Editorial Reviews for Nominees
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 Score: 90/100 (9.0 out of 10)
Well, here's something near and dear to our hearts! A workbook intended to help those who struggle with dyslexia, a very real and very misunderstood learning challenge that can make reading feel like trying to run through wet cement. And here is the thing: when a child (or adult) struggles to read, it is not because they are lazy. It is not because they are not trying. It is not because they do not care. In many cases, they are trying harder than everyone else in the room. They are just fighting a battle other people cannot always see--a struggle that even fewer understand. That is why resources like Apricot Tree Academy Dyslexia Intervention Workbook, Level 1 matter. This workbook, created by Sandra Dallon and Apricot Tree Academy, is aimed at young learners ages 5-10 and serves as part of a dyslexia intervention curriculum. It is designed as a student workbook for Level 1, Lessons 1-4, with activities that align with the corresponding teacher materials And we have to say: this is a thoughtfully constructed, visually warm, and genuinely useful early literacy workbook. Now, is this the kind of book you curl up with next to a fireplace and read for the plot twists? No. Nobody is sitting there going, “Oh my gosh, I cannot believe the tan cat is mad at the fat rat!” Although... honestly... the tan cat/fat rat drama does have some serious emotional stakes. But that is not the point. The point is structure. Repetition. Confidence. Pattern recognition. Sound awareness. Small wins. One decoded word at a time. One sentence at a time. One “I can do this” moment at a time. And on that level, this workbook succeeds. The book starts with simple short a words like mat, map, sat, hat, bad, can, tan, fan, ham, and jam. It also includes nonsense words, which is a great sign from an instructional standpoint. Nonsense words may look silly to an adult, but they are extremely useful because they show whether a child is truly decoding sounds rather than simply memorizing familiar words. That is important. A child who can read cat because they have seen it a hundred times may still struggle when they encounter a new word with the same pattern. But if they can sound out nonsense words like dat, gat, lat, or vap, that means they are developing transferable decoding skills. That is where the magic starts to happen. The workbook then gives students short decodable sentences such as “Pam is at the mat,” “Sam ran on the pad,” and “Tap the map.” Are these sentences literary masterpieces? Of course not. But they are controlled, intentional, and accessible. For struggling readers, that accessibility is everything. One of our favorite things about this workbook is that it does not rush. So many reading materials accidentally overwhelm children by introducing too much too quickly. This workbook is more patient. It lingers on sound patterns. It gives students repeated practice. It reinforces through word lists, sentence reading, handwriting, syllable counting, matching games, and short decodable stories. That kind of repetition may seem simple, but it is powerful. The short stories are probably the most charming part of the workbook. “The Tan Cat and Fat Rat,” “The Fat Rat’s Hat,” “The Band,” “The Slop Pot,” “A Jog in the Bog,” and “Fran at the Shop” all use controlled vocabulary while giving students something that resembles a little narrative. That matters because children do not just want to drill words forever. They want to feel like they are reading something. And even when the stories are extremely simple, they provide that feeling. “The Fat Rat’s Hat,” for example, is basically a tiny saga of fashion disaster and recovery. The rat has a hat. The rat sits on the hat. The hat is flat. The cat is sad. The cat gets the rat a cap. That is not exactly War and Peace, but for a beginning reader? That is a complete little reading journey. There is a character. There is a problem. There is a resolution. And most importantly, the child can actually read it. That is huge. We also appreciated how the workbook introduces the idea of closed syllables in Lesson 2. It explains the concept in a clear and kid-friendly way: one vowel, followed by one or more consonants, with the vowel making a short sound. That is the kind of foundational phonics concept that can unlock a lot for young readers. The workbook also brings in digraphs like ch, sh, and th, along with short o words such as dog, log, pot, mop, fox, and shop. Later sections appear to build into more complex spelling concepts like the FLOSS rule, welded sounds, plural s sounds, and short e practice. In other words, the curriculum has a real staircase. It is not random. It is not just “Here are some cute worksheets.” It builds. We also need to talk about the visuals. This workbook is surprisingly eye-catching. The teal, orange, cream, and dark navy color palette gives it a polished, branded feel. The illustrations are warm, cozy, and inviting, though it looks like some of them may have been AI generated. In any case, some of the reading scenes, animal illustrations, and story title pages genuinely look like they belong in a children’s picture book. At the same time... you run a risk when creating something this colorful with all these swirly lines and zig-zagging patterns in the background, especially for children with dyslexia. Like, wouldn't that be distracting? Moving on... Children who struggle with reading can sometimes develop anxiety around books and worksheets. A cold, clinical workbook can make that worse. This workbook feels more welcoming. It has personality. It looks like someone cared about making the experience less intimidating. That said, the visuals are also where we have one of our main critiques. Some pages may be a little visually busy for dyslexic learners. The decorative backgrounds, strong color blocks, illustrations, and layered layouts are attractive, but dyslexia-friendly design often benefits from extra simplicity, spacing, and visual calm. There are pages where the design looks wonderful from an aesthetic standpoint but might be slightly overstimulating for a child who already struggles with visual processing or attention. We would not call this a dealbreaker. Not at all. But if the workbook ever receives a revised edition, we would recommend preserving the warmth and charm while giving some pages even more breathing room. Our other critique is that some of the decodable sentences are a little awkward. For example, lines like “The cab had a lap” or “The man sat on a ham” are funny, but they might also make some children pause and think, “Wait... what?” Now, to be fair, this is a common challenge with decodable readers. When you limit yourself to specific sound patterns, you sometimes end up with odd little sentences. That is just part of the territory. And sometimes silly sentences actually help kids stay engaged. Still, a few lines could probably be polished while staying within the phonics constraints. But overall, this is a strong workbook. It understands that dyslexia intervention is not about throwing harder words at kids and hoping they magically catch up. It is about carefully building the foundation that other readers may have absorbed more easily. It is about making sounds visible, patterns predictable, and reading less frightening. And there is something genuinely beautiful about that. A child who struggles to read can start to feel like reading is a locked door. This workbook hands them keys one at a time. Short a words? Key. Closed syllables? Key. Digraphs? Key. Nonsense words? Key. Handwriting practice? Key. Syllable counting? Key. Decodable stories? Key. Matching games? Key. That is the power of a resource like this. It does not just teach reading. It teaches a child that reading is possible. And that may be the most important lesson of all. Apricot Tree Academy Dyslexia Intervention Workbook, Level 1 is a warm, structured, visually engaging, and intelligently scaffolded workbook for young readers who need extra support. It has a few rough edges, especially with occasional awkward sentences and some visually busy pages, but its heart and instructional design are firmly in the right place. For parents, tutors, teachers, and interventionists looking for a gentle but systematic early literacy resource, this is absolutely worth a look. Check it out on Amazon!
