Four decades have passed since Amaterasu Takahashi lost her daughter and grandson in Nagasaki's atomic destruction. Now an octogenarian widow living in Philadelphia, she's shocked by the arrival of a disfigured stranger claiming to be that grandson. He brings letters from the past, as well as...
Barbara Thorson is most definitely not your average fifth-grader. She refuses to buy the "motivational speaking" going on in the front of the classroom on career day, quipping to the less-than-esteemed guest, "I already have a 'career,' thank you." Indeed, Barbara's calling is so much greater:...
*STARRED REVIEW Many years earlier, Lucy Barton spent two months in a hospital after a routine appendectomy; no one ever figured out what was wrong. She wakes one morning to find her mother sitting on her bed, arrived in Manhattan from their rural Illinois hometown. Too many...
*STARRED REVIEW "This, reader, is a mother-daughter story," the American writer-who-is-also-the-mother insists in the latest from Lidia Yuknavitch (Dora: A Headcase). The mother-writer has battled debilitating bouts of depression but she's survived thus far, until her daughter's stillborn birth spirals her into silent withdrawal. In an...
*STARRED REVIEW "I was taught to avoid showing off," Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Margo Jefferson (writing, Columbia University; On Michael Jackson) begins. "But isn't all memoir a form of showing off?" That hesitation permeates throughout, the restraint perfectly mimicked in Robin Miles's elegant recitation. This work is a...
“A house. A writing machine. …[And her] animals” are the “home” Sandra Cisneros needs to “feel like writing.” The MacArthur “Genius”-author of The House on Mango Street – one of those celebrated pivotal titles readers never forget – offers the “stories from my life [that]...
Here’s a ‘did you know …?’-fact about the Smithsonian Museums … they’re all free, all the time. That’s not the case in many museums around the country, so the Smithsonian created Museum Day Live!, an annual event in which participating museums across the country open...
Ria Parker has avoided going home to Chicago for far too long, offering up convenient excuses about her demanding Bollywood career. With her beloved more-brother-than-cousin's impending wedding, Ria finally heads stateside from Mumbai to face the family. For 10 years, she's managed to avoid first-and-only-love Vikram,...
Grimm’s familiar tale gets a Southwestern rendering in Caldecott Honor-winner Eric A. Kimmel’s retelling, with “the best tortillas” as the golden standard. Señora Gonzalez boasts that her daughter Rosalia’s tortillas “are so light, they float like clouds.” The town’s richest man, Don Ignacio, summons Rosalia...
*STARRED REVIEW This is not your ordinary Hollywood memoir: no script doctor or publicist seems to have embellished or sanitized Tony/Emmy/Obie/Golden Globe-winning actress Mary-Louise Parker's first book. Written as a series of letters to almost three dozen "Mr."s both real and imagined, Parker's work captures past...
*STARRED REVIEW Set in remote 1970 Alaska, when indigenous communities still mourned losses that came with statehood in 1959, The Smell of Other People's Houses explores relationships that bind, falter, recover, and flourish. First-time novelist Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock introduces the distinct voices of four teenagers who, over...
'The Queen of the Night' blends opera and mystery into a grandiose read Fourteen-plus years after his Whiting Award-ed debut, Edinburgh, hit shelves in late 2001, literary social media-darling Alexander Chee returns with The Queen of the Night, in which another – albeit very different –...
*STARRED REVIEW For Samira, learning about skeletons proves to be downright mortifying. Samira insists that neither she nor her best friend, Frida, could possibly have anything so terrible inside of them. But after their teacher confirms the awful truth, suddenly Samira can’t help but visualize being...
Multiple narratives swirl around Alma Belasco, a Polish teenager who escaped the Nazis in 1939 and arrived in San Francisco to share a privileged life with an indulgent aunt and uncle. Now 73, Alma is a favorite resident in a senior facility, devotedly looked after...
*STARRED REVIEW If a picture is worth a thousand words, what does it mean when paintings start morphing, shifting, and even weeping actual tears? For Sierra Santiago, who thought she would spend her summer making the mural of her dreams, these newly moving pictures are clear warnings...
Avatar Aang takes a temporary narrative back seat to his Fire Lord buddy Zuko in Part One of the newest Last Airbender three-part installment. Now that Zuko has been reunited with his long-lost mother Ursa [you'll need to read The Search for the full backstory], he's bringing...
The single-page "author's note" which introduces this stupendous, otherwise-wordless wonder is a full story unto itself: Guojing reveals her lonely childhood growing up in 1980s China under the one-child policy. Her parents worked, and she was often cared for by her grandmother. But sometimes when...
*STARRED REVIEW Rhimes has become one of television's most powerful women – her ShondaLand production company owns Thursday night with Grey's Anatomy, Scandal, and How To Get Away with Murder. But career success aside, Rhimes is an introvert who was perfectly happy turning down most of...
*STARRED REVIEW Jonas and Wyatt entered the world as identical twin boys, adopted by Kelly and Wayne Maines after being born to Kelly's teenage cousin who wasn't ready to be a mother. By toddlerhood, Wyatt vocalized that she was a girl; Jonas always recognized he had...
Mothers, you will relate. Meet your bluntly honest children. Ask your little one a question about yourself – all the while hoping for a smidge of uplifting compliment or encouraging understanding – and what you'll probably get is not exactly what you anticipated. You've been warned! These little wonders just aren't capable of...
