Super powers, hilarity, demon spawn and Chinese mythology make The Epic Crush of Genie Lo an awesome book. Genie is busting her butt trying to get into a great college and get out of the community she lives in outside of San Francisco. Everything is going to plan until Quentin shows up and strange things start to happen, like demons arriving and the possibility of the whole city being destroyed.
Here’s the abridged version; turns out Quentin is actually the Monkey King and Genie is the Monkey King’s former all powerful weapon, the Ruyi Jingu Bang, reincarnated as a human. Of course this takes Genie some time to wrap her head around. Turns out being the Ruyi Jingu Bang also means she has awesome super powers. Since the Ruyi Jingu Bang, is incredibly powerful everyone is after Genie because they want to harness her power. Genie has no interest in belonging to someone else. Genie and Quentin begin to train together, because of those aforementioned demons. There are over 100 demons that have escaped from hell and Genie and Quentin need to take them all down to save the day. Note – that is not a simple task. While all that is going on Genie is still trying to manage her day to day life including applying for colleges, friendships, crushes and her divorced parents. She has her hands full to say the least.
As one reviewer said, “Few books could be more vital in this particular moment.” Helen Thorpe spends a year in the classroom at South High School in Denver that welcomes immigrants who don’t speak any English. She gets to know all the refugees including immigrants from Iraq, Democratic Republic of Congo, El Salvador, Mozambique, Burundi and Mexico! The subtitle is “Finding Refuge, Friendship, and Hope in an American Classroom,” which is the experience of the teenagers in the story, but is also the experience of the author who visited this classroom the year preceding the Trump presidency.
I loved reading about the amazing lives and struggles of teenagers making such enormous life changes, often following tragedy or great fear. As soon as I finished, I began to miss the kids. Well written and compelling.
First in the ongoing “October Daye” series, but the world-building and story are fully fleshed out in this novel. McGuire has an encyclopedic knowledge of fairy tales (the dark, un-Disney-fied kind) and folk lore, and they all come out to play here. Your heroine is a half-fey, half-human changeling who just spent the better part of a decade cursed to live as a fish, so she has a few issues. She also has a murder to solve and fairy court politics to navigate. A rich world with terrific characters that just keep getting better!
This is one of those gems of a kid’s book that adults will love. It’s packed with clever stuff that your 6-year old will get on one level and you will laugh at on another. It’s a perfect tool to teach the future generation the joys of irony, satire, parody, and what I call slightly snarky humor. Even older kids will enjoy this since I believe most 10 to 13-year olds have a highly developed sense of the ridiculous. There are two pieces I especially love: the title poem which will make even a little one giggle with delight; and check out the “Alphabet Book by the Laziest Artist in the World” (page 11) for something that had a group of adults guffawing loudly.
The Wizards of Once is a terrific new fantasy by Cressida Cowell, the creator of How to Train Your Dragon. This is the first in a new series, introducing the 2 main characters, a Wizard boy named Xar and a Warrior girl named Wish. The book has the best illustrations: spell books, snow cats, giants, sprites, magic spoons, thrones, king of the Wizards, queen of the Warriors, rooms in trees, witch blood and even flying doors! There are plenty of mysteries, many of which are not solved by the doozy of an ending — who is the narrator? What does the title mean? Will Xar ever learn? Funny and easy enough for a 3rd grader to apprehend while also pulling from a deep well of wisdom and humor to satisfy adults and young adults, this book is a winner. Get this one for your 9 year old and then read it aloud to the whole family!
Tess de Costa hears a voice that no one else can. When this voice tells her to save a local fisherman, everyone one in her town starts to treat her like a real life saint. They come to her for blessings and prayers and attribute all kinds of “miracles” to her. After Tess tragically dies, her mother leads the charge for the pope to officially recognize her sainthood, but the two people who knew Tess best, her sister Callie and Tess’s secret boyfriend Danny, feel this is betrayal of her memory. They remember Tess as someone who wanted to be a normal teen and only reluctantly carried the unfair expectations of an entire town. Danny and Callie set out together to sabotage the process and prove Tess was not a saint, which leads them to confront some hard truths about themselves, old family secrets, and the tragic mystery behind the kidnapping of a local girl.
