Editorial Reviews for Nominees
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 Score: 94/100 (9.4 out of 10)
Horrifas Magic Makeover by Susan L. Krueger joins Frankinschool by Caryn Rivadeneira as one of the most charming and beloved middle-grade novels to come our way! Are you a fan of fairy-tales and lighthearted stories featuring magic? You might have noticed that witches are often portrayed as the nasty, no-good villains, tricksters, troublemakers, and evildoers in these stories. They're often referred to as mean, ugly, and/or evil. They're often given exaggerated and grotesque features like wiry or frizzy hair, wrinkly skin (often an otherworldly color like green), menacing feline eyes, a wart or two, and—of course—a long, protruding nose with a hairy mole on it. It's like creators go out of their way to portray witches as ugly, undesirable, and inhuman as they possibly can. Well, imagine flipping the script on the tales of "mean, ugly, evil" witches. Imagine putting yourself in their shoes, Taking on their perspective. Imagine seeing humanity and the world as they see them. We might see witches as scary and an eyesore, but how might they perceive us? What if they see us normies in a similar way to how we perceive and portray them? In other words, imagine a world in which witches see themselves as the gorgeous, desirable, and liberated ones while humans are hideous, undesirable, and self-limiting. What's gross to us is delectable to them. What's ugly to us is beautiful to them. It's actually a fascinating and thought-provoking concept! And it's executed with so much tact and care. At the heart of this book is Horrifa, a young witch who is already considered stunning in her own world (among witches). She has green, scaly skin, wild root like hair, smoke on her breath, and a lovely collection of warts. To her mother, Dragunda, this is peak beauty. To Horrifa, at least for a while, it is something to hide. She has fallen under the spell of a mortal fairy tale about a prince’s ball and smooth, pink, twirly princesses. She wants to look like them, fit in with them, and win the prince’s attention. In other words, she wants to trade in her culture’s idea of beauty for someone else’s. The way the book explores that wish is both hilarious and sharp. Horrifa and Dragunda do not just wave a wand and turn her into a princess. They cobble together a “mortal makeover” using witch logic. Horrifa brews a potion to change her eye color. She slathers herself with a bone and moonlight paste so she can be pale and smooth. She dyes her hair with seaweed to get golden locks. Dragunda, grumbling but devoted, sneaks out to solve the “pink ball gown” problem and comes home with one of the strangest dresses in children’s literature, stitched out of stolen pig snouts. It is gross. It is ridiculous. It is also very, very funny. What really works is that the joke is always on the idea of a single, correct way to be beautiful, not on Horrifa herself. Dragunda never stops telling her how gorgeous she is as a witch. The insults are aimed at mortals. They are “small,” “pale,” “smooth,” and “silly.” The book lets kids see how strange and arbitrary our own standards might look from the outside. We call pointy chins and hooked noses “ugly,” but in witch culture those same traits are dazzling. That reversal lands so well because the author never drops the emotional truth underneath. Horrifa’s longing is real and understandable. Most kids will recognize that feeling of wanting to look like the people in a story or on a screen. The adventure that follows keeps pushing that theme. Getting to the ball turns into a whole sequence of chaotic, inventive witch solutions. Eggston the lake monster becomes a taxi service. A golden coach is “borrowed” with a cloud of ashy smoke that makes the mortal girls think it is on fire. Dragunda scares the horses into bolting. The result is not a graceful entrance at the top of a staircase but a crash into a swamp. Horrifa’s carefully built costume literally falls apart in the muck. Her night of perfection is gone. The way the book handles that disappointment is lovely. Dragunda fixes what she can, undoes the pig snout theft with a witty spell, and then offers Horrifa a different way to experience the ball. The chandelier scene is probably the emotional peak. Horrifa and her mother transform into bats and hang from the ceiling to watch the party from above. Instead of sweeping romance, they see crowded guests, braggy princesses, and a prince who is more fussy than charming. The famous ball is noisy, superficial, and honestly less magical than a good witch jamboree. Horrifa’s fantasy runs right into reality, and you can feel her quietly recalibrating. She is not “settling” when she chooses to go home. She is finally seeing clearly that her world, her body, and her life are already special. That is a powerful note for kids, especially for any child who has tried to squeeze into someone else’s idea of “pretty.” On the craft side, this feels like a strong pick for confident young readers or as a read aloud for slightly younger ones. The vocabulary is rich, the sentences are descriptive, and there is a lot of text per page, so it skews older middle grade rather than early chapter book. The black and white art, with its thin lines and expressive faces, supports the spooky comedy mood and sprinkles in fun background details like spiders, bats, and cats. If there is one mild caveat, it is that the makeover preparations take up a big chunk of the book. Very impatient readers might wonder when they will finally get to the ball. The payoff is worth it, however, and the slow build helps the final “this is not as great as I imagined” moment feel earned. This book has a certain choppiness, randomness, and chaos to it. A lot happens in a lot of different locations over the course of only 90 pages. For example, there's a moment when Horrifa just so happens to gain the help of a lake monster, Eggston. However, even that isn't arbitrary. It's earned, as things should be in stories. See, Eggston's help wasn't just something that happened out of nowhere, it's something that Horrifa earned with her kindness and compassion by helping to take a hook out of the lake monster's mouth in the past. This really shows that despite the way Horrifa and her mother might look to humans (like a monster), she is the opposite of a monster on the inside. This book repeatedly and effectively reiterates the message that beauty comes from the inside and that you should always be yourself, not anyone else. You know, there's a nuance to this book that we think might be missed by more shallow readers. This book isn't just a funny, weird, zany story with colorful, charimatic characters, it actually says a lot. It's a commentary on beauty standards. You could even stretch this out to things like body dysmorphia and other body/beauty image struggles. Let's face it, we've all opened a magazine or saw someone on TV and said, "I want to look like that" or "I wish I looked like that." We've all walked away saying to ourselves, "Why am I so fat?" or "Why am I so short?" or "Why is my hair not straight and/or curly enough?" or "Why are my muscles so small?" or "Why is my butt so big and/or small?" or "Why are my breasts so big and/or small?" or "Why am I not as beautiful and/or handsome like so-and-so or such-and-such." That's what Horrifa is experiencing. She wants the blue eyes, bright hair, and white skin of the human girls in the magazines—well, in this case, the fairy-tale books. What's ironic about all of this is that all those wacky, gross-sounding things that the witches use for their beauty solutions and makeup aren't too dissimilar from makeup, which is made of stuff like fish. When you really stop to think about it, makeup is also a kind of socially approved potion making. Grown ups smear on creams that sting, paint their faces with powders and liquids, glue on false lashes, dye their hair with chemicals that smell like something from a lab, even let people poke them with needles so they can look a certain way. In witch culture, rat milk, bilious yellow dye, and beet stained feet are glamorous. In ours, it is contour sticks, chemical peels, and injections. The book is quietly asking the question: who decided which version was normal and which was disgusting, and why do we obey those rules so faithfully? Horrifa’s blue eye drops are one of our favorite details because they dramatize how powerful that kind of conditioning can be. She literally changes how she sees the world, then panics when reality no longer matches the ideal in her head. That is what happens when we internalize beauty standards too deeply. We start to misread the mirror. The genius of this book is that it wraps that idea in jokes about pig snouts and lake monsters so kids can feel it before they ever have to put adult words to it. Anyway, this is a book about being your genuine self and moving past the noise. Check it out on Amazon!
