Over on Book Riot this week…
Oona Lee is possibly the worst sand dancer in her whole class, which wouldn’t be such a terrible thing if her older sister, disappeared now for many years, weren’t the best, destined to light five ancient beacons and save the Five Worlds from extinction. But she has talents of her own, ones she brings to bear when she joins forces with An Tzu, a boy from a slum with his own history, and Jax Amboy, the Five Worlds’ greatest Starball player. They all live on Mon Domani, at the center of the Five Worlds, a planet now being threatened by war as well as climate change so dire it could cause mass starvation.
The Sand Warrior is the first book in a new graphic novel series by Mark Siegel and Alexis Siegel, with art by Xanthe Bouma, Matt Rockefeller, and Boya Sun. That’s a lot of cooks in the kitchen for one graphic novel, and it shows in a few ways. The story is fairly complicated for a middle grade graphic novel, and it will take both adults and kids a bit of time to really fall into it. But that’s also part of the joy: the world the Siegels have created is complex, and the story has many moving parts that require more careful attention (or perhaps re-reads) than some readers may be accustomed to. It’s a fantasy lover’s dream, in other words.
Art and story work in tandem to build a multicultural world (or five worlds, really) with a detailed backstory and a unique magic system. Within the pages of this graphic novel you’ll find, for example, some people who are more plant than human, advanced robotic technology that conquers the uncanny valley, and sand castles big enough (and magical enough) for people to live in. It’s a really fun mixture of fantasy and science fiction, with all the creativity and weird names – one of the planets is called Grimbo(E) – that go along with that.
I’m a sucker for full-color art in graphic novels, and the art in The Sand Warrior is gorgeous. Even if readers have a hard time following all the nuances of the story, they’ll be riveted by the detailed landscapes and diverse cast of characters, each of whom is distinct and recognizable from panel to panel. The coloring is beautiful; the three artists work seamlessly together, eschewing the bold colors of a traditional superhero book for a softer but no less vibrant palette.
This should appeal to readers who like Kazu Kibuishi’s Amulet (Kibuishi has blurbed this, and it’s fitting), Faith Erin Hicks’ The Nameless City, and Ben Hatke’s Zita the Spacegirl.
We’re giving away a finished copy of 5 Worlds: The Sand Warrior, courtesy of Random House Children’s Books (who also sent me an unfinished review copy). To enter, fill out this form. I’ll pick a winner in two weeks. US only, please.
After I wrote about the way I read seasonally, my interest to read picked up significantly. It’s almost as if acknowledging it meant that I gave myself permission to follow my own reading desires and that sort of permission opened up the reading floodgates. Which isn’t a complaint. I’ve been reading a lot of really great stuff.
When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandya Menon
Looking for a teen romantic comedy featuring two brown lead characters? This is the ticket. With mega appeal to fans of Jenny Han and Amy Spalding, this book will be flying off the shelves.
Dimple has her heart set on spending the summer at a coding conference in San Francisco. She wants to create an app that helps launch her to success and to meeting one of her coding heroines, a woman she believes will open many doors for her future. Dimple doesn’t believe her parents will let her go, especially since it’s her last summer at home before college. So when they do say she can attend, she’s excited and thinks her parents have finally loosened up the need to have control over her future.
But then she meets Rishi.
Rishi knows that he’s being set up to marry Dimple. His parents have him attending the same summer coding program as Dimple so they can meet before the inevitable marriage to come. But the moment Rishi encounters Dimple, he frightens her and she’s unable to accept the weird, creepy things he’s saying to her about being her future husband.
Perhaps….Dimple’s parents forgot to tell her something about why they’re letting her attend this coding program over the summer.
While this book isn’t perfect — there are some serious pacing issues, particularly in the last third of the book — it doesn’t matter. Readers are in this one for the two characters who are well-drawn, engaging, funny, and who manage to have a happily ever after. What matters is the ride to get there, and it’s really enjoyable to see both of them going fully after what their hearts desire with romance and in their dreams outside of a relationship. This one is written in a third person point of view which alternates between Dimple and Rishi’s voices, making the pages really fly by.
In A Perfect World by Trish Doller
When Caroline’s mother takes her dream position in a clinic in Egypt, Caroline’s less than pleased about leaving her friends, her boyfriend (now ex-boyfriend), and comfortable Ohio life behind. Egypt is nothing like home, and more, now she feels like an entitled and privileged American with her own driver and tour guide for Cairo.
