Kate

It was cute - the illustrations were really great.
I think I liked the title more than I liked the actual execution.

Who knew kids could read without becoming feral monsters? Not adults, that's for sure.

This book keeps showing up on book prize lists, so I figured there's gotta be something good about it. I knew I was going to like it at least a little, since it's basically an AI story - dogs gain consciousness through divine intervention. It felt like a spin-off of [b:Mort e 22181034 Mort e Robert Repino https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1416178734s/22181034.jpg 41529181] actually, in a non-apocalyptic setting. 15 dogs suddenly find themselves with a new awareness of the world, and I found myself hoping desperately for their happiness. This has come about because of a bet between Apollo and Hermes, who've wagered a year of servitude against the happiness or lack thereof of the dogs at the time of their death (so, yes, dogs die in this book - keep that in mind if you're sensitive about this!). There's some goddish bickering in the background of the story that affects the lives of the dogs in different ways, but really it's about how the dogs deal with knowing. They quickly create a new language among themselves, and some embrace it quickly by creating puns and poetry, while others try to cling to their essential “dogness”, whatever that is, and struggle to reconcile what they see as their fundamental being with a new-found intelligence and knowledge. But they're different...they don't fit in the human world, but not in the dog world either. I can't help but call the gods' wager unfair, as they've created self-aware outcasts and expect to compare their level of unhappiness with humans who were born into a world expecting their self-awareness. How happy can you be to suddenly know the extent to which humans condescend to you? But it's only condescending if you have the knowledge to understand why. Baby talk is condescending to adults but for babies it's perfectly acceptable (and helps them understand language faster). Is it fair to be angry that someone spoke to you in a way you perceive as condescending if it wouldn't have been condescending before you could perceive condescension? And if the someone isn't aware that you can perceive condescension now? That was kind of confusing but the dogs weren't really thinking too much about how humans see regular dogs. They did a lot of reacting, and the nature of their reactions were different from before, and it scared and intrigued them. Anyway, I liked this book. I hope it wins one of the awards it was nominated for.

It is rare that I like every story in a short story collection, but here we are (that may not be true...the copy I was reading had pages missing in the middle of the last story so it's possible that was the one I wouldn't like). Geni's writing is poetic and easy to read, and every story is emotional and a little bit fantastic.

This book just broke my heart.
The depiction of paranoid schizophrenia in this book is very sad, and very scary, and pretty real. There is an overwhelming sense of futility throughout this story. What can you do when your son and brother has been taken over by mental illness, except love him? But love doesn't make things better either, so you either have to be sad for the rest of your life or go crazy yourself. John's parents do the former, his sister does the latter, and it's beautiful and heartbreaking.

I like the math involved in this book. Also nice to learn that 3 is the optimum number for a cat stack.

The main character's face is very, very expressive. The art in this book is just beautiful...so detailed and wonderful! It's about a little girl somehow abandoned in the forest, who is taken in by the forest creatures and lives a happy, feral life. Until one day she's discovered by some hipster hunters (or, I guess, they caught her in their bear trap? Only her hair was caught but that's pretty harsh, hipsters. Is using a bear trap really sporting? They take her to live with Famed Psychiatrist and his wife (presumably I'm supposed to assume the man is Famed Psychiatrist because he's the one measuring her head and taking notes while the lady just brushes the kid's hair and tries to cut her meat...but technically the lady could be Famed Psychiatrist while her significant other is her assistant. But I don't think I'm supposed to think that) and they just get mad at her for not learning even though it doesn't look like she's been there very long and so when she runs away they're just like “good riddance” which will be hard to explain to the papers but whatever. Famed Psychiatrist's dog and cat escape with our friend as well and live happy lives in harmony with the animals of the forest because this is a magical forest where predator and prey hang out and don't kill each other. I don't know what the bears and foxes eat but that's not the point of this story - the point is, you do you. I really like the magic in this book actually, because I would love to imagine that there are forests that exist where all the animals love each other and never die and people can have plants for hair. Probably somewhere in Europe.

ETA: of course I know what the bears and foxes eat, because there was a whole page dedicated to it that I apparently forgot, they eat fish. Sorry fish, you don't belong in our happy family of animals!

I tagged with my “depressing” tag but I don't think it's depressing so much as melancholy. I loved the illustrations, obviously, because I love Jon Klassen to bits and his illustrations really capture melancholy quite well. The story didn't quite do it for me - a house's people all move away and then house gets pushed up to the sky by the trees all growing around it. It paints a beautiful picture, but it personally didn't touch my heart so much. Maybe it was because, in this library copy I read, some monster underlined a bunch of words in PEN.

This book was really cute. I like the store that had dog parts on sale - I wish I could create my own frankendog too! I love that our main character wears a lab coat throughout.

Cute! Again, the illustrations really did it for me. The story was pretty good, Spark the dragon needs to learn not to breathe such large flames. Like in [b:Splash 25838000 Splash Kallie George https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1435861405s/25838000.jpg 45700897], where Splash stops splashing by being herself, Spark learns his lesson by growing older. Sure, that's fine.

I really like the art in this one. Though I've noticed that with this publisher, while the authors of the stories are Inuit, the illustrators often aren't.
Good story!

I was not surprised to learn that the author was an animator before he started writing books because reading this book was like watching a cartoon.
Everyone's facial expression was perfect, and the cat was hilarious. I now love Bird and Squirrel and must have more.

“‘What is the matter, Miss Wolf?' asked the little librarian. ‘Something very sad happened in my story and I can't read it anymore,' replied the wolf.”

I feel you, miss wolf.

The best part of this book is the stubborn tortoise who gets his library book tied to his shell with ribbon by two library owls.