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 Score: 92/100 (9.2 out of 10)
Exploring Beauty with Photographer Samantha Moller Lopez, Volume 1 is a beautiful photography collection featuring spectacular nature photos by Samantha Moller Lopez. The book is credited to Dow Creative Enterprises (presumably functioning as the corporate publisher/author) and set to "Song of Nature" by Ralph Waldo Emerson. "Song of Nature" is an inspired choice of text, a sweeping meditation on nature as the original creator and teacher. Emerson’s lines move from the grand and cosmic to the small and intimate, talking about stars and oceans in one breath, then apples, flowers, and dew in the next. The book presents the poem one short line at a time, spread across the pages, which slows your reading down and turns each line into something you can sit with. Instead of rushing through a block of verse, you are nudged to ponder every phrase in conversation with a single image. It's Emerson. It's practically perfect. Emerson's poem is an extraordinary literary example. With that said, we can't credit Lopez or Dow for the beauty of those passages and lines for obvious reasons. We can, however, credit them for providing fitting photographs that illustrate the different passages and lines. And that, to be honest, is hit or miss. There are times when the photographs match the lines and passages, and there are times when they just seem to be there, arbitrarily. Let's start with some the times that the photographs fit the poem... On page 4, an actual photo of the moon on a visibly cloudy evening accompanies the line "The sportive sun, the gibbous moon." Fittingly, it appears to be a gibbous moon. On page 12, there's a magnificent photograph of a stairway leading up and to the right with a marvelous ray of light coming down through the branches and leaves. The accompanying line is: "I sit by the shining Fount of Life." The only photo that would probably be more perfect is if the stairway were replaced with a fountain. On page 31, there's an image of a blooming flower with star-like rays radiating from the seedlings. The matching line is: "Tricked out in star and flower" On page 45, a fitting image of a tall tree accompanies the line "The summit of the whole." A tall mountain like Fuji probably would've worked too, but this is fine. On page 59, a photo of a deer aligns with the line "My creatures travail and wait." On page 67, probably the most beautiful and visually striking page in the book, a photo of a flowing body of light-blue water sparsely concealed behind the cover of green trees, a white path leading to the water. On page 75, the accompanying line "And mix the bowl again" is paired with a body of water wrapped in a circular ring, almost like a bowl. And there are a bunch of other examples like the pink rose on page 84 with "And the fresh rose on yonder thorn." That's awesome. However, there are a lot of photos in here that either seem redundant (very similar to others in the collection), superfluous, or that don't seem to fit the line at all. There are multiple shots of bamboo forests, multiple stone paths through trees, and multiple shrine gates from only slightly different angles. The first time you see a bamboo corridor or a tunnel of torii, it feels magical and fresh. By the third or fourth time, the impact starts to fade and the book begins to feel padded rather than tightly curated. A slimmer, more ruthlessly edited set of images would probably have made the strongest ones shine even brighter. There are also multiple shots of the exact same tree with the white papers hanging around it. Furthermore, there are pairings that require a lot of interpretive gymnastics. Lines that reference specific places or ideas, such as the Judaean manger, Nile, or the Academe, are sometimes matched with images that feel only vaguely related, like a wooded path or a generic stretch of bamboo. You can tell yourself that the path hints at pilgrimage, or that the bamboo stands in for a far off riverbank or a place of learning, but those connections are not immediately clear. In those moments you feel the photograph serving itself rather than serving the line. Or maybe like it's just a placeholder. That said, the photos themselves are rarely less than pleasing to look at. Lopez has a good eye for natural light, color, and texture. The soft blues and pinks of her skies, the glowing petals beaded with raindrops, the mossy roots and stone, all speak to someone who really walks in these places and cares about them. Even when the thematic pairing is loose, the image often still does its job as a visual pause, giving you a moment to breathe before you move to the next line of the poem. The design choice to give each line a full page of its own, paired with a single image, is one of the book’s quiet strengths. The generous white space and the steady rhythm of page turns create a meditative reading experience. You are not skimming a poem on a screen, you are taking a slow walk with it, one phrase and one scene at a time. For readers who already love Emerson, that is a gift. For readers who are new to him, it might be one of the gentlest and most accessible ways to meet his work. From a project standpoint, this feels like a very promising Volume 1. The concept is strong. Pair a classic, spiritually rich poem with contemporary nature photography, use the book format to slow people down, invite them to notice both word and world. With tighter image selection and more deliberate matching in future volumes, this series could become something really special, a kind of ongoing visual conversation with great poets. All in all, this book succeeds more often than it stumbles. The hits are genuinely beautiful and occasionally breathtaking, the misses are mostly matters of redundancy and looseness rather than any lack of skill. If you enjoy contemplative nature photography, classic poetry, or gift books that invite quiet reflection, this is a volume that is well worth sitting with, one line and one photograph at a time. Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 94/100 (9.4 out of 10)
Nurse Florence, Why Do Bug Bites Itch? is definitely one of the better installments in Michael Dow's long-running, award-winning Nurse Florence series! This is a health-based collection of children's books that we've long held mixed opinions about, largely due to hit-or-miss illustrations, stilted plots, hollow character motivations, and the complexity of the vocabulary (for children). What we've never questioned was the intention of these books: to introduce health topics to children while educating and exciting them about these topics. Nurse Florence, Why Do Bug Bites Itch? is one of the best-illustrated and relatable books in the series. These books are written to teach kids real science and real health concepts, often using situations that feel familiar and nonthreatening. On that front, this installment really shines. Bug bites are universal. They are annoying but not terrifying, which makes them a perfect entry point into talking about the immune system, skin, and germs. By the time kids reach the last page, they understand that the red bump and itch are not random punishment. They are the body reacting to chemicals in the insect's saliva. The story setup is simple but effective. Jean, Condi, and Sonia are on their way to lunch when Sonia cannot stop scratching her arm. Enter Nurse Florence, who takes their questions seriously and walks them through the whole process, from the insect using a proboscis to pierce the skin, to the blood vessel underneath, to the body recognizing saliva as foreign. The dialogue feels smoother and more natural than in many previous entries. The kids ask the questions real children would ask. Nurse Florence answers in clear, short chunks that kids can follow without getting lost in jargon. The illustrations are also a noticeable step up here. The close up of the mosquito proboscis in the skin is one of the best visuals in the series. It is simple and not too gross. The itchy bump, scratchy fingers, and expressive faces of the kids all support the text instead of distracting from it. The back matter, including the glossary and brief references, gives parents and teachers extra tools if they want to stretch this into a small lesson or discussion. The journal page with reflection questions is a smart touch for classrooms. There are still a few series quirks that show up. The story is very lesson first and character second, so readers looking for big emotions or deeper character arcs will not find them here. The vocabulary is mostly well judged for early elementary, although we still rely on adults to help kids with words like "proboscis" or "saliva." That can be a plus if you treat the book as something to read together, which is probably how it works best. We're going to say something a bit funny but true: the mosquito in this book is one of the cutest characters of the contest season! The author and illustrator took something that is usually seen as foreign, frustrating, annoying, pain-inducing, triggering, and scary, and actually made it cute and even friendly-seeming. This is probably a good thing. You don't want to make kids even more scared of something they're already scared of. It's true that bugs freak people out, not just mosquitos, but things like spiders, centipedes, and bed bugs. There are even people afraid of worms, beetles, and ants. There've been studies done in which people who were afraid of spiders were shown "friendly spider" movies (as a form of exposure therapy), reporting later that their attitudes and feelings toward spiders were less negative and severe. So, this book could help in the same way. Oh, and one of the other awesome things about this book is that it actually provides practical advice on how to deal with bug bites, like using calamine lotion, hydrocortisone cream, or even an ice cube to reduce itching. That turns the story from just “here is why it happens” into “here is what you can actually do,” which kids and parents will both appreciate. Ironically, we just read Steel Soldier, a book about the Battle of Guadalcanal which spoke a lot about malaria-carrying mosquitos, so it's a danger that arguably can't be underestimated, but it shouldn't be so terrifying that one can't live their life without freaking out about each and every bug bite. Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 95/100 (9.5 out of 10)
