Young Adult Readers Archives - Page 4 of 63

You’ve Changed: Fake Accents, Feminism, and Other Comedies from Myanmar by Pyae Moe Thet War [in Booklist]

18 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Memoir, Myanmarese (Burmese), Myanmarese (Burmese) American, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW She has two names, Moe Thet War and Pyae Pyae (pronounced “puh-yay, puh-yay”). Both were carefully chosen by her parents. As a Myanmar-born, U.S.- and British-educated, Myanmar-returned resident with a perfect American accent, Pyae Pyae unabashedly explores her “liminality ...

Rave by Jessica Campbell [in Shelf Awareness]

08 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Canadian, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Canadian artist Jessica Campbell (XTC69) introduces Rave with a provocative epigraph from controversial televangelist Pat Robertson that condemns feminism as "anti-family ...

Ain’t Burned All the Bright by Jason Reynolds, illustrated by Jason Griffin [in Booklist]

07 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, Verse Novel/Nonfiction, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Virtuoso Jason Reynolds’ latest is another chameleonic masterpiece, brilliantly consumable in various mediums, each providing transporting rewards. The original collaboration, conceived between best friends Jason Reynolds and Jason Griffin, works best on the page: Reynolds’ glorious words – cut-out phrases and sentences – laid...

Made in Korea (vol. 1) by Jeremy Holt, illustrated by George Schall [in Booklist]

06 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Korean American, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Bill and Suelynn Evans of Conroe, Texas, can’t have kids. Their experience at their wealthy friends’ son’s birthday party inspires a search for a proxy of their own. In this not-too-distant reality, “the smartest men on the planet” are consumed with “makin’ phony kids”...

Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li [in Booklist]

28 Mar, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Long before the first alarms are triggered here, renowned museums have been legal showcases for artful plunder: Nefertiti’s Bust in Berlin’s Neues Museum, the Rosetta Stone in the British Museum, the Koh-i-Noor in the Tower of London. Grace D. Li’s fascinating albeit uneven debut zeros...

Forbidden City by Vanessa Hua [in Booklist]

24 Mar, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

In her first historical novel, Vanessa Hua (A River of Stars, 2018) draws on 20-plus years of experience as a journalist covering Asia and the diaspora to reclaim a few of the “millions of impoverished women who have shaped China in their own ways yet...

Hakim’s Odyssey, Book 2: From Turkey to Greece by Fabien Toulmé, translated by Hannah Chute [in Booklist]

22 Feb, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, European, French, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Syrian, Translation, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW French graphic creator Fabien Toulmé opens the second of three volumes featuring Syrian refugee Hakim and his extended family with a clever recap of the first entry, facilitated by Toulmé’s young daughter, who asks to accompany him for the next interview: Toulmé lays out...

The Red Palace by June Hur [in Shelf Awareness]

07 Feb, by SIBookDragon in Canadian Asian Pacific American, Fiction, Korean, Korean American, Repost, Young Adult Readers

June Hur's self-described "obsessing over books about Joseon Korea" has made her a critically acclaimed author of historical Korean fiction. She follows The Silence of Bones and The Forest of Stolen Girls with another riveting thriller, The Red Palace, which transports readers to 1758 Hanyang (now Seoul), when murder...

Crushing by Sophie Burrows [in Booklist]

27 Jan, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, British, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW From just the cover, the color red immediately suggests a strangers-to-not narrative; that floating heart in the title underscores what’s to come. But knowing what happens doesn’t diminish in any way Sophie Burrows’ poignant, timely, mostly wordless graphic debut. Set in London, where Burrows also...

The Donut Trap by Julie Tieu [in Booklist]

03 Jan, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, Cambodian American, Chinese American, Fiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Casting an Asian American narrator for Asian American characters created by an Asian American author initially seems to be a promising decision, but Taiwanese American Natalie Naudus, though pleasant overall for Julie Tieu’s debut, isn’t consistently convincing with the multiple Asian languages in play. One...