That changes when Caroline meets Adam. He’s Muslim, and she knows that their relationship — even being seen together outside and around town — wouldn’t be a good thing to pursue. But he is the son of the person who is helping their family out and she can’t help but notice he’s cute, he’s driven, and he’s eager to take her out and about, even if it’s without much emotion attached to it.
Of course, you can guess what happens.
Doller’s book is a dazzling look at life in another culture through the eyes of a relatively privileged white girl who not only knows it, but acknowledges it, particularly when it comes to what her mother’s dealing with at her job and what she sees while being driven around by Adam. In a lot of ways, this was reminiscent of Anna And The French Kiss, but with an Egyptian setting and a little more frankness about how Caroline’s experiences are rare and at times, privileged-as-hell. There is great respect and interest paid here to getting Egyptian culture, as well as Muslim beliefs, correct, and Adam himself is a really well-rounded, complex, and interesting character who, as Caroline discovers, showcases how people who believe and live lives different than those in America can have just as many interests, desires, and complicated feelings as they do.
Readers who’ve liked Doller’s previous works will enjoy this one, as will those who’ve loved Stephanie Perkins’s romances and the relationship complexity that authors like Siobhan Vivian explore.
That Thing We Call A Heart by Sheba Karim
This book begin rocky for me, with what felt like a lot of information and, perhaps, an incorrect starting place. But as I kept on and moved into the second part of the book, I was suddenly unable to put it down because of how much had been built up.
Shabnam’s spending her last summer at home before heading to University of Pennsylvania and when her great uncle is in town from Pakistan, she’s voluntold she’ll be taking him out. Shabnam isn’t excited, especially since she’s not as invested in her cultural heritage as much of her family, including her great uncle. It’s also possible she told a bit of a lie about her uncle in the classroom and now she’s spinning it over in her head.
But it’s on that first excursion with her uncle that Shabnam meets Jamie. He’s cute and he’s white and he has a job opportunity for her at the pie shop his aunt owns. The job would be pretty easy and only for the summer, and Shabnam, blinded by her interest in Jamie and by what sounds like a nice way out of her house every day, says yes.
Of course, there’s the set up for the summer romance of her dreams. He’s so cute! He’s so interested in learning about her Pakistani heritage! He’s curious about how much she’s invested into her Muslim beliefs!
This isn’t the real focus of the story, though. The driving force here is the fractured friendship between Shabnam and her former best friend Farah. Farah, the only other Muslim at their posh private high school, is there on scholarship. She’s a loud, proud feminist. And she’s made the decision in the last few months to begin wearing the hijab. This sort of declaration of faith is what caused the rift in their friendship, as Shabnam felt that was a step back from everything Farah believed and everything she herself believed about her best friend.
With Shabnam in love and needing to tell someone, she flies back to Farah, ignoring all of the ways she’s ignored her and treated her poorly. Farah allows Shabnam back in, but it’s with reservation; Shabnam doesn’t see it, but we as readers do, especially as we begin to see how terrible a character Jamie is. Jamie loves Shabnam’s culture, and there’s a particularly stomach-churning moment when Jamie takes Shabnam to his aunt’s home, wherein she begins to see all of the cultural artifacts from around the world, which Jamie brushes off as “she’s just so interested in other people’s cultures,” like he is. But the more he presses her for her story and the more he presses Farah, the more we begin to see how he treats Shabnam not as a romantic interest but as a cultural curiosity.
He fetishizes her culture.
This book doesn’t have the happily ever after that would make it a romance, but I’d also say this isn’t really about romance or love at all. It’s about a crush, but more than that, it’s about friendship. Farah doesn’t go easy on Shabnam when they rekindle their friendship. In fact, she’s pretty frank and real with her about how terribly Shabnam has treated her and how little support and love she’s shown. In many ways, it’s Farah who is the most compelling character in this story, but it’s also clear why this isn’t her story. It’s about Shabnam coming to understand the ways people can misunderstand choices and how those meaningful choices people make don’t necessarily change who they are.
While reading this book, I kept thinking back to the comic that Wendy Xu wrote and drew for Here We Are: Feminism For The Real World and I can’t help as seeing them as a really worthwhile pairing to one another for understanding what happened between Shabnam and Jamie. They’d make an excellent pairing, and readers who love a good friendship story will want to pick this up.
Over on Book Riot this week…
Our justice system is broken in a lot of ways. It disproportionately targets and incarcerates people of color, giving them longer and harsher sentences and funneling them into the school to prison pipeline early. It favors the wealthy and leaves the poor with substandard representation, often leaving them in jail simply because they are poor. It relies on flawed evidence often obtained illegally or unethically and sentences innocent people to life sentences and even death.
