Some New Picture Books Coming In Two Good Series

 Facebook friend Valerie Bolling has two new picture books coming out in August. Here's an appreciation of two of her earlier books that suggest the new ones are something to look forward to.

The first new book is Bing, Bop, Bam, Time to Jam, illustrated by Sabrena Khadija. It's part of Valerie's Fun in the City series. The first offering in that series, Ride, Roll, Run, Time for Fun, also illustrated by Khadija, is about a diverse group of kids who have been released from school for the day. It is time for them to have fun. We're talking minimal words here with some eye-popping artwork. I don't know enough about art to be able to define or label it, but maybe that's just as well. It's terrific. 

Valerie's second book coming out next month is Together We Swim with illustrations by Kahlani Juanita.  This title is the second in her Together Series, the first being Together We Ride, also illustrated by Juanita. Together We Ride is another beautifully illustrated book, though in a very different style. It also has little text, though there's a narrative story here told between word and picture, while Ride, Roll, Run, Time for Fun! is more experiential.

We still have very young children in our family, and I'm a much bigger fan of books that can grab and engage that age-group's minds with story, words, and images than I used to be. I was very taken with these books and look forward to the next books by this author and these illustrators.

The August, 2023 Books And The Book Launch

A book launch celebration for both books will be held on Saturday, August 12 at 10 AM at the New Canaan Library in New Canaan, Connecticut.

Notes On Why I Read "Notes On An Execution"

I read Notes On An Execution by Danya Kukafka, because I am interested in the author's agent. And that is why I am mentioning this book here. It's part of my shifting my world view from children's writing to adult writing. 

Also, a couple of interesting things happened while I was reading it.

First, Notes On An Execution involves a number of women over a long period of time who are all connected to a murderer. Their stories are interspersed with the events of the murderer's execution day. I don't think I'm giving anything away here. It's all in the title.

Well, I started reading the book, and I found a section related to a mother of sons just too painful. I decided I wasn't going to read the book, which I had borrowed through an e-book service, and I returned it.

The very next day I saw on Twitter that Danya Kukafka had won the Edgar Allen Poe Award for Notes On An Execution. The award was announced the night before. She won this award at around the same time I was returning her book to the library.

Book awards often aren't that big a draw for me. However, the timing of this one was so uncanny that I decided to borrow the e-book again. I'm very glad I did, because this is an exceptional book. 

However, I was reading it in bed one night, hit another mother/son section and was up until around 4 AM unable to sleep. To be honest, I had also started an antibiotic that had insomnia as a side effect, so it could have been that. But I would advise any mothers of sons to not read this before going to bed.

Earlier this month, I attended a presentation by two agents who talked about some different categories of fiction. As a result, I'm going to suggest that Notes On An Execution is not a traditional genre work, meaning, in this case, mystery, but a genre work that leans literary or high concept. The book is not, after all, a who done it, since, again, it's in the title, but a why done it. It's literary because of the significance of character development. It's high concept in that the story keeps coming back to the murderer's execution day, and there is a great deal of compassion for every character.

It really is an impressive work. But moms with boys, remember not to read it before going to bed.

This Is What They Mean When They Say "Thought Provoking"

 I attended Facebook friend Sarah Darer Littman's book launch for Some Kind of Hate, published last month. I attended by Zoom, and I meant to catch a picture, but I was distracted because I was late joining. Why? Well, I kind of forgot about it until the last minute.

I mention this, because it illustrates the beauty of Zoom. I sure wouldn't have been driving to that bookstore a minute or so after the event was scheduled to start. I also mention it, because the interview with Sarah at her book launch relating to how she came to write Some Kind of Hate and the background information she's accumulated was fascinating. She has materials at her website on the book.

