Fighting Words by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

Such an important book. So thankful that Kimberly Brubaker Bradley made this accessible for younger readers. Della and Suki are characters that will be with me for a long time. If you have a daughter, make sure she reads this.

From the acknowledgements: "...a novel for ten-year-olds featuring sexual assault, a suicide attempt, foster care, homelessness, meth addiction, and eighty-six uses of the word snow." (She uses "snow" as a replacement for curses.)

This was a work of heart for Bradley. It is amazingly well-crafted and age-appropriate. The parallel storyline of the boy in Della's classroom who harasses the girls with "bra strap snapping" and the way Della finds her voice to get the adults to pay attention and to get him to stop...SUCH good modeling for our girls. The actual words about consent that they can use when it happens to them. 

I also loved finding HOW TO STEAL A DOG tucked into the story doing what books are meant to do  (and what Bradley's book does) -- lets the reader know that they aren't the only one. Not the only one who's been homeless and living in their car, not the only one wears free clothes, not the only one who's been sexually assaulted. 

You will want to read this. It's hard, but it's laced with humor and love. 

Grandparents' Day is September 8

Grandparents' Day is September 8 this year. Here are some picture books, many of which are #ownvoicees, that explore the relationship of children and their grandparents.

Our Favorite Day 
by Joowon Oh
Candlewick Press, 2019
review copy provided by the publisher

An #ownvoices book with gorgeous paper collage illustrations. Thursdays are Papa's favorite day because he gets to spend time with his granddaughter.

Ojiichan's Gift 
by Chieri Uegaki
illustrated by Genevieve Simms
KidsCan Press, 2019
review copy provided by the publisher

Every summer when she visits Japan, Mayumi and her grandfather care for the rock garden he built for her when she was born. What will become of the rock garden and their time together when Ojiichan has to go into the nursing home? Another #ownvoices story of the connection between a grandfather and granddaughter.

My Grandma and Me
by Mina Javaherbin
illustrated by Lindsey Yankey
Candlewick Press, 2019
review copy provided by the publisher

This is an autobiographical story of growing up in Iran and all the things a little girl does with her grandmother who lives with her family.

Grandpa's Top Threes
by Wendy Meddour
illustrated by Daniel Egnéus
Candlewick Press, September 3, 2019
review copy provided by the publisher

When Grandpa stops talking to him, Henry persists and finds a way to keep their bond -- by asking Grandpa for his Top Threes. At the end of the book, perceptive readers will learn why Grandpa had turned inward and have an even greater appreciation for Henry.

Stolen Words
by Melanie Florence
illustrated by Gabrielle Grimard
Second Story Press, 2017
review copy from the library

Like Henry, in GRANDPA'S TOP THREES, the granddaughter in this #ownvoices story helps her grandfather heal by giving him back the Cree language (in a book from her school) that was stolen from him when he was taken from his family to live in a residential school.

Grandpa Cacao
by Elizabeth Zunon
Bloomsbury Children's Books, 2019

Based on her childhood in the Ivory Coast, West Africa, this book is the author's love letter to a grandfather she never knew (and a fabulous connection to our 5th grade social studies if you trace the story of chocolate back even further to the Maya and Inca people in Latin America).

Around the Table That Grandad Built
by Melanie Heuiser Hill
illustrated by Jaime Kim
Candlewick Press, September 10, 2019
review copy provided by the publisher

A fun, cumulative story the celebrates the gifts that remain when our loved ones are gone.

I Miss My Grandpa
by Jin Xiaojing
Little, Brown and Company, September 3, 2019
review copy provided by the publisher

The little girl's grandfather died before she was born, but she still misses him. Her grandmother helps her to see her grandfather's facial features and character traits in her living relatives, and the girl realizes that her and her family. The text is translated into Mandarin Chinese on the final endpapers.

The Immortal Jellyfish
by Sang Miao
Flying Eye Books, 2019
review copy provided by the publisher

A boy's grandfather begins a conversation about immortality, but then dies before he and the boy can explore the idea further. In a dream, the boy's grandfather takes him on a grand adventure in which they explore reincarnation.

Good Talk by Mira Jacob

Over the years, we've written about/reviewed lots of graphic novels here at A Year of Reading. When the Cybils were brand new, I chose to judge graphic novels so that I could learn more about the format. Perhaps my love of graphic novels was fueled by a childhood reading diet of comic books.  Stacks and stacks of comic books. (There were also shelves and shelves of books, the Weekly Reader Book Club books, mandatory purchases at the shopping mall bookstores when we drove the 3 hours to Denver, and the regular trips to the local library. But there were also always stacks and stacks of comic books.)

