Kelly Jensen's Blog

2023 Favorites in Books, Writing, and Music

I don’t do a lot of “wrapping up the year” rituals. I used to, and while they had value for me then, I find it much more useful to do just a couple of things to put a bow on the current year and look forward to the next. One of those things is talking about the works which made an impact on me in some capacity.

Proclaiming anything the “best” feels like it puts a lot of pressure on whatever the thing in question is. My best is not your best, and what does “best” mean, anyway? Especially if you have not consumed every possible contender within a group, you can’t really measure best. Instead, I prefer to label these things favorites. They’re the things which stuck with me or that resonated in some way that, when I reach this time of year, I recall something from it, be it a message or story or feeling.

I’m offering up three categories of favorites this year. One is the roundup of my favorite personal works of writing, one is my roundup of favorite reads this year, and the last is my list of some favorite music I listened to this year.

My Favorite Writing in 2023

I took a break from doing as much freelance writing this year as I have in the past. School and parenting took some priority in my free time, as did doing a lot more presenting for groups.

I wrote a pair of posts that connected with one another very early in 2023 that I linked to heavily throughout the year: When did YA paperback books become $15.99, to which way too many people responded that teenagers–those for whom YA is written–can just get those books at the library if they cannot afford to buy them. What those well-meaning commenters did not see or did not want to see is that those very books are often banned at the library or may never be purchased because of silent censorship.I did a deep dive into the mess that is the board of Elmwood Park Public Library in suburban Chicago. This piece was eye-opening, and I’m grateful I got to meet a couple of the folks instrumental in holding the library’s leadership accountable this fall.What does one decade of the New York Times YA Bestsellers list tell us about the changing landscape in YA literature?One of the pieces I’d been wanting to write for a long time finally came to fruition: Why don’t most library masters programs require an ethics course?A look back at the United Daughters of the Confederacy and their efforts to ban ad censor books they did not like–and how that history is repeated in today’s Moms for Liberty.I gave the microphone over to Central York High School students to talk about why they were organized in protest against book bans in their school…again.With the rise of book bans and protests agains drag queen story times at libraries, how did Pride Month stack up in public libraries?A peek behind the curtain of BookmarkED, a “solution” to banned books, which was created by someone who championed book ban legislation in Texas.I broke the story of how SkyTree Book Fairs are just a “clever” rebranding of Brave Books’s Book Fairs.The Prom was canceled at one of the local-to-me high schools by district administration, and this is the story of why–and how students fought back. The musical was reinstated and will go on in the spring.This piece about how YA continues to make Shakespeare fresh, relevant, and fun was one I loved writing.My Favorite Books in 2023

Despite feeling like I didn’t read much this year, I sure did. Even with several months of reading only a book or two, I managed to finish 90, or about two per week. Not bad, given how much reading I did for school, too.

There is an interesting and odd trend to my favorites this year: water. There are a lot of books set in or near water.

I am not limiting my favorites list to just books published in 2023. Some of these will be backlist because I read a little bit of everything. These aren’t in any order. A * before a title means I listened on audio and recommend that format if you like to listen.

Chlorine by Jade Song follows a teen girl who is convinced she is a mermaid. This is a story of transformation and queerness and just how terrible high school can be–especially if you’re different in any capacity.

Whalefall by Daniel Kraus asks and answers one question: what would really happen if you got swallowed by a sperm whale (it is also very much a story of grief). This hard scifi read is fast paced and kept me wanting to talk about it.

A Death in Door County by Annelise Ryan is a cozy adventure mystery following Morgan, a 30-something who inherited her parents’ bookshop/metaphysical/magic store in Door County, Wisconsin. She’s a cryptozoologist and the story is about her recruitment to solve several mysterious deaths possibly tied to a lake monster. This is just fun–admittedly, the most boomer-esque 30-something you’ll read, but the premise is good enough to overlook that.

She Is A Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran is your read if you want a haunted house story that is also about colonialism. It’s genuinely creepy.

*How Far The Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures by Sabrina Imbler is an immersive memoir-cum-science nonfiction book that tells the story of growing up queer and biracial. You’ll learn about Imbler’s life, as well as ten fascinating sea creatures like the goldfish, the octopus who would kill herself to save her spawn, and more.

*What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo is a mental health memoir about life with complex post traumatic stress disorder. Foo’s story is so generous, and I appreciated how much was shared about what did–and did not–help in managing it.

*Poverty, By America by Matthew Desmond should be required reading for understanding inequity in America. I cannot stop thinking about one of his points about how the left, even when their policies are passed, fail to keep up the momentum to ensure those policies remain and why that’s connected to so many quick actions to reverse course by the right.

Yellowface by R. F. Kuang is one of the buzziest books on this list and it earned that buzz. What happens when a rising Asian author dies and her white friend pretends to have written her manuscript? I am not usually one who cares for books about the book world, but this had me start to finish.

One’s Company by Ashley Hutson is a novel about obsession and specifically, Bonnie’s obsession with Three’s Company. We’re not talking just collecting memorabilia. We’re talking she’s constructed a house to live out the show in her real life. A wild and potent story of grief and loss.

*The Art Thief by Michael Finkel is one I’ve written about quite a bit, but this true crime story is about an art thief and the lengths gone to feed his obsession.

Just Do This One Thing For Me by Laura Zimmerman is the sophomore effort by a YA author who is easily on the top of my favorites list. This story follows a teen girl whose con-artist mother claims she’s traveling to a concert in Mexico but instead, accidentally dies. Now the girl needs to not only take care of her siblings alone, but she must cover for all of the lies her mother has live on. It’s set in Wisconsin, and even though it tackles some heavy stuff, it is also at times laught out loud funny. It’s midwest YA to a T.

Finally, *Conspirituality by Derek Beres, Matthew Remski, and Julian Walker is a must-read if you’re at all engaged in the wellness world. This is a book exposing the grifts within it, including some of the biggest players in the field. One of my major takeaways was how messed up International Yoga Day is, including its ties to far-right Indian Nationalism.

My Favorite Music in 2023

I made a goal this year to listen to one new-to-me and newer album per week. This was to grow my music catalog and knowledge. It was a very hard challenge, and I lost steam over the summer. I did end up listening to dozens of new things, though, and even if the exact challenge is going to look different, I’ll be doing something similar in 2024.

Like with books, some of these are 2023 albums, but some are older. I kept to listening to things released in the last 3 years. You can dig into the entire roundup of what I listened to on Spotify here. Some of the highlights include:

Love Your Face by Savoy Motel is for fans of 70s-ish groove pop.

Looking for pop punk that is a LOT OF FUN? Then you’ll dig past // present // future by meet me @ the altar.

A lot of folks may be familiar with hard rock band Maneskin from Eurovision but they were new to me. I really enjoy Rush!

If you like upbeat folk music, Dustbowl Revival’s Is It You, Is It Me is worth a listen.

Indie female solo with pop feels but a wide range of style? Dig into Blondshell’s self-title album. “Veronica Mars” is a killer lead song.

A friend recommend the band High Waisted to me after asking for music like that of The Hippos (ugh, so good). I was NOT disappointed with this surf rock album, Sick of Saying Sorry. It looks like there is a brand new album out this month I’m going to be listening to, too!

Of course, I’m going to tell you how great Matchbox 20’s Where The Light Goes is. It’s new, though the band is far from new to me. But a pop rock band still being this great so deep into their career is worth continuing to shout about. (A side note: several male-led bands or soloists I like have been in my years for decades, and it is so neat to see them go from angry young men to more mature, been-to-theapy-to-work-through-stuff in their later work).

True Crime, Low Body Count: “Bloodless” True Crime Stories

I don’t care for true crime. I question some of the drive behind its popularity–it’s got a lot of dead girls and it positions human pain as entertainment–but I also understand why people are drawn to it. The genre has been around for a long time, and it ebbs and wanes in its connection with popular culture. Some works of true crime endure, like In Cold Blood by Truman Capote or Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry’s Helter Skelter, and others are but a flash in the pan. Entire careers have been built in the world of true crime, including staples like Ann Rule.

When I say I don’t care for true crime, I tell a bit of a lie. I have actually read quite a bit of it, and I have enjoyed the books I’ve read. John Krakauer’s Missoula kept me hooked, as did both Columbine and Parkland by David Cullen. Michelle McNamera’s I’ll Be Gone In The Dark was impossible for me to put down, as was Dashka Slater’s incredible YA true crime book The 57 Bus. Here’s where I won’t lie: In Cold Blood is also one of my favorite stories and one I can read stories about and stories derived from again and again. What captures me with true crime isn’t the crime. It’s the way the crime story is told. I want to feel like I’m reading a work of hard journalism, and that tends to lean toward the types of true crime books where there is not a dead body or series of dead bodies. Sometimes there are, of course. But for the most part, I prefer my true crime to have a low body count.

For years, I’ve called this subset of the genre “bloodless” true crime, but that feels a bit disingenuous,. There is always going to be some kind of blood with true crime, whether it’s literal or metaphorical. Calling this micro genre non-violent true crime also feels a little inaccurate: there is hurt along the way and in some cases, it can be violent. I think the better description for the kind of true crime books I like are those of unique obsession. These are stories where the criminal is not hungry for another person but driven to crime related to more material objects. Books in this niche can easily blend in with narrative nonfiction that explores science or art; you might see them recommended with books about, say, bats or owls. But these books do more than offer stories of creatures or objects. There is a crime of some sort at the center of the story, often focused on one or two individuals and exploration of a subculture where said individual is active and engaged. A book like The Language of Butterflies, while good, does not quite fit because it does not focus on the a specific crime related to lepidopteristry.

These books tend to be very white, and they also tend to be very male. This makes perfect sense: white collar crime is more digestible to us as humans, and we find white men to be most digestible in Western cultures (whether or not you believe that or I believe that is another story). Men are authorities and experts, and the crimes of obsession which center them can avoid diving into politics of the other, be it in race, gender, sexuality.

If you, like me, love a good true crime book that focuses less on human destruction and more on obsession, then you’ll want to try some of these books. It is not lost on me that most of these books have the word “thief” in the title.

The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession by Michael Finkel

I think part of why I am drawn to bloodless crime stories is because of my own (minor) connection to one. During my time at the University of Texas in the graduate Information Studies program, I had an opportunity to help with a research project. The project would result in a manual to help special libraries and archives across the country develop securities policies to protect their collections. This manual was long overdue and it was necessary, thanks to the nationwide crime spree of Stephen Blumburg. Blumberg was an obsessive about books–a literal, not figurative, bibliomaniac–and he stole books, manuscripts, and other significant materials from institutions across the US. You can read the Blumberg story here, and my (tiny) role in the project was helping tabulate the results of an institutional survey about the materials stolen by the book thief.*

When I read the flap copy for The Art Thief, I knew immediately it was a book I needed to read. I grabbed it on audio, and I was not disappointed. The story follows Stéphane Breitwieser, one of the most successful art thieves in modern history. Breitwieser stole hundreds of priceless works of art and artifacts from museums and cathedrals in Switzerland, France, and more over the course of eight years. He lived with his long-time girlfriend in the attic of an apartment building owned by his mother, about the most unassuming setup for such an art connoisseur. And connoisseur he was: Breitwieser was obsessive about the works he took, both in understanding their stories and in figuring out how to carefully remove them from where they belong.

The book is a fascinating look at obsession, as much as it is a book that questions motives. Breitwieser, like Blumberg, did not steal in order to make a profit. He did it because he was obsessive about art and those works in particular. Did he have stendhal syndrome? Did he struggle with kleptomania? Was it some other third thing? There’s ample time in the book dedicated to what the purpose of museums is and the struggles to develop security systems that allow public access while protecting culturally-significant valuables (not to mention the costs associated with security).

It’s hard to know or say. What we do know, though, comes through this book. Finkel’s storytelling is captivating, and his author’s note is a must-read at the end. The work is pieced together from actual interviews with Breitwieser and Breitwieser’s own writings about the crimes. The author’s note also references Blumberg and several other art criminals through history, perfect for readers who want to dedicate days of their life to internet rabbit holes. This is a short read, and the audiobook, performed by Eduardo Ballerini, an excellent option.

This story, like Blumberg’s, is not ancient history. Both men are still alive, their crimes done in the late 1990s and the early 2000s. Would these stories be possible today or, thanks to technology and the speed by which institutions can communicate have hampered their efforts much sooner?

The Dinosaur Artist: Obsession, Betrayal, and the Quest for Earth’s Ultimate Trophy by Paige Williams

Eric Prokopi because obsessed with the T. bataar bones the moment he saw them. What unfolds in this story is how Prokopi’s encounter with the fossils lead to his need to sell those fossils in the black market. It is a story of natural life trafficking that crosses the planet and delves into the world of underground fossil trade. The book, I should note, looks much lengthier than it truly is–about half of the pages are William’s research notes and references, which should indicate just how deeply researched this one is.

I admit to being a little confused at the conclusion of the book about what Prokopi ended up going to prison for, and that’s probably a result of the laws relating to his arrest being confusion. This is what happens when you commit international crime. Go into this one to learn about dinosaur fossils, the folks whose obsession moves from awe to theft, and where and how countries like Mongolia have become hotbeds for such crimes.

Who do dinosaur bones belong to, anyway? If that’s the one takeaway from the book, well, it’s a pretty good one.

 

The Falcon Thief: A True Tale of Adventure, Treachery, and The Hunt For The Perfect Bird by Joshua Hammer

In May 2010, Jeffrey Lendrum was arrested in the UK at an airport after a security guard in one of the lounges thought something suspicious was going on. Lendrum had left his partner in the lounge while he went into the bathroom for twenty minutes. The guard went in after and noticed nothing had been touched while he was in there — no shower, no running water. But there was a suspicious looking egg in the garbage can. Before long, it was discovered Lendrum had numerous eggs secured to his body, along with numerous eggs in his luggage. These were the eggs of falcons, each of which — were they to make it alive to his destination in Dubai — would net him a lot of money from political leaders in the region who practiced the art and sport of falconry. 

