Review: "Carole" by Clément C. Fabre

 

Carole by Carole by Clément C. Fabre
Translated by Matt Madden
English translation published August 2023 via Europe Comics
★★★★

On the face of it, Carole is two brothers' quest to find their aunt's grave in Istanbul—an aunt who died shortly after birth. Their grandparents, who had long since left Istanbul and established themselves in France, had once tried to find the grave again, but it had seemingly disappeared.

It helped going into this to know that the grave is largely beside the point; the book is a much deeper exploration of culture and history (and history in the making) and family lore than a simple grave, located or lost to time, can offer. I'm reminded of I Want You to Know We're Still Here, in which the author seeks traces of a half-sibling lost to World War II—in both cases, the search for records provide perhaps a more concrete and longer-lasting record than there is anywhere else.

The art is great—the cover is very true to the rest of the book—and I love the way the relationship between Fabre and his brother is depicted. There's a lot of push-pull, with one brother more adventurous and comfortable in the unknown than the other, and even as they clash they clearly get each other. I particularly love that Fabre isn't interested in making himself the, or a, hero of this story; he has a great eye for the reality of the situation.

It helps, reading this, to be okay with somewhat ambiguous endings, but this is a good one. Highly recommend.

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

Review: "Sweet Valley Twins: Teacher's Pet" by Nicole Andelfinger and Claudia Aguirre

Sweet Valley Twins: Teacher's Pet by Nicole Andelfinger and Claudia Aguirre
Published June 2023 via Random House Graphic
★★★

In the second instalment of this Sweet Valley Twins graphic novel adaptation, Elizabeth and Jessica are in competition: their ballet class is scheduled for a performance, and there's only one star role. Elizabeth is the teacher's pet pupil...but Jessica is convinced that she's the better dancer.

On the whole, I think this series is doing an excellent job of staying true to the original while updating things for the 2020s. Elizabeth comes off pretty well here—more 'kind, rational tween' than 'little miss priss', as she often ends up in the books. Jessica...well, Jessica is frowny and green with jealousy and ready to step on anyone who gets in her way for the entire book, but that's also honestly a marked improvement on who Jessica often is in the originals.

The 'Jessica is a better and more dedicated dancer' plotline feels pretty uneven. We're told several times that Jessica practices more than Elizabeth, but most of what we see is Jessica wanting to spend time with the Unicorns, at the beach, etc., rather than practicing. Dance is 'everything' to Jessica, she says, but in practice that seems to mean that 'dance is everything to Jessica as long as she's in the spotlight and there's nothing more interesting going on'. Meanwhile, Elizabeth performs seemingly perfectly until she's under pressure, which means that it's hard to evaluate Jessica's claim throughout the book that she's a better dancer than Elizabeth.

But Jessica's right about one thing: the teacher isn't fair. We saw this in the first book (the teacher being really nasty because Jessica was a normal kid instead of a professional dancer), and here she really does seem to pick a couple of favourites and ignore everyone else. (If I read the non-graphic-novel version of this book, it was a very very long time ago and I don't remember what the teacher is like there!) Jessica eventually gets her attention, of course, but I think her parents would do better to find her a different ballet teacher.

The art style, which feels to me more comic book than graphic novel, isn't really to my personal tastes, but it gets the job done. (Though—at the end, when they're both on stage in one way or another, Jessica still looks furious that Elizabeth has the temerity to exist.) I'll happily continue with the series.

Children's books: "Little Tree and the Wood Wide Web", "21 Things to Do with a Tree", and "Project Earth"

Little Tree and the Wood Wide Web by Lucy Brownridge, illustrated by Hannah Abbo (Ivy Kids Eco)
21 Things to Do with a Tree by Jane Wilsher and Martin Stanev (Ivy Kids Eco)
Project Earth by Carol Kim, illustrated by Ahya Kim (Picture Window Books)

Diving into the world of children's books! This time, a trio of books about trees and taking care of Earth.

Little Tree and the Wood Wide Web is a great way to teach kids a bit about the interconnected nature of, ah, nature. The lushy illustrated picture book tells the story of one young tree struggling to put down its roots in a big forest—and the other trees that come to its aid through a network of woods and fungus. ('The Wood Wide Web' is wonderfully punny, but the book tells us that it was actually coined by Suzanne Simard, who is—I Googled—a professor of forest and conservation sciences at UBC.)

The illustrations are soothing and eye-catching, somehow managing to be both consistent and varied. I love the little faces in the trees, but my favorite spread by far is the one where Little Tree is sad at night; the colors in the leaves are really gorgeous.

Adults reading to children—get out your reading glasses, because the text is small. Worth it for the combination of story and science, though!

21 Things to Do with a Tree is, as the title suggests, all about trees and some ways to get to know them better. Some of the activities are more likely to hold kids' attentions than others, but the illustrations are absolutely wonderful—delicate and detailed. They're also casually, naturally inclusive: the children (and adults) in the book have varying skin tones, some are wearing hijabs (and one is wearing a dinosaur sweater—and okay, that has nothing to do with diversity, but it's adorable), and one character is in a wheelchair. There's stuff for kids of different ages and interests and physical abilities in here. It's great. (The book is also careful to slip in safety reminders as needed. Don't eat the berries!)

I'm torn between making a "go climb a tree" joke or making a John Gorka reference—but I guess I can do both! Climbing a tree is already in the book, which gives me twenty-two things to do with a tree.

Another wonderful addition to a kids' bookshelf. Honestly, I'm taking some tips—as a grown adult—from page 24 on how to plant a tree...and I'm also going to go look up Gorka's "Branching Out" again. May this book prove to be as timeless as that song.

In Project Earth, written for slightly more advanced readers, Jina has a problem—climate change! When she learns about the effect climate change is having on polar bears, she's determined to be part of the solution. But that's not as easy as it seems...

