Fablehaven by Brandon Mull

I wanted to read this book to see what reading level it was and to see if it was appropriate for Dane at his age. (I think it's just at his reading level and I think he will love it once he finishes the series he's currently reading.) Also, I've seen these books for years and have never known what they are about, and finally wanted to find out. This book is about Kendra and Seth, a brother and sister who go to stay with their grandparents for a few weeks while their parents are on a trip, and they find out that their grandparents actually live on a magical preserve for magical creatures. They learn all about the magical creatures and get involved in ways they didn't anticipate, and end up having to stop an evil witch from taking down their family and the whole preserve. 

I thought the book was really well done and I probably would have loved it while I was the appropriate age group. As it was, I didn't personally love it a ton--I think I hate reading stories where the main character (or one of them) causes all the problems in the book and gets him or herself into scrapes that you just know are going to be big problems for them later. I just hate that and get more and more uncomfortable as I read, and try to avoid picking a book up when I know that's going to happen. This book relied on Seth breaking every one of the grandpa's rules and getting everyone into more and more trouble, even though he knew the consequences of breaking them--and that really got annoying after a while. I also felt like Mull avoided several really important plot points by having the grandparents say, "We don't have time to talk about that now. We'll have to talk about that later." Like the grandma wouldn't explain why she was a chicken? Why couldn't she just tell them in one paragraph? I'm guessing it will come up in a future book, but I felt like that was a cop-out. 

Overall, I think the book was great for middle-grade readers. I bet the next ones in the series will be even better, but I'm not planning on reading them myself. I will heartily recommend this to Dane, though.

The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo

I have heard so much about this book over the last few months/years and I finally was able to check it out on audiobook. I really, really enjoyed listening to this. I felt like Elizabeth Acevedo was a fantastic narrator for her own work (she is apparently a slam poet in her own right, in addition to writing about a character who is one) and I loved the main character of Xiomara and her ability to write her story through poetry. I honestly got choked up listening to some of her poems, thinking about how hard it is to be a teenager sometimes, and I couldn't even stand the emotions that I got while listening to some of her poems--particularly the one about what men and boys say to her. I thought Xiomara and her family were such interesting characters, and the tension between Xiomara and her mother over religion and her mother's expectations was so believable. My only real complaint was that I felt like all of the tension and the problems in the climax of the book were resolved way too easily. Her mom has been a holy terror through the whole book, and then all of a sudden she can let go of her overbearing overly religious issues and let Xiomara have her boyfriend over? I can't imagine that she would transform that much, even while talking to their priest. I was pretty disappointed in the neatly-wrapped-in-a-bow ending, because it didn't seem to go along with the rest of the book. But the poetry and the character development throughout the book was fantastic, and definitely worth it. A very good option for an audiobook as well. 

Criss Cross by Lynne Rae Perkins

I feel like I've got a good run going with two really good Newbery winners in a row! I really liked Criss Cross and I felt like it was an actually realistic representation of what it is like to be a young teenager. There were no big dramatic events for any of the kids in this book, but the book really understood what it felt like to be a kid, but also just what it's like to be a teenager. The conversations were real, but also, the way that people thought was real. I loved several of the quotes in here, about how people just miss opportunities without even knowing it:

"So often in books, or in movies, one character looks at another character and understands in a precise way what that person is feeling. So often in real life, one person wants to be understood, but obscures her feelings with unrelated words and facial expressions, while the other person is trying to remember whether she did or didn't turn off the burner under the hard-boiled eggs."

It felt so applicable and believable for me even today, but especially for teenagers as well. I loved this, especially by the end. It was really sweet. 

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

After just reading Sounder for my Newbery project and really not liking it, it was such a pleasant experience to read The Graveyard Book and to look forward to coming back to it every time I had to put it down. I am surprised that I hadn't heard more about this book (although maybe I would have if I had been reading middle-grade books when this came out 13 years ago) and I think I would have loved this as a child. I would definitely recommend this for my boys. 