A Psalm for Lost Girls doesn’t give any easy answers. Bayerl address a number of difficult issues from grief to mental illness with the thoughtfulness and gravity they deserve. Every character is vivid and feels like someone you know. Bayerl combines all this in a highly readable and fast-paced story. Fans of Jandy Nelson and Lauren Oliver will want to check this out.
When Mo Willems decided to end his much loved (and brilliantly funny) Elephant and Piggie series, he did have some good news. There would be a spin-off series called “Elephant and Piggie Love Reading” which would bring in celebrated guest authors and illustrators to tell an easy reader story created in the Elephant and Piggie tradition. Meanwhile the two esteemed characters would introduce the book and then share their goofy thoughts about what happens in the book at the end. The multi-Coretta Scott King and Caldecott Honor award winning Bryan Collier takes this formula and turns it on its head with the inventive It’s Shoe Time!. This punny romp stars some shoes outraged that a little girl has opted to wear mismatched footwear. They chase after her to stop this debacle from happening. The book follows the formula of a typical Elephant and Piggie book. Cartoon bubbles appear over the characters’ heads as they speak in simple, repetitive yet somehow lively sentences. But this is the first one in the series to have a meta moment in the MIDDLE of the book with a nervous Elephant and Piggie expressing that they “hoof to know” what happens next. Collier also ushers PEOPLE into the world of the series. The girl and her father are the first two human characters in the Elephant and Piggie universe, and Collier dares to make them realistic, not cartoonish. It’s a bit disorienting at first but oh so inventive. An added plus: this giddy story leads to a surprising conclusion that will have young readers giggling with delight.
Writer/illustrator Mordicai Gerstein, the Caldecott winner for the amazing The Man Who Walked Between the Towers, delivers yet another visually astounding picture book that mixes wonder with adventure. The story is relatively simple: in a seaside community, a fisherman’s son notices a whale tangled up in a net. Remembering a time when he almost drowned, the compassionate boy decides to defy his dad’s orders and help the dying creature by diving underwater and freeing it. What Gerstein brings to this stirring account about empathy is his cinematic eye for detail, knowing exactly where to place the figures on the page for maximum effect. Just look at that remarkable opening image of the kid spotting the struggling whale in the distance as the sun rises. Later there is a fantastic moment when he swims underwater and he looks right into the whale’s giant eye (every time I show the book to someone the person always says “wow” at that point). We need to turn the book vertically for the scene of the boy bravely cutting the net. I don’t want to spoil the ending, but I must say that the book ends with a moment that makes the reader gasp because it is so absolutely powerful.
Frenchie is on the run. Frenchie is one of the few Indigenous people of North America left and he is being hunted. Civilization has been devastated by war, climate change and disease. All but the Indigenous people have lost their ability to dream and because of that people have been slowly losing their minds. People are desperate to find a cure and have turned to rounding up Indigenous people; testing them, torturing them and collecting their marrow in hope of a cure. Frenchie and his small crew are heading north hoping to escape the recruiters, but with desperate people at every turn death is always lurking around the corner.
“Matt hasn’t eaten in days . . . he has discovered something: the less he eats the more he seems to have powers.”
Miller’s debut novel is at once stark and funny, a story about body image, addiction, and love. Miller’s story rides the line between fantasy and reality; does Matt really develop superpowers or is it the deluded fantasies of a starving mind?
I love this book. Miller’s treatment of eating disorders is authentic, heartfelt, and full of the realism that comes from first hand experience. I also loved the complex and often frustrating familial relationships explored in this novel. Each of them is complex, personal, and individual.
I know some people have issues with the inclusion of the supernatural but I found them to be well done and cohesive. If you do find that you are confused, feel free to start the chapter (they are typically short) over and really immerse yourself in Miller’s masterful prose.