From here, the book follows the rise of falconry in the middle east and how it ties into their history, as well as how it is Lendrum got caught up in the theft of some of the world’s most rare raptor eggs and how he traversed some of the most dangerous places in order to steal the eggs and make a profit. It’s a fascinating and infuriating story, not only because of how it plays into disturbing nature and causing further harm to hurting species, but also because of how Lendrum’s passion for nature went so off-course from his boyhood days in South Africa. 

The Falcon Thief, besides its obvious exploration of theft of eggs, has some moments of animal harm, but it’s one I think those who are sensitive to that might be able to stomach without too much problem. Hammer offers a fair assessment of why Lendrum would partake in such illegal acts, while balancing the history and legacy of falconry in the middle east. It’s not an apology nor excuse for his behavior; rather, it’s context and conjecture for the whys, particularly where Hammer was unable to get the information first-hand. 

It is bizarre to think about the books you read in The Before of COVID and those you read in The After as things. But I read this one in a hotel in San Mateo, California, in late January 2020. I remember it vividly…and I remember that memory being forever sealed into my head, in part because I was able to read it outside in the sun in January and because the flight back–out of San Francisco–was the first time I saw individuals taking COVID measures. Little did I know.

The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century by Kirk Wallace Johnson

Do not be put off by the premise of this one if you think nothing sounds more boring than a guy ho steals feathers for fly-tying. I promise–it is unbelievably interesting. This true crime book follows a man who becomes so obsessed with fly-tying that he breaks into a museum to steal their rare birds to sell the feathers for profit. Johnson’s attention to details and passion for cracking the mystery of the still-missing birds is propulsive, and the way this looks at a very specific community’s passion — in this case, the fly-tying community’s passion for very specific bird feathers — was fascinating. There’s a lot here, too, about ethics and about the ways people throughout history have sought what’s not theirs, starting with how those birds and feathers ended up in the British Museum of Natural History in the first place.

The images in this one, tucked near the back of the narrative, added a ton. I was surprised to see images of Edwin himself, who wasn’t at all what I expected (like Johnson himself had said just pages earlier), and seeing what these fly-ties looked like and the birds that drew such lust from those hobbyists made the crime all that more fascinating.

The Feather Thief may have been the first book to crack open this subgenre interest for me in a way that I could best put into words. I want to know about the crimes, yes, but more than that, I want to know about the psyche of the person behind it. What makes someone fall so deeply into a community like that of fly-tying? And how does a person move from the position of being engaged to becoming obsessive and acting on that obsession? That marriage of journalism with crime gives the right strokes of psychology and sociology, married with philosophy and history.

I know a lot of folks found Susan Orlean’s The Library Book another solid example in this micro genre, but I was not as smitten with it. I found the vocational awe to overwhelm the story, with the actual crime at hand–the 1986 fire at the Los Angeles Public Library’s Central Library–kind of being secondary to talking about how cool libraries and library workers are. The photos in it were also just bad and added nothing. Others disagree with me, given the high ratings of the book across the internet. It’s unfortunate for me, though, since it did not make me want to hurry and pick up the other white collar true crime book in Orlean’s arsenal: The Orchid Thief.

 

There are several other books within this niche, and though I haven’t read them, it’s worth including them for readers eager for more. As I mentioned, this is a very white and very male category of books which is in and of itself worth unpacking. Who gets their criminal mischief repackaged as entertainment as opposed to a dire warning? Who gets to live their life after being caught and who ends up finding themselves harmed in the process?

If a story about the wild Asian arowana, one of the world’s rarest fish, sounds up your alley, then the book you’ll want to pick up is Emily Voigt’s The Dragon Behind the Glass: A True Story of Power, Obsession, and the World’s Most Coveted Fish.

How about America’s flower selling culture and the quest to replicate a rare ghost orchid? That’ll be for you in Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief.

I did read The Truffle Underground: A Tale of Mystery, Mayhem, and Manipulation in the Shadowy Market of the World’s Most Expensive Fungus by Ryan Jacobs, and it, too, fits nicely into this subgenre, with a bit of caveat. The story is not quite as narratively-driven as the others here, but that exchange in writing style does not shortchange the story of folks who become obsessed with truffles and “hunting” them. I had no idea what a mess the truffle industry is top to bottom (I like truffle oil, though admit the aftertaste is what ultimately makes me decide to go for it or not–if I am not in the mood to enjoy that truffle flavor for the rest of the day, I’m going to skip it).

The Less People Know About Us: A Mystery of Betrayal, Family Secrets, and Stolen Identity by Axton Betz-Hamilton does not exactly fit this list but deserves a place here anyway. This is a memoir, but it’s bloodless true crime memoir about identity theft and the ways and hows Axton’s parents dealt with having their identities stolen over and over…and how her own identity was stolen from her by those she thought she could trust. This book gets billed as a mystery, which I think is unfair. There’s not really a mystery here in the sense of a “whodunit?” It’s much more a “whydunit?” Readers who, like me, dig the crime books above will find this one captivating, too.

 

*Someday maybe I’ll see about putting this story into a book format–I wonder if Blumberg, like his art thief counterpart Breitwieser, would ever grant personal interviews. He’s 75, so perhaps this is a question to find an answer to sooner, rather than later.

When Did Common Sense Media Become The Good Guys?

BookLooks is a Moms for Liberty invention. I broke that story in May 2022, and since then, the group has continued to deny that it is theirs. Too bad the proof is in the screen shots. The “database” of volunteer-generated book reviews aims to become a one stop shop for parents who either want to monitor their children’s reading (because parenting is hard and exhausting and who has the time to read all of the books available in a library) or who would like to be part of a Hate Group’s mission to ban every book that does not align with their right-wing christofascist beliefs.

BookLooks is not the only site doing this, and neither is the Hate Group, but they are the biggest, being given legitimacy again and again and again and again through the media. Every week I find journalists using it to talk about books being challenged within their community without any context as to what the site truly is. Moms has distanced themselves enough that a cursory glance by reporters on a quick digital deadline suggests nothing, so the group gets to own the entire cycle of the news: challenge the book, have the book’s review from their website be cited in the news, then get the book removed because it has reviews that agree with the initial challenge complaint.

Content warnings and ratings for BookLooks are sourced through folks with no interest in or professional background in education, literacy, librarianship, or child development. They are happier seeing their child pick up and read Lolita–an actual book about grooming–than The Kite Runner.

But this isn’t about BookLooks. As interesting as it is to see the media discover it more than a year after the fact its lineage was unearthed, and as annoying as it is to see school boards think it has real value, it’s not the first of its type and it won’t be the last.

Before BookLooks, there was Common Sense Media.

In 2010, Barnes & Noble announced it would be adding Common Sense Media (CSM) ratings to its website, which launched 100s of blog posts. This was the era of book blogs, and conversation about CSM raged. Authors weighed in on this as much as librarians and parents and book lovers and for good reason: CSM’s entire rating system is built on pulling pieces of a book out of context, conveying a count of whatever those pieces were, and using that information to help parents determine whether or not to pick up a book. There were age ratings, too, ensuring that books with too many swear words were not going to land in the hands of eyes deemed too young. Those books were better for readers 14 and older or 16 and older.

In a blog post bringing up the issue of CSM being integrated into Barnes and Noble, mega-bestselling YA author Sarah Dessen wrote the following:

I really, really appreciate all the comments you guys left on the Common Sense ratings that are now on the BN.com site, and I can see your points, both for and against. I totally understand the need for some guidelines for parents who might not have the time to read every book their teen reads but still want to know what the story contains in terms of offensive or mature material. But as I said, I do really worry that the ratings take so much out of context that the story itself is lost. (And I also LOVED the comment about how the graphic Common Sense uses is sort of similar to that which displays the terrorist threat level. It’s true!) But as an author, I have to say I was kind of surprised by the stuff they chose in Along for The Ride as offensive. I didn’t realize that “sucked” is a bad word these days, and, actually, I can’t remember a point in the book where Auden lost her virginity to Eli, and since I wrote it, I think I’d, you know, recall that. So the accuracy concerns me as well.

Dessen’s posts led to many more, including one from bestselling author Meg Cabot. Cabot looked at the CSM review for Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, a tween classic. What did she find?

Because Common Sense Media has attached a yellow caution light warning to their review of Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret that lets parents know they need to “watch out for” mentions of “Playboy, kissing, menstruation, bras, and emerging sexuality” in the book.

Weirdly, while on BN.com’s main page for Margaret, it’s suggested that the “appropriate reading age” for the book is 9-12, Common Sense Media rates it for kids age 11, but if parents “Click to learn more,” they’ll find out that Margaret doesn’t actually get a “green light” unless readers are above 14 years of age.

A tween classic deemed inappropriate for actual tweens.

The discussion of CSM’s integration with B&N did not turn to the belief that such ratings would deter kids from reading the books that they want to read. Discussions did not suggest parents would not find this information useful in some capacity. Indeed, it is impossible to read everything your kid might want to read. Having an idea of whether or not something is appropriate for them is helpful. Moreover, First Amendment Rights extend to everyone, with few limitations, especially when it comes to speech.

But CSM took its system beyond what is already done by professionals in the book, education, library, and child development industries.

Publishers give books age ratings. This is not something done quickly or thoughtlessly. I can tell you first hand as an author, spending phone calls discussing what the difference between a book being leveled for 12 and up vs. 14 and up would mean (mine are all 12 ). Professional review journals like School Library Journal, Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, Book List, and others include audience assessments, some by age and some by grade. The difference with CSM? Cherry picking passages, subjectively rating language on whether or not it is “appropriate,” and creating worries for adults where it was unnecessary.

Contextless information is just that: a way to wield power and through that power, ignite worry. That worry and anxiety–things busy parents do not have time for–is a perfect conduit for compliance. The Shiny Happy People docuseries lays this parternalism all out so neatly, and does so in such a way to showcase how looking at art or information or facts plucked from context is a tool of submission to christofascism.

Even if there is context rendered in those reviews, it’s silly. It undermines the purpose of literature and ascribes morality to the behavior of every character, main or not. Whose morality? That remains the question.

As Liz Burns wrote:

 Read some book reviews of books you have read, and you’ll see this is not objective or factual. Which is fine, because some people want this. For example, in writing about The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate, drinking and parental obedience is highlighted: “Parents need to know that there is little in the way of bad language or mature situations in this Newbery Honor book, but Calpurnia’s grandfather not only drinks regularly and tries to distill his own whiskey, he seems to have no concept that children ‘as young as 11’ should not be drinking.

Grandfather’s interests and hobbies should never have been seen in the story unless they could be a moral lesson for Calpurnia. I suppose that reviewer, looking today at how parents are behaving at school board meetings, would not blink an eye at how their language, their actions, and their histrionics are impacting the kids sitting in those same rooms or hearing about those meetings later on. To them, the fact the underlying purpose is to shield those kids from what they deem as inappropriate is what matters. It’s not the behaviors or the broader implications of such challenges.

Common Sense Media is not without value. This was true in 2010 and it is true now.  That value does not align with my values or beliefs in how literature works, but it serves a purpose. The problem in 2010 came from how Barnes & Noble gave it legitimacy by integrating those reviews on their website. That contextless information about a book was pulled even further out of context. We’re now two steps removed from the book itself, but right there on site, you could see that Along The Way had some kind of sex scene so parents should be cautioned.

That’s the sex scene author Dessen does not recall writing.

**

In the months after the blogosphere dug into the issue, so, too, did other book media and the professional associations. Why? Because creating a system which rates content on subjective terms is a perfect tool for mass censorship.

Nine major organizations banded together in May 2010 to issue a statement and letter against CSM and its content ratings, including the National Coalition Against Censorship, PEN America, the Authors Guild, and more. They give CSM benefit of the doubt with its intentions–and it’s a benefit with merit:

While we think that Common Sense Media provides a great deal of useful information, we have serious concerns about the ways CSM rates books. Our concerns fall into three general areas: 1) the implication that certain kinds of content are inherently problematic, 2) the negative attitude towards books, and 3) the potential that the ratings will be used to remove valuable literature from schools and libraries.

To no one’s surprise, CSM found its way into schools and libraries. The 2009, 2010, 2011 era was one rife with book challenges, though at a lesser degree than today. The aim of those challenges was what it is today, but the bulk of the focus was on graphic novels as comics became a more widely available and championed form of literature. CSM, founded in 2003, truly got its footing thanks to the lift from Barnes & Noble ( money from other partnerships). The language in NCAC’s letter to one school district said it best: CSM and similar ratings websites are perfect for allowing books to earn the “scarlet letter” through scare tactics and pressure to be the best kind of parent.

If you’re wondering who is behind CSM, here’s your answer: “professionals.” The answer given in 2010 during this conversion is the same one posted on their website today:

Our reviewers come from every corner of the media, academic, and parenting worlds. Many are known as trusted voices in their areas of expertise — from video games to apps. They have worked as reviewers for publications such as USA Today, Entertainment Weekly, AOL, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and more. Some are teachers, librarians, and experienced academics who’ve studied the impact of media at length. All are passionate about both media and Common Sense’s “sanity, not censorship” approach to providing information.

When integrated with Barnes & Noble, the reviewers for CSM were not named. They are now, and, with the cursory look I was able to make–much of CSM now lies behind a paywall of $4/month if you want more than your three free reviews per month–it appears they attempt to match the background of the reviewer with the content of the books being reviewed.

That is promising, at least.

**

The years after initial integration, the discussion around CSM died down. But in the background, the organization was hard at work. In 2015, the New York Times wrote a lengthy piece about Common Sense Media and the empire it had been building. Founder James P. Steyer is a master networker who grew up in New York City, attended Stanford, and built connections through his work as a clerk to one of the judges on California’s Supreme Court. Steyer and his company, despite the flaws in their system, have done a lot of great things over the last two decades when it comes to ensuring child safety in the digital world. It’s an arena that needs advocates and, given that Steyer is a well-connected, cishet white man, his voice has gone a lot further than those without his privilege who’ve been doing this kind of work. Yet–it’s not all good, and this is where we should pause.

Steyer is one of the biggest advocates today of banning social media use for those under the age of 16.