This book is about a live boy who is raised in a graveyard by the ghosts who live there. Just that once sentence sounds macabre and creepy, but this book has such a sweet feeling and definitely gives a sense of coziness and contentment throughout most of it. The boy is named Nobody and called Bod--and Bod grows up wanting to know who he is and why he lives there, and as he slowly learns and decides he wants to avenge his family, he has to learn how to protect himself and his home before he can go out into the world. I thought the ending was so bittersweet, when he leaves and has to say good-bye to all of his ghost friends and family, and they have to say good-bye to him and watch him go. In the interview in the back, Gaiman talks about how he had to learn how to parent and how to help his children go off and leave, and that was what he had to learn in order to write this book. 

The only thing I didn't like about this book was the beginning, when the murderer is at the house and kills Bod's parents and sister--it was too dark and creepy and sad for me. I guess it was a lot like the beginning of Harry Potter, but much more graphic and disturbing to have it described in front of you. But that didn't match the rest of the book.

Sounder by William H. Armstrong

I read this just because it was a Newbery winner and I am SHOCKED that so many of the reviews on Goodreads are of people who love this book and cried while reading it. I basically hated the whole thing. How many dog books win the Pulitzer anyways? I am clearly not a dog person and clearly not a dog book person... but I just really didn't connect with this book. It's a story of a family of sharecroppers in the South probably in the early 1900s, and the father steals some ham to feed his family and gets caught doing it. He is sent to jail and hard labor for years, and his family is left to fend for themselves. His loyal dog Sounder gets shot when he is being arrested, and ends up disfigured but doesn't die, and waits until his master comes home. 

I feel like that summary I just wrote didn't really encapsulate the feeling of the book. It felt really dark--really black and gray and hopeless, except for the boy being able to go to school after a while. I did not like how none of the characters in the book had names, not even the main boy. The one redeeming thing about this book for me was that it was pretty short and I was able to read it in an hour or two. I wouldn't have wanted to spend any more time on this book.

Less by Andrew Sean Greer

I have an eventual goal to try and read all the Pulitzer winners, and although I've been focused way more on the Newberys the last two years, I still want to try and get through these. Less was the 2018 Pulitzer winner, and I honestly finally got to it because it was available on audiobook when I was looking for something to listen to. I actually had it on e-book as well, and I ended up switching back and forth between the two when either one was better for me at that moment, and I actually liked it way, way better on audiobook. I feel like the comedy of the story really came out with the audio--maybe it was that I was reading too fast to really savor the funny elements of it when I wasn't forced to slow down with the audiobook pace. In any case, I did really like how this story was funny but still heartfelt, how Arthur Less had real feelings and real issues, even while he had many of the same problems happening to him over and over again. I was annoyed with how he kept sleeping with random people and how that was his solution to everything over the years, though--I really don't love that kind of lifestyle or books about it (straight or gay, doesn't matter). But many of the adventures Less gets caught up in in this book were written about so well that I could imagine them--riding on camels, getting injured in India, etc. I was torn and couldn't decide how much I actually liked this book at the end--if I just liked the narration or the book itself--but I'm glad I read it. 

The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World by Melinda Gates

I thought this book was really eye-opening and interesting, with stories from Melinda Gates's charity work around the world and explaining what has guided her interests and focus in her charity over the years. I feel like I was already on board with her main principles of the importance of focusing on women and women's empowerment, but I feel like I learned a lot from her experiences and the stories she shared about the importance of lifting women and especially in focusing on contraceptives for women. I obviously take a lot for granted in my privileged life as a white woman in the U.S., but I think the most obvious thing I have taken for granted is my ability to access contraceptives and how important that has been for my ability to care for my children and to have a happy life without worrying about getting pregnant at any moment. Gates talks about a lot of other issues as well, like the importance of education, maternal healthcare, stopping genital cutting, and other things that her charities are really involved in, and I really liked the insight on how you don't just swoop in as an outsider and force people to change, but how you have to have empathy and be a part of them in order to help things become better. Each chapter added something new and was interesting, and it was inspiring to see how much good is being done all over the world (not just by Melinda Gates, but a lot by her and her charities).