Some Kind of Hate is written from two points of view, as many YA books are. One is Declan's, a young person who becomes involved with a white nationalist group, and the other is Jake's, Declan's Jewish friend, whose local community becomes a target for Declan's new friends. The points of view almost become separate stories. A book totally from Declan's point of view might have been a hard sell. He's risky, because he's not likable. He's definitely a realistic character: not very strong-willed even before a life-changing accident he brought on himself, and from what I've read, he's the perfect mark for a hate group. But he also is unwilling to accept responsibility for the boatload of grief he brought down on himself and his family. He projects responsibility for his circumstances onto others instead of shouldering it himself, which would then make it possible for him to take some kind of positive action about his life. He also illustrates very well why it is so difficult to reach someone like him. His hate group buddies support his misery and give him beliefs to make him feel better. It is difficult for his family and friends to use logic, fact, or family history to convince him to change, because he believes and belief doesn't require logic, fact, or any kind of knowledge. How deep a hole is he going to dig for himself becomes the narrative drive for Some Kind of Hate.   

I kept talking about this book as I read it, and I think the reason I found it so thought provoking is that I come out of a world similar to Declan's, though much more rural. So I kept thinking, why didn't I or anyone I know go Declan's way? There are a couple of answers: 1. It was a different time, hate groups weren't as prevalent, probably because there weren't as many opportunities for haters to find one another, because the Internet hadn't been invented. I worked for the one Jewish storeowner in our area, so I was aware of verbal unpleasantness directed toward him. But if I hadn't had a connection, I might not have known these things happened in my day and age, there was that little communication in the world. 2. For all I know, people I knew growing up are now members of some of these groups or at least sympathizers. I don't belong to the kind of on-line groups where I would run into them. 

After my sons left home for college, I would hear on the news about some good-awful thing a young man had done, and I'd wonder, Did I remember to tell my kids not to do that? One time I actually asked my younger son about one of these things I'd read about and asked him if I'd ever told him not to do it. He looked at me and said, "You shouldn't have had to."

As I was reading Some Kind of Hate, I wondered if I had forgotten to tell my sons not to be antisemites or racists, the way Declan's parents forgot to tell him. While it appears I didn't have to with my own children, it looks as if kids like Declan have to be told point blank.

 

The Prequel Is As Good As The Original. Maybe Better.

How much did I like We Were Liars by E. Lockhart when I read it back in 2019, five years after it was published? I liked it so much that when I read that a prequel, Family of Liars, came out earlier this year, I
sought it out. 

These are books that it is difficult to talk about, because what is not known about them is what makes them so pleasurable to read. I tried to find a review of the most recent book, but I think the two I looked at gave away more than I want to. I can say that both books maintain the same atmosphere, and given that they were published, if not written, eight years apart that's no small task for the author to have accomplished. I will say that you should read the original book first and the prequel second. It's a prequel. Come on.

I can also safely say that I loved the family matriarch, Tipper Taft Sinclair. I suspect I wasn't supposed to. I don't think it says something disturbing about me that I like her but is an expression of how I function in our family. Tipper ran an annual lemon hunt in Family of Liars. I thought that was a fantastic idea, so when we were having a three-generation birthday lunch on my deck a few weeks ago, I ran an apple hunt, which is like a lemon hunt, but different. It wasn't as elaborate as Tipper's lemon hunt, but I didn't think to do it until the week before. 

Next year my apple hunt will be more Tipper-like.

How much did I like Family of Liars? I own a copy of We Were Liars and reread it, something I very, very rarely do. I mean rarely. The book was still intense and atmospheric with great narrative drive. But this time through I felt a bit about it the way I feel about Romeo and Juliet now that I'm an adult. Are these kids not all that bright?

But you have to read the book twice before you feel that way. The first time through, I didn't notice that. Give these books a read.

  

Environmental Book Club

What I usually see in middle grade environmental books are stories about kids fighting a big bad company that's doing nasty environmental things to endanger something like an animal or a wetland. Very formulaic and predictable. With The First Rule of Climate Club by Carrie Firestone we're talking more of an us-against-the-world thing. Some may find it a bit pedantic, but it's far more sophisticated than other books of this type that I've read.

First off, I feel I should point out that while the book's publisher is marketing it as middle grade, the library I borrowed it from classified it as "Teen." The kids are 8th graders and have access to more social media than I would expect from true middle graders and more freedom to get around. None of this means middle grade students shouldn't read it or like it, just that the more mature characters help explain their access to more mature situations. By mature I don't mean engaging in sex, but understanding racism and that they have the ability to become involved with environmentalism in realistic ways.

