SIBookDragon, Author at BookDragon

Trinity, Trinity, Trinity by Erika Kobayashi, translated by Brian Bergstrom [in Booklist]

18 Aug, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation

Tokyo-based author/artist Erika Kobayashi makes an intriguing, albeit uneven, translated-into-English debut, enabled by Canadian Brian Bergstrom. The consequences of Japan’s 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster are manifest in three generations of an all-female Tokyo family. Kobayashi’s novel takes place on a single day, following the schedule...

My Nest of Silence by Matt Faulkner [in Booklist]

17 Aug, by SIBookDragon in Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese American, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW After learning of Europe’s Nazi concentration camps as a child, Matt Faulkner also discovered how Americans of Japanese descent were unjustly imprisoned during WWII, a revelation made more urgent because of family connections: his great-aunt Adeline; her daughter, Mary; and Mary’s children were held...

Such Big Dreams by Reema Patel [in Booklist]

16 Aug, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Canadian, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Fiction, Indian American, Repost, South Asian American

*STARRED REVIEW Novelist Reema Patel and narrator Lavanya Gandhi prove ideally paired, symbiotically making their debuts. Patel, a Toronto lawyer with experience in Mumbai’s human-rights legal sector, draws on her experiences to create Rakhi, a 23-year-old office assistant at Justice for All. Rakhi caught the attention of...

A Map for the Missing by Belinda Huijuan Tang [in Shelf Awareness]

15 Aug, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Debut author Belinda Huijuan Tang's immigrant father is a gregarious storyteller, especially about his rural Chinese upbringing, but he has one story he's never been able to finish, about his lost father. Tang empathically transforms that incomplete memory into her exquisite novel, A Map for...

The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd

14 Aug, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Chinese American, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

Nell Young, former New York Public Library cartography scholar, is summoned back to the hallowed Map Division when her director father is found dead in his office. Seven years ago, he ignominiously fired her over the Junk Box Incident and she’s hasn’t seen him since....

A Career in Books: A Novel about Friends, Money, and the Occasional Duck Bun by Kate Gavino [in Booklist]

12 Aug, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Filipina/o American, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Nina, Silvia, and Shirin’s “now-mythical friendship origin story” began at NYU in their freshman writing workshop. As the only Asian Americans, they initially avoided each other, until a class trip to the New York Public Library led to a coincidental bathroom break that led to...

Beating Heart Baby by Lio Min [in Shelf Awareness]

11 Aug, by SIBookDragon in Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Japanese American, Korean American, Latina/o/x, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Lio Min's soulful debut novel, Beating Heart Baby, highlights music, art, and the love of family – by birth, yes, but more significantly by circumstance and choice. Their emotive narrative spotlights Filipino American artist Santi and Korean Japanese American musician Suwa, playing out a tumultuous relationship...

Only the Cat Knows by Ruyan Meng [in Shelf Awareness]

10 Aug, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Chinese, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Through the first half of her spare, intricate novella Only the Cat Knows – recipient of the 2020 Red Hen Press Novella Award – Ruyan Meng brilliantly builds a mounting sense of claustrophobia. A factory worker labors hard every day but is unable to...

Mika in Real Life by Emiko Jean [in Shelf Awareness]

09 Aug, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese American, Repost

Author Emiko Jean transfers the effusive charm of her YA novels (Tokyo Ever After; Tokyo Dreaming) into her first adult fiction, Mika in Real Life. At age 35, Japanese American Mika is once again jobless. Her career's been inarguably erratic, serially fired from a donut shop, nannying, writing ...

Dead-End Memories by Banana Yoshimoto, translated by Asa Yoneda [in Booklist]

08 Aug, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Once upon a time, Banana Yoshimoto (born 1964) debuted as one of Japan’s youngest literary phenoms. In the decades since, she continues to produce brilliantly relevant fiction, notable for an open, accessible simplicity that belies revelatory observations about life, love, happiness, and more. Her latest...

Joseph Smith and the Mormons by Noah Van Sciver [in Booklist]

07 Aug, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Biography, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Award-winning Noah Van Sciver shares in his author’s note he was born into an LDS family descended from a husband of Brigham Young’s daughter, Elizabeth. After his parents’ divorce when he was 12, he began to learn “about Joseph Smith and everything that [his]...