I've tagged 148 books "adult" in Goodreads, and three of them are graphic novels. But get this...all three of them are also memoir. I have no idea what that means. It just made me go, "Hmm..."

This is the most recent adult memoir in graphic novel format that I've read, and I think you should read it, too:

Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations

by Mira Jacob

One World, March 2019

Mira Jacobs is East Indian and her husband is Jewish. With a combination of drawings and photographs, the book is built around Jacob's conversations with her six year-old biracial son about Michael Jackson, brown and white skin, Trump's election, and police violence. Jacobs also allows readers to "listen in" on her conversations with her own parents, brother, and grandmother about how her family discriminates against her because her skin is a (tragically) dark brown, and with her mother in-law about how people at a party she throws assume Mira's the help because she's not white. There are conversations between Jacobs and her white friend about parenting, and conversations between Jacobs and her husband about dealing with white men who hold all the power without even being aware that they do.

This book, for me, was a window.* Perhaps for you it will be a mirror.* If we're going to repair the race issues that continue to divide our nation, we're going to have to use books like this as sliding glass doors* so that we can have conversations like these not just in our imaginations as we read, but in real life with the people around us -- other adults, our students and children, co-workers, politicians, family members, publishers, etc., etc., etc.

*Dr. Rudine Simms Bishop coined these terms in 1990. "Books are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange. These windows are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created and recreated by the author. When lighting conditions are just right, however, a window can also be a mirror. Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection we can see our own lives and experiences as part of the larger human experience. Reading, then, becomes a means of self-affirmation, and readers often seek their mirrors in books." (1990, p. ix)

The Power of Family

The power of family: You do what's right 

even if it wasn't your first choice.

Sparkle Boy

by Lesléa Newman

illustrations by Maria Mola

Lee & Low Books, 2017

Stef Soto, Taco Queen

by Jennifer Torres

Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Genevieve's War

by Patricia Reilly Giff

Holiday House, 2017

In Sparkle Boy, the adults are support of little brother Casey's desire for sparkly glittery things, but big sister Jessie isn't so sure...until older boys tease her brother at the library and she comes to his rescue.

In Stef Soto, Taco Queen, Stef wants nothing more than to be free of her family's food truck...until her family's livelihood and her father's passion are threatened, and then she fights to save it.

In Genevieve's War, it's 1939, and although her grandmother is prickly and difficult to get along with, Genevieve decides stay and help her rather than go back to her home in America. This decision leaves her trapped in occupied France (Alsace) as the Nazis get closer and closer. Even when she has the chance to escape a second time...the pull of family is strong enough to turn her back once more to her grandmother.

Foster Families and Adoption

"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies.

The man who never reads lives only one." 

George R.R. Martin

Forever, or a Long, Long Time

by Caela Carter

HarperCollins, 2017

The End of the Wild

by Nicole Helget

Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2017

The War I Finally Won

by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

Dial Books, October 2017

Three Pennies

by Melanie Crowder

Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2017

Each of these books is the story of (or a story that includes) foster care and/or adoption. These are lives I never would have lived if it hadn't been for these books. I never would have experienced the trauma, the questions, the shaky identity, the need for acceptance.

These are books that help readers to see that all families don't look the same, and they help readers realize that family does not have to involve shared genetics.

The quest of the characters in Forever, or a Long, Long Time shows how every foster home and family differs, and what love does and doesn't look like. Same with the quests of the characters in Three Pennies (including the owl who is looking for a family and home).

The End of the Wild includes economics (rural poverty), the environment (fracking), and immigration (Somalian refugees) along with issues of foster care.

The story of Ada, Jamie, and Susan continues in The War I Finally Won, the sequel to The War That Saved My Life, with the boundaries of "family" explored to include Lord and Lady Thornton, Maggie and Jonathan, as well as a German Jewish refugee girl, Ruth, and...well, in order not to provide a spoiler, I'll stop there.  :-)

Reading Without Walls

Forever, or a Long, Long Time
by Caela Carter
HarperCollins, 2017
review copy provided by the publisher

This was a Gene Yang "Reading Without Walls" book for me. Gene Luen Yang, the National Ambassador of Young People's Literature, has chosen as his platform/project to encourage readers to

1. Read a book about a character who doesn’t look like you or live like you.
2. Read a book about a topic you don’t know much about.
3. Read a book in a format that you don’t normally read for fun. This might be a chapter book, a graphic novel, a book in verse, a picture book, or a hybrid book.