Imagine a book... a book in which every single page is something you could put on your wall or mirror—something you could learn, be inspired by, and even live by? That's what you're getting with Ballerina Garden by the perennial OCA winners Once Upon a Dance! We have to preface this by saying that this book, like many of Once Upon a Dance's books, focuses on dance, ballet, and the performing arts. With that said, however, we think you could easily apply a lot of these lessons to your own life and/orcareer—anything you're passionate about, whether it be writing, sports, business, relationships, or more. This book could apply to anything that needs nurturing. That's something we appreciated the most about this book. It's practical, applicable, and yet ironically idealistic. Those aren't things that typically go hand in hand, and yet the creators struck a tactful and fine balance. In a lot of ways, this isn't purely a children's book, this is a non-fiction book that's applicable to everyone including adults. This book uses the beautiful and poetic metaphorical analogy of flowers and gardening, comparing them to performing arts. Chances are, you've had flowers in your home, yard, or garden fairly recently. How long did they last? Did they bloom? Did they whither and die? What caused these things to happen? What could you have done better or differently? What if you had stuck with it and nurtured them properly and with attention? Performing arts is like flowers in a garden. You can't just plant the seeds and abandon them. They require commitment, determination, dedication, time, focus, effort, and even some intelligence on part of their caretaker, i.e. the gardener. It's actually a remarkable and fitting analogy for how we need to tend to our passions, in this case dance and/or ballet. You can't wake up one day and be a professional. But you can work at it day by day, refining your craft and your skills. One of our favorite pages in this book talks about "Timing & Opportunity." Many times in life, it's easy to become discouraged or feel invisible. We're not performing on the biggest stages. We feel like we're not being seen or noticed. We're not getting millions, thousands, or even hundreds of views on YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram. And we ask ourselves: Does any of it actually matter? Does anyone really care? That's where self-determination and self-discipline comes in. Imagine if you were Napoleon, but instead of becoming an artillery officer at just the right time during the French Revolution, you decided to go into baking or something because the moment was too big and scary. Imagine if you were Tom Brady, but instead of going in the 6th round of the 2000 NFL Draft, you decided that all the QBs in front of you were just better, that you had no realistic shot in the pros, and you started working a 9 to 5 instead. Imagine if you were Once Upon a Dance, but instead of publishing children's books, you decided to ... well, quit publishing and quit spreading the message years ago. There would be no book awards, but worst yet, the many young lives touched by these books would've probably have had to find their inspiration from somewhere else, if that somewhere else even exists in their lives. Luck and opportunity work best when they're faired with hard-work and skill/talent—skill/talent that is honed over time and with great attention. Who's to say you can't be performing on Broadway or for Cirque du Soleil someday? The sky's the limit. Don't let limiting beliefs keep you from reaching your full potential. Don't let past failures and disappointments crush your dreams and cause you to abandon your passions. The illustrations in this book are artistic, stylistic, and visually stunning. They really match the poetic nature of this book. The dancers, as depicted in the illustrations, are poetically paired with images of flowers. The dancers' tutus, limbs, and movements literally emerge from petals and watercolor blooms. We liked the variety of colors and dancers of all genders and ethnicities, which is something that's easy to overlook. This is such a diverse cast! And they're not named. However, that anonymity just makes the message more powerful and impactful: anyone can dance, even YOU! The only complaint you could probably concoct is that there's A LOT of stuff happening on each page, so much so that the text and beautiful writing gets eclipsed at times. There's color, there's action, there's action on top of action, there are dancers and flowers. Then there's text. And the text, unfortunately, kinda gets mixed up, overshadowed, and sometimes even buried amidst all the chaos on the page. It doesn't help that some of the titles are in cursive or that the text isn't lifted or bolded. There is a faint white background behind the text, which actually helps quite a bit. Think of it like this: if you want to read the book, it might take some effort to dig the gems (the text) out from the chaos, but it's worth it. Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 90/100 (9.0 out of 10)
Born in Space is a sprawling, near-future space epic that we sometimes wanted to throw across the room and other times could barely put down. It is part family story, part mad science drama, part corporate space thriller, all orbiting around Teagan Ward, who is haunted by octopus dreams and strange visions that seem to tie her to something far beyond Arizona and Earth. Her nightmare of becoming a robed “priestess of the Octopus” and the later VR encounter with the ant like being who tells her “we will meet one day” are eerie, memorable hooks that make it clear destiny is tracking this kid. What's not so clear is what we're supposed to be tracking or focusing on. The book spreads its net far and wide. On one strand you have Teagan, her brother Hunter, their exhausted scientist parents Clara and Noel, the AI nanny (Betty), robots like the chef (Claw) and the joke cracking dental bot (Gummy), and their Labradoodle (Chester). Everyday life in Tucson already feels slightly futuristic with health pods, talking toilets, and omnipresent AI, but it is grounded in sibling squabbles, seed collecting, piano practice, and trips to the splash pad. Right off the bat, this book does something that we didn't particularly like in Brent and Edward Go to Mars: it places a heavy emphasis on describing and detailing emerging/hypothetical technologies and scientific concepts. It's always a balancing act because you don't want these things to distract from the plot and characters, you want them to enhance and elevate them. Your world and all its technology should accommodate the plot and characters, not become the focus. The author imagines a plausible 2060s in which a failed Chinese cyber offensive and brutal Western retaliation trigger “the Great Unraveling,” with climate change, automation, and economic collapse pushing millions into poverty while the ultra wealthy retreat to rotating space habitats like Halona. The details of lunar bases at Malapert and Shackleton, the gritty realities of regolith dust and buried habitats, the Chinese FAST telescope straining for signals and asteroids, and the orbital gateway at the Earth Moon L1 point all feel researched and thought through without becoming pure tech fetish. There is also an unexpected thread about Indigenous land, sacred places, and cosmology in the Apache and Hopi material, especially the Ant People and the “Four Worlds,” which cleverly echoes Teagan’s visions and the larger question of who really gets to claim the stars. Now, when we say "clever", that's a double-edged sword. It's possible for an author to overthink everything and outthink their audience. Remember, it's not what the author knows, it's what the readers understand and experience. You don't want to dampen their experience. Anyway... In another strand, Clara (again, Teagan's mom) is on the Moon, trying to build a seed bank and food supply at Malapert while secretly asked to “keep an eye” on the Chinese at Huashan. Then the camera jumps to General Lin Wenyi, disgraced architect of the Great Cyber War, to Zhu Yan at the “Eye of Heaven” telescope in Guizhou, and to Guy Zephron, the haunted pilot whose dam busting raid drowned millions and who now flies for billionaire Howie Rich’s asteroid mining fleet out of the ElleWon station. We distinctly remember him making a crucial (and pretty cool) decision to drop/launch an android in order to escape the space pirates, then being reprimanded for it by someone completely detached from the danger. It really got us on his side! That is a strong, punchy introduction to his character, but his arc never quite lives up to that promise, getting chopped up and buried under so many cutaways that his guilt and growth feel more like background color than a fully realized story. A lot of this book feels like this: stretched thin, choppy, and clunky. It's like wanting to enjoy the pizza but there are too many pineapples on it. On that note (about how this book kept ripping focus away from characters just when we were getting to like them), even the MAIN protagonists aren't immune to this. Like, Clara eventually gets overshadowed by Teagan who eventually gets overshadowed by Nevaeh, the girl born in space, and her super baby space siblings. Just as an aside: Nevaeh's whole arc reminded us of Blood of the Fisher King by Endy Wright, a book in which the good super baby clone(s) with special powers needs to deal with her renegade super baby clone(s) with special powers. Oh, and BY THE WAY... all throughout this, there's Kiana—who is admittedly our favorite