Book Reviews

Review: This One Summer by Jillian Tamaki

| Tasha

this one summer

This One Summer by Jillian Tamaki and Mariko Tamaki

Rose goes to Awago Beach every summer with her parents, but this summer things don’t feel quite the same.  Rose’s friend Windy is also there and the two of them hang out together just like every other summer.  But Rose’s parents are always arguing and her mother won’t go swimming with them at all.  Rose and Windy find their own way to escape the fighting, they rent horror movies from the local shop.  While they are there picking out and returning their movies, they watch a summer of teenage drama unfold in front of them.  This is a summer unlike any others, one where secrets are hidden and revealed and where sorrow mixes with the summer sun.

Done by the pair that did Skim, this is an amazing graphic novel for teens.  It deals with that fragile moment in life where children are becoming teens and everything around them is changing.  These two girls are suspended in that time during the summer, learning about themselves, about their parents and witnessing events around them in a new way.  The use of a summer vacation to capture that moment in time is superb.  Yet this book is not a treatise on the wonder of childhood at all.  It deals with deeper issues, darker ones, ones that the two girls are not ready to handle yet.  And that’s what makes it all the more wondrous as a book.

The art in the book is phenomenal.  The two girls are different physically, one a little stouter than the other and both are real girls expressing real emotions.  And the larger of the two girls is not the shy, meek one.  She has a wonderful sassiness to her, an open grin, and rocks a bikini.  Hoorah!  The art captures summer days, the beach, what a face of sorrow looks like and how it tears into ones entire physique.  Done in blue and white, the images are detailed and realistic.

A glimpse of one summer and what happens during it, this book is about capturing a moment in time, one that is filled with depth, despair and desire.  Appropriate for ages 13-16.

Reviewed from digital copy received from

Review: The Most Magnificent Thing by Ashley Spires

| Tasha

most magnificent thing

The Most Magnificent Thing by Ashley Spires

A little girl and her best friend, her dog, loved to do all sorts of things together.  Most of all, she loved to build and he loved to unmake things.  Then one day the girl had a great idea she was going to make “the most magnificent thing.”  First she figured out what it would look like, how it would work, and then came the easy part, making it!  She hired her dog as her assistant and they set out to find parts.  She built the thing, but when she and her dog stepped back, it wasn’t magnificent at all!  So she tried again, and again, and again.  Finally, after trying many times, she hurt her finger and she was very angry about all of the time, and the failures, and was ready to give up.  Luckily though, her assistant was there to give her encouragement to give it one more try, after a long walk.

Spires, the author of Binky the Space Cat, has created an ingenious little book.  Through clever storytelling she has written about the process of trial and error, the process of following through on a design and testing it, the creative process itself.  This is a young heroine with so much resilience and determination!  Her failures make her all the more brilliant and successful in the end.  And perhaps my favorite little twist is that people in her neighborhood find their own uses for her failed attempts. 

The art has the same wonderful modern quirkiness as her Binky books.  Though this is not a graphic novel format, she does use panes in her illustrations, making the iterations of her designs all the more fun to explore.  Done with minimal colors except for bursts of red, the illustrations are perfect for a design process.

Get this into the hands of math teachers who will appreciate a very readable book about trial and error.  It is also the perfect book for little girls to be inspired to use tools and create their own designs.  Appropriate for ages 4-6.

Reviewed from copy received from Kids Can Press.

Review: Chengdu Could Not, Would Not, Fall Asleep by Barney Saltzberg

| Tasha

chengdu

Chengdu Could Not, Would Not, Fall Asleep by Barney Saltzberg

Chengdu is a young panda who is having problems falling asleep.  Unlike all of the other pandas who are sleeping soundly on nearby branches, Chengdu just can not drop off to sleep.  He tosses and turns.  He tries different positions, even hanging upside down!  It takes him awhile, but he finally finds a perfect spot, and one that will surprise and delight readers.  But then, another little panda finds himself awake and what is he to do?

Saltzberg brings readers a clever and funny story of a little animal who cannot fall asleep.  The text is very simple and paired with large format illustrations that sometimes just features Chengdu’s eyes and other times show the very tired little panda looking straight at the reader in despair.  The resolution of Chengdu’s dilemma is very funny and satisfying.  It is guaranteed to get a giggle or two even from the sleepiest of listeners.

An ideal bedtime story, this book will have the littlest listeners happy and sleepy.  Appropriate for ages 2-4.

Reviewed from library copy.

