“Your body remembers how to dance. Your ancestors have been dancing like this for generations.” Ancestor Approved: Intertribal Stories for Kids (Edited by Cynthia Leitich Smith, Harper Collins 2021) is a collection of eighteen stories that are all connected by the Dance for Mother Earth Powwow, an intertribal event held in Anne Arbor, Michigan. MuchContinue reading “ANCESTOR APPROVED: Intertribal Stories for Kids”
Tag Archives: Middle Grade
BEASTS OF PREY – Ayana Gray
Ayana Gray’s Beasts of Prey (Putnam 2021) has been hanging out on my TBR since Christmas. Following Children of Blood and Bone (we won’t discuss the second installment in *that* series), I developed an appreciation for Pan-African young adult fantasy novels, and there are elements of Beasts of Prey that remind me of Children ofContinue reading “BEASTS OF PREY – Ayana Gray”
TRISTAN STRONG KEEPS PUNCHING – Kwame Mbalia
The third and final installment of Kwame Mbalia’s Tristan Strong series, Tristan Strong Keeps Punching (Disney Hyperion 2021), was a near perfect conclusion to a story that writes itself in your bones and whispers in your sleep. All three works were five star reads for this bookdragon, and I know had I read this asContinue reading “TRISTAN STRONG KEEPS PUNCHING – Kwame Mbalia”
PAX – Sara Pennypacker
“You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.” – The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Those were the words I couldn’t shake while reading Sara Pennypacker’s Pax (HarperCollins Publishers, 2016). The fox’s wise words from a beloved childhood classic echoed on each page of Pennypacker’s middle grade book about a boy and his fox.Continue reading “PAX – Sara Pennypacker”
THE GIRL WHO DRANK THE MOON – Kelly Barnhill
I read forty-seven books in 2020, and my last read of the year ended up one of my top two. I knew I’d like Kelly Barnhill’s The Girl Who Drank the Moon (Algonquin Young Readers, 2016), but I didn’t anticipate it even being in my top five. Yet I found this novel of an “enmagicked”Continue reading “THE GIRL WHO DRANK THE MOON – Kelly Barnhill”
TRISTAN STRONG DESTROYS THE WORLD – Kwame Mbalia
In January of this year, I posted a review of Kwame Mbalia’s Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky. In that review, I encouraged everyone to read the book and to it in little hands. Representation matters, and the literary world needed (and still needs) that “nerdy, black kid from Chicago.” In February,Continue reading “TRISTAN STRONG DESTROYS THE WORLD – Kwame Mbalia”
A Girl Named Tommi 