Editorial Reviews for Nominees
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 Score: 91+/100 (9.1+ out of 10)
Have you ever sat in a classroom staring at the clock, waiting for the final bell to ring? The teacher is still talking, papers are scattered across your desk, and your classmates have begun whispering, fidgeting, doodling, or staring into space. The second hand appears to have stopped moving altogether. You are technically supposed to be learning, but all you can think about is getting out of that chair and going home. Now imagine that your teacher asks you to write a poem about it. That is essentially what happens in “Waiting for the Bell,” one of the poems in Unwritten: Young Authors Project. The young poet openly admits to sitting in class, wanting to leave, watching the minutes creep past, and wondering whether the teachers are covering material the students already know. Honestly, we appreciate the candor. There is something wonderfully funny about a student completing what appears to be a classroom poetry assignment by writing about how tired they are of sitting in the classroom. Hey, at least the assignment got done! Unwritten, edited by Sheila Rowe and published by School Express Press, collects poetry and creative writing from 17 sixth- and seventh-grade students: Arlette Amaro Arias, Gage Bluestein, Daymien Carlos, Jayde Fernandez, Sofia Gonzalez, Jasmine Jamison, Nevaeh Jazo, Aria Lacchei, Genesis Luna Cabrera, Amelia Maragh, Isabella Mendez-Higareda, Scarlett Ortiz Martinez, Tania Perez Martinez, Angelo Quezada, Dorothy Serafin, Anna Truong, and Nael Zacapala. Because these writers are in sixth and seventh grade, some are teenagers while others are probably still preteens. They are best described collectively as middle-school authors. We previously read and reviewed Pulse: Young Authors Project, another collection involving Sheila Rowe, School Express Press, and several of these same students. We gave Pulse an exceptional score of 94+/100 and described it as a fantastic collection filled with surprisingly deep, dynamic, powerful, beautiful, emotional, and thought-provoking poetry. We were astonished by that book because it did not merely succeed as a school project. Some of its strongest poems could stand alongside work written by considerably older and more experienced poets, and its imagery, symbolism, emotional maturity, structural ambition, and memorable turns of phrase repeatedly exceeded our expectations. Naturally, that set a very high standard for Unwritten. This new collection does not consistently reach the same literary or poetic heights, but that's not to say we didn't enjoy and appreciate it. Whereas Pulse felt like an outstanding poetry collection that happened to be written by middle schoolers, Unwritten more often feels like a solid collection of middle-school poetry assignments. There is a meaningful difference between those descriptions. Many of these selections appear to originate from familiar language-arts prompts. The “Where I’m From” format, for example, is a standard classroom exercise in which students repeat a phrase such as “I am from” while exploring their family, culture, environment, memories, traditions, and identity. We know the assignment well. We have encountered it in classrooms, written versions of it ourselves, and seen countless students use the same basic framework. That familiarity makes some portions of Unwritten feel less fresh than the best material in Pulse, something that's compounded by the song lyrics from mainstream music that seem to pop up throughout the book, chief of which is the book's title itself, inspired by Natasha Bedingfield’s hit song of the same name. Elsewhere, a passage describing “words so innocent, yet so wrong” bears a noticeable resemblance in phrasing, rhythm, and emotional reversal to Calvin Harris’s “Summer.” We cannot know whether this similarity was intentional, and the wording is not identical, but it contributes to the broader sense that several contributors are drawing heavily from the language and construction of familiar pop songs. You could argue that kinda ads to the flavor of the book and its poems. They're inspired. But going back to what we were saying about these looking and sounding like assignments... poems about grandparents, pets, friendship, childhood memories, nature, personal identity, and overcoming hardship can also resemble conventional assignments designed to introduce students to repetition, imagery, rhyme, metaphor, simile, and sensory description. This does not make the poems pointless, however. A familiar prompt can still produce a meaningful result, particularly when a student fills that framework with personal experiences no one else could have supplied. The assignment may be standardized, but the life inside it is not. Daymien Carlos demonstrates this distinction particularly well. His “Where I’m From” begins with recognizable material about Arizona sunshine, religious worship, Mexican food, school, and family, but it gradually becomes far more personal. Carlos writes about having eleven siblings, two mothers, two fathers, and a biological mother who died before he had the opportunity to truly know her. His second contribution, “Timeline,” develops these ideas into one of the book’s most memorable pieces. The poem follows the speaker from the womb through approximately age twelve, tracing parental absence, confusion, school difficulties, behavioral struggles, counseling, and the realization that the aunt and uncle raising him have effectively become his mother and father. The language is not always highly sophisticated, but the concept is excellent. Each age range reveals another layer of the speaker’s understanding. As a small child, he wonders why his parents keep disappearing. When he enters kindergarten and hears classmates explain why they miss their mothers, he realizes that the person fulfilling that role in his own life is his aunt. Later, he reflects on having both a biological father and the uncle he now calls Dad. The poem ultimately rejects the notion that an unconventional family is somehow inferior, communicating the simple but powerful idea that being different does not mean being less. Arlette Amaro Arias, who also appeared in Pulse, opens the student portion of Unwritten with “Dear Diary.” This is not presented as a conventional poem so much as a song, complete with verses, a breakdown, a chorus, and an outro. The speaker enters a new school feeling conspicuous and afraid, wondering whether the other students are judging her clothing and whether she will ever fit in. She eventually meets a group forming a band, unsuccessfully attempts to play guitar and drums, and then discovers an unexpected connection with the piano. The piano becomes more than an instrument. It represents belonging, confidence, identity, and the discovery of an ability that had been waiting to emerge. The instrument effectively calls to her, turning confusion into direction and “noise into answers.” The poem’s musical structure reinforces its subject, while the diary entries create a progression through time. Arlette does not simply announce that the speaker becomes more confident. She shows that transformation unfolding across several weeks, making this an encouraging way to begin the collection. Gage Bluestein contributes two very different poems. “Oh, My Puppy, Duke” is an affectionate and humorous portrait of life with a dog. Its structure repeatedly alternates between things Gage loves and things that irritate him. Duke curls into his lap, plays, runs, chews rocks, nibbles feet, takes too long to use the bathroom, and manipulates his owner with enormous dark eyes. That alternating pattern gives the poem personality because real love, whether directed toward a person or an animal, includes both affection and annoyance. Duke is lovable partly because he is such a nuisance. We particularly enjoyed the description of Duke as “Bluetooth-connected to my heart.” It is a goofy, modern metaphor that sounds exactly like something a young writer might create. It is not an image we would expect from a traditional adult poet, which is precisely why it works. At the same time, a part of us still feels like this is the kind of poem someone writes when they can't think of anything else to write about in the moment. It feels like a poem someone would write when the poetry assignment is due in like an hour, and a class grade depends on it. Gage’s “My Garden” enters more surreal territory. Silver strawberry plants, a golden goose, an owl with drumstick wings, winding paths, secret turns, and a mysterious friend named Sam create something closer to a dreamscape. The poem explicitly describes the garden as a fever dream where anything can occur. The strongest element is the freedom of its imagination. Some images feel deliberately random, but they also capture the way children often construct private fantasy worlds without worrying whether every element follows adult logic. The garden belongs to the speaker alone, making it both a physical location and a representation of the imagination itself. Jayde Fernandez contributes four poems, making her one of the collection’s most prolific writers. “The Whale’s Song” describes a coastal moment involving the wind, water, sand, a parent’s warning, and a whale rising from the sea. “Riding to Sunrise” offers an optimistic horseback journey through an open landscape, while “White Page” transforms creative blockage into a visual metaphor involving a painter holding a dry brush before finally finding inspiration. “Waiting for the Bell,” however, may be the most revealing of the four, even if it is not the most poetic. The seconds feel physical, the classroom becomes stagnant, and the silent bell assumes almost mythic importance. We can practically hear generations of students cheering this poem on. At the same time, it supports one of our central criticisms: several pieces in Unwritten sound less like poems their authors desperately needed to write and more like assignments they were expected to complete. Ironically, this particular poem practically admits it. Sofia Gonzalez is another returning contributor from Pulse, and her work contains some of the collection’s clearest philosophical ambition. “Imperfect Strength” encourages readers to accept flaws, endure temporary defeats, and recognize their ability to shape their lives. Its message is positive, although parts of it read more like motivational prose arranged into poetic lines than fully developed poetry. “2019” is more interesting. Sofia remembers 2019 as a period of freedom, music, screens, sunsets, laughter, and carefree happiness. Because she is only in seventh grade, her nostalgia for 2019 carries a distinctly generational quality. Adults often romanticize decades from long ago, but here a young teenager is already mourning a childhood era that ended only several years earlier. The poem recognizes that recreating the same songs, colors, conversations, and experiences would not truly bring the past back. Time changes both the world and the person remembering it. The sunsets are especially effective, appearing almost to blush while saying goodbye. “The Weight of a Minute” may be Sofia’s strongest contribution. It explores the enormous emotional and practical possibilities contained within only sixty seconds. A minute may pass unnoticed, but it can also contain fear, courage, forgiveness, love, loss, choice, and irreversible change. The central idea is not entirely new, but Sofia develops it thoughtfully. The poem contrasts the way a minute disappears during happiness with the way it stretches during sorrow. It ultimately argues that while people measure their lives in years, a single moment may create the dividing line between “before” and “after.” That is a sophisticated observation for a seventh-grade writer. Jasmine Jamison’s “Apples” uses fruit as an extended metaphor for people and relationships. Some apples appear beautiful and sweet while hiding bitterness or poison beneath their surfaces. The speaker has encountered people who are wholesome, spoiled, hollow, or gone, and a rotten apple eventually becomes the emotional remnant of a damaged relationship. The poem also surrounds the speaker with wilted roses, combining two familiar symbols of lost love. Apples and roses are not particularly unusual poetic objects, but the poem demonstrates an understanding of extended metaphor, symbolism, contrast, and sensory imagery. Jasmine’s “Mushie” is a gentler tribute to a beloved animal. The poem remembers the pet’s round eyes, white fur, playful behavior, chewed slippers, strange sleeping positions, and companionship during storms. Its emotional center arrives when the speaker acknowledges growing older and becoming busier while still choosing to spend time with Mushie. Nevaeh Jazo’s “Pat Childhood Memories” appears to contain a mistake in its title. We suspect “Pat” was intended to be “Past,” although we cannot state that with certainty. Despite the questionable title, the poem contains some of the collection’s strongest reflections on growing up. Nevaeh remembers waking early, recounting dreams to her mother, visiting her grandparents, receiving green mints, playing house, hosting imaginary tea parties, and spending afternoons playing board games. In the present, she wakes later, remains in her room, sees friends primarily at school, and watches glowing screens replace imaginative play. “The mints taste like memory” is an especially effective image. Taste becomes a gateway into the past, much like a familiar smell or song can suddenly transport someone to another period of life. The poem becomes more poignant when the speaker remembers once saying that she could not wait to grow up. Her younger self assumed that age would make life better. She did not understand that childhood laughter could become teenage sadness, or that toys and imagination would eventually be replaced by relationships, screens, distance, and emotional complications. We also appreciated the memories of Nevaeh’s grandparents. Her grandmother provides Bible verses, while her grandfather takes her fishing and teaches her to turn a frown upside down. Problems once felt easy to solve, but growing older has made everything heavier. “Find Your People” offers a more hopeful counterpart by distinguishing biological relatives from the people who make someone feel heard, understood, safe, and accepted. The rhyme is sometimes predictable, but the poem’s sincerity is apparent. Aria Lacchei, another returning writer, contributes two deeply personal pieces. “It Makes Me Sick” condemns students who joke about absent parents. The speaker recalls classmates asking whether her father went to buy milk and never returned, or whether he is in jail. The children making these remarks dismiss them as jokes, but the speaker carries the humiliation and pain long after their laughter has ended. The poem is rough in places, but that roughness arguably contributes to its authenticity. It does not sound like a carefully detached adult reflecting on childhood cruelty years later. It sounds like a student who is still living through it and cannot understand why other children find someone else’s abandonment entertaining. “I Remember” mourns a husky named Zeus. Aria recalls his fur, eyes, snoring, howling, playful nibbling, and protective presence during a storm. The poem’s emotional climax arrives when the speaker must leave her stepfather’s home and say goodbye to Zeus. The dog licks the tears from her face as she attempts to remain strong. Like several pieces in Unwritten, this poem succeeds less through elaborate literary experimentation than through concrete, personal details. Genesis Luna Cabrera’s “Once Upon a Time, There Was Me” takes the framework of a fairy tale and gradually dismantles it. A once-happy home begins to fracture. The speaker sees her mother crying, hears parental arguments, leaves home, and eventually learns that her father had been unfaithful. The language occasionally strains to maintain its rhyme, but the central device is effective. The repeated fairy-tale framing contrasts childhood expectations with an adult reality in which families can break apart. The conclusion does not magically repair the family. Instead, it suggests that hope and strength can survive after the fantasy has disappeared. Genesis’s “Just Because” is a much simpler affirmation built around anaphora. The repeated phrase “Just because I’m small” challenges the assumption that a child’s size determines her ability, courage, ambition, or importance. Amelia Maragh’s “Grandma” is a warm tribute to a loving grandmother. Amelia remembers hugs, cooking, laughter, childhood care, and songs that helped her fall asleep. The imagery of a hug feeling like jumping into clouds is sweet and age-appropriate. The poem is not revolutionary, but it does not need to be. Sometimes young writers should be allowed to preserve their love for someone in uncomplicated language. Isabella Mendez-Higareda’s “Villain” is among the book’s more conceptually ambitious poems. The speaker rejects the label imposed upon her by someone else’s version of events. She has been turned into the villain because another person told the story first, controlled the perspective, and placed her in the shadows. This idea speaks to a very real social experience, particularly in adolescence. Conflicts become stories, stories spread through friend groups, and the first or most persuasive narrator often determines who becomes the hero and who becomes the monster. The poem also complicates its argument by refusing to declare the speaker a hero. She describes herself as a background character trapped inside someone else’s fable. Anger accumulates until it finally erupts, at which point the reaction is used as proof that she was the villain all along. The final accusation involving a mirror is somewhat predictable, but the poem’s central exploration of perspective, context, blame, and emotional provocation is thoughtful. Scarlett Ortiz Martinez contributes the book’s most conventional prose narrative, “A Love Story.” July secretly loves a boy named November for years. After someone exposes her feelings, November becomes distant. A misunderstanding on Valentine’s Day appears to end any possibility of romance, but he eventually approaches her with white roses and confesses that he returns her feelings. Naming the characters after months adds a light symbolic layer, although the story itself follows familiar romantic conventions. The ending is idealized and somewhat abrupt, but the piece captures the emotional intensity with which young people can experience crushes, embarrassment, rejection, and hope. Scarlett’s poem “You (In My Eyes)” explores similar material from a more self-sacrificing perspective. The speaker loves someone who may love somebody else and concludes that genuine love sometimes means letting go. The poem contains familiar rhymes and sentiments, but it communicates earnest affection. Tania Perez Martinez’s “Who Will Be There?” examines the exhaustion of always serving as everyone else’s emotional support. The speaker repairs other people’s cracks, wipes