Review: The Crossover by Kwame Alexander

| Tasha

crossover

The Crossover by Kwame Alexander

Josh Bell is a 13-year-old basketball star along with his twin brother Jordan.  They are the sons of Chuck “Da Man” Bell, who used to play European ball.  Now their father plays only with them, helping them learn the tricks of being a great ball handler.  Josh also has a beat, a rhythm that he patters when he plays, creating rap riffs as he runs on the court.  As he tells his story in verse, he also reveals more than just playing ball, he shows how he and his brother are becoming strong young men.  It just may be though that the strongest man that they know has some weaknesses of his own, ones that come at a huge toll. 

Can I just say how important this book is?  It is a verse novel, A VERSE NOVEL, for pre-teens that is about young African-American boys who are being reared by two involved parents in a middle-class home.  This book takes stereotypes and turns them on their heads.  Then you have the incredible verse by Alexander, capturing the rhythm of basketball and also the beat of an entire family.  The writing is so strong, so vibrant that the book can’t be put down. 

Josh is a great character as is his entire family.  None of them are stereotypes and both boys are different and yet similar to one another too.  They both struggle with playing the best, meeting girls, living up to their parents’ expectations, and discovering the truth about their father.  This is a coming-of-age story, but one that is dynamic and fresh.

Perfect for sports fans, this verse novel will surprise with its rap feel and its incredible depth.  Simply spectacular.  Appropriate for ages 11-13.

Reviewed from library copy.

Review: A Boy and a Jaguar by Alan Rabinowitz

| Tasha

boy and a jaguar

A Boy and a Jaguar by Alan Rabinowitz, illustrated by CaTia Chien

This is a stellar autobiographical picture book written by and about a wildlife conservationist.  Alan was a boy who could not speak clearly.  He battled stuttering all of the time except when he talked with animals.  When he visited the great cat house at the Bronx Zoo, he could whisper fluently into the ears of the cats.  He also spent a lot of time with his pets at home, speaking to them and telling them that if he ever found his own voice, he would serve as their voice since they had none and would keep them from harm.  Alan became the first person to study jaguars.  In Belize he felt at home in the jungle.  He worked to protect the jaguars and eventually had to speak for them in front of the President of Belize, hoping to save their habitat from destruction.  But can he speak clearly in the short 15 minutes he’s been given?

This book is made all the more compelling by the fact that it is true.  It gives readers a glimpse into the world of a child struggling with a disability, one that mars every verbal interaction he has.  And thanks to his ability with animals, readers quickly see beyond the stutter to the boy himself and to the gifts that he has to offer.  Even better, once Alan becomes an adult, readers get to see a man who is taking advantage of his uniqueness to make a difference in the world and for the animals he cares for so much.

Chien’s art is rich and varied.  She moves from backgrounds of wine red to brilliant yellow to the deep greens of the Belize jungles.  She shows an isolated boy, alone that contrasts beautifully with the man working happily alone in the jungle – so similar and yet so very different.

An extraordinary autobiography, this book shows readers not to judge anyone by how they speak but rather by what they do.  Appropriate for ages 4-7.

Reviewed from library copy.

Review: The Glass Sentence by S. E. Grove

| Tasha

glass sentence

The Glass Sentence by S. E. Grove

Released June 12, 2014.

The first book in a new fantasy trilogy by a debut author, this novel features incredible world-building and an amazing young heroine.  The world changed when the Great Disruption happened in 1799.  When the Disruption occurred different points of time were merged together into a single world.  Now almost 100 years after the Disruption, Sophia lives in Boston which is part of New Occident.  She lives with her uncle after her parents disappeared while exploring other eras when she was a child.  Her uncle is one of the best map makers and map readers in the world, a skill that become necessary when the world changed.  But then her uncle is kidnapped and their home ransacked.  Sophia finds herself journeying to Nochtland with a boy she just met following a clue her uncle left her before he was taken.  Her journey will lead her to different times and different places in the company of many different characters.  Little does she know, but it’s a journey to save the world.

Grove’s novel brims with details about this new world she has envisioned.  The world is a unique one, unlike anything I have ever read before.  It’s a mix of historical fiction, fantasy, science fiction and adventure.  The addition of the different eras in time makes for a book that is surprising and great fun to read.  It also offers all sorts of new and varied adventures for the subsequent books in the trilogy. 

I must admit to not being a huge fan of books with lots of traveling and quests, but Grove maintains the brisk pace of the novel throughout and the travel is an important part of the story itself.  Grove brings her world fully to life, making sure to fill it with characters that readers will embrace and enjoy spending time with.  Sophia is a girl with lots of brains and plenty of bravery, but one who has been sheltered much of her life.  My favorite character though is the villain of the story, Blanca, who steals memories from people using sand.  She is incredibly creepy and frightening, yet has her own motivation and goals beyond just stealing memories.

