Through a series of eye-catching infographics, this book introduces readers to the world. The infographics focus on personal things like family structure, most popular names, living spaces, and breakfast foods. It also looks more broadly at things like world population, city populations, traffic in cities, schools and homework. There are more light hearted infographics too like most popular dog breeds, summer vacations, sports and birthdays.
This book is worth exploring closely. Each double-page spread offers an infographic with layered information and an intriguing look at what data can show us about ourselves and about our world. The infographics are done in a modern flat style that works well with the numbers that are designed into the images. The images and numbers are carefully selected to be of interest to children and also easily understood by them.
A fascinating glimpse into our world from a variety of points of data. Appropriate for ages 6-9.
Aiden Navarro is fourteen and attending summer camp with his Boy Scout troop. He is leaving his Catholic Middle School and has decided to go to public high school, though he’s starting to dread what that means in terms of the bullying escalating even farther. After all, he doesn’t know how to dress himself since he’s been wearing a uniform to school for years. He also worries about how his sister is coping with his often abusive father now that Aiden is gone to camp. To make it all more complicated, Aiden is also gay and closeted. When he finds himself becoming attracted to one of his friends, Aiden has to decide whether to let him know or not. When things don’t go well, Aiden reaches a dark place that has him questioning how to go on.
Curato has created a graphic novel that really speaks to self discovery and learning how to survive. The setting of the summer camp really creates an atmosphere of freedom mixed with closely living with other boys his age. This can be a mix of exhilarating but also being unable to escape from bullying that targets Aiden’s sexuality. I applaud Curato for incorporating exactly the sorts of dirty jokes that boys in a group make together, all of them teasing about sexuality in a way that is damaging and hurtful.
The art in the book is done in black and white until the flames enter the pages. Those flames can be from bullying, from shame, from attraction, from rage. They all color Aiden’s life and therefore the pages. It’s highly effective, particularly as Aiden makes a decision about suicide.
A compelling look at a gay teen learning about himself and finding his core of fire. Appropriate for ages 12-15.
The winners of the 2020 Children’s and Teen Choice Book Awards have been announced by Every Child a Reader. It is the only national book award selected by the young readers themselves. There were seven finalists in each category. Here are the winners and honor books:
This novel offers first-person monologues from three generations of a Black family from Mississippi. They are a sharecropper family, caught in the aftermath of slavery and the cycle of poverty that resulted. Starting in 1927, Loretta tells the story of growing up picking cotton on land her family did not own. Her loving father died from exposure to the pesticides they sprayed in the fields. He gave her sapphire socks made with his own hands and she placed her other most valuable possession inside them, a marble that glowed like the sun. Loretta found Roly left outside as an infant. He grew into a boy who had a way with plants and animals. When the family got their own plot of land, they were attacked at night by someone who brutalized their animals, killing most of them, and poisoned their land. Roly slept out in the fields, hoping to draw the poison out and return the land to fertility. Then he caught the eye of Tess, a girl who he eventually married and had a daughter with. Aggie was that daughter, a girl who would not back down, much as her father would not make a hasty decision. Aggie fought for the right to vote even when she was not old enough to. She and Loretta worked together to pass the racist voting test and then to pay the toll tax. Beaten by police, Aggie finds comfort in the sapphire socks and the glow of the marble passed down to her. Just like the others in her family, she never stopped and never gave up.
Told in three distinct voices that speak directly to the reader, this novel takes a direct look at the systemic racism that has created such privilege for some and injustice for others. The use of monologues is brilliant, as the voices come through to the reader with real clarity, each speaking from their personal experience and from history. There is a sense of theater to the entire novel, helped by the introduction to each chapter that give stage directions and offers a visualization of how this would appear on stage. Often these are haunting images, transformative and full of magical realism.
The three characters are marvelously individual, each with their own approach to life, each facing daunting challenges and each ready to take those on, though in their own way. It is telling that as each new generation entered to become the new main narrator, I felt a sense of loss as the other moved off stage, since each was such a compelling character and each had more to share. I was pleased to see they stayed as part of one another’s stories all the way to the end of the novel.
Incredible writing, important civil right history, and a brilliant cast of characters make this novel glow. Appropriate for ages 9-12.
YALSA has selected the five finalists for the 2021 William C. Morris Award, which honors a debut book for young adults. The winner will be announced at the ALA Youth Media Awards ceremony on January 25, 2021. The finalists are:
I Am the Wind by Michael Karg, illustrated by Sophie Diao (9781624149221)
On a cold and damp autumn day, a little girl joins in the windy day. The wind can breathe frost and bring fog. It can be soft as a shadow or scale the highest peaks in the north. The wind can run like the wolves or hug and settle in with the musk ox as night. The wind joins in the beauty of the northern lights and whistles around rocks on a snow leopard ledge. The wind can create storms in the rainforests, give pestrels a lift on their long journey, and whisper in cloud forests. Then it returns to an autumn playground, listening for the call to rise up once more.
Told in poetic language, this picture book celebrates the way that the wind touches all parts our world. It speaks to the power of the wind to help birds on their migrations and to create weather patterns. That power is contrasted nicely by the quieter sorts of wind and breezes in the book, examples of the wind at its gentlest too. The writing is strong and reads aloud nicely. The different animals highlighted in the book are interesting choices, making turning pages very enjoyable.
The illustrations carry readers across the globe, showing various animals and creatures in each habitat. The wind is depicted as swirls of color, almost dreamy at times and other times whooshing appropriately across the page.
Perfect for reading on a blustery day in any season. Appropriate for ages 2-4.
The National Science Teaching Association (NSTA) has announced the winners of their Best STEM Books of the year. They define the best as books that “help by celebrating convergent and divergent thinking, analysis and creativity, persistence, and the sheer joy of figuring things out.” Here are the winning titles:
Ada Lovelace by Ben Jeapes, illustrated by Nick Ward
When Lina woke up in the morning, snow had fallen and the street was quiet and hushed. Despite the snow, Lina headed out to visit her grandmother. She loved helping her grandmother cook and today was grape leaf day, when they would make warak enab. As Lina walked to her grandma’s, she heard all sorts of noises. There was her neighbor scraping her shovel on the sidewalk. There was the crunch of her own boots in the snow. A blue jay knocked a soft ploompf of snow down from a branch, a quiet sound. People swept off their cars, others scritched past on skis. Mittens patted newly-built snowmen. Lina reached her Sitti’s apartment and the two worked together filling grape leaves with lamb and rice. Lina could hear the snow melting off her mittens and coat. Her grandmother showed her the tenth way to hear snow, one you had to slow down to notice.
This picture book is beautifully cozy and warm despite being mostly set in the outdoors on a snowy day. The sense of discovery as Lina hears the snow in various ways is great fun. The marriage of a weather event and the use of one specific sense adds to the fun and the curiosity as Lina walks to see her grandmother. The Lebanese family and food is front and center here too, warming the beginning and end of the book with a glow.
Pak’s art moves from the cozy home setting out into the cold and then back into a different warm home. His characters are diverse with their neighborhood filled with people of different races. The outdoor light, filled with blues and whites, contrasts with the yellows, reds and golds of the interior settings. It’s a celebration of the beauty and sounds of winter.
This book encourages us all to slow down and listen. Appropriate for ages 3-5.
Waking Brain Cells 