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 Score: 91/100 (9.1 out of 10)
What the Hell with the Hat? by Ed Ballou is not a conventional book, yet it exudes an unmistakable passion for literature and storytelling. Ballou is a playwright with nearly five decades of playwrighting experience—some ups and a lot of downs. But you know what they say? Mistakes, failures, and setbacks are the best teachers. He wrote his first script in the 70s on a typewriter. Over the years and decades he progressed to word processors, computers, laptops, and eventually a Macbook Pro. Oh, and by the way, he lost a copy one of his longtime works because one of his laptops broke. Can you relate? We can. Through this book, Ballou serves as both an inspiration and a cautionary tale. This book is fascinating in so many ways, mostly because it offers a very rare glimpse into the thought process and everyday struggles of a passionate creator, one who often times seems down on his luck. Yet he never gives up! Decades upon decades of writing dozens of different scripts and plays has calloused him like a barbell and chalk would callous a weightlifter. Ballou offers something that many creators don't: transparency and blunt honesty. Nothing he describes comes across as smooth, natural, or easy. We can't emphasize enough: this book is not a book. It's more like a collection of diary or journal entries. In fact, it sometimes feels more like that recording thing that psychiatrists do after therapy sessions. The author essentially shares notes to himself while he works through the realities of being a playwright: the rewrites, the stalled productions, the moments of hope, the practical headaches, the disappointments, the tiny victories, and the stubborn refusal to quit. That structure will not work for everyone. Some readers will absolutely wish for a cleaner narrative arc or a more conventionally shaped memoir. But for us, that rawness is part of the point. It lets the reader sit inside the grind instead of just hearing about it after the fact. It's in the moment (or shortly thereafter). It's practically unfiltered, talking about unsavory things like being jealous about the success of others. A lot of this book is stream of conscience, and it's super rough and sometimes hard to read. That in-the-moment, unfiltered aspect is simultaneously one of the best and worst things about this book. It's incredibly unpolished, rough, and unrefined. It almost seems thrown together and unfinished. It's like someone just copy & pasted all their tweets, e-mails, notes into a Word document with no editing, formatting, or... anything... then interspersed them with excerpts from their scripts. Some of the ellipses aren't even full ellipses. Some of the em dashes aren't even full em dashes. There are a lot of run-on sentences and fragments. A part of us wants to ask: Why would you submit this to a contest? Another part of us want to say: Thank you for submitting this to our contest. See, the fact that this is so unpolished, rough, and unrefined gives it a really raw, real, genuine, and authentic feel. Ballou doesn't sugarcoat or hide anything. And, really, what he's saying and describing is extremely relatable to authors and creators of every kind. We can personally relate to a lot of his struggles. He talks about how he entered a contest hoping to at least finish in the top ten and be featured, yet neither thing happened. He found himself trying to read the winner's work and not being impressed, admitting that this might've been due to some petty jealousy. We can relate to that! Can't you? One thing that stands out to us about Ballou is that he is constantly reading, researching, and trying to sharpen himself. He talks about Samuel Beckett, Shakespeare, Chekhov, Robert Frost, Walt Whitman, and more. One of his plays features a bunch of literary legends like the Shelleys. He tries to "learn from the classics." Sometimes, we feel like he distracts himself with all this research and probably overthinks things. Nonetheless, he seems to draw inspiration from these creators. The self-awareness and self-deprecation are also major aspects of this book. He creates a joke review of someone who crawled out of the back window to escape seeing one of his plays. We got a kick out of that. It's hard not to feel for him when he talks about his Indiegogo campaign failing or not being able to have the play he had planned at the venue he already rented due to circumstances with the actor(s). He talks about his creative process, which honestly seems kinda scatterbrained and unfocused to us. Ballou is one of those people who has an overactive mind and imagination. He has no shortage of ideas, yet seems to struggle to put it all together. He also seems to struggle with taking constructive criticism. There's a moment in which he's told to create a one-line hook for each of his scripts, but instead of doing so, he spends about a paragraph talking about reasons to discredit this advice, including the term "logline" being underlined in red on spellcheck. He also seems to have a lot of trouble focusing on any one thing. He talks about how it's normal for him to work on two or three scripts at one time. We're not sure if that's... ideal. He seems like a chronic pantser. He says something like how he just has a bunch of characters and that writing is like trying to open/crack an egg. In other words, it often seems like he has concepts of a plan but no actual plot. It sounds like he writes himself into corners, then writes himself out. It works for some. We get a hunch, though, that a combination of this and his overthinking may have adversely impacted the quality of his writing. He does have some good ideas that come from all his ruminations. For example, while working on Lake Brimstone, Ballou decides that the stairs and thrones in the play should be made of metal because, in his own mythological logic, they were built by Hephaestus, the god of fire, blacksmithing, and metalworking. That is the kind of detail we appreciate in this diary. He is not just throwing weird ideas at the wall. He is trying to make the world of the play feel internally coherent, even down to the material of the set pieces. He also created this really cool concept for a play involving his now-deceased three-legged cat, Toby the Boby, and a bunch of other talking animals. Why not finish that? It sounds adorable and fun. Check it out on Amazon! Review of "Brunt and Eggbert Happen Upon a Wreck!" by Jeff Dorrill, Illustrated by Angeles Peinador5/10/2026  Score: 94+/100 (9.4+ out of 10)
Brunt and Eggbert Happen Upon a Wreck! is a funny, tender, and surprisingly layered children’s picture book about family, patience, jealousy, manners, belonging, and learning to make room for someone new. The direct sequel to Brunt and Eggbert (book one in the series), it is created by Jeff Dorrill and illustrated by Angeles Peinador. This is going to sound like a funny and/or strange comparison, but this reminded us a lot of Winnie the Poo with monsters. Eggbert is a lot like Christopher Robin, and Brunt is a lot like Winnie the Pooh. The two more or less fill the same archetype. This book (and the series as a whole) have a lot of the same childlike wonder, charm, and lighthearted appeal. Brunt, a gentle monster, and Eggbert, a human boy, have built a happy father-son life together in their cozy shared cave. They garden, fish, read, joke, renovate, and look after each other like any loving family. Their peaceful routine changes when Astrid, a compassionate zoo veterinarian, discovers a wild, feral little monster causing absolute chaos in the woods. The creature trashes Astrid’s things, scares animals, and later demolishes Brunt and Eggbert’s cave, earning the name Wreck. This came as a pleasant surprise to us because we were expecting Brunt and Eggbert to discover a shipwreck with some treasure or something (based on the title). Instead, they discover a little monster who proves to be a handful! Eggbert struggles with Wreck almost immediately. She claws rugs, ruins homework, splashes in the stream, wrecks the garden, disrupts meals, and basically turns their home into a miniature disaster zone. Brunt, however, sees something Eggbert cannot at first: Wreck is not bad. She is frightened, untaught, and alone. It speaks to the importance of nature vs nurture. Brunt is also a monster, but he's also kind, likely because he was shown and taught kindness. The book presents the challenging question: couldn't a monster like Wreck be taught the same? Astrid helps Eggbert understand that Wreck comes from a different world and simply does not know how to behave, so they begin teaching her basic manners. Slowly, Wreck learns to say things like “please,” “thank you,” and “sorry.” The emotional turning point comes when Eggbert, overwhelmed and jealous of how much attention Wreck is getting, tries to return her to the monster village. But when he gets trapped near the river and is threatened by dangerous monsters, Wreck rescues him. Eggbert then realizes that Wreck’s so-called family may not be safe or loving at all. When he returns home, he admits that he was thinking more about his own comfort than Wreck’s well-being. This confrontation with the monsters is ever so slightly on the darker side, since the monsters threaten to eat both Eggbert and Wreck. There's also some peril when the monsters fall into the river after Wreck bites through the log bridge. However, they survive (no one dies in these books that we know of) and recover by clinging to the riverbank. So, children and adults can be comforted that the mean monsters still faced consequences without worrying if they're permanently hurt or in mortal danger. By the end, Eggbert