This chapter book is a nice introduction to climate change for young readers. Jina's understanding of climate change (and the things that contribute to it) is simple, but that's appropriate for the target age range of 6–8. The illustrations (many of which are full-page) are fantastic and a great fit for the book. And, as a bonus, there's a side story about reaching out to new classmates and making new friends, which manages to fit seamlessly into the broader story.

This is part of a series, so if kids enjoy Jina's adventures there are more books to expand their understanding of how to do right by Earth—I'd love to see a later book find Jina joining in a protest or something regarding policies that are contributing to climate change, since the difference that individuals can make pales in comparison to the damage big corporations can do to the environment.

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

Review: "Beth Hilton, Model" by Lee Wyndham

Beth Hilton, Model by Lee Wyndham
Published ~1961
★★★

Beth has always felt like an ugly duckling compared to her cousin Lisa, who has worked as a model since she was a child—but a stint in charm school leads to some unexpected opportunities for Beth, and suddenly she's the one in front of the camera.

I go through phases of reading old and outdated children's lit, and I seem to be in one of those phases now. Beth Hilton, Model does not disappoint: it feels charmingly wholesome and elderly, with the occasional jolt of WTF to remind you that it was written in the early 60s. There are some attempts at good lessons here—Beth is told, directly, that charm school will not help someone become a model if they don't already have the genetics for it (and to be wary of scams); she's also told more than once to maintain a healthy diet, not skip meals, and that models shouldn't be too thin. (Twiggy hadn't hit the scene yet when this was written, so who knows what she would have been told had this been published ten years later.) It's also well into the book before Beth starts modelling, and I love that she's not an overnight success—she gets a few jobs here and there, but it's a while before she's working regularly, and she's reminded more than once that she's lucky to live nearby and to have family who can support her. I also love the plotline with Pete, her platonic male friend—she's maybe interested in him, but he's more interested in Lisa's glamour. Later, when Beth starts to show some of that glamour too, Pete starts coming round again...and Beth is very sensibly cautious, and does not forget that he wasn't interested in her when she was Beth Hilton, Not a Model. (Later, there's a different boy for whom she's willing to give up an enormous opportunity, and I don't love that—but at least he's willing to do the same for her.)

But at the same time...some of the messaging is less good. Beth is told to lose a few pounds and that "When you're down to where you ought to be, you can binge once in a while for the sake of your morale" (104), which is a recipe for disordered eating. And when sexually assaulted, she's told that "It is your own fault" (159) for not knowing better when a previously charming-seeming man invites her in to "look in on my mother" (157). (Obviously there's no mother there.) Never mind that Beth is naïve and didn't know better; never mind that at other points in the book, she goes with some trepidation, alone, into strange men's apartments or workspaces and those experiences lead to her becoming a sought-after model. It was the 60s, and I know "it was her fault for being assaulted" was the order of the day, but...eurgh.

Anyway. The end of the book takes a wild turn that has nothing to do with modelling (snowstorm! trapped in a house up a mountain! drama!) and is frankly unnecessary to the book, but at least it's entertaining.

Do not recommend unless, like me, you're weirdly into outdated YA. Will absolutely read more.

Review: "I See You, Survivor" by Liz Ianelli

I See You, Survivor by Liz Ianelli
Published August 2023 via Hachette Books
★★★

I am scared right now. I am so scared you will think I'm crazy or dangerous for admitting that. I'm scared you will close this book and say, I thought Liz was strong, that she was a fighter and a survivor, but this...this feels like too much. (loc. 507*)

Ianelli was fifteen when her parents sent her to the Family—a "therapeutic boarding school" for troubled teenagers. She was eighteen when the facility could no longer hold her against her will and she left—but the trauma of her experience didn't end there.

On the surface, the troubled teen industry seems to be doing a good thing: taking at-risk youth and putting them in programs that are heavy on structure. The claims are big—that they save teenagers from addiction, promiscuity, early death. But the facts are bigger: the industry is unregulated, staff are rarely adequately trained, abuse is rampant, and reports of deaths at (and, critically, after) such programs are high. (And then the programs explain it all away by saying "they were already troubled, not our fault, at least we kept them alive for a few extra months or years".) I've read a fair amount about the troubled teen industry already, enough to go into Ianelli's book expecting abuse. And, well, that's what's in here. Physical, sexual, emotional, medical, spiritual abuse—let's just say that the Family didn't do things by halves.

It's a complicated, messy story, a manifesto and a lament and a confession and a record all rolled up in a ball of rage. The voice will likely be hit or miss for readers, but Ianelli is doing something valuable in her focus on not just her time in the Family but the continued struggle that came after, as a direct result of those years at the Family. I don't recommend going into this blind, because, as Ianelli notes, survivors of such programs (I hesitate to call them "schools") are often doubted—as in, "okay, it wasn't a good place, but surely it can't have been that bad". Sometimes it's easier to believe reports of abuse if they come from an outside source, so if this is a new topic for you...find some outside sources too, because these are voices and stories that should be taken seriously.

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

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

Review: "Temples & Tuk Tuks" by Lydia Laube

Temples & Tuk Tuks by Lydia Laube
Published 2004
★★★

Laube managed quite a writing career for herself, spinning her far-flung holidays into travelogue after travelogue. I read Behind the Veil (in which she took a temporary job in Saudi Arabia) some time ago, and I was curious about Temples & Tuk Tuks because I've found so little travel literature covering Cambodia.

The energy is good here, but on the whole I think I would have preferred this—and would be more likely to continue with Laube's books—had Laube been living and working in the countries (in this case Cambodia) she visited rather than just visiting; as far as I can tell, Saudi Arabia is the only country for which that was the case. Because Laube was here and there and all over the place in Cambodia, that makes it hard to get to know individual characters and their stories; instead, a large amount of the book's real estate is dedicated to descriptions of the guest houses she stayed in and meals she ate. And that's...fine...but not really where the stories I'm interested in are.

