One college-bound young woman's very bad time in space

"Binti" by Nnedi Okorafor
Recommended Grades: 9-12

Binti is a young woman who’s a prodigy in mathematics and communication, living in a future time when humans from all cultures of the world have access to space travel, and are in contact with several space-faring alien societies.

She is the first woman of her people, the Himba of Namibia and Angola, to be invited to study advanced mathematics at a prestigious university in another star system. She is the first in her family to even want to leave the village they live in long-term, let alone the planet. Full  of hope, she leaves earth on a spaceship.

Everything goes horribly wrong in space. She will have to use her wits, the knowledge that her elders taught her, and her incredible communication skills to survive conflicts with a jellyfish-like alien race that seeks to destroy her new university home.

The worldbuilding and technology in this story is so much more creative and groundbreaking than any science fiction television show or movie of today, even though the book was published almost 10 years ago now. Its centering of the way of life of a culture that has, by the futuristic setting of this book, stood up to the assimilative efforts of Eurocentric colonial capitalism for many centuries is remarkable on its own, but that’s just the beginning of its originality.

Binti’s Himba culture isn’t just a costume for her character. It forms core parts of her characterization and of the plot. This reliably places this series into the science fiction sub-genre of Afrofuturism.

The action is exciting and fast-paced, and the plot is compelling. I found myself not wanting to put it down before I reached the end.

The themes of the story revolve around coexistence with cultures that one doesn’t share. This could fit into larger unit about cross-cultural understanding.

There is some brutal violence in this story. For this reason, I recommend keeping this book, and the rest of its trilogy, available for all science fiction enthusiasts older than 9^th grade, who don’t mind a little violence.

Word count: 330 Words

Content Warnings (contains spoilers): 

A brilliant and challenging comic on the Asian American experience

"American Born Chinese"
By Gene Luen Yang
Recommended Grades: 9-12* (See review)

Lin moves to a new school for third grade. As one of only three Asian-American students, he struggles to fit in. Not only do the white classmates relentlessly bully him, but the teachers alienate him through their stumbling lack of familiarity with his culture. He tries to fit in more by rejecting anything that his classmates see as too Asian, including, at times, a classmate from Taiwan, Wei-Chen.

At the same time, the traditional Chinese story of the Monkey King is told. The Monkey King is a divine ruler of monkeys who’s rejected by the other divine beings for not being human-like enough. He struggles with trying to become more human-like in order to fit in.

At the same time, Jin watches a 1980’s style sitcom along the lines of Family Matters, about a white high school main character having to put up with an embarrassing comic relief cousin. The cousin is a full Chinese stereotype, straight out of racist 1800’s cartoons and minstrel shows.

OOPH.
A reminder that the contents of these comic pages do not
reflect my personal beliefs or taste.

This is a complex graphic novel to fully grasp. I first read it as a fan of graphic novels marketed towards adults, and it has a large adult audience. It’s appreciated for its unique overlapping storytelling, its use of metaphor and symbolism, and for its potent expression of the experience of growing up as an Asian American. I didn’t even think about it as a book to recommend to young readers until recently.

So: What age is this book right for?

Despite the story starting in third grade, I suggest this book to high schoolers and up. There are a few moments of bloody violence in it, and a few passing sexual references told as sitcom jokes, but those aren’t why I suggest caution here.

The Asian stereotype character is so potently offensive that any students who have not learned about the history and use of Asian stereotypes in the USA probably shouldn’t read this book and take him at face value. These parts of the book may even fuel racist bullying in classrooms that are too emotionally or intellectually immature to understand him.  

A high school literature class would need to spend time learning about stereotypes to give students the context needed to understand this character.

This character is such a problem that the Disney Plus television TV-14 adaptation of this book toned  him down substantially. They replaced his offensive name, removed his lecherousness, and instead portrayed him as a clumsy version of a 1980’s style Asian stereotype, along the lines of Sixteen Candles Long Duk Dong, rather than as the fully 1800’s-era portrayal found in the graphic novel.