Joyce Johnston, in her post at the Office of Intellectual Freedom’s blog, responded to the New York Times article. She offers the biggest takeaway to the story and to CSM more broadly, especially as the company gets praise from the “paper of record”: while they put a lot of money into efforts to help protect children on the national level and helped push forward some beneficial legislation, at what cost?:

These days, Common Sense Media’s initiatives contain a less than subtle paternalism based on the conviction that its values should control children’s learning experiences.  Early pronouncements like Core Belief 6  (“We believe that through informed decision making, we can improve the media landscape one decision at a time”) suddenly come across as a determination to reform that landscape in its own image. Starting this month (March 3), the Kids Action group has even started rating legislation based on how any potential law would—in CSM’s opinion, of course–help or harm kids. It even intends to “expose” sponsors of harmful bills—again according to CSM’s value system.

In 2017, Common Sense Media got another shout out in the New York Times. This time, the story was about how they hoped to combat gender stereotyping by rating the portrayal of gender in the media. Based on what metric? That is in and of itself a problem, isn’t it? Who’s to say a character is too feminine or too masculine? Who gets to decide if a female character is “too stereotypical?” Certainly, that should not be put on a single reviewer.

It should come as little surprise there is nothing here in terms of non-binary gender identities. At the time of the article the company was “considering” whether to explore trans identity representation.

Public discourse around CSM seems to have disappeared after that article. At some point–when is unclear, as there seems to be no information about it online–the partnership with B&N ended. The end of that partnership did not, however, slow down CSM or cause them to disappear (reviews are just behind a paywall now). But our discussions about why the reviews are a problematic approach to literature seem to have left the building.

And yet, it needs a revival.

It needs to remain alive.

**

BookLooks and similar review systems are attempting to replicate CSM and hoping to find the same level of success. It’s pretty impressive to go from the center of public discourse to so ubiquitous that no one questions the premise anymore. Few are asking why and how CSM has the kind of money and political connections to play a leading role in children’s education and entertainment on one hand while setting up a system so perfectly tailored toward censorship and bias on the other (even if they believe in “celebrating” banned books).

It’s even more impressive to do that in the same amount of time so many of us have been following book censorship.

Common Sense Media’s core beliefs are no longer easy to find on their website (though they are still there, including number 6). They’ve become a lot more neutral looking. As such, they’ve become easier to refer people to, and I hear and see educators and librarians do it all the time. I’ve done it, too–if a parent asks you whether or not a book is “appropriate” for their kid and you give them the description and they’re not happy with your answer, what do you do? I am not going to make the decision whether or not a book that uses the word “bullshit” two times is okay for your 13-year-old because I’m not reading a book and counting up swear words. That’s not my job. It’s also not the purpose of reading. You don’t coparent with the government, but you want the government and its ancillaries to do the parenting for you.

This is exactly the problem and exactly the solution Moms are eager for.

Common Sense Media is now seen as an authority in the media: they’re cited when the news talks about book bans–this is an excellent example–and they’ve become a place for outlets to turn to for quotes during the surge of book bans now. See this piece at Chalkbeat. Common Sense Media even helped a librarian win their book challenge of Melissa.

Huh? Huh.

The American Library Association (ALA) is clear on their stance when it comes to book rating systems: they rife with potential to become tools that restrict First Amendment Rights. Ratings systems developed by private entities are not to be used in decisions in the library:

Any private group’s rating system, regardless of political, doctrinal, or social viewpoint, is subjective and meant to predispose the public’s attitude. The use by libraries, therefore, would violate the Library Bill of Rights. Libraries should remain viewpoint-neutral, providing information that patrons seek about any rating system equitably, regardless of the group’s viewpoint.

It is worth pausing here for a moment with the phrase “viewpoint-neutral.” The idea libraries are neutral has been disputed now for well over a decade, with increasing force as censorship has roared forth since 2021. This is where it comes from. Pro-neutrality advocates believe that utilizing review sources that aren’t partisan extends to the library, as a whole, remains neutral. That is willful misinterpretation. Libraries are not and cannot be neutral.

Libraries are non-partisan. The ALA may have fumbled that one with their language, as much as it might be purposeful misinterpretation on the part of those too lazy to do their job in offering materials, programs, and services to all members of their community. Providing information about ratings systems equitably to patrons means giving all of the information: a patron wants to know about BookLooks? The patron learns where to find the system and who created it. That’s doing the job, even if it means using the phrase “Hate Group” to describe Moms for Liberty.

Viewpoint-neutrality does not mean free from fact.

**

Book banners play the long game. While I don’t believe that Common Sense Media’s goal has been book banning, and I support the right of those involved with the site to share their ratings, intent doesn’t change impact. Parents given this information without context become subject to this tool. Without the expertise or experience or time or energy, they keep going back for more and using it to make decisions…until they are no longer the ones making the decisions but instead are having the decisions to be made for them.

Then educators turn to these tools for answers, letting their role as leaders and authority succumb to a website whose ultimate goal is make enough money to turn a profit (yes, even a “nonprofit” like CSM).

BookLooks and Moms for Liberty are trying to do just this but on an overtly censorious level. The more distractions they can make, the less focus paid to how bad their tool is. The more they deny the system is theirs, the more they hope people don’t connect them. If they can win influence in one arena, they might sway it in others. Labeling them a Hate Group might turn some folks off, but it’ll sure as hell be a perfect marketing tool to get plenty of other folks on board.

Rinse, Repeat.

The speed of social media means that there’s less time being spent asking questions about sources and looking at paper trails. Social media also ensures that criticism speeds by and isn’t as easy to keep track or record of. You can’t Wayback Machine Twitter or Facebook posts that get deleted quite as easily as you can a blog post. Thanks to a media that continues to cite and use BookLooks without naming the source, without looking at what BookLooks is doing, period, the faster they believe they’ll be able to have the same kind of change in public opinion as Common Sense Media.

None of this even touches upon the dangerous lack of media literacy–social or not–plaguing us all.

It is the kids who have everything to lose when parents want a tool that does the work for them. It’s the kids who become subjects of organizations who have their hands in reshaping the meaning and use of information, truth, and history.

The more we allow systems like these to go unchecked and the more we do so without looking back at the fights like these we’ve already been part of, the easier it is to give up. The easier we make it to have our rights stolen from us by high-powered, well-connected individuals who believe they know what’s right for us as parents, as non-parents, and what’s right and just for our kids.

They may not coparent with the government, but I sure as hell do not coparent with them, nor do I consent to being part of their dirty scheme.

Do not get distracted, but do keep sounding the alarm.

 

 

Further Reading:

This Book Is Not Yet Rated by De Choudens BaezThe Thriving Industry That Helps Encourage Book CensorshipNACS Tightens Guidelines on Book Purchases; Using Common Sense Media and BookLooks for Review GuidanceBooks and Content Ratings Don’t MixShould Utah School Library Books Have a Ratings System?Campbell County School District [Virginia] To Link To Book Reviews From BookLooks.org, Booklist, Common Sense Media, Goodreads, and Plugged In.Williamson County School Board [TN] Committee for the Reconsideration of Instructional Materials (check out the citations here from the book objectors).Memorandum to the  Coeur d’Alene Public Schools [ID] Trustees (note the use of BookLooks, Common Sense, and Goodreads for reviewing titles being challenged…which were challenged using those very “ratings.”)Book Blogs Still Matter

Keynote: Why Your Voice Matters, Even–and Especially–As Censorship Increases

I had the honor of speaking to teens from a host of schools recently about the nationwide explosion of book bans and why, despite this, their work as young writers matters more than ever. I’m deeply grateful to my high school friend Lauren for inviting me, and I’m equally grateful to the engaged, thoughtful, passionate teen writers who know what’s happening and know they’re being supported by people who care deeply about their First Amendment Rights.

This video was recorded at Joliet Central High School (IL) April 15, 2023. I share it here for anyone to share as appropriate, especially with young writers who may be feeling defeated, silenced, and stuck right now.

Note: at one point in the presentation I talk about there being 4,000 unique titles banned. This is misspeaking–it’s 4,000 books, not unique titles–but I would not be shocked if it is 4,000, given quiet/soft/self censorship.

 

A Little Fungi Hurt No One: Mushroom Book Covers

There’s been a really fun book cover trend over the last few years, and it corresponds with a rise in both the cottagecore aesthetic and the rise of this as a horror theme: mushrooms. I’m a big fan of fungi, and I love when mushrooms pepper my native garden after the rain. They’re fascinating and creepy, by turns safe and poisonous, depending on what kind of ‘shroom you’re dealing with.

Mushrooms make perfect sense as a cover element, whether it’s front and center or part of the background of a bigger design. Mushrooms come in so many shapes and sizes, and they’re alien; they’re a reminder of the weird and magical right here on Earth. As you’ll see, many of the books below play with genre, whether toeing the line between memoir and something else or dancing between the world as we know it and a world with a little more magic, mystery, and intrigue.

In honor of (almost) spring and the (almost) return of mushroom season, let’s take a look at several mushroom book covers from the last few years. This won’t have every one, so of course, leave your favorite recent mushroom book covers in the comments. I’ve only included books where the mushrooms are easily identifiable on the book cover; there are some well-known and solid reads where mushrooms play a major role but do not necessarily make an appearance on the cover.

Book descriptions come from Amazon. Books span both YA and adult titles, fiction and nonfiction (minus obvious books about mushrooms, since that feels too obvious), so there’s going to likely be something intriguing here for every kind of fun guy. Note that I’ve done my best to identify the book cover designers and artists. It is still very difficult to do this without the book in hand, as few publishers give credit to their artists or designers either on their website or even when they do cover reveals.

 

 

Recent Mushroom Book Covers Fieldwork: A Forager’s Memoir by Iliana Regan, design by Morgan Krehbiel

Not long after Iliana Regan’s celebrated debut, Burn the Place, became the first food-related title in four decades to become a National Book Award nominee in 2019, her career as a Michelin star–winning chef took a sharp turn north. Long based in Chicago, she and her new wife, Anna, decided to create a culinary destination, the Milkweed Inn, located in Michigan’s remote Upper Peninsula, where much of the food served to their guests would be foraged by Regan herself in the surrounding forest and nearby river. Part fresh challenge, part escape, Regan’s move to the forest was also a return to her rural roots, in an effort to deepen the intimate connection to nature and the land that she’d long expressed as a chef, but experienced most intensely growing up.

On her family’s farm in rural Indiana, Regan was the beloved youngest in a family with three much older sisters. From a very early age, her relationship with her mother and father was shaped by her childhood identification as a boy. Her father treated her like the son he never had, and together they foraged for mushrooms, berries, herbs, and other wild food in the surrounding countryside—especially her grandfather’s nearby farm, where they also fished in its pond and young Iliana explored the accumulated family treasures stored in its dusty barn. Her father would share stories of his own grandmother, Busia, who’d helped run a family inn while growing up in eastern Europe, from which she imported her own wild legends of her native forests, before settling in Gary, Indiana, and opening Jennie’s Café, a restaurant that fed generations of local steelworkers. He also shared with Iliana a steady supply of sharp knives and—as she got older—guns.

Iliana’s mother had family stories as well—not only of her own years marrying young, raising headstrong girls, and cooking at Jennie’s, but also of her father, Wayne, who spent much of his boyhood hunting with the men of his family in the frozen reaches of rural Canada. The stories from this side of Regan’s family are darker, riven with alcoholism and domestic strife too often expressed in the harm, physical and otherwise, perpetrated by men—harm men do to women and families, and harm men do to the entire landscapes they occupy.

As Regan explores the ancient landscape of Michigan’s boreal forest, her stories of the land, its creatures, and its dazzling profusion of plant and vegetable life are interspersed with her and Anna’s efforts to make a home and a business of an inn that’s suddenly, as of their first full season there in 2020, empty of guests due to the COVID-19 pandemic. She discovers where the wild blueberry bushes bear tiny fruit, where to gather wood sorrel, and where and when the land’s different mushroom species appear—even as surrounding parcels of land are suddenly and violently decimated by logging crews that obliterate plant life and drive away the area’s birds. Along the way she struggles not only with the threat of COVID, but also with her personal and familial legacies of addiction, violence, fear, and obsession—all while she tries to conceive a child that she and her immune-compromised wife hope to raise in their new home.

With Burn the Place, Regan announced herself as a writer whose extravagant, unconventional talents matched her abilities as a lauded chef. In Fieldwork, she digs even deeper to express the meaning and beauty we seek in the landscapes, and stories, that reveal the forces which inform, shape, and nurture our lives.

Birds of Maine by Michael DeForge, cover by the author

Take flight to this post-apocalyptic utopia filled with birds.

Birds roam freely around the Moon complete with fruitful trees, sophisticated fungal networks, and an enviable socialist order. The universal worm feeds all, there are no weekends, and economics is as fantastical a study as unicorn psychology. No concept of money or wealth plagues the thoughts of these free-minded birds. Instead, there are angsty teens who form bands to show off their best bird song and other youngsters who yearn to become clothing designers even though clothes are only necessary during war. (The truly honourable professions for most birds are historian and/or librarian.) These birds are free to crush on hot pelicans and live their best lives until a crash-landed human from Earth threatens to change everything.

Michael DeForge’s post-apocalyptic reality brings together the author’s quintessential deadpan humour, surrealist imagination, and undeniable socio-political insight. Appearing originally as a webcomic, Birds of Maine follows DeForge’s prolific trajectory of astounding graphic novels that reimagine and question the world as we know it. His latest comic captures the optimistic glow of utopian imagination with a late-capitalism sting of irony.

 

City of Saints and Madmen by Jeff VanderMeer

City of elegance and squalor. Of religious fervor and wanton lusts. And everywhere, on the walls of courtyards and churches, an incandescent fungus of mysterious and ominous origin. In Ambergris, a would-be suitor discovers that a sunlit street can become a killing ground in the blink of an eye. An artist receives an invitation to a beheading—and finds himself enchanted. And a patient in a mental institution is convinced that he’s made up a city called Ambergris, imagined its every last detail, and that he’s really from a place called Chicago . . .