If there's anyone out there going from country to country as a travelling nurse...please go find yourself a publisher, because I'd read the hell out of that memoir series.

Review: "The Definition of Beautiful" by Charlotte Bellows

The Definition of Beautiful by Charlotte Bellows
Published September 2023 via Freehand Books
★★★

Bellows was in Grade 9 when the pandemic shut the world down. With time to spare, she set about trying to lose some weight—and, in the privacy of a world removed from everyone else, but with seemingly half the Internet determined to lose lockdown weight, a diet spiralled into an eating disorder.

I'm intrigued by this as something of a pandemic memoir. It's not at all the focus, but I've read enough articles talking about the impact of the pandemic on mental health, and on eating disorders more specifically, that this feels like the beginning of what might be a wave of memoirs about that. At one point Bellows' therapist observes that "The timing really is awful ... You have an eating disorder during a global pandemic. Normally, as part of the healing process, you would reconnect with teenage life. But now, with all these restrictions, you're stuck in a tricky situation" (loc. 792*). Isolation exacerbated by isolation, I suppose.

Bellows wrote The Definition of Beautiful while coming out of that eating disorder—and out of the more restrictive pandemic regulations—and while still a teenager. It's not entirely unique for that latter point, but this particular book is a truly impressive feat for a teenager. Writing a good story or essay is one thing, but managing a full-length book is another thing for anyone, let alone a teenager, and Bellows does an excellent job with pacing in particular, and with to-the-point but fully realized scenes. There are some places where I think age might help (more on that in a moment), but on the whole this puts a lot of adult-written memoirs to shame. (One of my primary thoughts while reading was This is clearly someone who reads a lot, which is always a good feeling.)

Two things that didn't work as well for me: First, a fair amount of the book takes place in Bellows' dreams, in a place she calls the Deep, which I'm not particularly keen on. I'm not actually sure if it's all actual (lucid?) dreams she had or more of a literary device to illustrate where one's mind tends to live during an eating disorder, but whether fiction of nonfiction dreams have always felt too intangible to hold my focus when reading. (Personal preference and your mileage may vary.) And second, at times—especially early on in the book—word choices and phrasing tilted a bit far towards angst. The book makes up for it in taking a clear-eyed (and almost numbers-free) look at the experience of illness and recovery, but that's really the one thing where I think time and distance would be a benefit.

Here's hoping that Bellows keeps writing. It'll be interesting to see where she goes with it, either fiction or nonfiction.

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

*I read an ARC, and quotes may not be final.

Review: "A Little Love Song" by Michelle Magorian

A Little Love Song by Michelle Magorian
Published 1991
★★★★

Good Night, Mr. Tom was my favourite book for approximately an age after I first read it in middle school, and I've meant for years to give A Little Love Song a go. In it, Rose and her older sister are off to the seaside for the summer, out of the way of war. It's meant to be a quiet few months for them, but they—Rose in particular—have some growing up to do.

Here's what's interesting about Rose: she and her sister, Diana, have grown up with some amount of money and privilege. They're sheltered: they barely know how to boil water. And when Diana befriends a young woman who is unmarried and pregnant, Rose is borderline appalled. She...doesn't know what she doesn't know, basically. Rose manages to learn that particular lesson fairly quickly (and redeems herself when it counts), but throughout the book she comes up, again and again, against her naïveté. She hasn't learned to judge what sorts of boys are worth her time and effort, and some of the decisions she makes are accordingly inadvisable. But that's what's great about the book: Rose makes these decisions, and then she lives with them. Nobody swoops in at the last moment to save her from her naïveté.

All's well in the end, of course. Readers will see some of it (e.g., the intersection between Hilda's story and Rose's) coming, but there's plenty to keep a reader on her toes. I wish I'd read this ten or fifteen years ago (when I was, you know, younger and less jaded...or something like that), but I'm glad it survived my bruised and battered to-read list.

Review: "Let's Never Speak of This Again" by Megan Williams

Let's Never Speak of This Again by Megan Williams
Published August 2023 via Text Publishing
★★★★

For Abby, teenagedom feels uncertain—she has supportive friends and family, and she's proud of her place as the youngest member of the school netball team, but (she's a teenager, and) that doesn't always mean she feels like she fits in, and a new girl at school compounds her uncertainty.

I read this partly for the cover and partly because it promised a story more about friendship than about romance, and I thirst for platonic friendship stories. It delivers: it's an understated story, and it's best not to go in if you're looking for something fast-paced with a lot of action...but for coming-of-age wrestling with what it means to have old friends and new friends, and how to support friends through hard things, it's great. One of my favorite moments comes early on, after Abby unknowingly kisses her cousin's cousin, and she's squicked out but not ashamed—she's ready to turn it into a cringey story for her friends. And later, when things get difficult, I love that she tries but also often does or says the wrong thing. She's still figuring it out.

I've said it over and over, but we need more stories like this—ones where romance might be a factor, but it's not the point of the book or the central part of the protagonist's life. Again, look for this when you want something quieter, but I love this sort of thoughtful, relatable thing where the intensity of friendship takes the center stage.

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

Short story: Review: "Calypso's Guest" by Andrew Sean Greer

Calypso's Guest by Andrew Sean Greer
Published August 2023 via Amazon Original Stories

In this twist on The Odyssey, a man alone on a planet wants for nothing—a veritable army of robots does his bidding, creates just about anything he could ever ask for, can build and rebuild the world to his specifications.

But: he's been there for centuries, alone, and he can never leave. He'll be there for centuries more. And it's only when someone else crash-lands on his planet that he gets a brief—and doomed to be temporary—respite.

Though it spans some seven years—and stretches beyond those years—this is a short story, and I would have read and read and read. By the time we meet the unnamed narrator, our Calypso, he is resigned to his fate; he has found a certain peace in his prison, but it is a prison nonetheless, and he has long since lost interest in exploring its boundaries or seeking (a futile) escape.

