Children's books: History: "Returning the Sword", "A Bike Is Not Just a Bike", and "A Quilt of Stars"

Returning the Sword by Caren Stelson, illustrated by Amanda Yoshida (Carolrhoda Books)
A Bike Is Not Just a Bike by Brenna Jeanneret, illustrated by Michelle Pereira (Gloo Books)
A Quilt of Stars by Karen Nyberg and Ann McCallum Staats, illustrated by Alida Massari (Familius)

Back to the world of picture books...this time, with history!

Returning the Sword starts with an American soldier who, in 1945, took home a surrendered Japanese sword as a souvenir. For more than sixty years, it sat in his home as an unsettling reminder of his experience, and the experience of the Japanese people he had seen struggling to put their lives back together after the war. And in 2013, he finally found a way to return the sword to its rightful place.

Stelson is involved in this story in an unexpected way (I'll let you read the book to find out how), and she brings a personal and thoughtful touch to the story. The story touches on the traumas of war from both sides—the winners and the losers, for lack of a more elegant way to put it—in a way that is appropriate for young readers, and the story of the sword in particular provides a unique starting point, plus a talking point for adults to introduce different parts of history to kids.

The art is fairly simple, but the full-page illustrations provide plenty of detail. Most importantly, though, it's clear that this was written with a lot of care and respect—a great pick for young readers interested in history.

Meanwhile, a bike is just a bike...except when it represents so much more.

In A Bike Is Not Just a Bike, children are introduced to some of the pushback women (and girls) faced when the bicycle—all things considered, a very modern invention—came into play. Nobody questioned the ability (or right) of men to ride bicycles, of course. But for women, surely they weren't physically capable...and it would risk their health and looks...and they should be at home in the kitchen, anyway...

Bicycles are one example of many—there were similar concerns about women running long distances (remember Kathrine Switzer?), going to space, etc. This bit of history points to the hypocrisy of it all: fine for women to work long hours cooking and cleaning and doing laundry (and, of course, for women of lower means, to do even more backbreaking labor as necessary), but surely riding a bicycle would be too much. Women's looks were considered at risk...but there was no concern of the same for men's looks. And, of course, this is not a problem that has gone away: Did you know how hard athletes had to push for the women's version of the (all-male) Tour de France? (Not part of this book, and note that the Tour de France Femmes is back since that article was published...but noting because it's so recent and so relevant!)

At any rate, this makes for a fun and informative read—great for a kid who is just learning to ride a bike, I imagine! The art is fairly simple, but it's evocative, and I love the color scheme.

A Quilt of Stars takes us through Karen Nyberg's journey to become an astronaut...and her multiple journeys into space, where in addition to doing cool science-y things (technical term) she found a way to apply another passion to space...by practicing spacecrafting! (Heh.)

This is really lovely—it's well timed, what with the recent NASA launch, and I don't know a ton about Nyberg, so it was nice to read something about her, and to think about some of the odd specifics of space. (Allowed just over three pounds of personal items for about six months in space, what would you bring?) The book talks about space and science, of course, but also about a collaborative quilting project that Nyberg engineered. I might have liked a little more about life on the space station, but then, that's the sort of thing that is more likely to be covered in picture books than why there are often stuffed animals in space even if the astronauts aren't the ones to design and sew them.

The illustrations are fantastic, lush and full-page with a dreamy color palette that emphasizes blue and gold. Gravity-free hair is a theme!

The theme of the quilting project was stars, and this would make such a good classroom read for young kids—learn a little about space, learn a little about quilting, and have kids design their own star-themed quilt blocks...out of paper or out of fabric, depending on time and resources.

Thanks to the authors and publishers for providing review copies through NetGalley.

Review: "Armaveni" by Nadine Takvorian

Armaveni by Nadine Takvorian
Published March 2026 via Levine Querido
★★★

I recently read a couple of graphic novels (Tall Water and Silenced Voices) that cover genocide in Sri Lanka and Guatamala, respectively, and since I know shockingly little about the Armenian genocide, this felt like a natural extension of that reading. Armaveni is a fictionalized retelling of Takvorian's own story and her family history.

As a story, it's heartbreaking. Again, I don't know much about the Armenian genocide, but you don't need to know the specifics of a conflict to understand fear and loss. I could have used more details of the historical background, because I simply don't know that much about the time and place—even the time frame was something I had to look up a couple of times. As a graphic novel, then, it didn't fully do the job for me: I would have liked more history wrapped in with the memoir. The book is also in one color scheme, and while past and present are clear, I struggled to keep track of the different characters in the earlier timeline. (I eventually stopped trying.) I'm not sure if a multiple color schemes would have helped me keep track, but I think I just needed something more.

