Hazel Bly and the Deep Blue Sea by Ashley Herring Blake Reviewed by Alisun Meet Hazel Bly. Hazel watches her little sister Peach like a hawk, doesn’t like risk or danger, and carries a first aid kit with her wherever she goes. Hazel suffers from crippling anxiety and worry. This is made painfully clear in […]
Category: Alisun’s Reviews
Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley
Meet Daunis Fontaine. Daunis is mixed race Ojibwe/White. She lives in Sault St. Marie, Michigan, has just finished high school, and has suffered the loss of a beloved uncle and her best friend, both deaths tied to meth addiction in her community. Her father was a hockey star from the Sugar Island Ojibwe reservation but […]
Our Little Kitchen by Jillian Tamaki
Our Little Kitchen Written & Illustrated by Jillian Tamaki Reviewed by Alisun This delightful picturebook tells the story of a community kitchen. While it is not plot driven, it documents an afternoon preparing a delicious meal for a diverse and inclusive group of neighbors. With vegetables harvested from the community garden, the team of cooks […]
Are there “good” Thanksgiving books?
You want to know about Native people? Do you really want to know about us? Or do you just need/want us so you can ‘do your thing’ (celebrate Thanksgiving)? You want me to tell you what I do for Thanksgiving. I understand that, but I think it more important that you ask about (in my case) the Pueblo people. Who are we? Where are we? What are OUR celebrations? When are they? What are they about? Debbie Reece
Prairie Lotus by Linda Sue Parks
Linda Sue Park, the award winning author of A Single Shard, A Long Walk to Water, and Project Mulberry brings middle grade readers Prairie Lotus — a deeply moving work of historical fiction set on the colonized prairie in 1870. The resemblance to the Ingalls-Wilder series is not coincidental. In the back matter, Parks details […]
Ivy Aberdeen’s Letter to the World
Gone is not a word Ivy thought she would ever use to describe a house. A person, maybe. Summer vacation. The last of the chocolate cake. But not a house. And certainly not her house.
Indian No More
Before being terminated, I was Indian. Now I certainly don’t mean I was killed off or anything. It was 1954. The United States government didn’t do that anymore. They just filed away our tribal role numbers. Erased our reservation from the map.
One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams Garcia
I love middle grades novels and I am used to reading the very best ones. I don’t read them as books for children, I read and enjoy them the way I do any book — because they tell good stories, because they introduce me to characters that I want to know, and because they make […]
Some Places More Than Others by Renée Watson
For the suitcase project, Amara’s teacher tells the class, “Everything and everyone tells a story.” This theme runs through the book taking Amara from her home in Beaverton, Oregon to Harlem, New York as she constructs HER story of place.
Just Ask by Sonia Sotomayor
Be different. Be brave. Be you.