By turns sensuous and terrifying, filled with exotica and eroticism, this interwoven collection of stories, histories, and “eyewitness” reports invokes a universe within a puzzle box where you can lose—and find—yourself again.

 

 

 

Fruiting Bodies by Kathryn Harlan

This genre-bending debut collection of stories constructs eight eerie worlds full of desire, wisdom, and magic blooming amidst decay.

In stories that beckon and haunt, Fruiting Bodies ranges confidently from the fantastical to the gothic to the uncanny as it follows characters—mostly queer, mostly women—on the precipice of change. Echoes of timeless myth and folklore reverberate through urgent narratives of discovery, appetite, and coming-of-age in a time of crisis.

In “The Changeling,” two young cousins wait in dread for a new family member to arrive, convinced that he may be a dangerous supernatural creature. In “Endangered Animals,” Jane prepares to say goodbye to her almost-love while they road-trip across a country irrevocably altered by climate change. In “Take Only What Belongs to You,” a queer woman struggles with the personal history of an author she idolized, while in “Fiddler, Fool, Pair,” an anthropologist is drawn into a magical—and dangerous—gamble. In the title story, partners Agnes and Geb feast peacefully on the mushrooms that sprout from Agnes’s body—until an unwanted male guest disturbs their cloistered home.

Audacious, striking, and wholly original, Fruiting Bodies offers stories about knowledge in a world on the verge of collapse, knowledge that alternately empowers or devastates. Pulling beautifully, brazenly, from a variety of literary traditions, Kathryn Harlan firmly establishes herself as a thrilling new voice in fiction.

 

Ghost Music by An Yu, design Suzanne Dean

For three years, Song Yan has filled the emptiness of her Beijing apartment with the tentative notes of her young piano students. She gave up on her own career as a concert pianist many years ago, but her husband Bowen, an executive at a car company, has long rebuffed her pleas to have a child. He resists even when his mother arrives from the southwestern Chinese region of Yunnan and begins her own campaign for a grandchild. As tension in the household rises, it becomes harder for Song Yan to keep her usual placid demeanor, especially since she is troubled by dreams of a doorless room she can’t escape, populated only by a strange orange mushroom.

When a parcel of mushrooms native to her mother-in-law’s province is delivered seemingly by mistake, Song Yan sees an opportunity to bond with her, and as the packages continue to arrive every week, the women stir-fry and grill the mushrooms, adding them to soups and noodles. When a letter arrives in the mail from the sender of the mushrooms, Song Yan’s world begins to tilt further into the surreal. Summoned to an uncanny, seemingly ageless house hidden in a hutong that sits in the middle of the congested city, she finds Bai Yu, a once world-famous pianist who disappeared ten years ago.

A gorgeous and atmospheric novel of art and expression, grief and survival, memory and self-discovery, Ghost Music animates contemporary Beijing through the eyes of a lonely yet hopeful young woman and gives vivid color and texture to the promise of new beginnings.

 

The Hedge Witch (Novella) by Cari Thomas, Cover by Andrew Davis

Rowan is visiting her aunt – Winne the hedge witch – in the Welsh countryside, to get back to nature and hone her skills, as well as taking a break from her annoying sisters and enjoying some peace and quiet. However, Rowan soon comes to realise that hedges are a serious business and this isn’t quite the opportunity to rest and escape she thought it might be.

Not only that, but mysterious events around the town are causing panic in the secret magical community and cowans – non-magical folk – are starting to take notice.

Can Rowan hone her hedge craft, try to make some friends and solve the riddle of the mysterious goings-on, or is magic about to be revealed to the world … or at least Wales?

 

 

 

High Times in the Low Parliament by Kelly Robson, Cover art and design by Kate Forrester

Award-winning author Kelly Robson returns with High Times in the Low Parliament, a lighthearted romp through an 18th-century London featuring flirtatious scribes, irritable fairies, and the dangers of Parliament.

Lana Baker is Aldgate’s finest scribe, with a sharp pen and an even sharper wit. Gregarious, charming, and ever so eager to please, she agrees to deliver a message for another lovely scribe in exchange for kisses and ends up getting sent to Low Parliament by a temperamental fairy as a result.

As Lana transcribes the endless circular arguments of Parliament, the debates grow tenser and more desperate. Due to long-standing tradition, a hung vote will cause Parliament to flood and a return to endless war. Lana must rely on an unlikely pair of comrades—Bugbite, the curmudgeonly fairy, and Eloquentia, the bewitching human deputy—to save humanity (and maybe even woo one or two lucky ladies), come hell or high water.

 

Into The Light by Mark Oshiro (3/28/23), Cover art by Carolina Rodriguez Fuenmayor, Cover design by Lesley Worrell

KEEP YOUR SECRETS CLOSE TO HOME

It’s been one year since Manny was cast out of his family and driven into the wilderness of the American Southwest. Since then, Manny lives by self-taught rules that keep him moving—and keep him alive. Now, he’s taking a chance on a traveling situation with the Varela family, whose attractive but surly son, Carlos, seems to promise a new future.

Eli abides by the rules of his family, living in a secluded community that raised him to believe his obedience will be rewarded. But an unsettling question slowly eats away at Eli’s once unwavering faith in Reconciliation: Why can’t he remember his past?

But the reported discovery of an unidentified body in the hills of Idyllwild, California, will draw both of these young men into facing their biggest fears and confronting their own identity—and who they are allowed to be.

For fans of Courtney Summers and Tiffany D. Jackson, Into the Light is a ripped-from-the-headlines story with Oshiro’s signature mix of raw emotions and visceral prose—but with a startling twist you’ll have to read to believe.

 

Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon, Cover art by Abby Kagan

A triumphant, genre-bending breakout novel from one of the boldest new voices in contemporary fiction.

Vern―seven months pregnant and desperate to escape the strict religious compound where she was raised―flees for the shelter of the woods. There, she gives birth to twins, and plans to raise them far from the influence of the outside world.

But even in the forest, Vern is a hunted woman. Forced to fight back against the community that refuses to let her go, she unleashes incredible brutality far beyond what a person should be capable of, her body wracked by inexplicable and uncanny changes.

To understand her metamorphosis and to protect her small family, Vern has to face the past, and more troublingly, the future―outside the woods. Finding the truth will mean uncovering the secrets of the compound she fled but also the violent history in America that produced it.

Rivers Solomon’s Sorrowland is a genre-bending work of Gothic fiction. Here, monsters aren’t just individuals, but entire nations. It is a searing, seminal book that marks the arrival of a bold, unignorable voice in American fiction.

 

Tastes Like War by Grace M. Cho

Grace M. Cho grew up as the daughter of a white American merchant marine and the Korean bar hostess he met abroad. They were one of few immigrants in a xenophobic small town during the Cold War, where identity was politicized by everyday details—language, cultural references, memories, and food. When Grace was fifteen, her dynamic mother experienced the onset of schizophrenia, a condition that would continue and evolve for the rest of her life.

Part food memoir, part sociological investigation, Tastes Like War is a hybrid text about a daughter’s search through intimate and global history for the roots of her mother’s schizophrenia. In her mother’s final years, Grace learned to cook dishes from her parent’s childhood in order to invite the past into the present, and to hold space for her mother’s multiple voices at the table. And through careful listening over these shared meals, Grace discovered not only the things that broke the brilliant, complicated woman who raised her—but also the things that kept her alive.

 

 

Weyward by Emilia Hart

I am a Weyward, and wild inside.

2019: Under cover of darkness, Kate flees London for ramshackle Weyward Cottage, inherited from a great aunt she barely remembers. With its tumbling ivy and overgrown garden, the cottage is worlds away from the abusive partner who tormented Kate. But she begins to suspect that her great aunt had a secret. One that lurks in the bones of the cottage, hidden ever since the witch-hunts of the 17th century.

1619: Altha is awaiting trial for the murder of a local farmer who was stampeded to death by his herd. As a girl, Altha’s mother taught her their magic, a kind not rooted in spell casting but in a deep knowledge of the natural world. But unusual women have always been deemed dangerous, and as the evidence for witchcraft is set out against Altha, she knows it will take all of her powers to maintain her freedom.

1942: As World War II rages, Violet is trapped in her family’s grand, crumbling estate. Straitjacketed by societal convention, she longs for the robust education her brother receives––and for her mother, long deceased, who was rumored to have gone mad before her death. The only traces Violet has of her are a locket bearing the initial W and the word weyward scratched into the baseboard of her bedroom.

Weaving together the stories of three extraordinary women across five centuries, Emilia Hart’s Weyward is an enthralling novel of female resilience and the transformative power of the natural world.

 

What Goes Up by Christine Heppermann

(Those are mushroom prints!)

When Jorie wakes up in the loft bed of a college boy she doesn’t recognize, she’s instantly filled with regret. What happened the night before? What led her to this place? Was it her father’s infidelity? Her mother’s seemingly weak acceptance? Her recent breakup with Ian, the boy who loved her art and supported her through the hardest time of her life?

As Jorie tries to reconstruct the events that led her to this point, free verse poems lead the reader through the current morning, as well as flashbacks to her relationships with her parents, her friends, her boyfriend, and the previous night.

With Poisoned Apples: Poems for You, My Pretty and Ask Me How I Got Here, Christine Heppermann established herself as a vital voice in thought-provoking and powerful feminist writing for teens. Her poetry is surprising, wry, emotional, and searing. What Goes Up is by turns a scorchingly funny and a deeply emotional story that asks whether it’s possible to support and love someone despite the risk of being hurt. Readers of Laura Ruby, E. K. Johnston, Elana K. Arnold, and Laurie Halse Anderson will find a complicated heroine they won’t soon forget.

 

What Moves The Dead by T. Kingfisher

When Alex Easton, a retired soldier, receives word that their childhood friend Madeline Usher is dying, they race to the ancestral home of the Ushers in the remote countryside of Ruritania.

What they find there is a nightmare of fungal growths and possessed wildlife, surrounding a dark, pulsing lake. Madeline sleepwalks and speaks in strange voices at night, and her brother Roderick is consumed with a mysterious malady of the nerves.

Aided by a redoubtable British mycologist and a baffled American doctor, Alex must unravel the secret of the House of Usher before it consumes them all.

At the Publisher’s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Hello! My Name Is In The YA Book Title: 2023 Edition

Over the last several years, the full name as part of a YA book title has been a big trend., in part because it makes the title a little bit more memorable–I might not remember the whole title nor whether it begins with an “A” or “The” or “This” or “That,” but chances are I’ll be more likely to remember it’s a book with a specific name in it. This is good service for those who help others find books as well. But much as I enjoy this structure, we may have hit saturation point. I think there’s still something to be said about how it’s especially powerful when the name is one tied to a cultural background, but perhaps it’s a styling that is worth taking a hard look at. Is it still effective? I don’t have an answer to this. I know I’ve seen a couple of YA books with “Margo/t” as the title character and I suspect keeping those straight would be hard for the average reader, let alone someone whose work is in YA books.

In 2023, we will see another collection of full names in YA book titles. Here’s a look at what they are and what they’re all about. Details for the titles come from Amazon, as those tend to have the strongest book descriptions.

It shouldn’t be hugely surprising to note most of these books are contemporary YA. A few of these titles have yet to have a book description or title released, as they’re projected to publish at the end of the year.

 

Arya Khanna’s Bollywood Moment by Arushi Avachat (Fall 2023; no cover yet)

Arya Khanna’s life gets a Bollywood spin when her older sister gets engaged.

Shaadi preparations are in full swing, which means lehenga shopping, taste testing, dance rehearsals, and best of all, that Alina is home. For the first time in three years, the Khannas are together again, and Arya is determined to keep the peace. She stifles the lingering resentment she still feels towards Alina, plays mediator during bitter mother-daughter fights, and welcomes Nikhil into the family with open arms.

Outside of shaadi planning, Arya’s senior year dreams are unraveling. In between class and her part-time gig as a bookshop assistant, Arya struggles to navigate the aftermath of a bad breakup between her two best friends and a tense partnership (turned friendship turned romance) with former rival, student body president Dean Merriweather.

Arya’s always considered herself a problem solver—the past three years have made her an expert in confronting adversity. But shaadi season teaches Arya new realities: Mamma’s sadness isn’t mendable, some friendships are meant to end, and life doesn’t always work out like the Bollywood movies Arya loves so dearly.

 

Bianca Torre Is Afraid of Everything by Justine Pucella Winans (4/11)

Sixteen-year-old Bianca Torre is an avid birder undergoing a gender identity crisis and grappling with an ever-growing list of fears. Some, like Fear #6: Initiating Conversation, keep them constrained, forcing them to watch birds from the telescope in their bedroom. And, occasionally, their neighbors. When their gaze wanders to one particular window across the street, Bianca witnesses a creepy plague-masked murderer take their neighbor’s life. Worse, the death is ruled a suicide, forcing Bianca to make a choice—succumb to their long list of fears (including #3 Murder and #55 Breaking into a Dead Guy’s Apartment), or investigate what happened.

Bianca enlists the help of their friend Anderson Coleman, but the two have more knowledge of anime than true crime. As Bianca and Anderson dig deeper into the murder with a little help from Bianca’s crush and fellow birding aficionado, Elaine Yee (#13 Beautiful People, #11 Parents Discovering They’re a Raging Lesbian), the trio uncover a conspiracy much larger—and weirder—than imagined. And when the killer catches wind of the investigation, suddenly Bianca’s #1 fear of public speaking doesn’t sound so bad compared to the threat of being silenced for good.

In this absurdist, darkly comical YA thriller that is a deceptively deep exploration of anxiety and identity, perhaps the real murder investigation is the friends we make along the way.

 

Carlos Alejos Has to Lose His Chichos by Mathew Rodriguez (Winter 2023, no description or cover yet)

 

The Fall of Whit Rivera by Crystal Maldonado (Fall 2023, no description or cover yet)

 

Gita Desai Is Not Here to Shut Up by Sonia Patel (Fall 2023, no cover and description from the publisher)

[F]ollows a teen whose first semester at college begins to unravel as trauma from her childhood becomes impossible to ignore. A heartrending story about never letting go of your voice.

