This memoir is a brutally honest reflection about the overwhelming emotions of growing up in poverty. Sixth-grader Rex feels incredible shame at the stigma of being in the free lunch program and inability to afford school supplies, on top of trying to shield his little brother from the DV between his stepfather and mother. Ultimately the book ends in a positive note as the family finds help.

Winner of the 2020 YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction award

Not a bad month for reading, though clearly lots of fantasy escapism. Even though I missed the faculty book club outing to hear Shelby Van Pelt talk, I enjoyed discussing Remarkably Bright Creatures with my sister, who read it with her book club last year.

Parentified Giddy is desperate to solve her stress-related stomach issues, so she tries the "opposition therapy" she read about on social media- stop getting her young siblings on the school bus, eat foods like chicken feet, and sit at a different table for lunch.
I get the sense the author wants even teen readers to ask "what was she thinking?!?" And at the same time, I was still hoping she could find a better balance in putting her needs first.

A transmedia middle grade horror story! Ryan and Sarah are trying to understand the creepy things happening in their hometown, but after an accident leaves Ryan confined to bed, he records all his ideas in his journal while Sarah logs a video diary gathering evidence.

Love that Sarah uses Poe themes for her website URLs and passwords!

#MiddleGradeMonday @Karisimo

Given how many fantasies come in trilogies, it was nice to see Thomas wrap up this story in one sequel instead of stretching it out to two. This book is more character focused, especially in the relationship between Teo and Aurelio, but there was still a twist I wasn't expecting that hit me in the feels.

Good example of diverse representation and queer characters without the queerness being the conflict.

1) Strawberries are probably my favorite (especially with cream!), but I also love apples - especially the ones you pick yourself (and the ones you put in pie 😉)

2) The Galaxy and the Ground Within - strangers of different species end up delayed at the Five Hop One Stop refueling station, and find common ground by breaking bread together. Lovely and hopeful story - part of a series but can be read as a standalone!

#Two4Tuesday @TheSpineView

The tagged #MiddleGradeMonday pick is one that stuck with me from when I was a kid!

The Pinballs focuses on three children in foster placements with the Masons - distrustful Charlie, sent there because her stepfather hit her so hard she got a concussion; naive Thomas J, whose aunts got too old and infirm to care for him; and Harvey, who arrives with two broken legs and a story about how it happened that keeps changing.

@Karisimo

Wow, the number of books I read really plummets when the semester starts!

Fav book tagged

#SeriesLove

Seems like teaching high school, and then children's and YA lit classes has really inflated my score! I have my children's literature students write an Essay in Defense of a Banned Book - sadly, some may need these skills as future teachers!

Favorites:
1) The Witches by Roald Dahl
2) Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson (and I especially love her response to people who want to ban it)
3) Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

#TLT @dabbe

I never thought I would find a children's book that used the magical realism style, but Medina pulls it off in this book! Probably best for stronger readers with good imaginations - the imagery of her language is enchanting.

#MiddleGradeMonday @Karisimo

"Of course the first thing I looked for was the fire watch stone. And of course it wasn't there yet."

When @CSeydel mentioned To Say Nothing of the Dog a few days ago, it inspired me to look back at the Oxford time travel series, and I found this book of short stories as part of the series I hadn't read yet.

#FirstLineFridays @ShyBookOwl

Favorite museum is hard!
-Most impactful: the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Berlin. The pitch black room except for a sliver of light in the ceiling far above taught me how architecture can be both art and argument.
-Most nostalgic: the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, more of a science center than a museum.
-Most Unexpectedly Fascinating: the National Archives in DC - saw the actual records of the Glory troops!

#TwoForTuesday @TheSpineView

Belated August reading report! A delightfully eclectic mix of Indigenous children's books (from my children's lit class), fantasy bedtime reading, and a classic from faculty book club.

Tagged my favorite - fun world building!

Not too bad! Being a big fan of musicals definitely helped, though I missed out on a bunch of the classic ones.

Faves:
1) "All That Jazz" - Chicago
2) "America" - West Side Story
3) "Aquarius / Let the Sun Shine In" - Hair

I'd add the following from contemporary musicals:
1) the whole Hamilton soundtrack, basically
2) "Wait for Me" - Hadestown
3) "Prayer" - Come From Away

#TLT #ThreeListThursday @dabbe

When all your July reads don't fit in the space to post to Litsy 😂

Fav book: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, which spurred such a great conversation at book club. If I ever put together a Narrative in Games class, I'm tempted to include it.