Mary Kate is a student in a pilot science class involving climate science in a town near Hartford, Connecticut. She has students from Hartford attending school with her. Living in this area, I can tell you that this is realistic. The kids seem gung-ho for environmentalism, but this makes sense, because they had to apply to attend the class. Only kids who can prove they have an interest and reason to be there are there. 

The kids have various interests, meaning environmentalism is covered in a more whole life type of way then in the "let's save the little wild rodent from the big bad oil company" kind of books. Food waste, composting, fast fashion, electric vehicles are among the topics pulled into the story. One of the things I particularly like about this book is that many of the things covered, such as composting and fast fashion, middle grade and above students could make part of their lives now.

Another topic Firestone covers--the connection between climate/environmentalism and race. Embarrassed to say that I was not aware of that. And my trash was going to the Hartford incinerator she writes about. (Interesting sidenote--before the incinerator came to Hartford, there was an enormous landfill there, known as Mt. Trashmore. It was right along a major highway north of the city. Landfills are not supposed to smell, but this one most definitely did.)

Another important aspect Firestone touches on--the potential for knowledge of climate change to cause anxiety in children. This isn't a book that just takes the attitude that children can and will fix everything for us.

The chapters in this story are very short and often in different formats--sometimes a traditional narrative, sometimes a podcast, sometimes a letter. I do like to move along when I'm reading.

This really is a book that should be valuable for a number of reasons. I hope it makes the short-list for the Connecticut Book Award next year, being both by a Connecticut author and set in Connecticut.

Hmm. What Is Going On Here?

 It's The End Of The World And I'm In My Bathing Suit by Justin A. Reynolds--I absolutely love the title. I love the cover. The book's main character, Eddie Gordon Holloway, is engaging and has a good voice. I like the basic concept--a kid who is caught in some kind of scifi situation while having nothing clean and dry to wear except the bathing suit he happens to have put on that morning. Kids left on their own to deal with with some kind of scenario like this has certainly been done before, but the bathing suit and the voice make this one attractive.

Eddie, though, tends to go on...and on...and on. About doing laundry. About his family. About doing laundry.About any number of things. And doing laundry. The laundry situation explains why Eddie is home alone during what appears to be a pivotal moment, at least locally. But I believe I was at the mid-point of the book before that pivotal moment even began to approach. This is the first volume in a serial, and it is definitely very introductory.

Could There Be A Reason For That?

Eddie has ADHD. ADHD has raised its head in my extended family and is having a look around. Thus it is a subject that interests me and that I may have to learn a great deal more about.

Not being knowledgeable about the subject at this point, I was left wondering as I read this book about the significance of ADHD in Eddie's life. Is Eddie's drifting away on tangents a representation of how the ADHD mind works? Is that what's going on here?

Or am I reading too much into this?

If the next book in the serial has as terrific a title and cover, I would be willing to give it another go, mainly because the story has barely started. 

A Nineteenth Century Couples Mystery For YA

 I often have a reason for picking up the books I do, one that goes beyond, "Gee, that looks good." I chose Anatomy: A Love Story by Dana Schwartz, because it sounds similar to the various adult mystery series I've read that are set in the nineteenth century with a male and female lead who meet somehow, get involved with solving a mystery, one thing leads to another, and romance ensues. Also, not to leave anything to the imagination here, sex.

That pretty much is what happens with Anatomy, which involves an aristocratic young woman who wants to break out of her planned life and become a surgeon. In that era, the study of anatomy was becoming significant in the training of doctors. Bodies to study were few and far between, and the medical community supported grave robbers, known as resurrectionists. Sure enough, our heroine gets tangled up with one who provides her subjects for study.

This was a good book, very readable. I'm not a fan of the direction it took at the end, but that definitely is a just-me thing. Additionally, for those of us accustomed to reading these kinds of stories for the adult market, the romance/sex is very tame. To the point that I was left wondering what happened and just what kind of relationship did these two now have. I hope that this doesn't mean that I need no-doubt-about-it sex scenes. It may be more that I struggle to read between the lines.