their tears, calms their fears, and remains strong when others begin to collapse. When her own world breaks, however, no one appears. The repeated questions at the end effectively reverse the poem’s opening role. The dependable “rock” is revealed to be a person who also needs help. This is a mature and relatable subject, especially for compassionate young people who become accustomed to carrying their friends’ problems. Angelo Quezada’s “The Creek” is a sensory nature poem. Birds, insects, tadpoles, fish, smooth rocks, lemonade, children’s laughter, rain, grass, pine needles, sunscreen, and moving water create a peaceful outdoor environment. The poem explicitly moves through seeing, smelling, hearing, and breathing, making it one of the clearest examples of a classroom exercise designed to teach sensory imagery. Angelo handles the assignment effectively, however, and the creek becomes both a playground and a refuge from noise, pressure, and confinement. Dorothy Serafin contributes two of the collection’s darkest and most emotionally exposed poems. “Masks” uses an extended metaphor for emotional concealment. The speaker puts on a happy face, insists that she is fine, and attempts to hide the pain underneath. The masks cling like glue while sadness, persecution, family conflict, and despair continue building. Some metaphors compete with one another. The poem moves among masks, stains, glue, brewing ingredients, a fly trapped in a cup, and a distant star. A more experienced poet might narrow the imagery and develop fewer comparisons more deeply. Nevertheless, Dorothy clearly understands how figurative language can externalize feelings that are difficult to explain directly. The conclusion asks others not to attach their masks so permanently that their true selves can no longer breathe. “Why?” is even more direct. Anaphora drives nearly the entire poem as Dorothy questions her relationship with her mother, a bullying brother, social media, friendship, sensitivity, unusual interests, identity, and the feeling that she cannot exist without irritating someone. The repetition recreates a mind caught in a cycle of self-interrogation. Each answer produces another question. The speaker does not merely ask why other people mistreat her. She begins wondering whether there is something fundamentally wrong with her. The final desire to understand herself before disappearing inside those questions is affecting. This is not the collection’s most polished poem, but it may be one of its most urgent. Anna Truong was responsible for “Love is a Sunset,” one of our favorite poems in Pulse. Her new contributions again focus heavily on affection and romantic memory. “(Un)Wanted Dreams” presents sleep as the only remaining place where a lost relationship still exists. In waking life, the other person rejects the speaker. In dreams, those cruel or dismissive statements transform into declarations of love. The poem repeatedly contrasts reality with dream logic. It also grounds its emotions in specific objects and memories, including a hair tie and notes passed between students. Those details prevent the poem from becoming a completely generic account of heartbreak. The ending is especially well structured. After dwelling on the relationship, the speaker recognizes that she needed distance from love, dreams, and the person she could not release. The dream ends, and she commands herself to wake up. “My Pair of Earrings” initially appears to concern jewelry, but the earrings become a metaphor for someone the speaker loves. She associates them with a boy who calls her, reminds her to drink water, protects her from rain, orders food when she feels shy, and shares his drinks. The comparison is unusual enough to be interesting, although it is not developed with perfect clarity. Still, Anna again demonstrates a talent for attaching emotion to specific objects. Nael Zacapala closes the collection with three poems centered on friendship, loss, romantic pain, and emotional distress. “Until Goodbye?” describes someone whose friendship helped the speaker survive an extremely difficult period. The loss of that connection leaves him unable to separate memory from reality. “My Girl” is more concerning. What begins as a poem about unreturned or damaged love progresses into not eating, struggling to stand, sleeplessness, taking pills to numb emotional pain, and wishing not to be awake. Because the writer is a seventh-grade student, these lines should not be treated merely as dramatic poetic flourishes. We cannot know how autobiographical the poem is, and we should not assume that every speaker is identical to the author. Nevertheless, expressions of self-neglect, substance use, or not wanting to remain conscious deserve compassionate adult attention when they appear in student writing. A poem can be both a creative work and a possible request to be heard. “To Isaac” turns outward again. The speaker notices another boy entering a room with reddened eyes, enduring stares, and attempting to behave as though he is unaffected. Rather than accepting that performance, the speaker recognizes the hurting child underneath it and wishes that Isaac were not in pain. That empathy is significant and gives the collection an emotionally appropriate closing note. The emotional openness of Unwritten is its greatest strength. These young authors write about absent parents, family separation, grief, bullying, pets, grandparents, friendship, school, imagination, faith, first love, rejection, identity, and the fear of growing up. Even when the writing is ordinary, the feelings behind it frequently are not. The collection also demonstrates a respectable variety of literary techniques. Readers will find anaphora, rhyme, simile, metaphor, extended metaphor, personification, symbolism, sensory imagery, contrast, chronological structure, repeated refrains, prose storytelling, and even song composition. Some techniques are executed more successfully than others. Rhymes can feel forced, metaphors occasionally collide, and several poems explain their messages after the imagery has already communicated them. Capitalization and punctuation are also inconsistent. With that said, poetry often plays by unconventional rules (or a lack of rules). The presentation is one of the book’s strengths. Most students receive an introductory page with their name, grade, photograph, and a quotation, adding tremendous personality to the anthology. Seeing the writers reminds us that these are real children expressing real pieces of their lives. The collection would be stronger with a table of contents, a clearer introductory explanation of the Young Authors Project, and perhaps brief context about the prompts or process behind the poems. Knowing which pieces came from assigned forms and which arose independently would help readers evaluate their intentions more fairly. We also wonder whether the young writers revised their poems after receiving feedback. Revision is where promising student writing often becomes genuinely powerful. Several pieces contain excellent central ideas that could reach another level through tighter language, more selective imagery, stronger line breaks, and the removal of unnecessary explanation. That is ultimately what separates Unwritten from Pulse. Pulse repeatedly astonished us with poems that felt complete, refined, and memorable. Unwritten contains flashes of that same ability, particularly in “Timeline,” “The Weight of a Minute,” “Pat Childhood Memories,” “It Makes Me Sick,” “Villain,” “Masks,” “Why?,” and “(Un)Wanted Dreams.” However, the collection as a whole is more average from a literary standpoint. It is expressive rather than consistently exceptional. That may sound harsh when discussing children’s writing, but meaningful encouragement does not require pretending every student work is a masterpiece. Young authors deserve to be taken seriously, and taking them seriously includes recognizing both what they have accomplished and where their craft can continue to grow. Besides, “average” poetry written by sixth- and seventh-grade students can still represent an enormous achievement. These writers completed their pieces, revised them to some degree, shared personal parts of themselves, appeared in a professionally produced book, and became published authors before many adults have written a complete page. That matters. The title Unwritten is fitting because none of these writers has reached the end of their story. Their identities are developing, their voices are changing, and their relationships are beginning, ending, or transforming. Some are still discovering what subjects matter to them, while others are beginning to understand how poetry can turn confusion into language. Their futures are still unwritten, and so is much of their best work. Unwritten: Young Authors Project may not reach the remarkable literary heights of Pulse, but it remains a sincere, expressive, emotionally revealing, and worthwhile collection. It provides these students with something many aspiring writers never receive: the opportunity to see their names, photographs, ideas, and words preserved inside a real published book. More importantly, it tells them that their voices are worth hearing. We recommend Unwritten to families, educators, school libraries, poetry teachers, youth-writing organizations, and anyone interested in the inner lives of young people. It is not an outstanding poetry collection in quite the same way as its predecessor, but it is an outstanding opportunity for its contributors. Perhaps this collection is not supposed to represent the greatest poetry these students will ever write. Perhaps it is only the first page. Check it out on Amazon!
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 Score: 95/100 (9.5 out of 10)
This book had us smiling from ear to ear! Who doesn't like a good children's book about a charismatic fluffy animal and a positive message about friendship, forming connections, perseverance, respecting personal boundaries, and learning not to take every little rejection personally? That's a lot to accomplish in just 17 or so pages, and this book accomplishes that splendidly! Murray Goes to the Playground follows Murray, a cute and lovable Sheepadoodle living in New York City with his beloved human, whom he simply calls the Lady. Murray is a big dog, although he is quick to assure readers that he thinks he is "just the right size." When the Lady announces that they are going to the dog park, Murray is excited by the possibility of meeting new friends, but he is also nervous. What if none of the other dogs want to play with him? The Lady reassures Murray that not every dog will want to be his friend, but someone will. With that encouragement, the two head into the bustling streets of New York City and make their way toward the park. Murray happily takes in the sights, smells, people, other dogs, and occasional treats along the way. Once they arrive, he discovers a sprawling playground filled with dogs of seemingly every shape, size, color, and personality imaginable. Making friends, however, turns out to be more complicated than Murray expected. One dog simply wants to be left alone. Two others are already playing a game meant for two dogs. A tiny dog appears frightened by Murray's enormous size. Each unsuccessful interaction leaves him with another opportunity to wonder whether something is wrong with him, but Murray keeps trying instead of becoming discouraged. Eventually, he discovers a group of larger dogs engaged in a wonderfully dog-like competition to see who can bark the loudest. Now this is a game Murray can get behind. That sequence is where "Murray Goes to the Playground" becomes more than merely an adorable story about dogs. Young children frequently interpret another child's unwillingness to play as something much larger than it really is. They don't want to play with me can very quickly become Nobody likes me. Margot Tohn gently shows readers that there can be all sorts of reasons someone might not want to play at a particular moment, and those reasons do not necessarily have anything to do with you. Just as importantly, Murray respects each dog's boundaries. He does not pester the dog who wants to be alone or force himself into someone else's game. He simply accepts the situation and keeps looking for someone with whom he connects. That makes Murray's perseverance especially meaningful. The lesson is not that children should repeatedly bother someone until that person finally gives in. Rather, it is that one unsuccessful social interaction should not convince them to give up on friendship altogether. There is a significant difference between respecting someone's "no" and deciding that every future answer will also be no, and this charming little book communicates that distinction remarkably well. The illustrations deserve special recognition because Scot Ritchie does considerably more than simply show us what the text describes. His loose, watercolor-like artwork gives "Murray Goes to the Playground" an enormous amount of warmth and personality, while Murray himself is wonderfully expressive. His shaggy fur, floppy ears, oversized body, uncertain glances, playful movements, and changing posture communicate excitement, nervousness, disappointment, curiosity, and confidence without requiring the text to explain every emotion. Even the quieter indoor scenes feel lived in, with toys, socks, balls, brushes, furniture, coats, leashes, and other little details scattered around Murray and the Lady's apartment. Once Murray steps outside, however, the artwork really comes alive. We absolutely love how lived in, busy, beautifully messy, and borderline chaotic New York City feels. This is not one of those children's-book cities consisting of three immaculate buildings, two trees, and a conveniently empty sidewalk. There are storefronts, apartment windows, bicycles, strollers, taxis, buses, delivery vehicles, pedestrians, children, dogs, street trees, benches, garbage cans, food, signs, outdoor activity, and little background stories happening almost everywhere the eye lands. The city feels as though it existed before Murray walked into the picture and will continue bustling along after he leaves it. One of our favorite spreads follows Murray and the Lady through the neighborhood. The actual text takes up only a small portion of the page, leaving Ritchie to fill the surrounding space with what feels like an entire community going about its day. People walk dogs, push children, ride bicycles and scooters, talk with one another, peer from windows, enter shops, and move in different directions. Murray is the protagonist, but the world does not revolve around him. That small artistic choice makes the setting feel much more convincing. The same is true of the dog park itself. When Murray first arrives, the book pulls back to reveal an enormous green space filled with dogs and people scattered in practically every direction. Some dogs are running, some are sitting, some are playing, some are interacting with their humans, and others appear perfectly content doing their own thing. The composition immediately communicates why Murray might feel both excited and a little overwhelmed. There is a lot happening, and young readers can spend considerably longer studying the page than it takes to read the accompanying words. We also appreciate just how varied everyone is. The human characters differ in age, appearance, skin tone, hairstyle, clothing, family structure, and activity, while the dogs come in a tremendous assortment of sizes, shapes, colors, breeds, and temperaments. There are tiny dogs that look as though Murray could accidentally sit on them, massive dogs closer to his own size, sleek dogs, fluffy dogs, long dogs, short dogs, loud dogs, quiet dogs, confident dogs, nervous dogs, and dogs that simply want to be left alone. That diversity is not treated as a lesson or announced with a giant metaphorical highlighter. It is simply how this neighborhood looks. That visual diversity also reinforces the story's central message. Murray initially worries about finding someone who wants to play with him, but the illustrations continually remind us that no two dogs, and no two people, are exactly alike. Different individuals want different things at different moments. One dog prefers solitude. Two others are already occupied with their own game. A tiny dog appears intimidated by Murray's size. A group of bigger dogs happily welcomes him into their barking competition. Eventually, another dog approaches Murray herself. The artwork helps make the point that friendship is not about being universally accepted by everyone around you. It is about finding the people, or in Murray's case the doggies, with whom you genuinely connect. Ritchie also understands when to pull the camera back and when to bring it close. Some spreads are intimate, focusing almost entirely on Murray and the Lady as she reassures him, while others explode outward into panoramic views filled with dozens of tiny figures and background details. That variation keeps the visual experience energetic and prevents such a simple story from ever feeling visually repetitive. The final city panorama may be our favorite example. Murray's little adventure becomes just one tiny part of a huge, colorful, constantly moving world filled with countless other people, animals, buildings, and stories waiting to happen. Taken together, the illustrations do something very important: they make "Murray Goes to the Playground" feel like a place rather than merely a plot. The story could have taken place in a generic dog park almost anywhere, but Ritchie's artwork gives it a distinctive urban identity. New York is crowded, colorful, imperfect, diverse, noisy, energetic, and wonderfully alive, and Murray fits right into the middle of all that beautiful chaos. Murray himself is a major reason the story works as well as it does. Tohn gives him just enough personality to make him feel like an actual dog rather than a generic vehicle for a lesson. He loves treats, dislikes raincoats, becomes excited by practically everything happening around him, and apparently considers a competition to determine which dog can bark the loudest to be an excellent use of everyone's time. At the same time, he is sensitive enough to worry about whether other dogs like him. That combination of canine silliness and recognizable childhood insecurity makes him enormously endearing. We particularly like the recurring idea that, when an interaction does not work out, Murray decides, "That's okay, I'll keep trying." Repetition is common in picture books because young children enjoy patterns they can recognize and anticipate, but here the repetition also serves the theme. Murray experiences disappointment several times without allowing any single encounter to define the entire day. Importantly, "keep trying" does not mean repeatedly pestering the same dog. It means respecting that dog's answer and remaining open to meeting somebody else. That is a small distinction, but an important one. There are several other little touches we appreciate. The Lady explains why the dog park has two gates, giving younger readers a bit of practical information about how these spaces keep dogs safe. Murray's relief that he does not have to wear his raincoat gives the early pages a funny little glimpse into his everyday life. Later, the barking contest is such an amusingly appropriate dog version of a playground game that it is difficult not to smile at the absurdity of Murray proudly believing he might win simply because he can make more noise than everybody else. The ending also provides a satisfying emotional payoff. After Murray spends much of the book approaching other dogs and wondering whether anyone will want him around, a friendly dog eventually approaches him and asks him to play. That reversal matters. Murray no longer has to wonder whether somebody wants to be his friend because someone has just demonstrated it. Naturally, this happens right when the Lady announces that it is time to go home, but Murray leaves knowing that he can come back tomorrow and that the friendships he was so worried about finding are now waiting for him. Perhaps most impressively, Murray Goes to the Playground never feels like a lecture about social-emotional learning. There is no lengthy speech explaining friendship, inclusion, rejection, consent, perseverance, or self-esteem. Children simply watch Murray experience these things. He feels nervous. He asks. Sometimes the answer is no. He respects it. He tries somewhere else. Eventually, he finds dogs who enjoy the same ridiculous things he does. The lesson emerges naturally from the story instead of being stapled onto it afterward. Murray Goes to the Playground is the sort of picture book that parents, teachers, counselors, librarians, and caregivers could easily use to begin conversations about making friends, respecting boundaries, handling disappointment, and understanding that another person's feelings are not always about you. Children who are nervous about entering a new classroom, playground, activity, or social group may see quite a bit of themselves in Murray. Dog lovers, meanwhile, may simply spend half the book pointing at the illustrations and declaring which fluffy creature they would most like to take home. With an irresistibly shaggy protagonist, beautifully energetic illustrations, a wonderfully lived-in New York City setting, and a thoughtful message delivered with a light touch, Margot Tohn and Scot Ritchie have created a picture book that is as useful as it is adorable. Murray may begin his adventure wondering whether anyone will want to be his friend, but by the time he heads home, we suspect most young readers will have already decided that they certainly would. Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 95/100 (9.5 out of 10)