Also a #SeriesLove success completing the Death books from the Discworld series! Not sure if I'll start another branch for the rest of the year or wait until next year as a new goal.

And soon to be 15, as we are reading Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow for our faculty book club this month!

🌼 Leverage (and the sequel Leverage: Redemption) are my go-to rewatches; I love a good heist!

🪻I really enjoyed Sorry, and my husband and I acquired it for ourselves when moving into our own house!

🌹Loved the cross between a library and Wonka's factory as the setting for an escape room game in the tagged book.

#WondrousWednesday @Eggs

I'm not always good at tagging books in Litsy as current reads, but I like this new feature from StoryGraph to help me go back and add them all monthly!

Lots of good reading done during my travels to and from the AP exam scoring and during my beach vacation.

"Why would anyone want to feel superior to others? Surely the only occasion to justify looking down on someone is while you are helping them up."

My favorite quote from Starry Messenger, our faculty book club pick for June.

75%, no doubt boosted by the fact that my brother was little in the 2000s, helping me cover the kids movies while watching the adult ones on my own with friends.

Favorites:
- The Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy (best score and fantastic character acting)
- the Ocean's trilogy
- the Matrix series, because they really spearheaded the trend towards transmedia storytelling that I focused on in my dissertation

#TLT #ThreeListThursday @dabbe

I'm teaching this one in my summer Children's Lit class! Zoe intercepts a letter from her absent father on her 12th birthday and learns that he is claiming to be innocent of the murder he's been convicted of. This starts her quest to get him released, learning how systemic racism impacts the judicial system. Zoe and her father start a sweet correspondence to get to know each other, bonding over food and music.

#MiddleGradeMonday @Karisimo

🙌🏻

(When this is the epigraph, you know the book is going to be good.)

I love that someone has set up a Little Free Library here at the AP Literature scoring venue!

I also love all the geeky book tshirts and seeing people tucked in corners all over reading during breaks and meals.

#TeachersOfLitsy

Set in WWII England, this middle grade novel details Ada‘s escape from her abusive mother to join her brother Jamie as he is evacuated to the Kent countryside. She grapples with (forced) gratitude toward her new caretaker Susan, low self-esteem, and the knowledge that her mother does not love her, for she could have given Ada surgery to fix her clubfoot as a child and did not.

#MiddleGradeMonday
@Karisimo

I think this installment captures a really authentic piece not just of adolescence, but of being in a relationship - trying to figure out your own identity, goals, and dreams (independently of your family or romantic partner). I liked that all the characters supported and expressed the importance of having friends you can open up to!

1) My grandfather was a high school math teacher, and my parents looked through the absentee list from his school for name inspiration. So I am technically named after someone who didn't bother showing up for school! 😂

2) I adored the tagged book growing up - a protagonist with my name and the ability to move things with her mind, just like Roald Dahl's Matilda (my other favorite book)? Sign me up!

#TwoForTuesday
@TheSpineView

A worthy sequel! Character development is a main theme here as Laia becomes more self-assured, driven by her need to save her brother; Helene figures out how to survive as the second-in-command to an emperor she doesn't trust; and Elias must reckon with all the harm he's caused as a Mask. Will be going on to book 3 after finishing my book club selection!

I think the Hunger Games movie was one of the more successful first-person book narration to third-person movie narration I've seen. Using Caesar Flickerman and the other tv announcers to give the background on things like tracker jackers instead of Katniss telling the audience worked really well.

#SundayFunday
@BookmarkTavern

I loved this book so much! The idea of faerie being real and studied academically was so fun to me, and both scholars definitely reminded me of personalities I've encountered as a grad student / professor. I will certainly be reading the sequel!

"remember the trouble you had giving co-author credit to that Welsh shepherd for your paper on faerie mounds? Your peer reviewers wouldn't let it go to print."

? I'm such an academic - this was the passage that convinced me that the seemingly morally ambiguous Emily was actually a good person at heart and not just motivated by her own ambition.

I was immediately sucked into this world of Masks hunting Scholars, and appreciated the lengths Laia wanted to go to in order to save her brother as well as Elias's frustration with the system he was born into. Will be continuing the series if I can find the next book!

I love teaching the WWI poem "Dulce Et Decorum Est" this book gets its name from for its masterful use of poetic devices to convey a powerful critique of war, and this novel honors that message deftly. It's remarkable to watch Kyr come to terms with the fact that she has been radicalized, and that the world is nothing like she's been taught.

"The sky lit up with green subreal flashes as a Wisdom cruiser dropped out of shadowspace."

