The End of this Era

I have been keeping this blog, in this format, for over 10 years now.  

I began it when I was in Graduate School, working on my Master's Degree in Library Science. I've kept it through 3 separate library jobs and one brief period of unemployment. I have been keeping several separate blogs over the past few years, trying to tie together all of my library passions in multiple places.  The result? I am overextended, and none of my blogs is getting the attention that it deserves. 

My solution is to create one blog, that ties everything together. It's called Library Nut's Library Life. 

(One blog to rule them all, one blog to bind them. One blog to find them all and in the darkness... wait, wrong story.)

You can find me on WordPress: 

https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/128101280

I'm moving some content over to that site.  You can find book reviews for all ages on that site, along with information about other things that I do as a regular part of my job.  My goal is to post regularly on that site. For right now, regularly means once a week. We will see how things go in the future!  I'd like to think that I can get myself together to post more often.

Thank you so much to everyone who has stuck with me through the last 14 years.  

It's been a LOT of fun!

-Bettina

YMA Announcements

Last week, I listed my top picks for the YMA Awards.  

I picked a few correctly, and I was way off on several more.

The Newberry Award

I had picked Swim Team by Johnnie Christmas

The actual winner was “Freewater,” written by Amina Luqman-Dawson

Printz Award:

I had chosen either A Thousand Steps Into Night by Traci Chee or

Ain't Burned All That Bright by Jason Reynolds and Jason Griffin

The actual winner is “All My Rage,” written by Sabaa Tahir

Caldecott Award:

Again, I had 2 favorites: Luli and the Language of Tea or Berry Song. I would like to note here that Berry Song, written and illustrated by Michaela Goode is a Caldecott Honor Book! 

The winner was “Hot Dog,” illustrated and written by Doug Salati. 

Coretta Scott King Award Winner:

I had chosen Swim Team by Johnnie Christmas.  (I really do love this book!) This book is a CSK Illustrator Honor Book!

“Standing in the Need of Prayer: A Modern Retelling of the Classic Spiritual,” illustrated by Frank Morrison, is the King Illustrator Book winner.

You can find the complete list of award winners here: https://www.ala.org/news/press-releases/2023/01/american-library-association-announces-2023-youth-media-award-winners

Youth Media Awards

 The Caldecott.

The Newberry.

The Corretta Scott King Award.

The Prince Award.

These are all the very top honors and awards that books receive every year from the American Library Association. They are known as the Youth Media Awards.  For years, I have played along and tried to pick what I feel are the best books of the year and the biggest contenders for awards.  Some years, I have completely called every single book.  Other years?  I haven't even heard of the winning books. I somehow missed them.

The awards are announced every January.  This year, the awards will be announced on Monday, January 30. That’s a week from today!

As always, I have my own favorites.  I've had multiple discussions with my friends around the country.  I know I've missed a lot of great books this year.  But for now, here are my picks for the best youth books of 2023.

Newberry Award: (Children's Fiction)

Swim Team by Johnnie Christmas

This graphic novel is an absolute must read!  While the story focuses on a young child learning how to swim, it talks about team work, facing your fears, overcoming your fears, working hard for something you really want, and reconcilliation. This is such a wonderful, positive upbeat story for young and old alike.

Printz Award: (Young Adult Fiction)

I'm going all in on one of these two books.  One of them will be on the list.

A Thousand Steps Into Night by Traci Chee

Ain't Burned All That Bright by Jason Reynolds and Jason Griffin

Caldecott Award: (Artwork in a Children's Picture Book

Luli and the Language of Tea by Andrea Wang

I love this sweet story of a group of children who are gathered together while their parents attend ESOL classes and how they bond together over a pot of tea.  This is a phenomenal book!

Berry Song by Michaela Goade 

The Caldecott is all about the artwork.  And Michaela's artwork is stunning in this story of....

Coretta Scott King Award

Swim Team by Johnnie Christmas

So, let’s all check in after the awards are announced and see how well I did!

Spy X Family

Have you found Spy X Family yet?

Maybe I'm a little late to the show, but what an awesome series! It has all the elements that I love. Action, adventure, a little bit of fantasy, and just enough drama to keep my attention. 

I don't even know how to unpack this series.  There's so much going on.  So, let me break it down a little bit.

First of all, the adults.

Secret Agent Twilight is sent deep undercover.  His mission? In order to keep the world at peace, he must get married and have at least one elementary age child. He adopts the name Loid Forger as his undercover name.

He finds Yor.  Yor is a a civil servant by day, and an assasin known as the Thorn Princess by night. Fearful that she will fall under suspicion by the government because she is single, she agrees to marry Loid. Neither one knows the other's secret.

