With her first novel for young readers (Inside Out and Back Again, HarperCollins 2011), Thanhhà Lai captured in verse one child’s experience adjusting to life in Alabama after leaving Vietnam. In Listen, Slowly, Lai explores the experience of Mai (Mia at…
Tag: review
Review: How It Went Down by Kekla Magoon
How It Went Down by Kekla Magoon (Henry Holt, 2014) begins with words similar to too many recent news stories – an African American teenager has been shot by a white man. The police arrest, and then quickly release, the…
Review: Tomboy by Liz Prince
Liz Prince‘s graphic memoir Tomboy (Zest Books, September 2014) chronicles her 31-year journey to define who she is in a world bent on doing it for her, and her evolution from rejecting all that is “girl” to someone who embraces who…
Bird: An Interview with Crystal Chan
“Grandpa stopped speaking the day he killed my brother, John. His name was John until Grandpa said he looked more like a Bird with the way he kept jumping off things, and the name stuck. Bird’s thick, black hair poked…
Review: The Freedom Summer Murders by Don Mitchell
“One day…you might find something worth dying for.” Michael Schwerner On June 21, 1964, three young men were murdered because they worked for civil rights in Mississippi. It took more than forty years for anyone to be prosecuted for murder…
Review: Five, Six, Seven, Nate !
In a pitch perfect follow up to last year’s Better Nate Than Ever (my review here), Tim Federle continues 13-year-old aspiring-actor Nate Foster’s pursuit of his musical comedy dreams in Five, Six, Seven, Nate! (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, January…
Review: Year of the Jungle by Suzanne Collins, Illustrated by James Proimos
“My dad has to go to something called a war. It’s in a place called Viet Nam,” explains Suzy, the younger-self narrator of Suzanne Collins’ autobiographical picture book The Year of the Jungle, Illustrated by James Proimos (Scholastic Press, 2013).…
Review: Boxers & Saints
While it did not claim the top prize, it’s easy to see why Gene Luen Yang’s latest work, the two-volume set Boxers and Saints (First Second, 2013), was a finalist for this year’s National Book Award. Like in his National…
Review: Sex & Violence
Young Adult novels often focus on the moment when a teen protagonist’s life is about to change — sometimes in small ways, and sometimes in large ways. In the first chapter of Carrie Mesrobian’s Sex & Violence (Carolrhoda LAB, October…
Worth the Price of Admission: Review Of Better Nate Than Ever
Better Nate Than Ever by Tim Federle (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, February 2013) is a love song, and a lifeline, to every kid who has ever dreamed of Broadway while navigating the mean streets of Hometown, USA.…