Whenever I've read of resurrectionists, the stories have been set in Great Britain. Anatomy takes place in Scotland and inspired me to check out if something similar went on in the United States. Oh, my goodness. Did it ever.

Yeah, the nineteenth century American medical community didn't suffer from an abundance of ethics, at least as we would recognize it today. 

And racist? Oh, yes. Though I suppose doctors back then could have argued that they only seemed like racists, because, hey, these are the bodies we could get.

I am so turned off to medicine right now.    

Ironhead: When You'd Rather Go To War Than Stay In This Marriage One More Minute

I can recall reading novels, probably historical romances, about the Napoleonic Wars when I was a teenager. So you can see why I was attracted to a review of Ironhead: Or Once a Young Lady by Belgian writer Jean-Claude van Rijckeghem, with translation by Kristen Gehrman, which might be described as a historical anti-romance.

Eighteen-year-old Constance is a young woman who doesn't know her place in early nineteenth-century Belgian society, probably because there isn't one for her, since she has minimal interest in doing laundry and bearing children. Her father insists she marry a much older man who will then become his business partner and pay off his debts. Constance sticks out the marriage for four months. Then, recalling having run into what was clearly a lesbian couple in which one member was dressed as a man, she comes up with a plan to take the place of a local acquaintance who has been drafted into Napoleon's army. Living as a man among soldiers--that is most definitely Stance's place.

Constance's fourteen-year-old brother, Pier, does know his place in their society. He's a student in a boarding school, which will open possibilities for him. But his father can no longer pay his school fees. Money from Constance's husband was supposed to take care of that. So when Constance disappears, he takes off with a supposedly trustworthy guide to find her and bring her back.

The two siblings appear as point-of-view characters in different parts of the book. We're not talking alternating chapters here, but close to it. Because Pier is a more conventional character, his story thread isn't as interesting in the early part of the book, though he improves markedly. They both have journey/adventure story lines.

I think this is a unique book in today's American YA scene, where you find a lot of fantasy and contemporary romance with some contemporary mystery and thrillers thrown in. Historical fiction tends to be of a more accessible time, say late nineteenth, early twentieth century. Ironhead is a good book that requires a little of the reader to start, with a big payoff later, something I can't recall seeing much of in YA. 

A Marvelous YA Mystery

I found Cold by Mariko Tamaki through a review in The Horn Book. I was a few issues behind, so I was able to find this book at a nearby library. I'm interested in YA mysteries and thrillers right now, so there was my attraction.

It's a terrific book about a dead teenage boy and a live teenage girl. And that's as far as I'm going with the plot description. Oh, except Tamaki does something terrific with the mean girl clique cliche. I am not a fan of alternating points of view, but this worked great. The female lead is my favorite Georgia since Georgia Nicholson. It's not that outrageous a comparison because these two Georgias have voice.

This could be described as a queer mystery. What is particularly interesting is that it is slowly revealed just how much that thread has to do with what is happening. 

Mariko Tamaki is the author of the graphic novel Emiko Superstar  (art by Steve Rolston), which won a Cybil in 2009. 

Goal-Driven Characters Are Very Readable

Copy provided by NetGalley

Publication date: June 7. 2022

I am embarrassed to say that June being Pride Month really hasn't been on my radar the way, say, Black History Month and Women's History Month are. I have been noticing references to it the last week or so, though, and as random luck would have it, I just finished reading a book that marks the occasion

I wasn't attracted to Home Field Advantage by Dahlia Adler by the romance. I don't care for romance by itself. Person meets person stories end with our leads getting together, so I feel I know the ending before I even begin. I need a surrounding story for my romance reading. And I wasn't attracted by the football, because I am only a sports fan during the Olympics, and pretty picky even then. What did lead me to ask for the galley was the knowledge that both the cheerleader in Home Field Advantage and the quarterback are girls. I haven't read a lot of those. To date.

