Completely Full Bookshelf

As I post this, I have returned from a weekend trip (not a vacation, per se, because my college semester isn't over!) with my family to accompany my younger brother to a conference! I brought three picture books along, and I decided I would read one per night and share each review along with a brief diary of how I spent each day on the trip! Thursday The day began with the, shall we say, intriguing  experience of trying to participate in a Zoom call while sitting in the backseat of a car—my hotspot worked surprisingly well, but unmuting to speak and then hurtling forward when someone slams on the brakes is not ideal for getting your point across. But I made it work—a victory, but whether it's my victory or the victory of college's eternal time suck is another question. But things improved! We arrived at our lovely hotel room and my mom and I unpacked and meandered while my father and brother went to day 1 of the conference. I helped my mom with virtual chores, worked on a s...

Before we get to the review, I'd like to share some random tidbits with you all. First of all, exciting news—I'm going to be a Round 2 Judge for Elementary/Middle Grade Nonfiction for the Cybils Awards this year!!! You can click here to see my full announcement post. Next, I apologize for being so behind on replying to my own blog comments—I'm trying to prioritize reading other people's posts and commenting on those, but my schedule has forced me to leave some gaps in my usual blogging routine, so I will try to get caught up at some point. Speaking of my schedule, in my personal life, I recently had the rewarding-but-draining experience of helping to coordinate a big project that was a massive pain in the neck for days on end but ended up being a lot of fun for a lot of people—so definitely worth it, but also quite exhausting! Another random thought—is anyone else waiting semi-impatiently for the sequel to Awkward , Brave , and Crush  by Svetlana Chmakova? Her website...

I hope everyone is doing well today! As back-to-school season begins, I just want to take a moment and thank all the wonderful educators I've met in the blogging world, as well as all the wonderful educators I haven't  met at all, for their tireless work in shaping the kids of today and tomorrow into better, smarter people, in spite of being under-paid, under-appreciated, and under-protected from the pandemic. I wish you all good luck!!! I also want to mention that I did some spiffing-up on the blog this past week, so the menu and sidebar have a different layout that is hopefully a little more intuitive—I realized that things I wanted people to see were buried in sidebar widgets or other pages, while things I didn't care much about were taking up space in the main menu. Let me know if the new layout works for you or is totally confusing and awful! (Update [8/15/2021]: I just discovered that the sidebar looks weird on a larger screen, because Blogger, in their...

I hope everyone is doing well this week! I took an hour on Friday morning to listen all the way through Billie Eilish's new album of music, Happier Than Ever , and it was SO GOOD!!! If you'd like song recommendations, I recommend "Getting Older," "Billie Bossa Nova," "my future," "GOLDWING," "Not My Responsibility"/"OverHeated" (which are kind of a pair), "Your Power," and "NDA"/"Therefore I Am" (which I also think work better as a pair). Also, I keep forgetting to plug my Thursday Thoughts posts, so I'll do that now—a while back, I discussed two fun non-kidlit books I had recently read , and this past Thursday, I posted another original poem called "An evening walk" ! Moving on, I've got an interesting and RIDICULOUSLY LENGTHY blog post for you today about my favorite book of all time: Goodbye Stranger  by Rebecca Stead. I could probably have shortened this post, but in...

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! (Update [7/26/2021]: One of the MMGM bloggers I really enjoy, Rosi Hollinbeck, is recommending and giving away an ARC of Kate DiCamillo's new book, The Beatryce Prophecy , and because she generously awards extra chances to giveaway entrants who share her post, I invite you all to check out her review and giveaway here! And now, I'll keep my fingers crossed that I win a copy! ;) ) I have returned from a 5-night vacation this past week that was just lovely! We spent 4 nights at the beach and a 5...

What a week. I'm not going to get into everything except to say that I am of course utterly appalled and disgusted by the anti-trans legislation in Arkansas. I heard from others that there is a small nonprofit organization in Arkansas called Intransitive that supports transgender people and is advocating against these laws; consider making a donation! Unfortunately, I don't have the mental fortitude for a full super-depressed write-up on that mess—at the rate we're going in the world, I would never actually have any time to review books—but I did want to mention the situation quickly. Also, since I've had the most unpleasant morning, I'm going to warn you all: if you have a Mac, and you are super-behind on software updates, and you are planning to install macOS Big Sur (the newest version), please, please, PLEASE  check and make sure that you actually have enough storage to install it. Because my sibling's Mac laptop gave us the go-ahead to install Big Sur even...