he was trying to decide whether to quit teaching and switch to writing comics full-time, as he negotiated an offer to write for Superman.

But with basketball, you don’t know if the “good guys” win. And by making that point early in the book, we didn’t know how the season was going to turn out. The final game is well-dramatized and had me shouting at the end. Yes, shouting at a graphic novel as if it were a live game.

Now, the women’s basketball team at Bishop O’Dowd won the state championship that same year, so I found myself wishing there had been more coverage of that. (There was some, but mostly talking about the older sister of one of the players on the men’s team.) Though to be fair, the book was long enough as it was, and that might have made it unmanageable. Not to mention the difficulty the author might have had trying to get to both teams’ games.

I also wasn’t sure I liked the author writing himself into the story. But by the end, I appreciated it. It added a personal touch and emphasized that these were real kids caught up in big events.

I’m not a sports fan. (Though I was, in fact, a big fan of my high school’s basketball team and took stats for it.) But I am a fan of Gene Luen Yang’s writing, and I enjoyed this book thoroughly. The pacing was good; the history was interesting; and the competition was dramatic.

firstsecondbooks.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.

Source: This review is based on a library 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 One By One, by Ruth Ware, read by Imogen Church

Audiobooks, Fiction Review, Mystery, Starred Review 0

One By One

by Ruth Ware
read by Imogen Church

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2020. 13 hours and 8 minutes.
Review written November 13, 2021, based on a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

One By One is a mystery and thriller designed with nods to Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. The setting is a ski chalet in the Alps. Soon after a ski outing where a guest goes missing, there’s an avalanche that cuts them off from civilization.

The guests this week are from Snoop, a U.K.-based app that lets you listen to the music other people are listening to. But Snoop’s in trouble financially, and they have to decide whether to take a buyout offer or try to turn things around with new technology. Tension is high because of that decision, and millions of dollars are at stake.

But the new technology is location-based and using it shows them the missing founder is in the bottom of a gorge. And may not have landed there by accident. When deaths follow that are definitely not accidental, we know that a killer is stuck in the chalet with them.

As is traditional, we start the book with ten people in the chalet — eight from Snoop, plus the two staff for the chalet, Erin the hostess and Danny the chef. We get alternating perspectives from Erin and from Liz, who was once a personal assistant at Snoop, and is now the smallest shareholder with two shares. But that means she’s the deciding vote for whether the company should take the buyout or not, which puts her under lots of unwanted pressure.

We get a window into the complicated relationships among the Snoop coworkers from Liz, who thought she’d left it behind long ago. Erin has an outsider’s perspective, but we get hints of some secrets of her own.

As time goes by, their phones have no connection, their power goes out, the temperature drops, the snow keeps falling, and the police fail to come. All while more deaths happen and tension builds.

I wasn’t surprised by Whodunit — I’ve read enough Agatha Christie mysteries to suspect this person — but I still thoroughly enjoyed the way it was unveiled. And yes, as is traditional with thrillers, figuring out the solution puts the one who figures it out in terrible danger.

I had to find things to do that would let me listen to this book to finish it as quickly as possible. Too much suspense to set it aside! Wonderful!

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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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