Amber McCloud is a popular cheer leader who is shooting for cheer captain, because it will help her chances for college. Jack Walsh is a gifted football player who has been brought in to replace Amber's high school's late lamented QB who was nowhere near as good as Jack is. In fact, the whole team is not on Jack's level. But they are grieving their dead teammate who died unexpectedly, and Jack, being Jacklyn, becomes a target for both misogyny and homophobia.

Goals, Goals, Goals

Amber is a somewhat closeted lesbian--what happens at cheer camp stays at cheer camp--dating a somewhat closeted gay football player, Miguel. One of the particularly interesting aspects of this book, I thought, was that neither Amber nor Miguel have any problems with their sexuality. Nor is family acceptance a major issue for them. They are not out, because coming out will hinder them reaching goals. Amber sees making cheer captain as a stepping stone to college and getting out of town and she doesn't see the cheer team embracing a lesbian no matter how good she is. Miguel wants to play football. His one experience with another player knowing his reality did not go well for him.

Jack, too, is very goal-oriented. A high-achieving female football player has few options. Playing with this loser team may be the only opportunity she will ever have to play football. It may be a stepping stone to some kind of sports-related career.

What these characters want to achieve makes their behavior make sense. Giving characters something to want is cliched writer advice. Give them a goal! 

Oh. Wait. Football has goals, doesn't it?

I am not fond of alternating points of view, and sometimes I felt Amber and Jack got too introspective for my taste. But this was a narrative with drive and some unique characters for this reader. I was even up for a football scene. I've only been vaguely aware that LGBTQ books are a thing in YA. Home Field Advantage definitely encourages me to read more.

Joe Cepeda Has A Book Out This Month. Hey! I Know Him!

I was checking out some book events at the Once Upon A Time Bookstore in Montrose, California, when I saw that Joe Cepeda is making an appearance there next month for his book, Rafa Counts on Papa. I thought, I know that name. It's from...it's from somewhere in my past.  

Indeed it is! Joe Cepeda illustrated my last two books, A Girl, a Boy, and a Monster Cat and A Girl, a Boy, and Three Robbers.

Check out his incredible studio.

Congratulations on the new publication, which looks and sounds wonderful.

Maybe It's Not Them, It's Me

Copy provided by NetGalley

Publication Date: May 10, 2022

By the time I read my NetGalley ARC of Dear Friends by Lisa Greenwald, I'd forgotten how I found out about it or why I was interested. That kind of thing happens to me rather frequently and often leads to some very positive reading experiences. This was one of them.

Dear Friends begins with protagonist Leni confronting friend problems. She is really, really into best friends and when things go awry with her summer best friend as well as her all around best friend, she is shaken. My first thought was, Oh, this is going to be another one of those books about learning how to accept that relationships change. So true, so true, but I feel I've read enough of those.

But, no! As Leni starts to think about these situations, she realizes that a number of her friends are, indeed, former friends. Is this a pattern? What is going on here? So she sets out to investigate these former relationships and try to determine what happened. 

Leni is a bit of a girly girl, interested in traditional girl friendship things, and I could have found her difficult to take as a character. However, her recognition that looking at her past relationships and contacting former friends could have a positive impact on her future gave her depth and made her a much more sophisticated character.

Some might argue that the book becomes a little teachy with what Leni realizes a person, herself included, needs to do in order to be a good friend. However, what she learns and expresses is valuable and a little different from other friend books I've read, which are often about avoiding toxic relationshiops. In this case, Leni is coming to terms with the idea that maybe it isn't her friends, it's her. 

The book certainly made this adult reader dwell a little bit on whether or not she's making time for other people. Not enough to do anything about it, but still.

Environmental Book Club

Copy provided by NetGalley

Publication Date: May 3, 2022

A World Full of Nature Stories 50 Folktales and Legends  by Angela McAllister with illustrations by Hannah Bess Ross is a lovely collection of folktales and legends from around the world that, as the title says, feature nature. They are often creation stories relating to some natural feature or event. Arguably they are not nature stories so much as they are stories trying to explain nature from the standpoint of people who had no understanding of natural science. 

