Kids & YA
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Wildwood Imperium
Colin Meloy & Carson Ellis
A jam-packed finale to this trilogy set in a version of Portland where Forest Park is the Impassable Wilderness, a magical land most humans in the city can’t physically enter. After establishing a new set of characters and new thread of narrative in the second book, this one starts with yet another new thread. It makes the story get...more
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Under Wildwood
Colin Meloy & Carson Ellis
When I read the first book in this trilogy, I made a comment about reading this second part “at my earliest convenience,” which turned out to be about five years later. This volume explores more areas of the fantastical land of Wildwood, where people and anthropomorphized animals coexist. It is a...more
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The First Rule of Punk
Celia C. Pérez
I am 100% biased with this book, as Celia is a longtime friend. But while it could be possible that I loved this solely from seeing Celia’s heart and humor within the narrative, she has been getting so much amazing feedback (including...more
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Brown Girl Dreaming
Jacqueline Woodson
Memoir in verse, telling the stories of Jacqueline Woodson’s childhood. The poems impart an impressionistic narrative, focused more on the small moments amidst the larger transitions — like the end of her parents’ relationship, moving with her mother and siblings to her grandparents’ home in Greenville, SC, then...more
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The Book Thief
Markus Zusak
Set during WWII in Germany, The Book Thief starts by following Liesel Meminger traveling with her mother and brother traveling by train to Munich. Her mother is a communist and has found a foster home for them to protection as political tensions rise under the Nazis. Along the way her brother dies, and Liesel...more
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Americus
MK Reed & Jonathan Hill
I found this story centered around a fight to ban a series of fantasy books about witches to be rather black-and-white — and not just because it’s a graphic novel that is drawn that way. The characters are all clearly set into one camp or another, and there is no one in between. There is little sympathy to be found for those on the...more
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Wildwood
Colin Meloy & Carson Ellis
I first heard about Wildwood through a Design Sponge post focusing on Carson Ellis’s beautiful illustrations about a year ago. It suddenly popped into my head again recently and turned out to be a good countertwist after finishing...more
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Pretty Monsters
Kelly Link
It’s almost exactly four years since I read most of Link’s Stranger Things Happen, and I experienced similar hit-and-miss responses to these stories. Sometimes the concept of the story is more entertaining than the execution, and the writing is often too simplistic and almost...more
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Tales from Outer Suburbia
Shaun Tan
The gorgeous art in this collection of stories would make this worth checking out on its own, but the stories are at times vaguely unsettling, examining the fantastically surreal edges of an otherwise banal world, while also remaining playful. In the end, it’s something kids would find entertaining, while adults may more appreciate...more
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The Westing Game
Ellen Raskin
I never read this when I was younger, but I kind of wish I had. It’s a complicated mystery based around the occupants of an apartment building who discover they’ve all been named heirs to a $2 million estate, except they need to compete against each other (in pairs dictated by the bizarre will) on a strange riddle in order to win...more