character—who is a cadet-turned-spy (infiltrating the Iron Hornet space pirate group) who effectively serves as Hunter's love interest. And, honestly, their relationship is our favorite in the book because it actually seems organic and earned. It's one of the few things in this book that really felt natural and real. They're candidate for "Best Couple" and "Best Dynamic Duo." Teagan and Julian are up there as well. Oh, and there's the freakin' pet octopus thing, Tentacle. All of this octopus stuff had our heads spinning on top of all the other stuff. There's a scene when one of its tentacles gets chopped off and morbidly cooked and eaten. There's a very brief scene in which it's explained that octopuses symbolize and represent freedom. Ok... It's also said to represent infinite possibilities and regeneration, which we guess kinda makes the tentacle-chopping scene not seem like a total disturbing waste of time. Oh, there's another moment like that. There's a bunch of people being massacred, then a woman gets tied to a cactus and her toes are used for target practice. We don't even have her screaming or saying/shouting anything. She doesn't even struggle. She just seems to stay there statically and take it. Then there's the cliche, generic, done-to-death trope of finding the murdered mother's hidden baby who's somehow still alive despite not eating or drinking for "a few days" and somehow didn't draw any attention from the baddies despite crying its eyes/lungs out for much of that time. It just seems like it's out of nowhere. It seems unnatural. It's shoehorned in between other sci-fi scenes. It's bizarre and tonally different from 99% of this book, which is rather hokey and even humorous. This scene is more like an ultraviolent western scene out of Diablo Canyon in which the bandits and villains in that book did stuff like that all the time. But that was a dark fantasy-western. It just seems like it doesn't fit this book at all. Remember we talked about the tone of this book being hokey and humorous? There's a "Worm Song" in here, and it's the cheesiest, most childish freakin' thing. We think it's supposed to be cute and charming. We thought it was silly and disrupted the pacing. There's a scene when the robots start saying, "I'm Spartacus!" (like the movie Spartacus) and are basically told to shut up, which was probably meant to be semi-serious (because these robots are being exploited for labor) but instead came across as humorous and goofy to us. There's even a scene in which people are saying, "Get a room, you two!" What is this, a sitcom? Is this Seinfeld or a space epic? All in all, this is A LOT to shove into one novel. We're not saying this book doesn't make sense, because it eventually (kinda) does, but talk about dropping your readers into the blades of the blender. Remember: we don't know what the author knows. So all these choppy vignette-like perspective shifts in the beginning had us feeling unmoored, to say the least. We found this book to be incredibly unfocused. Born in Space exemplifies three of the things we constantly complain about in fiction books: 1. Excessive and distracting world-building that tends to draw attention away from the characters and plot rather than enhancing or elevating them 2. Convoluted stories that seem disjointed and lack focus 3. Way too many characters and not even attention paid to developing them all We found this book to be incredibly frustrating, at least for the first 180 pages or so. Yes, action was happening, people were saying stuff, characters were doing stuff, but it just didn't mesh and seem cohesive... at least until much later. But this book did eventually redeem itself in a lot of ways. Previous characters we liked/loved, especially Guy and Kiana, came back into play, becoming relevant again. The author might argue that they were always relevant, but that's not the way we perceived them. It's like some of these characters fell off the face of the earth and we forgot they existed. Also, the plot-threads start to cross over and tie together. There's some semblance of cohesion later in the book. Oh, and there are moments of this book that actually made us feel something and got us a bit emotional. For example, Maureen experiences a profound loss, and it's a surprisingly touching scene. Ok, maybe we should talk about the key villain lost in all of this chaos—the needle in a haystack. We'd like to briefly talk about Cesar. Now, Cesar isn't the Jenova or the Sephiroth of this novel, he's the Hojo. He's the mad scientist who—if he had just stopped to think about how messed up his ideas and experiments were—a lot of this book wouldn't have happened. So... thank you, Cesar, you made this possible. He has a range of evil experiments and plans. One of them, arguably the most important because it gives us the book's title, is his super space baby experiment on Teagan. We actually found that to be fascinating because it hauntingly reflects the kinds of drugs, recommendations, and procedures that OBGYNs and fertility doctors will actually do. Cesar isn't some crazy space pirate or a god-like cosmic entity, he's a dude who is so possessed by the prospect of what science can achieve that he can't help himself. He's the embodiment of science unbridled, unfiltered, and uncontrolled, especially when outside of Earth's jurisdiction. He even tells us so. In space, he has the freedom to do pretty much any experiment he wants. And this becomes dangerous when one of his other plans involves using cordyceps (which usually infect ants) to brainwash and mind control populations of humans. Now, granted, this cordyceps idea sounds kinda inspired from/borrowed from Last of Us and shoehorned in during a later draft, but... whatever. Anyway, Cesar moved the plot along and was a character we could follow from beginning to end who helped us feel like there was actually some rhyme and reason to the chaotic madness that is Born in Space. Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 96/100 (9.6 out of 10)
Kings of Stone: The Hittite Enigma by R Jay Driskill is one of the most impressive and best researched historical books we've ever read! This book demonstrates so much beyond just its informational and educational content... It demonstrates: THIS is why we keep a record. THIS is why we preserve our history. THIS is why our history matters, even if—for no other reason—just to remind future generations that we existed, made a difference, and mattered. Someday, centuries or even millennia from now, someone might just dig up what happened to us—the things we did, the things we achieved, the things we failed at, the mistakes we learned from (or didn't), the people we loved, the people we fought; our beliefs, our values, our laws, our traditions, our customs, and the ripple(s) through time and history that we were responsible for. It's all consequential. It all matters. From the smallest preserved edict to the record of the largest battle. It all matters. Let us face it. The Hittites get severely overlooked and overshadowed by their flashier neighbors. Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, even Mycenaean Greece. What Driskill does here is drag the Hittites back into the spotlight and say, “Look. This was a real great power. This was a complicated, multilingual, empire level civilization that stood toe to toe with Ramesses and the rest.” One of the great strengths of this book is how it pulls together many different kinds of evidence into one clear story. Clay tablets, monumental inscriptions, city ruins, climate data, old scholarly arguments that have been revised or overturned. Driskill shows you how a curse text, a treaty fragment, a destruction layer, or a dam in central Anatolia all fit into the same bigger picture. It feels almost like watching a very careful detective rebuild a vanished world piece by piece. The structure also works beautifully. We get the kings and campaigns, yes, but also full, focused chapters on society, law, religion, literature, and collapse. We see the king and queen at the top, the panku and high officials, the “thousand gods” and their syncretism, the scribes copying myths and treaties, the farmers praying for rain, and finally the long, grinding crisis that pulls everything apart. It never feels like “just” military history. It feels like a study of how a whole system lived and died. Driskill’s prose stays clear and grounded even when he deals with tricky scholarly debates. He tells you when experts disagree, and he never pretends that we have more certainty than we really do. At the same time, he keeps the story moving and explains technical points in a way a patient general reader can follow. History buffs, writers, game designers, and worldbuilding nerds will find a feast here. If there is a potential drawback, it is that this can be a dense read at times. The level of detail, the constant engagement with sources, and the deep dives into things like settlement patterns or textual transmission might feel heavy for someone who only wants quick battles and royal drama. A few more visual aids sprinkled through the text could have helped those readers. For anyone even a little serious about the ancient Near East, though, the density is an understandable feature, not a defect. We were actually amazed and impressed by a lot of what we learned about the little-known Hittites. The author actually did a good job in the of demonstrating how they're not some mysterious group of people who came from out of nowhere. They're actually relevant to civilizations and stories that most people are more familiar with. For example, Abraham bought Sarah's burial land from a Hittite. The Hittites show up again generations later in the story of David and Bathsheba through Uriah. Yes, THE Uriah. They are also listed repeatedly in the Bible as one of the key nations living in the land that Israel would eventually settle, which means they were part of the everyday background of those stories. Outside the Bible, the Hittites are the “other side” of