Completely Full Bookshelf

Hey everyone! Today I am thrilled  to be recommending an incredible, awe-inspiring, must-read YA novel: Bitter  by Akwaeke Emezi. Please note, this book is a young adult (YA) novel, and it contains mature content. Also, this book is a prequel to Emezi's novel Pet , but the following review contains no spoilers  of that book (which is pretty easy, considering this one is a prequel!). Add it on Goodreads Let's start off with the publisher's description  of this book: ********** From National Book Award finalist Akwaeke Emezi comes a companion novel to the critically acclaimed PET that explores both the importance and cost of social revolution--and how youth lead the way. After a childhood in foster care, Bitter is thrilled to have been chosen to attend Eucalyptus, a special school where she can focus on her painting surrounded by other creative teens. But outside this haven, the streets are filled with protests against the deep injustices that grip the city of Lucille....

I hope everyone is doing well! Today, I'm reviewing another adult novel, since I've given myself the freedom to review adult novels on this kidlit roundup when the need arises when I haven't read anything else. I'm taking a look at Night of Miracles  by Elizabeth Berg! Please note, this is an adult book, and although I think it is perfectly acceptable for YA readers, it contains a bit of slightly mature content that doesn't make it a great pick for younger readers. Also, there are no spoilers  in the review below for the preceding book, The Story of Arthur Truluv . Add it on Goodreads (Before I get into this review, I have to note that my copy of this book has the weirdest printing error I've ever seen in my life—pages 117 through 132 are duplicated. As in, there are two full sets of them. It's so bizarre I had to share it!) Night of Miracles  is the first of two companion novels to The Story of Arthur Truluv , a wonderful novel with an irresistible combina...

I hope you all are doing well! I've decided to just openly admit that sometimes, I will only have an adult book to review, and even though this version of #IMWAYR is primarily for kidlit, I don't think any of us will refuse a great new book to read! So today, I have an adult novel to briefly review for you all that I think is just delightful: The Story of Arthur Truluv  by Elizabeth Berg! (And I will say, this book has some mature content, but any YA reader who wants to read this too will find absolutely nothing objectionable—in fact, in some ways, it's almost aimed at teenage readers as much as it is at adults!) Arthur Moses is a compassionate old man who visits the grave of his wife Nola every day—and remembers all the others who have passed too. Maddy Harris is a teenage girl who finds refuge from school bullies and her difficult father at the local cemetery. And Lucille Howard is an older woman who "seems to think the world is her classroom" but has just found...

I must say, this semester of college is keeping me in a perpetual state of chaos. I haven't let that stop my blog before, and I won't let it do so now...but if I post comments on your blog that are completely incoherent, blame it on my exhaustion. It's very strange, because some seriously wonderful things are happening—it's just that so much  is happening that I don't have time for much else! Also, please visit this post from last week so you can see a very important article by Nikole Hannah-Jones that will change the way you think about racism (and as I've since learned, it's immensely controversial among certain individuals who I don't agree with, which means you really  need to read it!). Moving along, I'd like to discuss an absolutely gorgeous  MG novel by an author I think we all know and love (I've adored so many of her books , most recently The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane ). Today I am reviewing The Beatryce Prophecy  by Kate DiC...

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 I dive in, I want to mention that I just read an article for a class that I think literally every human being (or at least every American) needs to read. If you've heard of The 1619 Project, the initiative led by Nikole Hannah-Jones at The New York Times  to reframe American history through a lens of slavery and the work of Black Americans to actually  live up to the ideals of freedom that our country is supposed to be based on (side note: this initiative spawned the gorgeous picture book Bor...

My mother and I went to do some shopping recently, mostly to find birthday gifts for a relative, and two things happened: I am starting to get in the holiday spirit now! Which is great, because the holidays are awesome, and which is also terrible, because I have several more weeks of homework to get through that I now want to completely avoid. My mother and I went into Old Navy and discovered that our local Old Navy might just be the single worst clothing store on the planet. They were playing one of those songs that sounded so bad, you had to wonder if the people who made the song made it ironically, or if they actually heard themselves and thought, "This sounds good! Let's subject the entire world to it for several decades." And also—Old Navy had a bunch of sweaters, and one of them was the most comically hideous color and texture I have ever seen in my entire life. It was truly astounding. I'll spare you the details. With that, today I am recommending yet another a...

So I have been a complete and utter blogging fiasco lately—I didn't comment on most people's blogs last week, I'm even further behind on my own comments, I haven't had time to read much at all, and I threw this review together on Saturday night/Sunday morning, which is not ideal! Chaos, seriously. At least I finally have my free time back (it was previously occupied by reading for several different book clubs), so I'm working on a graphic novel to review next week. Also, why is Blogger such a complete pain in the neck?! Now adding photos is all weird—they are supposed  to insert wherever you have the typing cursor positioned, but instead, they are showing up on the wrong rows, or—this one's new—inserting randomly in the middle  of a sentence. And I also keep having a different problem where clicking on one row of text puts the cursor in the row above it every single time and you have to close out of the post editor and go back in. Sigh—I hate this platform somet...

I'm excited to be here with an actual prose MG novel, which tend to be pretty rare in my reading schedule these days. Today we're looking at Mulan: Before the Sword  by Grace Lin. There are some SPOILERS  in the review below that I have marked with tags so you can avoid them if need be (although some of them are honestly worth looking at). Grace Lin is just as talented an illustrator as she is an author, and she did a beautiful job with the art for this cover!         So here's a bit of background. Back in 1998, Disney made an animated movie called Mulan  that is quite beloved—it was either the first or one of the first Disney animated movies with an Asian protagonist, and it's also just considered one of the super-fun early Disney animated films that people love. (And I didn't know this, but Mulan herself is an actual character from Chinese legends, and from what I know, the movie roughly followed the legends' plot.) Then, last year, Disney ...