Forever, or a Long, Long Time fits the first two categories for me. The foster care system is filled with characters who aren't like me -- I've never been on either the giving or receiving end of foster care. And foster care is a topic about which I know little.

Both fourth grader Flora and her younger brother Julian have been traumatized by the foster care system, but the trauma manifests itself differently in each child. To balance the pain of seeing how these two children have been damaged, the author gives them a loving "forever family" that does everything possible to help the children adapt, learn to trust, and heal. She gives Flora an amazing teacher, who has a realistically nearly boundless supply of patience and differentiation to help Flora succeed. And because the main character is 4th -- going into 5th grade, the book is very sensitively written.

More than anything, this book is a deeply insightful look at what FAMILY means. Flora and Julian's new mom has married a divorced man with a daughter,  plus she's pregnant. When she takes Flora and Julian on a quest to discover their birth family roots, every possible variant of what foster care might look like is in their past, from loving to chaotic to brutally regimented.

This is a book about what IDENTITY means. Flora and Julian doubt the very existence of their birth because they have no baby pictures.

This is a book about TRUST, and what it takes to build trust where none has ever existed.

This is a book about HOPE. Everything doesn't get tied up in tidy bows, but by the end of the book you can see that all the parents' (and teacher's) hard work is paying off and although there will be challenges in the future when the baby comes, progress has been made. Flora and Julian are going to be okay.

This book is NOT The Great Gilly Hopkins (but they might make an interesting pairing). It's been a long time (very long time) since I read Gilly Hopkins, but I don't remember the characters seeming real -- they were more like caricatures. The characters in Forever, or a Long, Long Time are multi-faceted people you get to know from the inside. They are very real. They aren't perfect; they make mistakes.

There is one way that this book might be like Gilly Hopkins. There might be a shiny sticker in its cover's future...

It's Monday! What are you reading? FLYING THE DRAGON

Thanks to Jen and Kellee at TEACH MENTOR TEXTS for hosting IT'S MONDAY! WHAT ARE YOU READING?

Flying the Dragon
by Natalie Dias Lorenzi
Charlesbridge, 2012
review copy provided by the publisher

This book hooked me by page 9, after two short chapters.

Throughout the book, the chapters alternate between Hiroshi and Skye, cousins who, at the outset of the book, have never met. Hiroshi lives in Japan with his parents and Grandfather. Skye lives in Virginia with her Japanese father (Hiroshi's father's twin brother) and her American mother.

Hiroshi is focused on competing in the upcoming rokkaku kite battles. "A member of the Tsuki family had always won the master flier title ever since Grandfather had first entered as a boy." This is the year that Hiroshi will enter the competition on his own.

Skye is focused on securing a spot on the All-Star soccer team.

And Grandfather needs cancer treatments that are available in the United States, not in Japan.

So Hiroshi, his parents, and Grandfather move to Virginia to live in a house down the street from Skye's family. No rokkaku kite battles for Hiroshi, and no All-Star team for Skye, unless she can pass into the advanced Japanese language class after Japanese Saturday school.

Natalie Dias Lorenzi is an ELL teacher. She gets the conflicts of language and culture spot-on perfect, both for Hiroshi, who is struggling to learn English, and for Skye, who is struggling to learn Japanese and accept her family's culture.

This interaction between Hiroshi and his ELL teacher broke my heart. I have had conversations like this so many times. Times when I know that there is a wealth of information and intelligence locked behind the barrier of language:

" 'I like kites.' 

But he wanted to say so much more. He wanted to tell Mr. Jacobs about the kite battle he had to miss because he'd moved to America. He wanted to explain that the dragon kite was the first one he had made himself. Well, mostly himself--Grandfather had helped a little. He wanted to say that grandfather was a rokkaku champion and Hiroshi's best friend. And that he hoped Grandfather would get better soon so they could keep flying kites together. 

'Yes,' Hiroshi repeated. 'I like kites.' "

One of the things I love best about this book are the believable ways that both Hiroshi and Skye grow and change. I love wise, wise Grandfather, and his role in bringing Hiroshi and Skye together.

I am in awe that this is Lorenzi's debut novel. I wish there were a William C. Morris Award, not just for YA authors, but for middle grade authors as well.

