Julián Is a Mermaid

Julián Is a Mermaid by Jessica Love
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I love this beautiful picture book about a boy who goes swimming with his grandma and on the way home sees people dressed as mermaids on the train, then creates his own mermaid costume while his grandma is in the shower. He isn't sure how he is going to respond when she sees the mess he's made, but she doesn't get mad, she helps him accessorize and takes him to see a show with other mermaids.

I love how this book celebrates imagination and depicts the loving, supportive relationship between a boy and his grandmother. I love the inter-generational and diverse characters and body types depicted in the lovely illustrations. My son also loves to dress up in costumes and play pretend, and though I'm pretty sure I would not react well if he took down our curtains to make a costume, I try very hard to create an environment where he has no worries about being accepted for expressing himself. I love that this book features a scene where such support is not only possible but just the way things are. Our world would be an infinitely better place if that were true everywhere.

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Starla Jean: Which came first? The chicken or the friendship?

Starla Jean by Elana K. Arnold
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

My kids thought this book was great; I thought it was meh. A little girl goes to the park with her dad and comes home with a chicken. I totally sympathized with the dad who stupidly said she could keep it if she could catch it, never imagining she'd actually catch it. I also sympathized with the mom who did not want a chicken inside the house, though I would have been a LOT more forceful about keeping it outside and away from my dining room table.

It was OK. Silly enough to make my kids laugh; ridiculous enough to make me roll my eyes. (Putting a diaper on a chicken??)

Oh--one thing I didn't understand was that at the end of the book there were some "chicken facts," including that chickens can do basic addition, with an illustration showing a chicken at a chalkboard adding 1+2=3. What?? How is this a chicken fact? If chickens have somehow been proven to be able to add, then the illustration should explain this, not be wildly impossible. That...just...NO.

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Nora Goes Off Script

Nora Goes Off Script by Annabel Monaghan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Nora Hamilton makes a living writing screenplays for The Romance Channel (a thinly veiled Hallmark Channel), swapping out the details but keeping the essential fantasy romance elements intact. However, when her deadbeat husband leaves, she turns her personal story into a major Hollywood movie, earning enough (barely) to get herself and her kids out of the debt he left behind. The studio even pays extra to use her actual tea house/writing studio for the last two days of filming. However, when they pack up and leave, she discovers the leading man--famous actor Leo Vance--remained behind. He begs to be allowed to stay and rest in the tea house, offering her $1000/day in rent--money she badly needs to fix her gutters. She agrees, and suddenly she finds herself playing tour guide and shopping tutor for a gorgeous man eager to participate in her family's life. As he integrates into her world, their relationship evolves into a romantic one, but will he actually stay, or will he leave like her ex-husband did? Nora felt relief when her husband took off; she's very much afraid Leo's departure could shatter her heart.

I absolutely loved this book. It both pokes fun at the formulaic Hallmark movies we all love and love to hate, and also works within that same basic framework. Thankfully, this story is one of the good ones, not the ones with the plastic blonde (or brunette) attempting to pretend to be a regular person. I loved that Leo actually did seem like he could fit into Nora's world, and later she proved she could hold her own in his. Nora's daughter Bernadette seems a bit older than her 8 years, but 10-year-old Arthur is entirely believable. Plus it was a breath of fresh air to read a romance novel where the protagonists are 40-ish instead of 20-somethings.

I think this would be a great book to discuss in a book group. What makes a person stay with someone like Ben who has no observable redeeming qualities? Yet Nora endured almost two decades of his freeloading and emotional abuse until *he* decided to leave. Even if his absence is welcome, those years he was around were traumatic and left emotional scars, so how did that conditioning impact Nora and Leo's relationship, particularly after Leo flew to L.A. for the audition?

For readers' advisors: story doorway is primary, character secondary. All sex happens offscreen, and there are only a few well-placed swear words, so the book is nearly a "gentle read." No violence. All the characters seem to be heterosexual, and racial identity isn't indicated that I can recall, aside from a few names that indicate some secondary characters might be something other than white. Pretty much like the majority of the Hallmark movies, really. (Honestly, that's the biggest drawback--how hard would it have been to make the characters more diverse?)

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Bloom of the Flower Dragon

Bloom of the Flower Dragon: A Branches Book by Tracey West
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

My kids loved this book; I was bored out of my mind and annoyed to boot. These stories are quite formulaic, which bothers my kids not a whit. I wouldn't mind so much if the formula was better--I'm really not on board with the 8-year-olds-save-the-world-completely-without-grownup-supervision concept.

In this iteration of it, Drake and Worm transport Ana and Kepri to some mountains where there are tiny dragons living in a field of flowers near a village but somehow without the villagers knowing about it. The dragon stone chose a blond boy to be the dragon master for the tiny dragon who first came to Bracken to ask for help. The "twist" this time is that the blond boy is rude to this little dragon because he's not thrilled the dragon is small, and he doesn't want to help because he's determined to go search for his missing father instead. Lovely.

A seer has predicted the imminent arrival of a monster, so the children go off to the field and figure out that Kepri can use sunshine powers to charge up the tiny dragons so they can basically hypnotize & heal the monster, which turns out to be a werewolf-type creature--i.e. a human who ate the wrong berries & morphed into a murderous beast. Most adults will be able to guess this outcome of this story.

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