What makes them attractive for American readers, in particular, is that many of them are unfamiliar to us. They are new and novel. At the same time, though, it appears that foolish kings and jealous, nasty siblings are common all over the world, as are the rewards of good character.

As a child, I was a fan of a couple of books of short pieces to be read over a long period of time. For that reason, I can see A World Full of Nature Stories getting a lot of use in a home library. Elementary and middle school librarians in schools with units on folk tales and legends or foreign countries should really consider this, too. 

I read an e-arc but what I saw suggests that, in addition to its fine content, this is a beautiful looking book.

Another Writers' Group Member With A New Book

Another one of my writers' group colleagues has a book publishing, this one today. If You Were a Garbage Truck or Other Big-Wheeled Worker! by Diane Ohanesian with illustrations by Joey Chou is a rhyming story that puts "preschoolers in the driver's seat as their favorite vehicles reveal the ups and downs of being a busy truck." It sounds as if it might be described as the inner lives of trucks.

Diane is the author of several other picture books. Two years ago, she did an impressive presentation for her lovely book, Snuggle Down Deep, that I was able to cover here. To help mark the publication of If You Were a Garbage Truck, as well as observe Original Content's twentieth anniversary, I'm rerunning it below.

 

Saturday, January 19, 2019 An Author Does Story Hour At A New Bookstore

Human children and animal babies all go to sleep. That's the entry point that makes Snuggle Down Deep by Diane Ohanesian with illustrations by Emily Bornoff work. Each section involves both some light factual material with the "snuggle down deep" repetition. The book combines nature, poetry, and...sleeping. It's a lovely book with an ecological thread.

The Event

Cookies A Work Of Art

This morning Diane Ohanesian did what could be called a master class in how to do an author story hour in a bookstore. She had an audience of close to a dozen kids from around two-years-old to maybe six or seven. Yes, she brought cookies, which made a much nicer impression than I would have expected.

Making The Story Interactive

What was really impressive, though, was the way she got control of her group with the first words she spoke. In a whisper, she asked her audience to do something and they did it.  She kept control with a terrific board kids could interact with as she was reading. She finished up with a simple art project that went over extremely well, probably because of the great box of supplies she brought with her. She had brand new packages of paper!

Treasure!

Watching Diane illustrated why new writers should take advantage of opportunities to see writers experienced with speaking and dealing with the public.

 

 

 

The Venue

Diane read at the new River Bend Bookshop in Glastonbury, Connecticut. It's a nook and cranny independent bookstore, the kind where browsers can get a sense of the intellect curating the offerings. I "have a bookstore" in Stowe, Vermont I go into once a year and walk around until something jumps off the shelf and tells me to take it home. River Bend

Children's Nook

could be that kind of place.

Of course, today I bought Snuggle Down Deep.

River Bend is hosting writers and other literary events. 

Cottonlandia: Southern Lit For YA?

Copy provided by NetGalley

Publication Date: January 11, 2022

A New York City rich kid ends up penniless on a cotton farm in Mississippi. That description at NetGalley, combined with the cover illustration, attracted me to Cottonlandia by Watt Key. It's a city mouse/country mouse, fish-out-of-water story, but one that's not played for laughs in the Green Acres mold. Also, there's no dealing with a traditional high school situation and friends here. No bullies, no teacher problems, no sports, no sibling rivalries. Not your same old, same old YA.

Fifteen-year-old Win Canterbury is not your same old, same old YA male, either. He is self-centered, self-involved, selfish, entitled, and immature and demanding. He most definitely is not the likable character required for readers to identify with. I loved him. He might not be someone I'd like to know personally, but I loved him in this book, because he was different. His unpleasantness, however, doesn't alter the fact that he has also been abandoned, though not your traditional abandonment on the side of the street. The reason for the abandonment is unique as well.

