I'm branching out from all the speculative fiction I've been reading to catch up on some realistic fiction. Here are two of my new favorites!
The first one is called "The Partition Project" by Saadia Faruqi. She also wrote this one that I liked a lot too called "A Place at the Table" It's about Maha (short for Mahnoor) who lives in Texas with her loving parents and her older brother. The story opens with the family at the airport getting ready to pick up Dadi, who is Maha's dad's adoptive mother. Dadi is going to come and live with the family and Maha is meant to act as a kind of a baby-sitter to Dadi. Maha is not happy about losing her bedroom (she gets her own room, but it's up in the attic) to Dadi and she's struggling to connect to Dadi, who is often abrupt and and kind of cranky. Maha's deepest passion is journalism and she's very excited when her teacher assigns them a documentary project. Except she has no idea what to do the documentary about. Dadi has been telling her stories about her earlier life and Maha decides to do the project about the partitioning of India, but she ends up so obsessed with the documentary that she forgets about a novel study project she was supposed to be working on with her best friend, Kim. They end up in a big argument and Maha worries that she will never be friends with Kim again. This is an interesting story to read-there are big themes of family and family history, especially family history that's painful. There are also themes of friendship and commitment to a task, of telling a good story and finding family. It would be fun to use this book as a springboard for a documentary project. It would also be interesting to use this a doorway to talking about the food of different cultures-Dadi is a really great cook and the food she cooks sounds amazing! I really liked this story and I think it a lot of middle graders are going to like this one too.
The second one is a sequel, which I don't typically read. I don't typically read sequels because there are so many new books published each year that I tend to prioritize new stories. BUT, sometimes a story is SO compelling you need to stick around for the second part and that was THIS story. This one is called Coyote Lost and Found by Dan Gemeinhart. I'm a BIG fan of Dan Gemeinhart's work, which you might know if you've been reading my blog. I really liked The Midnight Children. I also really liked Some Kind of Courage. But this is the one, The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise that is the prequel to Coyote Lost and Found. It's probably a good idea if you read Coyote Sunrise first, if you haven't and it's amazing. Because, spoiler alert-you need the backstory of Coyote Sunrise. Dan Gemeinhart will give it to you at the beginning of Coyote Lost and Found but the way Coyote Sunrise unfolds is total magic. Coyote Lost and Found then, is about Coyote (or Ella) who is no longer living in a bus with her dad, instead they have moved into a house and Coyote has started middle school. This is not an easy thing for a young woman like Coyote who has lived with just her dad, being homeschooled (or schooled by herself, mostly). She's so different from the other kids, the way she dresses, her lack of interest in a phone and social media, her love of books. So when she finds a box on the bus that contains her mother's ashes, Coyote and her dad go on a quest to try to find where her mom wanted her ashes spread. She left the directions in her favorite book, except that Coyote accidentally gave the book away several months ago. She doesn't want to tell her dad, because it makes him really sad. So once she convinces him to go on a road trip, she also recruits her best friend Salvador and her dad brings a friend along too, much to Coyote's dismay. So the lost and found, is not only about the book, but also about gaining closure from other big losses and trying to find what's new and what's enduring. This is just as wonderful as the first book and the kids who were too young to read Coyote Sunrise when it first came out are going to love discovering Coyote as a character and getting to read about both these chapters of her life.
Here's the cover:
And here's an interview that Colby Sharp did with Dan about Coyote Lost and Found.
Usually this time of year, I'm knee deep in middle grade speculative fiction as part of the CYBILS award list, which is super fun. But this year, they are taking a break (sad face emoji) but I'm still finding some fun things to read, it's just not the overwhelming glut I'm accustomed to, with stacks of books on hold for me at my local library and the stacks of books on my coffee table giving me the stink eye every time I sit down. Luckily, here are two amazing ones that just came out. The first one is in a category I like to call "not exactly speculative fiction". There are no ghosts or magical creatures in these books, but the kids face obstacles that I hope are not realistic. This one is called "The Free State of Jax". It's written by Jennifer Nielsen, an author whose work I admire greatly. Jax is a kid who has lived with his grandmother since he was a little boy. But his grandmother developed Alzheimer's disease and he was sent to ...
I have SOOO many books to read. My TBR pile is tragically large. Thank goodness I'm retired so I can devote my time to reading! Here are two of my newest favorites. The first one is a science fiction tale by Rebecca Stead called "The Experiment". Nathan is a pretty regular sixth grader with a best friend named Victor, except for one teensy little thing-Nathan and his parents come from another planet. For the most part, Nathan's life is like everyone else's-but there are a few eccentricities like how his mom weighs all of his food (and subtracts the things he doesn't eat), she keeps a log book with data about their life, they have Zoom meetings with other alien families and their kids, and then there's the pink toothpaste that Nathan has to brush with 5 times a day. But some weird things have been happening. Some of the kids have disappeared from the Zoom meeting without an explanation and now Nathan is growing a tail. A furry, orange...
Sooooo many new middle grade fiction titles are coming out this fall. Check out these two new ones. The first one actually came out in May but Netgalley was kind enough to keep it on the shelf until a few weeks ago. It's called "The Curiosities" by W. H. Eatons, which is actually three people- Mark Wheaton and his two kids, Rowan and Wyatt. It's about two kids, Marlow and Zack, who just moved to a new small town with their mom, an exogeologist (a scientist who studies rocks from other planets) who works at the Rocket Propulsion Lab. It's also about the cats who live in the neighborhood, who are talkative, friendly, and capable of a great many things. The problem begins with a hum that a creature notices. The creature is unidentified until quite late in the book but is referred to occasionally. The hum seems to be disrupting insects and birds and eventually the people of the town. When the middle school science teacher, Ms. Layla, dis...
Comments
Post a Comment