This is the story of the Cheer-Up Bird as told by two fingerprint bird-fish.



Cheer-Up Bird flies around Australia allowing the sad animals to take her cheer - such as some grumpy wombats, one of which injured his hand and really need his dressing changed.



Or the suicidal koalas, who have been struck with a strong ennui, until the Cheer-Up Bird shows them that lady koalas exist! Finally, a reason to live.

And then poor Grandma and Grandpa Emu, who someone has trapped suspended above the ground in some sort of torture device.



Cheer-Up Bird gives them all her cheer, because it's her job, and trudges back to her nest, where she is cheered up by her cheery Cheer-Up Bird birdies and I guess the cycle begins again the next day!

pretty cute, definitely for older kids if you want them to follow what's going on - not that there's really a story in any of these stories. The illustrations are super adorable though, I could see my kid self poring over each page to get all the little details.

I love picture books that tackle big concepts like this. I definitely get that you can have your mind blown with the idea of infinity at the same time as you're pondering the awesomeness of your red shoes.

I never read books about business, because I'm completely uninterested in business but I found this book interesting because RIM is Canadian, and it's a fun pastime to rag on BlackBerry lately. I do remember a time when BBM was THE THING but for a lot of the time that BB was on top, I didn't even have a cell phone - I've mostly just observed its downfall.

The gist I got about Laziridis from this book is that he, though an impressive engineer, created something that changed that game by accident, and then just continued to make shit that he thought was cool. RIM didn't take the iPhone seriously because Lazaridis didn't think that people would sacrifice battery power and reliable coverage for apps and fully functional web browsers on their phones...he hated typing on touch screens and assumed that everyone else would hate it too. He seemed confused when BB devices didn't sell well or when no one could figure out how to market them. Plus, as they were playing catch-up with Apple and Google, they sacrificed quality in trying to get new things out as fast as possible. RIM probably could have come up with some amazing things if they weren't always trying to out-do everyone else, and were able to manage their company better.

I skimmed a bunch of this book on account of I don't understand business stuff. There was something about lawsuits and the stock market that I didn't quite follow, but it sounded terribly stressful and I'm glad I'm not responsible for billions of dollars and the proper running of a company. I would for sure do something illegal by accident and possibly go to jail.

So I guess you can read this book as a business how-not-to, or you can read it like I did and snicker at terms like “email pager”.

I'm going to be comparing this book to [b:How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming 7963278 How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming Mike Brown https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1320532443s/7963278.jpg 11871989] by Mike Brown because I read these two books almost back to back and they're about the same thing. I found it interesting how both authors felt they were at the center of the Pluto controversy, but only mentions the other in passing. Thinking back, I don't remember either of them figuring prominently in my perception of the controversy, I just remember waiting to hear the vote from the IAU and then reading some responses to it afterwards, which may well have been written by one of these guys but I don't remember.So this book is kind of just a compilation of some stuff that Tyson thought was cool or funny or interesting about Pluto and its planet-ness. There's some song lyrics, some letters written to him from children and adults about their views, some legislation written about the decision, some quotes from other scientists (and non-scientists...apparently some astrologers were mad that the IAU didn't invite an astrologer to be part of the committee to decide what constitutes a planet), news articles, editorial cartoons, etc. It was pretty amusing, I like all the things that Tyson likes, basically. It was also interesting to hear the process of creating museum displays, of deciding what information will probably be true years from now, what might be revised in a few years, and what might need to be changed very soon. As a person who can't muster much outrage about Pluto being reclassified, I thought the way that the Hayden planetarium laid out their controversial display of planets made sense. If you're focusing on certain characteristics instead of nomenclature, Pluto doesn't always fit with any of the other planets. Pluto is round, but it's made of different stuff, its orbit is quite different, and it actually has more in common with other Kuiper belt objects than it does with the planets. I liked reading the reasons that people, including other astronomers, didn't think that Pluto should be reclassified. A lot of people just fell back on tradition...Pluto has always been a planet, so it should stay a planet forever! Part of the trouble was that there wasn't even a real definition of the word “planet” for people to point to. But then there was a vote, and an overwhelming majority of voting members chose to “demote” Pluto (I put demote in quotes because, as a couple of the astronomers quoted in this book say, Pluto doesn't care what it's called - it will continue on being Pluto no matter what we do. Plus “demote” makes it seem like being a Kuiper belt object is less interesting or cool which seems unfair to the other Kuiper belt objects!). And, as all the media coverage from New Horizons showed, we don't care any less about Pluto now that we happen to call it something different!

Cute! The illustrations killed me. Dad Bird's face : and all the other animal's faces when Little Bird starts BLARKing all over the place are great.The story was nice, nothing amazing. Little Bird learns that words can hurt people and apologizes, Dad Bird learns that his kid will repeat everything that comes out of his mouth.

I really liked this one! The illustrations are cute and I love any book that gets me to make animal sounds.

The illustrations are beautiful and interactive part seems fun. I tend to judge picture books by how good they'd be to read for storytime, and this kind of interactive book doesn't work so well. You can't get 10+ kids up to tap each page, unless you're trying to kill a lot of time. I would definitely read this with one or two kids though!

I love this Panda. He happens to be very specific about who he's going to give his donuts to, it's his prerogative, they're his donuts, so remember your pleases and thank yous!

The cutest intro to evolution I've ever read. The illustrations are simple and adorable, with a nod to human ingenuity and an optimistic ending.

Cute! I like the illustrations and I like that the author's name is Wood-RUFF!

Aaaaadorable.
Kate, whose lives with her family of werewolves, follows her heart when the moon calls to her on the 13th birthday and becomes a wereduck instead. And also there's a mystery and danger and intrigue. And it's set in Canada!