Up a Road Slowly by Irene Hunt

I knew literally nothing about this Newbery winner and I loved it so, so much. I guess it shows my old-fashioned ways, but it reminded me a LOT of the books I loved so much as a child, like Anne of Green Gables and so many others, books that were slow and more about the character development of the main character than about any exciting plot twists. I guess I love a good old-fashioned coming-of-age story, emphasis on the "old-fashioned" part--because this was definitely old-fashioned. It was published in 1966, so it definitely espouses some 1966 values, like the woman needing to take care of the home and that a woman isn't complete until she has loved a man and stuff like that. But I really enjoyed the book anyways. It just felt really familiar and homey to me, just like the books I would find and read on my grandma's bookshelf in San Diego. I can see a lot of modern readers turning their noses up at this, but I loved it and definitely plan on buying it to read it again. 

When You Trap a Tiger by Tae Keller

This was the 2021 Newbery winner, and it was available on audiobook from our library, so I snapped it right up. I actually really enjoyed this story, about Lily and her Korean grandmother. I loved its focus on stories and the power they have for us, and the influence of Lily's Korean heritage on her life and the story itself. I thought Lily was a determined and strong heroine, but not unbelievable, because she makes mistakes and obviously doesn't think as clearly as an adult, so she would be relatable for a kid. It seemed like it was going to be more magical than it was--there is an invisible-to-everyone-else tiger that talks to Lily, after all--but the book was really more about Lily and her relationship with her grandmother, her mom, and her sister, all of whom have important moments in the book both by themselves and with Lily. I loved that we got to know all of the characters and see them grow. I did feel confused by what Lily and the magical tiger were accomplishing--like, how did this actually happen?--but it was balanced out by the beauty of the rest of the story. 

Dragon Hoops by Gene Luen Yang

I heard about this being a great graphic novel about basketball, and since I haven't read many graphic novels (okay, just one, but I've spent a lot of time getting graphic novels for my boys so I feel like it's been more than that). This was an interesting story because I felt like it could have worked really well as an regular book written with words and no illustrations. Yang is writing the story of the varsity basketball team at the high school at which he teaches, but he works in parts about the history of basketball, the history of basketball with different racial and ethnic groups in America, basketball in China, and the school itself. Yang also works in a lot of personal aspects of his own story, like his decision to stop teaching to work fully on comics, and his wrestling with accepting a new opportunity to do the Superman comics. I feel like there were some things I would have maybe taken out to focus more on the basketball and the storyline of the championship, but I guess he had some good reasons to include that stuff. I thought the graphic novel format was an interesting choice, but I really enjoyed that part of it. I was thinking about giving it to Dane to read, but there is a bunch of swearing (written with symbols, but still) and I think he will be more interested in it when he is older anyways. (The best part of the graphic novel is how quickly it went--it was a huge, 400+-page book, but it only took a few hours to get through.)

Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

I did not love this book. I guess I'm not a dog person, but this story about a boy finding a dog and rescuing it from his abusive and mean owner did not get to me. I also think this book shows how much has changed over time in how we view our collective responsibility towards people and animals--I don't think a person mistreating his animals would be ignored or accepted like Judd Travers was in this book anymore. I think there's a chance Dane would actually really like this book, though--it does seem like one that would actually appeal to kids (appropriately). The boy in the story is pretty heroic in his determination to save the dog and stick up to the mean owner, and I think that would appeal to Dane (but I doubt I'll be able to get him to read it). I did root for Marty and was glad that Shiloh ended up being safe with him at the end, though. I'm not completely heartless.