Kellee Moye, of Unleashing Readers, and Jen Vincent, of Teach Mentor Texts decided to give It's Monday! What Are You Reading? a kidlit focus. If you read and review books in children's literature - picture books, chapter books, middle grade novels, young adult novels, anything in the world of kidlit - join us! We love this meme and think you will, too. We encourage everyone who participates to visit at least three of the other kidlit book bloggers that link up and leave comments for them.
Last Week on the Blog:
Last Week in Books:
The Sound of All Things is a picture book from a unique perspective. The parents are deaf and the son interprets sounds for the father who could hear when he was very young. The Alphabet from the Sky is a nice concept, but I found the text didn't add anything to the photographs so it just annoyed me a bit to have to bother with the words. I liked looking for the letters though. Hank's Big Day is super adorable and I never would have thought a pill bug with a human friend could be described as adorable. Giant Squid is a gorgeous book. The illustrations make the book, but the text is very nice too.
Magnus Chase was a humorous non-stop adventure that was just what I needed to take my mind off of some things. I do wish he hadn't used the phrase spirit animal early in the book and it had nothing to do with a Native person that I could tell. I would love for that to be a phrase that stops being used. There is a lot of diversity in this book as in Riordan's others and I appreciate that about his characters.
American Street is an intense contemporary young adult book focusing on a Haitian American family. Some of the major issues are the bonds of family and balancing cultures. I will have a longer review sometime later.
Enter Title Here was definitely different. The main character Reshma Kapoor is willing to do pretty much anything to get into her dream university. Anything includes some highly unethical activities. It's sometimes hard to like Reshma, but I certainly had to admire her persistence.
The Coming Week in Books: I'll post a review of History is All You Left Me by Adam Silvera over at Rich in Color. I've been taking my time with Here We Are: Feminism for the Real World because I am enjoying the essays so much I don't want to rush through them. I also started listening to the memoir Bad Boy by Walter Dean Myers. I also have a few books waiting on my shelf.
I wish you a great week!
Reading Challenge Updates:
Goodreads Challenge 2017 - 47/550
Diversity on the Shelf 2017 - 24/225 (goal = 50% of my books by and/or about POC)
LGBTQIA Challenge -2/30
ReadPOC Challenge - 15/125
#MustReadin2017 - 4/24
Nonfiction Picture Book Challenge - 13/100
I'm so excited that you shared my niece's post, Nine Muslim Canadian Writers You Should Read! Casey is brilliant and has turned me onto to many books I wouldn't otherwise know of.
ReplyDeleteAmerican Street is on my 2017 Must Read List. I'm looking forward to it more and more!
I didn't realized Casey is your niece. Cool.
DeleteUgh, yes...I do wish we didn't toss around words and phrases that have such significance for other cultures. I know a lot of people use the expression "spirit animal" without meaning to cause disrespect or harm, but it's 2017, it's definitely time for big names and big publishers to know better, and to lead by example!
ReplyDeleteI'm still looking forward to reading American Street, but it will be a while. I know it will be good. I'm glad you wrote about "sprit animal", feels as if others would know that it is a sacred term. Thanks for sharing, Crystal.
ReplyDeleteI read The Printer which is also by Myron Uhlberg - I found it beautiful. :) I wish we had The Sound Of All things though in our library, but we don't. :(
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