There's a certain hopelessness to this story—in the narrator's resignation, and in the futility of his hope that he will no longer be alone. I imagine it will frustrate some readers, but if you can sit in that futility (it took me a while to understand why he would not have bothered to explore the rest of his planet, his prison), it's a fascinating read. The narrator's exact circumstances are not always detailed (presumably he cannot be killed, but can he be injured? How badly? Are there any creatures on his island that he must fear?), but it does make one thankful for mortality, no?

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

Review: "The Unlikely Heir" by Jax Calder

The Unlikely Heir by Jax Calder
Published August 2023 (self-published)
★★★

There are a lot of people the heir to the British throne isn't supposed to fall in love with—commoners, for example, or Americans, or anti-monarchists. This goes double when the heir was until recently 11th in line, and is an American himself at that, and certainly not expected to get anywhere near inheriting...and triple when he unexpectedly falls for a man...and quadruple when, uh, that man is the prime minister, and royalty isn't supposed to get involved in politics. So that's Callum's life in this book. Shenanigans ensue.

Perhaps against my better judgement, I am very fond of contemporary "suddenly royal" books (shhh, we all have our quirks), and this is no exception. It's interesting in a few different ways—first, though Callum is not living a particularly privileged life at the beginning of the book and doesn't have any expectation of going anywhere but farther down on the line of succession, he's well aware of who his family is. This is not a "who is this upstart" book so much as a "hello, Gran" book. Second, Callum is a grown man by the time he takes his place as first in line for the throne, and the expectations placed on him are...different from the expectations in fiction I've read in which a girl or woman is suddenly high up in the succession line (or about to marry within it). There's no discussion of his figure, or schedules so packed they leave no time for breathing, or days upon days of etiquette lessons. To be fair, I do think this book leans heavily towards the permissive side on that score—I suspect that anyone thrown into that particular shark tank would be far more scrutinized from the Crown's side, not just the public side, than Callum ever is—but there's a point to be made about expectations and attitudes when a man is in a position of (sudden) power vs. when a woman is.

The romance is fun and full of terrible puns, which is...well, pretty much just how I like it. Callum and Oliver very quickly come up against the reality of their situation—they can't be together publicly unless one of them steps down from their respective very highly privileged and influential roles, and chances of maintaining a private relationship are slim to none—which means that the things keeping them apart tend to be external rather than internal, which I'm always fond of because the relationship tends to feel healthier.

I'm not sure Callum needed quite so many things stacked against him, though. He's 1) unexpectedly first in line, 2) American, 3) the sort of romance-novel clumsy that means that he'll spill coffee down someone else's shirt any time there are photographers around but rarely otherwise, 4) in a relationship that could become a legal nightmare, and 5) just now realizing that he might not be as straight as he thought. And that's a lot. 1 and 4 together would be enough for a book's worth of drama. 3 is probably in there as an inoffensive character flaw, but there's a limit to how many "charming but clumsy" hero/ines I can take, and I hit that limit a good decade ago. I'm ready for a new standard inoffensive character flaw! 2 definitely creates drama, and I suppose 5 is in there so that Callum and Oliver can spend time as friends (and without sexual tension) before getting together, but for those I could take them or leave them.

All told, plenty of fun—will likely appeal to fans of Red, White and Royal Blue or American Royals.

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

Review: "Hungry Ghost" by Victoria Ying

Hungry Ghost by Victoria Ying
Published April 2023 via First Second
★★★

Val is smart, popular, and under pressure—mostly from her mother, who cannot interact with Val without telling her that it's better to be thin, that it would be bad if she gained weight, that whatever she's eating is too much, that she should be careful so that she stays thin. Val has found a workaround: she eats, and then she throws up. It doesn't change her mother's comments—but it keeps her thin.

The art here is lovely; not as precise as the cover image, but with soothing, consistent shades of a foamy blue-green, a pale salmon, and a soft, purply grey. I would have liked to see some more from the side characters, though—although Val's best friend, Jordan, and her mother both get a reasonable amount of page time, there's very little from her mother that is not either grief (due to a mid-book plot point—I have rarely related to a character so much as when Val observes that I haven't really been able to think too much about my dad. I've just been trying to hold my mom together (119)) or food-shaming. It seems clear that her mother has some major issues of her own, but because we never see any of that (and very few gentler moments with Val) she's relegated to this role as, well, food-shamer extraordinaire. (I'm not sure if there's supposed to be a cultural aspect here—parent reluctant to give too much praise—but I don't want to assume, because neither that nor the background of the title is discussed.) I'd also have loved to see more of Val's brother, more of why she's interested in Allan, more of her world in general.

That said—I think the the themes of body image and grief will resonate heavily with many readers. Although I'd say that Val clearly has bulimia or purging disorder, not the vaguer 'disordered eating' claimed in the book, she's managing her eating disorder in a way that hasn't torpedoed her life (yet), which is, to most, probably more relatable than the more-common-in-YA-fiction eating disorder that rapidly turns into something imminently life-threatening and requiring hospitalization. Where Val might go from the end of the book is up to the reader's imagination, but hopefully it's to happier places.

Children's books: "An Unexpected Thing", "Is a Worry Worrying You?", and "My Brilliant, Resilient Mind"

An Unexpected Thing by Ashling Lindsay (Frances Lincoln Children's Books)
Is a Worry Worrying You? by Ferida Wolff and Harriet May Savitz, illustrated by Marie LeTourneau (Tanglewood Publishing)
My Brilliant, Resilient Mind by Christina Furnival, illustrated by Katie Dwyer (PESI Publishing)

Diving into the world of children's books! This time, it's all about that old monster—worry.

In An Unexpected Thing, Fred's life is ruled by fear—but his (new?) friend Coco helps him see that sometimes uncertainty can be wonderful.

This makes for a lovely, compassionate look at anxiety in kids. I have a friend (diagnosed with anxiety from a very young age) who might have benefitted from this sort of book as a child, and I expect many adults will also know children for whom this would be helpful—children who can't quite bring themselves to fling themselves at the world with abandon.