Overall, this is still a brilliant book. I fully suggest having it available in a high school library’s comics collection for students’ solitary reading, and for requests. I would also suggest it as a text for use in a high school classroom to study stereotypes and the Asian American experience.

Word count: 478 words

Content Warnings (contains spoilers): 

This ghost story brings the history of the dead to vivid life

 "How I became a Ghost" by Tim Tingle
Recommended grades: 5th-8th

Issac is a ten-year old boy of the Choctaw people, from what we now know as Mississippi. He’s already dead when he starts narrating the tale of what leads to his early demise. Death is an inevitable facet of reality for the many doomed characters in this dark story, since soldiers of the United States army have begun the destruction of and forced relocation of his people. We now know this genocidal project as the Trail of Tears.

Isaac’s existence is already on the border of the mystical while he’s still alive. He has frequent visions of danger and death before the events happen, and ghosts that only he can see are a constant presence in his tale. He also talks to his dog. None of this is seen as dangerous or unrealistic by his tribe members once he finally tells them. Ancestors visiting to impart wisdom is treated as just another part of their daily lives. This departs from the normal tropes of children’s literature, in which disbelief or shunning often come to a character with powers.

Despite his inevitable death, Isaac still succeeds in aiding his tribe as they travel west, through a harsh winter, with cruel and sadistic soldiers who seek to escalate the violence and disease at every opportunity. The violence and injustice is graphic and upsetting at many points. Which is the point.

The use of ghosts and ancestral spirits in this book to give depth and life to historical events reminds me of the Southern Gothic tradition and of Toni Morrison’s “Beloved,” which also uses fictional ghosts to represent the ancestral trauma and permanent scars of American history on its still-living survivors. This book is written in a much more straightforward narrative than that work, and its sympathetic characters and well-paced action sequences make it a thrilling read in parts, on top of its educational and empathetic values.

You expect the hero of a story to survive the tale of adventure that he tells you. That this hero is dead before the book even starts should tell you how unique and unpredictable this middle-grade book really is.

This is one reason this book stands apart as a notable work of children’s literature. The other is the unfortunate dearth of culturally authentic written adaptations of Native American stories. Most children’s books which proport to be taken from Native American traditions instead originate from a person outside of the culture, such as a white anthropologist, whom inevitably adapts the narrative to fit European tropes and traditions.

By contrast, the mystical and historical events at this book’s heart are, according to the Choctaw author, Tim Tingle, taken from genuine stories from his people.

I recommend this harrowing, but gripping, book for 5^th grade and up, especially if it could be added to the time period that the student is learning about the Trail of Tears in their history curriculum. Be ready for any parents or school officials who adore Andrew Jackson  to challenge it, but it’s worth that fight.

Word count: 500

Content Warnings (contains spoilers): 

Why can't the world just let fat girls live in peace?

 "Starfish" by Lisa Fipps
Recommended grades: 5th-6th 

Ellie just wants to live the normal life of a sixth-grader, but her classmates have been relentlessly bullying her about her weight since she was in kindergarten. It all started at her fifth birthday party, when she wore a whale bathing suit while performing an impressive cannonball in front of all of her classmates. Her classmates and even her siblings have never been able to let that tiny moment go. As everyone has gotten older, and in theory, more mature, this bullying has only ramped up – getting to the point where bruises and injuries come into play.

On top of all of this, her best friend, seemingly the only person in her grade that doesn’t bully her, who actually sees her as a person, is about to move away. Who can possibly show her any kindness? Her pug is adorable, but her mother is truly no help. Her mother would rather lecture her about calories and carbs than show anything approaching acceptance of her youngest daughter.

Ellie’s problems seem to be building up to a boiling point, but Ellie is a talented poet for her age, so this first-person story is written in free verse. I will admit now that this is the first novel in verse I have read, and I plan on reading more after this, since it’s an appealing format, especially for teaching a poetry unit, or for struggling middle-grade readers.