I've already picked my first read aloud for this year, but I'm pretty sure this will be my second. Check it out -- you'll be glad you did!



Author's website: Natalie Dias Lorenzi | Author
Author interview at Read, Write, Repeat
One of Jama Rattigan's amazing Book Birthday posts at Jama's Alphabet Soup

Kindred Souls

Kindred Souls
by Patricia MacLachlan
Katherine Tegen Books (HarperCollins), 2012

My eyes welled up on page two of this book, and when I put it down I gulped back a sob.

Patricia MacLachlan dedicated this book to the memory of her father. "...born in a sod house on the prairie he loved."

My father would have been 85 this year. He was born in a sod house.

How I wish he were here, watching the birds -- no hummingbirds, but definitely redtailed hawks. How I wish a good dog -- a farm dog -- an angel dog -- named Lucy could find him. How I wish I could build him a sod house.


This book is a poem that you read with your heart. It refuses to be condensed into a plot summary. Go read it. Keep a hankie close by.

Treasures -- an acrostic poem

Two generations, in a time-honored
Relay, passing the baton of
Existence --
All of the
Stuff which seems
Unremarkable, but which defined, made
Real, connected the
Elder runner to the past in the present. Now it all
Stands ready to meet a new future.

© Mary Lee Hahn, 2012



Poem #22, National Poetry Month, 2012

While I was home, I took all of the glass out of the china cupboard, carefully hand washed it all, then videotaped Mom telling the story of each piece. We had just finished when one of her friends came to  visit and told me I must see the "exquisite" teacups in the high cupboards in the kitchen. This led to another whole tableful of dishes with stories to be recorded.

I'm sure I'll be writing again about those family stories, about that sense of connectedness to the women in my family...through the dishes that have been saved...passed on (where else?) in the kitchen of my childhood home.

Cathy, at Merely Day By Day, is joining me in a poem a day this month. Other daily poem writers include Amy at The Poem Farm, Linda at TeacherDance, Donna at Mainely Write, Laura at Writing the World for Kids (daily haiku), Liz at Liz in Ink (daily haiku), Sara at Read Write Believe (daily haiku), Jone at Deo Writer (daily haiku)...and YOU?

Friends and Family

Friends: True Stories of Extraordinary Animal Friendships
by Catherine Thimmesh
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011
review copy provided by the publisher

The first thing you'll do when you pick this book up is look at all  of the CUTE photos of unusual and extraordinary animal friends -- monkey and macaque, giraffe and ostrich, capybara and squirrel monkey...and my favorite, the toad and mouse.

Then you'll go back and enjoy the rhyming text.

A friend connects...

A stretch, a slight strain, 

a balancing feat,

friends go to great lengths 

in order to meet.

(Asian camel and Vietnamese miniature pig)

No matter

who has

a snout

or a beak,

connecting with friends

is something friends seek.

(giraffe and ostrich)

Finally, you'll want to know the story of how each pair of animals became friends, and you'll go back to the nonfiction paragraph below each poem to find out more about the animals, where in the world, and how they became friends.

Little Treasures: Endearments from Around the World
by Jacqueline K. Ogburn
illustrated by Chris Raschka
Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, 2011
review copy provided by the publisher

Jacqueline Ogburn, author of A Dignity of Dragons: Collective Nouns for Magical Beasts, seems to be the kind of person who loves words, and language, and quirky terms.

In Little Treasures, Ogburn has collected parental terms of endearment in fourteen languages. There are three or four terms from countries as far-flung as Uganda, the Slovak Republic and Argentina. The borders of many countries are dissolved by including terms that Russian-speaking or Arabic-speaking or Hindi-speaking people use. For the non-English languages, there is a pronunciation guide, and for the languages that do not use the Latin alphabet, the term is written in the alphabet of the language, and the pronunciation guide includes a Latinized version of the term.

Through it all, Chris Raschka's illustrations emanate love and joy and playfulness. You'll want to pick up your own "little coconut candy," your own "habibi/beloved," your own "Knuddelbaerchen/little huggy bear" and snuggle and cuddle and call them whatever it is that YOU call your little one.

There are no little ones in my house (well, not counting the cat...), but I can't wait to take this book to school and see if my students can add to this list. One my mom calls me, "pumpkin," is in the book, but "sugar plum" is mine, all mine!

What are YOUR favorite terms of endearment for your children, and what were YOU called as a child?