Category Archives: News and Fun

Review: Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker by Patricia Hruby Powell

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Josephine by Patricia Hruby Powell

Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker
Patricia Hruby Powell
Illustrated by Christian Robinson
Chronicle Books
Published December 1, 2013

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About Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker

In exuberant verse and stirring pictures, Patricia Hruby Powell and Christian Robinson create an extraordinary portrait for young people of the passionate performer and civil rights advocate Josephine Baker, the woman who worked her way from the slums of St. Louis to the grandest stages in the world. Meticulously researched by both author and artist, Josephine’s powerful story of struggle and triumph is an inspiration and a spectacle, just like the legend herself.

… Continue reading →

Review: Reggie and Delilah’s Year of Falling by Elise Bryant

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Reggie and Delilah's Year of Falling by Elise Bryant

Reggie and Delilah’s Year of Falling
Elise Bryant
Balzer + Bray
Published January 31, 2023

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About Reggie and Delilah’s Year of Falling

Delilah always keeps her messy, gooey insides hidden behind a wall of shrugs and yeah, whatevers. She goes with the flow—which is how she ends up singing in her friends’ punk band as a favor, even though she’d prefer to hide at the merch table.

Reggie is a D&D Dungeon Master and self-declared Blerd. He spends his free time leading quests and writing essays critiquing the game under a pseudonym, keeping it all under wraps from his disapproving family.

These two, … Continue reading →

Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Books for International Holocaust Remembrance Day

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10 Books to Read for International Holocaust Remembrance Day

Top 10 Books for International Holocaust Remembrance Day

Friday, January 27 was International Holocaust Remembrance Day. On that date in 1945, the Auschwitz concentration camp was liberated. Some of the stories listed here share the lives of some of those who were imprisoned there. Some were imprisoned at other camps. Still others fled their homes in Europe in an attempt to escape the Nazis.

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic is “freebie”, so I’ve chosen to share some of the books I’ve read or that are still on my reading list that feature stories based on historical events or family history. Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by Continue reading →

Review: Maus II: A Survivor’s Tale: And Here My Troubles Began by Art Spiegelman

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Maus II A Survivor's Tale And Here My Troubles Began

Maus II: A Survivor’s Tale: And Here My Troubles Began
Art Spiegelman
Pantheon Books
Published September 1992 (originally published in 1991)

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About Maus II: A Survivor’s Tale: And Here My Troubles Began

Acclaimed as a quiet triumph and a brutally moving work of art, the first volume of Art Spieglman’s MAUS introduced readers to Vladek Spiegleman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler’s Europe, and his son, a cartoonist trying to come to terms with his father, his father’s terrifying story, and History itself. Its form, the cartoon (the Nazis are cats, the Jews mice), succeeds perfectly in shocking us … Continue reading →

Top Ten Tuesday: Best Books by New Authors I Read in 2022

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Best New Authors I Read in 2022

Top Ten Authors New to Me that I Read in 2022

2022 was a great year for me in terms of finding debut authors whose books I loved and finally trying books by authors that I’d had on my TBR for a while. For this week’s Top Ten Tuesday, I’m sharing the top ten best books by new authors (or new to me authors) I read in 2022.

Out of the 171 books that I agreed to review in 2022, 121 of them were authors who were new to me. That doesn’t include the backlist titles that I read, which I am not doing a good job keeping track of right now. I would guess … Continue reading →

Review: The Buried and the Bound by Rochelle Hassan

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The Buried and the Bound by Rochelle Hassan

The Buried and the Bound
Rochelle Hassan
MacMillan
Published January 24, 2023

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About The Buried and the Bound

A contemporary fantasy YA debut from Rochelle Hassan about monsters, magic, and wicked fae, perfect for fans of The Darkest Part of the Forest and The Hazel Wood.

As the only hedgewitch in Blackthorn, Massachusetts—an uncommonly magical place—Aziza El-Amin has bargained with wood nymphs, rescued palm-sized fairies from house cats, banished flesh-eating shadows from the local park. But when a dark entity awakens in the forest outside of town, eroding the invisible boundary between the human world and fairyland, run-of-the-mill fae mischief turns into outright … Continue reading →