chooses compassion. He recognizes that Wreck needs a safe home just like he once did. Brunt and Eggbert rearrange their cave to make room for her, and the story closes with the new family sharing cobbler, making plans, and entering the Crispy Crunchy Peach Cobbler Bake-Off together. Once again, the illustrations by Angeles Peinador are fantastic! They really make this an above-average children's book. The one tiny little thing that bothered us (and maybe it's more of a character thing) are the boils on Brunt's skin. One of us was eating and had to stop eating when reading this book because the sight of these boils made their stomach turn. With that said, they put forth the message that you can't judge a book by its cover (or a person based on their physical appearance). Brunt is beautiful because his heart is good and he is kind and loving. He isn't beautiful because of his skincare routine. Everything else in this book looks phenomenal. Can we get something off our chests though? We're still not entirely comfortable with this relationship between Brunt and Eggbert. Yes, we know this is a children's book and it's supposed to be lighthearted, innocent, and not taken so seriously. We just can't shake that Brunt was some adult monster who found this little boy, now they live together and are always together. And Brunt seems to have quite a bit of power in this relationship dynamic. He even "demands" to know where Eggbert and Wreck have been all day. We were a bit surprised by that, although you could chalk it up to Brunt being so caring that he shows emotions when he's worried or concerned. It does come across as a little possessive, like when Brunt reflects on when it was just him and Eggbert without Wreck in the picture. Wreck is arguably our favorite character in the entire series so far. She's a menace! But she's a cute little menace. She kinda reminded us of that crazy little fuzzy mascot from the Honey-Comb cereal commercials, or maybe of a troll doll. We love that she has little baby snakes and scorpions in her hair! It reminded us of a Gorgon/Medusa. She's so expressive, and it's funny to see the mischief in her eyes! Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 94+/100 (9.4+ out of 10)
Life is beautifully messy. So are people. Nothing is ever so straight forward. We constantly try to fit people's lives into these neat, coherent little narratives. We really want the beginning to logically predict the end. If you pull a single thread from a person's life--say a 19-year-old kid in 1966 completely covered in black soot, sweeping graphite dust in a Pennsylvania steel mill at 3:00 in the morning--you immediately picture a very specific blue-collar trajectory. You picture someone deeply entrenched in the industrial machinery of mid-century America. But imagine pulling a completely different thread from a few decades later. Now you have a man (author and poet John Yurechko) with top-secret clearance sitting in a classified government bunker, analyzing complex Soviet military strategies for the highest echelons of the U.S. intelligence community. Two entirely different universes. On paper, those two realities just don't intersect. But what happens when both of those threads, along with a few other wild, contradictory ones, belong to that same person? Part of the same story. The same twisting, turning, winding, weaving path. The same life journey. Well, you might end up with a fascinating work like Second Thoughts by John Yurechko. Second Thoughts is a is a reflective, autobiographical, philosophically restless collection of poems and passages about change, memory, labor, love, aging, history, family, country, and the strange impossibility of summarizing a human life. It is not just a poetry collection. It is kinda like an excavation of life. This book is essentially an archaeological dig into a deeply unconventional American existence, one that begins in coal, steel, graphite, sweat, and working-class inheritance, then moves through academia, Berkeley radicalism, political disillusionment, government service, intelligence work, marriage, fatherhood, illness, travel, grandfatherhood, and mortality. That is a lot. And somehow, Yurechko makes the scope feel personal rather than bloated. The opening prose piece, “First Thoughts,” is one of the strongest parts of the entire book. It establishes the central metaphor of the collection: dust. Specifically, graphite dust. The image of young Yurechko sweeping the floor of the U.S. Steel Fairless Works Mill is almost mythic in its futility. He is handed a broom and asked to clear a path through black industrial dust that keeps settling back over the same ground. It is Sisyphus with a push broom. It is Hercules cleaning the Augean stables, except the filth is airborne, metallic, ancestral, and personal. This is where the book gets its emotional engine. Yurechko is not merely describing a miserable summer job. He is tracing an inheritance. His grandfather Joseph dug anthracite coal and developed black lung. His father worked around the steel industry. The family story moves from Slovak miners to Pennsylvania coal to United States Steel. It is a carbon-based lineage in every possible sense: biological, industrial, historical, and spiritual. We loved how Yurechko turns soot into symbolism without losing the physical ugliness of the thing itself. The graphite gets in his ears, around his lips, in his nostrils, beneath his nails, and even after he returns to college, he is still trying to scrub it out of his body. That detail is tremendous. It is also the perfect metaphor for the entire collection. You can leave a place, but that does not mean the place leaves you. Then the book changes shape. Yurechko becomes the young intellectual, the poet, the protester, the Berkeley radical, the man standing near the fire of the 1960s and 1970s. The early poems often reflect that search for identity. Some are mythic. Some are romantic. Some are angry. Some are jagged and experimental. You can feel a young writer trying on different voices, forms, postures, and philosophies. Are all of these early poems equally successful? Maybe not. Some of them feel very much like poems written by a young man in the late 1960s and early 1970s. That is both a limitation and part of their charm. A poem like “Adrestos Supplicating” is ambitious and classically inspired, but it also has the slightly grand, formal, myth-heavy quality of a young poet reaching toward antiquity to understand violence, guilt, justice, and doom. “Some Day” has romantic intensity, but it is less compelling than the later work because it feels more abstract and idealized. However, those early poems matter because they show the formation of the mind. They are not just individual pieces. They are artifacts. And that is important because this book is less about isolated poetic perfection and more about the record of a consciousness over time. The Berkeley-era material is especially fascinating because Yurechko’s life was not merely brushing against history. He was close enough to inhale it. He writes about protests, tear gas, rubber bullets, friends becoming radicalized, and the strange chaos of a political moment when righteous anger and genuine moral conviction sometimes slid into paranoia, danger, and disillusionment. That tension gives the book real bite. Yurechko does not present his younger self as a fool, nor does he present his older self as magically enlightened. That is one of the things we appreciated most. The book is not smug about age. It is not one of those “I was young and wrong, but now I know everything” retrospectives. Instead, it is more honest than that. It understands that every era of a life comes with its own blindness. The great pivot of the book, of course, is Yurechko’s move from radical outsider to government insider. That could have felt ridiculous if handled poorly. Instead, it becomes one of the most interesting contradictions in the collection. After all the protest, distrust, and ideological unrest, Yurechko rereads the Constitution, revisits JFK’s famous call to service, completes his PhD, moves east with Jane, and enters government work. He joins the U.S. intelligence community, receives a top-secret clearance, travels widely, and spends decades serving inside the very machinery his younger self once challenged. That is a heck of a character arc. And again, the book wisely refuses to flatten it. Was it compromise? Growth? Betrayal? Maturity? Pragmatism? A different form of service? Probably all of the above. That is what makes it human and relatable. Yurechko’s later reflections suggest that he did not stop wanting to improve the world. He simply stopped believing that shouting from the outside was the only way to do it. He moves from revolution to responsibility, from street protest to statecraft, from ideology to imperfect service. The book becomes a meditation on how people change when they discover that the world is not waiting to fit their clean little theories. And then, after all that history, the body enters the room. The stenosis section is another major highlight. In “Concerning the Onset, Intensification, Confrontation, Struggle, and Subsequent Departure of My Stenosis,” Yurechko writes about physical breakdown with a mixture of humor, horror, humiliation, and clinical specificity. The title alone is almost comically overbuilt, but that is part of the point. Here is a man used to analysis, structure, intelligence, discipline, and control, suddenly facing an enemy that does not negotiate. His spine betrays him. The body becomes its own bureaucracy, and it is not taking appeals. We found this section powerful because it strips away the old identities. The