Category Archives: grades

Family Lost and Found: A review of Shut Up, This is Serious

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Shut Up, This is Serious
Carolina Ixta
HarperCollins/Quill Tree Books
January 9, 2024
Age: 14+

In a life full of heavy burdens and chaotic emotions, all Belén wants is a distraction. Her father has left the family, her best friend is pregnant (hiding it, and her boyfriend, from a strict Catholic father), and she can’t find the motivation to care about school. Maybe a boyfriend and the possibility of sex can distract her from reality? But as avoidance often does, plans backfire, and she’s left feeling worse and on the verge of not graduating. After a run in with her father, and near breakdown, Belén’s struggle is finally seen by her family and friends, getting her the help she needs to heal.

Debut author, Carolina Ixta, draws her protagonist as a brash-voiced, big personality to hide her insecurities. Weighed down by unnamed depression, Belén uses her responsibilities to the pregnant Leti and a one-sided relationship to avoid dealing with her feelings of abandonment and unworthiness. Comparison to the father she both despises and misses adds to her confusion and anger. Secondary characters are less developed in contrast to Belén, each dealing with trauma that blinds them to what is happening with the other characters. With a plot that spans a year, the pace moves from a drawn out fall full of heartbreak, questionable decisions, and painful truths, to a quick spring climax, and epilogue-like summer conclusion.

In this raw and emotional family drama, Ixta thoughtfully explores depression, cultural expectations, and the value of chosen family.

Can You Keep a Secret?: A Review of The Enigma Girls

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The Enigma Girls: How Ten Teenagers Broke Ciphers, Kept Secrets, and Helped Win World War II
Candace Fleming
Scholastic
March 5, 2024
Age 8-12

It wasn’t just the boys doing their bit for the war effort during the harrowing years of World War II. Sibert Award-winner Candace Fleming follows The Enigma Girls, ten young women working with the British government, cracking ciphers and codes to help win the war. Based out of Station X at Bletchley Park, a once top secret center of the British intelligence, thousands of people (nearly ¾ of them young women, p. 237) worked night and day intercepting, decoding, transcribing, translating, and cataloging secret communications from German, Italian, and Japanese government and military leaders. Walking chronologically through the war years (1939-1945), Fleming introduces each woman as she’s recruited into the sphere of Bletchley Park, snippets of her life before, during, and after the conflict, and her often emotional reactions to the exhaustion, secrecy, and triumph of the work.

The brisk pace and simple, yet engaging prose of this narrative nonfiction title pull readers into the frantic feelings and tense atmosphere of Station X. Fleming balances that emotion with well-explained vocabulary and intra-chapter information about codes and code breaking. Extensive photo documentation of Europe at war and Bletchley Park in particular bring the horrors of war and high stakes of the work to vivid life. Due to the clandestine role that the women and Bletchley played in the war, primary source material from the time is limited. Fleming’s source notes show extensive research into the biographies and autobiographies of the women (most of them wrote of their wartime experiences once they were allowed), and archives in Britain and beyond. Other backmatter includes thorough source notes, photography credits, and author’s note, and an index to come (not included in the reviewed ARC).

A deftly crafted tribute to the unsung young women whose efforts often turned the tides of battle, saving the lives of allied servicemen.

Forgive Me?: A Review of The Dubious Pranks of Shaindy Goodman

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The Dubious Pranks of Shaindy Goodman
By Mari Lowe
Levine Querdio
Published November 7, 2023
Age 10-14

Awkward and excluded, 12-year-old Shaindy Goodman just wants to fit in with the girls at Bais Yaakov Middle School. When she’s invited by Gayil, the queen bee next door, to help with a series of pranks, she shrugs off her misgivings in favor of acceptance. Helping out with some harmless jokes, even if it means breaking into school, may be her chance to find friendship. Shaindy quickly realizes the pranks are more mean-spirited than high-spirited, and that only certain classmates are being targeted. Naïve to Gayil’s manipulation, she feels guilty but hopes for the best until the mischief and hard feelings are all pinned on her. As she finally understands Gayil’s acts of revenge for an unintended slight, she lets go of her own anger for lessons of penance, forgiveness, and taking responsibility for her actions.