Was craving some sci-fi, and this book is delivering!

#FirstLineFridays
@ShyBookOwl

Somewhat anticlimactic end to the founding trilogy. I do wonder if I was expecting too much from it - clarifying the mystery of how the Companions came to exist is no small feat!

Finished off this trilogy, and while I can't say I predicted all the outcomes, I wasn't surprised at each character's fate, either. Not sure whether I'll continue reading the rest of the series.

Enjoying my break from school with a little book shopping! Top book is the next selection for our faculty book club, and the bottom one fits perfectly with my week on Afro/Africanfuturism in my World Lit class in the spring semester.

#BookHaul #ShopLocal

Started my #HyggeChallenge on Wednesday as a way to relax now that fall semester grades are in. I asked my husband to choose a game that didn't require too much strategy and was amused that he went with this one. (He admitted it needed more strategy than he anticipated after we were done. 😂)

I agree with other Litsy readers that Nikolai is the best part of this book; otherwise, this feels like yet another frustrating YA romantsy, where Alina could have solved most of her problems with Mal by communicating better.

#NoveListReadingChallenge - March
Read a book from the last five years that's been adapted into a movie or TV series.

Not a bad reading year! Didn't hit my goal of 100 books, but I'm starting to realize that may not be realistic now I'm no longer involved in the curriculum review project. I'm amused at the discrepancy between the longest and shortest book - that's what comes of teaching children's lit! Will be interesting to see if Pratchett is top next year as I continue the Discworld series.

Tagged book was my favorite of the year for its original concept!

My #lastfirst of 2023/2024 is the Grishaverse - managed to finish Shadow and Bone and start Siege and Storm. Figured I'd see what the fuss is about as I'm developing a Young Adult Literature class.

I may be burned out on the Chosen One trope, though, so we'll see if I continue.

@BookNAround

I may not have met my total book goal, but I did meet my goal to read all the Night Watch books in the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett. Will have to figure out which of the Discworld character arcs I want to read next, and maybe join #SeriesLove2024 to help!

#SundayFunday @BookmarkTavern

1) full length: Die Hard 😂
TV special: Muppet Family Christmas (Careful of the icy patch!)

2) All I want for Christmas is the best thing to eat and make sure you get the money. 🤣

3) The tagged book is cemented as a winter book in my mind.

#WondrousWednesday @Eggs

I enjoy when an author plays within the fictional world they created, especially when they invite others in to do so to - it's like reading fanfiction, only I don't have to worry about screening for the good stories! Some of these stories fill in the history of the world, such as how Scythe Curie got her reputation or what Scythe Goddard did before he was a scythe. Others are character studies - I appreciated the one narrated by the Thunderhead.

Sam Vimes proves that he is unable to detach from his work by solving crimes on vacation at his wife's ancestral country house. His growth as a character is really on full display here as he argues for goblins to be considered human.

With this read, I've achieved my goal of reading all the Night Watch Discworld books this year! Prachett fans - which arc should I read next? The wizards? The witches?

#Discworld #ReadingGoals

Fun to catch it at a perfectly round number!

I wasn't going to do this since it's the end of the semester, but I need grading motivation, so my goal is to spend 20 hours over the next 4 days reading and grading student essays. I'll break it up with fun reading by trying to get to 60% in Snuff by Terry Prachett (at 38% now).

#20in4Readathon @Andrew65

1) Jury's still out on a tree because cat, but we'll do some other indoor decorations.
2) The Moravian Star and candles in the windows.
3) I'm all in on the a capella: Straight No Chaser, Pentatonix, and my friends' semi-pro group Keystone A Capella - you haven't heard "Santa Baby" until you've heard it sung by a bass (miss you, Gooch!)

#WondrousWednesday @Eggs

As with many fantasy series, this got bloated - books 4-6 are all basically one story arc. This one feels like a very YA ending; it does wrap up the story and the main characters all get their fairytale ending, but in a very plot-sketchy way. I don't think they are given the space at the end to really process the emotional weight of all the events leading to that point. Overall, Chainani set up more complexity & depth than he was able to fulfill.

1) My parents are excited to host in their new house, so my husband and I are bringing side dishes and staying over to visit the Christmas market on Friday.

2) The tagged book showcases best friends and found families, supporting both family and strangers through hard times, and celebrating good food made well (especially cheese!)

#Two4Tuesday @TheSpineView

Read for our faculty book club! I've seen the praise and critiques from this group, and did agree with most of it, but in the end I did find it an enjoyable read.