steelworker, the poet, the protester, the scholar, the intelligence analyst, the martial artist, the traveler, all of them are forced into the same fragile human container. Suddenly a wave on the beach can become a threat. Suddenly walking is strategy. Suddenly dignity is not a grand philosophical concept. It is whether you can stand, move, sleep, and endure. That is where the book becomes unexpectedly moving. Yurechko is very good at connecting the personal body to historical ruin. When he writes about Rome, decay, fallen empires, broken tiles, and buried coins, it is hard not to hear the echo of his own physical collapse. His body becomes an empire losing territory. His spine becomes a ruined column. His former confidence becomes archaeology. That is strong stuff. The aging poems continue this thread. “Thoughts On Aging” is not sentimental. It is clear-eyed. It understands that aging is not simply wisdom and gray hair and rocking chairs. It is subtraction. It is a narrowing perimeter. It is possessions becoming burdens. It is time turning from an abstract concept into a pressure system. It is the realization that the universe has not slowed down just because you have. And yet, Second Thoughts does not drown in despair. That may be the book’s greatest surprise. Because as the body weakens, the emotional and cosmic range of the book expands. Yurechko looks outward to history, the sea, ancient civilizations, infinity, and the universe. He also looks inward to family, marriage, grandchildren, small domestic moments, and the tiny sacred absurdities of daily life. This is where Jane and Wesley become so important. The poems about Jane are some of the book’s most grounded and tender. Yurechko’s love poems are not always flashy, but they feel lived-in. That matters. This is not the feverish idealization of “Some Day.” This is love after decades. Love with memory. Love with errands. Love with worry. Love with a lost hat. “Lost Hat Found, Found Love Lost” is a wonderful example of how Yurechko can turn a seemingly tiny domestic event into something emotionally large. A forgotten hat becomes a quest. A simple retrieval becomes a love poem. The stakes matter because the person matters. And then there is Wesley. The toddler poems are delightful because they introduce chaos back into the book, but now it is not the chaos of politics, war, protest, or bodily failure. It is the chaos of new life. In “The Gait of the Toddle,” Wesley becomes an adorable agent of entropy. He hides objects. He disrupts order. He moves through the house according to a logic adults cannot fully understand. After a lifetime of trying to organize knowledge, history, policy, discipline, and memory, Yurechko is outmaneuvered by a toddler. Honestly, that is fantastic. The book suggests that the end of life is not merely decline. It can also be reintroduction. Renewal. Wonder. A return to mystery. A baby’s first breath, a grandchild’s movement, a wife’s hat, a walk on the beach, a heron standing still, these become as meaningful as governments, wars, empires, and classified files. That is the hidden wisdom of Second Thoughts. The book begins by asking, “Did I move any dust?” By the end, we understand that the answer depends on what kind of dust we are talking about. Industrial dust? Historical dust? Domestic dust? Cosmic dust? The dust of old civilizations? The dust of a life remembered? The dust disturbed by a toddler crossing the floor? Yes. All of it. If we had a criticism, it would be that the collection is uneven. Some poems are much stronger than others. Some early works feel dated or overly abstract. Some later pieces lean into large philosophical language when the concrete image would have carried the feeling more powerfully. Yurechko is at his best when he trusts the physical world: graphite dust, a beach wave, a lost hat, a trembling body, a child’s hidden object, an ancient shoreline. When he gets too cosmic too quickly, the poems can occasionally float away from the reader. Second Thoughts is not sleek, trendy, or minimalist. It is not trying to be Instagram poetry. Thank goodness. It is a dense, reflective, sometimes strange, sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking collection from a man looking back across decades and trying to understand what it all meant. It is a book about how one life can contain multitudes: steel mill soot and classified intelligence, Berkeley protest and government service, Tae Kwon Do discipline and spinal vulnerability, ancient history and toddler chaos, public duty and private love. Above all, it is a book about revision. Not just revising poems. Revising the self. Second Thoughts reminds us that we are not bound to the first draft of our ideology, our identity, our ambitions, or our understanding of the world. We change because life changes us. History changes us. Love changes us. Pain changes us. Children and grandchildren change us. Time changes us most of all. And if we are lucky, we eventually get the chance to look back and ask the same haunting question Yurechko asks: Did I move any dust? For John Yurechko, we think the answer is yes. Maybe not always the dust he expected. But certainly the dust that mattered. One of our favorite little lines in this book is "cemetery of familiarity." This really speaks to the transcience of life and how things are constantly changing. We're constantly having to trim and let go of old things, familiar things. That doesn't mean forgetting them entirely, but just not letting them weigh us down and keep us from moving on (and moving forward). Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 96/100 (9.6 out of 10)
Where do we even begin? Amber Berkowitz is a phenomenal human being, a passionate and talented author, and now she's put that all together in the form of this remarkable children's book/children's educational brand! We love it! When it comes to children's book brands, we've come across a lot of gems: Story Monsters, Once Upon a Dance, WickWick (Tuula Pere's brand), Leigh's Wheelie Adventures (Charlene McIver's series), Cora Can series (by Sally Kashner), Miki Taylor's Bentley series, and Saratoga Springs Publishing. These are all multi-time award-winning children's book brands. Well, AMB Kids Books, created by Amber Berkowitz, belongs in that conversation of elite children's book publishers! Berkowitz puts it all together: her own magnetic personality and the undeniable charm and appeal of adorable characters like Gigglet, the incredible main protagonist of Berkowitz's flagship series! Gigglet is Pikachu-levels of cuteness, charm and charisma! As soon as we see her, we know we're looking at a Berkowitz work. And Berkowitz has a vision that she executes with so much undeniable passion: appearing in costume as Gigglet (visiting schools and parties), offering Gigglet plush toys, Gigglet plush party dresses, Baby Wigglet plushies, and more! This is more than just a book brand, this is something more. Oh, and by the way, all of these things are incredibly reasonably price (the custom plushies, which usually cost the maker a lot, are only $25) and appear to be very high quality just like the books! The Gigglet plush toy look so adorable and intricate with cute eyelashes, ears, pink blushing cheeks, a gleeful expression, a pink bow, pink dress, and big piggy feet to help her stand up on a desk or shelf. Children will love her! They'll also love the Baby Wigglet plush toy with the three little hairs on his baby piglet head (nice touch!) and bright blue eyes. All of these have a positive, cheerful, happy expression, which is contagious. Like with the books, it's impossible not to smile when you see them. Speaking of the books... those are the heart and center of this brand! And all the ones we've read have been oh-so-lovely! These books exude positivity and light, things which children need in their lives. They really lift your spirits! Let's go through a few of them—Outstanding Creator Award-winning children's books! Let’s start with Gigglet Goes to School. We LOVED Gigglet Goes to School! And here’s the funny thing: we didn’t love it because it was trying to be the biggest, deepest, most groundbreaking children’s book ever written. We loved it because it is simple, sweet, adorable, comforting, and full of light. Sometimes that is exactly what children need. Honestly, sometimes that is exactly what adults need too. After reading so many dark, heavy, complicated, and emotionally exhausting books, there is something almost healing about joining an adorable little piglet as she wakes up, goes to school, learns, plays, writes, paints, dances, eats, naps, picks flowers, and returns home to Mama Pig. That’s it. And that’s the magic. Gigglet is not trying to save the world. She is not carrying some enormous destiny on her tiny piggy shoulders. She has no superpowers, no tragic backstory, no giant villain to defeat. She simply goes to school to “learn and play,” and she does it with cheer, curiosity, and happiness in her heart. There is something beautiful about that. In a world that often teaches children and adults alike to rush, compete, worry, perform, and constantly chase the next thing, Gigglet reminds us to stop and smell the roses. Or, in her case, stop and pick the flowers on the way home. Peppa, eat your heart out. There is a new cute, girly piglet in town! The book’s structure is wonderfully accessible for little readers. The text is big, short, and easy to follow, making it perfect for bedtime, circle time, classroom reading, or parent-child bonding. The illustrations are bright, colorful, and instantly eye-catching, with the kind of cheerful visual energy that naturally draws children in. One of the best educational aspects of Gigglet