Just before Christmas sometime in the 1990s, Win's wealthy father informs him that he's sending him down to visit his sickly grandmother in Mississippi for a few days. Win doesn't know the woman. He's only been to Mississippi once. His father is insistent. So Win is handed off to a flight attendant in New York, takes three planes to get to his destination, where he is met at the airport by John Case, the farmer who has been renting the Canterbury family's property, Cottonlandia, for decades. The farm is a going concern as a cotton plantation/farm, but the family house is sort of rotting around its owner, who is sort of rotting away herself. Not exactly a southern mansion, though it and the grandmother have clearly seen better days. Win is dropped into this world where he can't even get food he's used to, and after a few days he learns that he has to stay there. He has nowhere else to go.

The 1990s setting makes Cottonlandia believable. The Internet was not then what it is now and teenagers were not connected with phones and social media, so Win's isolation  makes sense. An old lady with no TV and only one phone she doesn't want to use would be eccentric at that time but still possible.

In a more formulaic YA book, Win and his creepy grandmother would develop a deep, meaningful relationship. Not here, thank goodness. Or living at Cottonlandia would awaken some kind of instinctual love for the family property. Again, no. Instead, Win's boredom and dependence on John Case, as his contact with his old world, eventually leads to his involvement with the people he now finds himself stuck with. He eventually rejects those who should have cared for him and didn't and embraces those who provided him with care when he needed it. 

If I knew more about southern regional writing, I might suggest that Cottonlandia is southern lit for YA. Place and world view are hugely important in the story, and the place is in the south. There's a lot of description, which is something I usually skim. I didn't here. Seriously, I actually read about cotton farming and blowing up beaver dams. (Aside: I am not fond of beavers.) I felt I was being exposed to something new for me, read everything, and looked forward to getting back to the book between reading sessions. Some people might argue that the climax of the story wasn't climactic enough, but there's a reality to that. Plus, if you had any involvement with construction at the end of the last century, the issue Win uses to get what he wants is entirely believable. It used to be a very big deal and may still be, though maybe not so much here in New England.

The author, who has published successfully with traditional publishers, says in a note that he published Cottonlandia himself. It can be hard for self-published books to attract attention. I hope that this one gets some.

A Fun And Compassionate Book About Friends And Picky Eating

Copy provided by NetGalley

Publication November 2, 2021

I  think The League of Picky Eaters by Stephanie V. W. Lucianovic could be described as a middle grade friends book. Main character Minerva recognizes that her long-time best friends are just plain toxic. (The main one has a mother who is pretty appalling, too, as mean girl moms often are in books and movies. Mean girls learn their mean ways at home.) Sadly, this is at the very point when Minerva is placed in a remedial class, where she eventually realizes she's found a group that embraces and understands her.

The remedial class Minerva is placed in is for picky eaters, children who don't meet the standards for eating in the slightly alternative world they live in. Like Rival, a YA mean girl book, The League of Picky Eaters is about something more than just school relationships. Rival was about singing, and The League of Picky Eaters is about...picky eating.  

Picky eating is a real thing, and it is what brought me to this book after reading Lucianovic's adult book on the subject. We have three picky eaters in our family, one of whom has taken whatever this is--condition/eating disorder/food aversion--into adulthood. We've been dealing with it for many years. Picky eating isn't a dire, life-threatening issue. But it does cast a shadow over lives. We are an extremely food-centered culture. Meals and snacks are eaten at school, incredible numbers of social events are created around food or food is featured before or after them. Work meetings involve lunches, coffee and doughnuts (though all our picky eaters will eat those, or at least some types), dinners, and receptions. A simple book discussion group can end up meeting in restaurants. Dating is around meals. Oh, wait...traveling...means eating in restaurants. Any health situation that involves eating--gluten-related health conditions, diabetes, lactose intolerance, and, yes, picky eating--causes life complications for people affected and their families.

At last Sunday's book launch for The League of Picky Eaters, which I attended in Los Altos, California from my office in southern New England through the magic of Zoom, Lucianovic, a recovered/recovering picky eater, said she was twenty-seven-years old before she started making progress on her own picky eating. She went on to go to culinary school and eat, what sounds to me, like a remarkable number of things. She is every mom of a picky eater's fantasy. She wrote this book, she said, because in the area where she was living she was seeing competitive parenting around eating. And that led her to a book set in a school named for St. Julia Child where students are graded and tracked for their eating.

