Wolf By Wolf By Ryan Graudin

(lol sorry for the weird ass pic.  This coffee place is super crowded and I can’t smile at my computer without people looking at me like I have the plague)

Heyoo!  I’m Melissa and I’m Book Wench number… four?  I am 24, live in good ol’ New York City, and I used to work with these lovely ladies in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Well, I’m def no stranger to the book industry.  Former English major, former production editor at Pearson, former Cincinnati bookseller, current freelance editor (Mosaic Editing holler at me, this is a shameless plug for your editing services), current bookseller at Books of Wonder.  I’m currently working on procuring a full-time job in publishing (aren’t we all HA HA HA).

A little about myself: I love Beyoncé with every fiber of my being.  More than is really healthy probs.  I listen to a lot of Christmas music.  I’m really into astrology currently even though I’m very skeptical of it (it doesn’t make sense to me either).  My favorite author is Hemingway, but not as a person. My favorite person is Libba Bray, but not necessarily as an author. I read primarily YA and middle grade (Books of Wonder is a children’s book store), and the occasional feminist adult fic.  My reviews and recommendations will primarily be YA, holler.

I’ll post a normal pic of myself, idk, when one exists.

(That’s my cat, Casper.  Casper the Friendly Cat.  He’s probably the most important thing about me tbh)

Here’s a list of what us wenches are reading right now!

Under a Painted Sky by Stacey Lee & The War that Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubraker Bradley

Whatcha reading, Brett?

Wing & Claw by Linda Sue Park 

By Break of Day by M L Buchman

Indeh by Ethan Hawke and Greg Ruth

Whatcha reading, Jo Ann?

Burn Math Class by Jason Wilkes

Passenger by Alexandra Bracken & Ninth Key by Meg Cabot

Whatcha reading, Tori?

On a Chris Haughton kick today. Cannot wait for his new book, Goodnight Everyone,  in the fall. <3

Chris Haughton’s beautiful storybook Shh! We Have A Plan was recently transformed into a live theatre production by Cahoots NI. We were lucky enough to make the backdrop animations, including these little fellows.

Exciting news yesterday from Andrea Beaty, David Roberts and Abrams Kids! The newest book in the fabulous Rosie Revere, Engineer and Iggy Peck, Architect series has been revealed. :)  She’s ADA TWIST, SCIENTIST!

Woo Hoo! for science and Woo Hoo! for two African American kids! 

A Feminist Reading List for the Holidays: Books by strong, spirited, whip-smart, flawed, fantastic, human, devastatingly talented women for anyone - female, male, or otherwise - on your list.

My Life On The Road by Gloria Steinem

We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Hissing Cousins by Marc Peyser and Timothy Dwyer

Isabella: The Warrior Queen by Kirstin Downey

Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl by Carrie Brownstein

A House Of My Own by Sandra Cisneros

Fates & Furies by Lauren Groff

Vanessa and Her Sister by Priya Parmar

The Gracekeepers by Kirsty Logan

Missoula by Jon Krakauer

Let Me Tell You by Shirley Jackson

The Mare by Mary Gaitskill

You Don’t Have to Like Me by Alida Nugent (@thefrenemy​)

Peruse all of our holiday lists here!

Claire here!

Okay, so I have recently finished the lovely Kate Hattemer’s new YA novel The Land of 10,000 Madonnas.

It is about a group of 5 teenagers sent on a quest to Europe as a dying wish from their friend and cousin, Jesse, who died of a heart defect nearly a year previously. It is beautiful, sad, funny, bittersweet, and sometimes slightly gross. The gross factor is mostly due to Ben’s penchant for smoothies for every meal which sometimes include unusual choices for a liquefied meal.)

Kate’s sophomore novel reminded me a little bit of Maureen Johnson’s 13 Little Blue Envelopes. But I suppose that is more for the similarities between their teenaged characters going on trips across Europe after losing a loved one. I find Kate’s characters more real and relatable than Johnson’s. Cal, Trevor, Ben, Lillian, and Matt aren’t meant to discover some great and magical cure for their grief and then fall in love. They are and have been grieving. They deal with their grief on a daily basis and in myriad ways. And they are only beginning to come to terms with Jesse’s death. As teenagers, they are often prickly in their mourning, and don’t always agree. And like many teenagers I know, they do not say what they mean and feel immediately or clearly to each other. Hattemer’s portrayal and the perspectives she offers from her characters is one of her strengths in this book. They aren’t special in any extra way, they are normal, and they have been dealt a tragedy. And they react and exist accordingly. 

The book did take me a little while to get through, but that is in part because I tend to be a distracted reader and also this is a book that will make you think and reflect.  This is a novel that will be a good cathartic read. Hattemer made me tear up more than once while I was reading, but she brought me out on the brighter side at the end. I will be recommending this to fans of David Levithan, Maureen Johnson, Ava Dellaira, Emery Lord, and even John Green readers. I think that Kate Hattemer is going to be an author to keep an eye on and a voice to be heard in YA in the coming years.