the famous Battle of Kadesh that many people have seen in Egyptian documentaries about Ramesses II. Yes, THE Ramesses II. The book even touches on how Hittite records may preserve early references to places and peoples that later appear in Greek stories, like the world around Troy, so they end up feeling surprisingly close to a lot of the history and mythology we already know. The Hittites, as presented in this book, are genuinely fascinated. There are times when this reminded us of one of those royal court dramas on TV or in movies. There's lots of drama! Lots of backstabbing, infighting, betrayal, and even some romance. These are the ingredients for a great episodic television series! It's also interesting how much we know about the thoughts, feelings, and opinions of these dudes (and gals) who lived like 2,300+ years ago. Actually, this book goes back to around 1,650 BC, so that's 3,600 or so years ago! We're bad at math, sorry. Anyway, how cool is it that we can know how someone felt that long ago? For example, Driskill shares the story of Hantili I, the royal brother in law who helped assassinate King Mursili I, grabbed power with bloody hands, and then spent the rest of his life trying to live with it. In the surviving texts you can almost hear him circling back to that one act again and again, wondering if every sickness, every bad omen, every family misfortune is the gods sending the bill for that night. He worries that his children and grandchildren will have to carry the stain of his regicide, and he begs the gods to let the guilt stop with him. Moments like that make the Hittites feel less like stone carvings and more like real people whispering across three thousand years, still ashamed, still afraid, and still hoping for mercy. In western terms, this almost sounds like Macbeth or Richard III trying to cope with what they did to their kings! There are even some interesting romantic or pseudo romantic stories, like when the queen of Egypt suddenly finds herself widowed and writes to the Great King of Hatti asking him to send her one of his sons to marry because she has no heir. It is part diplomatic crisis, part long distance almost love story, and it feels oddly familiar in a world of political marriages and careful alliances. Driskill walks you through the letters, the suspicions on both sides, and the tragic fallout when things go wrong, letting you feel both the personal desperation of a young queen and the cold calculations of the royal courts. There are also the later marriage negotiations that lead to a Hittite princess becoming the wife of Ramesses II, complete with formal bragging about her beauty and the benefits of peace, which read almost like a royal version of “enemies to lovers.” On the Hittite side, we meet couples like Hattusili III and Puduhepa, whose prayers and letters show a husband and wife ruling together, presenting a united front before both their subjects and their gods. None of these read like modern romance novels, of course, but the mix of duty, attraction, fear, and loyalty gives the book a surprising amount of emotional texture for something built on clay tablets and broken stones. Ok, so the last thing we wanted to discuss is how this book so critically preserves and celebrates the monumental achievements of the Hittites. It credits them for some incredible historical “firsts” and “earliest knowns.” For example, they are behind the first surviving written international peace treaty in history, the famous agreement between Hattusili III and Ramesses II after Kadesh. They give us the earliest large body of written Indo European language in the form of Hittite, which is a huge deal for linguistics. Their vassal treaties and diplomatic letters look like prototypes of later international law, complete with extradition clauses, oaths, and mutual defense. Driskill also makes it clear that the Hittites were not operating in isolation. They were a key pillar in what is effectively the first integrated international trade system, moving metals, grain, textiles, timber, and luxury goods along routes that tied Anatolia, Syria, Mesopotamia, and Egypt together. They sit right in the middle of what he calls the Late Bronze Age Great Powers System, a tight circle of “superstates” that recognize one another as equals, swap royal daughters, send gifts, and negotiate over markets and spheres of influence in a way that feels uncannily like an ancient version of modern great power politics. Their law code is one of the earliest to lean away from pure eye for an eye punishments and toward fines and restitution, which feels surprisingly humane for the Late Bronze Age. This is also critical because so much more attention is given to the Code of Hammurabi, which is famous for its harsh “if he breaks this, you break that” style of justice. By contrast, the Hittite laws often reduce the penalty for bodily injury or accidental harm to a payment, compensation, or negotiated settlement instead of automatic death or mutilation. They make distinctions between intent and accident, between theft and simple loss, and even soften earlier penalties over time, which suggests a legal tradition that is willing to rethink itself. Driskill does a great job of showing that if we are going to talk about the roots of humane, restorative justice in the ancient world, the Hittites deserve to be in that conversation right alongside, if not slightly ahead of, Hammurabi. Now, you could call some of this "soft on crime" and the opposite of Chinese legalism (which include slicing people and sawing people in half), but that is a discussion for another day. They are also among the early movers in iron working, sitting right at the edge of the shift from bronze to iron that will reshape the ancient world. By the end of the book, you get the sense that the Hittites were not just another ancient empire that rose and fell. They were pioneers who quietly helped set the template for how big states make peace, write laws, manage allies, stitch together wide scale trade systems, and move into new technological ages. Speaking of technology, the Hittites sounded like brilliant chariot-makers and charioteers! There are accounts of them having thousands of chariots and making them lighter yet sturdier than the Egyptians and such. Ok, we know that we said the "firsts" were the last thing we were going to talk about, but it dawned on us that we also have to talk about the administrative and government reforms. So much attention in our Judeo-Christian/western-biased history goes to the Greeks, the Romans, and the Hebrews. Well, the Hittites made an impact when it came to those areas too. For example, there is this king in here named Telepinu who basically looks around at the royal family drama and says, “Enough.” After generations of usurpations, murders, and cousin-on-cousin power grabs, he issues what is essentially one of the first constitutional style reform documents in history, the Telepinu Proclamation. It spells out who gets to be king, in what order, and what happens if there is no clear male heir, trying to remove the “maybe I should just kill my brother and take the throne” incentive from the royal job description. It also takes cases of royal bloodshed out of private revenge and puts them in the hands of a formal assembly, the panku, which can actually judge a king who kills his own relatives. That is a baby step toward checks and balances, three and a half thousand years ago. Telepinu does not stop at the palace door either. The Proclamation talks about governors who are supposed to protect their provinces instead of squeezing them, and Driskill shows how archaeological evidence backs this up with standardized seals, reorganized provincial centers, and new fortifications. You start to see a state that is trying to be more than one strongman in a fancy hat. It is trying to be a set of institutions and rules that can survive bad kings as well as good ones. Again and again, this book reminds you that the Hittites were not just swinging swords and driving chariots. They were quietly experimenting with succession law, oversight bodies, and provincial administration in ways that feel surprisingly modern. Then you get Mursili II, who inherits a kingdom shaken by plague, rebellions, and dangerous neighbors, and basically goes into full "fix the system" mode. His annals read like a mix of military log and audit report as he tours the provinces, reins in vassals, replaces corrupt or useless officials, and reasserts royal authority in places that had drifted away. At the same time, his famous plague prayers show a king who thinks of misrule and broken oaths as national problems that bring real consequences on everyone, not just private sins. He keeps asking what went wrong before his time, what promises were broken, and how to repair the relationship between crown, people, and gods. Between Telepinu trying to lock down succession and the panku, and Mursili II trying to rescue a wobbling empire through inspections, reforms, and public accountability, you start to see a long Hittite tradition of treating government as something you can tune, correct, and improve rather than just endure. What this indicates to us is that these people from 3000+ years ago weren't just stinky, hairy, smelly savages with bad hygiene, short life-spans, and who just wanted to fight, hunt, kill, and sleep with women like mindless cavemen. No, they were actually brilliant in their own way. They were troubleshooters and problem-solvers. They weren't just figures etched and carved in stone. They were flesh and blood. And they matter. They've sent ripples through history that are still felt today. Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 96/100 (9.6 out of 10)
