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I guess any three points define a triangle, but in this case it must be a pretty big triangle, because gosh these are three extremely unrelated books (related only in that I happened to finish all three today).

The Awakened Kingdom is NK Jemisin's 2014 post-Inheritance-trilogy novella that I somehow misread as being a 2024 work and moved to the upper ranks of my reading list before I realized. I don't *think* I ever read it in 2014? It was fine. Bit heavy-handed - Jemisin seemed determined to hit us over the head with the point to a degree that actually took me out of the story somewhat - but it reminded me how much I liked the trilogy, and I thought it was a neat epilogue.

Slippery Creatures, KJ Charles. The first book in of one of Charles' many historical-romance trilogies. This one is a working-class soldier home from WWI and an aristocrat and there is ~espionage~. I somehow still haven't binge-read everything Charles ever wrote, but gosh I eat this stuff up. I feel like the aristocrat character here might be exploring some Peter Wimsey-adjacent territory (if you had a Wimsey who was actually gay, I mean, not just sometimes gay on AO3).

The Mysteries, Bill Watterson and John Kascht. 2023 picture book. Let's be real: I would not have been especially interested in this if it didn't have Watterson's name on it, and, having read it, I think my biggest takeaway was "huh, I guess I'm glad Watterson is still out there exploring as an artist". Something like 35 two-page spreads, where the lefthand page has a sentence, and the righthand page has a black-and-white illustration, which I guess are a mix of photographs of sculptures (Kascht) and drawing (Watterson). The story is an ambiguous and inconclusive fable; you could read it a few different ways. I didn't, on a first read, find any of them hugely compelling or memorable (although who knows, occasionally something ends up staying with me much more than I would have guessed from the initial impact), but it was a fine little interval of contemplation. (Not comics but I'm tagging for comics because I might later think that's how I would have tagged it...)

Two good picture books we've read recently (I plan to stop reading picture books to the 7yo when he asks me to, and even then I might still read picture books myself sometimes, picture books are awesome.)

Mission To Space by John Herrington is a very basic nonfiction about Herrington's experience as a real-live astronaut, illustrated with photographs, with the neat twist that Herrington is Chickasaw, so while he's in the Shuttle his nation is presenting a blanket to NASA and dancing and celebrating, and when he gets to the ISS he mentions that he brought his eagle feather to space, and, look, I am always here for space, I would have been into this just for a dude doing a spacewalk, but I always get extra-emotional about people bringing their personal signifiers with them and, like, bringing their culture or their narrative into the empty space of space? And then the best part was a glossary at the end of how the Chickasaw Language Committee created the vocabulary to talk about space exploration in Chickasaw, such that an astronaut is literally an "above walker", blasting off is "exploding it goes", gravity is "holds it at the ground", outer space is "way up there", the Shuttle is a "flying canoe", the ISS is "the place in outer space where they live", and a rocket is an "exploding arrow". I just think the whole project of "how do we describe this novel situation with the words we have without just using loan words" is neat. Not that I ever got more than a paragraph or two into Uncleftish Beholding despite an actual love of chemistry, but, like, my favorite word in Spanish was always "ovni", un objeto volante non identificado, a UFO. (I liked that it was also an acronym, like, Spanish wouldn't necessarily have to use the same approach to coming up with this word, but they did.) Anyways, Q was surprisingly engaged with reading through this glossary and sounding out the pronunciations of the Chickasaw words, and I appreciate books in which Native American people are still here and doing things as opposed to only showing up In History.

Otis and Will Discover the Deep, Barb Rosenstock and Katherine Roy, is beautifully illustrated nonfiction about the 1930 first dive of the Bathysphere deep-sea submersible. I thought this did a good job of balancing the risk and scariness of this with the wonder of the deep ocean - there's a great double-fold-out at the climactic deepest point teeming with fish and squids and krill. Q tried to close the book when he saw the author's note but he let me read him a few more facts about how deep the Bathysphere eventually went and how deep the Trieste went later, and he thought it was interesting how the illustrator had people pose for reference photos looking through, like, the circular window in a play tent to stand in for a porthole.

Fell behind while we were in San Diego, trying to get back on track.