Loid also adopts a daughter, Anya, from the orphanage. Unbenownst to Loid and Yor, Anya is a telepath who quickly discovers the secrets of her new family. (Which she keeps to herself.)

Anya attends school at Eden Academy, where she goes to school with the child of Loids target. The hope is that the children will befriend each other and the parents will become friends as a result. As you can expect, nothing goes according to plan and things go wonderfully, horribly askew.

The Plot Thickens

I don't find this series to be predictable, and I find the addition of a telepath into the mix an unexpected joy in a story about an assassin and a world class spy who don't know each other's identity. The addition of additional characters that are pivotal to the plot adds an extra element of depth - and maybe a little chaos - into each volume.  I tore through the books that were available in Maryland this summer, and I've had the additional volumes on hold ever since. 

Why Should I Read This?

Long time Manga readers looking for a series that is a little diffent from a lot of what's out there will enjoy this series.

If you are new to Manga, and want to dip your toe in the Manga water to see what this is all about, this quick paced series is a great place to start!  

If you're an Anime watcher, the first season of  Spy x Family is available on both Crunchy Roll and Hulu. The second season should be released some time in 2023.

Links:

Spy x Family Fandom Wiki: https://spy-x-family.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_Characters

2022: A Year (of books) in Review

It has been quite a book year for me! I started the year on the National Book Committee, where I had the great honor of reading newly published books So many awesome, wonderful books, I cannot even begin to keep track of them all here. Those books were heaven sent. I was put onto the committee at the beginning of March 2020 and the steady stream of book boxes showing up at my doorstep when the rest of the world was shut down saved my sanity! 

I have a most beautiful spreadsheet that I used to track every book I read, my comments about each book, and how I thought that book would fall into my life in the library. After 2 years, I rotated off that committee in March. I then found my way onto another book committee – but this one is at the state level. This has kept me busy, but not as busy. I have been able to savor the books I am reading more at this level! 

I took part in a Manga Reading Challenge during July. I don’t normally read Manga, and this challenge got me out of my comfort zone and reading a new to me format. After reading 96 books in July, I found a new appreciation for Manga. I know that I prefer to read “slice of life” stories, but a really good fantasy will hold my attention across multiple volumes! 

Over the next few weeks, I am going to highlight some of my favorite books that I read this year. The scope of my committee work has been Elementary School (mid-grade books) so a lot of what I’ve read doesn’t fall into the parameters of a blog that was originally designed for Young Adult Readers. I admit that I stretched out the parameters to include tweens during the pandemic, but I intend to focus more on books that are solid YA Reads over this next year. 

I’m looking forward to this year. I have many things I would like to do. At the top of this list is making certain that I publish something in this blog weekly. I have the list of the books I’ve read over the last two years. I have so much Manga that I need to review. And more than a few graphic novels!  

I am looking forward to this next year in books!  

Thanks for journeying with me! 

My Owl, Freda, dressed up all fancy for a scavenger hunt.

The Magic Fish

 Nguyen, Trung Le. The Magic Fish. 2020. Random House Graphic. New York, NY.

Traditional Vietnamese Folk Tales interweave throughout this graphic novel story of a young Vietnamese-American boy struggling to find the words to tell his parents of his sexual orientation. I love the beautiful retelling of these stories and how they tie together the plot points as Tien struggles to find the words to speak his own truth. 

I especially appreciate that while the entire work is written in English, I want to point out the work that the author/illustrator used with the text to indicate which conversations were in English, and which conversations were taking place in Vietnamese. It helped me feel like I was a part of a separate conversation that I would not normally have been allowed to hear.

This book is magic. If you haven't read it yet, add it to your list! It's an awesome tale!

Image: World Cat

Author Website:

http://www.trungles.com/

Clap When You Land

 Acevedo, Elizabeth. Clap When You Land. 2020. Harper Collins Publisher, New York, NY.

ISBN 13:  978-0062882769

Content Warning: Sexual Assault

This book took me by surprise with the open honesty throughout the book.  Two young girls: Yahaira and Camino with two different mothers in two different countries discover that they are related to each other when their mutual father dies.  Their father had spent 9 months of the year in New York with Yahaira and 3 months in the Dominican Republic with Camino.

Each daughter was very different from the other, and yet the father did his very best to give both girls the very best opportunities that he could. The day that their father boarded an airplane to the Dominican Republic to spend the summer with Camino, the plane crashed soon after take off.  As the families grieve the loss of a wonderful man, the girls learn of each other's existence.

The honesty of the girls and the women in the family as they struggled to come to terms with who their father actually was, the lies that had been told, and how to reinvent themselves in the face of great tragedy makes this book stellar. This novel in verse is a must-read.

Author Website: http://www.acevedowrites.com/