Lowe uses the period of the Jewish High Holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, as well as their lessons, as a frame for this middle grade drama of judgement and atonement. She crafts a well-rounded and sympathetic character in Shaindy, expressing a universal need for friendship and belonging, and the way tweens and teens often make poor decisions in search of them. The plot and pace of the title move quickly through the season, mirroring the way bad choices can often lead to snowballing consequences. Moments of lightness, Shaindy’s struggle with roller blades, and final closeness with her sister help temper more serious content and lead to a satisfying conclusion. In the penultimate scene, a classroom of girls offers each other silent acknowledgment of wrongs and forgiveness for them. The wise words of a teacher, “The hardest thing many of you will do in your lives… is admit you were wrong,” (p 155) is a life lesson for those of all ages and religious backgrounds.

Family Legacy: A Review of The Blackwoods

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The Blackwoods
Brandy Colbert
Harper Collins/Balzer+Bray
Age 14+
October 3, 2023

The Blackwood family is Black Hollywood royalty, with an acting legacy spanning generations. When Blossom Blackwood, the family matriarch, passes away, the remaining three generations of her family must contend with the celebrity, jealousies, and pressure that comes from a lifetime of ambition and secrets. In the 1940s, Blossom dreams of being an entertainer, even if there weren’t many options available to a talented and ambitious young black woman in Hollywood. Years of hard work and sacrifice, fierceness and faith, brought her success. Blossom’s great-granddaughters, the beneficiaries of her struggle, handle her passing and her legacy in very different ways. Ardith is a successful young actress, close to Blossom through both faith and friendship, and struggles to process her loss and trust those around her to help. Hollis, the child (grandchild and great-grandchild) of famous faces, just wants to fly under the radar of her family’s stardom. The girls and their family struggle to reorient themselves when the revelation of a long-buried family secret challenges what they think of themselves and their relationships.

In this complex young adult drama, Colbert uses a dual timeline and three distinct narrators to explore how ambition, fame, and identity can impact how we trust others. Blossom is forced to make heartbreaking choices to pursue her goals—breaking off a relationship where she isn’t supported and leaving her young son with his grandmother for the chance to act off-Broadway. In her narrative, faith in herself and her family, and a desire to build a legacy, drive her ambition. In chapters focused on Ardith and Hollis, the teens struggle to live up to that legacy and do it in a media landscape that undermines their ability to trust new friends and old. Each contends with the problems of their time—discrimination, invasion of privacy, and living with the consequences of their choices—in an effort to control their own narrative. Colbert celebrates the power of perseverance and family in an emotional tribute to strong women everywhere.

Enchanted by Ella Enchanted? Follow it to more great reads.

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Did you know that Gail Carson Levine’s inspiration for the Newbery Honor book Ella Enchanted was part love for the Cinderella story and part annoyance—“She’s so disgustingly good! And why does she take orders from her horrible stepmother and stepsisters?” (Levine). Well, we might not all be able to create award-winning alternatives to our favorite books, but we sure can find some amazing options for taking our own favorite stories in new directions.

Butler Youth Services Scholar Andreya Costello took inspiration from Julia Smith’s reader’s advisory book map from Booklist Online centering Amari and the Night Brothers by B.B. Alston. Starting the map with Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine, a beloved book from her childhood, Costello attempted to connect it with more recent and diverse works written for a teen audience to take the story in new directions. Readers can follow the paths connecting each book by genre, theme, mood and more.

Link to the full project with path rationales.

About the Scholarship

The Butler Youth Services Scholarship for Underrepresented Groups in the Field of Library and Information Science is awarded each year to a student seeking to earn an MLIS with a focus in children’s services for public or school libraries with the goal of increasing diversity in the profession. Preference will be given to graduates of a Dominican University undergraduate program who are from a background underrepresented in the field of library science. This competitive award considers merit, academic excellence, leadership qualities, and the desire and disposition to work with young people as part of the applicant selection process. The project above was created in association with the scholarship award. More information on the award and application process can be found HERE.