The Innocence Project tackles this last facet. Their mission is to “free the staggering number of innocent people who remain incarcerated, and to bring reform to the system responsible for their unjust imprisonment.” They do this mainly through DNA testing, helping to free people wrongly convicted through a procedure not available at the time of their conviction. Since 1989, 350 people have been exonerated through DNA evidence. Twenty of these served time on death row. 217 of these – 62% – were African American. The Innocence Project started their work in 1992 and have been instrumental in helping 183 of those wrongly convicted get justice. If you haven’t yet donated to an organization this month and have the means to do so, I urge you to join me in supporting their cause.
For this month’s book list, I’ve focused on novels and nonfiction featuring kids and teens in prison or kids and teens whose parents or other loves ones are in prison. If you know of any I’m missing, please let me know in the comments. Also be sure to check out the In the Margins book list, curated each year by Library Services for Youth in Custody. It focuses on recommended books for teens “living in poverty, on the streets, in custody – or a cycle of all three.”
Fiction – Picture Books
Knock Knock: My Dad’s Dream for Me by Daniel Beaty
A boy wakes up one morning to find his father gone. At first, he feels lost. But his father has left him a letter filled with advice to guide him through the times he cannot be there.
Far Apart, Close in Heart: Being a Family When a Loved One is Incarcerated by Becky Birtha
Children who have a parent in prison express their feelings of sadness, anger, worry, and embarrassment and suggest that talking to others and keeping in contact with the missing parent helps them deal with the situation.
Visiting Day by Jacqueline Woodson
A young girl and her grandmother visit the girl’s father in prison.
Fiction – Middle Grade
Ruby on the Outside by Nora Raleigh Baskin
Eleven-year-old Ruby Danes is about to start middle school, yet no one in her life, except her aunt, knows her secret–her mother is in prison. Then Margalit Tipps moves into Ruby’s condo complex, and the two immediately hit it off. Ruby thinks she’s found her first true-blue friend. Is she ready to tell Margalit the truth? When Margalit’s family history seems to tie in too closely to the very event that put her mother in prison, Ruby fears she may lose everything–but she may learn the true meaning of friendship, honesty, and love along the way.
All Rise for the Honorable Perry T. Cook by Leslie Connor
Eleven-year-old Perry was born and raised by his mom at the Blue River Co-ed Correctional Facility in tiny Surprise, Nebraska. His mom is a resident on Cell Block C, and so far Warden Daugherty has made it possible for them to be together. That is, until a new district attorney discovers the truth–and Perry is removed from the facility and forced into a foster home. When Perry moves to the “outside” world, he feels trapped. Desperate to be reunited with his mom, Perry goes on a quest for answers about her past crime. As he gets closer to the truth, he will discover that love makes people resilient no matter where they come from .. but can he find a way to tell everyone what home truly means?
Pieces of Why by K. L. Going
Twelve-year-old Tia lives in a white slum in New Orleans with her mother, and her whole world revolves around singing in the gospel choir with her best friend, Keisha–but when practice is interrupted by a shooting outside the church, and a baby is killed, Tia finds that she cannot sing, and she is forced to confront her feelings about her incarcerated father who killed a girl in a failed robbery years before.
Fiction – Young Adult
Wise Young Fool by Sean Beaudoin
Teen rocker Ritchie Sudden is pretty sure his life just jumped the shark. Except he hates being called a teen, his band doesn’t play rock, and “jumping the shark” is yet another dumb cliché. Part of Ritchie wants to drop everything and walk away. Especially the part that’s serving ninety days in a juvenile detention center. Telling the story of the year leading up to his arrest, Ritchie grabs readers by the throat before (politely) inviting them along for the (max-speed) ride.
Holding Smoke by Elle Cosimano
John “Smoke” Conlan risks everything to clear his name of the two murders he did not commit while he cultivates his supernatural ability of travelling freely outside the concrete walls of the dangerous juvenile rehabilitation center known as the Y, helping himself and his fellow inmates have a chance at redemption.
Something Like Hope by Shawn Goodman
Shavonne, a fierce, desperate seventeen year-old in juvenile lockup, wants to turn her life around before her eighteenth birthday, but corrupt guards, out-of-control girls, and shadows from her past make her task seem impossible.
The Row by J. R. Johansson
After visiting her father on death row for twelve years, seventeen-year-old Riley is determined to find out if he is guilty or not before he is either executed or retried and, perhaps, released.