Get this into the hands of fans of complex fantasy like The Golden Compass, they will find a whole new world to love here.  Appropriate for ages 11-14.

Reviewed from copy received from Viking.

Review: Rules of Summer by Shaun Tan

| Tasha

rules of summer

Rules of Summer by Shaun Tan

Enter the surreal world of two brothers with a picture told in few words and many pictures.  The book takes place in the previous summer and explains what one of the brothers learned that summer.  The lessons are strange, but the images are even wilder.  The first lesson is “Never leave a red sock on the clothesline.”  It is accompanied by a wonderful and magnificently creepy image of a huge rabbit the size of a house with a red eye staring over the wall as the two brothers cower on the other side.  As the pages turn, the world gets odder and odder, forming a cohesive world but one that surprises, horrifies and delights.

As Tan blends humor with his frightening images, one starts to see a world that is beyond our own and yet strangely parallel.  These brothers live in a different world, one with its own rules and laws but one that is hauntingly familiar to our own.  Perhaps my favorite series of images is the series of pictures for “Never wait for an apology” where the younger brother is padlocked in a small steam engine with smoke pouring from the smokestack.  Black birds fly past.  Since all of the other images were done as single picture, I didn’t expect to turn the page and see the image continue from farther away.  It all evoked so brilliantly the loneliness, the trapped feeling, the isolation of waiting for an apology. 

Tan continues to surprise and delight in this new picture book.  While not for everyone, there are some children who will adore this skewed world that speaks to our own.  Appropriate for ages 6-10.

Reviewed from copy received from Arthur A. Levine Books.

Review: Chandra’s Magic Light by Theresa Heine

| Tasha

chandras magic light

Chandra’s Magic Light: A Story in Nepal by Theresa Heine and Judith Gueyfier

Chandra and her sister Deena were at the market when they saw a man selling a strange lamp.  There was a large crowd around him as he explained that the lamp gathered energy from the sun.  It would cost less money than a kerosene lamp over time, and it was much healthier too.  Chandra’s baby brother had a bad cough, and she knew that this lamp would help him.  But the lamp was too expensive for them so they headed home quickly to tell their father of the lamp.  But their father didn’t understand the need for a magic lamp or have the funds to spend on one.  The girls even showed their father a solar lamp that their neighbor had purchased, but still the cost was too high.  So the sisters decided that they would work to get the down payment for a lamp.  They picked rhododendrons in the hills and sold them at the market.  But even then, they did not have enough money.  This story focuses on the efforts of two girls to change the lives of their family members through one act of kindness and hard work.

This book draws the reader into the world of Nepal, evoking the sights, smells and sounds of the busy market before launching into an explanation of the importance of the solar lamps.  The authors make sure that readers understand the poverty of the family, the hardships they face and their inability to purchase the lamp they need.  The final pages of the book contain facts about Nepal and the way people live there. 

The illustrations are bright colored, filled with the colors of Nepal and with the bright colors of the clothing.  When the girls head to pick rhododendrons, the pages fill with the blossoms.  Those deep pinks and reds are also echoed throughout the home of the family and the clothes that the girls wear.  The colors are rich and saturated.

A strong female protagonist, a just cause, a glimpse of Nepalese culture, and a message of sustainability make this a strong addition to any library.  Appropriate for ages 4-6.

Reviewed from library copy.

Review: Eye to Eye by Steve Jenkins

| Tasha

eye to eye

Eye to Eye: How Animals See the World by Steve Jenkins

Explore different types of animal eyes in this gorgeous nonfiction picture book by the amazing Steve Jenkins.  In this book, Jenkins not only talks about the different kinds of animals eyes, explaining them in just the right amount of detail, but also looks at specific animals and their unique eyes.  Jenkins shares lots of facts, carefully chosen to be fascinating and fun.  One never knows what will be found on the next page and whether it will be looking right at you.

Jenkins makes sure that children will learn about evolution in this picture book.  His emphasis throughout is on the evolution from simple light-sensitive eyespots to the complex camera eyes of humans and hawks.  As always, his information is well-chosen and interesting.  It is accompanied by large-format images that are paired with smaller images that show the animals entire body.  This is science information at its best.

The eyes have it!  This is a book that belongs in all public libraries.  Appropriate for ages 6-9.

Reviewed from library copy.