Author: booknutgirls

booknutgirls http://thebooknutdotcom.wordpress.com I read. I blog. I sell books. I chauffeur my kids. What more do you need to know?

It’s Cybils Day!

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I’ve had a super busy fall, so I haven’t been as involved in the Cybils as I would have liked, but it’s been going on.  The shortlists were just announced and there’s a LOT of really great books on them (I even manged to nominate one that made it!). Some of my favorites, many I haven’t read. Do check all the lists out!

As for me, I volunteered to be on round 2 of the new category, Audiobooks. This is what I get to listen to over the next 6 weeks, and I couldn’t be happier! As always, check back on February 14th to see what we’ve picked as our winner!

Out of Abaton, Book 1 (Library Edition): The Wooden Prince
by John Claude Bemis
Oasis Audio
Nominated by: Lauren Snell

This surprising & original retelling of Pinocchio takes place in a magical steampunk version of 15th century Italy. The title character is an “automa,” a wooden robot powered by alchemy. He seeks to be reunited with Geppetto & the musical cricket Maestro as they all race to save Prestor John, ruler of the Magical Kingdom of Abaton, from the wicked Doge of Venice. Pinocchio’s discoveries about family, friendship, and free will are deftly woven in with episodes of high adventure. The audiobook is truly a movie for your mind, with a full sound track that includes music & sound effects.

Jeanene Johnson, Got My Book

Raymie Nightingale
by Kate DiCamillo
Listening Library
Nominated by: Sondra Eklund

Raymie Nightingale by Kate DiCamillo. Narrated by Jenna Lamia. Listening library. 2016
Raymie Nightingale has one goal, to win the 1975 Little Miss Central Florida Tire competition. Her father left town with the local dental hygienist and Raymie’s plan is for him to read about her win in the paper and to come home to her. While preparing for the competition, she befriends Louisiana Elefante and Beverly Tapinski as they all take baton twirling lessons from Ida Nee, the town expert. The Three Rancheros, as they call themselves, help each other to solve the problems they are facing. While Raymie wants to win back her father, Beverly is determined to sabotage the pageant and Louisiana hopes to get her cat Archie back. These underlying motivations lead to some unlikely and amusing adventures for the quirky friends.
Lamia effectively conveys the emotions and personality of three distinctly different characters; single-minded, yet sensitive Raymie, ethereal and swooning Louisiana, and the tough and ardent Beverly. Lamia’s expert storytelling brings this this poignant tale of love and loss to life.

Maren Ostergard, King County Library System

The Best Man
by Richard Peck; narrated by Michael Crouch
Listening Library
Publisher/ Author Submission

A classic Peck tale, this is the story of Archer and his grandfather, uncle, and teacher. Told through his years as a fourth, fifth, and sixth grade student, we see the influence these individuals and others have had on his life during this bildungsroman story. Crouch strikes a balance between Archer aging through the grades, bring a sense of wisdom to the grandfather, and a general relatability to all the characters portrayed. Balancing both humor and touching moments, this audiobook is a fit for families and middle graders alike.

Stephanie Charlefour, Love. Life. Read.

The Inquisitor’s Tale: Or, the Three Magical Children and Their Holy Dog
by Adam Gidwitz
Listening Library
Nominated by: Katy Kramp

On a dark night in 1242, a group of travellers gathers in an inn in France to exchange stories of three remarkable children: Jacob, Jeanne, and William. With flavors of The Canturbury Tales, each tale teller adds a unique slant to the collection, slowly building on each others’ version to build a complete picture. This is a book that’s perfectly done as a full cast production, as each narrator gives a spin to their section that makes the characters come to life. With plenty of topics that middle grade readers will relate to today, this is a historical book with just the right amount of humor and magical realism to give it a wide audience appeal.