With all this said, it's an interesting book about a conflict that isn't enough discussed (Türkiye in particular has worked to suppress discussion of the genocide and to reframe it as something, well...pro-Türkiye); a decent one to add to a library collection about oppression and conflict in both past and present.

Review: "The Boxcar Children" by Gertrude Chandler Warner

The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner
First published 1924
★★★

Four orphaned children in the 1920s find an old boxcar and move in. This was one I read in childhood, and when I stumbled across it I thought I'd give it a quick reread to see how memory held up.

This is of course a deeply romanticized version of homelessness, and also a deeply romanticized version of orphanhood. The children are all sickly good and sweet and hardworking—never the smallest complaint—and for all that they're living rough in the 1920s, they also don't struggle: There's never any question that Henry, the eldest, will be able to find work to support them (and indeed, on his first attempt he finds a wealthy doctor who is more than happy to pay Henry handsomely, and daily, to do odd jobs—imagine if this had been written a few years later, in the Depression!); they never struggle to find sufficient healthy food (within a couple of days they're cooking up hearty stews); when they decide they need plates and cups and so on, off they go to find a dump in the woods, and lo! A dump appears, with everything they could possibly want. If there's any grief over the loss of their parents, we don't see it; they're perfectly happy and self-sufficient until their extraordinarily wealthy grandfather steps in, and then they're perfectly happy to step into a rather more pampered life.

Now. With all that in mind, I remember this being wonderful for the imagination as a child—who among us who read this as a kid didn't dream of running away to live in a boxcar in the woods? Sometimes I still wish it were a possibility. (I also remember a moment in the book where one of the characters is cross for a half second, and everyone is shocked because it's so out of character, but that didn't happen in the book I just read...so I do wonder whether there are a couple of different editions floating around out there!) Sort of a shame that they're only actually in the boxcar for a single book, as reading about rich kids with basically unlimited resources is less fun than reading about kids figuring it out, even if in a very improbable way.

I'd forgotten that their grandfather tells them that they should all go to college, which is great—there's certainly a fair amount of class-based expectation there, I wonder how many girls in the 1920s had the good fortune and privilege for college to be a given.

Also fascinating to see the different covers on this; for a book about children in the 20s they wear some awfully 80s clothing on the covers! I understand why (more appealing to contemporary, or contemporary-at-the-time-of-an-edition-being-published, readers), but this would have been so different a story in the 80s.

Review: "My Chance to Fly" by Samantha Tonge

My Chance to Fly by Samantha Tonge
Published August 2026 via Boldwood Books
★★★

Una's life is regimented, and that's just the way she likes it. She's open with her best friend and with this mother, but with really nobody else: She keeps her communication direct and to the point and avoids doing anything new. So flying to southern Germany on a whim is not exactly in character...

I picked this up because, as much as I love travel books, they don't often take the characters to Germany, and I was curious about what Una's experience would be like. I enjoyed her time in Germany—she gets to do some things that a lot of tourists don't necessarily get to experience, and Konrad, her German contact-turned-paramour, is good company. It's probably lucky that they turn out to be a good fit, because it could be awkward if he kept wanting to do things together and she really wasn't into it, but generally he comes across nicely. It's also interesting how much her interactions with Konrad bring Una out of her shell—less a matter of "he's the one who really sees her" (which is good! I'm not a fan of romance in which, you know, only he sees the beauty behind her glasses or whatever) and more a matter of...he's the catalyst for positive change in her life.

On the one hand I find the premise a little silly (fly hundreds of miles in the hopes that a specific bird will show up?), but on the other hand it's sweet. Life throws a few unexpected wrenches at Una, including one that forces some...different questions than she necessarily expected to need to answer. I didn't mind that (didn't see that particular twist coming until shortly before Una did), though I didn't love the way things with her parents resolve (felt a bit 180). There's a fair amount of German sprinkled throughout the book, and for the most part it's solid; nice that it goes beyond "ja" and "nein".

All in all, a fun romance that takes readers somewhere new, and I can't argue with that.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

Review: "Suffer a Witch" by Joy McCullough

Suffer a Witch by Joy McCullough
Published August 2026 via Dutton Books for Young Readers
★★★★

Admit it, the priests told you, and twelve years was old enough for you to know you must listen to church authorities. Old enough to know the truth didn't matter anyway. Old enough to know someone had to pay for a boy's wounded pride. (loc. 669*)

McCullough was a young teenager, a preacher's daughter, when a new youth pastor was hired at her father's church. That is not the point she describes as the tipping point, the moment when things could have been different—but fundamentally, this pastor who groomed her and sexually assaulted her tipped her life upside down. And: He was not subtle. And: Nobody spoke up, not when it was McCullough and not when it was her sister and not when it was the next girl behind closed doors with the youth pastor.

