As I’ve mentioned (repeatedly) in writing about dog and cat picture books—kids love them. Adults love them. Whether they are funny, touching, clever, or as is often the case, a combination of all those qualities, reading books about our favorite companions is almost always extremely rewarding. Here are some wonderful choices to share with your picture book readers.
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Usually I prefer to review picture books as a group, but my grandson loved “Beaky Barnes and the Devious Duck” by Caldecott Honor winner David Ezra Stein so much that he insisted on taking it home with him after reading it. When I asked him specifically what he loved about it, he said that it’s just really excellent. But he (and his grandfather) loved the humor. They loved the sneaky acts and the deviousness. They loved the characters. And they loved the plot.
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The cat on the cover did it—I knew “Starter Villain” by John Scalzi was a book I wanted to read. Even if the cats weren’t the center of the plot. But to my delight, the cats were magnificent! And the dolphins were hysterical, in a tough-guy kind of way. But the substitute teacher, first person narrator Charlie Fitzer, is just a wonderful main character. The kind of guy we really root for and we want to attain his dream.
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Unlike her first explosive novel, “Honor,” which begins powerfully, in her new novel, “The Museum of Failures” author Thrity Umrigar builds our connection with the characters slowly and carefully. We meet Remy as he travels to his native India to see about adopting a baby. He arrives in Mumbai, which he still calls by the name he used in his childhood, Bombay, and is immediately drawn in and made at home by his childhood best friend Jango and his wife, Shenaz.
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In this absolutely charming Regency mystery, Celeste Connally brings an unlikely hero into our midst. Lady Petra Forsyth is an independent woman of means who is determined not to let her existence be controlled by society’s demands. While at her level of upper class English nobility, women are expected to marry quickly, bear heirs, and keep their opinions to themselves, Petra refuses to comply.
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There’s no mystery involved in “The Winthrop Agreement,” and the narrative in this historical fiction is fairly straightforward as author Alice Sherman Simpson takes us forward and backward in time right around the turn of the 20th Century. The only mystery we might consider is how, over the past century, so much has changed in terms of technology and our lifestyles, and yet so little has changed in terms of our class prejudices and the chasm that exists between the ultra-wealthy and the rest of us.
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While El Niño might promise a rather warm winter, those reading “Spy School: Goes North” by Stuart Gibbs will surely feel the icy chill of north winds fingering down necks and up sleeves. Because in this eleventh novel in the Spy Series, Ben and his cadre of fellow spy students and a few adults are in Alaska, where even in the summer you need parkas in addition to industrial strength mosquito repellant.
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“Kissing Kosher” is a Romeo and Juliet-type romance, but in Jean Meltzer’s seasoned hands, it’s much more. Meltzer is passionate about educating as many readers as she can about chronic illness and chronic pain. It seems a strange match for a romance, but we see how important it is for someone with chronic pain to find an understanding partner. And perhaps, true love conquers all? Including chronic illness and pain? In this novel, it feels as if Meltzer has shared more than usual about her inner feelings regarding the daily grind of living with chronic pain and its effect on career and personal relationships.
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Most people reading “The River We Remember” will not really remember the year 1958. And even fewer will be able to relate to small-town Minnesota as William Kent Krueger depicts it. In the rural town of Jewel, many of the inhabitants are either farmers or those in town who support farmers by providing food at the local diner or teaching their children at the local school. Sheriff Brody Dern protects people, but his job is usually dealing with drunks. That changes on Memorial Day when the body of local wealthy farmer Jimmy Quinn is found in the river.
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Sometimes a book can be difficult to read, perhaps difficult because of the quantity of information presented, perhaps difficult because it makes us uncomfortable, or sad, or because it shines a bright light on ugly human flaws which we’d rather not think about. But that book might need to be read over and over again to really experience it fully, discomfort notwithstanding. Naomi Ragen’s fourteenth novel, “The Enemy Beside Me,” is just such a novel because of the intense spotlight she shines on a country that to this day refuses to admit its part in the massacre of its Jewish population, and because of the amount of information she presents, factual first person accounts, about those horrific events.
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In “The Measure,” by Nikki Erlick, we visit a changed world where all people over the age of 22 are able to discover how long they will live. “The measure of your life lies within” is what is inscribed on a wooden-looking chest that also features each person’s name on it. Inside the indestructible chest is a piece of string, similarly indestructible, and its length indicates the life span of the recipient. This simple white—almost magical—string changes the world.
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Take a trip back in time to visit the spectacle of the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair, courtesy of Anika Scott. In her latest novel, “Sinners of Starlight City,” we see and experience the sights, sounds, and smells of the fair through the eyes of Rosa Mancuso, who performs at the fair as the mysterious and sultry Madame Mystique. We also meet, in a connection seemingly unrelated at first, eighteen-year-old Mina Gallo, who is imprisoned in a house in Cicero, waiting for the birth of her child. Her mafioso family is embarrassed at her unwed state and wants to have the child taken to an orphanage, Mina returned to the family, and life to continue as it was before she made what is in their eyes an unsavory alliance with someone of color.
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