Alyssa Feller, The Shady Glade

When the Sea Turned to Silver
by Grace Lin
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Nominated by: Jennie

Traditional Chinese tales are interwoven with an adventure story in this book that follows the pattern of Lin’s award-winning books Where the Mountain Meets the Moon and Starry River of the Sky. There are some characters in common with the earlier two books, but readers stepping in for the first time won’t feel out of place. Young Pinmei has grown up with her grandmother, the Storyteller, on a remote mountain. But one year when the winter has gone on far longer than it should, her grandmother is kidnapped by a threatening stranger Pinmei can tell is only disguised as a common soldier. She and Yishan, the boy who lives alone up the mountain, set out to rescue her. Kim Mai Guest’s narration portrays Pinmei’s journey to confidence, as well as the full cast of characters. The audio format highlights the interconnected details and the poetic language in this book that’s destined to be a classic.

Katy Kramp, a library mama

First Sunday Daughter Reviews: The Christmas Book Haul Edition

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First, the books that all the girls got for Christmas (mostly asked for):

M asked for this because she visited it over the summer when she was in Paris:

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C didn’t ask for this, but really loved getting it anyway:

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E asked for some of these; she’s a hard person to buy books for!

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A decided she wanted to be a completest and get the rest of Rick Riordan’s books

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though Grandma and Grandpa also got her this, which she loves (and the rest of us mostly groan at)

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and K wanted to fill out our graphic novels. She was very excited by these!

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What books did you get for Christmas?

My Best of 2016

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I heard someone say (I don’t remember who) that 2016 was so bad a year overall that instead of best-of lists at the end, we should just be celebrating things that didn’t suck. So, in that spirit, I give you my reading year, which mostly didn’t suck.

By the numbers:

Middle Grade Fiction: 40
YA Fiction: 46
Graphic Novels: 16
Non-Fiction: 10
Adult Fiction: 22
Number of those that were sci-fi/fantasy books, not counting graphic novels:  40
Number of those that were by authors of color: 17
Number of those that had prominent characters of color: 23
Number of those that were audio books: 12
Number of those that were rereads: 7

Grand Total: 133 – that’s the lowest total I’ve had since I started keeping record!

Abandoned: Searching for John Hughes, Maestra, The Haters, The Magicians, Lone Survivor

And now this year’s awards:

Best Adult Fiction: Leave Me 
Best YA book: The Sun is Also a Star
Best Middle Grade book: Ms. Bixby’s Last Day
Best Fantasy: A Darker Shade of Magic
Best Sci-Fi/Distopian: Redshirts
Best Graphic Novel: Mighty Jack
Best Non-Fiction: Voracious
Best MG/YA Non-Fiction: Quiet Power
Best Romance: Love & Gelato
Best Mystery: I am Princess X
Best Audiobook: Today Will Be Different

And in other categories…

Cover love: 

threedarkcrownscrookedkingdom sixofcrowsheartlessandidarken

I had a thing for black covers this year, I guess.

Don’t judge a book by its cover:
winnerskiss

You can judge this book by its cover:
meg

Best in-person book group book: The Buried Giant

Best on-line book group book: The Piper’s Son

Favorite reread: Jacob Have I Loved

The Best Reading Experience: Textbook

*Blush*: Maestra, The Bollywood Affair

I Love Food: Voracious, My Kitchen Year

Italy!: Love & Gelato, With Malice

Clones are the new Aliens: The Diabolic, Replica

Dystopian/Post-Apocalyptic/Aliens isn’t quite overdone (yet): The Diabolic, Undertow, The Knife of Never Letting Go

Awesome Fantasy Heroines: Rebel of the Sands, Heartless, Caraval, Nimona, A Gathering of Shadows, The Blue Sword, Six of Crows/Crooked Kingdom

Books I should have read AGES ago: Redshirts, The Piper’s Son

Awesome LGBT: Proxy, We Are Okay, If I Was Your Girl, Lumberjanes: A Terrible Plan, You Know Me Well

9/11: Towers Falling,  Nine, Ten, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk

It’s a damn fine ending: The Raven King, The Shepherd’s Crown

Can’t Wait for You to Read it Too: Fish Girl, Short, Caraval

Loved it, but can’t seem to sell it: Heartless

Wanted to love it, but didn’t: Smoke

Best Middle Grade Book Group Discussions Ever: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, The BFG (overwhelmingly the favorite), The Witches, The Twits, Fantastic Mr. Fox

I’m Kind of Over It (though the Midnight Release Party was a blast): The Cursed Child

Author everyone else loves that I discovered I liked: Alex London

Sometimes the Hype is Right: Me Before You

“Best” Part of My Job (aka Author Events I Managed):

2016-authorsJessica Day George, Maggie Stiefvater, Mac Barnett, Sarah Maas, Loren Long, Jennfier Mathieu, Leigh Bardugo, Ben Hatke, Brian Farrey & Kelly Barnhill,  Chris Grabenstein, Jake Parker, Daniel Miayres, and Kate DiCamillo.

Plus bonus James Kennedy, Alex London, and Amy King at KidlitCon

Best event I didn’t run but was super impressed by:

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What are some of your bests this year?

Monthly Round-Up: December 2016

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Tis the week after Christmas and there hasn’t been much time for much of anything. Still, I had a decent enough month for reading…

Stay tuned for the year-end wrap up tomorrow!

Middle Grade:

short
Short

YA:

flawed proxy caraval weareokay

Flawed (audio)
Proxy
Caraval
We Are Okay

 

Adult:

todaywillbedifferent readerimarriedhim billylynn meg

Today Will Be Different (audio)
Reader, I Married Him
Meg
Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk

Graphic Novel:

fishgirl newsprints tetris

Newsprints
Tetris: The Games People Play
Fish Girl

Non-fiction:

lonesurvivor
Lone Survivor (DNF)

Audiobook: Flawed

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flawedby Cecelia Ahern
Read by Aysha Kala
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy provided me by the publisher rep.
Content: There’s a somewhat graphic branding scene, some teen drinking (but the main character doesn’t) and an uncomfortable scene where I was afraid there would be a rape (there wasn’t). It’s in the YA section (grades 6-8) of the bookstore.

First a story: our Macmillan rep is an older gentleman, whose tastes run towards history and thrillers. But, being a good rep, he does read some of the kids stuff (he does both). And, every once in a while, he finds a YA he really likes.  This is the second time I’ve kind of said “yeah, yeah” to one of his recommendations (the first time was Cinder). I was going to get around to this one. Eventually. But then, he was kind, and sent me the audio version (which he REALLY liked) and I figured I should give it a shot.

I just need to learn to trust him: this was really good.

The problem is that it doesn’t really have a good hook. It’s a society (loosely based in England, or that may just have been the narrator’s English accent) in which they’ve developed a court system to judge people’s morality. If they find anyone to be morally or ethically wanting, they deem them Flawed, brand their skin and impose a whole ton of rules on them. They aren’t allowed to have children, they have restricted diets and a curfew, they aren’t allowed to congregate in more than groups of two. They have different restrooms, assigned seats on the bus… you get the picture.

Our main character, Celestine, on the other hand, is perfect. She has the perfect boyfriend (the son of the Flawed Court’s head judge), she has the perfect grades, the perfect family, the perfect clothes, the perfect life. Then, her next door neighbor gets hauled into the court for adhering to her mother’s wishes to be euthanized. Which gets Celestine thinking: maybe there’s something not quite right about the Flawed Court? And so, when she encounters an older Flawed man on the bus having a bad asthma attack, but doesn’t have a place to sit, Celestine helps him. Which lands her in the Flawed Court for aiding a Flawed.

And that’s just the beginning of Celestine’s journey. This is really just a set up for a bigger conclusion (due out in the spring), but it’s a fascinating one. I do have to admit that I was often annoyed with Celestine, especially her dependence on boys, but other than that, it was really good. I loved the comparisons to racism, from the segregation to a riot that broke out near the end of the book. I really liked the world that Ahern built; while it’s vaguely dystopian, it isn’t futuristic or mystical.