One of the big attractions of this book for me is that our main character doesn't experience some kind of eating revelation. Characters changing is a simplistic, quick-and-dirty writing rule/tip thrown around in many how-to articles and intro-writing workshops. Minerva's life does change in a realistic and positive way. But it's not around her eating, which is also realistic. I haven't seen or heard of a lot of that happening with picky eaters.

The League of Picky Eaters is entertaining and interesting, because it's about something we don't see a lot in children's books. (I don't know if I've seen it in any fiction.) My concern for the book is that adult gatekeepers won't be familiar with picky eating and not realize what Lucianovic has done here. 

Stephanie Lucianovic ran her launch party from her kitchen where she made a grilled cheese. Grilled cheese figures prominently in The League of Picky Eaters, because it is an acceptable, even loved, food for many picky eaters. Yes, yes, we know grilled cheese well here. In fact, someone mentioned it just yesterday.

The Way "I" Say It

I've finished reading my first digital arc from NetGalley, The Way I Say It, by Nancy Tandon, which, I am relieved to say, is a beautifully written book about real child situations. I say "relieved," because Nancy is a member of my writers' group, this is her debut novel, and things could have been awkward, since my followers here are aware that I'm a little picky in my reading. (To be honest, in my head I talk about books the way the legendary Roy Kent on Ted Lasso talks about soccer.)

In our writers' group, we are all working on a number of things. Some of these projects go back a while and as new members come into the group, they may not be aware of what individuals were working on in the past. And some of us, yes, I mean me, may be a little irregular in our attendance. So while I was aware of this book and that it was being submitted to agents and when agents got involved and when it was sold, my knowledge was what you might call superficial.

For instance, I thought The Way I Say It was about a kid with a speech impediment and how he deals with it. I would argue that's not the basic story here. The basic story, to me, is far more sophisticated. It's about a kid, who happens to have a speech issue, dealing with his anger and guilt over a failed relationship and how that impacts his world during sixth grade.

I hate to go into too much detail, since there were a couple of points where I actually exclaimed while reading this book, because I am so lazy that I didn't even read all the flap copy. I don't want to take that experience away from other readers. (Don't read the flap copy!)

So I'll talk about some other things.

What Do I Mean By Real Child Situations?

Over the years, I've found that many middle grade novels, especially the ones that are warmly embraced by gatekeepers, deal with situations adults find...uh, shall we say...terrifying? Dead parents, siblings, relatives, and friends, divorce, terminal illnesses, chronic disease, war, and the ever popular demented old people, for example. I'm not saying these aren't terrifying situations or that they never happen within children's families. But there's a whole other category of issues that are important to children and focusing on the major life problems that adults find important all the time suggests that children's problems are not valuable enough to showcase in books for them.

In The Way I Say It, Nancy Tandon deals with a school year full of these types of issues. Fear of humiliation and not being included, struggles to deal with uncomfortable interactions, beginning to want to spend time with members of the opposite sex, getting started on a new school year and having to rebuild relationships or make new ones. Starting a new school year is like starting a new job, people. We think starting a new job is important, don't we? Why isn't starting the new school year enough without killing someone off or breaking up a marriage to go along with it?

Write Who You Are

 

I don't like to use the expression "write what you know," because, first, it's a cliche and, second, it has become somewhat controversial. People get very hot under the collar about what it means and what it has to do with them. I prefer "write who you are." Nancy Tandon is a speech therapist. I believe that's why the great deal of speech therapy talk in her book sounds natural and normal to the moment where it takes place. She drew upon who she is to create details for her main character and the teacher who plays a big part in his sixth-grade life and for various situations she puts them into.

 

It's true you can research whatever you want to write about. But there used to be an expression I'd see in book reviews, "don't let the research show." That can be difficult to do if you haven't had an opportunity to live with or maybe work with that research for a while. It can create information dumps or at least sound forced. The Way I Say It illustrates the value of writing who you are.

The Way I Say It will be published Jan. 18, 2022 by Charlesbridge. I'm excited to see how it will do.