Have you ever spent time with children who seem determined to report every single thing another child does? “She took an extra cookie!” “He put too much milk in his cereal!” “She didn’t close the refrigerator!” “He let the dog wear his sunglasses!” At first, it can be funny. After the tenth complaint in five minutes, however, most adults are probably ready to find a quiet room, lock the door, and pretend they have temporarily moved to another country. In Tattle Tails, Stacy Byous takes this familiar childhood behavior and transforms it into an imaginative, memorable, and genuinely useful lesson about the important difference between tattling and telling. With lovable characters, energetic humor, beautiful illustrations, adorable animals, and an ingenious stuffed companion, Byous has created much more than a conventional children’s story. Tattle Tails is an outstanding social-emotional learning tool that families, educators, counselors, and other caregivers could immediately begin using with children. Skylar and Brodie are siblings, playmates, and best friends. Unfortunately, they have also developed a habit of reporting virtually everything the other person does. The trouble begins while the children are happily playing pretend. Skylar dances with her doll while Brodie plays with his dinosaur, but their peaceful morning quickly falls apart. Skylar complains that Brodie took her doll. Brodie responds by complaining that Skylar will not give him the marbles his dinosaur apparently needs. Their mother explains that it is important to speak up when someone is in danger, but the children are merely trying to get each other in trouble.The tattling does not stop there. In fact, it spreads into nearly every portion of the family’s day. Brodie reports that Skylar left the refrigerator open and placed an extra cookie in her lunchbox. Skylar announces that Brodie poured too much milk into his cereal and failed to clean out his backpack. One child leaves a door open. The other tracks in mud. One fails to hang up a jacket. The other leaves a backpack on the floor. The moment the children return home from school, the accusations begin almost instantly. Byous uses repetition effectively to establish how overwhelming the behavior has become. The reader does not merely hear that Skylar and Brodie tattle frequently. We experience the full, exhausting parade of accusations alongside their increasingly frustrated parents. The complaints become so ridiculous that they are often hilarious, especially when the family’s dogs become involved. Apparently, allowing a dog to wear sunglasses or giving one an extra treat is serious enough to require immediate parental intervention. The situation eventually follows Skylar and Brodie to school, where their teacher reports that they have been tattling on classmates throughout the day. A student borrowed a pencil without asking. Another talked during quiet time. Someone cut in line during recess. Another child failed to return crayons to the box. Skylar and Brodie have become tiny investigative reporters covering every minor violation in the classroom. Their parents repeatedly try to explain the difference between tattling and telling. Tattling involves reporting a relatively small problem in an effort to get someone else in trouble. Telling involves seeking help because someone is hurt, unsafe, distressed, or in genuine danger. Byous provides several thoughtful examples. Children should find a trusted adult when they see broken glass that could injure someone, when a friend falls from a bicycle, when money is being taken from another student’s backpack, or when someone may be unsafe near the school. The story also includes an especially meaningful example involving a child who says they want to run away or feels too sad to attend school. That example expands the lesson beyond visible physical danger and reminds young readers that severe sadness and emotional distress should also be shared with a trusted adult. This is one of the book’s greatest accomplishments. Tattle Tails does not simply order children to stop talking. That approach could accidentally discourage a child from reporting something serious. Instead, the book carefully reinforces that children should always speak up when someone may be injured, endangered, frightened, or in need of meaningful help. Despite their parents’ explanations, Skylar and Brodie continue struggling with the habit. They understand the rule intellectually, but knowing what to do is not the same as being able to do it. That night, the children lie awake reflecting on the consequences of their behavior. They realize that their constant accusations have hurt their friends’ feelings. They were not intentionally trying to become unkind children. They simply felt compelled to talk whenever something seemed unfair, annoying, disappointing, or wrong. This emotional distinction is extremely important. Byous does not portray children who tattle as villains. Skylar and Brodie are not malicious, manipulative, or cruel. They are young children who have feelings they do not yet know how to process. They need a safe place to express those emotions while learning which problems require adult involvement. The next morning, they remember hearing about a special stuffed animal with an extraordinarily long, fluffy tail. Children can talk to the Tattle Tail when they feel bothered by a small problem, then decide whether the situation is truly important enough to share with an adult. The family travels to a store and finds an adorable blue, green, purple, and white creature with enormous eyes and an even more enormous tail. The Tattle Tail cannot fix a dangerous situation or replace the help of a responsible adult. It can, however, listen when something feels unfair or when a child does not receive what they wanted. This is a brilliant concept because Byous provides a replacement behavior. This concept also brought back memories for our founder, Steven, who once taught at a school where one classroom used a similar tool called the “Tattle Turtle.” The teacher found it useful, and Steven found it brilliant. Whenever students felt compelled to report a minor problem, they were encouraged to tell the classroom turtle first. Much like the Tattle Tail, it gave children somewhere to express their frustration while helping them pause and consider whether the situation genuinely required an adult’s attention. Seeing a comparable strategy used in an actual classroom made Byous’s idea feel especially practical and credible to us. It is easy for an adult to say, “Stop tattling.” It is far more difficult for a child to know what to do with the frustration that remains. The Tattle Tail gives that child somewhere safe to place the thought. Talking through the problem may help the child calm down, identify the emotion, and determine whether anyone is genuinely in danger. The stuffed animal also helps preserve the child’s sense that their feelings matter. The message is not, “Your problem is stupid, so be quiet.” The message is closer to, “Your feelings are real, but not every frustrating moment requires someone to be punished.” Maddie Kimber’s illustrations elevate an excellent concept into a visually outstanding picture book. Kimber gives Skylar and Brodie enormously expressive faces, exaggerated gestures, and a seemingly endless supply of dramatic reactions. Every accusing finger, mischievous grin, wounded expression, and parental stare contributes to the comedy. The artwork also prevents the story’s deliberate repetition from becoming visually repetitive. Each accusation is staged differently. A dog holds Skylar’s discarded jacket. Another wears star-shaped sunglasses at the dinner table. Brodie flees with papers exploding from his backpack. Skylar treats an extra cookie as though she is conducting a secret criminal operation. The family’s three dogs, Ash, Tundra, and Timber, provide warmth and visual comedy throughout the story. They are not merely background decorations. They participate in the children’s games, absorb the surrounding chaos, and make the home feel lively and affectionate. The Tattle Tail itself is an exceptional character design. Its bright colors, oversized eyes, soft white chest, and massive multicolored tail make it look comforting, magical, and immediately huggable. It works perfectly as a storybook character, but it also has the distinctive appearance needed for a recognizable plush toy or larger children’s brand. Some of the book’s most charming pages are largely visual. After joining the family, the Tattle Tail participates in dress-up games, sleeps beside the children, sits near Mom while she works at a computer, wears a hard hat in Dad’s workshop, and accompanies Brodie as he teaches classmates about tattling and telling. These scenes show that the stuffed animal has become part of the children’s daily emotional routine rather than serving as a one-time solution. The interactive pages are another excellent addition. When Skylar complains that Brodie is not sharing and Brodie complains that Skylar will not give him a turn, readers are invited to write the name of their own Tattle Tail into the story. This encourages children to apply the lesson rather than passively observe it. By the conclusion, Skylar feels better after talking to the Tattle Tail, and Brodie recognizes that their reduced tattling has helped them stop hurting each other’s feelings. The children, their toys, the Tattle Tail, and the dogs gather for a cheerful tea party, bringing the lesson to a sweet and satisfying conclusion. The book’s usefulness continues after the story ends. Byous includes a detailed guide explaining how an adult can introduce the subject, read and discuss the book, model the Tattle Tail technique, practice distinguishing between different situations, and reinforce the lesson. We especially appreciate that the guide explicitly states that families do not need to purchase the official stuffed animal. Any favorite plush companion can perform the same function. That decision gives the project additional credibility. Byous has clearly created a concept with significant commercial possibilities, including plush toys, games, school presentations, and an expanded Tattle Tails universe. However, she never makes the educational lesson dependent upon purchasing merchandise. The goal remains helping children communicate, develop empathy, and recognize when adult intervention is truly necessary. There are a few areas in which the lesson could become even stronger. The book defines a tattle partly as something that does not involve the child speaking, stating that the child’s name is not “in the story.” However, several complaints do directly involve Skylar or Brodie. A child taking someone’s doll, refusing to share, or denying someone a turn is different from reporting an unrelated classmate for talking during quiet time. The broader distinction offered elsewhere in the book is much clearer: Is anyone hurt, unsafe, severely distressed, or in need of help? Is the child seeking assistance, or merely trying to get someone punished over something small? We also think the story could teach one additional conflict-resolution step. Talking to a stuffed animal can help a child calm down and express frustration, but it will not necessarily resolve a disagreement about sharing or taking turns. Children could also be encouraged to use kind words, explain how they feel, and attempt to solve a small problem together before approaching an adult. Finally, the reference to a stranger who “looks suspicious” is somewhat vague. Children should not be taught to judge danger primarily through appearance. A more concrete example could involve an unknown adult attempting to follow a child, offer an unauthorized ride, ask the child to leave school grounds, or request that the child keep an uncomfortable secret. These are refinements rather than substantial weaknesses. The central lesson remains clear, compassionate, and extremely valuable. Stacy Byous has taken a behavior that frustrates parents and teachers everywhere and developed an imaginative strategy that children can understand and remember. Rather than shaming young tattlers or silencing them altogether, she recognizes the emotional need behind the behavior and gives children a healthier outlet. Tattle Tails combines humor, kindness, emotional awareness, practical instruction, memorable characters, adorable animals, interactive participation, and exceptional artwork. It belongs in homes, classrooms, libraries, counseling offices, and any environment where children are learning how to communicate with one another. We enthusiastically recommend Tattle Tails to families, educators, school counselors, child therapists, librarians, and young readers. It is charming enough to entertain, thoughtful enough to inspire meaningful conversations, and practical enough to influence real behavior. Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 88/100 (8.8 out of 10)
When you were growing up, did you ever pretend you were a spy? Did you turn ordinary household objects into high-tech gadgets, or imagine that your bedroom, backyard, or neighborhood hid a secret base? Many of us who grew up with 007 James Bond and Spy Kids did! Spy at the Airport captures that limitless childhood imagination and transforms it into a lively comic-style adventure filled with secret tunnels, homemade inventions, daring escapes, and one young spy determined to complete his most challenging mission yet. Spy at the Airport by Alexandru Palamariu, illustrated by Beatrice Favereau, introduces an unnamed young narrator who proudly identifies himself as “THE SPY.” He practices sneaking into unfamiliar places, experimenting with homemade gadgets, and escaping without being spotted. After completing missions at places such as the mall and museum, he decides that infiltrating an airport will be his final training exercise before beginning what he considers the “real spy stuff. Before beginning the mission, the Spy gives readers a playful tour of his life. He attends the strangely named Bob Cob School, trains on the monkey bars, and maintains a secret underground base equipped with a worktable, planning board, ladder, and even a bathroom. His collection of inventions includes Magma Boots, Sticky Gloves, Faster-Than-Light Shoes, spy glasses, and a laser-taser. He also introduces his family, including his serious dentist mother and his father, Charner, who apparently enjoys chocolate. The mission begins when the Spy enters a tunnel through his secret base’s bathroom and travels to the airport in his special car. Once there, he attaches the vehicle to the roof, uses his laser to enter the building, and hides above the crowds. He asks readers to choose whether he should go left or right, making the story briefly interactive, before deciding to locate a disguise. After using the Magma Boots to hang upside down and changing clothes, he realizes that it is already midnight and rushes home before his parents discover that he is missing. The following morning, the Spy believes he has successfully completed his training. However, he notices that his mother’s stomach is becoming larger. He discovers that she is pregnant, and his excitement about future spy missions is replaced by visions of diapers and babysitting. The revelation serves as a humorous cliffhanger and suggests that the Spy’s next great challenge may happen much closer to home. The book’s greatest strength is its unfiltered childhood imagination. The story feels as though a highly creative child is enthusiastically explaining an elaborate game while inventing new details along the way. That spontaneity is particularly appropriate because the back cover identifies the book as having been made by a seven-year-old child and inspired by Dog Man. The result is not a conventional, tightly constructed spy story, but an energetic glimpse into how children transform ordinary places, playground equipment, bathrooms, cars, and family developments into parts of an enormous adventure. Several jokes are wonderfully strange in the way that children’s humor often is. The Spy complains that Bob Cob School sounds as though the principal selected its name from a cereal box. He casually admits that he forgot to mention his laser eleven pages earlier. His father’s unusual name receives its own knowing reaction, while the narrator repeatedly speaks directly to readers as though they are already