Steel Soldier is a no-holds-barred, gritty, violent, and deeply human account of the Battle of Guadalcanal, one of the key campaigns of the Pacific War during World War II. It is told from the perspective of James J. Messina, who hand-wrote and (impressively) even illustrated a five-volume memoir to preserve this harrowing true story for his children. All of that is brought together, edited, and framed through the efforts of his son, Charles. This is the story of a man. The story of a battle. The story of a nation at war. The story of a time come and gone but never to be forgotten. The story of the Greatest Generation. All captured in about 300 pages. This is the story of a generation of ordinary kids from mill towns and city blocks who suddenly found themselves on a jungle island with history and the fates of nations bearing down on them. We're going to preface our discussion of the content of this book by saying that the first third of this book takes a lot of patience. It takes awhile to get going, especially with Charles Messina explaining the process of how this book came together and all the context behind it. Furthermore (and most critically), the first five or six chapters about James Messina's early life, basic training, and the start of the war are nowhere near as interesting, compelling, or engaging as the actual battle itself. That's normal and to be expected. Not everything needs to be action, shooting, and explosions. This isn't some 80s action flick (or an Ethan Richards novel), it's real life. We did find our attentions waning and becoming impatient though. At the same time, these early chapters provided context and background for the later, more dramatic chapters. They paint James Messina as an average 20th century American boy who became a man, a soldier, and a hero, expected to do extraordinary things under extraordinary, brutal, and high-stakes circumstances. Messina starts as a restless young steelworker from West Aliquippa who wants “some excitement” and winds up in the Old Breed of the 1st Marine Division. The early chapters cover recruiting stations, Parris Island, long marches at Camp Lejeune, and convoy duty. There is humor, boredom, and the kind of tiny details you only get from someone who was actually there: the food, the pranks, the nicknames, the feel of a rifle that is finally starting to feel like an extra limb instead of a foreign object. The thing that really stood out to us about these early chapters was Messina's drill instructor, who seemed to always go on power trips and call everyone a "sh*thead." It was somewhat humorous in how over-the-top it seemed. Another interesting thing about these chapters (and the book in general) is how it's explained that basic training and the military were different back then. Another interesting thing about these chapters (and the book in general) is how it is explained that basic training and the military were different back then. The men live in canvas tents instead of modern barracks. The bathroom is called the "head," not the latrine. There are strict rules about no radios, no loud talking at night, smoking only when the "smoking lamp" is lit, and lights out at 10 PM sharp. The DI has total freedom to belittle them, get in their faces nose to nose, and threaten to "make you or break you" with no concern for mental health language or gentle feedback. Messina even mentions coming back from furlough and, at the thought of Parris Island, the first image that pops into his head is that corporal’s face and his dumb nickname for them, "sh*theads," which says a lot about what that older style of training felt like from the inside. Oh, and by the way, everyone seemed to smoke back then. They smoked during transit. They smoked during battle. They smoke indoors too! There's even a bit of a joke later on during the battle in which the narrator says, "We usually just stood around smoking and bullsh*tting." This is also the time before the M16, which feels like it has been standard-issue since the dawn of time at this point. But this is before the Cold War, Vietnam War, and NATO. So, Messina is issued an M1903 Springfield bolt-action rifle with a pistol-grip stock and five-round clip, and he spends hours scraping Cosmoline off it, cleaning the bore, and learning bayonet drills. Later, in the Pacific, his squad leans on “Old Faithful,” the Springfield ’03, while a buddy like Negri lugs a Browning Automatic Rifle that Messina calls the best jungle weapon a man could carry. The Marines even hand out M1 carbines with folding stocks to local islanders because they themselves do not like them, and Messina notes that most Japanese soldiers are carrying a smaller .25-caliber bolt-action rifle with a wicked hooked bayonet. All those details really drive home how different the gear, training, and overall feel of the Marine Corps were compared to the lighter, more high-tech and automatic weapons of today. There's one little scene that really stood out to us with regard to the older technology, and that's when the Marines in Guadalcanal had to figure out how to aim and shoot at the enemy in the dead of night. Thankfully, they had tracer rounds back then, but night vision was still in its infancy and not widely used. So, one of the more innovative and cunning soldiers figured out he could attach a white paper to his rifle and use that to guide his shots. We love reading about soldiers being resourceful and clever like that. Oh, speaking of shooting and aiming... there's a really cool scene about James Messina demonstrating how great of a shot he is. He is handed a .45 caliber automatic pistol at the range and told to shoot at a target fifty feet away. The instructor walks him through how to raise the weapon, bring the front sight down onto the top of the bull’s-eye, and squeeze instead of jerk the trigger. Messina does exactly what he is told and, to everyone’s shock, hits a bull’s-eye on his very first shot. Then he fires the next nine rounds and hits nine more bull’s-eyes in a row, earning an expert score with the .45 even though he has never fired a handgun before. It is a great little moment that shows both how well the old school instructors could teach and how naturally gifted Messina was as a shot. He also seems to have a keen eye, such as when he spots a sniper in a tree obscured by camo, something that no one else seems to notice or see. Oh, and this book also makes you appreciate civilian life and modern conveniences. There is a small moment when James and his buddies head into the mess hall and spot a little machine selling crackers and snacks, and it feels like Christmas morning. They have been living on C-rations, powdered eggs, and whatever the cooks can scrape together, so dropping a coin into a machine and getting a fresh, salty cracker is almost magical. You can practically feel the joy of that tiny treat, surrounded by mud, sweat, and fatigue. Here in 21st century America, in any major civilian city, you can walk a block or two to a 7-Eleven and pick from a whole wall of chips, candy bars, and drinks without thinking twice. Things cost a lot less back then, but you also worked for quarters, and those quarters were precious. Steel Soldier quietly reminds you that for Messina’s generation, a simple snack from a mess hall machine could be a luxury, and that perspective makes our constant access to food, comfort, and choice feel a lot less guaranteed and a lot more like something to be grateful for. Other attention-grabbing things are discussed before the battle itself. For example, the fate and speculation about what happened to Amelia Earhart is discussed. There's a sad and tragic moment when some crew are swept overboard and can't be rescued while avoiding the Japanese submarines. It is quick on the page, but it hits hard. James also discusses a beautiful woman named Stevie who crosses his path aboard ship, and those scenes feel like a completely different world. He notices her looks, her smile, the way she carries herself, and you can sense that mix of shyness and daydreaming that comes with being a young man far from home. For a few pages, the tone shifts from training schedules and danger zones to something almost like a peacetime crush. Then the narrative swings back toward Guadalcanal, and that contrast makes the coming violence feel even sharper. All these little side stories (Amelia Earhart, the men swept overboard, Stevie) help you remember that these were real people with curiosity, grief, and romantic fantasies, not just names in an after-action report. These are human beings. And you know who else is presented as human beings? The Japanese enemies and the Melanesian people who inhabit the Solomon Islands (where Guadalcanal is). They aren't just NPCs or faceless enemies. Messina talks about captured Japanese officers, letters found on bodies, and the simple fact that the men charging his lines are also scared, also hungry, also far from home. He notices the islanders who guide patrols, work as laborers, and try to survive a war dropped on top of their villages. Sometimes they are savvy allies, sometimes tragic bystanders caught in the crossfire. The book never turns them into stereotypes. Instead, it quietly reminds you that every uniform and every bare foot in that jungle belongs to a person with a story, even if we only glimpse it for a sentence or two. There are scenes in which the slain Japanese soldiers have to be buried in mass graves, and they're referred to as "sneaky little bastards." It's strange how that sounds almost endearing and respectful in context despite the words being harsh. "Sneaky" can be interpreted as clever and cunning. "Little bastards" makes them sound smaller yet formidable, which they were. Unfortunately, the Japanese soldiers are presented not just for their ferocity, relentlessness, and bravery, but also for the brutality that they've become infamous for (through the 30s and 40s). One of the most haunting scenes in the book is when James and the Marines come across a blackened and decomposed female body that they realize is a Catholic nun whom the Japanese viciously murdered along with other Catholic missionaries on the island. While it's haunting and tragic, it also leads to one of the most tender scenes in the book in which the Marines go out of their way to give