*Gail Carson Levine. “Gail Said: Ella Enchanted.” Gail Carson Levine, https://www.gailcarsonlevine.com/ella.html. September 12, 2023.

Elementary!: A review of The Improbable Tales of Baskerville Hall

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The Improbable Tales of Baskerville Hall
Ali Standish
Harper Collins Children’s Books
Age 8-12
Available September 12, 2023

In a middle-grade twist on the Sherlock Holmes stories, a brilliant young Arthur Conan Doyle accepts a full scholarship to a mysterious school for exceptional students. In the hopes of providing a better life for his family, Arthur devotes himself to school, including the friendships, mysteries, and mayhem that one would expect of a 19th century English boarding school—eccentric students and professors, secret societies, magical clocks, and even a baby dinosaur. But when it comes time to submit to the questionable ethics of the secret society, and their promises of wealth and power, or do the right thing at the possible expense of his future, Arthur shows integrity to the end.

Standish borrows liberally from the Holmes novels with characters, like Dr. Watson, Jamie Moriarty, and Sherlock Holmes himself, named for many of the original Doyle’s most famous characters. Arthur himself is drawn as one would imagine a young Sherlock. These details, however, may be lost on young readers. The swiftly plotted and intricately detailed mystery can stand alone though, using its quirky characters and darkly atmospheric setting to draw the reader into its world and to rooting for the cast of diverse and well-crafted characters. Themes of friendship, integrity, and problem-solving run heavily through the novel and help to ground some of the more outlandish plot devices, like time travel and dinosaur hatching. And with a parting “the game is afoot” (p. 310), Standish sets the stage for a series of future adventures that junior sleuths will be sure to love.

Claiming Her Place: A Review of We Still Belong

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We Still Belong
Christine Day
HarperCollins Children’s Books
Age 8-12
August 1, 2023

Excitement, anxiety, disappointment, and hope—over the course of one emotional day, Wesley Wilder explores all the feeling middle school has to offer. As the early riser in her close-knit, multi-generational, indigenous household, Wesley battles nerves over the big day she’s planned. She’s written a heartfelt poem for the school newspaper in celebration of Indigenous People’s Day. She’s planning to use the same newspaper issue to ask her kind, funny, gamer-boy, crush to the school dance. And will cap off the day celebrating at the intertribal powwow planned in her Seattle area community.

As the title implies, themes of belonging, community, family, and friendship drive the fast-paced plot of this middle grade novel. Wesley is a thoroughly sympathetic character, full of all the uncertainty, eagerness, and budding confidence of adolescence, while exhibiting a strong connection to her single mother, grandfather, and extended family (a well-crafted network of supportive adult characters). Her thoughtful voice, and desire for community, come through in care for her best friend, Hanan, and her efforts to reach out to those around her in need of a friend. And even when things around Wesley seem to unravel, like her crush already having a date or her aunt’s family’s potential move, she grounds herself in gratefulness, showing a mindfulness uncommon to most middle grade characters. Day (Upper Skagit) handles incidences of discrimination toward indigenous people and causes with a gentle touch, weaving them into the narrative in a way that explains and exemplifies Wesley’s kindness. A day in the life of a soft-hearted girl growing into her voice.

With a Twist: A Review of What a Desi Girl Wants

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What a Desi Girl Wants
Sabina Khan
Scholastic
July 18, 2023
Age 12+

Induced by curiosity, guilt, and a very persuasive Dadi, Mehar flies from her boring home in Kansas to her family’s nawabi palace in Agra, India, for her father’s lavish wedding festivities. In a South Asian and LGBTQ twist on What a Girl Wants (Warner Bros., 2003), which is itself an adaptation of the 1955 play The Reluctant Debutante by William Douglas-Home, Mehar attempts to reconnect with a distant father, undermine her social-climbing future step-mother and step-sister, and foster a blossoming relationship with her Dadi’s lovely and shy personal assistant, Sufiya. As she bonds with her father, gets to know Naz and Aleena (the future steps), and grows closer to Sufiya, her original motivations come into question and she discovers both stronger relationships and humility through the journey.

