I am an employee at a children's library, working on my Master's in Library and Information Science, with a bachelor's in English and History. I read. A lot. Most of what I've been reading lately is children's and teens' literature for work and classes. My general comfort zone in books is fantasy (high, low, fairy tale, etc.), science fiction, Southern literature, comics, historical fiction, historical non-fiction, biography, mythology, and Christian theology. I am always eager to expand my horizons, so feel free to send me a book recommendation in an ask!
Some free book recommendations:
The Girl Who Sang by Estelle Nadel and Sammy Savos
All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren
Silence by Shusaku Endo
SPQR by Mary Beard
East by Edith Pattou
Magik by Angie Sage
I will be using this blog to post reviews of the books I've read and any general literary or historical analysis I decide to write up. Happy reading!
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While I sort of get the impulse, it does always get my back up when people talk about something like Animorphs with this attitude of 'omgggg remember these books, how on EARTH were we allowed to read these books, they're so grim and dark and violent and tragic, no adults could possibly have known what they actually contained or they'd have been banned.'
And like. Allowing for the fact that there absolutely are adults who think every distressing topic ever should be banned from children's literature - they're children's books. You were allowed to read them when you were a kid because they were written for kids. Bridge to Terabithia is also a children's book. So is Where the Red Fern Grows and Old Yeller and Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry and The Giver and loads of other books that deal with heavy, difficult topics. It is appropriate and good for children to have books about these things that are tailored to their reading levels and it genuinely really bugs me when people act like they're somehow not really for kids because bad things happen in them or they end tragically.
Recommended Reading Group: This is a good book for kids from pre-k to elementary. This is one of my toddler's favorite books, and she's not quite three yet at the time of this post.
Synopsis: A sleeping kitten is alerted to the presence of a mouse, who escapes by jumping into a poster of an Egyptian Antiquities exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Does Kitten follow? Of course he does. The kitten and the mouse then go on a chase through several historical art pieces housed in the Met, including a sculpture of a dog from the Remojadas culture in Mexico, an Mblo mask by the Baule people of Cote d'Ivoire, and a stained-glass window of the Israelites gathering manna from Germany. When the kitten loses the mouse, he realizes he is lost himself, and runs around frantically until an icon of St. Anthony of Padua helps him find his way back home. Kitten returns home safely after an ancient Egyptian stele lets him through its false door, and happily eats his dinner.
Personal Thoughts: This book is super cute. The narrative is easy for any kid to follow with a surprising amount of tension, and the terse writing makes this very good for a storytime. My favorite part of this book by far is the artwork. Brian Lies actually made sculptures and paintings that mimicked the original works in the Met, and the story comes alive as the kitten blends in with each different aesthetic. There's even a portion at the end where Mr. Lies walks us through the process of making the different pieces, and has academic citations for each original artwork. I really think this book deserves to become a classic.
Recommended Reading Group: This is solidly a YA book, but depending on the maturity of the reader I could even recommend this to a ten-year-old. It has some violence and child abuse, but essentially no sexual content and very little (if any) language.
Synopsis: Hanalei hunts seadragons. Not for their hides or their teeth, like the dragoners with their harpoons. Not even for their eggs that are said to grant a wish to the people that can find and consume them. Instead, Hana chases seadragons across the oceans to study them in their natural environment. She has a special connection to them because of the tragedy that drove her from her home of Tamarind, and the dragons trust her unlike any other humans. Unfortunately, her former boss, a ruthless dragoner whose only concern is profit, wants to use her knack for dragon-finding to hunt for dragon eggs, and the trail ends up leading the whole ship right back to the islands of Tamarind. Back at her home, she reconnects with her childhood best friend: Samahtitamahenele, the only son of the crown princess of Tamarind, excluded from the throne because Tamarind is a matriarchal society, who nevertheless has had to learn how to lead in the face of his mother's magical coma. Reunited in the face of peril after a traumatic parting, Hana and Sam have to work together to find some dragon eggs before the dragoner captain does, bringing long-buried feelings back to the fore.
Personal Thoughts (contains spoilers):
Since it's Asian American and Pacific Island Heritage Month in the US, this seemed like a good book for the time. I enjoyed this! Polynesian-inspired fantasy settings are rather rare despite their rich history and folklore, so it was nice to read a book where that was the focus. The plot is pretty engaging, and even though I guessed some twists ahead of their reveal, the set-up and payoff were done well so I didn't feel cheated at all. Hana and Sam are really engaging protagonists to follow, apart and together- you get a good sense of both their personalities and they have great chemistry in their interactions. The other characters were also handled well- you got the feel they were actual agents in their own lives instead of just being background actors in Hana and Sam's stories.
I also really enjoyed the worldbuilding. There's a fair amount of show, don't tell, where place and character names show up where you can tell what kind of real-world cultures are supposed to be represented, but the dynamics of the cultures are different enough that it doesn't feel like Lucier just copy-pasted real-world history into her fantasy setting.
All that said, I do have a couple of complaints. I read an ebook version through Libby, and I noticed several mechanical issues with the book: typos, missing words, awkward spacing. There were also some spots where the dialogue, which was typically pretty polished and fit the tone of the story, suddenly felt half-baked and clunky. I don't know what happened with the former issue, but I think the book needed just one more go-around with editing and it would've been great. As it is, though, I still really enjoyed the narrative and the characters, so I say it's still worth checking out.