This text is easier to turn the pages through than traditional novels for middle grades, but it doesn’t have the overly large type or immature themes of books made for younger readers, or the large amount of pictures, and associated reputation for lower worth (and even ineligibility for some reading programs), that graphic novels have. Poetry is sophisticated. Adults even read story-poems, I mean, haven’t you heard of “Dante’s Inferno” and “The Illiad”?

The poetry here is largely free verse, and the overall effect is that of journal entries from the very observant, wry, and sarcastic main character. There are moments of real beauty and insight in the verse, which would speak straight to the experiences of any child, but especially a girl or a child raised as such, who struggles with the worlds’ cruel and unfair reactions to her weight.

Unlike for my review for Melissa, I can’t say from personal experience how accurate to real-life all of the struggles in this book’s narrative are, as I didn’t become medically “obese” until adulthood. The author explains in the back of the book that the familial cruelty, peer bullying, and self-hatred explored in the story are all based on her own memories of growing up, making this semi-autobiographical. The veracity of a story like this is impossible to question.

I recommend this book to anybody reading this who’s selecting literature for fifth to sixth graders. The setting is in a wealthy suburb in Texas, which won’t sound exactly like home to all readers, but the emotional landscapes and humor on display could appeal to any readers interested in realistic fiction about girls. I especially suggest it for any 5^th to 6^th grade student struggling with weight-related bullying.

Word count: 523 words

Content Warnings (contains spoilers): 

A true story about a truly strange bird and its people

"Kakapo Rescue"
Written by Sy Montgomery,  photographs by Nic Bishop
Part of the "Scientists in the Field" Series
Recommended grades: 5th-7th 

Sy Collins, a children’s nonfiction author, and Nic Bishop, a wildlife photographer, had to wait years to be given the opportunity to visit a remote island in New Zealand that only scientists, wildlife rescue volunteers, and occasional writers and photographers are allowed to step foot on. This island is called Codfish Island in English, or Whenua Hou in the local Maori language, and it contains the only known wild population of Kakapo in the world.

Kakapo are a large, flightless, nocturnal species of green parrots, which were driven to the brink of extinction when humans brought rats, cats, and dogs to an island ecosystem that had evolved for millions of years with no mammals.

At the beginning of the book, only 87 Kakapo exist in the whole world. By the end of the book, will that number go up, or tragically, will their numbers shrink even further? The scientists and volunteers working on the project hope to see new baby kakapo while the visitors are there, as it is finally a breeding year for the birds – which breed less than once a year, only during the seasons when a local tree species produces extra fruits.

The photographs are clear and informative. They seamlessly combine with the text to bring the reader right into the New Zealand forest with the authors. They also show the beauty of the wildness of the surrounding area, and many other interesting animal species that live nearby.

This is written and laid out like an expanded narrative article from a popular science magazine such as National Geographic. It includes action, adventure, heartbreak, and brief character portraits of the birds and their human helpers. It is gripping and informative, and it also has long asides about both the natural and human history of the wildlife and its conflicts with people, as well as the New Zealand conservation movement.

The only thing separating this book from a nonfiction work for adults are the abundance of photographs, and the fact that niche scientific jargon, and advanced technical jargon, is explained, succinctly.

However, not all of the science is expanded on. Fundamental biological principles like natural selection, endangered species, extinction, the basic “one plus one equals three” arithmetic of animal husbandry, and historical subjects like the outlines of colonization and the traveling of the Maori people are mentioned, but not explained in detail.

In this way, the text doesn’t hold the readers’ hand, and it never talks down to the reader. This would be a very refreshing find for a certain age of child who has had enough of the extremely basic facts one finds in other, broader nonfiction books on the natural world written for this age range.