Locked Out (series) by Patrick Jones
Explores the complex ways that parental incarceration affects teens, from physical absence to family histories of crime to stigmas and emotional health.
Criminal by Terra Elan McVoy
Eighteen-year-old Nikki’s unconditional love for Dee helps her escape from her problems, but when he involves her in a murder Nikki winds up in prison, confronted with hard facts that challenge whether Dee ever loved her, and she can only save herself by telling the truth about Dee.
Lockdown by Walter Dean Myers
Teenage Reese, who is serving time at a juvenile detention facility, gets a lesson in making it through hard times from an unlikely friend with a harrowing past.
Monster by Walter Dean Myers
While on trial as an accomplice to a murder, sixteen-year-old Steve Harmon records his experiences in prison and in the courtroom in the form of a film script as he tries to come to terms with the course his life has taken.
The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly by Stephanie Oakes
A handless teen escapes from a cult, finds herself in juvenile detention, and is suspected of knowing who murdered her cult leader. | Kimberly’s review | Kelly’s review
The Knife and the Butterfly by Ashley Hope Perez
After a brawl with a rival gang, sixteen-year-old Azael, a member of Houston’s MS-13 gang and the son of illegal Salvadoran immigrants, wakes up in an unusual juvenile detention center where he is forced to observe another inmate through a one-way mirror. | Kelly’s review
Burning by Danielle Rollins
After three years in juvenile detention, Angela is just months shy of release, but then ten-year-old Jessica arrives in shackles and is placed in segregation, and while no one knows what she did to end up there, creepy things begin to happen and it becomes clear that Jessica and her possible supernatural powers are more dangerous than anyone expected.
The Walls Around Us by Nova Ren Suma
Orianna and Violet are ballet dancers and best friends, but when the ballerinas who have been harassing Violet are murdered, Orianna is accused of the crime and sent to a juvenile detention center where she meets Amber and they experience supernatural events linking the girls together. | Kimberly’s review
Nonfiction
Caught Up: Girls, Surveillance, and Wraparound Incarceration by Jerry Flores
From home, to school, to juvenile detention center, and back again. This book follows the lives of fifty Latina girls living forty miles outside of Los Angeles, California, as they are inadvertently.
Runaway Thoughts and Ghetto By the Sea edited by Amy Friedman
In 2013, students at Venice High School in Los Angeles formed the first P.O.P.S. (Pain of the Prison System) club, a club for those whose lives have been touched by prison. Many have parents, friends, siblings, uncles and aunts inside; some have had their own brushes with the law. All have stories to tell. These anthologies offer the stories, artwork and essays of those whose voices we too seldom hear.
Hole in My Life by Jack Gantos
The author explains how, as a young adult, he became a drug user and smuggler, was arrested, did time in prison, and eventually got out and went to college, all the while hoping to become a writer.
No Choirboy: Murder, Violence, and Teenagers on Death Row by Susan Kuklin
This compelling work takes readers inside America’s prisons and allows inmates sentenced to death as teenagers to speak for themselves. In their own voices–raw and uncensored–they talk about their lives in prison and share their thoughts and feelings about how they ended up there.
Girls in Justice by Richard Ross
Reveals the world of incarceration of America’s young girls in detention. A rare, multi-dimensional look at these girls’ vulnerable lives, this book speaks to the unique issues they face with essays, images, and the life stories shared by girls in custody.
Juvenile in Justice by Richard Ross
The photographs in Juvenile in Justice open our eyes to the world of the incarceration of American youths. The nearly 150 images in this book were made over 5 years of visiting more than 1,000 youth confined in more than 200 juvenile detention institutions in 31 states. These riveting photographs, accompanied by the life stories that these young people in custody shared with Ross, give voice to imprisoned children from families that have no resources in communities that have no power.
Let Me Live: Voices of Youth Incarcerated edited by Save the Kids
This anthology collects the work of incarcerated youth worldwide. The poems and autobiographical sketches featured remind readers that incarcerated youth are thinking and feeling individuals with the same aspirations and goals as other children, not merely statistics to analyze or incorrigible people to forget and discard. As a creative outlet and space for expression, the book provides a means for the poets to empower themselves and resist victimization by the supposed criminal justice system.
Real Justice (series) published by Lorimer
True stories of wrongfully convicted young people in Canada, including Rubin “Hurricane” Carter and David Milgaard.
What Will Happen to Me? by Howard Zehr and Lorraine Stutzman Amstutz
Pairs portraits of children whose parents are incarcerated with the reflections of grandparents who are caring for them and includes resources for caregivers and advice on dealing with the unique emotions of these children.