Completely Full Bookshelf

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...

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...

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...

I have a few quick notes before we move into today's review. First of all, I have finally set up a Goodreads account for my blog!  It is currently a bit of a mess, and I will be trying to get it finished up over the next few weeks. And if you're already reading my blog, I honestly wouldn't bother looking at my Goodreads—it's only going to have mini-reviews of the books I'm already reviewing on my blog anyway, along with links back to my blog. But I hope it will be a useful way for new readers to discover my blog so that my posts don't just disappear into the ether! You can visit my Goodreads profile here. Also, some quick self-promotion: I have started a photography blog, A Scrapbook of Stories , that I am using primarily to participate in the #2021picoftheweek challenge hosted by MMGM's own  Of Maria Antonia  (which is also now open to book bloggers)! Make sure to stop by if you're interested. I also revisited my reviews from July to December 2020 in a...

Before we get to today's post, I'd like to mention that I shared another original poem this last Thursday, "On summer" —check it out if you're interested! Also, I have the winners of the Summer 2021 Book Giveaway to announce! The winner of Everywhere Blue  by Joanne Rossmassler Fritz is... Danielle! The winner of Fighting Words  by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley is... Rosi (a fellow MMGM blogger)! The winner of the signed copy of Invisible Emmie  by Terri Libenson is... Shaye (a fellow #IMWAYR blogger at The Miller Memo) ! And the winner of Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe  by Benjamin Alire Sáenz and Are You Listening?  by Tillie Walden is... CarloShmarlo! Congratulations to all the winners, and thanks so much to everyone who entered! Moving to the review, I'm excited to have a review today of a ridiculously fantastic YA graphic novel, On a Sunbeam  by Tillie Walden! This book has somewhat mature content as well as complex themes ...

***Important notice for email subscribers*** Blogger continues to get more and more aggravating for me (and I'm sure for everyone else as well). This time, it's because most people on Blogger use a system from Blogger's owner, Google, called FeedBurner to run email subscriptions. Unfortunately, Google has decided to make a gigantic mess for basically everyone on Blogger by discontinuing FeedBurner's email subscription system in July of this year. Because I had some spare time this week, I have migrated my email subscription system from FeedBurner to a new system called Mailchimp.  So what does this mean for you? Well, first off, you do NOT need to resubscribe to keep receiving my  emails —I exported all of my subscribers from FeedBurner and imported them into Mailchimp, so if you have been receiving emails in the past, you will continue receiving them now. By Monday evening, you should have received two copies of this post, one from FeedBurner and one from Mailchimp ...