The illustrations are rather rougher than the cover image suggests, but the use of color is really nice, especially as the book transitions from Fred's view of the world to Coco's.

In Is a Worry Worrying You?, worry is an uninvited monster that has crashed your picnic, tripped your best friend, and taken up residence under your bed. Do you ever have a worry that won't go away? What is a worry, anyway?

But not to worry! No swords are needed to battle this monster. Instead, the book subtly walks young kids through redirecting their thoughts and finding alternative solutions. The illustrations are dark but playful, and they remind me a bit of Where the Wild Things Are—not only a book for worried kids but one for monster-loving kids!

All in all, an excellent addition to any collection of books aimed at helping kids understand and work with their emotions.

Designed as a mix of playful rhymes and useful tools, My Brilliant, Resilient Mind walks kids (and their parents) through negative feelings—and some ways to cope with them and hopefully turn them around.

The rhymes vary somewhat in scheme, usually ABCB or AABB. They're a bit slant in places, but I'm guessing that kids won't notice, and the rhyming would be a good way to help some of the strategies (variations on reframing and positive thinking, mostly) stick in one's brain. The art is simple but effective, something like a mix of colored pencil and watercolor. My favorite thing, though, is a simple little choice: the twins are a boy and a girl, and it's the girl who loves soccer and the boy who loves art. It's inconsequential to the story, but it's so nice to see that tiny choice to buck stereotype and subtly reinforce that interests aren't gendered.

Not sure this is one kids are likely to return to over and over again for the story, but it's a useful addition to a bag of tricks for teaching kids about managing emotions.

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

Review: "The Ministry of Thin" by Emma Woolf

The Ministry of Thin by Emma Woolf
First published 2013
★★

In 2012, Woolf published An Apple a Day, a memoir (drawn from a Times column that she wrote) about trying to recover from anorexia. In 2013, she followed up with The Ministry of Thin, in which she takes an extremely unscientific look at the pressure that girls and women are under to look and sometimes act a certain way.

And...I can only think that Woolf was still deep in her disorder when she wrote this. She speaks of anorexia as a thing of her past, but she also says that I literally don't go near butter (loc. 267); wonders whether, despite her anorexia, she was ever actually mentally ill (loc. 2597); describes women who don't have 'fuller figures' as 'the perfect ones' (loc. 3167); argues repeatedly that size is purely down to behaviour rather than, e.g., genetics; and tries unconvincingly to argue that she doesn't have a problem with fat bodies:

This [fear] is the way I feel about fat in food. However, fat as body shape seems quite different. It interests me. I wonder what it would be like to become very large. (loc. 606)

but then continues with fun things like this:

I know it's easier than it sounds. I know that, despite having come close to death, I would still choose battling anorexia over battling obesity. No one wants to be fat. Everyone wants to be thinner. (loc. 760)

The book isn't entirely about body size—Woolf also talks about, for example, the pressure to be made up a certain way (she tells us that the fact that she sometimes leaves the house without mascara is down to 'my own laziness' (loc. 1643))—but as far as I can tell most of this book is her attempt to delude herself into thinking that she's perfectly healthy and normal now, and any residual terror of butter or disdain for fat people is just natural because she's a woman in today's (or 2013's) society. I do not recommend reading this if you have ever had an eating disorder. I do not recommend reading this if you have a bigger body. I do not recommend reading this in general.

Woolf was still only very recently into some semblance of recovery when she wrote this. It's been ten years, and I really hope that things have continued to improve for her. But...somewhere along the way, I wish an editor had looked at this and said, 'Look, interesting concept, but let's table this for a few years until it feels less raw and you can think about actual science and research instead of your continued tithing at the Church of Thin.'

Children's books: "Explore Under the Earth" and "Explore the Rainforest" by Carly Madden

Explore Under the Earth by Carly Madden (Happy Yak)
Explore the Rainforest by Carly Madden (Happy Yak)

Diving into the world of picture books!

Explore Under the Earth takes Evie and her dog Juno down through the layers of—surprise—the earth, learning a bit about each layer as they go.

I love the varying sizes of the pages, which allow for something tactile and colorful. The order seems backwards to me (surely the pages should get smaller as Evie and Juno go down deeper into the earth?), though it would take a total and probably difficult rewrite to start at the earth's core and work outwards, so I can see why the author opted to do otherwise. It's easy to see how this concept would translate well to other shaped board books—a triangular mountain book, perhaps? Another partial circle for one about rainbows? The possibilities go on and on.

Young readers can continue Evie's adventures in Explore the Rainforest, which takes Evie and her dog Juno up, up through the layers of the rainforest, each page a bit larger as they climb through the trees.

This makes for a colorful and instructive read, with lots of layers in the illustrations and plenty of little details to attract young readers. The format is a lot of fun, combining whimsy and practicality. (The font is quite small, though—adults, have your reading glasses at hand!) Either of these would make a fun gift for a young child who is curious about the world.

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

Short story: Review: "A Welcome Reunion" by Lucinda Berry

A Welcome Reunion by Lucinda Berry
Published August 2023 via Amazon Original Stories

A chilling look at what comes after: when Hannah knew her before, Janie was a violently abused child—someone in need of help, support, love. But Janie's disturbances went far deeper than that, and there was no recovering from what she did.

She's eighteen now. An adult. Released from juvenile detention, her record locked, going by a new name—and prepared to set the world on fire. And Hannah isn't prepared to see it burn.

This story is set sometime after Berry's The Perfect Child. It's not necessary to read that first—I have not, and I didn't realize until I'd finished the story that it's a follow-up to a full-length book. I suspect (having skimmed some reviews for the book) that this will go a ways to satisfy readers who hoped for more of an ending to the book, but the creepiness of the violence in this story tells me that I will have to save consideration of the book for a day when I'm in the mood to be unable to sleep at night.

