There is just one more day left in December that will be an homage to the reading and blogging in 2021, but for today I am finishing up the top tens– today graphic novels and manga.
What’s not to love about graphic novels and manga? Whether it’s a standalone or series, the varied abilities and styles of the illustrators and artists are equally matched by the writing of the authors (unless they’re one and the same to which hats-off for talent and skill. All of these titles bring sometimes special to readers from middle schoolers with Huda F Are You? to adults with In Love and Pajamas. There were superheroes and super sleuths, mysteries, and adventures. Plus one adaptation of a wildly successful historical fiction novel with Between Shades of Gray.
The focal point of my reading experience is young adult since I am a high school librarian. As mentioned in yesterday’s post, I am not including any nonfiction in my top ten’s for 2021 because of committee work, but it still left plenty of time to read fabulous young adult fiction. And here they are:
While Lee’s The Nobleman’s Guide to Scandal and Shipwrecks is the end of her Montague Siblings series that was postponed from 2020 and an eagerly anticipated title, there are several on the list from 2021 that are becoming or could become series themselves. Gray’s Beasts of Prey has already had a sequel announced (Beasts of Ruin) and one of the first books on my TBR for 2022 is Jean’s Tokyo Dreaming, the sequel to Tokyo Ever After. Sharpe likely has no intention of a second book for The Girls I’ve Been however there was so much to Nora’s story that it could easily have a sequel. Her obstacles were no match for her will to survive, so I would love to know where she goes after the bank heist is over.
Adler’s summer romance Cool for the Summer is as hot as Playing with Fire but for different reasons. The history unpacked in both Moore’s The Perfect Place to Die (about H.H. Holmes’s killing spree) and Williams Garcia’s A Sitting in St. James as sweeping and atmospheric. While the last two not yet discussed– Take Me With You When You Go and Me (Moth) are centered around a relationship between two characters: siblings and strangers, respectively that unfurl deep-rooted connections which wreck readers by the end.
The year end review is here! Over the next three days I’ll be featuring three top tens including today’s childrens, middle grade, and adult edition, tomorrow young adult fiction edition, and Thursday’s graphic novels and manga edition. I have had to intentionally leave off young adult nonfiction since I have spent the year reading close to two hundred middle grade and young adult nonfiction titles for my work on the 2022 Excellence in Nonfiction Award and therefore cannot talk about them.
In no particular order, these ten books feature elements like lyrical prose, thought-provoking questions about life, and the necessary empathy to be a human being in this world. Whether it’s grief or loneliness, needing to find your purpose, or going on an adventure, these ten authors kept me riveted from start to finish.
A fellow librarian colleague, Stacey Rattner, who I’ve mentioned in the past and I presented last month about how our reading lives as librarians affect our students’ reading lives. We asked questions to think-pair-share about and then coupled them with reading recommendations.
During one of these sections, we talked about having time/making time to read and Stacey shared that I read during my lunch period. Yes. Every day I read during my lunch period. Other than when my intern and I were eating together this fall or if I can’t take my lunch for some reason, you’ll find me with my feet on the opposite chair, eating my snack, and reading. And it was recently reinforced when I was listening to the audiobook Do Nothing: How to Break Away From Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving by Celeste Headlee that what I’m doing has work and personal benefits similar to this BBC article from 2019 that also references how brain breaks at work lead to happier employees and feelings of productivity. I didn’t start doing this because of these reinforcing studies, I did it because I knew it would help me detach for a brief time in the middle of the day and do something I loved. It resets me and I started sharing on my public Instagram my lunch time reading it, using the hashtag #literarylunchbox. They tend to be graphic novels or short nonfiction that I can either read in a period or over a few days.
Here are some of the titles I’ve read recently during my lunch period:
I woke up to the news in my Instagram feed and was flooded from memories of my teenage years. There are certainly books I remember reading over and over again in elementary school but as I moved into middle school Anne Rice was the author woman for me.
I don’t remember which book I started with but I have a sneaking suspicion it was The Witching Hour because while her career was made famous through writing about vampires, her witches trilogy I remember being taken away with. But I did read every one of her books on vampires too. And I know I’ll have a few who agree and many who won’t, but I dare say that Interview with the Vampire was better on screen than it was in the pages of the book. It doesn’t diminish the worlds she created, the character development, sharing deep desires and longings, and what immortality could look like. She built them with skill and passion. She embodied her work. I’m sad to have never met her. But 80 is a fabulous life in which most knew her name and the work she produced.
Is it any wonder that a newer batch of writers like Holly Black and Cat Winters are among my favorites as well? Probably not because they both wrote messages of heartbreak over the loss.
While you’ll have to buy me a drink to get my best Anne Rice reading story, rest assured I owe my teenage reading life to the many checkouts at the local public library of the queen of vampires, Anne Rice.
Regardless of what level you work at in a school library, as a librarian part of your goal is to have books in the library that students want to read. Popularity is sometimes obvious, re: Dogman and sometimes it’s geographical or site-specific. This was evident several years ago when Karen McManus broke out on the scene for young adults with her murder mystery One Of Us Is Lying. Students should feel comfortable requesting the purchase of certain books. And sometimes they make it loud and clear.
Enter Junji Ito, the GOAT of horror manga since he entered the field in 1987. His popularity in our library is a confluence of one of our senior electives called Horror Fiction and Film, the large showing number of students who attend Anime Club (of which I’m the faculty advisor), and that manga regularly makes the top circulated items in our library.