Goes to School is how it encourages children to notice similar-sounding words and playful phonetic patterns. We get pairings like: Scribble & Squiggle Crunch & Munch Swish & Swash Nestle & Nuzzle Tumble & Stumble Snuggle & Cuddle That is such smart children’s writing. It is fun. It is musical. It is easy to remember. It gives children words they can say, hear, repeat, and connect to the pictures on the page. And then there is the relationship between Gigglet and Mama Pig, which gives the book its emotional softness. Gigglet may spend much of the day away from her mother, learning and exploring independently, but she begins and ends her day with Mama Pig. There is safety there. There is comfort there. There is love, trust, and security. And, of course, they are all smiles. That is the essence of AMB Kids Books at its best: cheerful, child-centered, visually inviting, emotionally safe, and quietly educational without ever feeling like homework. Then there is Welcome Baby Wigglet!, which may be the emotional crown jewel of the Gigglet universe so far. Just when we thought Amber Berkowitz’s baby pig children’s books could not get any cuter, she introduced Baby Wigglet. And wow. This book is adorable, heartwarming, and genuinely touching in a way that sneaks up on you. On the surface, yes, it is another bright, cheerful, beautifully illustrated children’s book about cute anthropomorphic farm animals. But underneath all the pink, sparkle, giggles, bows, and piggy sweetness, Berkowitz is exploring something much deeper: family, change, insecurity, reassurance, and the powerful emotional bonds that shape children’s lives. In Gigglet Goes to School, much of the emotional focus was on Gigglet’s relationship with Mama Pig. She could go out into the world, learn, play, write, paint, dance, snack, nap, and explore, then safely return home to the warmth and security of her mother. In Welcome Baby Wigglet!, that family circle expands. Now we get more of Gigglet’s relationship with both parents, including Papa Pig, who gets to play a more visible role. More importantly, we get the arrival of a new baby brother, Wigglet, and with him comes one of the most relatable childhood fears imaginable: “Will I still be loved the same?” That is such a big feeling for such a little piglet. Gigglet initially worries that the new baby might replace her as the family’s “baby.” That is not just cute. That is real. That is the kind of emotional anxiety many children experience when a new sibling enters the home. Suddenly, routines change. Attention shifts. Everyone is excited about the baby. And a child who was once the center of the universe may wonder where they now fit. Berkowitz handles that fear with so much tenderness. Gigglet is reassured that her parents still love her just as much as ever, and that becoming a big sister is not a loss. It is a new role. A new responsibility. A new adventure. What first seems scary becomes exciting. What first feels like replacement becomes connection. But what remains is love. There is so much heart in this book. Honestly, it had us feeling emotional at times, especially when Gigglet fears being replaced and later when she finally embraces her little brother. That moment works because it is not just about a baby pig meeting another baby pig. It is about a child learning that love does not shrink when a family grows. It expands. That is a beautiful message. The book also works on a surprisingly thoughtful developmental level. Families are children’s first classrooms. Before school, before friendships, before the wider world, children learn safety, affection, language, trust, empathy, and identity through their earliest relationships with parents and siblings. In that sense, Berkowitz’s books are not just cute. They are quietly modeling the foundations of healthy emotional growth. You can even see a gentle version of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs at work. Baby Wigglet is fed, warmed, protected, held, loved, and welcomed. His basic needs and safety needs are met by attentive caregivers. Then love and belonging bloom around him as the family cuddles, names, and celebrates him. And here is the really sweet part: Gigglet becomes part of that nurturing circle too. Because she has been raised with so much love, she is able to reflect that love back toward her baby brother. When she notices that their names sound alike and that he looks like her, it is almost as if she sees the love given to her mirrored back through Wigglet. That is genuinely beautiful. There is also a fun interactive element when Gigglet tries to guess what her parents’ big surprise might be. Young readers may shout, “It’s a baby!” especially if they have already read the book before. That makes it a great read-aloud opportunity. Parents and teachers can pause and ask open-ended questions like, “What do you think the surprise is?” or “How do you think Gigglet feels right now?” That is the mark of a strong children’s book: it does not just tell a story. It creates a moment between adult and child. Welcome Baby Wigglet! is one of the strongest entries in the AMB Kids Books catalog because it takes everything that makes Gigglet lovable, the cuteness, the warmth, the charm, the bright illustrations, the positive energy, and adds a deeper emotional layer about family growth, sibling love, and the reassurance every child needs to hear: You are loved. You still belong. And there is room in this family for even more love. There are so many more books in the series including Gigglet Goes to the Beach and Gigglet Goes to Summer Camp! What's clear is that Gigglet and her stories are part of something bigger, more exciting, and more explansive than just one book! They're part of a world—a universe! Gigglet has many members of her family and many friends who make this universe seem lived in and full of love. Gigglet's Mama actually has a name, Joy! (We just learned that!) And Gigglet's Papa is named Hammdon. So much thought went into this! Gigglet also has a ducky friend named Waddles (cute!) and a cow friend named Dandy! It's hard not to melt looking at and reading about these characters. The brand has activity and coloring pages as well, making this a really engaging educational experience. Berkowitz also expands into other genres with her Magical Farm Series, which began with Bubblegum Rocks, and OCA winner in fiction! She also has a book called Ladybug Kisses and another that appears bilingual (Spanish) called Besos De Mariquita. Berkowitz has appeared in a bunch of magazines, big and small, and is always out and about promoting her work and sharing the love of reading with children at events and schools. Check out AMB Kids Books!  Score: 94+/100 (9.4+ out of 10)
Talk about poetry with a pulse, a microscope, a scalpel, a cathedral, and a shovel. Exits: Selected Poems by Stephen C. Pollock is a haunting, cerebral, formally impressive, and emotionally resonant poetry collection about mortality, illness, aging, nature, cruelty, climate collapse, memory, legacy, and renewal. Pollock’s preface frames the book around the beauty and frailty of life, the cycles of nature, and the promise of renewal, and that mission statement absolutely pulses through the collection. This is not light, breezy, “the flowers made me sad” poetry. This is sophisticated, intricate, complex poetry for high-IQ individuals. A lot of this stuff—quite frankly—is going to go over some people's heads. Pollock is an absolutely brilliant person. He was a physician, eye surgeon, and neuro-ophthalmologist. He was recruited to Duke University as Chief of Neuro-Ophthalmology, where he was an associate professor. He was also the chief executive of CEC (Community Eye Care). His poetry/writing reflect this brilliance. This is poetry that understands anatomy, mythology, music theory, ecology, art history, and human grief. It is poetry that knows what a meniscus is, what a tritone is, what Khepri symbolizes, what a biopsy can feel like, and what it means to watch a body or a world slowly fail. And yet, somehow, it still has enough heart to stop beside an abandoned balloon shop and mourn the invisible breath that once gave someone’s dream its shape. That is the magic trick of Exits. Pollock is not merely writing about death. He is writing about exits, and that distinction matters. An exit is not always a disappearance. Sometimes it is a transformation. Sometimes it is a wound. Sometimes it is a memory. Sometimes it is the empty space that proves something was once alive, loved, useful, beautiful, or necessary. One of the most compelling things about this collection is how Pollock approaches mortality almost like a scientist who knows science is not enough. When we think about medicine, diagnosis, and the body, we often crave precision. We want the broken bone on the X-ray. We want the doctor to point and say, “There it is. That is the problem.” But life, illness, aging, grief, and death are not always that clean. Much of human mortality exists in diagnostic muddy waters. That is where Pollock’s poetry steps in. When clinical language cannot fully explain what it means to be finite, Pollock turns to myth, architecture, music, nature, and visual art. That approach is especially powerful in “Nasal Biopsy,” one of the book’s most striking poems. A medical scare becomes a Gothic cathedral. The nose, described through anatomical terms like alae, columella, and nare, becomes an architectural structure. Breath becomes something almost sacred. The doctor becomes a priest-like figure. Gauze becomes a kind of communion wafer offered not to God, but to Pathology. That is brilliant. The poem is not just being fancy for the sake of being fancy. It is doing something