All told, a satisfyingly creepy shot of writing that begs the question—how far would you go to keep your world in one piece, and to keep someone else from destroying it?

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

Review: "Trail of the Lost" by Andrea Lankford

Trail of the Lost" by Andrea Lankford
Published August 2023 via Hachette
★★★★

2015: A young man goes into the wilderness and disappears.
2016: A young man goes into the wilderness and disappears.
2017: A young man goes into the wilderness and disappears.

In Trail of the Lost, Lankford chronicles three disappearances on the Pacific Crest Trail—Chris Sylvia, Kris Fowler, and David O'Sullivan—and the efforts made to find them. A park-ranger-turned-nurse, she got involved in one of the unofficial searches almost by accident, but once she was in, she couldn't turn away.

I read Lankford's Ranger Confidential in 2016, and it left me with the sense that she had loved her work but was deeply burnt out by the time she left. This proved to be a better fit of a book for me, partly because I adore both thru-hiking books and search-and-rescue memoir, but also because Lankford is uniquely qualified to write it. Lankford more than had the qualifications to take part in the search efforts, and she proves here that she also has the research and writing skills to weave a very complicated story. This is three stories in one, mixed with numerous others—because inevitably, over the course of years of searching and researching, Lankford and the scrappy team of searchers she was involved with stumbled across, or were asked to investigate, other missing-persons cases. No spoilers, but what the investigations turned up varied widely.

Most missing-person cases in the wild are resolved quickly, but that was not to be the case for any of these three. It makes for a twisty and turny ride, with leads including a cult, multiple psychics, questionable science (read: the kind of science that the book is here to critique, not to promote), drone footage, solo accidents, accidents involving other people, and much more.

One thing that might turn some readers off: Lankford has a tendency of mentioning mental illness in the context of crime ("...a thirty-two year-old man with a history of mental illness..." (loc. 3148*); "...mentally ill fugitive..." (loc. 3638); "...attacked by a mentally deranged man" (loc. 4539); etc.). It's never a main point of the story, but then, neither is any of these individuals' mental health relevant to whatever parts of the story Lankford tells. Again, not a big enough part of the story for me to draw conclusions, but enough to mention...and to remind anyone who is still reading that people with mental illness are far more likely to be victims of violent crimes than to commit them themselves.

Overall, a fast and gripping read if you're drawn to wild spaces, mysteries, and stories taking place in the intersection of those things. May be of interest to readers of Kathryn Miles' Trailed and Jon Billman's The Cold Vanish.

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

*I read an ARC, and quotes may not be final.

Review: "Skating on Mars" by Caroline Huntoon

Skating on Mars by Caroline Huntoon
Published May 2023 via Feiwel & Friends
★★★★

Super sweet middle grade read about ice skating, gender identity, navigating friendships and middle school cruelty, and grief. I picked this up for the skating aspect but stayed for the grief processing, which feels on point—shifting understandings of identities when someone important is not there to learn about it is something I've thought a lot about in the past year (though in a different context than Mars has), and it's handled in a nicely understated manner here.

Some of the gender identity stuff feels a bit more heavy handed (there are lessons here), but I think that may be reflective of the fact that not only am I not the target audience (I'm almost three times Mars's age), but Mars's generation is learning about gender identity at a much younger age than my generation did, and the lessons are correspondingly age-appropriate and sometimes simplified. (I'm not sure when I first met someone who wasn't cis—or rather, was openly not cis—but I'm guessing college, and that wasn't because I was particularly sheltered but rather because at the time we hadn't really gotten past discussing the LGB part of things. Cue a whole bunch of learning on the fly!)

It's fascinating and cool how much things have changed in a few years—fifteen years ago I was struggling to find lesbian books, let alone lesbian books that didn't involve homophobic violence, in the LGBTQ selection; ten years ago I could find trans books in the YA section at the library; now I can find books that further subvert the gender binary in the middle grade crop of books. It'll be interesting to see what comes next.

Review: "To Walk It Is to See It" by Kathy Elkind

To Walk It Is to See It by Kathy Elkind
Published August 2023 via She Writes Press
★★★

There is a saying: An adventure is not worth telling if there are no dragons. (loc. 127)

I say that I'm a semi-reformed nomad, and it's books like these that keep the 'semi' part of that in play. Surely I could lace up my boots, lock up my apartment, and go out into the mountains for a few weeks...or months?

When Elkind and her husband Jim wanted an adventure, they did that: they picked the GR5, a route that winds from the Netherlands all the way down to the south of France. As the kilometers slipped by, the route got tougher—but so did they.

This is the second book I've read in as many months about the Grande Randonnée network (the first was The Twenty, about the GR20), and my goodness it fuels the wanderlust. Elkind and her husband had pretty quiet dragons on the trail, all things considered—occasional wrenches thrown in the works, but it would be stranger if there were none in 98 days of walking! Her dragons tend to come more from within, when looking back at years past. I'm particularly intrigued by Elkind's writing about her dyslexia, for which she did not receive adequate support as a child—not learning to read until grade seven—and the fact that she ended up teaching elementary school, with a focus on reading. We teach what we need to learn, she says (loc. 775), and I wonder how much else that might apply to.

I read piles and piles of books about the Camino before I walked that, and another stack or two after—perhaps these books about the GR trails herald a new adventure? One can dream.

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

Review: "Nobody Needs to Know" by Pidgeon Pagonis

Nobody Needs to Know by Pidgeon Pagonis
Published August 2023 via Little A
★★★★

My chromosomes chose intersex. My doctors chose girl. And I was left to endure the consequences. (loc. 1337*)

Pagonis was told a lot of things about their body as a child—some of which turned out to be true. Others turned out to be warped truths, and still others turned out to be blatant lies. And then there were the things that Pagonis wasn't told.