Some grown up books:

In the Labyrinth of Drakes and Within the Sanctuary of Wings, books four and five of Marie Brennan's Lady Trent series. Wow I loved these. (spoilers) ( Read more... )

Stories of the Raksura 2, the novellas The Dead City and The Dark Earth Below. I enjoyed these a lot, especially The Dark Earth Below. She does such a good mix of character development and fantasy adventure.

Some picture books:

Leave Me Alone, Vera Brosgol. Adorable story about a woman looking for a quiet place to knit, from the former Pants Press comics writer/artist. Q really liked this one.

The Boy Who Loved Math: The Improbable Life of Paul Erdős, by Deborah Heiligman, illustrated by LeUyen Pham. So, on the one hand, this is charming and heartwarming in the way that picture book biographies sometimes are, yay Uncle Paul who had friends all over the world and did lots of great math, and on the other hand I can't help but notice how many of those friends were men, and when they talk about how his friends had to do his laundry and cook for him and pay his bills, they show men, but, realistically, were they, or did this inevitably fall to the ubiquitous supportive wives? Like, yes, some people are nonneurotypical and I want to live in the kind of world that supports them in realizing their potential, but I'm pretty done with the trope of the genius man-child who's too special and important for self-responsibility, and a picture-book level take on Erdős can't really tell me how much it was one or the other (or both, or neither, life is complicated). I just can't help but imagine that *women* who woke people up at 4 am to do math were more likely to get sedatives than hundreds of coauthors.

Separate Is Never Equal: Sylvia Mendez & Her Family's Fight for Desegregation, Duncan Tonatiuh. Despite growing up in SoCal I had never even heard of Sylvia Mendez, whose case came seven years before Brown v. Board. Thurgood Marshall wrote friend-of-the-court briefs for the Mendez case, and Earl Warren was the CA governor who signed the desegregation of CA schools into law because of the Mendez case. Anyways, we read this as part of my ongoing effort to make my kids aware of the history of racism in this country. It's always a little nerve-wracking to read a book in which characters express bigoted views, since, like, what if that's what Quentin remembers and takes away, but we talked some about how those were hurtful lies, and it ends on a page celebrating interracial friendships, so, fingers crossed? (Junie read it by herself but I talked to her about it too.) I just really want to try to get some ideas of justice in there before our new white supremacist dictatorship enrolls the kids in the MAGA Youth and starts indoctrinating them, aaaaaaugh.

Some movies:

Won't You Be My Neighbor, the Mr. Rogers documentary. I grew up watching a great deal of Mr. Rogers (although I could never interest my own kids in it) so it was really interesting to look back on it and get this perspective.

Ant-Man and Wasp. I enjoyed the heck out of this - definitely the "lighthearted fun" end of the superhero spectrum, but, you know what, I love that end. Great action, some really fun games with size (love that trope forever), highly attractive people... (spoilers) ( Read more... ) Anyways I really enjoyed the 3D and thought it was a great call to see it that way, really enhanced the action.

Kicking off my Hugo-finalist reading with Scalzi's The Collapsing Empire, which I knew I would enjoy pretty much exactly to the degree I did. I think I've said this before, but I have a huge respect for Scalzi's mastery of his craft. His pacing never bogs down, he lands his beats, he has interesting story premises. (And, as a bonus, he has plot preferences very compatible with my own, like, "competent people try to deal with shit"... I get impatient with self-sabotage and passive protagonists.) Buuut... to me, this more like makes Scalzi one of the top authors whose new book I would want to have on my phone while stuck in some tedious/stressful situation allowing for occasional reading, than it makes this the top book I'm excited about this year and want to recommend to others/to The Future/etc. Collapsing Empire doesn't do anything particularly original or surprising or important or amazing, it's just a good read, and I definitely recommend it *as* a good read! But I want to see the big awards go to stuff I have to describe with more exclamation points (even if they're possibly not quite so professionally polished, even).

I read The Prince and the Dressmaker the day I bought it, but am finally reviewing it post-Junie getting it as a birthday present. (Yes, I read my kid's book before she got to open it, it was irresistible). I've been a fan of Jen Wang since the Pants Press/Strings of Fate days (okay, technically I can't confirm this is the same Jen Wang, but it's got to be, young webcomics Jen Wang connects to professionally published Jen Wang through Flight) and this is a terrific book that I definitely recommend if you like beautiful drawing or sweet romance or genderfuckery or coming of age stories or [SPOILERS] ( Read more... ). Junie liked it too.