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Advice From a Librarian to Combat the U.S. Literacy Crisis #1:
If you don't read books: Read a book. Read any book. Read a book you loved when you were a kid. Read a book that interests you now. Read an entire collection of poetry or essays and think about why the author or editor arranged those works in that order. Read an erotic novel. Read nonfiction. Read graphic novels or manga. Read a kids' chapter book or a YA novel. Read a book digitally. Read a book on paper. Read an audiobook and really focus on it - if you notice yourself spacing out, scroll back to the last words you remember and try listening again. Read any book. And then when you finish it, celebrate for a minute (get those endorphins going!) and then read another one.
If you read books: Try reading a book that intimidates you. Maybe it's thick. Maybe it uses archaic language. Maybe it's a book that was translated from a language you don't speak into a language you do speak. Maybe it's a genre you don't normally read. Maybe it's the same kind of book as always, but you put your phone away and really focus on reading for 20 to 30 minutes at a time. (I know I've been struggling with this.) What scares you about reading? What challenges have you been avoiding? Try getting out of your comfort zone just a tiny bit, celebrate for a minute, and then try again.
Can everyone who reads this PLEASE reblog it?!?!? Libraries literally saved my life as a child!
Being abused at home, bullied at school and lost in the world, the library and all the books I could escape to the most amazing worlds, kept me alive!
I would walk to the library, and spend all day, from 10 am to 9 pm reading there!! I got special awards for how many books I read, I wrote little blurbs on why i loved the books (probably why I love to BETA and do ARCs)
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE Just hit the green arrows and the reblog!!!
As a 50 year old woman, the library offers me so much. Digital art pads to borrow, 3D printing, book clubs that are face to face (yeah, the introvert likes face to face because a moderator will stomp on anyone getting snarky)
New books in LARGE PRINT! I’m visually challenged and as much as I love my kindle, The feel of a real book in my hands will always be a beloved feeling!
Our library also has quarterly books sales of almost free books!! For 5$USD we get in a day early and can buy as many as we want. Anyone else has to wait and there is a limit for the first 2 days.
Also many, many libraries have inter library loan(it may be called something different). This means if they don’t have the item you want, they can get it for you. This may include photocopy/pdf of articles. This can also include along with books and DVDs, microfilm/fiche which is also a huge resource. Check around for libraries that are listed as depositories if you want to look at government documents.
Remember that many colleges and universities have open stacks for the public. You will likely have to pay a membership fee but you will get to stuff.
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Recommended Reader Group: Middle and high school. Discussion of heavy topics that may be a bit much for younger kids.
Synopsis: Faye Meisel is a Jewish-Japanese girl whose only real friend is her older brother, Shiloh. Shiloh has just turned thirteen and had his bar mitzvah when he gets a gift in the mail from his Jewish grandfather: a lump of clay. Grandpa, or Zeyde, Judah wants to induct his grandchildren into the family tradition of making golems, and despite their dad's initial protests, the two end up spending Pesach with Zeyde to get a jump start on their education. They learn the lore of golems, their family history, and discover a new world in their dreams that they hope to save with their newfound skills. But things don't go exactly to plan.
Personal Thoughts (Contains Spoilers):
I picked this up expecting a more typical children's adventure story. I thought Faye and Shiloh'd learn to make golems and use them to fight off some antisemites that were threatening their synagogue or something like that. What I got instead was a personal look at a Jewish family's history and all its traumas, and Faye having an internal crisis about Jews' role in history. Her breakdown towards the end- being afraid of always being hunted, always being killed, always being hated and blamed for nothing she actually did- resonated so strongly with what I have heard from real-life Jews that I nearly started crying. It almost feels like a bait and switch, when you realize that the Other World that Faye and Shiloh were exploring in their dreams is actually their ancestral memories bleeding through. While the book doesn't end in the kind of triumphal victory over hate you may have hoped for, Faye's personal triumph over her fear and her resolve to live for her family is an incredibly empowering and simple message.
I also really like Emi Cohen's writing style. She did incredibly well at making Faye a believable modern middle-schooler. Her nerdiness, wit, and capacity for self-reflection make her really compelling to read, which is great for such an internally-focused book. One of my favorite bits in the story was the look at Jewish history we got to see through the Not-Ghosts of her ancestors cropping up and interacting with each other.
Overall, a solid book that should get more attention. I would recommend this to kids who want more Jewish protagonists, or kids that feel disconnected from their heritage, whatever it may be.
#public libraries are good because they let people access books they might never otherwise read#private book ownership is good because it's Yours#physical books are good because they last a long time and again it's Yours#ebooks are good because you can fit a whole library into the physical space of a single book and they're cheaper to produce#audiobooks are good because they're accessible to people with eyesight or visual reading issues and leave your hands free#in conclusion: all books are good and people should enjoy them however and whenever they can#(lest it be misunderstood I agree with you completely OP I just also really like books in general and it got away from me)
I usually try to be tolerant of anachronisms in books, particularly ye olde medieval generic swords and sorcery type books, but I think I broke the sound barrier with how quickly I just shot out of my immersion in this book when ye olde ancient archivist in the ye olde fantasy-england castle's library tells the protag where to find a certain book by giving him its dewey decimal number.
Today in an arthurian retelling set in pre-saxon britain I encountered a character who said he was going to quit drinking "cold turkey," which I think puts him roughly a thousand years prior to European awareness of the existence of turkeys, and the dissonance had barely registered in my mind before I remembered the medieval lending library run on the dewey decimal system and decided a chronologically misplaced poultry idiom wasn't worth noticing in comparison.
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oh someone told me something useful yesterday. she said she’s been thinking about her tbr less as an overwhelming list of books she Must Read and more like she’s cultivating a wine cellar. making a rich collection that will provide the perfect thing when needed. a bottle will get uncorked when the time is right