 

Gloria Buenrostro Is Not My Girlfriend by Brandon Hoàng (6/27)

Gary Võ is one of the few Vietnamese kids in his school and has been shy for as long as he can remember―being ignored and excluded by his classmates comes with the territory. So when the most popular guy in his grade offers Gary the opportunity to break into his inner circle, Gary jumps at the chance. All he needs to do is steal the prized possession of the most beautiful and untouchable girl they know―Gloria Buenrostro.

But as Gary gets to know Gloria, he’s taken in by her authenticity and genuine interest in who he really is. Soon, they’re best friends. Being part of the “in crowd” has always been Gary’s dream, but as he comes closer to achieving infamy, he risks losing the first person who recognizes his true self. Gary must consider if any amount of popularity is worth losing a true friend.

 

 

 

The Great and Powerful Gracie Byrne by Shannon Takaoka (Fall 2023, no cover or description yet)

 

Imposter Syndrome and Confessions of Alejandra Kim by Patricia Park (2/21)

Alejandra Kim doesn’t feel like she belongs anywhere. At her wealthy Manhattan high school, her súper Spanish name and súper Korean face do not compute to her mostly white “woke” classmates and teachers. In her Jackson Heights neighborhood, she’s not Latinx enough. Even at home, Ale feels unwelcome. And things at home have only gotten worse since Papi’s body was discovered on the subway tracks.

Ale wants nothing more than to escape the city for the wide-open spaces of the prestigious Wyder University. But when a microaggression at school thrusts Ale into the spotlight—and into a discussion she didn’t ask for—Ale must discover what is means to carve out a space for yourself to belong.

Patricia Park’s coming-of-age novel about a multicultural teen caught between worlds, and the future she is building for herself, is an incisive, laugh-out-loud, provocative read.

 

 

The Luis Ortega Survival Club by Sonora Reyes (5/23)

Ariana Ruiz wants to be noticed. But as an autistic girl who never talks, she goes largely ignored by her peers—despite her bold fashion choices. So when cute, popular Luis starts to pay attention to her, Ari finally feels seen.

Luis’s attention soon turns to something more, and they have sex at a party—while Ari didn’t say no, she definitely didn’t say yes. Before she has a chance to process what happened and decide if she even has the right to be mad at Luis, the rumor mill begins churning—thanks, she’s sure, to Luis’s ex-girlfriend, Shawni. Boys at school now see Ari as an easy target, someone who won’t say no.

Then Ari finds a mysterious note in her locker that eventually leads her to a group of students determined to expose Luis for the predator he is. To her surprise, she finds genuine friendship among the group, including her growing feelings for the very last girl she expected to fall for. But in order to take Luis down, she’ll have to come to terms with the truth of what he did to her that night—and risk everything to see justice done.

 

Margo Zimmerman Gets the Girl by Sara Waxelbaum, Brianna R. Shrum (5/2)

This charming YA rom-com follows Margo, who suddenly realizes that she’s gay but has no clue how to express her identity, so she enlists out-and-proud Abbie to act as her tutor on everything “Queer 101”…and first love.
 
Margo Zimmerman is gay, but she didn’t know until now. An overachiever at heart, Margo is determined to ace her newly discovered gayness. All she needs is the right tutor.

Abbie Sokoloff has her own gayness down to a science. But a flunking grade in US History is threatening her acceptance to her dream school. All she needs is the right tutor.

Margo agrees to help Abbie get her history grade up in exchange for “Queer 101” lessons. But as they spend more and more time together, Margo realizes she doesn’t want just any girl—she wants the girl.

 

Nigeria Jones by Ibi Zoboi (5/9)

Warrior Princess. That’s what Nigeria Jones’s father calls her. He has raised her as part of the Movement, a Black separatist group based in Philadelphia. Nigeria is homeschooled and vegan and participates in traditional rituals to connect her and other kids from the group to their ancestors. But when her mother—the perfect matriarch of their Movement—disappears, Nigeria’s world is upended. She finds herself taking care of her baby brother and stepping into a role she doesn’t want.

Nigeria’s mother had secrets. She wished for a different life for her children, which includes sending her daughter to a private Quaker school outside of their strict group. Despite her father’s disapproval, Nigeria attends the school with her cousin, Kamau, and Sage, who used to be a friend. ­There, she begins to flourish and expand her universe.

As Nigeria searches for her mother, she starts to uncover a shocking truth. One that will lead her to question everything she thought she knew about her life and her family.

From award-winning author Ibi Zoboi comes a powerful story about discovering who you are in the world—and fighting for that person—by having the courage to be your own revolution.

 

Rana Joon and The One and Only Now by Shideh Etaat (7/25)

This lyrical coming-of-age novel for fans of Darius the Great Is Not Okay and On the Come Up, set in southern California in 1996, follows a teen who wants to honor her deceased friend’s legacy by entering a rap contest.

Perfect Iranian girls are straight A students, always polite, and grow up to marry respectable Iranian boys. But it’s the San Fernando Valley in 1996, and Rana Joon is far from perfect—she smokes weed and loves Tupac, and she has a secret: she likes girls.

As if that weren’t enough, her best friend, Louie—the one who knew her secret and encouraged her to live in the moment—died almost a year ago, and she’s still having trouble processing her grief. To honor him, Rana enters the rap battle he dreamed of competing in, even though she’s terrified of public speaking.

But the clock is ticking. With the battle getting closer every day, she can’t decide whether to use one of Louie’s pieces or her own poetry, her family is coming apart, and she might even be falling in love. To get herself to the stage and fulfill her promise before her senior year ends, Rana will have to learn to speak her truth and live in the one and only now.

 

The Renaissance of Gwen Hathaway by Ashley Schumacher (3/14)

Dumplin‘ meets Well Met in this novel about finding your place in the world, learning love is a risk worth taking, and discovering what happens when you take your fate into your own hands.

Since her mother’s death, Madeline “Gwen” Hathaway has been determined that nothing in her life will change ever again. That’s why she keeps extensive lists in journals, has had only one friend since childhood, and looks forward to the monotony of working the ren faire circuit with her father. Until she arrives at her mother’s favorite end-of-tour stop to find the faire is under new management and completely changed.

Meeting Arthur, the son of the new owners and an actual lute-playing bard, messes up Maddie’s plans even more. For some reason, he wants to be her friend – and ropes her into becoming Princess of the Faire. Now Maddie is overseeing a faire dramatically changed from what her mother loved and going on road trips vastly different from the routine she used to rely on. Worst of all, she’s kind of having fun.

Ashley Schumacher’s The Renaissance of Gwen Hathaway is filled with a wise old magician who sells potion bottles, gallant knights who are afraid of horses and ride camels instead, kings with a fondness for theatrics, a lazy river castle moat with inflatable crocodile floaties, and a plus-sized heroine with a wide open heart… if only she just admits it.

 

Riley Weaver Needs a Date to the Gaybutante Ball by Jason June (5/23)

Femme, gay teen podcaster Riley Weaver has made it to junior year, which means he can finally apply for membership into the Gaybutante Society, the LGBTQ+ organization that has launched dozens of queer teens’ careers in pop culture, arts, and activism. The process to get into the Society is a marathon of charity events, parties, and general gay chaos, culminating in the annual Gaybutante Ball. The one requirement for the ball? A date.

Then Riley overhears a cis gay classmate, Skylar, say that gay guys just aren’t interested in femme guys or else they wouldn’t be gay. Riley confronts Skylar and makes a bet to prove him wrong: Riley must find a masc date by the time of the ball, or he’ll drop out of the Society entirely. Riley decides to document the trials and tribulations of dating when you’re gay and femme in a brand new podcast. Can Riley find a fella to fall for in time? Or will this be one massive—and publicly broadcast—femme failure?

This new novel from Jason June explores how labels can limit and liberate us, and shows just what can happen when you bet on yourself.

 

Rubi Ramos’s Recipe for Success by Jessica Parra (5/16)

Graduation is only a few months away, and Rubi Ramos’s “recipe for success” to get into prestigious Alma University is already off track.

When Alma waitlists Rubi’s application, Rubi will need to be distraction-free to make the grade and keep her parents―who have wanted this for her for years―from finding out. Which means falling for her cute surfer-slash-math tutor, Ryan, definitely won’t work. And neither will breaking her mother’s ban on baking―her parents didn’t leave Cuba so she could bake just like them.

But some recipes are begging to be tampered with.

When the First Annual Bake Off comes to town, Rubi’s passion for baking goes from subtle simmer to full boil. Add to the mix her crush on Ryan may be turning into a full-fledged relationship and Rubi’s life is suddenly so different from what it was. She’s not sure if she has what it takes to win the Bake Off, or where the relationship with Ryan is going, but there’s only one way to find out―even if it means going against her parents’ priorities.

Now Rubi must differentiate between the responsibility of unfulfilled dreams she holds and finding the path she’s meant for.

A joyful novel of first romance, new possibilities, and the chance to define yourself, Rubi Ramos’s Recipe for Success is a novel that will find its way into your heart and never leave.

 

Seven Percent of Ro Devereux by Ellen O’Clover (1/17)

Ro Devereux can predict your future. Or, at least, the app she built for her senior project can.

Working with her neighbor, a retired behavioral scientist, Ro created an app called MASH, designed around the classic game Mansion Apartment Shack House, that can predict a person’s future with 93% accuracy. The app will even match users with their soulmates. Though it was only supposed to be a class project, MASH quickly takes off and gains the attention of tech investors.

Ro’s dream is to work in Silicon Valley, and she’ll do anything to prove to her new backing company—and the world—that the app works. So it’s a huge shock when the app says her soulmate is Miller, her childhood best friend with whom she had a friendship-destroying fight three years ago.

Now thrust into a fake dating scenario, Ro and Miller must address the years of pain between them if either of them will have any chance of achieving their dreams. And as the app takes on a life of its own, Ro sees that it’s affecting people in ways she never expected—and if she can’t regain control, it might take her and everything she believes in down with it.

 

Take a Bow, Noah Mitchell by Tobias Madden (1/3)

There Are No Cheat Codes for Showmance

Seventeen-year-old gaymer Noah Mitchell only has one friend left: the wonderful, funny, strictly online-only MagePants69. After years playing RPGs together, they know everything about each other, except anything that would give away their real life identities. And Noah is certain that if they could just meet in person, they would be soulmates. Noah would do anything to make this happen―including finally leaving his gaming chair to join a community theater show that he’s only mostly sure MagePants69 is performing in. Noah has never done anything like theater―he can’t sing, he can’t dance, and he’s never willingly watched a musical―but he’ll have to go all in to have a chance at love.

With Noah’s mum performing in the lead role, and former friends waiting in the wings to sabotage his reputation, his plan to make MagePants69 fall in love with him might be a little more difficult than originally anticipated.

And the longer Noah waits to come clean, the more tangled his web of lies becomes. By opening night, he will have to decide if telling the truth is worth closing the curtain on his one shot at true love.

 

Tim Te Maro and the Subterranean Heartsick Blues by HS Valley (2/14)What happens when your enemy becomes your friend … with benefits? 

Red, White and Royal Blue meets The Magicians in this surprising, wildly original and joyously funny LGBTQ YA novel set in a magical boarding school.

Tim Te Maro and Elliott Parker – classmates at Fox Glacier High School for the Magically Adept – have never gotten along. But when they both get dumped the day before the big egg-baby assignment, they reluctantly decide to ditch their exes and work together. When the two boys start to bond over their magically enchanted egg-baby, they realize that beneath their animosity is something like friendship … or physical attraction.

Soon, a no-strings-attached hook-up seems like a good idea. Just for the duration of the assignment. After all, they don’t have feelings for each other … so what could possibly go wrong?

From debut Kiwi author H.S. Valley, the latest winner of the Ampersand Prize, comes this gleefully addictive romantic comedy that’s perfect for fans of Rainbow Rowell and David Levithan. In a word – it’s magic.

The Unstoppable Bridget Bloom by Allison L. Bitz (5/2)

A bright and fun fat-positive YA novel about learning how to express yourself when what has always defined you is no longer an option. Perfect for fans of Julie Murphy and Emma Lord.

Bridget Bloom’s out-of-this-world voice is the perfect fit for center stage. When Bridget’s admitted to Richard James Academy, a college prep boarding school with a prestigious music program—where heartthrob Duke Ericson attends—all her dreams are on track to come true: leave the hometown where she’s never belonged, fall in love, and launch her Broadway career.

But upon arriving at the academy, she learns that due to her low music theory scores, she’s not eligible to perform or earn the sponsorship she needs to afford the tuition. Worst of all, Dean of Students Octavia Lawless, the one person with the power to reverse the decision, challenges her to work on her humility . . . by not singing at all.

Without her voice, Bridget will have to get out of her comfort zone and find a new way to shine. Good thing she is unstoppable!

 

Wren Martin Ruins It All by Amanda DeWitt (Fall 2023, no cover yet)

Now that Wren Martin is student council president (on a technicality, but hey, it counts) he’s got it all figured out. His first order of business: abolish his school’s annual Valentine’s Day Dance, a drain on the school’s resources and general social nightmare—especially when you’re asexual. His greatest opponent: Leo Reyes, vice president and all-around annoyingly perfect student, who has a solution to Wren’s problem with the budget. A sponsorship from Lovr, the anonymous dating app that’s swept the nation. The theme: 21st Century Masquerade. Suddenly, Wren’s plan for a dance-less senior year has turned into heading the biggest dance Rapture High has ever seen. He’s even secretly signed up for the app, just to start a list of grievances for the student council advisor.

When Wren accidentally starts up a conversation with one of his matches, who was forced to join the app by meddling friends, he realizes that things might be getting a little out of his control. He never meant to like his anonymous match, nicknamed Lovr Boy, and he certainly didn’t mean to develop a crush on him. Wren decided a long time ago that dating while asexual wasn’t worth the hassle, but the anonimity of the app has made things more complicated, not less, when it gives him permission to start catching feelings he always avoided before. The Valentine’s Day Dance is rapidly approaching, and Wren isn’t sure what will kill him first: the dance, his love life, or the growing realization that Leo’s perfect life might not be so perfect after all.