Complex family dynamics drive the plot of this emotionally charged YA dramady. Mehar doesn’t fully understand her parents’ relationship and the reasons they split. She makes assumptions about the way Naz and Aleena are using her father. And she underestimates the family obligations and social restrictions that drive Sufiya’s reluctance to out herself. Khan writes Mehar as confident and clueless in turn, ruled by her desires and goals in a way that conflicts with Indian cultural expectations. She is a flawed, yet likable protagonist that stands out against the less developed secondary characters. The juxtaposition of her t-shirts and jeans against the lavish palace, wedding finery, and luscious foods adds to the sense of her straddling cultures with varying degrees of success. As Mehar settles in and struggles less, she grows in maturity, owning up to her mistakes and mending fences to get what she really wants—connection.

Control Your Own Destiny: A Review of The Queens of New York

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The Queens of New York
E.L. Shen
HarperCollins, Quill Tree Books
June 23, 2023
Age 13+

Yours, mine, theirs—unrealistic expectations will get you every time. Jia is an aspiring manga artist with dreams bigger than running her parents’ Chinatown dumpling restaurant. Ariel is a genius, headed for a parent-approved STEM program and early admission to college, but all she really wants is closure after her sister’s death. Everett is bound for Broadway and determined to make it, even if it means fighting through the undisguised racism she sees in her theater program. Over one summer, the girls support each other through hard decisions and horrible situations no matter if they’re sitting together wrapping dumplings or separately traveling the world.

Shen sets teenage dreams and goals against the expectations of Asian American families, community, and culture in steamy, summertime Flushing, Queens. Weaving themes of racism, loss, guilt, and bravery through the narrative, she crafts a story of friends that will be there through it all, near or far. Each of the young women face a test of their ambition—Jia shows her parents she deserves to go to college, Ariel leaves for South Korea to find the answers her parents are keeping from her, Everett must stand up to the mockery and racism she sees in her theater world—and each knows she can lean on the others for strength to do what’s needed. Chapters alternate between the narration and story of each of the main characters, divided by text and email communications that showcase their extraordinary friendship. Thoughtfully written and deeply nuanced characters will have readers cheering for their satisfying wrap ups. An ode to growth and bravery, and the friends that make it all less scary.

Cracking the Code of Middle School: A Review of Talia’s Codebook for Mathletes

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Talia’s Codebook for Mathletes
Marissa Moss
Walker Books
June 13, 2023
Ages 8 to 12

Talia loves cracking codes and doing math, but can’t seem to solve the puzzle that is middle school. Joining the mathlete team was supposed to help with her transition, but as the only girl on the team, the boys make her the outcast. When her mathlete best friend, Dash, gets too embarrassed to be best friends with a girl, and wants to hide their friendship, there’s only one thing Talia can do—make her own all-girls mathlete team! With her new friends by her side, Talia becomes determined to bring their team to victory, get her friend back, and figure out the social rules of middle school.

The comic diary form gives a personal touch to the feelings, actions, and reactions Talia has to daily life as a middle school student. The book is broken down into observations, deductions, quizzes, and puzzles, which act as chapters. With this style, readers get a fast-paced book with no breaks in the plot. The illustrations are meant to look like doodles in a diary but are still expressive with the use of postures and facial expressions. The colors are bright with the use of watercolors and gouache with ink to give definitions to characters and objects. The overarching themes of friendship, discovering a sense of self, and finding the courage to do something outside the norm make this book perfect for readers entering middle school. Talia evolves in her social development, starting as self-centered and refusing to see her friend’s perspectives then becoming conscious of her actions and how they affect other people’s feelings. Talia’s friends and family don’t have major character developments during the book, but they do support and encourage her on her journey through middle school. Talia’s Codebook for Mathletes is a STEM-oriented book that teaches young readers, especially girls interested in math or science, to be courageous and forge their own unique path in middle school.