psychologically profound. It takes a frightening, invasive, humiliating medical moment and gives it symbolic scale. It restores dignity to the patient. It turns the body from a vulnerable object on an exam table into a sacred space where fear, faith, doubt, and mortality all collide. “Syringe” does something similar, only with even more mythological and neurological complexity. The clinical reality of illness, especially multiple sclerosis, is filtered through the Greek myth of Syrinx, the water nymph transformed into reeds while fleeing Pan. The hollow needle, the hollow reed, the spine, the nervous system, the flute, the body, and the myth all begin to echo one another. There is also a disturbing memory of pithing a frog, inserting a needle between vertebrae and destroying the connection between brain and body. That memory lands like a needle of its own. This is where Pollock’s poetry is at its most unsettling and most impressive. He understands that the body can become a site of betrayal. But rather than surrendering to that betrayal, he builds symbolic architecture around it. Myth and art become load-bearing walls when the physical spine gives out. Wow. And yet, Pollock is not always operating in grand tragedy mode. He also has a dark, strange, surprisingly effective sense of humor. “Tube” is a perfect example. A toothpaste tube narrates its own decline, shrinking into a “rumpled wreck of tin,” lamenting its collapsed rear end and cap that looks like a fez. On paper, that sounds absurd. In practice, it becomes one of the book’s sharpest portraits of aging, depletion, usefulness, and exhaustion. That final idea, that the tube is “not dead or empty, just depleted,” is funny until it is not. It captures the grinding reality of chronic illness, aging, burnout, and survival. You are not always starring in a Greek tragedy. Sometimes you are just a crumpled tube on the bathroom shelf, still expected to squeeze out whatever you have left. That is the Pollock effect: he takes something ordinary and turns it into a mirror you may not want to look into. The nature poems are equally strong, but do not expect a soft, sentimental view of nature. Pollock strips away the Disney version of the natural world and replaces it with something colder, sharper, and more mechanically honest. “Arachnidaea: Line Drawings” is a great example. A dew-covered spiderweb could easily become a pretty poem about morning light. Instead, Pollock sees geometry, predation, ritual, music, time, and death. The spider is artist, murderer, architect, and maestro. Its web is a trap, a stringed instrument, a clock, and an attempt to impose order against decay. The poem’s language is loaded with design and structure: perpendicular, parallel, cords, patterns, weft, warp. It is beautiful, yes, but it is also ruthless. Pollock seems fascinated by the fact that beauty and brutality can share the same engineering. That idea continues in “Diabolus in Musica,” one of the collection’s finest formal poems. The poem turns a cicada swarm into a demonic concert, using the musical concept of the tritone, the so-called Devil’s interval, to frame the insects’ mating call as something both natural and infernal. The poem’s closing couplet, asking what composer composed this chorus before decomposing each carcass, is classic Pollock: witty, morbid, musical, and exact. He loves those turns. Compose becomes decompose. Beauty becomes decay. Song becomes carcass. Nature becomes a factory of reproduction and death. The formal control here is outstanding. “Diabolus in Musica,” “Zombie Fires,” “Metamorphosis,” and “Waning Crescent” all show Pollock’s command of sonnet-like structure. “Narcissus” is especially clever because its enclosed rhyme scheme mirrors its subject: reflection, reversal, symmetry, and entrapment. The poem does not merely describe a mirror. It behaves like one. That is high-level craft. “War Crimes” may be the most morally disturbing poem in the book. The speaker recalls being five years old and using a magnifying glass to burn a living butterfly’s wing. What makes the poem so horrifying is not only the child’s cruelty, but the adult rationalization around it. The parents explain it away as youth, science, curiosity, entomology. Pollock refuses to accept that excuse. He connects that small act of detached cruelty to a much larger continuum of human violence: the Holocaust, lynchings, the killing fields, Salem, bombed villages, and children maimed by war. That leap could have collapsed into melodrama in a lesser poet’s hands. Here, it works because Pollock is not saying a child burning a butterfly is equivalent to genocide. He is saying that cruelty begins in the same frightening place: the ability to distance oneself from another being’s pain. The magnifying glass becomes a terrifying metaphor for human technology. We can use the lens to study, understand, illuminate, and protect. Or we can use it to focus the sun and burn the wing. That same lack of empathy expands to planetary scale in “Zombie Fires,” a climate poem about Arctic fires smoldering beneath permafrost. The image is apocalyptic, but not in a loud Hollywood way. These are not dramatic explosions. They are hidden burns. Fires underground. Damage beneath the surface. Heat surviving winter. The poem’s final image of the planet as a lifeless ballerina circling the sun is devastating. It is elegant, lonely, and cosmically cold. “Metamorphosis” is quieter but equally pointed. The poem begins with butterflies congregating around a flowering shrub, then pivots to pesticide spraying and disappearance. The closing suggestion that “surely no one’s to blame” is clearly ironic. Someone is to blame. We are. The poem understands how environmental harm often hides behind ordinary household convenience. No villain twirls a mustache. Someone just wants the roaches gone. Then the butterflies vanish too. The elegiac poems may be the most emotionally accessible pieces in the book. “Leaves,” dedicated to Shinayo Matsumoto, is a beautiful tribute to a ninety-one-year-old woman whose life is captured through rituals, objects, cultural memory, and grace. She loves sumo. She arranges things carefully. She prepares tea. Her hands are wrinkled, twig-like, and still capable of making flowers beautiful. The final image, after her Buddhist ceremony, of leaves dancing in the air is simple and perfect. That is one of Pollock’s great strengths. He knows when to be dense, but he also knows when to let an image breathe. “Seeds” is another standout. A goldfinch eating from a dying coneflower becomes a meditation on legacy. One flower is spent, but its seeds continue. The poem’s sonnet-like structure gives the moment weight and inevitability. It is not just about a bird and a plant. It is about the dead, the living, and the unbearable fact that loss can still scatter life. “Waning Crescent” may be the best poem in the collection for showing how perspective shapes reality. A four-year-old daughter looks at the crescent moon and sees glasses or a fingernail. Her father looks at the same moon and sees a scythe. Same moon. Same sky. Completely different meanings. The child sees focus, play, and imagination. The adult sees time, mortality, and the blade. That contrast is the whole book in miniature. The same principle appears in “Dung Beetles,” one of the densest and richest poems in Exits. Pollock links M.C. Escher, Egyptian burial, scarabs, Khepri, dung beetles, waste, art, death, and rebirth. The dung beetle becomes a perfect symbol for the collection’s central philosophy: life takes waste, decay, and endings and uses them to create the next cycle. That may be the closest thing this book has to an answer. We do not escape decay. We make meaning out of it. And then there is “Steve’s Balloons,” which may be the sleeper gut-punch of the collection. The speaker drives through a weary Southern town and sees the faded remains of a boarded-up balloon shop. The poem could have stopped at nostalgia. Instead, it arrives at something far more profound: a dream is not the deflated rubber left behind, but the breath that once filled it. Good grief. That is an incredible image. The material world fails. The sign fades. The store closes. The balloon collapses. But the breath, the intention, the hope that briefly lifted it, mattered. If there is a criticism to make, it is that Exits can be dense. Very dense. Some readers may find themselves rereading poems like “Syringe,” “Dung Beetles,” and “Cyclone Batsirai, Madagascar, 2022” multiple times before the emotional core fully opens. Pollock’s references are layered, and his poems often assume a reader willing to sit with myth, anatomy, music theory, ecology, and art history. This is not a flaw exactly, but it does mean the collection asks for patience. However, that patience is rewarded. The artwork also deserves praise. The book pairs each poem with an image, and these pairings deepen the reading experience. The dew-covered web intensifies “Arachnidaea.” Picasso’s “Girl Before a Mirror” is a smart companion to “Narcissus.” The abandoned storefront photograph makes “Steve’s Balloons” feel grounded and real. The artwork turns the collection into a gallery of exits: biological, spiritual, ecological, personal, and cosmic. The art is impressive and fits the tone, mood, and subject(s) text. You've got butterflies, engineering layouts, nature, physiology, anatomy, and a burning globe. We won't give the book or the author too much credit for them as most of them are public domain, but it is nice window dressing. Ultimately, Exits is a brilliant, challenging, beautifully crafted collection about the finite nature of life and the strange forms of renewal that follow loss. It argues, quietly but persistently, that acknowledging death is not a morbid exercise. It is the very thing that gives life urgency. As the Emily Dickinson epigraph in “Time” reminds us, forever is composed of nows. Pollock takes that idea seriously. If life is temporary, then every moment matters more, not less. This is not always an easy collection. But it is a deeply rewarding one. It is scientific without being sterile, formal without being stiff, philosophical without being bloodless, and sorrowful without being hopeless. Pollock understands that every body, dream, ecosystem, and life has an exit. But he also understands that exits leave traces. Seeds. Leaves. Breath. Ash. Art. Memory. And sometimes, if we are lucky: renewal. Check it out on Amazon!  Paperback Score: 94/100 (9.4 out of 10)