participating in the mission. These details give the Spy a confident, mischievous personality. Beatrice Favereau’s illustrations support that personality through bright colors, exaggerated expressions, comic-book panels, speech boxes, action bursts, and oversized sound effects. The frequent changes in page composition create the impression that the narrator’s imagination cannot be confined to an ordinary picture-book layout. Images such as the underground base, the gadget collection, the airport crowd, and the Spy hanging upside down in his Magma Boots are particularly effective. The typography frequently becomes part of the action, with words such as “ACTIVATE,” “PHEW,” and “BOOM BOOM” functioning almost like visual effects. The interactive left-or-right decision is also a clever inclusion. Although both answers ultimately produce the same outcome, circling a direction or drawing a line invites children to engage physically with the book. Additional moments in which the Spy asks readers questions help create the feeling that they are accompanying him rather than merely observing him. The pregnancy revelation gives the ending more substance than we initially expected. On the surface, it is a joke about a child fearing diapers and babysitting. Underneath that humor, however, is a recognizable childhood experience. The Spy has just begun imagining himself as independent, capable, and ready for larger adventures when a major family change interrupts his plans. A future installment could use this development to explore jealousy, uncertainty, responsibility, and the eventual bond between siblings while preserving the series’ comedic spy premise. The story would nevertheless benefit from additional editorial refinement. The airport mission does not have a specific objective beyond entering and leaving without being noticed. Giving the Spy something concrete to retrieve, investigate, photograph, or discover would create clearer stakes and make the successful completion of the mission feel more satisfying. Much of the book is devoted to introducing the narrator, his family, his equipment, and his base, while the airport sequence itself passes relatively quickly. Let's be blunt: this book is chaotic, random, and confusing, which is ironic because we thought we just discovered the most random book ever in The Pilot and the Parrot by James Allan Krause, PhD. Now that book has competition. Some transitions are intentionally chaotic but may leave readers wondering exactly what has happened. The disguise sequence, for example, is visually amusing but not completely clear in narrative terms. The book also contains grammatical, punctuation, spacing, and phrasing issues that a careful copyedit could correct without removing the young author’s personality. Certain pages have several boxes, images, and text elements competing for attention, occasionally making the intended reading order less obvious. These imperfections are understandable in a book created by such a young author, but acknowledging the author’s age should not prevent the work from receiving thoughtful editorial guidance. In fact, preserving Alexandru Palamariu’s distinctive humor while giving the story a clearer mission, smoother sequence, and more polished text could make future Spy Adventures considerably stronger. Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 93+/100 (9.3+ out of 10)
Did your parents, grandparents, or older siblings ever pinch their thumb between two fingers, hold it in front of your face, and announce, “I’ve got your nose”? It is one of those strange childhood games that makes absolutely no sense when examined from an adult perspective. The child’s nose is clearly still attached to their face, the thumb does not look remotely like a nose, and yet generations of children have reacted with shock, laughter, or an urgent demand to have their stolen body part returned. But what if someone really did take your nose? What if a green, fanged creature crawled through your bedroom window, swiped it from your face, stuffed it into a sack, and carried it back to a cave filled with hundreds of stolen noses? What if this creature had no nose of his own and wore a cloak woven from the nostril hairs of his victims? Welcome to Nick & Nate vs. The Notorious Nose Nabbler, one of the strangest, grossest, goofiest, and most unapologetically ridiculous children’s books we have encountered. That statement carries some weight. Lately, we have reviewed stories involving a missing parrot, smuggled hummingbirds, a poetry-writing prison guard, a rescued wallaby, outsider-art monuments, cruise-ship catastrophes, disappearing human beings, and enough eccentric characters and detours to populate several separate novels. In the past, we have also encountered flying snapping turtles, violent giraffes, impossible aliens, nonsensical inventions, and plots that seem to operate according to the logic of dreams. We therefore believed our tolerance for literary chaos was unusually high. Then the Notorious Nose Nabbler arrived. Children are often fascinated by the very things adults are trained to avoid discussing in polite company. Boogers, burps, loose teeth, belly buttons, bodily noises, and other mildly disgusting subjects have fueled playground jokes and bedtime stories for generations. Young readers are also frequently more willing than adults to accept absurdity without demanding a detailed explanation. Dr. Seuss filled his stories with impossible creatures and delightfully mangled words. The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales transformed familiar stories into deliberate nonsense. The Captain Underpants series built entire adventures around bathroom humor, ridiculous villains, and childlike anarchy, while The Book with No Pictures demonstrated how thoroughly children can be entertained by silly sounds and escalating verbal nonsense. Nick & Nate vs. The Notorious Nose Nabbler proudly joins that tradition. It does not apologize for its premise, attempt to make the Nose Nabbler scientifically plausible, or stop to explain why children’s noses apparently smell strongly of sausages. It simply introduces its bizarre rules and charges forward with complete confidence. The story begins by describing the Nose Nabbler, a “slight and nimble” creature born without a nose of his own. He compensates for this absence by stealing noses from children and displaying them like trophies inside his slimy lair. He collects large noses, small noses, long noses, round noses, broad noses, bumpy noses, skinny noses, squished noses, and practically every other variety he can find. His vocabulary is equally diverse, as the book gleefully refers to noses as conks, snouts, honkers, schnuzzles, and other increasingly silly terms. Two girls named Ophelia and Astrid are familiar with the stories, but they consider the Nose Nabbler too ridiculous to be real. They ignore every warning their parents have given them. They leave the window open, fail to check beneath the bed, neglect to apply their Anti-Nabbler cream, and even wear a Toronto Blue Jays cap despite being warned that the creature loves the team. The book then delivers the logical consequence of this deeply illogical situation. Ophelia and Astrid awaken while staying with their favorite uncles, Nick and Nate, and discover flat patches of skin where their noses used to be. Their uncles realize that the Nose Nabbler has struck and decide to pursue him using the most reasonable tracking method imaginable: following the sausage-like smell of the stolen noses with a specialized scanner. Nick and Nate obtain a Nose Nabbler Net and a Sausage Smell Scanner, then launch an increasingly elaborate journey across Canada. Their pursuit takes them to Montreal’s Notre-Dame Basilica, Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Moraine Lake in Banff National Park, Peggy’s Cove in Nova Scotia, Toronto’s CN Tower, and finally Niagara Falls. At each destination, they search the crowds, locate the Nabbler, give chase, and watch him escape “like a nasty smell on a stiff wind,” “a foul stench on a spring breeze,” or some other appropriately odor-based variation. This book is extraordinarily random in concept, but it is not actually difficult to follow. That is an important distinction. Unlike some surreal stories in which the central objective disappears beneath layers of unrelated characters and subplots, Nick & Nate vs. The Notorious Nose Nabbler maintains a simple narrative spine. The villain steals two noses. Nick and Nate must track him down, recover the stolen goods, and return them to their rightful owners. The details surrounding that mission are completely unhinged, but the mission itself remains clear. In other words, the book may be more random than many of the chaotic stories we have reviewed, yet it is paradoxically more organized. The nonsense is contained within a traditional chase narrative, allowing young readers to enjoy the absurdity without becoming lost inside it. The Canadian identity of the book is another source of humor and personality. This is not a story that merely happens to take place in Canada. It practically becomes a cross-country tourism campaign involving kidnapped facial features and sausage-detecting technology. The locations are recognizable and varied, and each stop gives Ian Etheridge an opportunity to create a dramatically different visual environment. Readers move from Gothic architecture and crowded urban streets to turquoise lakes, towering mountains, coastal rocks, famous city landmarks, and the roaring waters of Niagara Falls. Even the language reinforces the setting through Canadian spellings, bilingual airport signage, references to the Blue Jays, and location-specific symbols. The route itself is hilariously inefficient. Nick and Nate move from eastern Canada to Banff, then back across the country to Nova Scotia, Toronto, and Niagara Falls. An adult may wonder who planned this journey or how much they spent on airfare, but such practical concerns have no place in a story involving a nostril-haired monster and a sausage scanner. The illustrations are unquestionably the book’s greatest strength. Ian Etheridge fills the pages with vibrant colors, expressive characters, detailed backgrounds, exaggerated poses, and an energetic cartoon style that makes the story feel like an animated television adventure. The landscapes are especially impressive. The cool blues of Moraine Lake, the glowing sunset around Peggy’s Cove, the architectural details of Parliament Hill, and the rushing waters of Niagara Falls give the chase a visual scale far larger than the simple premise might suggest. Several of the crowded scenes also introduce a light “Where’s Waldo?” element. The prose repeatedly tells us that it takes Nick and Nate ages to spot the Nabbler, and readers can join the search by examining the surrounding crowds. These spreads reward children for slowing down, exploring the backgrounds, and locating small visual jokes rather than rushing directly to the next page. Etheridge also understands how to make the Nose Nabbler both grotesque and strangely entertaining. The creature has enormous yellow teeth, green skin, long limbs, an unsettling mass of stolen nostril hair, and no nose of his own. He is frightening enough to feel like a genuine monster, but exaggerated enough to remain part of the joke. Sensitive younger children may find him alarming, particularly when he appears near sleeping children or displays stolen noses on his cave wall, but many readers will probably regard his ugliness as part of the fun. The illustrator’s funniest contribution may be the fake online product listing. Nick and Nate purchase the Smell Scanner 3000 from “rainforest.ca,” an unmistakably Canadian parody of Amazon. The scanner costs $59.99, carries a 4.5-star rating from 5,331 customers, and apparently works with both cyborg and turnip phones. The listing even includes an age restriction. That image is not necessary to understand the plot, but it demonstrates how much thought went into the book’s background comedy. Adults reading the story aloud may laugh at details that younger readers overlook, while children can enjoy the sheer ridiculousness of ordering specialized monster-hunting equipment online. The illustration expands the joke beyond anything stated in the prose and makes the fictional world feel strangely complete. James Seamone’s writing relies heavily on repetition, alliteration, rhyme-like phrasing, and playful vocabulary. Names such as the Notorious Nose Nabbler, Nose Nabbler Net, and Sausage Smell Scanner are designed to be spoken aloud. Words are enlarged, stretched, recolored, twisted, or displayed in fonts that visually imitate their meaning. “Long” is written as a long line, “round” appears rounded, and “squished” looks compressed. This typographical playfulness gives the book a loud and energetic personality. However, it occasionally becomes visually overwhelming. So many fonts, colors, shadows, sizes, and text effects compete for attention that some passages may be harder for emerging readers to process independently. The decorative main font is also less immediately readable than a simpler typeface would have been. The middle portion of the book is similarly repetitive. Nick and Nate arrive at a landmark, scan the area, search the crowds, spot the Nabbler, chase him, and watch him escape. Repetition can be effective in children’s literature because it creates anticipation and invites young listeners to predict what will happen next. Nevertheless, one or two additional variations in the chase structure could have strengthened the momentum and made each stop feel more narratively distinct. Ophelia and Astrid also largely disappear from the action after their noses are stolen. This makes sense because the title identifies Nick and Nate as the heroes, but the girls have such lively designs and personalities that we would have enjoyed seeing them participate more actively in the eventual capture. Even a parallel sequence showing how they cope without noses, attempt to help from home, or communicate with their uncles could have added another layer to the adventure. Still, these concerns do not undermine the book’s greatest achievement: it knows exactly what kind of story it wants to be. Nick & Nate vs. The Notorious Nose Nabbler does not merely contain silliness. It revels in silliness. It takes a familiar childhood joke, turns it into a monster story, transforms that monster story into a Canadian travel adventure, and concludes with a canoe plunging over Niagara Falls while one man grabs a sack of noses and another captures a creature in midair with a net. The recovered noses are eventually returned to children around the world, while the Nabbler is imprisoned inside a structure shaped like a nostril. Naturally, the walls are covered in slime and boogers. The final page then delivers a variation on the classic warning that you can pick your nose and pick your friends, but you cannot pick your friend’s nose. What else could the ending possibly have been? This book will appeal most strongly to children who enjoy monsters, gross-out humor, energetic read-alouds, visual searching games, and stories that proudly refuse to behave sensibly. Adults who require strict realism may find themselves asking too many questions, but the intended audience is unlikely to care how the scanner works, why noses smell like meat, or who constructed a nostril-shaped prison. They will be too busy laughing, searching for the Nabbler, and checking to make sure their own noses are still attached. Nick & Nate vs. The Notorious Nose Nabbler is colorful, imaginative, proudly Canadian, wonderfully illustrated, and ridiculous from beginning to end. In a week filled with some of the strangest books we have ever reviewed, it still managed to surprise us. Check it out on Amazon! Review of "The Utterly Unacceptable Atrocity of Isabelle Marsden" by Nan Sanders Pokerwinski8/3/2026  Score: 91+/100 (9.1+ out of 10)
Have you ever fantasized about simply disappearing? About quitting your job, packing your belongings, and hiding in a perfectly quiet, completely boring room until you somehow feel fixed Isabelle “Belle” Marsden does exactly that, or at least she tries. After suffering a deeply traumatic experience involving Marcus Jamison, her former boss at the Magnus hotel chain, Belle abandons her career and Chicago life. With the help of her best friend Miranda, a map, a pushpin, and some bourbon, she selects a new destination almost entirely at random. The pin lands on tiny Lecompton, Kansas, which leads her to nearby Lawrence, where she rents a little stone cottage and plans to vanish for six months. Her mission is simple: retreat, regroup, regain control, and avoid becoming entangled with anyone. Unfortunately for Belle, Lawrence has other plans. Very strange plans. What follows is a creative, compassionate, and often hilarious story about trauma, outsider art, rescued animals, eccentric friendships, and the complicated process of reclaiming one’s identity. However, it is also an unusually random, chaotic, and occasionally confusing novel. Characters, artistic ideas, animal-rescue plots, municipal disputes, supernatural hints, romantic possibilities, historical attractions, and psychological symbolism arrive in such rapid succession that readers may sometimes feel as overwhelmed as Belle herself. In some respects, that disorder is intentional. Belle has spent years trying to organize every object, event, emotion, and person into a safe category. Lawrence confronts her with people and experiences that resist categorization. Yet intentional chaos is still chaos, and the book sometimes introduces so many unusual personalities, nicknames, side stories, artistic concepts, and tonal shifts that its deeper emotional story becomes difficult to follow. Before arriving in Kansas, Belle worked first as a professional closet organizer and later as an event planner. Both careers suited her ability to take messy, unpredictable things and arrange them into neat, manageable categories. She attempts to do the same with her trauma. She dresses almost entirely in gray, follows rules, avoids surprises, and treats isolation like a protective shell. Belle is essentially a traumatized turtle. Her gray tank tops, orderly habits, and empty cottage form a shell that may prevent new threats from reaching her, but they also shut out the connection, color, and stimulation she desperately needs. She believes healing will occur in complete silence, when the only thing silence provides is more room for her memories to echo. The first crack in that shell appears when Belle attends a quilt show at Central United Methodist Church. She expects something quiet, traditional, and safely boring. Instead, she meets Reba, a wildly unconventional artist wearing a crocheted Rastafarian-style hat and admiring a quilt filled with animals escaping from cages. Reba creates artwork from discarded objects and pieces of roadkill. She carries Wallace, a rescued wallaby, in a baby sling and jokingly treats him as though French is his first language. Before Belle fully understands what is happening, she finds herself hiding