Shoutout to librarians!

April whizzed by! Between oral surgery (bleh) and the kids’ spring break (whee?) I got a lot of reading (and some writing) done.

My younger son & I visited the main branch of the New Orleans Public Library, and the kids’ room librarian was so excited to offer us books based on what we were perusing. She sent us home with authors and titles I would not have found on my own (same with my kid), and we have buzzed through them. Now we need to request the sequels!

So a shoutout to librarians, whose enthusiasm & spot-on recommendations brought many hours of spooky delight in worlds we would not have otherwise encountered.

I’m still working through my stack, but here are a few of my latest reads.

Ginny's books

The Magic Words: Writing Great Books for Children and Young Adults
it was amazing
A classic in the making, great for writing workshops or DIY MFAs. This book should be on every serious writer’s bookshelf, whether writing for kids or adults. After hearing glowing reviews, I finally picked up a copy, and it did not disa…
Black Wings Beating
really liked it
Marvelous world building. Everything is sky- or bird-related, commerce to religion to slang–even the oncoming war has to do with who controls the skies. The primary story, about siblings on a quest for the Ghost Eagle, is tightly woven,…
The Peculiar
liked it
Enjoyed the worldbuilding–who wouldn’t love an alternate, steampunk Victorian England in which humans and faeries live side by side?–but never really connected with the characters or the plot. Maybe because a murder mystery for kids, i…
Night of Cake & Puppets
really liked it
I haven’t (yet) read the Daughter of Smoke & Bone series, but I found this short novel fun, romantic, clever, and sweet with a just-dark-enough edge. The characters are engagingly odd, and their complicated courting ritual a delightful w…
Muse of Nightmares
it was amazing
Fabulous sequel that raises the stakes even higher than in Strange the Dreamer. More than Lazlo and Sarai’s relationship is at stake; the city is set to go to war with its newfound inhabitants, so similar to the gods who tormented them f…

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