If you can get over the initially disturbing caricatures of a toddler and bearded man as the two married-to-each-other protagonists, you're in for some ingenious, goofy fun. [Having had a parent at our kids' school be convicted as one of the country's worst child pornographers...
In the small town of Caledonia, Iowa, Jewel stands out: she's "'half-Jamaican, a quarter white, and a quarter Mexican.'" As if to provide a physical embodiment of Jewel's hapa background, the audible producers cast Amandla Stenberg, who played the heartbreaking role of young Rue in the film version of The...
Christy Jordan-Fenton and her mother-in-law Margaret Pokiak-Fenton began publishing stories in 2010 about the older Pokiak-Fenton's difficult childhood as a young Inuit child growing up in Canada's Northwest Territories. Their four books in four years are comprised of two titles for middle grade readers, Fatty Legs and A Stranger at Home, which were then...
The layers here are astonishing, revealed through the filtered lens of an unnamed narrator who gathers the shared experiences, memories, and words about an enigmatic, brilliant man who has lost his sanity by the time the narrator’s research begins. The subject is Rong Jinzhen – orphan, mathematical genius, unparalleled...
According to a note at book's end, Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhī of 13th-century Persia, also known as Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī, or simply Rumi, "...
Check out this toothsome battle-cry: "The kimchi revolution: How Korean-American chefs are changing food culture" by Paula Young Lee for Salon.com. The article's first paragraph introduces a bi-coastal feast: Momofuku's NYC bad-boy David Chang (his signature cookbook is posted here) and L.A.-based Roy Choi. [The...
Absolutely no doubt that you could read either of these titles separately and find two engaging standalone stories. But read them together and you're guaranteed a much more satisfying experience that reveals Kathie's love of frogs, the significance of "[only] me in grade three" meeting someone...
Each of Tom Cho's 18 stories in his just-over 100-page-debut is a surprise waiting to happen to you. Already lauded and awarded in Cho's native Australia, his Stateside arrival is sure to elicit gasps, guffaws, and more. Welcome to half a century of pop culture icons – before you...
When I read Andrea Cheng's The Year of the Book almost two years ago, I had no clue it would turn out to be a series! Such staying power bodes well that later printings of Book have been fully corrected; click on The Year of the Book post for...
Clearly, James A. Levine is a 21st-century Renaissance man. He's an endocrinologist and professor at the renowned Mayo Clinic, he co-directs Obesity Solutions, a project of Mayo and Arizona State University (where he also professors), he's credited with pioneering the treadmill desk, he NEATly Gruves ...
Salem Brownstone, once the proprietor of the Sit & Spin Laundromat, gets an ominous telegram (on Halloween, naturally) calling him to New Mecco City, Azania to "take immediate possession of his [late father's] house and the contents therein." His mourning – "[a]fter all these years of...
Koly, the only daughter in a poor, rural Indian family, leaves all she's ever known to fulfill her duties in an arranged marriage. Once the wedding is over, Koly realizes her family was tricked: her new husband is a sickly young boy whose parents are interested only...
First, a few details to address before we get to award-winning Lauren Groff's down-the-rabbit-hole, delightfully convoluted debut novel ...
Okay, so what are the chances?! Varsha Bajaj's exuberant debut middle grade novel begins with a food allergy that sends her teen protagonist, the titular Abby Spencer, to the ER with an anaphylactic reaction. Talk about eerily prescient – less than 12 hours later, I'm repeating...
The day after Alice Hayward is baptized, she's found strangled in her own home; her husband George is on the couch with a bullet through his head. The apparent murder/suicide understandably has the couple's tight-knit small Vermont town in shock, especially causing a crisis of...
Ah, well ...
Please correct me if I'm wrong here: The Japanese American imprisonment has been the focus of many, many titles for audiences of all ages, via fiction, non-fiction, poetry, short stories, plays, graphic titles, picture books, and more, but I believe Mariko Nagai's Dust of Eden...
Here's your oxymoron for the day: wordless books that convey so much. French illustrator/author Gaëtan Dorémus pays a kid-friendly homage to the American western ...
Comprised of just 27 pages which hold 14 poems, this collection feels more like a pamphlet than an actual book. That said, the spare verses by J.C. Elkin, a Pushcart Prize-nominated ESL teacher at a Maryland community college, are not without complexity and depth, inspired by...