In Nobody Needs to Know, Pagonis chronicles a journey of surgeries and imposed otherness punctuated by revelations: as a kid just starting school, as a preteen, as a first-year in college. It was that last revelation, which led Pagonis to seek out their medical records, that set them on a route to activism—in particular, a drive to change the system that made Pagonis's body not their own for so long.

I'd learned early on, in the days after the surgery while lying in that hospital bed and during all the checkups that followed, that my body wasn't my own. It didn't belong to me. It belonged to everyone else. It belonged to the people who could "fix" it, to the people who wanted to study it, to the people who would use it. (loc. 945)

I've read enough about what it means to be intersex to understand one very simple thing: the best cosmetic intervention is no cosmetic intervention. There are too many stories of infants having parts cut off or sewn up so that they look more "standard," irrespective of what that might mean for identity or quality of life, and ignoring the fact that these infants will eventually grow up to be children and then adults with opinions and feelings about their own bodies. This is just one of those stories, and as far as I know such surgeries are still the norm rather than the exception. But Pagonis highlights some other devastating experiences as well—such as being a kid in hospital expected to strip down and bare all for any set of doctors who wanted to come by and take a look, without being told the truth about why they were in hospital and without an understanding that they could say no.

Two things that I would have really liked to see here: first, though there are some ties to trans activism, I'd love to know where the people fighting against intersex rights (such rights including the right to not have nonconsensual cosmetic surgery) stand on questions of trans rights. Pagonis touches on this a little, in terms of hospital policy, but I suspect that there's a different kind of enormous disconnect in how conservative politicians view the matter.

And second, research. I do not need the hard numbers to be convinced, but that doesn't mean I don't want to see the hard numbers anyway. Late in the book, when Pagonis is talking to doctors who perform these surgeries, the doctors' argument (as Pagonis tells it) boils down to "It makes the parents happy if their kids' genitals look normal!" I desperately wanted a retort of "Here's what the peer-reviewed research says about what those kids say about their own damn genitals when they grow up"—but I don't know what sorts of studies have and haven't been done, so barring that, I'd have liked some discussion about surgeries continuing despite the long-term impacts not having been studied in sufficient detail.

If you don't pick up the book, it's still worth checking out Pagonis's Wikipedia page and reading more about their experience and advocacy work.

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

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

Review: "The Dos and Donuts of Love" by Adiba Jaigirdar

The Dos and Donuts of Love by Adiba Jaigirdar
Published June 2023 via Feiwel & Friends
★★★

Puns and Bake-Off-inspired YA! I'm here for that.

I've read more than my fair share of YA rip-offs (not a criticism) of the Great British Bake-Off, and they've been hit or miss. The thing I love most about Bake-Off is how relaxed it is—the bakers are all highly competitive, yes, but mostly they're competitive with themselves. The stakes come from wanting them all to succeed rather than pitting one against another. (It probably helps that there's no cash prize—people get a different kind of aggressive when there's money involved.) For that reason, I tend to find it disappointing when bake-off rip-offs lean heavy on the manufactured drama. I'm here for the cake descriptions and to be sad when any contestant goes home, not for food fights and hair-pulling.


For the most part The Dos and Donuts of Love strikes a nice balance. I love that Shireen's ex is never portrayed as evil—Shireen wants to cast her that way, yes, but it's more complicated than that. There's some ~~kitchen drama~~, but a lot less than there could be, and while it definitely looks like the producers are trying to add turmoil, they never really succeed. It's maybe worth noting that while this is marketed as YA, it could go down to MG without too much trouble—as it is, it feels on the younger side of YA.


In other places I'm not really convinced. There's...not a lot of creativity in the food? It's a very short competition, with about as many multiple eliminations as single eliminations, but even then most of the dishes are skimmed over at best, leaving the pacing feeling uneven. It kills me that, tasked with making something chocolate, Shireen and her partner settle on chocolate cake and then...consider their planning done. What kind of chocolate cake? Vegan? Flourless? Double chocolate? Filled with hazelnut mousse? Chocolate orange? What kind of frosting? There are literally thousands of options, and the fact that non-foodie me knows this but Shireen doesn't seem to consider it is...concerning. With few exceptions, her baking choices are all pretty basic, and I wish I'd gotten a better idea of where any of the contestants might go with a bit more creativity. What Bangladeshi inspiration could Shireen—as she says she wants to—bring to her baking? Tell me what a Bangladeshi-inspired donut would taste like! I want to try it!

But then, the judges don't seem to mind. Two contestants make macarons twice over the course of the show, and two others make donuts twice, and even though the entire thing is...five or six episodes long? (I could probably work this out, but I'm just going to guess), nobody comments on the repeats. They're planning everything from scratch, apparently, without any knowledge of what to plan for (to my understanding, not how baking shows usually work—usually you at least have a sense that you'll have to make, e.g., a cake and a bread and a pastry, so that you can plan to infuse your bread with basil or whatever and the crew can buy any specialty ingredients needed for your recipe), but I can't help thinking that the 'top' junior bakers in Ireland should be able to think a bit more creatively, even on the fly.

So overall...cute enough, and I'm thrilled to see more Bake-Off rip-offs (no joke. Someone write more! I might run out!), but not quite hitting that sweet spot. Fill in the donut plot holes, and then we can talk...

Review: "Lovingly Abused" by Heather Grace Heath

Lovingly Abused by Heather Grace Heath
Published 2021 via Palmetto Publishing
★★★

I've been reading a lot about conservative American religion of late, especially Evangelicals and the Quiverfull movement. It's not a new reading interest of mine (it's a very, very different world from the one I grew up in), but a few things have made this not-so-fringe group get more publicity of late, and consequently...more reading material. So I picked up Lovingly Abused after watching the Amazon docu-series Shiny Happy People, for which Heath was interviewed. Heath was raised in the Institute in Basic Life Principles and its Advanced Training Institute, which is to say that she was homeschooled using the IBLP's so-called Wisdom Booklets—which in turn is to say that her education was, ah, lacking. Real school curriculums don't hand out actual tests asking "How do show love to a homosexual?" or show a video of a man limping and ask "What do you think is causing this man to limp?" (40), Heath writes. (The answers, if you're curious: you become a 'prayer warrior' for the homosexual—but not a prayer partner, because that could lead to temptation!—and the man is limping because of his extreme bitterness caused by Satan.)

