Book-Talk : Go with the Flow

This graphic novel concerns four friends in high school and their experience around having their periods, an experience they share in common with 1.8 billion people around the world each month. It is the book that authors Lily Williams and Karen Schneemann wish they had growing up.

Book-Talk : Alebrijes by Donna Barba Higuera

In this companion book to The Last Cuentista, Earth has been a barren wasteland for 400 years. Thirteen-year-old pickpocket Leandro takes the fall when his sister Gabi steals a piece of fruit and, in punishment, Leandro’s consciousness is placed inside a small drone, an alebrije, and he is banished from the city of Pocatel. But beyond the walls of Pocatel lie other alebrijes, like Leandro, who seek for a better world. Out there too, lie mutant monsters, wasteland pirates, a hidden oasis, and the truth.

Color Outside the Lines (Anna-Marie McLemore)

Each Friday that school is in session, I share the link to a read-aloud preview of a book from SRCSA library. The “First-chapter Friday” selection for Nov. 17, 2023 is Color Outside the Lines, featuring contributor Anna-Marie McLemore.

Book-Talk : The Cardboard Kingdom

Welcome to the “Cardboard Kingdom,” where a group of neighborhood children have created their own imaginative world out of ordinary household items and materials. This book-talk was created as part of LIS 5400, “Children’s and Young Adult Literature,” for the graduate program in Library and Information Science at the University of Central Missouri.

Sexuality and reader’s advisory

A question was posed to me as part of my studies in Children’s and Young Adult Literature: How would I provide reader’s advisory for young people who are looking for books related to sexuality?

Books about “sexuality” could encompass all sorts of topics. Do kids want to know about “where babies come from?” Do readers have questions about their sexual orientation, or their gender identity? And to incorporate the asexual community’s “Split Attraction Model,” does a reader have questions about their romantic orientation along with, or opposed to, sexual orientation as “distinctly different experiences” (Gender & Sexuality Resource Center, n.d.)?

Yusuf Azeem is Not a Hero, by Saadia Faruqi

Each Friday that school is in session, I share the link to a read-aloud preview of a book from SRCSA library. The “First-chapter Friday” selection for Nov. 10, 2023 is Yusuf Azeem is Not a Hero, by Saadia Faruqi.

Goodreads to combat review-bombing

Goodreads, a “a prominent platform for book discovery,” is taking steps to combat review-bombing: a practice where people who haven’t even read a book, leave negative reviews for the book in an effort to drop its rating. This development is significant for efforts to promote greater diversity in publishing, because often “diverse” authors are the ones being targeted by review-bombing campaigns.

https://bookriot.com/goodreads-releases-statement-on-review-bombing/

Shadowshaper, by Daniel José Older

Each Friday that school is in session, I share the link to a read-aloud preview of a book from SRCSA library. The “First-chapter Friday” selection for Nov. 3, 2023 is Shadowshaper, by Daniel José Older.

Adaptations of classic literature

One of the books I read this semester was an adaptation of a classic novel: Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy by Rey Terciero and Bre Indigo. Not only is this “modern retelling of Little Women” rendered in a graphic-novel format (Terciero & Indigo, 2019, front-cover matter), but it also updates the March family from Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women to be a mixed-race and blended family circa 2015-2017.