Thirty Talks Weird Love by Alessandra Narváez Varela [in Booklist]

29 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Audio, Fiction, Latina/o/x, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, Young Adult Readers

At 13, Anamaria is a beloved daughter, a top-performing student at an elite academy. But she lives in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico on the Texas border in 1999, threatened by looming femicide. And then Anamaria meets Thirty, who insists she’s Anamaria’s 17-years-in-the-future self. Thirty indeed talks...

Passport by Sophia Glock [in Shelf Awareness]

09 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Memoir, Middle Grade Readers, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Few titles need official CIA permission to be published, but Sophia Glock's perceptive graphic novel memoir, Passport, had to go through the "daunting and complicated task" of obtaining the CIA's Publication Review Board approval. Glock's parents were "intelligence officers," an admission they disclosed when they...

Discipline by Dash Shaw [in Booklist]

06 Dec, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Graphic titles about Quakers aren't exactly a hot topic – or are they? This season brings two Quaker-related comics in quick succession: David Lester's Prophet Against Slavery: Benjamin Lay and this, Dash Shaw's Discipline, a haunting fictionalization of a teenage Quaker Civil War soldier. Quakers...

Never Open It: The Taboo Trilogy by Ken Niimura, translated by Stephen Blanford [in Booklist]

24 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Hapa/Mixed-race, Japanese, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Three ancient, traditional Japanese myths get fabulously, subversively transformed in Tokyo-based, Spanish Japanese graphic creator Ken Niimura’s (Henshin, 2014) irresistible latest. “Never Open It” was, once upon a time, “Urashima Tarō,” a “Rip Van Winkle”-like tale about a fisherman who saves a turtle from...

Prophet Against Slavery: Benjamin Lay, a Graphic Novel by David Lester, with Marcus Rediker and Paul Buhle [in Shelf Awareness]

19 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Biography, Black/African American, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Benjamin Lay, small in stature with dwarfism, was a monumental historical figure almost lost until historian Marcus Rediker published The Fearless Benjamin Lay (2017), which returned Lay to prominence as "the first revolutionary abolitionist." Canadian artist David Lester energetically distills Rediker's biography into a...

Girlhood: Teens around the World in Their Own Voices by Masuma Ahuja [in Shelf Awareness]

16 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Biography, Indian American, Middle Grade Readers, Nonfiction, Repost, South Asian American, Young Adult Readers

What began as a series by journalist Masuma Ahuja for The Lily (a product of the Washington Post) expands here into the enlightening Girlhood. Ahuja gathers "colorful and rich" accounts of 30 girls from 27 countries that reveal similar themes: longing for adventures, big dreams, growing pains, and figuring...

Paradise on Fire by Jewell Parker Rhodes [in Booklist]

12 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, Young Adult Readers

At 4, Adaugo lost both parents and a best friend to fire. Grandma Bibi left Nigeria to raise her. Eleven years later, Grandma sends Addy from their Bronx apartment to Wilderness Adventures, a California summer camp for disadvantaged city youth, insisting, “Daughter of an eagle”...

The Cat Who Saved Books by Sosuke Natsukawa, translated by Louise Heal Kawai [in Shelf Awareness]

08 Nov, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

Cats have long appeared in Japanese fiction, especially popularized in I Am a Cat (1906) by the father of modern Japanese literature, Natsume Sōseki. Joining recent 21st-century mega-successes – The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa, If Cats Disappeared from the World by Genki Kawamura, for example – is the...

Booklist Backlist: Japanese Graphic Horror [in Booklist]

29 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Lists, Short Stories, Translation, Young Adult Readers

I can’t watch scary movies, but I love graphic horror on the page. And really, fear-mongering via Japanese manga – both series and standalones – promises some of the most affecting fright-fests. As we approach that most haunting time of the year, here’s some chilling company. Death...

Asadora! (vol. 3) by Naoki Urasawa, translated by John Werry [in Booklist]

28 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

The third volume of Naoki Urasawa’s latest superb spectacle begins to distinguish individual story lines while overlapping various subplots. It’s 1964, five years since Japan’s deadliest typhoon. Asa is as righteously spunky as ever, determined to expose what happened the morning after she witnessed what couldn’t...

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