It’s definitely worth reading.

Lone Survivor

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lonesurvivorby Marcus Luttrell with Patrick Robinson
First sentence: “Would this ever become easier?”
Content: It’s a non-fiction military book so there is a lot of harsh situations and swearing. It’s in the biography section of the bookstore.

No, this is not my usual reading. But I figured I’d branch out and give something that’s completely outside of my comfort zone a try. And I was willing to read this story of a Navy SEAL and their mission to capture and kill Osama bin Laden. I’d like to think I went in with an open mind, willing to hear Luttrell’s story, to listen to the justifications for war, and to try and understand what makes someone become a Navy SEAL.

And at the beginning I was mostly okay with it. I was fascinated and impressed with his recounting of his training, of the hardships he had to endure. But, the longer I read this the more one thing bugged me: this book didn’t have an editor. And it was driving. me. nuts.

“Didn’t have an editor” is an assumption. I’m sure someone went through for spelling and punctuation. But what was missing was a cohesiveness, a tightness to the story. Luttrell would repeat himself time and time again. He’d go off on a pages-long rant on the “liberal media” (two words I’m tired of hearing together; what they really mean is corporate east-coast based media, and that includes Fox News). He would quote someone and then have a paragraph explaining how this wasn’t accurate but you get the gist. In short: the publishing company did Luttrell a disservice for not giving him a good editor and making him tighten up his writing: Luttrell sounded much less intelligent than I am guessing he is. No, he’s not a writer. I get that. That’s why publishing houses hire ghost writers (and if this is Robinson’s doing, then he’s not a very good ghost writer): to make the “celebrity” story more cohesive.  It just got to a point where I couldn’t stand the circular writing, the opinionizing, and the plain bad editing.

Which is sad, because I think Luttrell’s story is a valuable one. I just wish I could have gotten through the book.

Tetris: The Games People Play

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tetrisby Box Brown
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy pilfered off the ARC shelves at my place of employment.
Content: It’s a history, so if you’re not into Tetris or video games, it won’t be interesting. That said, it’s not a super-high reading level, so kids as young as 10 or 11 might be interested in this. It’s in the Graphic Novel section of the bookstore.

First, a confession. One of my roommates the winter of 1991 had a Nintendo (I’m assuming, after reading this), and Tetris was on it. I don’t know how it started (and I may have been playing it in the arcade for a while already; I don’t remember), but I became obsessed with Tetris. Obsessed. I would stay up until 1 or 2 in the morning, playing it, forgoing going out, homework, eating… Eventually, after a month or so of this, my roommates staged an intervention and banned me from playing Tetris. They may have even gotten rid of the game; I don’t remember that either. The game (and my obsession) fell by the wayside, and I haven’t really thought much about it.

That is, until this book showed up in the store and a co-worker pointed it out, saying I might be interested.

It’s the history of how Tetris came to be. A couple of software developers in the USSR thought of this game, worked to program it and sent it around the department where they worked. It became a hit with their friends, and that was the end of it. Or so they thought. But, a developer for Atari and another for Nintendo got their hands on it, and, well, Things began to happen. It’s really kind of convoluted; there was a lot of legal problems, and negotiating business with the USSR wasn’t the easiest to do. But, in the end, Nintendo ended up with the rights, and the rest is history.

Choosing a graphic format to tell this story was interesting, though I’m not sure how well it worked for  me. I kept forgetting who was who (since, after the initial introduction, I only saw their faces and couldn’t remember their names), and the black and yellow color palate got a little old after a while. But, that said, the story was a fascinating one.

Not a bad read.

Fish Girl

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fishgirlby David Wiesner and Donna Jo Napoli
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Release date: March 7, 2017
Content: It’s a simple graphic novel, but it has dark undertones. Probably not for the super sensitive souls. It will be in our middle grade graphic novel section.