My only reservation on recommending this book for children who like animals and adventure, and who are around 10 to 12 years old, is that the format really does make it look like a picture book, less advanced than the chapter fiction books they are also assigned for reading. If they have reservations about this, feel free to introduce them to the adult concept of a “coffee table book”, that format which adults have no shame in purchasing for themselves. Tell them this is just a small, well-written, "coffee table book" for any people old enough to understand it. That's not even a lie.

Word count: 545

A hopeful anthem for advanced young poets

"Change Sings"
Written by Amanda Gorman, illustrated by Loren Long
Recommended grades: PreK-3rd

This picture book is a combination of artwork and a poem which was written as an anthem to stir children to action in changing the world for the better. It’s a slightly abstract poem, about personal empowerment through and for community connection, and collective effort. It ends with a clear call to a young reader to join this joyful movement.

The poem in this book is beautiful. There is no surprise there, Amanda Gorman is one of the most lauded poets in America today, for good reason. She was the youngest presidential inaugural poet in history, when she participated in Joe Biden’s inauguration in 2021. Her overall work is uplifting, serving as a beacon of hope and optimism during these bleak political times. As a result of bringing a stirring and inspirational attitude to politically active people, she has won several awards, and become a New York Times bestseller.

The illustrations in this book are lovingly rendered, in a soft-edged and cheerful style. They show an unnamed main character in a diverse city setting, gathering neighborhood children a few at a time, before they all play music together, and improve the neighborhood by visiting the elderly, cleaning up trash, building a new wheelchair ramp, and turning an abandoned storefront into a grocery store with the help of an adult. In the end, they paint a huge mural depicting themselves, which says “We Are the Change”, in large letters. To my adult sensibility, the story in the illustrations is an inspiring and morally righteous message for young children to absorb.

There is one jarring issue. The words and the pictures are disjointed from one another. Unlike most picture books, even ones written as rhyming verse, the text and the pictures in this book don’t directly reference one another. The poem isn’t a narrative, it is instead written as slightly abstract song lyrics, which never directly reference the action taking place in the artwork that they’re paired with. There is very little imagery in the poem, and the imagery that is in the words is never on the page.

The only reason I could follow the connection between the artwork and the words on each page is because of my adult-level understanding of metaphor, symbolism, and of the political context that this book was written in, when intolerance and suspicion has sadly become the cultural norm instead of local community cohesion.

Four-to-eight-year old students may have a difficult time absorbing both the words and the pictures at the same time, because of this disconnect. The most gifted among them could grasp the connections and the overall meaning of the combination of the art and the poem, but the adult-sized lessons and political references in this book might be more inspiring to the adults reading it than to the kids it’s being read to.

Note: Gorman has authored a second children’s book, “Something, Someday,” which looks to be more strictly narrative than this one. It looks promising. I will post a review of that one here soon.

Word Count: 505

A cozy, bilingual, wool-lined fairytale

 

“La Princesa and the Pea”
Written by Susan Middleton Elya, Illustrated by Juana Martinez-Neal
Recommended age: Pre-K – 3^rd

 

When I asked my town’s librarian for help in looking up this book’s location in her stacks, she was thrown off by it being placed in the English language section, when the title almost sounds like it should be in their Spanish language collection. That combination of Spanish and English in the title was a preview of this picture book’s mixed cultural references and language. This is a modern retelling of the fairytale  “The Princess and the Pea”, set in Peru, the country where the illustrator Juan Martinez-Neal grew up in and studied art.

Susan Middleton Elya’s rhyming verse is mostly written in English, with a few Spanish words peppering the lines, highlighted with a red text color. These red words and translated for any non-Spanish readers with a helpful glossary at the front of the book.

I only know a little bit of Spanish from middle and high school, with too few opportunities to practice it in my adulthood, but I enjoyed that the author uses the Spanish words to enhance the rhyming scheme. I even learned a few new pieces of vocabulary from this book. This retelling of the classic story also focuses more on the comedic aspects and on the smitten young people than other versions.