The story is devastating. McCullough is so clear about what happened and the ways in which she was silenced, both then and later; also the ways in which it affected her, then and later. (I won't get into the family parts of things here, but...if she's not still angry, she's a more forgiving person than I.) Her story comes in conversation with women accused of witchcraft—in Salem, in Sweden, in Scotland, beyond. (See the quotation up top.) It's also in conversation, at times, with itself: I do say that, in a previous draft, in a poem my editor says / isn't quite landing (loc. 855).

I had some trouble with the story format—verse works best for me when I can't just read it as sentences flowing one into another with extra line breaks, and when I have to slow down and reread to get all of the nuance and wordplay. While there is some play of structure and word choice here, for large parts of the book I was able to just read straight through. This is more personal preference than anything, but I probably would have found this a better fit for me in a different format (more prose, or a different style of poetry, or maybe a play). That said, maybe also worth noting that the formatting wasn't quite right on my Kindle (I read an ARC and assume this will work better in the final version, so not something to worry about), and if I'd realized earlier I would have switched to reading on my phone, where things like page breaks came across more clearly. And if you like your poetry on the more straightforward side, this is likely to be a better fit for you.

3.5 stars; structure wasn't for me, but the story is powerful and important, and I love the tie-ins to history. At one point McCullough mentions a previous book being called "timely" when it came out in 2018, and she notes that it was timely then and now and in the 1970s and in the 1610s and in so many years in between, and this feels the same way. It's a timely book, published now when so many stories have been told about abuse within churches and religion (and when restrictive evangelical religion is doing its best to take over the US), but it also would have been timely five years ago or ten or fifty, and I expect it will be timely still some years from now.

*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

Review: "Beyond Borders" edited by Sue Averill

Beyond Borders, edited by Sue Averill
Published 2016
★★★

A short collection of essays about nursing in humanitarian contexts. I picked this up because I'd read a longer collection by the woman who edited Beyond Borders and found it engaging; also because humanitarian work (while not without ethical problems, sometimes significant ones) is interesting to read about, so I probably would have picked this up anyway.

In many ways, I knew it would be like this, but I don't think it is possible to viscerally feel the depth of this challenge without actually being inside it. (Heather Starshine McLeod, "Burst Wide Open," loc. 207)

Beyond Borders is short, coming in at well under 100 pages by Kindle estimation. There are ten essays, and several writers contributed more than one; I suspect One Nurse at a Time (the organization through which this book was published) was quite a small outfit, and judging by its website, which was last updated in 2023, it may since have closed its doors. The writing quality here is variable (some proofreading would not have gone amiss) but overall decent; for the most part I really just would have liked longer essays, and more of them. (Interestingly, a number of the essays in this book seem also to be in Nurses Beyond Borders, which was edited by one of the contributors to this book and published a few years earlier; I may have to see if my library has that one.)

One interesting thing: Sue Averill writes in "T Girl" that Children in my world don't play with other kids one day and die the next. [...] Children in my world don't die in my arms, with me impotent to offer more than mumbled assurances that she was among friends. (loc. 732) It's a poignant moment, but it is not lost on me that her cowriter for the previous essay in the book, "Susy" (and also her cowriter for On a Mission), writes in yet another essay in this book ("Mae Mae"), about the premature death of her own son. It's not in and of itself contradictory; Averill is writing about her own experience, not about Elizabeth Coulter's. But that disconnect could be the starting point for a book all its own.

Review: "Solstice" by Carol Gilligan

Solstice by Carol Gilligan
Published August 2026 via Random House
★★★★

Two people come together, and fall apart, and come together again. It's a push-pull relationship: Eve and Gabe have a happy marriage, three children, a partnership. They've been together long enough that sometimes their attention strays. But sometimes the rules change, or maybe the consequences, and so Eve finds herself alone in Amsterdam, choreographing a ballet and wondering what comes next.

Gilligan is best known for her feminist theory, and although I haven't read In a Different Voice, I've run across it enough times to be intrigued when I saw that Gilligan has turned to fiction. (Also, not to be shallow about it, but that cover!)

The book is functionally historical fiction, though it covers some world events that are, ah, extremely timely. What interests me most is the way the scenes are set up—there's often a significant time jump between scenes, so even if Eve is having (for example) a fairly intense or upsetting conversation in one scene, by the next scene things have moved on.

In places it gets a bit...I was going to say "theoretical", but I think "abstract" is more accurate. For my tastes, anyway—there's always a sweet spot of enough bridges to keep connections clear but not so many that readers feel talked down to; I think in places a bridge or two would have been helpful to me. (Though, too: Not everything has to be related!)