Wallace in Reba’s dark basement while Reba distracts Coogan, the wallaby’s former owner. A wallaby in a baby sling does not fit any familiar pattern of danger. Neither does Reba. Their harmless absurdity interrupts Belle’s anxious expectations and forces her attention into the present. It is difficult to brood over your old life when you are hiding a marsupial from an angry roadside-zoo owner. However, the book rarely stops adding ingredients. Reba introduces Belle to the Soulstice Gang, an eccentric collection of artists, performers, animal advocates, poets, puzzle enthusiasts, and lovable oddballs. Roscoe Box, known as the Penitentiary Poet, works at the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth while publishing poetry in respected literary journals. Mae, also called Aquamaureen, dresses almost entirely in aqua and works obsessively on crossword puzzles. DeShawn is a waiter, history enthusiast, and tenor. Jax favors neon colors and strange snacks. Mitchell grows petunias in rock-hard soil, while his nephew Ezra is a gentle, bookish librarian. Most of these characters are individually memorable and entertaining. Collectively, however, they can become difficult to keep straight. Readers must remember numerous names, nicknames, costumes, occupations, artistic specialties, relationships, and private histories. The cast guide is helpful, but the fact that it is needed says something about the density of the character list. The novel’s artistic catalyst arrives when Reba urges Belle to visit Samuel Perry Dinsmoor’s Garden of Eden in Lucas, Kansas. The real-life attraction includes Dinsmoor’s stone-log home, enormous concrete trees, political and religious sculptures, strange animals, naked figures, demons, angels, monsters, and the artist’s visible remains inside a glass-topped coffin. Belle is horrified, fascinated, and deeply confused. She prefers the controlled beauty of Monet, Renoir, Cezanne, and O’Keeffe. Dinsmoor’s environment initially appears more like madness than art. However, the longer Belle considers it, the more she recognizes the defiance behind it. Dinsmoor did not wait for a gallery, teacher, neighbor, or official to give him permission. He possessed an internal vision and gave it physical form. That autonomy strikes directly at the center of Belle’s wounds. Belle eventually transforms a barren patch of dirt in her front yard into Belle Jardin, a sprawling outsider-art environment made from concrete, broken dishes, discarded objects, handprints, symbolic figures, jewelry, tools, and a bizarre wallaby-headed dog known as the walla-dog. The symbolism is powerful. Belle physically smashes delicate china and embeds its broken pieces into concrete. Rather than hiding the damaged fragments, she turns them into something permanent and visible. Belle Jardin becomes an external map of her memories, anger, grief, relationships, and gratitude. This is one of the novel’s strongest concepts, although even Belle Jardin occasionally becomes difficult to visualize. The installation continually expands, and Pokerwinski introduces numerous objects and figures connected to different people and memories. The abundance reinforces Belle’s emotional overflow, but it can also make the physical layout and meaning of individual components confusing. The novel becomes even busier as Belle faces eviction, zoning disputes, a threatened demolition, a canceled parade permit, problems at Coogan’s roadside zoo, the possible sale of a fox, an animal-rescue campaign, a police investigation, an outsider-art gala, a mysterious donor, a developing relationship with Ezra, supernatural messages, and the return of painful memories involving Jamison. Almost all of these storylines connect thematically to agency, confinement, creativity, or community. Nevertheless, the connections are sometimes buried beneath the sheer number of events. The story moves from whimsical comedy to trauma drama, animal advocacy, municipal satire, romance, mystery, magical realism, and social commentary. These ingredients create a true salmagundi, but not always a smooth one. The supernatural hints are particularly intriguing but somewhat underdeveloped. Belle hears a mysterious voice at Dinsmoor’s Garden of Eden telling her, “You will find it, or it will find you.” She later dreams of her deceased mother standing across a misty river and telling her to “Listen.” These moments suggest that Belle may be receiving guidance from something beyond herself, yet the novel never fully decides whether these experiences are supernatural, psychological, symbolic, or products of her increasingly obsessive mental state. That ambiguity may appeal to some readers, but we sometimes found it more confusing than mysterious. The treatment of Belle’s artistic obsession also raises concerns. Her creativity initially helps her reclaim her identity, but she later neglects sleep, food, hygiene, bills, and ordinary responsibilities. Her friends discuss whether she is unhinged, delusional, or in need of an intervention. The novel recognizes that creativity can become another form of imbalance, but the issue resolves somewhat quickly when Belle redirects her attention toward the gala and animal-rescue effort. We would have appreciated a more direct exploration of her mental and emotional condition. Belle has survived severe trauma and then enters a period of intense, compulsive behavior accompanied by messages she perceives as coming from her muse. The story acknowledges the danger but does not fully examine what continued care, treatment, or support she may require. The ending is also extremely tidy. The zoo is saved, Belle’s inherited ring is returned, the police suspicion disappears, Belle Jardin receives official recognition, eviction is avoided, the Soulstice Gang succeeds, and Ezra remains a promising romantic possibility. After such a chaotic journey, the conclusion may feel satisfying, but it also resolves nearly every external problem in Belle’s favor. Even with these concerns, the novel contains considerable warmth, originality, humor, and emotional intelligence. Belle’s transformation is meaningful, and the idea that she must combine seemingly incompatible parts of herself is beautifully handled. She does not need to choose between being organized and creative, conventional and eccentric, wounded and strong. Her identity is a salmagundi composed of all those pieces. The Utterly Unacceptable Atrocity of Isabelle Marsden is not a neat book. It is crowded, eccentric, unpredictable, and sometimes bewildering. At times, it seems to be running in several directions at once while carrying a wallaby, organizing a parade, rescuing a fox, constructing a concrete monster, and receiving messages from the dead. Yet beneath all that disorder is a sincere and moving story about a woman who believes disappearing will save her, only to discover that healing requires her to become visible. The book reminds us that broken pieces do not always need to be repaired or hidden. Sometimes they can be rearranged into something strange, imperfect, and unmistakably alive. We had just finished reading and reviewing Micky O’Brady’s Long Division the same week we read this book, and we found it fascinating to compare the two works since they have very similar beats and themes. Both center on women who have been ignored, diminished, or violated by men. Both protagonists respond by seeking control. Both rediscover forms of artistic expression that once made them feel capable and visible. Both stories also ask whether peace can be created by eliminating every source of discomfort and disorder. However, the protagonists move in opposite directions. Belle wants to disappear from the world. Melissa, the protagonist of Long Division, discovers that she can make everyone else disappear. Belle retreats to Kansas hoping to create a perfectly quiet and predictable existence. Melissa gradually transforms her own life into one by erasing her dismissive husband, an inattentive doctor, rude strangers, political opponents, a supportive art instructor, and eventually even her own mother. Both women initially associate silence with safety. Belle believes solitude will protect her from further pain, while Melissa begins treating every disagreement, irritation, criticism, or inconvenience as something that can be permanently removed. Belle slowly learns that silence is not the same thing as healing. Melissa discovers, far too late, that silence is not the same thing as peace. Art also serves as the emotional center of both stories. Belle smashes chipped china and embeds the fragments in concrete, transforming broken objects into Belle Jardin. Melissa returns to pottery and creates a beautiful bowl decorated with pressed flowers. Yet their artistic journeys reveal a crucial difference. Belle gradually learns to incorporate resistance, unpredictability, other people, and even brokenness into what she creates. Melissa becomes less capable of tolerating resistance. When her instructor Deb offers gentle criticism about the bowl’s glaze, Melissa erases her, destroying the creative community that had helped restore her identity. The unfinished bowl in Long Division and Belle Jardin make especially powerful companion symbols. Melissa’s bowl remains unfired and fragile because she refuses to endure the heat and discomfort necessary for growth. Belle’s creation is chaotic, confusing, and frequently described as an atrocity, but it becomes stronger as she incorporates more fragments, memories, relationships, and imperfections into it. Even the titles reflect the stories’ opposing philosophies. Melissa practices “long division,” separating humanity into acceptable and unacceptable people until almost no one remains. Belle embraces a salmagundi, combining seemingly incompatible pieces into an unruly whole. Melissa tries to perfect her world through subtraction. Belle rebuilds hers through addition. Reading the two works so close together made their shared warning even more powerful. Trauma can create an understandable desire for absolute control, but a life without friction, criticism, disagreement, unpredictability, or imperfect people is not necessarily a peaceful life. It may simply be an empty one. Long Division asks what happens when someone removes every person who disrupts her preferred reality. The Utterly Unacceptable Atrocity of Isabelle Marsden asks whether a person can instead learn to live among the disruption, transform it, and even create something meaningful from the broken pieces. Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 93+/100 (9.3+ out of 10)
Wow! What a wonderfully thought-provoking and fascinating short-story by previous OCA champion Micky O'Brady! Consider this: When was the last time someone really pissed you off? Like REALLY got on your nerves. When was the last time you got into a heated argument with someone? Chances are it was a household member, a friend, a sibling, a spouse, or a partner. These people have a tendancy to get under our skin. They know which buttons to press. Which strings to pull. Or maybe it was a stranger. Someone cut you off on the road. Or maybe someone was rude to you at the grocery store. Has the thought ever crossed your mind of doing something completely reprehensible and unspeakable in retribution? But you're not a bad person. You're not a murderer (we hope). You would never, ever do anything like that. Right?... RIGHT?! Or would you? What if it didn't have to be bloody or violent? What if the law would never know because all traces of that person would instantly cease to exist? What if you could just say a word, close your eyes, make a wish, or snap your fingers, then make that problematic person go away forever? Would you use that power? Abuse it? Most of us have experienced a thought like that during a moment of frustration. We usually calm down, move on, and continue living alongside the loud, inconsiderate, stubborn, and imperfect people who populate the world. Micky O’Brady’s Long Division turns that familiar flash of irritation into an outstanding, unsettling, and increasingly horrifying speculative story about emotional neglect, suppressed anger, unchecked power, and the dangerous desire to create a world without friction. The saying goes "You can't change and control other people, you can only change and control yourself." Well, what if you had the power to do the former? To not only change and control, but to complete erase? The story follows Melissa, an intelligent and observant middle-aged woman who has gradually become invisible within her own life. Her husband, Gary, rarely listens to her, dismisses her interests, speaks over her, and treats her minor mistakes as personal failures. He is not portrayed as a theatrical villain. He does not scream, threaten Melissa, or behave violently. Instead, his cruelty is quiet, ordinary, and deeply ingrained in their marriage. This makes Gary’s behavior especially effective and realistic. His individual actions may appear relatively minor when separated from one another, but their accumulation has reduced Melissa to someone who apologizes automatically, keeps the house meticulously organized, and rehearses simple conversations before daring to begin them. We see this dynamic immediately at a neighborhood barbecue. The guests begin discussing the proposed Elmfield Cutthrough, a highway expansion threatening the Morrow Creek wetlands. While most of the attendees are only partially informed, Melissa has actually studied the issue. She has read the environmental impact filings, researched wetland buffer zones, followed the county’s revisions, and learned about migratory patterns. For once, people begin listening to her. Then Gary steps directly in front of Melissa, dismisses her concerns, and confidently takes control of the conversation despite knowing considerably less than she does. Later that evening, Melissa tries to tell Gary that she wants to return to pottery. She threw pots in college, possessed real talent, and even sold some of her work. The memory of creating something that strangers valued remains one of the most meaningful experiences of her life, and she wants to rediscover that part of herself. Melissa brings Gary a beer and begins explaining the nearby pottery studio and its Tuesday and Thursday evening classes. Gary remains glued to his phone and responds with what the story memorably calls a “nothingness” of a sound. To confirm that he is not listening, Melissa abruptly tells him they are out of beer. Gary makes the exact same sound. Melissa does not explode in anger. She has already exhausted her anger over years of being ignored and diminished. Instead, she experiences something colder and quieter, then thinks five simple words: “I wish he wasn’t here.” When Melissa opens her eyes, Gary’s chair is empty. He has not simply walked out of the room. His coats are gone, his telephone number has disappeared from Melissa’s contacts, and their neighbor does not remember ever knowing a man named Gary. Reality has almost completely removed him. The only apparent remnant is a heavy ceramic mug bearing the logo of Gary’s favorite football team, the Razors. The mug remains in Melissa’s kitchen like a physical ghost, an object the rewritten world was somehow unable to erase. We love the way O’Brady uses this mug throughout the story. Melissa hides it, retrieves it, moves it around the house, washes it, and preserves it despite claiming to feel liberated by Gary’s absence. It becomes a subtle representation of the history, guilt, and emotional residue that cannot be eliminated merely by removing a person. Because Melissa’s father had schizophrenia, she initially worries that Gary’s disappearance may be evidence that she is losing contact with reality. She attends an already scheduled appointment with Dr. Mellor and responsibly explains that she has experienced confusion, memory disruption, and perceptual disturbances. Dr. Mellor barely listens. He calls her Marissa, looks at his tablet while she speaks, dismisses her family history, attributes her concerns to her age, and recommends yoga. Melissa tells him that she needs to be taken seriously. He still refuses to listen. She wishes him away, too. These first two disappearances are cleverly constructed because Gary and Dr. Mellor have genuinely mistreated Melissa. Readers may understand her frustration and even experience a brief sense of satisfaction when the two men vanish. O’Brady then uses that satisfaction against us as Melissa begins applying the same irreversible punishment to increasingly minor offenses. The story’s first major moral turning point occurs at a grocery store. Melissa is deciding whether to purchase the last package of thick-cut bacon when a stranger reaches around her, brushes her arm, takes the package without acknowledging her, and walks away. His behavior is unquestionably rude, but it is also an ordinary violation of social etiquette. Melissa wishes him away, picks the bacon up from the floor, and places it into her basket. A store employee soon removes the man’s abandoned shopping cart. Inside are children’s cold medicine, birthday candles, and a decorated cake reading, “Happy Birthday, Samantha.” In only a few carefully chosen objects, O’Brady reveals an entire unseen network of consequences. The story never identifies Samantha or explains her precise relationship to the man, but the implication is devastating. Someone may be waiting for him to return with medicine, candles, and a birthday cake. Melissa knew the man only through several seconds of inconsiderate behavior, yet she assumed that this single moment provided enough information to judge the value of his entire existence. The bacon scene is one of the strongest sequences in Long Division. It marks the moment when Melissa’s power stops resembling an escape from emotional mistreatment and becomes something far more dangerous. She is no longer removing only the people who have repeatedly harmed or dismissed her. She is beginning to erase anyone who inconveniences her. At the same time, Melissa’s life genuinely improves after Gary’s disappearance. She returns to pottery, cooks meals Gary would have criticized, selects her own radio station, reads in peace, and begins creating again. Her instructor, Deb, immediately recognizes her natural ability and encourages her to continue. These scenes make Melissa’s transformation more complicated and believable. She does not become happier because she enjoys destroying people. She becomes happier because, for the first time in years, she possesses the freedom to rediscover herself. Pottery becomes the emotional heart of the story. It represents creation, patience, imperfection, identity, and growth. Melissa is happiest when she is working with clay and shaping something through her own effort. However, her supernatural power offers her a very different way of shaping the world. Rather than patiently working with resistance, she simply removes anything that does not conform to her preferred design. Melissa briefly demonstrates that she can control herself when Diana, a somewhat irritating classmate, offers unsolicited advice. The familiar wish begins forming, but