Children’s Literature

Two from the Cybils

1 Comment / 2015, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Cybil Challenge, Favorites, Fiction, Sci Fi and Fantasy, Young Adult /

Death Sworn was… not bad. Not my favorite, but not bad. I liked Ileni and I am kind of looking forward to the next book (which is on my library cart now.)

I loved, loved, loved, loved, loved Death By Toilet Paper and didn’t expect to. That darn kid broke my heart over and over again. You don’t realize just how good your toilet paper was until your family can’t afford to buy it any more. *sniff* Also, professional sweepstakes folks, haha. I love those people.

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Two Awesome Middle-Grade Fiction Books

2015, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Cybil Challenge, Favorites, Fiction /

I’m making a lot of progress on my Cybils shortlist and am feeling really happy about all of the really good books that made the list.

I didn’t expect to love Ice Dogs but I did. Victoria is a great character and I loved her strength and I loved her dogs.

I also didn’t expect to love Nickel Bay Nick, either. Totally loved the characters and the story. Even better, I didn’t see the end coming! (That almost never happens and really never happens with children’s books.)

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Three Graphic Novels

2015, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Comics & Graphic Novels, Cybil Challenge, Young Adult /

There’s not much on the library cart that I really want to read right now, thankfully there were some graphic novels from the Cybils shortlist to tide me over until I can pick up something interesting at the library. All of them were pretty good so that made me happy.

Strange Fruit: Uncelebrated Narratives from Black History was super interesting and drawn beautifully. I was surprised to have never heard of any of the people featured in this volume. My only issue with this book is that the text was difficult to read in places. I’m old, probably could use some bifocals, and the white text on black at times was difficult. In some areas, there was brown text. And, it was tiny, too. This is a book for kids so I’m guessing this is my issue and not an issue the intended audience will have. lol

Harlem Hellfighters was excellent. The pages felt chaotic, which seemed right for the story but made it hard for me to read late at night. Again, this might be an old woman problem. Hah.

In Real Life was pretty darn good. Girl gamers FTW!

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The Meaning of Maggie

2015, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Cybil Challenge, Fiction /

From the Cybils shortlist, a middle grade fiction… The Meaning of Maggi. I really liked Maggie and I especially liked her family. These were real people… dad worked at Hartsfield and worked his way up from a baggage handler to ticketing. Mom got a job at a fancy Atlanta hotel, cleaning rooms and doing laundry. They ate some junk food.

What I didn’t like was the way they kept Maggie in the dark about her father’s health. I get it but… I didn’t like that aspect of the story. I also cannot picture any of my kids as 6th graders grokking this at all. Maggie was so young, in so many ways — for someone especially bright. Infantile, even. This… was troubling, particularly when Maggie had the breakdown at the end. She was completely unprepared and that was messed up.

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When I Was The Greatest

2015, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Cybil Challenge, Favorites, Fiction, Young Adult /

I had to take a little break from reading When I Was the Greatest because I was afraid things were going to go very very wrong for Ali, Needles and Noodles and I just didn’t feel like I could deal with that the day or two after the Charleston shooting.

I did eventually go back to the book and really enjoyed it. Things did go badly for the boys but not THAT badly. It could have been so much worse.

Interesting story — interesting characters. Well worthy of the Cybils shortlist. Pst, there’s knitting in this book!

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Two From TW’s Joy Pile

2015, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Fiction, From the Stacks Challenge /

I decided I was going to participate in the Flash Readathon on Sunday. I decided I was going to grab some children’s fiction or YA fiction from the shelf… something TW swears brings her joy but I have not read.

First, I grabbed Midnight Magic, by Avi. I’ve read a lot of Avi but not this one. It was fun. I’m not sure why TW is sure it brings her joy, but it was cute.

Next, I grabbed Wanted, Mud Blossom. A book I know was mine (my children’s) but I’d never read. Probably because I hadn’t read the other books about the Blossom family and I hate reading series books out of order. I don’t know if my kids ever read this book. Or if they’ve read any other books about the Blossoms. Whatevs. It was cute. Very young, not YA for sure.

I enjoyed them. I’m glad I read them. It was fun. And hey, it’s two books from my stacks! If it were up to me, I’d give them both away, though…

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The Freedom Summer Murders

2015, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Cybil Challenge, Daily Dose, Favorites, Non-Fiction, Young Adult /

This is hard.

I read Freedom Summer Murders because it was on the Cybils shortlist. It was a good book for kids who don’t know much about Freedom Summer. I was glad I read it.

I also got sucked down a hole of thinking about education in South Carolina which led me to spend a good bit of time on Wednesday evening looking at articles about the history of education in South Carolina.

All of that caused me to be somewhat amazed by the fact that I had any black teachers at all… growing up in Charleston, SC. It caused me to think more kindly upon a black teacher I had, who really — wasn’t a great teacher. It caused me to think even more kindly about a black high school English teacher that was a good teacher, though I liked nothing more than to complain about her when I was in her class.

It also caused me to spend more time thinking about how people should know more about Septima Clark. We rarely hear her mentioned when we read about the fight to end segregation. It also caused me to wonder if Crosstown in Charleston was ever officially re-named for her. (It was.)

And shortly after all of that wondering and thinking and stuff… I saw the news about the shooting at Emanuel AME and … how can we be here in this time, after all of these amazing people fought so hard. After people gave their lives. How can my home state and our country still be so steeped in racism that this can happen? How?

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The Crossover

2015, Audiobooks, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Cybil Challenge, Favorites, Poetry, Young Adult /

I wasn’t sure how I was going to feel about TheCrossover — we listened to it on audio and it’s about basketball. Not generally our sort of thing. Turns out… amazing book. Amazing. I loved everything about it. The poetry. The characters. The plot. *sniff* I’m not going to say best book ever but damn it was a good book.

Read it. Listen to it on audio. Give it to your kids.

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