her a proper, respectful Catholic burial. It is also notable that it is Sgt. Breeding, one of the more rough, tough, no nonsense Marines in the unit, who takes the lead in making the sign of the cross, organizing the little graveside service, and making sure she is treated with dignity. In a book full of artillery, ambushes, and disease, this quiet act of reverence stands out and shows how, even in the middle of a brutal jungle campaign, these men still carried a sense of mercy, faith, and basic human decency. There are even times when they show decency toward the Japanese soldiers, particularly those they capture. One of these times comes back to bite them in arguably the book's most tense battle scene, but it is commendable. It should be briefly mentioned that the Japanese are constantly referred to by the derogatory term "Japs" as was common lingo by Americans at the time. This might offend some readers, but it's raw, real, and honest to the time and context. It's also interesting to hear James talk about the other enemies on the island: the wildlife (animals)! He describes flooded camps crawling with insects, including scorpions and nasty spiders, and swarms of huge mosquitoes that help spread malaria and make sleep nearly impossible. There are also giant land crabs skittering around the bivouac at night, bush rats that chew through everything, snakes coiled in the undergrowth, wild dogs, iguanas, and even crocodiles lurking in the rivers. By the time he is done describing all of it, you really feel like the Marines are fighting the jungle itself as much as they are fighting the Japanese, with every step and every night’s sleep turning into a struggle just to avoid being bitten, stung, or eaten alive. Even the giant saltwater crocodiles, said to be up to 20 feet long and 2,000 lbs., are humanized a little. We're told that, despite their dangerous reputation and monstrous size, the crocodiles were never reported as having eaten a soldier. They were scared too, frightened by all the artillery explosions, bombs, and gunfire. It makes you think about who the real monsters are and how human beings and their conflicts can dramatically impact the environment and wildlife. One last thing that's very fascinating is that James is able to bring us to speed on insider knowledge. For example, he picks up that a lot of the passwords/codes used by the military at the time used the letter L (like "Honolulu") because the Japanese had trouble pronouncing the letter L. This is a thrilling, dramatic, heartwrenching, riveting real-life story and one of the best World War II books we've ever read. We'd also like to mention how special it is that it was James Messina's "secret dream to become an author" which he gets to live now. He will soon be an award-winning author! Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 93+/100 (9.3+ out of 10)
Has your beloved pet ever gone missing? Have you ever wondered what they might have seen? Who they might have met? What they might have done? Lucky's Adventure: The Saratoga Rescue is a fictionalized story based on true events surrounding the life and adventures of Lucky, an anxious little Yorkie–Affenpinscher mix, and her owner ("Mom"), presumably the author herself. The book is a middle-grade chapter book with black & white illustrations by multi-time award-winning illustrator Anthony Richichi. The illustrations definitely accommodate rather than distract from the story. The book follows Lucky Charms, a once abused dog who begins life as “Bailey” in the South, where she is yelled at, hit, and finally dropped at a shelter. There she meets Miss Peaches and learns what “rescue” means as she waits for a family, until she is transported north, placed in a foster home, and finally meets the woman who becomes “Mom,” along with Hershey Kisses the cat, who slowly shifts from “annoying furball” to true sister. The middle of the story shows Lucky and Mom building a life together in Saratoga Springs, complete with dog park friends, hikes, ice cream, and cozy bedtimes. At the same time, the narrative quietly underscores how much Mom needed Lucky too, setting up the “who rescued whom” theme. The big turning point comes when Mom travels to Kansas City and Lucky stays for a sleepover at Casey’s house. A loud truck startles her, her collar snaps, and she bolts into the woods. From there the narrative splits between Lucky’s on the ground adventure and Mom’s increasingly frantic search with Casey’s family, friends, and eventually what feels like the whole town, complete with posters, social media alerts, and near misses. As Lucky wanders, she basically takes a tour of Saratoga, following a rainbow to the state park to bathe in a geyser, riding Longshot the Moose’s antlers at SPAC, trotting downtown with ducks, tasting the sulfur heavy water at Hathorn Spring, spinning on the carousel, snacking at the farmers’ market, napping in a compost pile near Spring Run Trail, hiding from a snake, bunking at the Oklahoma horse barns, and even riding Olivia the racehorse in a big race before heading to the lake with her old friend Baelish. Each stop brings new animal and human helpers, though she keeps just missing Mom. The story alternates between Lucky's point of view and Mom's, and that structure really works. From Lucky's side, we feel the confusion, fear, and curiosity of a little dog who suddenly finds herself on her own in a big, unfamiliar world. From Mom's side, we see the very human panic of a pet parent who is trying to hold it together while doing everything possible to bring her fur baby back home. The dual perspectives raise the emotional stakes in a way that is still kid friendly and accessible. As Lucky wanders through Saratoga, the book doubles as a kind of love letter to the town. She visits parks, trails, the farmers' market, horse barns, and more, meeting new animal and human friends at nearly every stop. Local readers will enjoy spotting familiar landmarks, while readers from elsewhere will still get a clear feel for a tight knit community that rallies around a missing dog. The little map and list of locations help sell that sense of place even more. One of the strongest aspects of this book is how it balances worry and safety. The situation is serious. There are cold nights, loud noises, and moments when Lucky is hungry, wet, or plain worn out. Still, the tone never gets too heavy, and Lucky almost always finds a helper or a safe spot to rest. That mix of real tension with reassuring comfort makes it a great choice for sensitive readers who love animals but might be easily overwhelmed. If there is a minor drawback, it is that Lucky's journey includes a lot of start, stops, and side characters. At times, it can feel a bit like a "Saratoga highlight reel" on top of the main lost dog storyline. However, many readers, especially kids who enjoy meeting new characters and discovering new places, will see this as a feature rather than a flaw. Each encounter adds another small lesson about kindness, courage, and community. The beginning does feel a bit like an info dump. The explanation that Lucky's name used to be "Bailey" seems a bit unnecessary and might be confusing or overly complicated for young readers. There are also times when this book just seemed a bit flat and mundane. There are sections of this book that seem like slice-of-life scenes/moments that don't really advance the plot and seem superfluous/unnecessary. You don't want to tempt readers—especially young readers who have a short attention span—to close or put a book down. If you keep changing the subject, the side characters, and the focus, it becomes tempting to do so. Then again, you don't necessarily have to read the book in one sitting. It's a chapter book, afterall. You can read it one chapter and one night at a time. That could work. You might also have to suspend your disbelief and remind yourself that this is a fictionalized retelling of real events, meaning there are definitely fantastical elements including a ghost-like character in Maple, Lucky's "guardian angel," and moments like when Lucky talks to people (like she's a human who speaks English) and when she rides on Olivia (the horse's back) during a race. Obviously, those types of things are fictional. Ultimately, though, this book is a powerful testament of the beautiful bonds between pets and their humans. They save us as much as we save them. Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 95/100 (9.5 out of 10)
It has always been an admirable and worthwhile challenge to teach children about Jesus and what his words and sacrifice actually meant. The challenge often comes from the good book's complex, nuanced nature as well as the violent and scary content that The Bible sometimes conveys (like the crucifixion, the great flood, the binding of Isaac, the plagues on Egypt, or Revelations). It can be overwhelming, uncomfortable, and confusing for children. Heck, it's overwhelming, uncomfortable, and confusing for many adults! Well, one of the best tools we have in teaching young people about Jesus and about God's word is through beautiful illustrated works like this that break the content down in a way that makes sense and isn't so cryptic. Seeking the Lost Sheep by Daniel Cramton is one of the best-illustrated Christian children's books we've read in years! It hearkens back to the illustration and presentation style of the KJV Classic Children's Bible (by Thomas Nelson and Seaside) that thousands of children owned in the late 80s and 90s. Only, it's even more colorful and a bit more friendly. Seeking the Lost Sheep is part of an ambitious and admirable effort by Cramton and WestBow Press to bring the gospels to children around the world—to introduce them to the beautiful gift of salvation and hope they have in Christ Jesus. This series is projected to include a trilogy of books that focus on three of Jesus' parables: the parable of the lost sheep, the parable of the missing coin, and the parable of the prodigal son. This first book focuses on the parable