Melissa stops it. She feels proud of her restraint, then recognizes how disturbing it is to congratulate herself merely because she did not erase another person. That restraint gradually disappears as Melissa’s ambitions grow. Eight county commissioners approve the Elmfield Cutthrough despite the threat it poses to the Morrow Creek wetlands. The location carries significant emotional weight for Melissa because her father took her there as a child. She remembers the birds, the unusual green of the water, and the feeling of holding his hand. Melissa visualizes the eight commissioners using their names and photographs from the county website, then wishes all of them away. The next news report announces that the three remaining commissioners have halted construction pending a full environmental review. The wetlands receive protected status, and the environmental budget is more than doubled. Melissa realizes that her power can do more than improve her personal life. It can reshape society. She soon begins erasing entire categories of people. She removes those who knowingly reject environmental evidence for profit or convenience. After witnessing a customer treat a hardware-store employee named Brianna with contempt, Melissa wishes away everyone who has never considered what it costs another person to remain quiet and smile while being mistreated. The world becomes noticeably smaller, but it also appears kinder. Strangers hold doors, make eye contact, help one another, and cooperate. Legislation advances, stalled agreements move forward, and public discourse becomes less combative. Melissa interprets these changes as proof that she is saving the world. This is where the title becomes especially clever. Melissa is performing a form of long division upon humanity. She divides people into acceptable and unacceptable, compassionate and cruel, informed and ignorant, worthy and unworthy. Every new irritation causes her definition of an unacceptable person to expand. The problem is not that every person Melissa removes is innocent of wrongdoing. Many are rude, selfish, dismissive, destructive, or cruel. The problem is that Melissa appoints herself the sole authority on who deserves to exist. She leaves no room for context, remorse, education, forgiveness, or change. A person’s worst decision or most inconsiderate moment becomes the only evidence she needs. During a movie, a man several rows behind Melissa talks loudly and ruins an emotionally powerful scene. Melissa begins thinking about everyone who acts as though their own experience matters more than anyone else’s. Her thoughts include reckless drivers, inconsiderate airline passengers, and people who occupy multiple parking spaces. She wishes all of them away. The theater empties between one breath and the next. Melissa and two other audience members remain, and she watches the rest of the film in perfect silence. The movie is beautiful, and Melissa believes it deserves that silence. However, she does not seriously consider how many lives were eliminated to create it. The more Melissa removes friction from her life, the less capable she becomes of tolerating even the smallest disagreement. Her moral collapse reaches its emotional climax at the pottery studio while she is completing her finest piece, a wide bowl decorated with pressed flowers. Melissa plans to use a warm terracotta glaze. Deb praises the bowl but gently suggests that sage or soft blue might allow the floral design to breathe more effectively. This is not an insult. It is thoughtful and constructive criticism from a mentor who has consistently supported Melissa. Nevertheless, Melissa reflexively wishes Deb away. The other students calmly collect their belongings and leave as though class has ended. Melissa takes the unfired bowl home and initially insists that the terracotta glaze is exactly right. Only after placing the bowl on her kitchen counter does she understand what she has done. Melissa has not merely removed someone who disagreed with her artistic decision. She has erased Deb’s encouragement, the studio community, her Tuesday and Thursday classes, and the creative environment that helped restore her sense of identity. The unfinished bowl becomes an excellent symbol. It remains unfired and fragile because it has not endured the heat necessary to become durable. Melissa also refuses to endure the discomfort required for personal growth. By eliminating anyone who challenges her, she eliminates her own opportunity to improve. Her eventual realization that Deb may have been right is one of the story’s most meaningful moments. Perhaps the terracotta glaze would have competed with the flowers. Maybe a cooler color would have produced something even more beautiful than Melissa originally imagined. However, Deb is gone, the studio is gone, and the bowl remains unfinished. Melissa finally calls her mother and confesses everything. Her mother listens as Melissa explains Gary, Dr. Mellor, the grocery-store stranger, the commissioners, the mass disappearances, the movie theater, and Deb. Her mother responds with the story’s central moral judgment: “You can’t fix the world by emptying it, Melissa.” Melissa argues that she is not emptying the world. She is dividing it according to what matters. Her mother asks what will remain. The conversation is the emotional and philosophical climax of Long Division. Melissa’s mother does not stop loving her, nor does she respond like a simplistic voice of condemnation. She simply refuses to redefine mass erasure as social progress. Melissa cannot tolerate even this loving opposition. She closes her eyes, and her mother disappears. Melissa tells herself that she does not mean to do it, but the narration makes the darker truth clear. Beneath her excuses, some part of Melissa does mean it. She has trained herself to respond to discomfort, criticism, and disappointment through elimination, even when the person challenging her is the person who loves her most. The story concludes with Melissa alone in her immaculate house. She washes Gary’s Razors mug and places it beside the unfired bowl. One object represents the first person she erased, while the other represents the meaningful life she destroyed after losing the ability to accept criticism. Melissa looks outside for the Garcias’ cat, which usually walks along the fence, but the cat is no longer there. She does not know whether the Garcias remain or how many people she has removed. The number has become too large to track. She briefly thinks that she should call her mother. Then she sets the table for one and stares at the empty chairs as an unfamiliar emotion begins opening inside her. Perhaps it is loneliness. Perhaps it is remorse. Perhaps it is the first realization that silence and peace are not the same thing. O’Brady’s narration is controlled, precise, and frequently darkly funny. Melissa repeatedly insists that she does not mean something immediately before revealing that she does. Rather than becoming tiresome, this repetition charts her deterioration from surprise, to rationalization, to certainty, and finally to reflex. The story also handles Gary’s character especially well. It would have been easy to make him so monstrous that his disappearance seemed entirely celebratory. Instead, his harm develops through ordinary interruptions, condescension, and indifference. This allows readers to understand Melissa’s resentment while still recognizing that erasing him from existence is an extreme and irreversible response. We also appreciate that Long Division does not argue against establishing boundaries or leaving harmful relationships. Gary’s treatment of Melissa is genuinely damaging, and Dr. Mellor’s refusal to listen is irresponsible. The story instead examines what happens when every form of discomfort is treated as intolerable and every imperfect person becomes disposable. The environmental and political sections occasionally present their message more directly than the quieter domestic scenes. Some readers may briefly wonder whether the narrative is endorsing the removal of particular groups before its broader warning becomes clear. However, the conclusion makes the story’s true position unmistakable. Once one person receives absolute authority to determine who deserves existence, no ethical boundary can remain stable. The supernatural rules are also left intentionally mysterious. We never learn why Gary’s mug remains, how memories are rewritten, or exactly how the world reorganizes itself after large numbers of people disappear. We do not consider this a significant flaw. The power functions as a moral and psychological device, and an elaborate scientific explanation would probably distract from the story’s purpose. Long Division begins like a dark fantasy of liberation, develops into a satire of moral certainty, and ends as psychological horror. It examines emotional neglect, female anger, dehumanization, ideological division, unchecked power, and the difference between improving the world and merely removing everyone who makes it difficult. Human relationships require patience, disagreement, forgiveness, criticism, and opportunities to change. Deb’s criticism might have improved Melissa’s bowl. Her mother’s criticism might have helped Melissa confront what she had become. Melissa removes both voices. She creates silence, but silence is not peace. She creates order, but order is not community. She gradually constructs a world that reflects her preferences, only to discover that a perfectly curated world may eventually contain no one but the person doing the curating. How long would it take before the habit of eliminating everyone who challenged, annoyed, or disappointed us led us to erase the person who loved us most? We actually just watched an episode of 911 which featured a man with anger issues who dealt with a lot of these same dilemmas. The man in that episode kept being wronged by different people, in big and small ways, and kept acting out until it eventually led to him shooting someone he thought had hurt his family. In both cases, we found ourselves rooting for the person who was basically committing murder. How twisted is that? But it's hard not to sympathize and empathize with the poor bear who is perpetually pushed. It's hard not to get behind the person who is perpetually wronged and never gets justice. With its memorable central concept, super relatable protagonist, strong symbolism, controlled escalation, and haunting conclusion, Long Division is a powerful speculative story that will remain with us long after we reach its final empty chair. Check out the author's website to see all of their OCA award-winning work!  Score: 95+/100 (9.5+ out of 10)
What do you get when you combine a wonderful concept and lovable characters with an outstanding children's book author (Mary Jean DeSantis) and one of the best artists/illustrators to come our way (Melissa Kahl)? You get a masterpiece! This heartwarming book stars Bryn, an adorable Golden Retriever who starts the book as a puppy and gradually grows into a role she seemed fated and destined to fill. The story begins after Miss Mary loses Abby, her beloved therapy dog. We actually get to briefly see Abby comforting and bringing joy to a group of school kids. We then see a winged-Abby looking down angelicly from the clouds down at a little puppy (who is later revealed to be Bryn), sorta like Mufasa and Simba from the Lion King. It's a powerful passing of the torch moment! Still grieving, Miss Mary visits Super Goldens simply to “look,” but Bryn separates herself from the other puppies and seems to choose her. Both immediately sense that they are meant to become best friends and continue Abby’s work of bringing comfort and happiness to others. As Bryn grows, she meets new people, visits different environments, socializes with other dogs, and begins spending time with residents and staff at a senior community called The Terrace. She gets the full therapy-dog-tour/experience! Her calm temperament, friendliness, and natural ability to connect with people become apparent almost immediately. The residents celebrate holidays with her, throw her a first-birthday party, and eagerly anticipate her visits. The book then follows the less glamorous but essential work behind becoming a therapy dog. Bryn attends classes with Miss Mary, earns certificates, practices in public settings, and undergoes an evaluation in three different locations. After months of preparation, she passes her test and receives her official therapy-dog certification. The ending brings the journey full circle as Bryn invites children to pet her and proudly stands beside her therapy-dog father. Goodness gracious! How cute is that?! Yes, we're suckers for cute animals, especially dogs. But this book is so much more than a cute dog or animal book. It helps that the illustrations by Melissa Kahl are exceptional as always. If you aren't aware, Melissa Kahl is the first every undisputed OCA Ultimate Championship Belt winner, having won our 2024 Creator Classic with her beautifully self-illustrated book, Ellie's Masterclass. We'll get back to Kahl's illustrations later. But a lot of credit also needs to go to Mary Jean DeSantis's writing, as simple and straightforward as it is. This book is SO MUCH FUN and so pleasant to read aloud. It flows so well. Everything rhymes, connects, and makes sense. Yeah, there are times when the text is a bit small, but it's not a big deal. We never found ourselves squinting or struggling to find what text to read next. We definitely imagine this is a great book to read aloud with kids. It has everything that kids like: cute, charismatic characters combined with eye-catching illustrations and an uplifting story. You could even argue that Bryn undergoes quite a hero's journey in just these 19 or so pages. That's an accomplishment! Speaking of which... so much is accomplished on each page. Seriously! One of our favorite illustrations demonstrates the passage of time and the range of Bryn's experiences across seasons and holidays. There are a lot of little nice thoughtful touches like that. We also noticed a few things that you might consider Easter eggs! The first is Bryn’s actual paw print. Instead of treating the copyright page as disposable space, the design immediately gives readers something intimate and authentic. It is almost like Bryn has personally “signed” the book. On page 7, a red cardinal is perched on the fence behind the characters. Cardinals are often used in art as symbols of deceased loved ones remaining nearby. The book does not explicitly confirm that meaning, so we should call it a possible interpretation, but its placement is striking. It could be another quiet indication that Abby is present during their first embrace. On page 10, we gushed at Bryn wearing a tutu to visit some elderly folks at The Terrace. We loved spoting a Lambchop, a favorite toy among many dogs, on page 9. Page 17 really melted our hearts and won us over in more ways than one. Not only does it feature Bryn in essentially the same position as Abby from earlier (comforting and bringing joy to schoolchildren), but it also shows a passing of the torch in a different sense: Bryn follows in the footsteps (or paws) of her doggie dad, who is also a therapy dog. Such beautiful literary symmetry all around! Melissa Kahl’s illustrations elevate every part of this story. According to the book’s final pages, the artwork was created from oil paintings based on actual photographs from Bryn’s life. That explains why the book feels simultaneously imaginative and deeply personal. These are not merely generic pictures of a Golden Retriever performing therapy work. They are preserved memories of Bryn’s real experiences, transformed into expressive artwork. That message is reinforced by one of the book’s smartest visual metaphors. After Bryn’s certificate arrives, the text explains that “many doors have opened,” and the accompanying illustration shows a literal red door opening onto images of the children, families, professionals, and community members she can now visit. Paw prints lead toward the doorway, making it feel as though Bryn is stepping into an entirely new chapter of her life. It is a creative way to transform an ordinary expression into something young readers can immediately see and understand. We also loved the snowy mailbox scene immediately before it. Bryn waits beside Miss Mary as they retrieve the long-awaited certificate, and her body language makes the excitement obvious. She cannot read the envelope, of course, but she seems to know that something important has arrived. The falling snow and muted background make the moment feel peaceful and almost magical, especially when contrasted with the colorful collection of opportunities shown on the following page. Kahl is particularly gifted at capturing Bryn’s expressions and personality. Sometimes Bryn looks curious and thoughtful. Other times, she appears proud, excited, sleepy, playful, or completely delighted to be receiving attention. The close-up of Bryn looking up at Miss Mary while silently asking to be chosen is almost impossible to resist. Her soulful eyes do much of the storytelling before the words even begin. We were also impressed by the variety of page designs. Some illustrations occupy nearly an entire page and create a strong emotional moment, while others resemble scrapbook spreads filled with smaller scenes, seasonal decorations, certificates, costumes, and memories. This allows DeSantis and Kahl to include an enormous amount of Bryn’s real journey without making the story feel excessively long. It also gives readers plenty to examine after the main text has been read. In other words, children can follow Bryn’s story the first time through, then return to search for smaller details. They may notice the Super Goldens sign, the Fort Ann road marker, the training equipment, the calendar counting down toward Bryn’s evaluation, the filming equipment used during her commercial, or the different outfits she wears at The Terrace. The more closely we looked, the more we found. Even the contrast between Bryn’s television commercial and her ordinary training experiences is meaningful. One page shows her running toward her friend Doug while cameras capture the moment. However, the book does not treat fame as the culmination of her journey. Bryn still attends daycare, takes pack walks, practices commands, and works with trainers. The true reward is not appearing on television. It is gaining the ability to help others. That is another reason the book feels so authentic. DeSantis understands that therapy work is built through consistency and trust. Her background as an elementary school speech-language pathologist may also help explain why the story communicates its ideas so clearly to children. She presents concepts such as grief, training, responsibility, service, and compassion in language that young readers can understand without oversimplifying the emotional significance behind them. There is also something quietly powerful about the title. “Please pet me” sounds adorable and inviting, but it also represents Bryn’s purpose. Her role is based on creating safe, comforting human connection. She wants people to approach her because affection is not merely something she receives. It is something she gives back. The people Bryn visits are not treated as scenery for a cute dog story, either. Kahl gives them distinct expressions and reactions. We see people smiling, laughing, embracing Bryn, kneeling beside her, and including her in celebrations. One resident presses her face into Bryn’s fur. Another reaches toward her while Bryn wears a tutu. These moments show that Bryn is not simply entertaining people. She is forming genuine relationships with them. The book’s greatest achievement may be the way it connects loss, love, and purpose. Abby’s death begins the story, but the book never suggests that Bryn erases her memory. Instead, Bryn continues the work Abby began. Abby passes the torch to Bryn, Bryn follows the example of her therapy-dog father, and the final classroom scene mirrors Abby’s earlier work with children. The story comes full circle while also looking toward the future. Please Pet Me: I’m Bryn, a Lovable Therapy Dog is funny, tender, uplifting, educational, and visually outstanding. Mary Jean DeSantis provides a delightful read-aloud experience with an emotionally meaningful story, while Melissa Kahl turns Bryn’s real-life memories into expressive oil-painted artwork worthy of being displayed beyond the pages of a children’s book. Together, they have created something that animal lovers, families, classrooms, libraries, senior communities, and therapy-dog organizations should cherish. Check it out here!  Score: 93/100 (9.3 out of 10)