The illustrations won the 2018 Pura Belpré award, which the ALSC awards to Latinx childrens’ writers and illustrators “whose work best portrays, affirms, and celebrates the Latino cultural experience”. Looking at the soft-edged, wooly-looking, traditional-media drawings, this award was selected well, especially when you factor in the note at the end of the book, which explains Martinez-Neal’s influences for this project.

The book is packed full of characters wearing colorful woven clothing, and the floors and backgrounds on almost every page include at least one example of alpacas, wool threads drying or being dyed, or patterned blankets hanging on lines. 

Note the dyed Alpaca wool drying in the background, and the Guinea pigs, popular pets in Peru, in the foreground

Martinez-Neal included these details because she was inspired by the textile culture of the indigenous people of Peru. She specifically modeled the clothing of two different characters on those of peoples from two distinct regions of the country. This effort of including accurate details stands in stark contrast to a long tradition of children’s books created by people entirely outside of the depicted indigenous culture blending aspects of different peoples' cultures together haphazardly.  

Overall, this fractured fairy tale lends a sweet touch to an elementary classroom’s read-alongs, or to a children’s library. I recommend it for any collection that needs more variety in their fairytales.

 

Word count: 414

Some kids never stop the 'asking why about everything' phase. They become scientists.

 

"Ada Twist, Scientist" 
Written by Andrea Beaty, Illustrated by David Roberts 
Recommended Age: PreK-2nd Grade

As soon as the 3-year-old Ada Twist was big enough to crawl out of her crib on her own, she was exploring, showing her boundless curiosity before she could speak. She pushed at the outlines of her toddler world, made messes, and climbed to dangerous heights on furniture, spurred by an intense need to know more. Her first-ever word was “Why” – the word behind the wonder that inspires scientists to wake up every morning.

She is a practicing scientist as soon as she has enough hand-eye coordination and language skills to ask, to draw, and to test theories.

Her parents react with loving encouragement, keeping up with her questions and intense interests. As she makes it through second grade, her science-based play progresses from cause-and-effect demonstrations to more advanced theorizing, and she finds a mystery that focuses her freewheeling curiosity into the rigor of a real experiment. During this exploration, she missteps, coming close to hurting someone. Her parents finally must step in, and stop her. Does her research career end here, before it can even begin? Is there a limit to her parents’ and her classmates’ acceptance of her spirited scientific self?

This book’s text is written in unforced rhymes of simple words, which topple and fall out of the mouth like normal speech that just happens to rhyme. This is ideal for reading aloud to children between four and six years old, as the rhythm, language, and rhymes make the text enjoyable to both read aloud and listen to.

The illustrations are both neat and expressive. The precise pen lines and watercolor fills are an ideal choice for a story about the controlled chaos of scientific experiment. The emotions on the simply-drawn faces are universal and clear to young readers, while piles of detailed objects on many pages lend visual interest to children. They will enjoy reading the subtle language of the pictures while listening to the written words.

This book is part of a collection of many sequels, including a series of chapter books for transitional readers, as well as a Netflix television adaptation. I see why. It is charming, well-drawn, and relevant to the last few decades’ intense focus on STEM immersion for all K-12 students. The original picture book is recommended for class read-alongs, especially as an introduction to a science unit for this age range.

Word Count: 374

"Mexikid": A comic-adventure-real-life-coming-of-age story

“Mexikid” by Pedro Martín

Recommended Age: Grades 5-9

Awards Won:

•  2024 Pura Belpré - Author and Illustrator Awards
• Newberry Honor

Pedro Martín was a middle-school-aged child with a big imagination in the late 1970’s. That’s when he, his two parents,  and his 8 siblings took a lengthy road trip from central California to Mexico to bring his Abuelito home to live with them. What could have been a long and stressful drive instead turns into a grand adventure in Pedro’s child’s-eye perspective, stuffed full of action, Fanta, sibling pranks, corrupt border guards, and car trouble.

