Completely Full Bookshelf

Hello everyone! If you're reading this on Monday, I'd like to wish you a happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day! This past college semester, I took a class where we read King's Letter from Birmingham Jail , and he made a very profound point that I wanted to share. He discussed people's insistence that Black people just remain "patient" and wait for change to arrive naturally, before pointing out that change does not, in fact, just arrive over time—it takes specific actions on the part of the public to make it happen. I think so many of us nowadays sometimes feel like we need to be patient and allow change to be made incrementally, but we can see that the decades and decades Black people waited for change actually resulted in stagnancy and no change  until they started a movement in the 1960s. I think it's worth remembering with many of today's issues that maybe we don't need to wait for change at all—maybe we need to demand change now , because that may...

I hope everyone is doing well! We spent an hour on Saturday doing that most wretched of tasks: changing the smoke detector batteries. I envy everyone who buys those new smoke detectors where you don't have to replace the battery for 10 years. Today I am looking at an intriguing new MG graphic novel: Marshmallow & Jordan  by Alina Chau. And I'm also hosting the Holiday Picture Book Giveaway  with details at the end of this post! Review of Marshmallow & Jordan : Preview the illustrations on the publisher's website         A few weeks ago, I scoured the website of First Second, the massive graphic novel imprint from Macmillan, for new MG/YA graphic novels to pre-order, and this book, which debuted on October 26, was the one I was most excited for (besides Other Boys )! (I mean, just look at that cover.) I haven't seen anyone talking about this book yet, and although it is not a perfect read, I am still excited to be bringing it to y'all's att...

I hope you all are holding up well! I'm writing this review on Saturday afternoon , not Saturday night—that's how you know I'm relatively organized right now. (I used to have these done way earlier in the week, but this year, college has thrown a real wrench in that.) Also, as a judge for the Cybils Awards, I wanted to remind everyone that you have through Friday, October 15  to nominate your favorite kidlit books for the awards! You can  see the details here —I highly encourage you all to take a look and suggest some books for consideration! Now I just need to figure out what to nominate...   (Update on Sunday night: I submitted my first nomination, and you can expect to hear about it on the blog in the coming weeks!) Anyway, today I am recommending an absolutely fabulous YA graphic novel: The Girl From the Sea  by Molly Knox Ostertag. And I'll warn you, I just wrote a paragraph where I said I would "briefly" discuss something and then had to go back and del...

***Blog news!***  It's the summer now, which means I have way more time to devote to reading books and to blogging! As such, I am starting a new feature on my blog called Thursday Thoughts ! On at least some Thursdays, I'll be discussing book-related topics that I have opinions about and inviting you all to share your thoughts in the comment section! Note that these are not book reviews (I will continue to only post those on Mondays), but I hope these can be a new way for me to connect with my readers! (Also, if you want to see these posts in your Blogger reading list, I finally added a Follow button  on my blog sidebar!) ***Public service announcement***  I heard some weird things online about people's Blogger posts getting deleted recently. I have no idea if any of that was true, but it seems like a good time to remind you all to download a backup of your blog on Blogger periodically—to do so, go to your Blogger dashboard > Settings > Manage blog > Back up cont...

Update (4/2/2022): I typically participate in blogging groups that review kids’ books, but sometimes, I do end up reading adult books like this one. In the past, I have typically labeled those books as MG or YA when I review them, primarily because I still want my typically blogging audiences to see them! However, this has become confusing, so I have decided to re-label these books as adult books, while leaving the reviews in their original format. Thank you for your consideration! Before we get to today's post, I have the winners of the 2021 Books by Asian-American Voices Giveaway to announce! We had 15 entrants and 5 winners, which means you all had a 1-in-3 chance of winning (not bad!). The winner of Displacement  by Kiku Hughes is... Aaron! The winner of Where the Mountain Meets the Moon  by Grace Lin is... Danielle! The winner of Measuring Up  by Lily LaMotte and Ann Xu is... Maria! The winner of Parachutes  by Kelly Yang is... Shaye! And the winner of The Magi...

Before we get to today's post, I want to mention that, in case you didn't see my post on Friday, I have created a new rating system for my blog that I call Ratings for the Graphic Novel-Averse!  This rating system is designed to tell readers who don't usually like graphic novels how much they will enjoy the graphic novels I review. The higher the score, the less likely you are to be frustrated or weirded out by the book! (Note that the scores have nothing  to do with the actual quality of the book—that's what my regular rating system is for.) Click here to learn about what each rating means and to hear some tips on getting started with graphic novels if you've never made the jump before! Also, quick complaint session: I have been locked in a battle of wills with technology this morning. First, I finally managed to place an order on the CVS website, even though it kept randomly going out and saying "Access Denied" and not coming back for 10 minutes. Also, ...

YES!!! I am so glad that Biden and Harris have won the U.S. presidency/vice-presidency. I try not to get political on this blog, but it's hard to spotlight and value different perspectives in books when the president is screaming hateful rhetoric for four years straight. Obviously, this win will not solve all of America's problems, and depending on the results of the Senate elections, it may not allow for any real policy improvements, but at least we can sleep at night knowing a reasonable person has the nuclear codes and veto power. This is an unusual post, because I didn't read a YA book to review for my #IMWAYR-only post this week, so I have a picture book instead: The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse  by Charlie Mackesy. I also decided to post two reviews of movie adaptations of books I reviewed a while back. I actually meant to put these up around 3 months ago, but I was going to wait until I had time to watch the movie adaptation of The Hate U Give  with m...