Release date is April 19th 2016. I highly recommend it. And if you can, get it from a bricks and mortar bookstore or the library!

H! Alia here.

I’m holding an OMG-I’m-going-to-TRY-to-read-all-these-books-this-weekend reading party by myself for these books in time for the American Library Association (ALA) Youth Media Awards on Monday morning! These are just a few of the books being considered RIGHT NOW in secret meetings by the Newbery Committee…

Follow this link for a live webcast of the awards on Monday (8am) and info about every award up for grabs!  

These awards are where they announce the Newbery, Caldecott, Geisel, Pura Belpré, Printz, Sibert, Odyssey, Stonewall, Coretta Scott King, Schneider Awards and more…That’s a lot!! And I’m SO EXCITED for it.

Also, the ALA Midwinter Conference is underway in Boston. Ah a land of Book Talk, ARCs, F&Gs and cool people…

Teachers! Holding Mock Caldecotts and Mock Newberys are GREAT ways to get your kids excited about reading. Woo!

Yay for books! Yay for book awards!

Hello! :) Bookwench #2 reporting in. Here’s a little about me...I’m Alia, I’m 27 years old and I love books, cake and Korean food.  I used to be an elementary school teacher in Daegu, South Korea for about four years. Daegu is famous for being hot (it’s in a valley), has lots of great food and people there have the best Korean accent ( it’s like a tough southern accent). With a background in teaching and experience in children’s bookselling, my contributions to The Bookwenches will mostly be children’s literature related.  I specialize in Picture Books. You have questions? I have answers. Need a suggestion? You got it. You like looking at pretty pictures?...WELL ME TOO! I also read quite a bit of middle grade and some YA. I like a little bit of everything; fantasy, historical fiction, sci-fi, fairy tale, realistic fiction, romance, coming of age novels, graphic novels etc.  One of my favorite books of all time is Zel by Donna Jo Napoli. Like Tori, I like that medieval, princessy but AWESOME story stuff!  In 2016, I’m looking forward to Sherman Alexie and Yuyi Morales’ new book Thunder Boy Jr. It’ll be Alexie’s first picture book!! If you don’t know him, just check out The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian. You won’t regret it. I’m also looking forward to Pugs of the Frozen North by Philip Reeve and Sarah McIntyre!  You can also check me out at my blog readitrealgood.com and I have a twitter @readitrealgood. On my blog I share diverse and excellent reads. It’s intended to be a resource for people looking for great kids books, especially ones focusing on diversity. I also discuss diversity in literature and publishing and share my thoughts from time to time. 

Nice to meet you...만나서 반갑습니다! 촣은 하루 되세요! ^_^

Claire here! I am back in the Kids store again at the bookstore. And the first thing I read yesterday morning was Vikki Vansickle’s new picture book. And I am so glad that JoAnn brought it over to me! (JoAnn, you have me hooked. If I Had A Gryphon is going to be my big story time book next week.) 

If I Had A Gryphon is written by Vikki Vansickle and illustrated by Cale Atkinson. It is about Sam, a young girl who has just gotten her first pet: a hamster. Sam thinks hamsters are not nearly as exciting as some of the mythological creatures she reads about in her books. So she starts thinking of some other pets that might be a bit more fun, but also perhaps a lot more work. Maybe hamsters aren’t so bad?

Ohmygoodness this book! I adore this for a multitude of reasons: the illustrations are adorable, there are mythological creatures everywhere, Vansickle’s rhymes are bouncing and delightful, and Sam is both whimsical and practical in an entirely enchanting way. Also that too cute kraken happily playing with a dismal blue whale and a sunken steam ship. That page cracked me up!

The mythological creatures in this picture book make me so so pleased. I loved mythology as a kid. I had all the giant collections of Greek and Egyptian myths I could get my hands on. And later I added Celtic, Norse, and Japanese myths to my collection as I found them. If there were beautiful illustrations, that made them all the better. Myths and the heroes, monsters and enchanted creatures depicted in them fed my imagination. And I have never entirely grown out of that phase. Vansickle makes me slightly nostalgic for those times when little 8 year old Claire was curled up on the couch with giant mythology books, much like Sam. And I really love that Vansickle and Atkinson are introducing these mythological characters to younger readers in such an accessible and fun way.

Vansickle’s rhymes are rhythmic and skip along as Sam considers what she could do with her more exciting pets and what their potential downfalls might be. The kraken one is honestly, pure gold. “If I had a kraken/ We’d swim and deep-sea dive/ But I would need a scuba suit/ In order to survive.”

Also Cale Atkinson’s illustrations just fill me with pink bubbly happiness. He manages to make manticores, kraken, jackalopes, and gryphons look equally joyful and cuddly. I just realized today that he also wrote and illustrated To the Sea, about a lonely boy named Tim who has to take a lost whale named Sam back to the ocean. (If you have not read it, you should, it is just as cute as If I Had A Gryphon.)

PLEASE go check out If I Had A Gryphon. You will love it. At the very least, it should make you giggle.