I usually don’t write about books this far in advance, but the end of the year is nigh, and I couldn’t wait for this one.

I didn’t know I needed a graphic novel from David Wiesner and Donna Jo Napoli, but this book is a gift. The story is simple: a mermaid living in an aquarium with the fish and her octopus friend, run by the person she believes to be her only family, Neptune. Then she meets a girl, Livia, who — by the fact of her friendship, by some simple questions  — expands the mermaid’s world.

But it’s more than that.  There’s a dark underbelly, as the mermaid — dubbed Mira by Livia — becomes brave enough to explore her world and as she realizes what Neptune has done. There’s themes of friendship and choice and standing up for oneself running through the book, themes that aren’t heavy-handed, but rather subtly employed throughout for those who are looking for them. Napoli is a master writer, and Weisner speaks volumes with his gorgeous (and often fantastical) watercolor drawings.

I didn’t know that a Weisner/Napoli graphic novel was something I wanted in life. Now, I can only hope they team up for another.

 

 

Short

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shortby Holly Goldberg Sloan
First sentence: “I spend a lot of time looking up.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Release date: January 31, 2017
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Content: There’s some more “grown up” stuff that 3rd graders might be confused about (well, nothing specific; it just felt more that way), but it’s good for the 5th grade and up. I’ll probably put it in the middle grade (grades 3-5) section of the bookstore, for now.

Julia Marks is short for her age. She’s mostly okay with this, though she is tired of the jokes and tries not to use the word “short” hardly at all. So, when her mother finds something for her and her younger brother to do this summer, in the form of being munchkins in a local performance of The Wizard of Oz, Julia is less than thrilled. Especially since her dog recently died. But then she meets Olive, an adult with dwarfism, and suddenly the summer becomes much more… wondrous. She also meets her neighbor, Mrs. Chang, an older woman who turns out to be a lot more than Julia initially thought. As the summer progresses and rehearsals go on, Julia learns that she’s capable of, well, big things.

Like all of Sloan’s other books, this one is incredibly charming. Sloan has a gift for taking simple situations — a summer play, a girl who is insecure about her height — and making them Grand. It seems a simple plot, but Julia is a fantastic character to spend a book with. And the characters Sloan surrounds her with, from Olive and Mrs. Chang to all the other bit (and not so bit) players, are equally as wonderful. Sloan makes you want to fall into the book and experience life right along with Julia. Sloan has a way of capturing the littlest parts of every day life and making them magical.

A delightful book, one that will hopefully be as beloved as Sloan’s others.

Caraval

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caravalby Stephanie Garber
First sentence: “It took seven years to get the letter right.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Release date: January 31, 2017
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Content: There’s some domestic abuse and an almost-rape. If the reader is sensitive to those topics, then this probably isn’t for them. It will be in the YA section (grades 6-8) of the bookstore.

I will say this straight up: this one is a hard book to sum up. There’s devoted sisters, the older — Scarlett — of which will do anything for the younger — Tella. There’s a controlling and abusive father who uses the sisters’ devotion against them. There’s a traveling game, Caraval, that is invitation only and that Scarlett has wanted to attend for years. There’s a history between Caraval’s master, Legend, and Scarlett’s grandmother. And then there’s Scarlett’s impending marriage.

And then Scarlett and her sister get invited to the game, the week before her wedding. And it turns out that finding Tella is the POINT of the game. One in which Scarlett must be prepared to risk everything to win.

I loved this. Seriously. No, it’s not lyrical and the writing isn’t the grandest, but it’s good, solid storytelling with an epic story to be told. I loved that the stakes were high. And the chemistry between Scarlett and Julian? When it was on, it was ON. I liked the use of magic in the game and the way it kept me in suspense about what was real and what wasn’t

I liked that the story wrapped up, mostly suitably, even though there was a bit left undone for a sequel. Definitely worth reading.