Also a shoutout to Abigail the Whale, picture book by Davide Cali and Sonja Bougaeva, which was interesting-looking enough to my kids that both of them had already pulled it out of the library-book basket to read by the time I got around to reading it to them. (Junie of course mostly reads on her own and Q is starting to do more of that too, but I do like to sometimes read them things that are coming off my to-read list picture book category.) Nice messages both of positive thinking/visualization and appreciating your bigness (superwhale! yay), and there's some really cute, sweet art. I don't know if it's really possible to inoculate my kids against mainstream fatphobia (or, for that matter, gender rigidity), but these books that try make *me* happy *right now*, which definitely counts for something. (My mom maybe tried to start something about "Prince and the Dressmaker", all "that book you gave Junie looked... interesting" and I was just like "yeah, it's so good!! :) :)" and she didn't have anything else to say to that.)

I don't review everything my kids read, but here's two worth mentioning:

Accident! by Andrea Tsurumi is a picture book about a little armadillo who spills some juice and decides she'd better hide in the library until she's a grownup. On the way to the library she encounters many other animals experiencing DISASTER, MAJOR MESS, WRECK, FIASCO, MAYHEM, CALAMITY, and CATASTROPHE, until a voice of wisdom points out they're all just accidents, and then there's a really beautiful page of things you can do next: offer sympathy, offer help, ask for help, apologize, check in. I got this from the library for Q but I might need to buy it for myself home.

Pashmina by Nidhi Chanani is a YA graphic novel about an Indian-American girl who becomes curious about her mother's homeland and past, while also dealing with some resentful feelings about changes to her family. I'm calling it YA rather than middle grade because the character is a teenager and deals with some mildly heavy topics (like her father having abandoned her mother) but Junie read it and enjoyed it and I would feel comfortable recommending it to other kids Junie's age who like similar things (maybe after a parental check of the abandonment content).

The Raven and the Reindeer, T. Kingfisher who is Ursula Vernon, 2016. A nifty YA novelization of "The Snow Queen" fairytale, with shapeshifting, and the having-to-overcome-feeling-stupid part of being a hero, and lesbians, and realizations about dangling after jerkboys. Recommended, especially if you like Fire and Hemlock.

A Closed And Common Orbit, Becky Chambers, 2016. Sort-of sequel to Long Way To A Small Angry Planet, although most of the characters from that aren't in this one. This one is more serious and intense, grapples SFnally with some not-unfamiliar brain stuff? Also I criiiiied so much oh my gosh, really hit some of my buttons for that. Recommended but while I think you *could* read them in either order, this one definitely spoils some stuff that happens in Long Way so my suggestion is to read them in publication order.

The Curious World of Calpurnia Tate, Jacqueline Kelly, 2016. Sequel to Evolution of etc. Kelly has answered my objection about the previous book and laid out a path by which Callie might actually escape and make it to college! Really hoping we get a third one of these with some bigger time jumps so we can see her do it. Are series that start with a juvenile protagonist and follow them all the way into adulthood rarer now than they used to be? I mean, there's Harry Potter, but I feel like stuff like, oh, all the big classic old timey girls series, Anne and Little House and Betsy/Tacy, and then the fantasy classics like Dragonsong and Alanna, there's this whole thing where the content (and, especially in the older series, the complexity of the writing), "grows up" along with the characters. I don't know whether someone could sell a series like that today - specifically I don't know whether Kelly might have. I guess there's Princess Diaries, hrm.

The Case of the Invisible Dog and The Case of the Secret Scribbler, E.W. Hildick, illustrated by Lisl Weil. We've finally caught up to McGurks I remember! Not all or even most of the details - I think I would have read these in like 1984, and never re-read them past elementary school - but there's bits where I'm like "oh yeeeah, this is familiar." Invisible Dog is really charming, and Secret Scribbler involves an Actual Crime TM!

The Storyteller, Evan Turk, picture book, 2016. I don't follow the Caldecott (so no idea what they've been awarding) but I could see this making the list. Really neat story about storytelling, with nested framing stories. Junie was intrigued and wanted to discuss further, which she rarely does about her reading!

Zoom, Istvan Banyai. Q was fascinated by this wordless picture book in which steady "zooming out" reveals scenes to be pictures cleverly inset in other scenes. After we went through together he spent a long time flipping back and forth through the pages "zooming".