 

It’s (Not) Always Sunny with YA Sunflower Book Covers

Here’s a fun little trend in the world of YA book covers over the last couple of years: sunflowers. But they’re not always sunny, happy sunflowers gracing these covers. In some instances, they’re downright terrifying sunflowers. The kind of sunflowers that makes you wonder why you’re not more suspicious of such towering plants that take hold in mid to late summer.

I’ve rounded up a few recent YA sunflower book covers. I love how none of these are exactly, err, sunny at all.

Descriptions come from ‘zon, and cover artist information is included where possible. Can you think of other YA sunflower covers from the last year or two? I’d love to hear them.

 

Things That Grow by Meredith Goldstein; Cover designed by Celeste Knudsen

When Lori’s Dorothy Parker–loving grandmother dies, Lori’s world is turned upside down. Grandma Sheryl was everything to Lori—and not just because Sheryl raised Lori when Lori’s mom got a job out of town. Now Lori’s mom is insisting on moving her away from her beloved Boston right before senior year. Desperate to stay for as long as possible, Lori insists on honoring her grandmother’s last request before she moves: to scatter Sheryl’s ashes near things that grow.

Along with her uncle Seth and Chris, best friend and love-of-her-life crush, Lori sets off on a road trip to visit her grandmother’s favorite gardens. Dodging forest bathers, scandalized volunteers, and angry homeowners, they come to terms with the shape of life after Grandma Sheryl. Saying goodbye isn’t easy, but Lori might just find a way to move forward surrounded by the people she loves.

 

 

The Undead Truth of Us by Britney S. Lewis; Cover Design by Zareen Johnson and illustrated by  Adekunle Adeleke

Sixteen-year-old Zharie Young is absolutely certain her mother morphed into a zombie before her untimely death, but she can’t seem to figure out why. Why her mother died, why her aunt doesn’t want her around, why all her dreams seem suddenly, hopelessly out of reach. And why, ever since that day, she’s been seeing zombies everywhere.

Then Bo moves into her apartment building―tall, skateboard in hand, freckles like stars, and an undeniable charm. Z wants nothing to do with him, but when he transforms into a half zombie right before her eyes, something feels different. He contradicts everything she thought she knew about monsters, and she can’t help but wonder if getting to know him might unlock the answers to her mother’s death.

As Zharie sifts through what’s real and what’s magic, she discovers a new truth about the world: Love can literally change you―for good or for dead.

In this surrealist journey of grief, fear, and hope, Britney S. Lewis’s debut novel explores love, zombies, and everything in between in an intoxicating amalgam of the real and the fantastic.

 

We Deserve Monuments by Jas Hammonds; Cover design by Beth Clark and Sarah Kaufman, art by Laylie Frazier.

What’s more important? Knowing the truth or keeping the peace?

Seventeen-year-old Avery Anderson is convinced her senior year is ruined when she’s uprooted from her life in DC and forced into the hostile home of her terminally ill grandmother, Mama Letty. The tension between Avery’s mom and Mama Letty makes for a frosty arrival and unearths past drama they refuse to talk about. Every time Avery tries to look deeper, she’s turned away, leaving her desperate to learn the secrets that split her family in two.

While tempers flare in her avoidant family, Avery finds friendship in unexpected places: in Simone Cole, her captivating next-door neighbor, and Jade Oliver, daughter of the town’s most prominent family—whose mother’s murder remains unsolved.

As the three girls grow closer—Avery and Simone’s friendship blossoming into romance—the sharp-edged opinions of their small southern town begin to hint at something insidious underneath. The racist history of Bardell, Georgia is rooted in Avery’s family in ways she can’t even imagine. With Mama Letty’s health dwindling every day, Avery must decide if digging for the truth is worth toppling the delicate relationships she’s built in Bardell—or if some things are better left buried.

 

Where Darkness Blooms by Andrea Hannah; Cover Design by Olga Grlic and art by Marcela Bolívar (2/21/23)

The town of Bishop is known for exactly two things: recurring windstorms and an endless field of sunflowers that stretches farther than the eye can see. And women―missing women. So when three more women disappear one stormy night, no one in Bishop is surprised. The case is closed and their daughters are left in their dusty shared house with the shattered pieces of their lives. Until the wind kicks up a terrible secret at their mothers’ much-delayed memorial.

With secrets come the lies each of the girls is forced to confront. After caring for the other girls, Delilah would like to move on with her boyfriend, Bennett, but she can’t bear his touch. Whitney has already lost both her mother and her girlfriend, Eleanor, and now her only solace is an old weathervane that seems to whisper to her. Jude, Whitney’s twin sister, would rather ignore it all, but the wind kicks up her secret too: the summer fling she had with Delilah’s boyfriend. And more than anything, Bo wants answers and she wants them now. Something happened to their mothers and the townsfolk know what it was. She’s sure of it.

Bishop has always been a strange town. But what the girls don’t know is that Bishop was founded on blood―and now it craves theirs.

 

Early 2023 YA Nonfiction for Your TBR

YA nonfiction continues to be one of the underdogs of the literary world. There are few awards dedicated to honoring the work, and as much as some of us have rallied for Goodreads to make it a category for their annual readers’ choice awards, they haven’t (and I suspect they will not). It also doesn’t get the same social media attention as fiction does. All of that is unfortunate, especially because it is both a growing and wonderful arena of books. We know teens are big nonfiction readers, and books written with them as an audience in mind matters. Because I keep track and read YA nonfiction, I find it worthwhile to roundup the upcoming new releases as much as I can to give these books a boost they might not otherwise see in “most anticipated” and similar roundups. That all said, let’s take a look at some of the early 2023 YA nonfiction you’ll want on your radar.

These are all YA nonfiction books hitting shelves between January and the end of April. I’ve pulled descriptions from Amazon. As usual, because it is harder to track down all of the nonfiction being published for young adults, this list is far from comprehensive. It leans more heavily on narrative nonfiction than more of the how-to style nonfiction. If you know of other YA nonfiction hitting shelves in the first few months of the year not included, I’d love to hear about them in the comments. Usual disclaimers apply here that one of the tricky parts of YA nonfiction is that many are published for 10-14 or 12-18, so some of these titles might lean more toward middle grade than YA.

Early 2023 YA Nonfiction Cash is Queen : A Girl’s Guide to Securing, Spending and Stashing Cash by Davinia Tomlinson and Andrea Oerter (1/3)The world’s first money book written exclusively for girls, Cash is Queen is designed to deliver the sophistication, practicality, and fun guaranteed to appeal to today’s young woman.

Study after study shows that women are far happier discussing virtually anything else but bank balances, and this lack of confidence in openly discussing money matters is crippling the female population financially. Women negotiate less in salary discussions, are excessively cautious and risk averse when it comes to investing, and lack the general awareness around how to optimize retirement savings to guarantee a comfortable retirement.

With clear explanations and empowering text by experienced financial expert Davinia Tomlinson, you’ll learn that establishing a positive relationship with money as an adult must be cultivated in childhood.

Cash is Queen explains in a tone that’s relatable, fresh, and fun, everything a young girl needs to know about saving, spending, and stashing her cash, helping girls everywhere establish positive financial habits that will last a lifetime.

Non-patronizing or preachy, this book is essential reading for young girls everywhere as they enter adulthood and begin the journey of discovery in identifying the mark they would like to leave in the world.

Dark Testament: Blackout Poems by Crystal Simone Smith (1/3)

In this extraordinary collection, the award-winning poet Crystal Simone Smith gives voice to the mournful dead, their lives unjustly lost to violence, and to the grieving chorus of protestors in today’s Black Lives Matter movement, in search of resilience and hope.

With poems found within the text of George Saunders’s Lincoln in the Bardo, Crystal Simone Smith embarks on an uncompromising exploration of collective mourning and crafts a masterwork that resonates far beyond the page. These poems are visually stark, a gathering of gripping verses that unmasks a dialogue of tragic truths―the stories of lives taken unjustly and too soon.

Bold and deeply affecting, Dark Testament is a remarkable reckoning with our present moment, a call to action, and a plea for a more just future.

Along with the poems, Dark Testament includes a stirring introduction by the author that speaks to the content of the poetry, a Q&A with George Saunders, and a full-color photo-insert that commemorates victims of unlawful killings with photographs of memorials that have been created in their honor.

 

Female, Gifted, and Black: Awesome Art and Literary Pioneers Who Changed the World (Black Historical Figures, Women in Black History) by Becca Anderson and M.J. Fievre  (1/10)

Learn about amazing women in Black history. Whether you learned about these women in school or not, these Black historical figures changed society and inspired future generations. Read all about these powerful women in black history such as Amanda Gorman, Alice Walker, Warsan Shire, Eartha Kitt, Gloria Hendry, Issa Rae, Pearl Bailey, Shonda Rhimes and so many more. From artists to writers, models to dancers, Female, Gifted and Black inspires you to be a trailblazer with these stories of strength, perseverance, and talent.

Dive into this Black history book. Driven by female empowerment, this collection of biographies tells the unique stories of these powerful women in Black history who made a difference. From artists to activists, Female, Gifted and Black showcases a plethora of passions and skills to prove that Black is beautiful. These mighty women in Black history prove that your passions and drive are the most powerful things you have.

Inside Female, Gifted and Black, you’ll learn to:

Recognize the importance of honoring Black intelligence, willpower, and passionCelebrate the strength of these revolutionary women in Black historyChannel your inner womanhoodDiscover powerful stories of accomplishments achieved by Black historical figures

 

Doomed: Sacco, Vanzetti, and The End of the American Dream by John Florio, Ouisie Shapiro (1/24)

In the early 1920s, a Red Scare gripped America. Many of those targeted were Italians, Eastern Europeans, and other immigrants.

When an armed robbery resulting in the death of two people broke headlines in Massachusetts, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti―both Italian immigrants―were quick to be accused.

A heated trial ensued, but through it all, the two men maintained their innocence. The controversial case quickly rippled past borders as it became increasingly clear that Sacco and Vanzetti were fated for a death sentence. Protests sprang up around the world to fight for their lives.

Learn the tragic history we dare not repeat in Doomed: Sacco, Vanzetti, and the End of the American Dream, an action-packed, fast-paced nonfiction book filled with issues that still resonate today.

 

How to Be a (Young) Antiracist : How to Be a (Young) Antiracist by Ibrim X. Kendi and Nic Stone (1/31)

The New York Times bestseller How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi is shaping the way a generation thinks about race and racism. How to be a (Young) Antiracist is a dynamic reframing of the concepts shared in the adult book, with young adulthood front and center. Aimed at listeners 12 and up and co-authored by award-winning children’s book author Nic Stone, How to be a (Young) Antiracist empowers teen listeners to help create a more just society. Antiracism is a journey—and now young adults will have a map to carve their own path. Kendi and Stone have revised this work to provide anecdotes and data that speaks directly to the experiences and concerns of younger listeners, encouraging them to think critically and build a more equitable world in doing so.

 

 

 

Colin Kaepernick: Change the Game by Colin Kaepernick, Eve L. Ewing, Orlando Caicedo (Illustrated by) (3/7)

A high school senior at a crossroads in life and heavily scouted by colleges and Major League Baseball (MLB), Colin has a bright future ahead of him as a highly touted prospect. Everyone, from his parents to his teachers and coaches, is in agreement on his future. Everyone but him.

Colin isn’t excited about baseball. In the words of five-time all-star MLB player Adam Jones, “Baseball is a white man’s sport.” He looks up to athletes like Allen Iverson: talented, hyper-competitive, unapologetically Black, and dominating their sports while staying true to themselves. College football looks a lot more fun than sleeping on hotel room floors in the minor leagues of baseball. But Colin doesn’t have a single offer to play football. Yet. This touching YA graphic novel memoir explores the story of how a young change-maker learned to find himself, make his own way, and never compromise.

 

 

In Limbo: A Graphic Memoir by Deb JJ Lee (3/7)

A debut YA graphic memoir about a Korean-American girl’s coming-of-age story―and a coming home story―set between a New Jersey suburb and Seoul, South Korea.

Ever since Deborah (Jung-Jin) Lee emigrated from South Kora to the United States, she’s felt her otherness.

For a while, her English wasn’t perfect. Her teachers can’t pronounce her Korean name. Her face and her eyes―especially her eyes―feel wrong.

In high school, everything gets harder. Friendships change and end, she falls behind in classes, and fights with her mom escalate. Caught in limbo, with nowhere safe to go, Deb finds her mental health plummeting, resulting in a suicide attempt.

But Deb is resilient and slowly heals with the help of art and self-care, guiding her to a deeper understanding of her heritage and herself.

This stunning debut graphic memoir features page after page of gorgeous, evocative art, perfect for Tillie Walden fans. It’s a cross section of the Korean-American diaspora and mental health, a moving and powerful read in the vein of Hey, Kiddo and The Best We Could Do.

 

Nearer My Freedom: The Interesting Life of Olaudah Equiano by Himself by Monica Edinger, Lesley Younge (3/7)

Millions of Africans were enslaved during the transatlantic slave trade, but few recorded their personal experiences. Olaudah Equiano’s The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano is perhaps the most well known of the autobiographies that exist. Using this narrative as a primary source text, authors Monica Edinger and Lesley Younge share Equiano’s life story in “found verse,” supplemented with annotations to give readers historical context. This poetic approach provides interesting analysis and synthesis, helping readers to better understand the original text. Follow Equiano from his life in Africa as a child to his enslavement at a young age, his travels across the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea, his liberation, and his life as a free man.

 

 

Hidden Systems: Water, Electricity, the Internet, and the Secrets Behind the Systems We Use Every Day by Dan Nott (3/14)

We use water, electricity, and the internet every day–but how do they actually work? And what’s the plan to keep them running for years to come? This nonfiction science graphic novel takes readers on a journey from how the most essential systems were developed to how they are implemented in our world today and how they will be used in the future.

What was the first message sent over the internet? How much water does a single person use every day? How was the electric light invented?