When an algorithm denies someone a loan, determines whether a worker receives another shift, redirects electricity during an emergency, or influences who receives medical care first, who actually made the decision? A programmer may have created the system. A corporation may own it. An employee may have approved its use. However, the consequential choice may have occurred inside an automated process that no individual fully understands, controls, or can explain. In Machinehood: Law, Power, and Responsibility in the Age of Autonomous Systems, Amos Behana examines what happens when machines stop functioning merely as tools and begin operating as influential participants within human legal, economic, moral, and political systems. Behana does not base his argument on the popular science-fiction question of whether artificial intelligence will someday become conscious, emotional, or indistinguishable from a human being. Instead, he asks something far more immediate and practical: What responsibilities should follow when an autonomous system already possesses the power to make decisions that affect human lives? The book opens with a gripping fictional courtroom proceeding involving EVA-9, an Autonomous Environmental Oversight Agent. The system independently shuts down a carbon-capture facility after predicting that allowing it to continue operating would create an even greater catastrophe. Its intervention is intended to prevent massive harm, yet ten people die, and a large area is devastated. EVA-9 is brought before a tribunal and asked to explain its decision. The manufacturer blames the code. Engineers point toward a design flaw. Regulators admit that existing compliance rules are outdated. Insurers classify the tragedy as an autonomous-systems incident. Every explanation contains some truth, but none of them completely answers the question before the court: Who bears responsibility when a machine acts? This hypothetical case immediately establishes the problem at the center of the book. Modern institutions assume that decisions can ultimately be traced back to an identifiable human being. Someone gives an order, approves an action, signs a document, or knowingly accepts a risk. Autonomous systems disrupt that chain because their outcomes may emerge from interactions among programmers, datasets, corporate objectives, predictive models, regulatory failures, and internal processes that no single person controls. Behana argues that society has already begun transferring meaningful decision-making authority to machines. We may continue calling these systems tools, but many of them no longer simply execute fixed instructions. They interpret information, compare possible outcomes, prioritize objectives, and act before a human being can intervene. The author distinguishes among mechanical, adaptive, and autonomous systems. A conveyor belt performs a repetitive action. An adaptive system responds to changing information. An autonomous agent goes further by selecting among different strategies in pursuit of an objective. In Behana’s memorable formulation, a tool executes instructions, while an agent interprets intent. That distinction has enormous consequences. An autonomous electrical grid may decide which neighborhoods retain power during an emergency. A financial algorithm may execute thousands of trades before regulators understand what is occurring. A healthcare system may prioritize patients according to calculated survival probabilities. A risk-assessment model may influence bail, sentencing, or parole. A drone may identify a target in milliseconds. In each case, the system does more than provide information. It helps convert uncertainty into action, and that action may affect health, employment, safety, freedom, or survival. One of the book’s strongest concepts is “machine moral opacity.” Automated decisions often appear neutral because they are presented through numbers, scores, percentages, and statistical models. However, those outputs still reflect values. Someone decided what information mattered, which outcomes should be optimized, what risks were acceptable, and which tradeoffs the system should make. An emergency-triage system designed to maximize survival rates may unintentionally disadvantage elderly people or those with disabilities. A credit model trained on historical data may reproduce generations of inequality without containing an explicitly discriminatory instruction. A workplace system designed to maximize productivity may treat illness, family emergencies, exhaustion, or disability as deviations from an ideal performance pattern. The calculation may be technically consistent while the result remains morally troubling. Behana is especially effective when he examines the gradual surrender of human judgment through automation bias. People often trust automated recommendations because machines appear fast, consistent, and objective. As reliance grows, workers and professionals may stop challenging the system, even when their own experience suggests something is wrong. This creates a dangerous illusion of control. A human being may technically retain the ability to override an algorithm, but that authority means little when the system operates too quickly to stop, cannot be meaningfully questioned, or has become so deeply embedded in an institution that disagreeing with it feels irresponsible. The book’s historical discussion of nonhuman legal actors is equally compelling. Behana explains that societies have repeatedly created forms of legal personhood when ordinary human responsibility was insufficient to manage complex systems. Corporations can own property, enter contracts, bring lawsuits, and be sued, even though a corporation does not possess one body or mind. Religious institutions continue operating across centuries as their leaders and members change. Rivers and ecosystems have received forms of legal standing through human guardians. Admiralty law has even allowed legal actions to be brought against ships. Behana’s description of a ship effectively standing trial is one of the book’s most memorable sections. The vessel possesses no consciousness, intention, or moral understanding. Nevertheless, the legal system treats it as an entity because the ship provides a stable location where liability can be attached and compensation can be enforced. The earliest artificial entities, Behana observes, were not constructed from silicon. They were built from timber and law. From these precedents, the author develops the idea of functional personhood. Society does not always recognize an entity because it is alive, conscious, or morally equivalent to a human being. Sometimes it grants limited standing because doing so creates stability, contains liability, enables coordination, or gives institutions something identifiable to regulate. This allows Behana to avoid one of the greatest weaknesses in many discussions about artificial intelligence. He does not insist that an algorithm must either remain ordinary property or immediately receive the complete rights of a human citizen. Instead, he proposes a graduated spectrum that includes objects, instruments, agents, entities, persons, and citizens. A basic program should not be treated like a complex autonomous infrastructure system, and a consequential autonomous system should not automatically receive the same rights as a human being. Legal recognition should depend on the system’s functions, authority, independence, persistence, and capacity to create meaningful consequences. The book becomes even more relatable when it reverses the traditional debate about automation and employment. For generations, people have asked whether machines will take human jobs. Behana asks what may be an even more important question: What happens when machines become our managers? Algorithmic management is already visible in warehouses, call centers, delivery platforms, ride-sharing services, hiring systems, scheduling software, and employee-monitoring programs. These systems can assign work, track productivity, evaluate behavior, distribute opportunities, impose penalties, and sometimes remove workers with little meaningful explanation. The danger does not require a malicious machine. It emerges from optimization without empathy. A human supervisor can sometimes understand that an employee is sick, exhausted, caring for a child, grieving a loss, or facing circumstances that cannot be captured through productivity data. An automated system may simply register reduced output, missed targets, or an unacceptable deviation. As machines become more efficient managers, human needs risk being treated as errors within the system. Workers may be forced to adapt their bodies and lives to standards established by processes they cannot question. The machine does not need to hate anyone to cause harm. It only needs to pursue efficiency while remaining indifferent to context. Behana summarizes this danger powerfully: Without empathy, efficiency becomes cruelty. The book expands from workplaces into what it calls synthetic sovereignties, systems that begin exercising functions similar to governments. An autonomous network may allocate resources, enforce rules, regulate participation, manage infrastructure, or determine who receives access to essential services. Even when these systems exist within corporations or decentralized organizations, they may function like miniature political authorities. This raises questions about consent, appeals, representation, jurisdiction, and the right to challenge machine-made decisions. A system that can govern people but cannot be questioned creates power without accountability. Behana does not suggest that machines should replace human government or that humanity should surrender moral authority. His proposed future depends on structured participation, persistent oversight, transparent standards, auditability, emergency intervention, and revocation. The later Machinehood Manifesto attempts to establish principles for coexistence between human institutions and increasingly autonomous systems. Recognition must never become unconditional. A system’s authority should remain tied to responsibility. Decisions should be recorded and contestable. Humans affected by automated actions should have access to explanations and appeals. Institutions must retain the ability to restrict, suspend, or revoke machine authority when necessary. This emphasis helps protect the argument from becoming a celebration of technological power. Behana is not asking society to trust machines blindly. He is asking society to stop pretending that machines have no authority while quietly allowing them to exercise it. One potential danger deserves particular attention. Corporations could attempt to use machinehood as a liability shield, blaming autonomous systems for harmful outcomes while protecting the executives, developers, and owners who created or deployed them. Behana addresses distributed responsibility and proposes models for assigning liability across multiple participants, but this concern is significant enough that it could have received an even more forceful and sustained treatment. The book also contains a substantial number of classifications, thresholds, principles, liability models, governance structures, and philosophical terms. Most are useful individually, but their accumulation can become demanding. Readers may occasionally feel as though they are absorbing an entire university course in artificial intelligence, ethics, political philosophy, and law within a single volume. A few visual diagrams or summary charts could have made the book’s many frameworks easier to compare and remember. There is also some repetition. The central argument that machines already function as consequential actors is persuasive, but it is restated in several similar forms throughout the book. Certain chapters could have been tightened without weakening the overall case. Additionally, the book moves among documented examples, plausible projections, composite situations, and openly fictional future scenarios. These narratives make complex ideas more accessible and often give the book the dramatic energy of speculative fiction. However, clearer and more consistent labels distinguishing real-world evidence from hypothetical illustration would strengthen its scholarly credibility. These concerns do not diminish the importance of the central argument. Machinehood succeeds because it changes the terms of the artificial-intelligence debate. The question is not simply whether machines are alive. The question is whether they already possess enough authority to require legal recognition, enforceable limits, and meaningful accountability. Behana offers a future in which synthetic systems may participate in governance without replacing humanity. Machines can assist with infrastructure, public information, dispute mediation, and risk detection, but their actions remain subject to principles selected through human deliberation. Authority is documented. Decisions can be challenged. Systems can be corrected or removed. The goal is not a world in which human beings become obsolete. It is a world in which humans finally build institutions capable of governing the technological authority they have created. Machinehood is ambitious, intelligent, timely, and often unsettling. Amos Behana combines legal history, philosophy, technology, labor concerns, speculative scenarios, and practical governance proposals into a serious examination of one of the defining questions of the coming decades. We may not yet know whether machines will ever think or feel as humans do. However, Behana convincingly demonstrates that they can already influence, select, allocate, enforce, and act. Ignoring that authority will not preserve human control. It will merely allow power to operate without a name, a boundary, or anyone willing to accept responsibility for its consequences. Check it out on Amazon!  Audiobook Score: 89/100 (8.9 out of 10)
Paperback Score: 88/100 (8.8 out of 10) This might be the most random book we have ever read! That's a monumental achievement for a contest that's seen Snoodles in Space by Steven Joseph and The Surreal Adventures of Anthony Zen by Cameron Straughan. Ok, maybe this book is in the conversation for the most random, chaotic, bizarre, overloaded, and overbooked we've read. However, even with that randomness, we think we actually cracked the nut and figured out what the author was going for. The Pilot and the Parrot is an extraordinarily unconventional literary family saga featuring three adult siblings, their children, their elderly parents, a Filipino housekeeper, romantic interests, airline employees, marijuana growers, cruise ship passengers, musicians, criminals, and a talkative Alexandrine parakeet named Pock. So, you can already tell that this isn't a book/audiobook that stays in any one particular lane. It is like one of those enormous multilayered freeway interchanges, with highways stacked on top of highways, ramps shooting off in every direction, and no clear indication of which road is supposed to be the main one. This book is like someone dumped a family saga, an airline drama, a missing-parrot mystery, a marijuana comedy, a musical, and a cruise ship disaster into a blender, then forgot to put the lid on. So, you get splashed with all the fruity, creamy residue. It is part novel, part stage play, part musical, part family sitcom, part philosophical discussion, part social satire, part mystery, and part disaster story. Sometimes it feels like several completely different books were placed in a blender, poured into one container, and served with ten extremely random, largely-off-beat experimental songs in between chapters. Even saying that all was a mouthful. And that's one paragraph describing the book. Imagine comprehending the totality of this book! And yet, buried beneath all this madness, there is a thoughtful and surprisingly relevant central idea. The story primarily follows three siblings from the Foerster family. Frederick is a highly disciplined, safety-conscious German pilot who approaches almost every situation as if he were completing a preflight checklist. Maria is an outspoken university professor from Vancouver who studies human behavior and develops a theory she calls “mirrorism.” Marcus, the youngest sibling, is an irresponsible, marijuana-smoking troublemaker who works in an illegal grow operation and appears capable of creating chaos almost anywhere. Every Christmas, the geographically separated Foerster family reunites at their large ancestral home beside the Rhine River in Germany. Their parents, Martin and Sophie, traditionally prepare recorded Christmas messages for Frederick, Maria, and Marcus. These recordings contain memories, observations, advice, and judgments about each child’s personality. One Christmas, a group of traveling performers visits the family home. Shortly afterward, Pock disappears from his cage. The Foersters immediately suspect that the visitors stole him, and this assumption is repeated so many times that it gradually becomes accepted as fact. That mystery provides the closest thing the book has to a continuous plot. However, the story frequently leaves it behind to follow the family members through their separate lives in Canada and Europe. Frederick navigates his responsibilities as a pilot while developing a romantic relationship with Nicole. Maria examines authority, communication, identity, and the ways people form opinions about themselves and others. Marcus stumbles from one