These were the cult classics. I later learned this is an actual term for media geared towards a specific audience, but I mean it in the literal sense. This would have been convenient to know when I spent an embarrassing amount of time arguing with outsiders that films such as Monty Python and the Holy Grail or Clockwork Orange weren't even approved cult movies, let alone classics. (82)

IBLP is not in and of itself a religion: it's an organization that peddles its services to any number of conservative churchgoers. Heath describes attending conferences with Calvinists and Mennonites, Amish people and Baptists. But it has all the hallmarks of a cult: a leader taken as charismatic; a highly authoritarian structure with one leader at the top; an us-or-them mentality; a distrust of the outside world; suppression of questioning. Heath was taught that sexual abuse was the victim's fault, that dinosaurs and humans coexisted, that a seven-year-old girl sharing a hymnal with a seven-year-old boy was slutty and inappropriate, that touching a dead body would defile her, that her role as a woman was to be wife, mother, subservient.

You know that quote from Billy Graham's wife, "I don't believe in divorce, but I belive [sic] in murder?" I'm surprised none of my relatives have that cross-stitched on throw pillows. Throughout my whole family tree, we have rapists, incestual pedophiles, child molesters, spouse and child abusers, thieves, drug addicts, and a murderer. But I was the first one ever to get a divorce. My family simply didn't believe in divorce because, you know, it's important to have standards. (159)

Health is very clear about the disservice her homeschool 'education' did to her and the damage it wrought, but she's also clear-eyed about her parents' motivations—in particular, that her mother was trying to do right by her kids, and IBLP/ATI presented a path forward with what felt like security, a contrast to her mother's unstable childhood. It's a story that seems to be common: parents getting their families into IBLP because it sounds better than their stressed situations; kids bearing the brunt of the consequences. Heath tried, year after year, to fit into the mold—but eventually, the straws piled upon the camel's back became too much, and she started to choose her own future over the one her upbringing demanded of her.

As a book, it's somewhat hit or miss. Heath has a wry, dry humor, and it's very necessary in the face of the abuse, neglect, and control she describes. She also has the evidence to back it up: she's not talking just about 'here's my memory of this experience' (which would in itself be valid, to be clear), but she also has the materials from her homeschooling 'education' and an entire trove of IBLP references to pull on. It's entirely worth checking out her social media accounts after reading the book to get more visuals. That said, I would love it if Heath's role in Shiny Happy People led an established publisher (Lovingly Abused is self-published) to reach out and work with Heath on polishing an updated version of this. It's such a powerful story but sometimes feels all over the place—the structure is sometimes chronological and sometimes thematic, and at times repetition feels more like catharsis than like something that best suits the story. It makes a great deal of sense in the context of Heath not having had access to formal education until she was an adult, and to me it was worth it for the combination of context and personal story that the book offers, but I suspect that there's a potential version of this book that could reach, and resonate with, a much wider audience.

Review: "Disobedient Women" by Sarah Stankorb

Disobedient Women by Sarah Stankorb (@sarahstankorb)
Published August 2023 via Worthy Books (@worthypub)
★★★★

When girls are taught "Biblical womanhood" equates with purity and submission, they are trained to feel responsible for protecting men from their allegedly God-ordained sexual appetites—dress modestly, avoid front-to-front hugs, vow virginity until marriage—but also obliged to yield to authority figures: their pastors, fathers, men. Through one lens, they are delicate, precious. But through another, easy prey. (loc. 870*)

For decades, the Southern Baptist Convention has been a conservative stronghold in the US, holding firm to a patriarchal view of religion. Think purity culture, think fighting against marriage equality, think forbidding women to preach. And think sexual abuse: for decades, the SBC covered up abuse by leaders and more generally men in the church, blamed women (and girls) for men's crimes, and told survivors over and over again that their voices were not to be heard.

Not all women listened. And it's that story that Stankorb documents in Disobedient Women: sometimes it started with a blog post, and sometimes with a tweet, but over the years a growing number of decided that it was time for something to change. They started sharing their stories, swapping information, and building databases of the men the church had, again and again, protected from the consequences of their crimes.

If you're familiar with the IBLP (think: the Duggar family, Bill Gothard, and the recent docuseries Shiny Happy People) and the way it has contributed to change in the American religious landscape, a lot of this will feel familiar. Stankorb did not grow up directly in it, but she felt the reverberations in her own upbringing, and her research is meticulous. This is not a book about religion or faith—it's about one of the ways that religion has been used to mask grabs for power and to abuse those with less power. I'm fascinated by the points Stankorb makes about blogs and social media doing things that traditional journalism could not:

Wartburg Watch covered the extreme theologies of popular pastors and broke abuse cases journalists couldn't touch. It is immensely difficult for journalists to get editorial approval on a story about sex abuse allegations without charges; it requires deep fact-checking, a willing editor, and a publication taking on potential liability risk. But reporters have more readily covered the fact of a blog post making such claims, and in this way, Parsons helped create an end-around for getting media coverage of the stories she worked to corroborate. (loc. 1160)

Eventually, these voices added up, reaching a critical mass loud enough that they could no longer be ignored. And yet this can only be the beginning: Over the course of these years that started with reporting on the bloggers and then following my sources' advocacy on social media, writes Stankorb, the countermovement for reform has changed shape too. This book, in many ways, represents a snapshot in time. Much as the reckoning begun with those in this book has rocked the church, in other ways, a needed shake-up is only beginning (loc. 3125).

This is one of many recent books that are continuing that shake-up, and it's a good one to have on your shelves.

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

*I read an ARC, and quotes may not be final.