How Do You Say I Love You?

How Do You Say I Love You? by Hannah Eliot
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I love the idea of this book, with its message that children and parents all over the world love each other, just in different languages. I love that each “I love you” is written out in the original language itself, in the transliteration into English, and phonetically/with a pronunciation guide. It’s very sweet, with its depiction of regular children doing regular things.

What I don’t love is that it skews toward European countries, and that the illustrator, whose last name doesn’t sound Caucasian, somehow manages to make most of the children & parents look like White Americans. Perhaps it’s the dots for eyes or the narrow range of skin tones or the generic clothes and facial features?? I would have preferred MUCH more variety, and no pale-skinned redheads or blondes playing soccer in Egypt, for example. When I was in Egypt, most kids had brown hair & skin, & those who didn’t were typically tourists. Even the few Caucasian locals had more of a tan. I guess maybe the illustrator was trying to show the universal appeal of soccer? But white faces shouldn’t outnumber brown ones, so that made me cringe. In a book celebrating diversity, whiteness should not be the default.

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Amelia Bedelia Unleashed

Amelia Bedelia Unleashed by Herman Parish
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Amelia Bedelia is back and anxious to adopt a dog, but she has no idea what kind she wants. Her attempts to figure out the answer to that question are full of hilarious mishaps, but in the end, she finds exactly the right kind of dog for her.

This second installment in the Amelia Bedelia chapter book series was just as entertaining as the first. My 6-year-old loved having me read it to her at bedtime. It's fun and silly and engaging.

My biggest quibble is that all the characters are white/presumed white. Seriously, would it have killed the illustrator to have drawn some of the characters with darker skin? There are so many illustrations, I'd almost characterize the book as an illustrated novel, yet not a one looked anything but white. That's what is keeping my rating at 3 stars instead of 4.

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Listening With My Heart: A Story of Kindness and Self-Compassion

Listening With My Heart: A Story of Kindness and Self-Compassion by Gabi Garcia
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Esperanza finds a heart-shaped rock and is inspired to share love and kindness, which comes full circle when she makes a mistake and needs help remembering to show herself kindness and compassion as well.

It's a sweet story with a direct message that models simple ways even children can demonstrate compassion. A bit more plot or character development would have bumped my rating to 5 stars, but the message earns every bit of the 4 stars! I absolutely love that nearly all the characters have varying shades of brown skin. It's a very positive, healing book to read with children.

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Romancing the Inventor

Romancing the Inventor by Gail Carriger
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This one is for everyone who loved the character of Genevieve Lefoux in the Parasol Protectorate (or Vieve in the Finishing School series) and wanted to see her find love.

A character-driven novella wherein Imogene Hale takes a job as a parlourmaid for Countess Nadasdy's vampire hive in an effort to help feed her mother and siblings whilst simultaneously avoiding matrimony. Imogene never imagined she'd meet the love of her life: the eccentric inventor busily creating things in the hive's potting shed. The course of true love never did run smooth, though, and this love must navigate hurdles both external and internal--from a vindictive footman and vicious vampires to Genevieve's disastrous relationship history.

For readers' advisors: character doorway is primary, setting secondary. Plenty of sexual tension, but only a couple of not-explicit lesbian sex scenes. Some physical abuse from the footman and vampire queen. Alexia and the Woolsey pack make several delightful appearances, and the wicker chicken has a cameo. A couple of mild historical swear words. It's best to have read at least the Parasol Protectorate series first to understand the nuances of the setting and characters.

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Bruce's Big Storm

Bruce's Big Storm by Ryan T. Higgins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Like all the other Bruce books, this one is absolutely delightful--funny for kids and for their grown-ups. This time around, Bruce is the reluctant host of all the neighborhood animals during a big storm. When a tree crashes through the roof and slices the house in two, the neighbors rally to fix up the house even better than before--adding a "rumpus room" (It's for rumpusing!) where everyone can hang out and play cards. My kids ask for this as a bedtime story over and over and can now recite pretty much the entire book. Or at least sections of it before dissolving in giggles. We love Bruce books so much!

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I Saw an Ant on the Railroad Track

I Saw an Ant on the Railroad Track by Joshua Prince
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read this book to my daughter's kindergarten class in honor of the Transportation unit they were working on. The kids were really into it--caught up in the suspense of whether the ant was going to be smashed by the train. However, even these 5 & 6-year-olds were savvy enough to point out that an ant would most assuredly feel the vibrations of an enormous train barreling ever closer and would have gotten off the rail WAY before the train posed any kind of mortal danger. In fact, they blurted this fact out right in the middle of the story, which gave me an opportunity to respond with, "True, but you can pretend anything you want in fiction!" and then quickly move on before anyone thought about all the ways that *isn't* quite true or realized the switchman should have just picked up the ant instead of trying to redirect a TRAIN from its appointed route.

The illustrations in the book are beautiful--sort of a soft-focus photo-realism...aside from the ant who walks on two legs and carries a stick with a bag of belongings hanging from it. That part's pure "photo-fantasy," you might say.

There are some great vocabulary words in the text, and loads of rhyming words, which the kids were having fun listening for. The rhythm of the text flows along well in all but a few spots, so practicing out loud in advance is a must. The stutter-spots can be overcome if you learn which syllables to emphasize, but that's nigh impossible in the moment.

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The Women with Silver Wings: the inspiring true story of the women airforce service pilots of World War II

The Women with Silver Wings: The Inspiring True Story of the Women Airforce Service Pilots of World War II by Katherine Sharp Landdeck


Katherine Sharp Landdeck's detailed account of the day-to-day experiences of the women who flew for the Army Air Forces and the long-term machinations and political maneuvering involved in the evolving alphabet soup of acronyms is riveting. Her extensive research included years of interviewing and becoming friends with dozens of the women; reading their letters, diaries, memoirs, and speeches; combing through newspaper archives, photos, accident reports, and government documents; and triple-checking everything. My husband is an air force officer and military history buff, so I enjoyed the opportunity to read about one of his favorite subjects but from a female perspective.

It's endlessly astonishing to me how sexist (and racist) beliefs can persist when they are so demonstrably false and utterly ridiculous. Still more astonishing is that they persisted during WWII when sheer practicality should have rendered them moot: women not only could fly anything and everything, they NEEDED to do so in order to maximize the number of men able to fight. (Never mind that women could have also done an excellent job of fighting.) Landdeck's meticulously researched "The Women with Silver Wings" brings this absurdity into sharp focus.

Since I'm reading an advance reader's edition (ARC), the endnotes haven't yet been numbered, nor are they marked within the text, but once that happens for the final published version, they will be beneficial, although in some cases it would be nicer if they were footnotes and more easily read without flipping back and forth. Also, the extensive number of women featured in the book makes me wish for some sort of Cast of Characters list with a sentence or two to remind me who's who & has which background. But that's a minor quibble in an otherwise fascinating book.

Many thanks to Bookbrowse.com and the publisher for the ARC they sent me in exchange for my honest review.

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