Ito is the GOAT for a reason. They are dark, mind-bending, frightful, and intelligent horror stories and short stories. I’m drawn to them as so many of our students are. We recently started getting in our newest order which is adding more of Ito’s books to the collection and replacing well-worn books that have been in circulation for several years. He’s someone that we will likely always have on order.
First, read at least one of Ito’s books if not all of them. Second, remember to listen to your students when it comes to what’s on the shelves.
Aren’t breaks for catching up on your TBR pile? Mine wasn’t ridiculously large but I do have the added problem of borrowing books digitally or putting books on hold that come in super quickly even though I really don’t have time to read them. Additionally, my committee work is coming to an end which means a lot of the prescribed reading I’ve had to do all year is now petering out and I have more room for all the extras.
And Ruta Sepetys’ new book coming out in February was just that book I got my hands on this month. Not only did I have the pleasure of being able to read an advanced copy, within days I was assigned it to review for a professional library magazine. So I am not going to go into great detail with a review because that will be published shortly in School Library Journal, but know that it’s my Outstanding Book of the Month for November for a reason– ’nuff said.
It’s been a long month, but October for educators is akin to March in many ways.
As my secret reading (reading for a committee which I cannot share) ramps up, I was still able to sneak in some books that do not fit the committee’s profile to pick my outstanding book of the month. And you know how I like to cheat. This month’s outstanding book is actually a trio, part of a series written by Kami Garcia and illustrated by Gabriel Picolo.
Their Teen Titans graphic novels will see the release of Robin some time in 2022, but until then I dove into the first, Raven, the second, Beast Boy, and the third, Beast Boy Loves Raven within days of one another via Hoopla where you never have to wait! And maybe that adds to the excitement but I also recognize that these three so far are written beautifully in both the dialogue and narrative and Picolo’s illustrations compliment it with vivid colors and exquisitely drawn character, situational, and action scenes which flowed scene by scene.
Meeting Rachel, then Garfield, and then building the suspense to when they meet and discover they both have hidden abilities meant that the stories had to stand on their own but then come together. With a backstory for each character it was easy to move from one to the other and then the meet-cute between the two. It’s as simple and complicated as two veterans can make it, to the celebration of readers.
Today is my sixteenth year in education. Fifteen of them have been right where I am today, as the high school librarian.
I have seen one facelift and one major update with the third around the corner– a completely new space to move in to next fall to the facility. I have had more than a dozen direct supervisors, building principals, and superintendents. With a graduating class hovering around six hundred students, I have likely interacted with close to 9,000 teenagers and hundreds of teachers. And whatever each school year brings, it always circles back to the kids. I saved this post to make on the first day of school, but it’s really a post that could have been shared on the last day of school last year. And it’s been sitting with me all summer long.
The three major subgenres of books that were most circulated last year– specifically reflecting why they were the most circulated as I often do at the end of a calendar year when making “best of” lists or the books most likely to be missing from the shelves and of course, when I’m putting new orders together for purchase.
Yes, we still checked out physical books through the curbside pickup method, the small number of students who were physically in the building, and the handfuls of drive-up to their curbside. And then there was the robust digital offerings. I booktalked until I couldn’t booktalk anymore– Google Meets, 1:1, and in-person.
What were they?
Murder
Romance
Humor
Let’s break this down: the three most asked-for books in the library came down to murder, romance, and humor. And then I say, it was 2020. And you nod your head. Of course!
True crime is prevalent in Netflix series and podcasts, books and casual conversation. It’s a thing. And it’s a thing with our teenagers too. Being home with their families rather than playing team sports and attending school every day, I’m sure there was some level of interest in the subgenre because of these massive shifts in daily business. It’s easy to go to a darker place. And books are nothing if not a reflection of inner thoughts and feelings.
We all needed some love. We missed family gatherings and meeting up with friends. And for teenagers, a whole chunk of their socialization went out the window when schools shut down. Really, all they needed was some love. So can you see how a little romance went a long way?
And humor, there is comfort in the familiar. Yes, we have Diary of a Wimpy Kid in our high school library and no I couldn’t keep them on the shelves. They wanted the escape from the seriousness of the news and the pandemic. They wanted to laugh. And who can blame them?
I will remember this past school year because it was the year I lost my co-librarian for the majority of the school year to budget cuts and had to manage alone. It was isolating because staff were scattered and hunkered in their rooms talking to computer screens. But I still saw kids each day and I will remember that all they wanted were some books and those books had to do with murder, romance, or humor. And I replied, well then I’ve got a book for you…
For this school librarian, the end of August means the end of summer, but that’s okay because then I get to go back to reading, recommending, and chatting with students about books! In the meantime, here’s my favorite from this past month.
And how appropriate a gif because it’s the most delicious romance: Emiko Jean’s Tokyo Ever After. As I was shouting my love of this book from the rooftops (and in a Young Adult book group meeting), I was informed that there is already a sequel in the works: Tokyo Dreaming, so now I’m not so sad it’s over because I know Izumi will live on again between the pages of the book.
What Jean does is exactly what you’d expect from a Cinderella story and an enemies to lovers trope. Izumi is a regular American girl who discovers that she’s Japanese royalty. But that’s not enough, when she discovers her roots, she falls for the bodyguard.
What I love:
Izumi’s girl gang. Their and her realness inject goofy humor throughout the book
The romance, of course!
The character development. Every character has something rich to offer to the story as a whole
This is a romance for any season. This was my summer read– the kind of cutely sexy beach read that feels indulgent. But it could be a spring read– as love blooms all around (Izumi’s is not the only love story in the book!). It could be a fall read– the colors and smells of that season are as succulent as the details of the story as it comes together. And need I explain that in the depths of winter– this is a story that will warm your heart.
Readers Be Advised 