Notes from a Young Black Chef (Adapted for Young Adults) by Kwame Onwuachi with Joshua David Stein [in School Library Journal]

06 Aug, by SIBookDragon in Audio, Black/African American, Memoir, Nigerian American, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Narrator Malik Rashad isn’t quite Kwame Onwuachi, who ideally narrated his original 2019 memoir – but here, that’s not necessarily a liability for younger audiences who might need a smidge more animation. Rashad affectingly channels Onwuachi, the self-described “black kid from the Bronx ...

Disability Visibility (Adapted for Young Adults): First-Person Stories for Today edited by Alice Wong [in School Library Journal]

05 Aug, by SIBookDragon in Audio, Chinese American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

“This is the book I wish I had as a teenager,” disability rights activist Alice Wong reveals, choosing 17 stories for this adaptation from the 37 in her 2020 original. As editor, Wong again reads her introduction. While none could dispute that Wong is a...

The Missing Word by Concita De Gregorio, translated by Clarissa Botsford

04 Aug, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, European, Fiction, Italian, Repost, Translation

Widower, widow. Uxoricide. Orphan. Patricide. Infanticide. And yet missing from that harrowing vocabulary is a word for “parents who lose children. Who don’t murder them, but lose them.” Irina becomes that kind of grieving parent when her 6-year-old daughters vanish. She’s recently separated from husband Mathias,...

The Flamingo by Guojing [in Shelf Awareness]

03 Aug, by SIBookDragon in Canadian Asian Pacific American, Children/Picture Books, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost

Few books deserve the "perfect" designation, but The Flamingo by Guojing arguably earns that appellation. The celebrated author of The Only Child and Stormy presents another remarkable, near-wordless story for young readers that gloriously commemorates bonds between humans and animals, enhanced here with the heartwarming relationship between a child and...

Fish Swimming in Dappled Sunlight by Riku Onda, translated by Alison Watts [in Shelf Awareness]

02 Aug, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation

Following the notable success of The Aosawa Murders, prolific, award-winning Japanese author Riku Onda reunites with translator Alison Watts for Fish Swimming in Dappled Sunlight, another riveting, tightly plotted psychological thriller. "This, I guess you could say," the novel opens, "is the story of a photo." That...

Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng [in Booklist]

01 Aug, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Bird is 12. Home is a 10th-floor dorm apartment without a working elevator. His Harvard professor father has been demoted to clerical duties at the library. Since his mother, Margaret, left three years ago, Bird is called Noah, anything to disassociate from her since she’s...

The Lemon Tree (Young Readers’ Edition): An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East by Sandy Tolan [in School Library Journal]

31 Jul, by SIBookDragon in Arab, Audio, Biography, Jewish, Middle Eastern, Middle Grade Readers, Nonfiction, Palestinian, Repost, Young Adult Readers

“I wanted to write a history book in disguise,” journalist and professor Sandy Tolan announces, “and to make it feel, throughout, like a good novel. Even though the story is true.” Tolan voiced his original; here Rami Medina makes his audiobook debut: his rich, youthful...

Fashionopolis (Young Readers Edition): The Secrets Behind the Clothes We Wear by Dana Thomas [in School Library Journal]

30 Jul, by SIBookDragon in Audio, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Paris-based journalist Dana Thomas adapts her 2019 erudite exposé for younger audiences, and also (again) narrates. For a writer careful enough to include phonetic guidelines – ”Maria Cornejo (pronounced “Cor-nay-ho”),” for example – her inconsistencies surprise: Ikeda is not “ai-kee-dah”; “Iris (pronounced “EEE-reece”)” is followed...

Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians But Were Afraid to Ask: Young Readers Edition by Anton Treuer [in School Library Journal]

29 Jul, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Middle Grade Readers, Native American/First Nations/Indigenous Peoples, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW “Indians. We are so often imagined, but so infrequently well understood,” Anton Treuer’s opening sentence reads. As a Princeton-educated, Ojibwe professor with “one foot in the wigwam and one in the ivory tower,” Treuer “cannot speak for all Indians,” but he’s ready with “specific...

BookDragon Author: SIBookDragon