3.5 stars and some food for thought.

Thanks to the author and publisher for inviting me to read a review copy through NetGalley.

Review: "On a Mission" by Sue Averill and Elizabeth Coulter

On a Mission by Sue Averill and Elizabeth Coulter
Published 2017
★★★

Averill's work as a nurse has taken her around the world, and On a Mission focuses on various trips she took to places in dire need of more medical care. This is organized as a set of essays, most (not all) covering experiences during those trips: to Darfur, to Sierra Leone, to Uganda; to Pakistan, to Ethiopia, to the Philippines (though the Philippines chapter has a somewhat different focus...).

It's a fast and interesting read, if at times a difficult one; there's so much loss and devastation and senseless violence. Averill's experience is both wide and deep, and this kind of work calls for an innate ability to think on one's feet and come up with creative solutions.

Most of the book is told from Averill's perspective, but a couple of chapters/essays pull more from her coauthor's side of things (Coulter being a nurse and writer). I didn't love those chapters—there wasn't enough context for me to understand immediately who was talking and why, and the extended "joke" about pretending that a (fictional, mercifully) new nurse was a sexual predator was...not actually funny. Shockingly. On the whole I probably would have preferred a longer-form memoir to these largely disconnected essays, but then, I always prefer a longer-form memoir to largely disconnected essays, so there's that.

There are a couple more books published by the volunteer organization that Averill seems to have worked with (though the actual trips were, as I understand it, through Doctors Without Borders), and I'd be interested to pick those up too.

Review: "Tales of Tanzania" by Hamish McGlashan

Tales of Tanzania by Hamish McGlashan
Published May 2015
★★★

McGlashan was a young doctor in 1960s Britain when he decided he wanted an adventure, and also less medical red tape—so off he went to Tanzania, where the salary was better and the opportunities broader (assuming you were White and British and male, of course).

It must have been a fascinating time in Tanzania, which only (with the exception of Zanzibar) gained independence in 1961. McGlashlan was, as he notes, the last of the breed (90); the British of course only trusted themselves to provide medical care, and so he was in Tanzania in the last years of Britain sending medical staff down on colonial business. It is worth noting, incidentally, that McGlashan readily acknowledges the racism inherent in his appointment; he says, among other things, that I was still underqualified and underexperienced for the role and there must have been many Asian doctors in the country who could have claimed precedence (90), had they been allowed or trusted to do so. (He says earlier that there were no African doctors in Tanzania in the 60s, which I assume is why he specifies qualified Asian doctors here; I'd be curious to know more about the state of medical education for Africans before and after independence.)

So by and large it's an engaging book. There's a certain amount of cowboy-ing, of course (common in memoirs discussing medical work in underresourced places...especially if those memoirs are written by men), and I imagine that practicing medicine in Tanzania now is a very different ballgame. The book could have used a final polish, as there's a certain amount of repetition (I didn't need a third mention of using rotting bananas to attract butterflies!), but if this is the sort of thing to interest you, it's not a bad addition to the subgenre.

Review: "Alchemy of Souls" by Adriana Mather

Alchemy of Souls by Adriana Mather
Published August 2026 via Feiwel & Friends
★★★

Grayson wants to bring down his uncle. Eloise wants a better life for her family. They've been in each other's orbit for years, but kept their distance...until they have no choice but to work together to ensure their mutual survival.

I had it in my head that this would be a boarding school book, but it's more of a restrictive college with boarding school rules (curfew, very limited freedoms, sneaking out to drink, etc.) setting. This is a highly regulated society with strict class division, which plays a huge role. Think dystopia books from the early 2010s; Eloise and her family are on the poverty track with very limited options for upward trajectory, while Grayson's family is high up in the food chain and determined to keep it that way.

I loved the premise (and the cover!) but could have used a bit more by way of worldbuilding. It was late in the book before I got a sense of what the wards were, and I never did figure out why Eloise's bestie from Maine has an aggressive Irish(?) accent. (Maggie doesn't serve a whole lot of purpose in the book—she's mostly accent and Eloise feeling guilty that she doesn't have time to hang out with Maggie because she's trying to save her own life.) I'd also be curious to know more about how the wards, which seem to have quite strict and limited borders, work across continents, and what exactly they do beyond keep out the "riffraff".

This is YA, so there's a romance; it's not really my jam, but it'll be good for readers who like enemies-to-lovers and a pretty high level of knight-in-shining-armor heroics. I wondered for a while whether this might be the first in a triology (again: dystopia books from the early 2010s!), but things feel fairly wrapped up by the end, so while it's possible that it'll spin off in other directions (or with other characters?), this makes for a quick read on its own.

Thanks to the author and publisher for inviting me to read a review copy through NetGalley.