Many memorable characters fill the narrative of this graphic memoir, but the central relationship is between Pedro and his Abuelito. Pedro had met him during previous trips to Mexico, but he only remembered distant and formal interactions.

As the family caravan gets ready and then starts driving, Pedro starts imagining his Abuelito as a larger-than-life war hero, based on stories from Pedro’s father and sister about his time as a supplier to troops during the Mexican Revolution from 1910-1917. He imagines him as a comic book hero, in multi-page spreads that visually reference golden-age adventure and superhero comics.

Pedro’s view of his family matures over the course of the book, as he learns how to admire and get to know his Abuelito in a more grounded and reality-based way.

In addition, this memoir chronicles Pedro’s changing insecurities and confidence about his Mexican-American identity. He feels too American to be fully Mexican, but he also feels like he must be Mexican. This book could be of specific interest to students who are curious or concerned about their own cross-cultural identity.

The family is introduced with national symbols

This book is also partially a travelogue about the family’s journey through Mexico. Pedro’s father manages to find new friends and their distant relations in every town they stop in, so the trip they take is from an insider’s perspective. This turns this book into a universally relatable portrait of a beautiful and inviting country. This aspect, along with the nuanced and loving family dynamics, the vibrant and expressive comic art, humor, action, and misfortunes, combine to make this into a book I enthusiastically suggest adding to everyone’s shelves for children 10-14.

A travel-focused spread in the iconic style of Diego Rivera

A final note: if your library has a graphic novel section, this should be added as a prime example of a graphic memoir. This sequential art tradition has been innovative and active in the world of comics made for adults for decades, and this work could be a great way to introduce the concept to young people.

Word count before this: 402 words

Content warning for the book  (Minor spoilers ahead):

"Melissa" - a transgender tale of trials and triumphs

"Melissa," by Alex Gino

Recommended Age: Grades 4-6 

Melissa is about a fourth grade student named George, who enjoys video games, riding her bike, good books, and joking around with her best friend, a girl named Kelly.

The close third-person narrator describes George with the pronoun set she/her/hers, but the rest of the characters use the pronouns he/him/his. Every gendered pronoun, every gender-segregated school line-up, every reference to how well-behaved a ‘boy’ she is, causes her emotional pain. The pain from this mismatch between how others see her and how she sees herself builds to a boiling point when George auditions for the lead girl’s part in the school play.

How will her friends, family, classmates, and authority figures react to this transgression in the rules of the school play?

One of the things that I enjoyed about this book was how theater, which has traditionally been a welcoming space for gender nonconforming and queer students, played a central role in the coming-out narrative for the transgender main character.  This has echoes in my own experience as a nonbinary person, and I think this detail might act as a guidepost or a relatable moment for young readers.

Gino writes an engrossing narrative rich in both scene-setting observations, and in the small, emotionally fraught social details that can either destroy or rescue an entire week for a child at this age.

The reactions that people in George’s life have to her changing gender identity could have been lifted out of the diary entries of myself and my transgender friends. It’s clear that the author is writing about the transgender experience as someone who has lived it themselves.

This work was highly relatable to me, even though I came to my nonbinary experience from the ‘opposite’ side, and I recommend it fully to any young readers of any pronoun set, who are curious about their own gender nonconformity or identity. This narrative has the potential to help children who are anything like George feel less alone in their struggle. It might even help them plan and hope for a better future.

Other readers without this personal connection are still likely to enjoy for it for its well-told, poignant story about a child coming to terms with themselves, in a world that both passively and actively fights against her existence. These difficulties come across as even more challenging to all readers, in today’s political and cultural climate, which has made existing as a transgender youth literally illegal in many states, and an unpleasant public debate topic for students who just want to live as themselves in basically the entire English-speaking world.

Read more about the book at Alex Gino’s personal website.

Word count: 437