For every utility we use each day, there’s a hidden history–a story of intrigue, drama, humor, and inequity. This graphic novel provides a guided tour through the science of the past–and reveals how the decisions people made while inventing and constructing early technology still affect the way people use it today.

Full of art, maps, and diagrams, Hidden Systems is a thoughtful, humorous exploration of the history of science and what needs to be done now to change the future.

 

Michi Challenges History : From Farm Girl to Costume Designer to Relentless Seeker of the Truth: The Life of Michi Weglyn by Ken Mochizuki (3/14)

A powerful biography of Michi Weglyn, the Japanese American fashion designer whose activism fueled a movement for recognition of and reparations for America’s World War II concentration camps.

The daughter of Japanese immigrants, Michi Nishiura Weglyn was confined in Arizona’s Gila River concentration camp during World War II. She later became a costume designer for Broadway and worked as the wardrobe designer for some of the most popular television personalities of the ’50s and early ’60s.

In 1968, after a televised statement by the US Attorney General that concentration camps in America never existed, Michi embarked on an eight-year solo quest through libraries and the National Archives to expose and account for the existence of the World War II camps where she and other Japanese Americans were imprisoned. Her research became a major catalyst for passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, in which the US government admitted that its treatment of Japanese Americans during World War II was wrong.

Thoroughly researched and intricately told, Michi Changes History is a masterful portrayal of one woman’s fight for the truth―and for justice.

 

Share Better and Stress Less by Whitney Phillips, Ryan Milner (3/14)We know that pollution damages our physical environments—but what about the digital landscape? Touching on everything from goat memes gone wrong to conflict in group chats to the sometimes unexpected side effects of online activism, this lively guide to media literacy draws on ecological, social justice, and storytelling frameworks to help readers understand how information pollution spreads and why. It also helps them make sense of the often stressful and strange online world. Featuring a hyperconnected cast of teens and their social-media shenanigans, reader-friendly text tackles the thorny topic of internet ethics while empowering—and inspiring—young readers to weave a safe, secure, and inclusive digital world. Readers are invited to delve further into the subject with the help of comprehensive source notes and a bibliography in the back matter.

 

 

 

Rising Class : How Three First-Generation College Students Conquered Their First Year by Jennifer Miller (3/28)

This eye-opening YA narrative nonfiction follows three first-generation college students as they navigate their first year―and ultimately a global pandemic.

Making it through the first year of college is tough. What makes it even tougher is being the first in your family to do so. Who can you turn to when you need advice?

Rising Class follows three first-generation freshmen, Briani, Conner, and Jacklynn, as they not only experience their first semester of college, but the COVID-19 pandemic that turned their Spring semester upside down. From life in the ivy league to classes at a community college, this nonfiction book follows these students’ challenges, successes, and dreams as they tackle their first year of college and juggle responsibilities to their families back home.

Eye-opening and poignant, Jennifer Miller writes a narrative nonfiction story that speaks to new beginnings, coming of age, and perseverance.

 

Unaccompanied: Stories of Brave Teenagers Seeking Asylum by Tracy White (3/28)

This book tells the true stories of five brave teens fleeing their home countries of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guinea, on their own, traveling through unknown and unfriendly places, and ultimately crossing into the US to find refuge and seek asylum. Based on extensive interviews with teen refugees, lawyers, caseworkers, and activists, Tracy White shines a light on five individual kids from among the tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors who enter the U.S. each year. In stark black and white illustrations, she helps us understand why some young people would literally risk their lives to seek safety in the US. Each one of them has been backed into a corner where emigration to the US seems like their only hope.

 

¡Ay, Mija! (A Graphic Novel) : My Bilingual Summer in Mexico by Christine Suggs (4/4)

In this bilingual, inventive, and heartfelt debut, graphic novel talent Christine Suggs explores a trip they took to Mexico to visit family, embracing and rebelling against their heritage and finding a sense of belonging.

Sixteen-year-old Christine takes their first solo trip to Mexico to spend a few weeks with their grandparents and tía. At first, Christine struggles to connect with family they don’t yet share a language with. Seeing the places their mom grew up—the school she went to, the café where she had her first date with their father—Christine becomes more and more aware of the generational differences in their family.

Soon Christine settles into life in Mexico, eating pan dulce, drawing what they see, and growing more comfortable with Spanish. But when Mom joins their trip, Christine’s two worlds collide. They feel homesick for Texas, struggle against traditions, and miss being able to speak to their mom without translating. Eventually, through exploring the impacts of colonialism in both Mexico and themselves, they find their place in their family and start to feel comfortable with their mixed identity.

 

Questions I Am Asked About The Holocaust : A Young Reader’s Edition by Hédi Fried(Author), Laila Ekboir(Illustrator), Alice E. Olsson(Translator) (4/4)

Hédi Fried was nineteen when the Nazis arrested her family and transported them to Auschwitz. While there, apart from enduring the daily horrors at the concentration camp, she and her sister were forced into hard labor before being released at the end of the war.

After settling in Sweden, Hédi devoted her life to educating young people about the Holocaust. In her 90s, she decided to take the most common questions, and her answers, and turn them into a book so that children all over the world could understand what had happened.

This is a deeply human book that urges us never to forget and never to repeat.

 

 

 

Where to Start : A Survival Guide to Anxiety, Depression, and Other Mental Health Challenges by Mental Health America, illustrated by Gemma Correll (4/11)It can be extremely hard to figure out what’s going on in our own heads when we are suffering—when we feel alone and unworthy and can’t stop our self-critical inner voice. And it’s even more difficult to know where to go for answers. But this book can help. Here you’ll find clear, honest, jargon-free information about all the most common mental illnesses, including a first self-assessment test; tips on how to get help and how to talk about your mental health with friends, family, and medical professionals; and tools for staying healthy. Plus, the book’s accessible and reassuring information and resources are interspersed with insightful and very funny drawings by acclaimed cartoonist Gemma Correll. This will be a book that you’ll cherish.

 

Work What You Got by Zion Clark, James S. Hirsch (4/11)When a baby named Zion was born in 1997 to an imprisoned, drug-addicted mother, his future seemed bleak. Born without legs due to a rare condition called caudal regression syndrome, Zion was abandoned and shunted to a foster-care system ill-equipped to care for him. In this stirring memoir, readers will follow as he is bounced from home to home, subjected to abuse, neglect, and inconceivable hardship. Somehow, Zion finds supportive angels along the way: his first two foster families, who offer a haven; the wrestling coach who senses his “warrior spirit” and nurtures it; the woman of fierce faith who adopts a seventeen-year-old and cheers his every match. From play-by-play narration of how Zion adapts wrestling moves to defeat able-bodied opponents, wielding phenomenal arm and hand strength, to accounts of his extraordinary work ethic, unflagging optimism, and motivational speaking, this is an inspirational story of courage that will appeal to any athlete who respects determination, any young person facing adversity, and any reader who wants to believe in the human spirit. Money Out Loud : All the Financial Stuff No One Taught Us by Berna Anat and Monique Sterling (4/25)

So no one taught you about money, either? Let’s figure this me$$ out together. 

In this illustrated, deeply unserious guide to money, Berna Anat—aka the Financial Hype Woman—freaks out her immigrant parents by doing the unthinkable: Talking about money. Loudly. 

Because we’re done staying silent, anxious, and ashamed about our money. It’s time to join the party and finally learn about all the financial stuff that always felt too confusing. Stuff like:

How to actually budget, save, and invest (but also make it fun) How our traumas shape our most toxic money habits, and how to create new patternsHow to build wealth in a system designed to keep us broke How to use money to fund our biggest dreams—and change the world

No more keeping our money on mute. It’s time to grab the mic.

 

My Top Ten 2022 Favorite Books

Something I’ve come to really lean into this year is that my reading life is going to look different every single year and that that is okay. A decade ago, I could read 200 books a year; that was a time when I had far fewer outside obligations and I had the kind of mental space every evening to knock out 50-100-200 pages of a book. I’m in a completely different season of life now. Between school and being a mom, I’m learning that prioritizing and making space for reading simply looks different. Twenty minutes in the car of an audiobook? Excellent! Fifteen minutes in bed before I inevitable reach for my phone and zone out with TikTok? Also excellent. A day off work where I don’t have to do anything and can lie on the couch and read? A literal dream! Any and all of this is fine in my world, especially given how much reading I do outside of a traditional book. Beating myself up for not reading 100 books in a year is not a nice way to treat myself (and for the record, I’ll get about 90, which is still almost two books per week!).

I like to think of my “best of” list less of a best of and more of a favorites list. These are books that stuck with me or that I had a particularly good reading experience with. This year’s roundup of my personal top ten includes several buzzy books, as well as plenty of books that got little or no attention at all. Half of these books are ones I did on audio, since that is where I am able to get some of my heftier reading in now.

Different this year than almost any other year in my reading life since the start of writing about it is that there are few YA books. I read a lot of YA, but I don’t think as many stuck with me this year as in years past. It’s not that they were bad; it’s that there was little that at this point in the year I either remember or reference or think about. In general, if it’s not been a TikTok book of the moment, then YA in general has been quieter this year. I’ve seen it in my work at Book Riot and across social media more broadly. YA isn’t the hot category unless it’s a trendy title, and that’s not to say there hasn’t been good stuff. Rather, it’s not quite as impactful as it has been in the last decade+. I hope that we’ll see an upswing in those meaty, outstanding literary YA titles again in the coming year.

That said, what’s interesting is a lot of my favorites this year are adult books featuring teen or young adult leads. Crossover reads are knocking it out of the park, and I can’t help but wonder what would happen if more of the voices in those adult-published titles were showing up in actual YA. It’s also a nice reminder how these labels have a purpose for organization reasons but at the end of the day, they don’t necessarily mean anything at all. A good book is a good book, and those who get books into the hands of readers are skilled enough to know precisely how to do just that.

Onto my favorites of the year. Let’s dive on in.

I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy

I know nothing about McCurdy or her role as a child actress, so I went into this memoir fresh. I picked the audio as I had access to a review copy as the book began gaining a massive holds list, and frankly, that was the way to go. This story of Jennette’s upbringing, her mother’s several competing mental illnesses and the way they directly impacted Jennette, Jennette’s own challenges with disordered eating and anxiety…it is powerful and incredibly hard to read. But it’s not all doom and gloom. This is a surprisingly hopeful memoir about how Jennette has worked hard to figure out who she is and what it is she wants from her life, despite a lifetime of trauma.

My last assignment for this semester of counseling school was a client case profile, and while I did not pick McCurdy, she was at the top of my list of potential options (and, as it turns out, two or three of my classmates did choose her). She’s going to inspire a lot of folks to do some important internal work with this book.

If you’ve held off on this because of the celebrity aspect, think of this far more as a mental health and mental illness memoir than a celebrity memoir. You’ll hear about the acting stuff, but that’s not the white hot center of this read. Audiobook listeners should go that round, as McCurdy’s voice telling her own story is so, so good.

 

The Myth of Normal by Gabor Maté and Daniel Maté

Speaking of mental health books, I picked this one up on recommendation from my kid’s teacher who said Maté is an author who has done some really thought-provoking work in that space. I ended up listening to this on audio at the same time I was working on a school project on adverse childhood experiences, and the two were in uncanny harmony. Maté wrote this book with his son, and his son does the audiobook performance.

Trauma has been such a buzzword culturally, but it’s not really used correctly. Trauma is a response, not the incident that precipitates it. Trauma lives in the body and the mind, and it’s one of the reasons that it is impossible to separate the body from the mind. They are two intertwined entities that cannot be separated. This book explores the notion of why trauma is important to understand and how the notion of someone being “normal” is a complete falsehood. Our experiences create our responses, and trauma responses are so common across our culture–made even more apparent in individuals coming from any marginalized background or experience–that not acknowledging that is a major oversight. Normal is a lie; we’re all hurting in some ways and understanding, acknowledging, and working with that helps us not only understand ourselves but better engage with each other as complex, complicated people.

This is written for a general readership, so if you’re interested in mental health, it’s a great one.

 

Now Is Not The Time to Panic by Kevin Wilson

I fell in love with Wilson’s writing and ability to craft young adult voices with Nothing to See Here. I read that one for an Audies committee I was on and even though I’m not a huge fiction-on-audio reader, it just worked.

So it was surprising I put off reading Wilson’s new book for as long as I did. But the reason was being unable to decide between the audiobook or the print edition. I went with print, but I can see the audio of this being just as outstanding. The book beings in a present period when a reporter reaches out to an adult Frankie Budge, but it quickly flashed back to Frankie’s 16th year. It’s summer in small town Tennessee and a weird boy has just moved to town. She and Zeke become friends less because they were into each other and more to keep from becoming bored. And in that forced friendship, the two of them accidentally begin a Satanic Panic in their small town. It is a funny book, but it’s also one full of so much tenderness and truth about what it is to be a teenager in a small town, desperate to have your voice seen, heard, and believed.

There is tremendous crossover appeal to this one, so I won’t be surprised if it sees an Alex Award sticker coming its way. I’d hand it to any teenager looking for a story of realistic misfits and the summer that changed their lives . . . on accident.

 

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

Obviously, another buzzy title up there with McCurdy’s, but both of these books have gotten such buzz for a reason. Zevin’s book follows two young adults, Sam and Sadie. They run into each other at a train stop in Harvard, and when Sam reaches out to Sadie, they begin to reconnect slowly to the friendship they had back in their youth in California. Eventually, they decide they’re going to begin to work together and build a video game. That game ends up defining their friendship over the next several decades as they build a video game company and see ups and downs in relationships both within and beyond their dyad.

At heart, this is a very simple book. It’s a friendship story. But because it is so simple, it’s a look at how complex and complicated friendship can be. It’s also a story of race and racism, of romance, and what happens in a culture that becomes obsessed with young talent. Zevin’s writing is immersive, and even though video gaming doesn’t do much for me, I found myself completely pulled into the video game elements of the story. This is another book that is published for adults, but it has great appeal for teen readers; Sam and Sadie’s story begins when they’re college students, flashes back to their teen years, and it grows as they move through their adult years.