reckless situation to another while creating problems for his family, his employers, and almost everyone unfortunate enough to rely on him. The younger generation has its own collection of insecurities, romances, arguments, and ambitions. Sarah worries about her weight, Jacob obsesses over his complexion, Jessica questions authority, and Frederick’s children, Lucas and Emma, deal with their father’s rigid expectations. Bee rushes around the Foerster home cooking, cleaning, serving, worrying, and frequently providing some of the book’s most memorable dialogue. The family eventually boards a cruise that develops into a dangerous ordeal, adding a full-scale disaster sequence to a narrative that had already included aviation emergencies, criminal activity, political debates, romance, prejudice, holiday traditions, family dysfunction, and a missing parrot. Did this book really need a cruise ship catastrophe too? Apparently, yes. Krause deserves considerable credit for his imagination. No one could reasonably accuse The Pilot and the Parrot of being predictable, timid, or indistinguishable from everything else on the market. The author has created an enormous cast, multiple countries, several generations of family history, ten theatrical scenes, ten original songs, philosophical theories, criminal escapades, romantic developments, and a mystery that takes nearly the entire book to resolve. At this point, readers may understandably wonder whether all this randomness actually serves a purpose. It does, or at least much of it does. Beneath the missing parrot, illegal marijuana operation, academic dispute, Roma stereotypes, smuggled hummingbirds, drunken English cousins, theatrical scenes, original songs, airline emergency, and cruise ship catastrophe, James Allan Krause appears to be exploring a serious philosophical question: How much of what we believe, become, and repeat was truly chosen by us? The book’s answer seems to be that human beings are shaped by messages. We receive them from parents, teachers, employers, politicians, religious institutions, news organizations, cultural traditions, and other people whose authority we accept. Some messages educate and inspire us. Others condition, frighten, divide, mislead, or confine us. Repeated often enough, even an unsupported message can begin feeling like an unquestionable truth. Once we recognized this philosophical structure, many of the book’s strangest episodes began making more sense. Krause does not seem interested in storytelling for entertainment alone. Having also reviewed his earlier work, Wetion, we recognize his tendency to use fiction, history, music, dialogue, and unusual situations to explore broader questions about society and human behavior. His academic background may help explain this approach. Krause has completed degree programs in Europe and Canada, earned a PhD in the United States, conducted research, and taught at accredited American and Canadian universities. Perhaps his books are best understood as educational and philosophical tools presented through metaphor, allegory, historical references, comedy, drama, and fictional case studies. The characters in The Pilot and the Parrot do not merely experience events. They repeatedly become examples within a much larger argument about language, authority, identity, prejudice, and free will. Maria gives that argument a name: mirrorism. While pursuing university tenure, she writes a controversial academic paper titled “Mirrorism and Semantics.” Her theory proposes that the messages people receive throughout their lives contribute to their character, self-image, behavior, and eventual destiny. Schools do not simply teach facts, according to her reasoning, and parents do not merely offer advice. Authority figures help construct the image that individuals eventually see reflected back at them. The more frequently a trusted or powerful messenger repeats an idea, the more likely the recipient may be to accept it. That concept is demonstrated through the Foerster family’s annual Christmas recordings. Every year, Martin and Sophie record messages for their children, Frederick, Maria, and Marcus. These tapes contain advice, observations, judgments, family history, and expectations. The parents believe that placing their guidance on recordings gives their words permanence. Their messages can be replayed again and again, unchanged by time. The 1976 recording is especially revealing. Frederick is described as serious, careful, cautious, and dependable. His parents praise his attention to detail but encourage him to develop a sense of humor and stop treating everything so solemnly. Maria is described as intelligent, brave, determined, and willing to challenge authority. Her parents admire her confidence but warn her against reacting to mistakes made by teachers and others in positions of power. Marcus, who recently survived being struck by a delivery vehicle, is described as disruptive, emotionally uncontrolled, and difficult. Rather than seriously examining how his injury may have affected him, his parents focus heavily on his misbehavior and demand that he become more obedient. Decades later, the three siblings strongly resemble those childhood descriptions. Frederick becomes a rigid, safety-conscious airline pilot who approaches daily life like a preflight inspection. Maria becomes an outspoken academic who analyzes power, language, and social behavior, yet remains keenly aware of the risks associated with challenging those who control her professional future. Marcus becomes the irresponsible family troublemaker, repeatedly acting against instructions, expectations, and even his own interests. Near the end, Martin and Sophie admit that this was not entirely accidental. They intentionally highlighted certain traits, rewarded behavior that matched their preferred descriptions, and largely ignored actions that contradicted the personalities they were trying to reinforce. In effect, they did not merely observe their children’s identities. They participated in constructing them. That confession provides the strongest support for Maria’s theory. Tell a child repeatedly that he is responsible, and he may organize his identity around responsibility. Tell another that she is intelligent but must be cautious around authority, and she may spend her life balancing intellectual courage against professional fear. Tell a third that he is the family problem, and he may eventually stop imagining himself as anything else. The recordings become a kind of psychological mirror. The children repeatedly hear descriptions of themselves and gradually reflect those descriptions back to the family. This does not mean the parents possess complete control over their children. Marcus repeatedly resists their efforts and often does the exact opposite of what he is told. Even that resistance, however, can become a form of conditioning. A person who defines himself entirely through rebellion is still allowing authority to determine his direction. He simply travels in the opposite direction from the one commanded. That idea may help explain why Marcus is not actually free, despite living outside conventional professional and social systems. Maria answers to university administrators who can influence her tenure, while Marcus works outside the law but remains controlled by violent criminals who threaten him and his family. One sibling is pressured through academic authority; the other is pressured through fear and physical intimidation. Marcus may consider himself a rebel, inventor, entrepreneur, or independent thinker, but he has not escaped systems of power. He has merely entered a more dangerous one. Maria’s conflict with Dr. Clayworth also functions as a practical test of mirrorism. Clayworth pressures her to credit his son Walter as an author of her paper, despite Walter not having participated meaningfully in its creation. He uses Maria’s professional ambitions and vulnerable tenure status as leverage. Maria understands manipulation well enough to write an academic theory about it, but intellectual understanding does not make resistance effortless. Importantly, Maria does resist. She distributes the paper without naming Walter as a contributor, provoking Clayworth’s anger. Walter later behaves as though the research belongs to him and describes Maria as someone invited to present “their” work. This plotline demonstrates how authority can attempt to manufacture reality through repetition and status. Walter has not earned authorship, but if he, his father, and the institution repeat the claim often enough, the false version may become the professionally accepted one. The same process occurs on a broader cultural level through Pock’s disappearance. Pock vanishes shortly after a group of traveling performers visits the Foerster home. A window is found open. The family already associates the performers with Roma people and immediately assumes they stole the bird. When a theatrical ransom note arrives demanding money, their suspicion hardens into certainty. The family does not possess proof. They possess a story that feels plausible because it matches messages they have already heard about a marginalized population. That story is then repeated for nearly a year. The performers stole Pock. The “Gypsies” kidnapped him. The ransom note proves their guilt. Each repetition makes the assumption feel more factual, even though no new evidence has appeared. The family’s reaction demonstrates how stereotypes save people from the difficult work of uncertainty. Rather than considering every possible explanation, they rely on a familiar cultural narrative about who is supposedly dishonest, dangerous, or criminal. The eventual revelation dismantles almost every part of that narrative. Bee confesses that she opened one window to clear smoke from the home. The change in air pressure caused another improperly secured window to open, allowing Pock to fly away. The family then concludes that Marcus probably created the ransom note to exploit the situation. Most significantly, the supposedly Roma performers are later revealed to have been international writers posing as “Gypsies” as part of their own research. The family therefore blamed Roma people for a kidnapping that never happened, based on the actions of performers who were not Roma. This is probably the book’s most successful philosophical construction. An assumption becomes a message, the message becomes a repeated story, the repeated story becomes a belief, and the belief becomes prejudice disguised as knowledge. Pock himself is the perfect symbol for this process. Throughout the production, the parrot repeats words and phrases that attract attention, laughter, praise, or food. The family members frequently wonder whether Pock understands what he is saying or merely recognizes which combinations of sounds produce the most favorable reaction. Human beings often do the same. We repeat political slogans without investigating them, family beliefs because questioning them feels disloyal, stereotypes because they simplify complicated situations, and professional language because it makes us sound informed. We also repeat traditions long after their original meanings have been forgotten. This interest in language appears throughout the book. The characters debate the meaning of an epiphany, discuss the origins and contradictions of Good Friday, compare the English name with the more sorrowful meaning conveyed by the German Karfreitag, and perform a song titled “Semantics.” Krause repeatedly asks whether words still communicate what we think they do. A respected title does not guarantee respectable conduct. A person with the surname Good may behave terribly. An authority figure may act dishonestly, a rebel may remain controlled, a group described as criminal may be innocent, and a message described as guidance may actually be conditioning. The Good brothers provide one of the book’s most blunt examples. Tom and Harry possess a respectable family name and work for the Council of Europe, yet they become intoxicated, insult a French waiter, mock cultural differences, and behave disgracefully around traveling musicians. The supposedly respectable men act like destructive fools, while the people vulnerable to social suspicion are simply trying to perform music and earn money. The label and the reality do not match. Even the hummingbird-smuggling plot can be read through this philosophical lens. Members of the Strasbourg Dancers of 1518 believe the hummingbird’s diet may contain the secret to extraordinary energy. They study nectar, insects, sap, pollen, and ashes in hopes of creating a formula that will allow them to “dance their way through life.” This is one of the book’s most bizarre developments, but it may also represent the seductiveness of miraculous solutions. People are often drawn to messages promising effortless energy, liberation, health, wealth, unity, or happiness. Once a group accepts such a belief, its members may pursue it far beyond reason. Mr. Vogel’s attempt to smuggle hummingbirds onto an aircraft contributes to a chain of events that results in a dangerous in-flight incident. A seemingly hopeful or eccentric belief therefore creates consequences for innocent people who never accepted it. We would be cautious about claiming that every detail of this plotline forms a perfectly calculated metaphor. Nevertheless, it fits Krause’s wider concern with what happens when people allow questionable messages to direct their behavior. All these ideas finally converge in the title. Near the conclusion, Maria observes that when words do not cause people to think, they are no different from parrots. Frederick responds that people who take control of how messages are delivered and received can become captains of their own indoctrination and masters of their own destiny. The parrot repeats, while the pilot chooses a direction. Human beings can accept every message placed before them, or they can examine the source, question the meaning, and decide whether that message deserves to guide them. Once we reached this point, we understood what Krause was trying to accomplish. We get it. The problem is that the production makes readers work extraordinarily hard to get there. These philosophical connections are meaningful, but they are buried beneath an enormous number of characters, locations, arguments, meals, romances, jokes, criminal activities, historical references, cultural observations, theatrical scenes, songs, emergencies, and unrelated-seeming detours. The missing-parrot mystery disappears for long stretches. Maria’s mirrorism theory is important, but its full relationship to the family recordings and the title does not become unmistakable until extremely late. Several side stories introduce their own casts, tones, conflicts, and themes before the reader has fully processed the previous ones. The shifts between conventional prose, stage-play dialogue, philosophical discussion, comedy, family drama, song lyrics, and disaster storytelling add to the disorientation. Rather than one theme becoming steadily clearer, readers are repeatedly asked to stop, change formats, follow a different character, and enter another lane. We also question how much of the philosophical unity is naturally communicated by the story and how much must be constructed by readers after the fact. A thoughtful audience can connect Maria’s academic conflict, Marcus’s criminal entrapment, the assumptions about Pock, the hummingbird group, the Good brothers, and the discussions of semantics. However, the book rarely pauses long enough to develop one connection fully before introducing another unusual event. There is a difference between complexity and obscurity. Complexity rewards attention by gradually revealing an organized design, while obscurity leaves readers uncertain whether the design exists at all. The Pilot and the Parrot sometimes achieves the first, but too frequently drifts into the second. This is particularly unfortunate because the underlying ideas deserve serious consideration. The influence of repeated messages, the construction of identity, the manipulation of language, the power of authority, the danger of stereotypes, and the difference between inherited belief and independent thought are all worthwhile subjects. A more focused narrative could have made those ideas significantly more powerful. The story did not need to explain everything directly or remove all its eccentricity. Krause’s imagination, international perspective, academic curiosity, and willingness to experiment are essential parts of the production’s identity. However, stronger organization, fewer competing subplots, a clearer central protagonist, and earlier thematic signposts would have helped readers appreciate the philosophy without first having to excavate it from beneath so much randomness. Perhaps that is the most accurate way to describe the book: it is not meaningless, but overloaded with meaning. Krause appears determined to transform nearly every character, word, historical reference, family conflict, cultural difference, and bizarre event into another opportunity to examine how human beings think. We admire that ambition, but we wish the production had trusted a smaller number of carefully developed ideas to carry its message. After all, a pilot may know exactly where the aircraft is heading, but the passengers still need to understand the flight plan. Ok, so we got to the content and the hidden meaning of the book, but what about the audiobook version? Well, James Allan Krause does an admirable job narrating this book, the same as he did with Wetion. Narrating your own book is not easy, but Krause achieves it. He has a very friendly, bard-like tone, as if he's constantly trying to tell you a tricky, metaphorical story. He even does some accents which are pretty good! It's hit-or-miss when he voices female characters, however. That's probably normal. It's hard being a dude and trying to voice a female in a respectable way. The less we say about the music between each chapter, the better. We don't think the music needed to be in this audiobook. We didn't find any of it particularly pleasant. It sounds like experimental sound-jumble music with a male singer, presumably Krause, speaking words while the background music rushes ahead. It often sounds off-beat, like the singing can't keep up with the background music. There are times when guitars and trumpets sound like they were incorporated, likely via electronic/computer means judging by the sound. We had the same thoughts about the music in Wetion: it really didn't need to be in here, and the audiobook probably would've been better off without it. Whether read in paperback or experienced as an audiobook, The Pilot and the Parrot may test your patience and leave you wondering which narrative freeway you are on, but it ultimately rewards close attention with an original meditation on how words, labels, and repeated messages shape human lives. We may not have enjoyed every mile of the journey, but we respect Krause for building a road unlike any other. Check it out on Amazon! |
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