By: tanita✿davis,
on 12/20/2016
Welcome to the 2016 Cybils Speculative Reader! As a first run reader for the Cybils, I'll be briefly introducing you to the books on the list, giving you a mostly unbiased look at some of the plot.Enjoy! Time travel! Ghosts! Plotting adults! Secret... Read the rest of this post
By: tanita✿davis,
on 12/16/2016
Welcome to the 2016 Cybils Speculative Reader! As a first run reader for the Cybils, I'll be briefly introducing you to the books on the list, giving you a mostly unbiased look at some of the plot.Enjoy! This is a Cybils year with an interesting... Read the rest of this post
By: tanita✿davis,
on 12/13/2016
Welcome to the 2016 Cybils Speculative Reader! As a first run reader for the Cybils, I'll be briefly introducing you to the books on the list, giving you a mostly unbiased look at some of the plot.Enjoy! We've noticed plenty of "hidden princess"... Read the rest of this post
By: tanita✿davis,
on 12/9/2016
Welcome to the 2016 Cybils Speculative Reader! As a first run reader for the Cybils, I'll be briefly introducing you to the books on the list, giving you a mostly unbiased look at some of the plot.Enjoy! While some girls are horse-crazy from the... Read the rest of this post
By: Sarah Stevenson,
on 11/17/2016
This scary cover almost made me not want to read it.Synopsis: I’m a huge fan of Frances Hardinge’s Fly By Night books, so I was eager to check out this one—another middle grade fantasy. It’s hard to talk about this one without giving away... Read the rest of this post
By: Sarah Stevenson,
on 11/7/2016
Synopsis: Yes, look, I'm participating in a Thing, and that thing is Middle Grade Monday! When am I ever organized enough to do that? Today, evidently. Anyway, I recently read Newbery Award winner Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool, who was one... Read the rest of this post
By: tanita✿davis,
on 10/18/2016
Welcome to another session of Turning Pages!Today my flying book-boat icon is especially apropos, as I'm talking about a time travel book, where the travel took place onboard a pirate ship. Now, I don't actually love time travel novels, because a.)... Read the rest of this post
By: tanita✿davis,
on 10/11/2016
Welcome to another session of Turning Pages!If we say we never judge a book by its cover, we'll sound like better people, sure, but we'll be total liars. I chose this book based on its beautiful cover, and that first snap judgment was enough to pick... Read the rest of this post
By: tanita✿davis,
on 9/20/2016
Welcome to another session of Turning Pages!The jacket flap copy for this novel was "Newsies" meets "Les Mis" or something like that, which made me chuckle, as I have seen neither and am not particularly interested in musicals, in any event.... Read the rest of this post
By: Sarah Stevenson,
on 9/19/2016
Synopsis: The Queen of Blood, which comes out TOMORROW, is a foray into YA crossover fantasy by Sarah Beth Durst, author of numerous wonderful, whimsical, fantastical MG and YA fantasy titles such as (most recently) The Girl Who Could Not Dream... Read the rest of this post
By: tanita✿davis,
on 9/14/2016
It's Day 6 of the PASADENA blog tour!Bad things happen everywhere. Even in the land of sun and roses. When Jude's best friend is found dead in a swimming pool, her family calls it an accident. Her friends call it suicide. But Jude calls it what it... Read the rest of this post
By: tanita✿davis,
on 8/30/2016
Welcome to another session of Turning Pages!One of the uses of exploring new people, places, and things in fiction is to understand and normalize them. As I stated a few months back in my review of Marike Nijkamp's THIS IS WHERE IT ENDS, I struggle... Read the rest of this post
By: tanita✿davis,
on 8/23/2016
Welcome to another session of Turning Pages!According to the PEW Research peeps, about 70% of people consider themselves religious in some fashion, whether through traditional Jewish, Muslim or Christian denominations or other neopagan practices... Read the rest of this post
By: tanita✿davis,
on 8/16/2016
Welcome to another session of Turning Pages!Many teens struggle with historical fiction which seems like a genre of "long ago and far away." The history of North Korea happened - and is still happening - right now. This book is a first-person... Read the rest of this post
By: tanita✿davis,
on 7/15/2016
Welcome to another session of Turning Pages!Aquafortis got me thinking about comfort reads a few weeks ago. While I really started reading fiction mostly late in high school, I have some read-again books which resonate with me mostly because of... Read the rest of this post
By: tanita✿davis,
on 7/4/2016
It's July 4th! Maybe by now you're tired of sunshine, patriotic colors, smoke from the bbq or your neighbors, relatives, and friends, and would prefer to get back to your usual semi-monastic existence of reading and not speaking to people. At... Read the rest of this post
By: tanita✿davis,
on 6/7/2016
Welcome to another session of Turning Pages!Here's one of the infrequent middle grade novels we review here on this site; I chose it because the main character is a.) adopted and b.) Cambodian - just like my sister. She would have laughed a lot... Read the rest of this post
By: tanita✿davis,
on 5/20/2016
Welcome to another session of Turning Pages!Once, long ago, I used to watch Daria and then get RIGHT online to talk about it. Though I didn't write stories or draw pictures about it, I had favorite characters and discussions with people all across... Read the rest of this post
By: tanita✿davis,
on 5/13/2016
Welcome to another session of Turning Pages! Synopsis: Nola Chambers is a reminder that her family wasn't always the golden-skinned, fair-haired folk who can stand proud and nearly-white in their village of Redding. Nola reminds her father that... Read the rest of this post
By: tanita✿davis,
on 4/1/2016
Welcome to another session of Turning Pages! Synopsis: Kirit Densira lives with her Trader mother in the Towers - skyscrapers made of live, organic bone, which pulse and grow. The City is alive, and the Traders are some of the most powerful and... Read the rest of this post
By: Sarah Stevenson,
on 3/17/2016
Check it out--no whitewashing here!Synopsis: The Fog Diver was this year's Cybils Award winner for Elementary and Middle-Grade Speculative Fiction, and I've been intending to read it for several months now—so when it won the Cybils I made a... Read the rest of this post
By: tanita✿davis,
on 3/11/2016
Welcome to another session of Turning Pages! Synopsis: Safiya fon Hasstrel is a Truthwitch, who can discern the truth in all situations, and of the upper class. Though she usually doesn't look or act like it, as her uncle has drank away much of the... Read the rest of this post
By: Sarah Stevenson,
on 3/3/2016
It's hard to see, but that's a pattern of little shopping carts in the background...Synopsis: So far, everything I've read by Blythe Woolston—that being The Freak Observer (reviewed here) and Catch and Release (reviewed here)—has been a tiny... Read the rest of this post
By: tanita✿davis,
on 2/2/2016
Welcome to another session of Turning Pages!Synopsis: One day she's leaping in the waves near the family's Paradise-by-the-Sea beach home, the fittest of the fit, dreaming of finishing Little Women and having a new best friend; the next moment her... Read the rest of this post
By: tanita✿davis,
on 11/27/2015
This book is a gem and a gift, and in order to avoid spoilers I'll say up front: Parker is blind. The dots on the cover are Braille. And now you know ...except, it's not a big secret. Really, Parker would be the first to say, "So? And get over... Read the rest of this post
Oh, this one looks really good! (I'm a sucker for stories about foster kids—don't know why—and I've never read one that's also spec fic.) I hope it makes it onto the shortlist!