Audiobook Score: 95/100 (9.5 out of 10) The Treasure of Capric is one of the best narrated audiobooks we have ever listened to! Seriously! Narrated by the remarkable author, Brandon Wilborn, you can tell how much love, heart, soul, and passion he put into this! Wilborn holds nothing back in this performance. If we were going to compare his performance to that of other narrators, it would be Scott Allen of the Saxen Saga (by Ingrid Moon) or Eddie Marsen of Deadly Game (by Sir Michael Caine). That's elite company! He does all of the voices and all of the accents, whether they be male or female. He does posh nobles/royals, gruff soldiers, anxious young men, weary elders, sinister villains, gentle women, slippery rogues, and everything in between. And, yes, let’s talk about the accents, because this is where the audiobook really starts flexing. Wilborn does not simply read the book in one polished “fantasy narrator” voice and call it good. No, no, no. He gives Pallingham a whole vocal ecosystem. Some characters sound refined and aristocratic, with that crisp, elevated British quality you would expect from castle halls, political scheming, and men who have never had to pull water from a well in their lives. Others have a rougher, earthier sound, closer to the working-class tavern, the muddy road, the village square, or the exhausted soldier who has seen too much and been paid too little. He does posh & pompous (which fits Evasius perfectly). By the way, it's so funny to hear Evasius say "excellent" like he's Mr. Burns. The narrator can also do sexy, tempting, and dangerous (fitting the witch/witches). He can do nervous, anxious, and somewhat cowardly like Tobin (seriously, Tobin's voice reminded us of inn keeper, dungeon master, or bridge troll in a D&D game). Actually, Tobin is kinda like that one scribe/monk from Dragonheart. Wilborn can also do charming and endearing feminine voices like Louise's. He even does her pitiful little begging schtick, which reminded us of the voice of the spider in the viral "Don't kill me, I'm just a humble spider" skit. Gosh, we really loved Louise. It was sad to see her disappear for a chunk of this book, but we think that was the point. Distance makes the heart grow fonder. The author had Louise capture our hearts along with Kurian's, then made us hope and work for it. Anyway... There's a dean in here, we think his name is Goodman, who sounds like Mr. Popo from Dragon Ball. Gosh, Wilborn even does Celtic and Irish accents. He even sings the songs from the book with a Celtic/Irish accent—songs like "Fare thee well, my brothers dear" and the one about the witch who lost a loved one and caused troubles at sea... those sent chills down our spines! He doesn't flinch at all. Some people would get really nervous and uncomfortable singing a song from their own book. Wilborn is fully invested—he goes all in! Wilborn demonstrates so much range! And that range matters. It really elevates this story and its characters. It facilitates that old school fantasy/D&D spirit of the book. We have a hunch that the author really enjoyed playing D&D at one point in his life, cause there's a lot of D&D-esque stuff in here. And we mean that as a compliment! This audiobook has that wonderful tabletop-adventure energy where you can practically see the party forming in real time. Kurian is the conflicted monk/warrior with a destiny bigger than he understands. Rhys is the bruiser who would absolutely kick down the wrong door before asking questions. Tobin is the nervous scholar who knows the obscure rule that saves everyone at the last second. Louise is the scrappy, street-smart guide with secrets of her own. Then you have witches, monsters, castles, monks, hidden kings, ancient prophecies, cursed places, strange songs, lost treasures, and a tyrant who practically radiates “final boss” energy. It’s great! And Wilborn’s narration leans into that adventurous spirit without making it feel cheesy. That’s the trick. He understands the difference between theatrical and ridiculous. He gives the story the heightened, almost campfire-tale quality it needs, but he still treats the emotional beats seriously. When the story is funny, he lets it be funny. When it is eerie, he lets the silence breathe. When the characters are terrified, grieving, tempted, or inspired, he gives those moments the weight they deserve. That is especially important because The Treasure of Capric is not just a treasure-hunting fantasy. It is a spiritual fantasy. It is a coming-of-age story. It is a story about corrupted power, lost faith, dying institutions, and the painful difference between guarding something sacred and actually understanding why it is sacred. In lesser hands, some of this could feel overly preachy or stiff. But in audio form, Wilborn gives the material warmth and life. He makes the moral and spiritual elements feel less like lectures and more like lived experience. There is a part of us that feels like this book and story is a bit on the generic side. Everyone kinda fits into a fantasy archetype we're quite familiar and a bit jaded with. Speaking of being jaded, this is the third consecutive book we've read about trying to recover a lost treasure (the others being A Pirate’s Life for Me: A Pirate’s Life Indeed! by Christopher David James and The Wickedest Town by McKenzie Catron-Pichan). This book also has a random-quest feel to it that almost makes the objective seem like busy work. Yes, the characters are ultimately trying to save and eventually avenge their monastery, but a lot of this book seems like: "Find this thing for me or I'll do more bad stuff." There are aspects of this book that seem really inspired by other things, especially Homer's Odyssey. You have the wandering hero. You have the long, dangerous journey homeward and kingdom-ward. You have strange islands, mysterious guides, monsters, witches, temptations, songs, caves, hidden rulers, divine or semi-divine intervention, and characters constantly being tested physically, morally, and spiritually. There is even a “Siren Song” section, which practically invites the comparison. But again, we do not mean that as an insult. Fantasy has always been built on old bones. The Odyssey, Arthurian legend, Biblical quests, Tolkien, Lewis, tabletop campaigns, medieval folklore, and old heroic romances are all part of the same giant storytelling stew. The Treasure of Capric feels like it is pulling from that tradition. Sometimes that makes the book feel familiar, maybe even a little too familiar. But at its best, it gives the story a mythic, fireside-tale quality, like we are listening to an old adventure being retold through a fresh lens. Check it out on Amazon!  Audiobook Score: 94+/100 (9.4+ out of 10)
Cate and the Garden Bandits is already a fantastic, heartwarming, and captivating children's book by Betsy Coffeen, magnificently illustrated by Ginger Seehafer. So, how does it fair as an audiobook? Phenomenally! Especially when it's narrated by someone as talented as Heidi Immler with sound design, music, and direction by the incomparable Zachary Simpson! All of the Little Monsters Read-Along audiobooks are exceptional. They open and close with the familar instrumental version of the "Story Monsters Theme Song." It's really catchy and really frames each of these as being part of something welcoming, fun, and exciting. They also instruct and invite young readers to follow along with the paperback or hardy copies of their books. That makes each listening/reading experience more engaging. We love that. We also love that each of these books contains tremendous educational value. The ending of this book includes words/vocabulary that children can learn like antenna and drone (in bug terms). The book itself promotes positive messages and lessons like working together, harmony, unity, teamwork, hard work, not judging people based on appearances, and putting aside differences for the greater good (and because it's the right thing to do). Something else we caught in this audiobook that we don't remember catching in the hard copy is how much appreciation Cate the Butterfly has for the hard work and effort that the other bugs (like Pete the Potato Bug, Davey the Dung Beetle, and Walter the Earthworm) put into the garden. "Cate thought about her friends... Cate knew they would be sad if they could see these beautiful flower petals scattered all over the ground." This stood out to us because it indicates how considerate a person Cate is. Not only is she considerate, but she's caring and compassionate. What great traits and characteristics to teach children! Heidi Immler's narration is amazing! Her narration is clear, cheerful, and very well paced. She doesn't rush through the reading, nor does she take an eternity. It's just right—ten lovely minutes of outstanding narration and a lovely story. Heidi is also able to differentiate the voices of different characters like Cate and the older, one-eyed bumblebee (who is initially rude, confrontational, a bit combative). Heidi really nails when Cate exclaims, "Thief!" at him. We also loved hearing her say the line, "a baby bumblebee!" How cute! Simpson's sound design really stands out in this audiobook. He incorporates the sound of a bumblee's wings as well as an echo effect when Cate faints and wakes up. Clearly, a lot of time, effort, and passion went into this audiobook. Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 94/100 (9.4 out of 10)
