Kate Mester
Solid 3.5. Plot moves quickly with some twists so will be an easy sell for booktalks. All of the spelled out foreshadowing annoyed me as a reader but could come in handy to teens. Appreciated all of the characters of color without that being part of the plot.
The first book of the Grisha trilogy was so poorly written that I quit after book one, so I wasn't expecting much, but she got so much better, thankfully! She excels at worldbuilding, but this time she really leaned into characters, observations, and much better dialogue, and kept a humming and intricate plot and pace. It was incredibly long but I wasn't bored once! Had a great conversation with BOB team about the growth of her writing today, and the team is looking forward to reading the sequel!
Wanted to understand the Caldecott controversy. Illustrations are gorgeous, but I think saying this is for Caldecott age group is a stretch, even allowing for the up to 14 argument. Skim was solidly YA, I see this as the same.
Pretty disappointed by this one. I've liked her other books but the writing was so stilted here. The dialogue was not authentic, many characters felt like caricatures rather than real people, even the main characters were written with only surface traits rather than nuance. The basketball writing (which was about half the book) also felt like an observer rather than a player wrote those sections. The whole thing felt didactic and “problem-novel forced” rather than what should have been a meaningful look at racism and Islamaphobia in a private school.
4.5 Woooow, this was beautifully tragic. The writing was excellent, especially at the sentence level but the emotional arc was impressively intricate, and I felt so compelled to know what would happen with these characters. It is a necessary emotional gut-punch of a novel.
Not enough Barney! Appreciated the gender pronoun discussion and the continued queering of this series. The roller derby game was fun but this volume was much lighter on plot than others. Always adorable and fun!
The art isn't as good now that the original artists aren't doing it. The stories are still fun and sweet, but aren't as zippy. The series isn't holding up as well but is still cute and readable
The first chapter with backstory was great, but then they changed author/artist for the mermaid single-story and it wasn't as compelling.
Holy bell hooks! Still charming and the characters gain a little more personality depth, but the plot moves from quirky to full blown unexplainable nonsense in this volume. I'm hoping they focus on the characters and dial down or streamline the fantastical in the next volume.
Liked that each title was a song, the 80s setting, and the exploration of Harry's friendships, but enjoyed Wise Young Fool more as a band novel.
Excellent and straightforward. This isn't an autobiography but she graciously gives us enough details of her life to ground her anecdotes and examples. She gives great actionable advice in a way that anyone can think on and follow. Strongly recommend for all readers.
3.5. Important topic with all pieces created by Native women. However, the layout itself has some problems. The full color pages are beautiful but the book is then cut to a size that's relatively unworkable in a HS library. Also, though the content was arranged into chapters, it was still relatively disjointed, there wasn't flow, and the grapbic style of the pull quotes (some words large and rest small) made than hard to read and contextualize. Bought a copy for the library and will sell it, hoping it will find it's audience .
Adult sci-fi doesn't tend to be my thing, but I enjoyed this more than I was expecting to. With enough suspended disbelief, especially in how the story resolves, I was compelled to keep reading until the end. The story was twisty and interesting, with each part (6 in all) revealing another telescoping layer of the world he's built. My students that have read it said they were confused, so I'm not sure I'd recommend it for YA, but I don't think I'll forget this book.
Serviceable murder thriller, not as twisty as her first book. The payoff didn't feel very earned, but think teens will like this. As a side note, I'm SO OVER the stereotype of 80 year old librarians falling asleep on the job so that a character can come in to a (public, in this case) library to look at a book in secret. It's lazy and hackneyed writing and just dumb at this point in YA.
Woooow. So vulnerable, so brutally honest, so well written. Strongly recommend you get the audio so Kiese can tell you his tale himself. Unflinchingly tough but necessary to hear. Absolutely in my top reads of the year.
Classic Reynolds - seemingly simple yet so complex, powerful and compulsively readable, balm for the eyes, ears, heart, and soul. You can read it in 20 minutes but you should read it over and over. Need to find video of him performing this.
Just ok and really hoped it would be better. The story was earnest and I've had some students like it, but none of the characters rose above semi-stereotypes and the story dragged and didn't pick up until about half way through.
Satisfying ending to a middle grade series with so much heart, authenticity, and humor. Reynolds' facility with language remains impressive and his messages here are delivered without being didactic. Guy Lockard did such a great job with the audio books, will miss listening to these.
At the end of the audio version, Jason Reynolds introduces Guy Lockard and they talk about how they're old friends and the choices they made together in voicing Sunny. I wish I had listened to this before the book because it would have changed my listening experience going in. I wanted to quit the audio after 10 minutes because Lockard's choices were annoyingly weird and over the top. But then I finally undestood that this is what they were trying to do, it fit with the character, and his narration was so additive to the story that I then LOVED it. This has now become my favorite book of the series and I think Lockard's narration works even better here than in Ghost because his choices make him sound closer to the age of the character. Weird, sweet, heartwarming, and funny.
Jason Reynolds is even better at the MG level! Loved Castle/Ghost, his grey-area character nuances, and the diversity of supporting characters (getting their own books soon, hopefully). Audio was excellent and gave distinct voices to the many characters, especially nailing Ghost (“I could feel the altercationess rising” is one of my all time favorite lines). I have known so many of these characters in real life, and I know kids will strongly embrace this realistic reflection of their realities.
Illustrations could put it in Caldecott contention, and the story is sweet but insubstantial.
I think his art is graphically interesting but I don't personally like it. I'm firmly in the minority here, which is good because this is most likely Caldecott short-list. The triple-nested story about the powers of storytelling was beautiful, and I liked that the end notes gave a few details about keeping culture through storytelling but didn't get too didactic, letting the power of the story speak.
I was listening to her audio, enjoying her stories like I was catching up with a friend, until the needle scratch moment where she described a friend as having “chinky eyes.” REALLY, Issa? I am surprised and saddened that this description made it through editors.