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 12/6/2016
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! Writing inclusive speculative fiction is... Read the rest of this post
By: Sarah Stevenson,
on 11/28/2016
Synopsis: I picked this one up (and got it signed; woot!) at the most recent Kidlitosphere Conference in Wichita—somehow I missed it when it came out a few years ago, but I'm so glad I went back for it, because it's up there with my favorite A.S.... Read the rest of this post
By: Sarah Stevenson,
on 10/24/2016
This is one of the most gorgeous and effectivecovers I've seen. I love it.Synopsis: Clara and Hailey are twin sisters, and like a lot of sisters, they are closer than close one moment, but in the next, they get on each other's last nerve. Hailey is... Read the rest of this post
By: tanita✿davis,
on 9/30/2016
Welcome to another session of Turning Pages!One of the things the kidlitosphere talked about a lot in the early days of the early 2000's was the preponderance of YA novels with ridiculously 1% families in them. Rare were the books where the kids... Read the rest of this post
By: tanita✿davis,
on 8/18/2016
This has been the summer of the monkeybrain - too much going on, too much we wanted to do and we're not going to get it done, because it's nearing the end of August. ::sigh:: One thing we didn't want to miss was talking about Kate Messner's latest... 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 6/1/2016
Welcome to another session of Turning Pages!Readers who enjoy a sprawling fantasy epic will be glad to see another female-centric contender on the horizon. Thought The Conqueror's Saga is a series, its first book stands alone with a finished arc... Read the rest of this post
By: tanita✿davis,
on 3/18/2016
Welcome to another session of Turning Pages! Synopsis: Privileged and perfect is how life could be described for fifteen-year-old Kambili and her brother, Jaja. In Nigeria, where so many deal with fuel shortages, power outages, strikes at hospitals... Read the rest of this post
By: tanita✿davis,
on 3/8/2016
Welcome to another session of Turning Pages! Trapped.Every fingernail scrapesOn shut doors,Ripping off.At least the bloodcan escape. - from the ARCSynopsis: Fifteen-year-old Hope is her mother's last chance for vicariously getting out of the... Read the rest of this post
By: tanita✿davis,
on 2/12/2016
Welcome to another session of Turning Pages!Synopsis: It was pretty well going to be the most depressing visit to Blackheath 17-year-old Rosie Clayton had ever taken. Though she visited her grandparents in the London neighborhood from Nashville... Read the rest of this post
By: tanita✿davis,
on 12/29/2015
This is less of a book review than a book reaction, and is a little more self-indulgent than the way I usually book talk here in the Wonderland tree house. However, after reading just this morning that there's a thirteen day period where PTSD is... Read the rest of this post
By: tanita✿davis,
on 12/4/2015
I don't often like to review a book waaaaay before it comes out, so this is less of a review, and more of a squee with a few salient details you could find on the back of the novel. I posted this review for the first time in August, because I Could.... Read the rest of this post
By: tanita✿davis,
on 11/10/2015
The best thing about reading is the opportunity to observe, discover, and reflect about somewhere else, and someone else, and maybe begin to imagine yourself in someplace else, with another situation. Some of the very best "old-school" YA novels... Read the rest of this post
By: tanita✿davis,
on 9/30/2015
I remember M.E. Kerr. My sister had a book called DINKEY HOCKER SHOOTS SMACK, and I was in grade school and thought the title sounded awful. Who'd name their kid Dinky? With books, though, curiosity traps me every time, and the fact that Dinky was a... Read the rest of this post
By: Sarah Stevenson,
on 8/10/2015
Summary: Ashley Hope Pérez's latest novel comes out on September 1. I tell you this so you can brace yourself. Out Of Darkness is historical fiction of the most wrenching kind: based on a real-life tragedy, with plenty of collective guilt to go... Read the rest of this post
By: tanita✿davis,
on 8/7/2015
I don't often like to review a book waaaaay before it comes out, so this is less of a review, and more of a squee with a few salient details you could find on the back of the novel. I really enjoyed this book; it was unashamedly a love story -- but... Read the rest of this post
By: Sarah Stevenson,
on 7/6/2015
Summary: This one hadn't been on my immediate radar until I signed up to attend the Printz award ceremony at ALA in San Francisco at the end of June—and then I decided I'd better get going on reading the winner of that prestigious honor if I... Read the rest of this post
By: Sarah Stevenson,
on 5/7/2015
click to embiggenA surfeit of conflicts sistericalMakes this graphic novel hysterical - And a journey by carMakes it all worse by farA truce would be some sort of miracle!Other Noteworthy Info: This incredibly fun graphic novel, published last year,... Read the rest of this post
By: tanita✿davis,
on 3/23/2015
Welcome to another edition of In Tandem, the read-and-review blog series where both A.F. and I give our two cents at the same time. (You can feel free to guess which of us is the yellow owl and which of us is the purple owl...we're not telling!)... Read the rest of this post
By: tanita✿davis,
on 3/10/2015
Those of us who were English majors can be some of the biggest sticklers for facts, just the facts, ma'am, when it comes to our literary giants. We might argue loudly about canon, be Holmes buffs who tend to be wary of fan fiction, and dispute over... Read the rest of this post
By: tanita✿davis,
on 12/3/2014
This book is non-fiction, and was originally self-published, because the filmmaker Nick Gray was so convinced this was a story we should know. Nonfiction what we usually review on the blog, but though this particular tale is about two real boys,... Read the rest of this post
By: tanita✿davis,
on 9/12/2014
This is necessarily going to be a shorter review, since this is a psychological thriller and there is virtually not much other than the barest of plot summaries I can share with you without providing spoilers and clues that you don't need. What I... Read the rest of this post
By: tanita✿davis,
on 9/8/2014
Come, Best Beloved, and sit you by my feet. I shall tell you a tale such as sister Scheherazade could have scarce imagined. A tale of wonders, of deeds both great and grievous, of courage that defies description, and above all, Child of Adam, I... Read the rest of this post
By: tanita✿davis,
on 8/19/2014
Got a long stretch of quiet time available? This isn't a read-at-the-crowded-airport-layover novel, necessarily, but I found it absolutely arresting over the one-sitting course of a quiet morning. I grabbed this book because this author's debut... Read the rest of this post