What happens when the faith that shaped your whole world also becomes the thing that wounds you most? Falling From Disgrace by Tammy S. Dietz is not just a memoir about growing up LDS. It is a memoir about shame, silence, survival, and the brutal work of learning your worth outside the systems that denied it. We have to preface this by saying that this book presents heavy critiques about a sizable international religion (Mormonism). It can also, secondly, serve as quite a critique of organized religion in general. It's a bit like Cult Girls by Natalie Grand, in a sense, a book which presented a scathing portrayal and critique of Jehovah's Witnesses and their religion. Grand had spoken as a former Jehovah's Witness. Likewise, Dietz speaks as a former Latter Day Saint/Mormon. With that said, if that's something that will bother you or make you personally uncomfortable, then you might have to take that into consideration. However, the author doesn't concern herself with your comfort level. She's not out to sugar coat things. Instead, Dietz concerns herself with telling the truth—HER truth. And that means something. It's authentic, it's genuine, it's raw. It matters. Falling From Disgrace is a memoir about growing up in a devout Mormon family in Northern California, with Utah functioning almost like a spiritual homeland. Early on, Tammy is sincere, impressionable, and deeply invested in the faith, but cracks start appearing through things like Brigham Young’s polygamy, racist church teachings, rigid gender roles, modesty culture, and invasive worthiness interviews. At the same time, her home life is unstable: money is tight, her mother becomes increasingly withdrawn and neglectful, and shame becomes one of the main ways the family tries to control behavior. In the meantime, Tammy engages in illegal acts like shoplifting, which ironically takes a back seat to other acts that her church looks more harshly upon like premarital sex and cohabitation. There's a constant tug-a-war between Tammy's wants and desires and that of her parents (particularly her conservative fundamentalist father) and the LDS church. The church places a lot of emphasis on two aspects of Tammy's life: her sexual activity and tithing. This facilitates her eventual realization that the LDS church might be more interested in money and controlling female members for patriarchal, misogynistic reasons than in actual salvation through Jesus Christ. Now, just to be clear, we're not necessarily endorsing this idea, but the book does make a strong personal argument for it. Tammy is basically told that losing her sexual purity is worse than being dead. It's essentially a ticket straight to hell (or at least the best way to be left out of heaven). Tammy's crisis of faith and romantic/sexual relationships create a ton of tension, particuarly between Tammy and her father. This is a throughline that runs across the entirety of the book, leading readers to wonder if they can ever reconcile or not. It's good tension and drama. And it's also very relatable. We've all had falling outs and disagreements with loved ones. Anyway, here in Utah (ironically), it has long been purported that many homeless youth end up that way because they've been disowned or kicked out of their homes for being LGBTQ+ or simply sexually active before marriage. Salt Lake City is the heart of the LDS Church, the location of the temple—the same temple which plays a rather huge part in the background of the book, with the author constantly dreaming of a fairy-tale-like wedding ceremony there. This book is actually full of engaging real-life romance. One of our favorite pairings is between Tammy and Steve. There is something sweet, youthful, and genuinely affecting about that relationship. It feels like one of those connections that briefly offers Tammy a glimpse of tenderness and possibility in a life otherwise dominated by pressure, guilt, and scrutiny. Of course, this memoir is not naive about romance either. Love does not magically erase trauma, nor does attraction automatically lead to safety or stability. That is part of what makes the relationship material in this book feel so human. Mike is also a hugely important figure in the memoir, arguably even more so in the grand scheme of Tammy's life. While Steve brings some of the spark, Mike brings a kind of steadiness. He feels like someone Tammy can actually build a life with, not just dream with. That matters. Especially in a memoir like this, where the author spends so much time trying to separate fantasy from reality, religious idealism from lived experience, and institutional promises from actual human care. The author also isn't shy about sharing an uncomfortable and inappropriate relationship that a teacher, Mr. Bittle, tried to have with her when she was too young and naive to know any better. Mr. Bittle is essentially a predator. He charms her with attention, cards/notes comparing them to Dorothy & the Scarecrow from The Magical Wizard of Oz, asking for/hinting at affection, and trying to her her alone with him on his motorcycle. He seems to be grooming her. In presenting the story of Mr. Bittle, the author also highlights one of the books key themes: the wrongfully exploitation of girls and women in this type of society (or in society in general). Girls and women are often treated as existing for the needs of men, sexual or otherwise. They are taken advantage of. In a sense, Mr. Bittle is just one of many predatory male forces. He is exemplary of the larger problem. This is a fascinating read! Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 94/100 (9.4 out of 10)
Well, we're pleasantly surprised! We've become so accustomed to Studio Story Monster's short, sweet, and charming little songs and jingles. Well, "The Bumblebees" is actually quite a different kind of song: it's a song, it's a story, it's a culmination, it's character progression, and it's a celebration all wrapped in one! First of all, this song has a really wonky, high-energy feel to it. It's jazzy, swingy, rhythmic—the kind of music you want to move to. It's kinda hard to find clean music that kids want to dance to these days. Modern dance music defaults to either dirty suggestive pop music or expletive-ridden rap/hip-hop music. This song, on the other hand, is fun and clean! It hearkens back to an older era of music... dare we say... disco. You even get some of the old "Ooo la la laa" that you'd expect to hear with jazzy harmonizing background singers (fitting for a song that talks about harmony between different parties) or maybe 70s disco or 80s pop. "The Bumblebees" is a song from the Cate and the Garden Bandits Musical with music & lyrics by Zachary Simpson, story and characters by Betsy Coffeen (the author of the book on which the musical is based), vocals by Erin Rementer and Kalen Kelly, and trumpet instrumentals by Jim Derrick. We really liked this combination! It's not necessarily something we'd blast in our cars or play in public, but it's something you can listen and dance to with your kids at home or at school. The background singing bumblebees all talk/sing a little funny, almost as if they have a buzz in their voices—how fitting! They go all-in with this. It might come across as obnoxious or annoying to some listeners, but we think it's great character work. They're bees, after all. They're supposed to sound like that. Haven't you talked and sung with bees before? The cool people have. The voice of Kalen Kelly, who we think voices Queen Bee Kira, is a great contrast to this. Her voice is sharp, clear, powerful, yet unmistakably and beautifully feminine. It cuts through the other voices, not like a rough saw but rather like a hot knife through softened butter. One of the best parts of the song is when she names all the bees, emphasizing the "B" sound in all of them! It's fitting and actually fun to hear. Erin Rementer, who voices Cate the Butterfly, always shines in these songs! Her vocal performance is perfect for a beautiful yet strong butterfly. She has the voice of a Disney princess! Magical and flowery. We loved all of the performances. One of our favorite little bitty parts is when all the garden bugs briefly say hello to the bumblebees in harmony. They talk over each other rather than waiting their turns, which comes across as really organic and natural. This is a really important scene in both the book and the musical when the original magical garden residents find common ground (both figuratively and literally) with the bumblebees (formerly misunderstood as the "bandit bugs"). Rather than fighting or being afraid of each other, the two sides discuss their mutual appreciation and need for the garden. They become friends! How cute! It's a really positive message for children and adults alike, and this song pushes that positivity home. The theme of community comes across in this song. We especially loved the lyrics: "Community and harmony, buzzing around this big ole' tree." The characters apologize to each other for previous misunderstandings and discuss how they can help each other to make the magical garden an even better place than it was before. Check it out here! |
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