In some ways, this reminded me of Joey Comeau’s Malagash, a favorite of mine from a few years back.

 

Trigger by N. Griffin

I’m so sad this YA survival story has gotten so little attention. It is a phenomenal and terrifying book about a girl raised in isolation by her father. She’s being trained to be a fighter. First and foremost, she’s a chess prodigy, and when she’s unable to be the winner her father demands of her, she’s forced to run. That, plus being trained in hunting, have made her a powerful force. Indeed, she’s prepared for the worst to happen and she and her father will survive when the world comes crashing down.

Except.

Didi knows how good she is. How she’s even better than her father says she is. She might be able to outrun even him. Out hunt even him. Survive.

This is an immersive story about the end of the world and about the ways in which grooming actually works–this is a father grooming his daughter to become a pawn in his game. But when she reverses course and chooses to no longer be a pawn in his game but instead put him in checkmate, suddenly, she’s the one who knows how to play the game best.

I read this one and a couple other survival YA stories out this year back to back. Griffin’s stood out.

 

True Biz by Sara NovicNovic has written an absolutely brilliant book about a single year at a residential Deaf school. The third person POVs give a look at life as a student and an administrator, about the history–and discrimination and activism of–Deaf people. Each voice is unique, the book’s set up and execution is so smart, and the ending was as satisfying as it can get. This is an adult book but it has mega teen appeal.Saying too much more about this one would ruin the impact of it. But it is an important contribution to Deaf literature and one that is as savvy and insightful as can be. As a bonus, you’ll get some mini lessons on American Sign Language (with a side of a snarky tone sometimes which is just outstanding).

 

 

 

Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Impostor Behind the World’s Most Notorious Diaries by Rick Emerson

I did this one on audiobook, adding it to my TBR as soon as I got through the three-part series on Go Ask Alice on “You’re Wrong About” (you can listen to those here, and guest Carmen Marie Machado is the perfect voice on this!). No matter what you think you know about the person behind the bestselling fake teen diary Go Ask Alice, I assure you that the true story is even wilder than you can imagine. This is a book that offers some incredible context to the life of Beatrice Sparks, the mastermind behind that diary and several others of the era. I was hooked from the beginning and found ways to be in my car just a little bit longer to keep listening. Sparks was a con artist who lied her way to not only the National Book Awards–being on the first ever panel to award the Young People’s Literature honor–but she stole the stories of real teens and profited nicely off them while doing real true harm to those families.

Interwoven in here is the panic over LSD, Satan, and how the Mormon Church helped create the environment perfect for books like this to find a widespread audience.

Again: even if you “know” the story, this book will leave you with more twists and turns than you can imagine. Listening to the 3-part podcast series will be your appetizer to the main course that is this book.

 

What The Fact?: Debunking Disinformation to Detangle the Truth by Dr. Seema Yasmin

Look: we need more lessons on media and information literacy. Yasmin’s book–which has an amazing audiobook production–is a must-read covering the differences among misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation, while offering practical tools and insight into how to most smartly engage with media and social media. As someone who does this work and considers myself pretty savvy (I do have a librarianship background, after all!), I picked up a lot more knowledge from reading this.

There’s no bias here. And that statement will ruffle some feathers because of course there’s bias in everything. But I’ll let that statement stand, as Yasmin does a great job of saying it and explaining it, too. There’s no bias here.

This is a YA nonfiction title, but it is more than appropriate for middle school and adult readers, too.

 

 

 

Year of the Tiger by Alice Wong

I love Wong’s writing and her work in the disability space more broadly. This memoir is necessary reading for anyone wanting to know what it is like to grow up at the intersection of being marginalized and being disabled. But, in her trademark humor and snark, Wong rejects the idea she should be anyone’s hero or anyone’s inspiration. Rather, she demands action alongside her and fellow activists.

One of my favorite parts of this memoir is its setup. It’s highly designed, reading more like a scrapbook with art and creative storytelling elements than what might be expected with an adult memoir. It captures the spirit of Wong’s voice and points, while being a real visual experience in and of itself. There’s a really well balanced mix of essays showcasing the breadth and depth of Wong’s experience.

 

 

 

Yerba Buena by Nina LaCour

It’s hard for me to think about the fact this book came out this year. It seems like it has been out a lot longer, but that might be because it’s a book I have been thinking about since I finished reading it back in January or February.

At 16, Sara Foster runs away from her northern California home. She’s been care taking for her younger brother after the early death of her mother, especially because her father is hot and cold and not reliable. But after her best friend and former girlfriend is found in the lake, dead, the next in a long line of people to be pulled from the water in a similar condition, Sara knows she needs out. She quickly befriends a guy with a car, they participate in an activity that leaves both of them haunted to make a little cash, and they head south toward LA. It is not an easy trip, and when they run out of money before making it to the city, they each take up a job, hoping to have enough for dinner. Eventually, Sara works her way out of the situation, abandoning the guy, and making a name for herself in the LA bar scene at the infamous Yerba Buena, a high-profile restaurant with a well-known chef.

Emilie is from the LA area and grew up with her parents and older sister, who is in and out of her life, as she wrestles with addiction. Emilie has always wanted the kind of life her Creole grandparents had, one filled with community and with adventure. The problem is, Emilie has no idea what she wants to do with her life–she’s on her fifth college major and going no where. So when she takes a job as a flower designer and ends up at Yerba Buena doing their table arrangements, she could never imagine what the position would hold for her: beginning a long affair with the famous restaurateur. She has feelings for him and enjoys the attention he shows her, a girl who is messy and lost and adrift in the world. But when Emilie discovers she’s his side piece, that he has a whole family and life outside their relationship, she calls it off and finds herself once again drifting. 

When Sara and Emilie reconnect, both of them a little lost, broken, and struggling to build lives from the broken pieces of their past, it seems like immediate chemistry. But then Sara is cold in a way that surprises Emilie and things look bleak. . . then Sara gets the chance to explain, and the two of them find incredible comfort, recognition, and love with one another.

This is a beautiful, emotional character study of two young women trying to figure themselves out. It’s romantic and challenging, in that it invites the reader inside these lives while also keeping readers at the same distance with which Emilie and Sara keep themselves from others (and, initially, one another). There is a lot of fabulous stuff here about those messy years that are true and authentic, and the emotional realities of navigating life as a newly independent adult are authentic. It’s well paced and engrossing, the perfect kind of literary novel that refuses to be what one would consider a typical literary novel. There’s a lot to dig into when it comes to language, to imagery, to symbolism, but it doesn’t detract from giving these characters fully-considered arcs or lives.

 

My 2022 Favorite Things

It’s been a minute, hasn’t it? I have on my to-do list a post that digs into what it has been like to blog the book world for 15 years…and I think it might end up being a reflection on 16 years by the time I get to it. As anyone who is a caretaker can attest, the job is long and hard and carving out space to sit down and write can be tough. But with the new year in sight, and with the potential downfall of social media outlets, I want to get back into the swing of book blogging here at my first and forever home, Stacked.

To ease on in, something a little bit not bookish. I was opening up a package this week from a Black Friday weekend purchase and thought it would be fun to highlight a few of my favorite things from 2022. There’s no real rhyme or reason other than these things improved my life (and that might mean just a tiny bit) or I enjoyed them. I will put together a favorite books of 2022 before the year concludes, too–imagine that after almost a year of not being here, getting the promise of more than one piece to enjoy.

As always, thanks for being here. I hope you stay, and I hope we can reignite this incredible community of bloggers, librarians, publishing folks, and more at STACKED.

Crowned Athletics

I am not a Disney person at all. I know plenty of folks who are, but it’s just not my jam. I suspect as my kid grows up, that might change. But when a friend raved about Crowned Athletics, which creates workout clothes inspired by Disney characters, I checked them out with skepticism. I’m glad I let my guard down, though, because I absolutely love my tank tops from here. They’re fun, whether or not you care about the character who inspired them. I’ve got three of the tanks, all in the “flow” style, and you can absolutely size down in them (they go up to an XXXL). I’m used to buying inexpensive wares for yoga, so the price point on these made me pause, but they’re worth it. I have not tried anything outside the flow tops, but if they’re any indication, I suspect the other pieces are quality as well.

Yes, the front and back are different! The back on these is mesh, so there’s a lot of great air flow for those sweatier workouts.

 

Paru Tea Bar’s Okinawa Sugar

I love tea and usually drink 2-4 cups a day. For the last year or so, my hands down favorite is this Okinawa Sugar that my boss turned me onto. It’s sweet without being cloying, as it has a little bit of a bite to it, too. I drink it as is, but I can see that this could make a nice option with milk. I tend to buy a few full size packages at once and try out other smaller size flavors from PARU. Nothing from them has been disappointing, but this is, hands down, my favorite.

 

ZEYAR Highlighters

 

 

I went back to graduate school this year for clinical mental health counseling–a decision that is one of the best I’ve made in a long time–and I needed to stock up on some school supplies. These highlighters, which have a chisel-tip, have been fabulous. When I get to use a real print textbook and not an overpriced digital rental (the bane of my existence), these highlights do the double duty of allowing a neat underline and highlight, so I don’t have to toggle between a pen and a highlighter.. The colors are nice, they don’t bleed, and they’re just fun.

 

Three Ships Lip Treatment

 

 

I don’t have a fancy skincare routine, though I have really gotten into my jade roller in the last month or so because it feels so nice, but I do apply a lip mask nightly. I got this Three Ship duo in a subscription box a couple of years ago and I continue to buy it. I don’t really use the exfoliator because I’m lazy, but when I have used it, I really like it. For me, the lip mask, which tastes like buttercream, is worth it. You can usually buy this set new and unopened at a lower price on Poshmark (hot tip: most beauty products you want to try but don’t want to go full price on are worth looking for on Poshmark).

 

Mushroom Solar Lights

 

 

We’ve done more to make the outside of our home cozy in the last year or so than we ever have before. After losing the lattice fence between my house and my neighbor’s to a storm, the neighbor had it replaced since it was technically hers. Unfortunately, she did not realize after chasing down the contractors that it would be Fort Knox between our homes, rather than the friendly fence from before. As a result, we’ve tried to make it much less a fort and more an opportunity. We’ve strung up lights and made the garden in that area really pop.

One of the fun finds this year I included in our outside decor were these adorable mushroom lights. They’re solar powered, and they have a couple of settings, so you can do a solid light or a little bit of a pattern of lights. I’m excited to pull them back out after the winter.

 

Linen Sheets

 

 

I’ve never spent more than, like, $30 on a sheet set. This year, I realized it’s probably worth investing in really nice linens, especially the ones that are used every single day. Linen gets softer and cozier the more you wash it, and while it killed me to spend $100-some dollars between the sheets and pillow cases, these have been worth every single penny. I expect we’ll get many years out of these sheets, even if they aren’t name brand. I’ll reiterate that it is worth spending the money on nice things you use every single day if you’re in the position to do so. I’m hoping after the holidays to get a linen duvet to use on the comforter we have on top of these sheets which is riddled with tears from the animals.

 

Haden Electric Tea Kettle

 

 

After the second of my Wal-Mart ceramic electric tea kettles bit the dust last year–and both lasted me a solid year or so, which I’m not mad about–I decided to upgrade. I asked around for my friends’ favorite electric kettles and ended up choosing this one. It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Even more than looking nice on my very small and very ugly countertops, it can be set to whatever temperature you need your water to be and it can hold water at 200 degrees. That is perfect for someone like me who, as noted above, is a 2-4 cups of tea person. I don’t have to reheat multiple times in the morning.

 

In addition to those “things,” there were other things that are less object-based and more learning/experiential based that fall into my 2022 favorites, too, including:

Buying my kid’s plastic toys at thrift stores–I stopped buying those big Little People farms, houses, tractors, etc., at the store and pick them up for $3 at the thrift, wash them in the sink, and viola!

 

Carving out time every weekend, sometimes both days of the weekend, to get up early and go work at a local cafe. I’ve been able to go during the weekday mornings as well, but those weekends are how I get true ME time away from my responsibilities as a mom, wife, etc. I love the place I go to and enjoy trying out all of the fancy lattes and their excellent avocado toast. Worth every single penny every single time. Whether it’s an hour I use to catch up on emails or three hours I use to do work for school, it’s time that belongs entirely to me. Yes, it means getting up super early on the weekends, but that’s how I fit the puzzle of my life together.

 

Finding a Zoom yoga teacher who has fit nicely into my life. I love my local studio where I teach but it is so hard to get to in-person classes. I decided this year to try a new teacher who has some ties to my studio, and her classes have been so phenomenal for my practice and teaching. I always tell my students that you’ll find several teachers in your yoga life you love and sometimes it takes work. I’ve been lucky to find so many good ones, and I always appreciate having a wealth of talent from which to choose for my needs.

 

Prioritizing ten minutes of reading a day. It is hard, especially when I have school, to read for me anymore. I won’t lie: doing the work I do on censorship has really taken a toll as well, and so, too, is the reality of being a mom. But I’ve tried hard to be conscious of taking 10 minutes a day to read, be it when I get into bed or on drives to/from school drop off for my kid via audiobook. I think I’ve read about as much on audio this year as in print, and even though my reading life looks and feels worlds different than a few years ago, it’s still there, it’s still important, and I still find so much value in it.

 

Choosing one thing for lunches and automating that part of my life as much as possible. I don’t like eating the same things all the time. Or at least, that’s what I THOUGHT. This year, I discovered how much a routine has helped me feel less frustrated about feeding myself and a family three times a day. I pick whatever the lunch is for the week and let that be what it is. If I choose something else during the course of the week, that’s fine, but knowing there is a plan helps take that mental load off. Lately, it’s been a lunch of a peanut butter English muffin with some kind of side (pretzels, etc.). It’s not glamorous nor photoworthy, but it is one less thing on the mental load. (And I hear folks who meal prep talk about the benefits of it, but I don’t like meal prepping because to me, it feels like eating leftovers for days–someone else in my family does this, though, and it works well for him!).

 

I’d love to hear what things helped you this year. What did you love? What do you talk about all of the time? What made your days just a touch brighter?