of the lost sheep. It's a great place to start! Why? Well, it features a cute, charismatic, and cuddly creature (the sheep) and tells one of the most powerful messages of the whole Bible: that God has not forgotten them, and that God loves humanity (represented by the lost sheep) so much that he sent his only begotten son, Jesus, to die for all of their sins. All of that captured in a short story, conveyed here in less than 30 lovely pages! Wow! The brevity and conciseness is a strength of this book, not a weakness. Children have short attention spans. You're competing for their attentions with live-streaming, video games, social media, and smartphone apps. If you're going to impact them, you need to do so quickly. And this book achieves that. Once you get through the somewhat heavy-handed opening, this book flies. You could probably read this with your childen in ten minutes or less, which is perfect for bedtime! Accomodating that is the fact that this book isn't wordy at all. It's very brief. And the lines are relatively easy to read. They rhyme. And the vocabulary is simple. Now, in all honesty, some of these lines sound a little contrived, usually to fit the rhyme scheme. But they do their jobs. Kids love rhymes. We'd rather they be engaged with the text because of the rhymes than be bored or disengaged at someone just telling them the story. Honestly, there's a part of us that wants to say that the 3-4 pages could've been relegated to the explanation at the end of the book. The first 3-4 pages talk a lot more about the macro picture: that this book/series brings the words of Jesus to life in storybook form and makes it apparently clear that this book has evangelistic aims (i.e. we'd love it if you became a Christian). A part of us felt like this put the cart before the horse, frontloading the heavy-handed, didactic stuff in the beginning may have not been the preferred approach. If this stuff had been saved for the end of the book, it could've helped children to understand the sheep and the shepherd's story without risking potentially boring or scaring them away. For example, there is an illustration of Jesus being crucified (with some blood) early on. While this event is crucial to the faith and the ultimate message, it may have been better to save that for after the sheep and shepherd's story, once the kids were already hooked and engaged, ready to hear the deeper meaning of the message. Now, we get it... this was supposed to be the first in the series, and was supposed to introduce readers to the fact that the series will be covering these topics and these three specific parables. This book does take some expected creative liberties with this well-known story, and there's really nothing wrong with that. The shepherd does a lot more than just leave his flock to find the missing sheep, he actually goes on a whole adventure (albeit in one page), going through a marsh and climbing a hill or a mountain to get a better view. That's great because it shows that God didn't just casually, nonchalantly wave his hand to save his creation, he made the ultimate sacrifice for them. And the sheep's side of the story is expanded too. The sheep gets distracted and led astray by a dragonfly and a cow (which is kinda funny). The cow being there seems a little random, but it hearkens back to the Hebrews in the wilderness who infamously made a golden calf to worship while Moses was away meeting with God. So, it kinda makes sense. And kids can point out the cow and the sound that its bell makes ("CLANG CLANG"). Also, he gets himself caught in the thorns and bristles like some of the unfortunate seeds that the sewer sewed in another of Jesus' parables. The sheep is cute enough, but there were times when we felt its face was a bit too flat and human-like. We think this is because the illustrators had to find a way to convey human emotions with a non-human/anthropomorphic animal. We would've also loved it if the raccoons were cuter, but it's not the biggest deal. Speaking of the illustrators... we'd really like to take our hats off to them, even despite us being slightly critical of the sheeps head/face. They did a commendable job. The book credits Onofrio Orlando from WM Art Studio as the line artist. It credits Mariya Stoyanova as the color artist. Orland is from Malta and Stoyanova is from the United Kingdom, so this was an international effort! That, along with the book itself, really shows you how much Jesus and The Bible still mean to millions around the world. People who may have never seen each other or met in person—people hundreds or even thousands of miles apart—can still find common ground in their faith, beliefs, and these universal stories of sacrifice, salvation, and redemption. Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 95/100 (9.5 out of 10)
Have you ever felt like you were misunderstood? Like everything you did was torn down and criticized at no fault of your own? It's like the whole world was against you. And nothing you did was ever good enough. Like nothing you did was ever right or accepted, no matter how hard you tried. Have you ever been made to feel broken, incapable, or incompetent by people who seem broken, incapable, and incompetent themselves? Well, Allie's Adventure on the Wonder perfectly captures these feelings. The feelings of an underdog. The struggles of a black sheep. We feel like we're repeating a bit of what we said in our review of Liliana’s Match: Finding Bella by Victoria Smith, a book about a girl with ADHD & anxiety. However, though the two books are similar in their themes, they're different enough to still be great in their own right. We greatly appreciated this Allie's Adventure on the Wonder for the story it told, the characters it gave us, and the themes it tactfully explored. It spoke to us. It resonated with us. Perhaps its greatest strength is that it gave us several outstanding characters including one of the best protagonists (in Allie) and one of the best villains of the year (in Mrs. Heartred). It also gave us a nominee for Best Supporting Character (in Charlie). If you want to score highly in an Outstanding Creator Awards contest in either Fiction or Children's Books, just give us GREAT CHARACTERS. Make them relatable. Make them people we can root for (or against). This shouldn't be a secret. However, people apparently haven't caught on. Great characters can save an average or generic plot (which this book somewhat veers into). They can make up for average writing. The trope of escaping (either mentally or physically) into a fantasy realm is nothing new or fresh. Plots are CONSTANTLY alluding to (or outright using) Neverland (from Peter Pan) or Wonderland (from Alice in Wonderland) to tell some intertextual or metatextual tale about reality and fiction mirroring each other. It has kinda been done to death. But what elevates this book from the brink of cliche and redundancy is how relatable a character Allie is and what a demonic, devilish b&$t Mrs. Heartred is. Mrs. Heartred represents every persecutory, emotionally & psychologically abusive, and dismissive teacher you ever had. But she's not comically evil. She's not pure evil. She's the scariest kind of evil: REALISTIC evil. She is the kind of person we could imagine sneaking into schools with a BS online degree to teach our kids how to BS their education, all while traumatizing and discouraging the kids who are trying and actually want to do well. Teachers like this exist! And it stinks! Mrs. Heartred encourages mediocrity while crushing innovation, creativity, and outside-the-box thinking. It's like she has to crush, criticize, and/or shut down every single new idea, every single new project, and every single question or insightful thought that Allie has. It's maddening! It really creates this powerful tension that we, the reader/audience, can't help but be compelled by and engaged with. We want Allie to succeed--to show Mrs. Heartred up--for no other reason than we hate Mrs. Heartred ("Mrs. Hatred") so much. Adding to the tension, we see how Mrs. Heartred treats other students differently and favorably, all while dismissing and belittling Allie and her condition as "your so-called Auditory Processing Disorder." But, as we alluded to before, Mrs. Heartred still comes around as a realistic rather than comical or over-the-top villain. She actually has a backstory, displacing her own harsh thoughts and opinions about her disabled child on Allie. She also finds the poisoning of a certain student's food shocking, lower than she would even go. Oh, and by the way, Mrs. Heartred isn't the only villain. The Decker Sisters are quite formidable. Allie is a likable and relatable character who happens to suffer from Auditory Processing Disorder (APD). Rather than making her seem weird, crazy, or unusual, this book makes her (and others like her) seem like someone we could actually BE or befriend. Allie loves things that many of us loved growing up: Harry Potter, Dragon Lance, and Dragon Ball Z. She's also insightful, innovative, and creative. She's clearly the best creator in her class, which would be recognized if Mrs. Heartred weren't her teacher. One last character we have to talk about is Charlie. Charlie is a character who ultimately tugged on our hearts and broke it. His connection and chemistry with Allie is unmistakable. It's powerful! It's one of the best chemistries we've seen two characters have this year. Both are characters who are a bit unusual, misunderstood, and looked down upon by others, but they find peace, comfort, and care in each other. Their pseudo-romantic bond is beautiful. There's also quite a bit of humor in here. One of our favorite scenes involved Allie's father, a tick, and some Raid. That was genuinely hilarious. Anyway, this is a book that does a great job at presenting APD tactfully and in an understandable way, all while giving us great characters who are sure to make you feel a certain way. Check it out on Amazon! |
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