Jackaby by William Ritter | Book Review

August 29, 2014

I feel like I have been anticipating reading Jackaby by William Ritter for like FOREVER. No, but seriously, it was a relatively decent book. Jackaby is described as Sherlock meets Dr. Who. As I’ve watched around fifteen minutes of Dr. Who, have only seen The Great Mouse Detective, I can’t quite testify to the accuracy of that comparison. What I can, however, testify to is the merits and drawbacks that I perceived while reading this book. On the whole, I liked Jackaby, yet it did not entirely gel with me. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good book that’s worth recommending.

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The Witch’s Boy by Kelly Barnhill | Book Review

August 28, 2014

The Witch’s Boy essentially opens with two little boys who decide to take a raft out on the river and to the sea. Tragedy strikes and one of the boys dies, while the other is left behind. The boy’s mother, a witch, sews his dead brother’s soul to his body and so, Ned, finds words jumbled up when he reads and when he speaks. Despite this, he’s a good boy, brave and pure of heart. Meanwhile, a Bandit King comes along to steal the magic of Ned’s mother, because she has the only magic left in the world in a jar in her house.

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Tell Me Again How A Crush Should Feel by Sara Farizan | Book Review

August 27, 2014

The very first BEA book that I chose to read and finish this year was Tell Me Again How A Crush Should Feel by Sara Farizan. The book is pink and purse sized with lots of chapters, easy to read font and plenty of blank pages between the chapters. I decided I wanted Farizan’s book to be my first BEA read because I was feeling all kinds of We Need Diverse Books enthusiasm and what better way to feed into enthusiasm for such a great project than by reading a book that totally exemplifies diversity. Farizan’s Tell Me Again How A Crush Should Feel hits check boxes on two points – the main character is Iranian American AND happens to be a lesbian. I mean, books with Arab-American characters are rare enough, but with lesbian Arab-American characters? I have found the unicorn of diverse books and that is a very, very good thing.

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Somebody Up There Hates You | Hollis Seamon | Book Review

November 1, 2013

I am easily taken in by a good cover and you guys, Algonquin Young Readers has KILLED it with the cover of Somebody Up There Hates You by Hollis Seamon. I love the typography and the colors and basically everything about the cover, plus it actually has some significance to the book with the crown and […]

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If You Could Be Mine | Sara Farizan | Book Review

July 24, 2013

Reading books with unique concepts is kind of my favorite thing ever, especially when said book is a young adult contemporary with a situation that I have never encountered before. Y’all, the publisher Algonquin has this new house called Algonquin Young Readers, which publishes you guessed it YA. Friends, I was so freakin pumped up […]

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