Adam Stern began his Harvard career feeling like an impostor when he was matched into a Harvard Medical School psychiatry residency impeded, he worried, by his upstate-New York medical degree: “I found myself soaring into one of the most prestigious residency programs in the country,...
*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...
When new kid Livy enters middle school, she doesn’t yet have friends, but she’s not exactly alone. Viola, her identical blue shadow no one else can see, never leaves her, but she voices every poisonous thought, insisting Livy is a “total disaster” doomed to be...
Expanding the insightful delights introduced in global bestseller Before the Coffee Gets Cold (2020), readers are welcomed back to Funiculi Funicula, Tokyo’s time-travel café. The rules haven’t changed, especially the two most urgent: the temporal seeker must wait for the woman-in-white to vacate her seat...
*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...
An 1892 "emancipated duel" between two women is about to take place as the overseeing (female) doctor drolly remarks, "we will never be emancipated from the stupidity of men." That too-true theme lingers throughout Gwen E. Kirby's remarkable 21-story debut, Shit Cassandra Saw, as women love,...
An unexpected airport encounter – with an inevitable flight delay – reunites two university classmates in Antoine Wilson's disturbing yet intriguing Mouth to Mouth. Reminiscent of the cult classic film My Dinner with Andre, Wilson's tête-à-tête exchange takes place in the plush chairs of a...
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...
*STARRED REVIEW Covering most of the 20th century across the Korean peninsula, Juhea Kim’s debut novel wondrously reveals broken families and surprising alliances created by uncontrollable circumstances. Kim links multiple narrative prongs, effortlessly navigating overlaps and disconnects. Korea remains under Japan’s ruthless occupation in 1917, which lasts...
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”...
In her first book in a dozen years, Lan Samantha Chang (All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost, 2010) – the first woman and first Asian American director of the storied Iowa Writers’ Workshop – introduces the family Chao who, for 35 years, has been feeding...
Young People's Poet Laureate Margarita Engle (Your Heart, My Sky) masterfully blends inspiring symbolism with sobering reality in Light for All, a picture book that both celebrates and exposes the hardships of the immigrant experience. Pura Belpré Award-winning illustrator Raúl Colón (Imagine!) splendidly fills the pages with...
*STARRED REVIEW The works of Yoshiharu Tsuge, credited with the "invention" of literary manga, finally arrived in the U.S. 65 years after he began publishing in Japan in 1955. His 2020 English-language debut, The Man Without Talent, was quickly followed by graphic powerhouse Drawn & Quarterly's...
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...
Journalist Danielle Dreilinger resurrects, elevates, and applauds the superwoman, subversive history of “home economics,” a field now more unjustly lampooned than deservedly lauded. Dreilinger’s preface, “Everything You Know about Home Economics Is Wrong,” promises – and veteran narrator Rachel Perry splendidly delivers – 150 years...
Make room for African Artists: From 1882 to Now, a stunning coffee-table title that is itself a substantial, gorgeous display. Conceived by internationally renowned art publisher Phaidon, this impressive compilation showcases 316 modern and contemporary artists who "were either born within the continent or have...
Eva Chen and Sophie Diao: A Collaboration of Joy and Empowerment Eva Chen and Sophie Diao have yet to meet in real life, but they already share important commonalities: both are American daughters of Chinese immigrants, both have multiple book credits, and both are multi-tasking multi-talents. Chen is a...
An Instagram executive and Google Doodler might not seem to be a literary match, but author Eva Chen (Juno Valentine series) and illustrator Sophie Diao (I Am the Wind) prove to be an ideal pairing in their fabulous first picture book collaboration, I Am Golden. "We...
Japan’s graphic-horror auteur Junji Ito has yet another U.S. edition with a serialized manga originally published as Travelogue of the Succubus, compiled here as Sensor, translated by Jocelyne Allen, who also brought Ito’s Eisner-winning Frankenstein to English-language readers. Mount Sengoku erupted decades ago by the time...
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...
