First Uprooted Shadowshaper; Secret Flash Parade; Weird Mix

[maribou]

Shadowshaper, by Daniel José Older
This YA fantasy was incredibly well-done, warm and playful and pushing at the boundaries of things. I am not so MADLY in love with it as many of the other people on the internet seem to be, but I am in love with it enough that I wriggle just thinking about it, and about the fact that there are other books by this author that I have yet to read.
(293)

Uprooted, by Naomi Novik
Now this! This I am MADLY in love with. Start to finish, it could not have been more perfectly perfect for me. If I had to do the "it's like X and Y" thing, I would say it's like Lifelode mashed up with Wrede's Forest Chronicles with a dash of Zelazny's Amber thrown in for good measure, spiced by having had some of Theodora Goss' more folkloric writings waved in its general direction. But really it's not like any of those equally splendid things, it's its own, newish thing, that is also an oldish thing, and which (evidently) I loved so very much that I can't really explain my feelings.
(294)

The First Elizabeth, by Carolly Erickson
This was very spritely, except when it was so busy being thorough that it got bogged down a bit. I learned a lot about Elizabeth. (I find that getting most of my knowledge about British history from fictive sources causes some problems, and have slowly been working to remedy that; in fact, I started reading this book after I was watching some or other TV show about Henry VIII and was SCANDALIZED that they merged two of his sisters into one character! wtf??? you don't just MERGE princesses like that! *ahem* sorry, tangent.) I was irritated that the author's sympathies so clearly were more with the aristocratic class and not at all with the peasants and servants, about whom she was often snide, but that was a reasonably small quibble that may simply have been a side effect of immersing herself in her subjects.
(295, O64)

Secret Coders, by Gene Luen Yang (ARC)
What a great idea this book was! It's basically a comic that teaches kids boolean logic and logo programming as puzzles, except it's all woven into an exciting story that I would have superdug as a kid. The only thing that made me mad is that it stopped on a HUGE cliffhanger! And since I was reading an advance reading copy the next book wasn't out yet. so I had no way to remedy my Need To Know What Happened. *twitches just remembering it* And even as of this writing, the 2nd book is still not out! *staples hand to forehead and assumes an attitude of despair* But, thinking back to how much fun I had tearing through series like this as a kid, I am hoping the rest of the volumes do come out, soonly, because then I would be more than willing to share them with the kids I know. Right now it would just be mean!
(296, O65, A8)

The Flash: A Celebration of 75 Years, by Gardner Fox et al
So I really love the Flash as a character but had only the spottiest context in terms of, you know, actually having read the comics in situations other than randomly-reading-comics-aloud-to-my-cousin-when-I-was-thirteen-and-babysitting-him. Now I have read lots of Flash comics! And his entire confusing backstory makes like 80 percent sense to me instead of 30 percent sense! Huzzah! Also it was interesting to watch how these comics changed stylistically over the decades.
(297)

Mix It Up!, by Hervé Tullet
Another charming kids' book with lovely pictures about which I don't have a whole lot to say. Think this would be especially fun for kids at the age where they have to think a lot in order to go from hearing someone tell them to do something to actually doing it. The things they are told to do are educational (teaching about color mixing) but not so much so as to get in the way of the silliness.
(299)

Tippy and the Night Parade, by Lilli Carré
This was cute - another one of those TOON books I was enthusing about a few posts back. Not my favorite of them, but still lovely.
(300)

You're Never Weird on the Internet (Almost), by Felicia Day
I have no idea if this would be any good if you don't already know who Felicia Day is, or don't particularly care. As someone who leans toward fangirl but isn't ACTUALLY a fangirl of the author, and who is interested in how people deal with anxiety and other stressful life things generally, I enjoyed it very much. Funny, warm, endearing, insightful, honest.
(301)

Comments

[kerrymae.livejournal.com]

I liked the Felicia Day book. It wasn't quite what I had been expecting, which was rather refreshing in the end. I admit to having an acquaintance with her brother, so I snickered a little more here and there than I might otherwise have. Still, I liked it!