Are you a library book? Because I’m checkin’ you out.
I couldn’t help it. Cheers to love this Valentine’s Day highlighting a handful of my favorite romances in every format and for different audiences.
Category Archives: Fiction
Love: Self discovery
Last week I recommended the entertaining first book in The Misfits series The Royal Conundrum written by Lisa Yee and illustrated by Dan Santat to a girl who didn’t really know what she was looking for. I told her that a fun adventure would await and if it sounded good, then dive in.
She returned today saying she wanted something else. I’m not even sure she cracked it open. As a mood reader myself, I assumed that the good time romp that The Royal Conundrum offered her last week when we talked wasn’t what she was looking for now. We chatted for a few minutes. I showed her a new display of books and talked about a few based on format and topic and told her to roam and see what stuck out.
Ten minutes later she came up to the desk with Full Disclosure by Camryn Garrett that I had talked about from our display and the Manga Classic edition of Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare that was in a wildly different location than the other. Both a decidedly different mood than the original. We chatted during checkout and she grabbed a few bookmarks content with her choices.
I want to celebrate her self discovery. Her agency in choosing what is right for her at the moment. It wasn’t an assignment. It wasn’t forced. She just wanted to read a good book and meandered through the library without me trailing behind. We need to give kids the space to make their decisions with confidence… or maybe even sheer randomness. Either way, I’m glad she feels at home in the library to return and borrow as often as she needs.
Love: Quirky books
I had mentioned in my Love: YMAs post a few of my favorite award winners and honorees including John the Skeleton. It’s a quirky book– in part because it’s a translation? Maybe. But also because it’s odd to write about a “retired” science classroom skeleton going to live with a set of grandparents. It got me thinking about how much I enjoy a quirky book– on my Goodreads shelf, they’re called “offbeat”. To me, it constitutes a book that is unlike anything written in topic, style, mood, tone, plot, or characterization. What might be quirky to me, might not be quirky to you, so I’ll let you decide after I highlight five.
- Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides remains in my top five books of all time. I recently reread it and realized just how much I adore the narration of the Lisbon girls’ demise in their house from the vantage point of neighborhood boys. This is in addition to the fact that all of the girls commit suicide by the end of the story and thus lending itself to the melancholy mood that is so direct in so few pages.
- Henry Hoke’s Open Throat is another vantage point that’s wholly puzzling– a mountain lion in the hills of Hollywood. Yup. Making scathing work of judging humankind.
- David Sedaris wrote and Ian Falconer illustrated Pretty Ugly, a picture book with the goofiest and sweetest twist at the end. The style, the character, the entire premise is quirky but oh so lovely by the time you close the book.
- Ian X. Cho’s Aisle Nine made it into the top five finalists for the Morris Award this year. I’ve never read anything with as much zest and disdain for life than Jasper and the alien creature that lives in his apartment with him while he works a dead end job as a supermarket that’s a portal from hell. I couldn’t help but make a puzzled face through most of it with a little Mona Lisa smile.
- Jackie Morse Kessler’s final book in her Riders of the Apocalypse series called Breath brought a unique approach to the series in which a contemporary teen embodied a horseman as a way to understand an issue they were faced with.
- Lauren Destefano’s Wither was the first in a Chemical Garden trilogy that I got in to. The premise was a medical dystopia with intense characters in an unflattering situation that was creepy and got creepier as the trilogy moved forward.
Love: Book covers
Love it or hate it, we’re a visual culture. And we do judge books by their covers! I can’t help but stare at evocative book covers. Do you have a favorite? Here are a few of mine:
Dunlap’s debut The Resurrectionist was a recent recommended read and I couldn’t have been more in love with the morbid cover.
When I’m doing readers advisory with my high schoolers, I lead with the breathtaking beauty of this cover of Grown by Tiffany D. Jackson (the recent winner of the Margaret A. Edwards award at the Youth Media Awards).
I spent too much time being eviscerated by Ashley Hope Perez’s Out of Darkness and telling everyone I knew to read it before I bought it so I could own it and stare at a cover that in it’s simplicity summarizes the complexity of human existence and sends shivers down my spine every time I think about Naomi.
Were my eyes playing tricks on me? I didn’t really see this cover until days after I finished it and was staring at it again. Genius connection to the story in Jason Reynolds’ Long Way Down.
Speaking of second takes– both Schwartz’s first book Anatomy: A Love Story and her second Immortality: A Love Story have that creative illusion that highlights the heart and mind of the duology’s intelligent and daring heroine Hazel.
Love: the YMAs
Blogging each day during a month has been a fun adventure to challenge me and I’ve decided February is a LOVE-ly month for another round using the theme of love. Have an idea for a post? Drop it in the comments.
This past Monday was the premier event in children and teen publishing: the Youth Media Awards. While it will undoubtedly look different next year without having a midwinter conference beforehand, it will continue to be an event to be viewed. It’s where winners of big awards that add seals to books get announced to the gasps, claps, and exuberance of all who are watching. There are years I’ve been “in the room” and years like this year that I was watching the livestream making audible noises and shaking my hands in celebration. Here were the titles that I was most excited to see come across the screen either because I devoured them (not having known about them previously in the days following the YMAs or precisely because I loved them leading up to the YMAs).
Favorite posts from 2024
With the last day of the year, what’s better than a quick post of my favorite posts from this year because they were often about amazing moments or reads from this past year.
- The “best” lists from this year
- My forty-book reread to celebrate turning forty
- Meeting authors and celebrating books
- The best new comic series this year
And it wouldn’t be the end of one year and the start of another without having my last book of the year and first book of the new year lined up. Several hours ago I finished the National Book Award winner Kareem Between by Shifa Saltagi Safadi. It’s clear why it’s a winner.
And as if Fiona Staples and Brian K. Vaughan made a wish come true that I whispered into the ether or not, my first read of 2025 will be Saga #71.
There’s no doubt this will be the perfect way to usher in a new year of reading. If you haven’t hitched your wagon to Saga yet, make this your year.
Best of 2024: Adult
Finally, the caboose to this best-of train are books written for adults. A treat and indulgence for a high school librarian like myself. It’s evident that I lean heavily into nonfiction but have been known to get sucked into a vivid fiction too. Oh, and comics.
Best of 2024: Young adult
For the third day of the four day event featuring the best of 2024, I’m sharing my favorites targeting young adults. One is an ongoing comic in which I cosplayed the main character, Erica Slaughter at a recent comic con. One is by the GOAT of YA, Jason Reynolds. Several romance titles that. One nonfiction about deadly plants. A few autobiographies in various formats. And last, one atmospheric fairytale.
Best of 2024: Middle grade
Next up, the fantastically deep bench of awesome middle grade for 2024. I could have created an honors list in addition to the ten I’m featuring as my favorites of the year.
Best of 2024: Picture books
It’s that time of year! Where readers, social media influencers, publishers, libraries, and anyone related to books share their best books. I’m no different. Though my years-end lists always feature books published in that year, not what was read in that year. This year I’ve settled on four categories: picture books, middle grade, young adult, and adult. I decided not to organize by format or genre but instead on audience. Here are my favorite picture books from 2024. Favorites because of their message, their art, and the way the art and words meld.
Readers Be Advised 