Review of Blood at the Root, by LaDarrion Williams

Award Winners, Paranormal, Teen Fiction Review 0

Blood at the Root

by LaDarrion Williams

Labyrinth Road, 2024. 419 pages.
Review written April 29, 2025, from a library book.
2024 Cybils Award Finalist, Young Adult Speculative Fiction

Blood at the Root is about a boy who learns he has magic in his veins and can go to a school for others like him and learn to control and wield his powers. Sound familiar? In this case, the boy is a Black boy named Malik, who’s been living in foster care for ten years, since he was seven. That was when his power manifested, his mother disappeared, and he remembers dead bodies in the noise and confusion. So he’s always felt responsible for his mother’s death.

But now Malik is seventeen, and he’s been emancipated. He’s going to break his young foster brother Taye out of a bad situation and head to California to start a new life.

But things don’t go as planned – and Malik’s powerful magical grandmother finds them. She sends Malik to the oldest HBCU of them all – Caiman University, where the students learn to harness their power. Malik gives in to the scheme after he’s sees pictures of his Mama at Caiman. Maybe he can find out what actually happened to her.

Meanwhile, kids are disappearing both inside and outside Caiman U, and some are being found with their magic drained. There’s talk that the dreaded Bokors are coming back, and rumors that Malik’s mother knew something about them.

You’ve got your traditional good-vs-evil story as Malik tries to learn to use his magic as well as figure out whom he can trust and which side is the good side.

This isn’t a kids’ magic school. It’s a university, and there’s plenty of cussing and partying, plus plenty of violence and some sex. I personally prefer fantasy novels where I understand how the magic works and have a better idea of where the plot is going and the motivations of the characters. This one did keep me reading. Where Blood at the Root shines is how the magic is rooted in Black history and culture. I love the dedication:

This is dedicated to the seventeen-year-old Black boy who the world told he doesn’t have magic.

Lemme let you in on a lil’ secret: you do.
It is in your blood; it is nestled deep in your bones.
It is in the very soil you walk on that’s been blessed by the sweat and tears of your ancestors.
Walk in it with pride.

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Review of Charts for Babies, by Michelle Rial

Delightfully Silly, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

Charts for Babies

by Michelle Rial

Abrams Appleseed, 2026. 36 pages.
Review written June 2, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

This book makes my mathematical heart happy! Mind you, I’m the mom who, frustrated when grading third-semester calculus papers, taught my small children the chain rule of calculus. (Just the pattern, not anything about the concepts behind it.)

This book, too, gives small children some patterns – and maybe they’ll notice some concepts. But that’s kind of not the point.

It’s all light and happy with pages in rainbow colors and rhyming text. And we see things in charts. Here are a couple of examples of the text in spreads:

This is wide.
This is narrow.
This is a line.
This is an arrow.

And of course that’s accompanied by an appropriate chart. Here’s another:

This is a block.
This is a stack.
This is a duck.
The duck says, “Quack Quack!”

The charts are all pretty much that simple, with some excuses to give hugs at the end.

And then on the final end papers, we get a key to the types of charts used – in a chart: Venn diagram, column chart, dumbbell chart, area chart, scatter plot, bubble chart, matrix, pie chart, bar chart, sound wave chart, timeline, decision tree, line chart, concentric diagram, spiral graph, and key. That last box is wonderfully self-referential.

So you see – they will learn something! It’s all clever and fun. What is a chart, after all, but a visual representation of something, a way to understand it at a glance? I always love a read-aloud that parents will enjoy, too, and this one is 100% fun!

michellerial.com

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Review of A Hymn to Life, by Gisèle Pelicot

Audiobooks, Starred Review, True Stories 0

A Hymn to Life

Shame Has to Change Sides

by Gisèle Pelicot
read by Emma Thompson
translated by Natasha Lehrer and Ruth Diver

Books on Tape, 2026. 7 hours, 23 minutes.
Review written May 19, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

This book mentions some horrific events – and I’m so glad I read it. I came away encouraged and emboldened and so full of admiration for Gisèle Pelicot.

Gisèle Pelicot is the famous case of a woman who was drugged and raped by her husband and offered up to other men over a period of ten years. When it came time for the trial in 2024, she made the decision not to have a closed court, as most women did. Because, as she’d heard in a slogan before, “Shame has to change sides.” Besides, she didn’t want to be shut in a room with fifty-two men who had raped her and their lawyers. Let public outcry help them begin to face up to what they had done.

The book opens in 2020 when Madame Pelicot and her husband were asked to come to the police station. From here on out, I’ll do as she did and call him Dominique, since he is not her husband any longer. Gisèle knew that he had recently been arrested for taking video up women’s skirts in a grocery store – and the police had seized his phone and computer.

After they arrived at the station, they were taken to different rooms. Gisèle didn’t realize that Dominique was being arrested. But in the room where she was taken, a compassionate police officer showed her pictures of a woman who looked like she was dead being sexually abused by Dominique and many other men. They confirmed that the woman in the pictures was Gisèle, and no, she had not consented to any of this and had no knowledge of any of this.

Of course she was in complete shock that first day. The news brought devastation to her whole family.

She also tells the story of her childhood and how they met. They both had tough childhoods – his with a sexually abusive father – and she’d always thought they’d rescued each other. Looking back, there were some red flags, but she’d thought they were just regular bumps in a marriage.

Something I appreciate about her story is that she refuses to give up all her good memories of Dominique. They had decades of what she thought was a good marriage, three children, and plenty of love and laughter between them.

I appreciated this because my own ex-husband had an affair and left me – not anywhere near as big an offense – but I, too, refuse to give up my good memories of him or deny that I was happy in those many years of our marriage. Like Gisèle, I was told plenty of lies – though, again, certainly not nearly as many – but enough to relate to her experience of having to figure out her past and what was real and what was lies.

And she was dealing with at least ten years of deception. Her mother died of a brain tumor when Gisèle was nine years old, so when she started having blackouts, she assumed she was going to die like her mother. She also had strange vaginal discharges. She saw multiple doctors and had tests run, with Dominique solicitously accompanying her – and they didn’t find any problems. But she even stopped driving because she’d had an incident in a car when she couldn’t stay on the road. And when the detectives checked her hair, they discovered traces of the poisons Dominique had been giving her. All her symptoms cleared up when he was in prison.

I was chilled by a story when, early on, she’d teased him, “You aren’t drugging me, are you?” – and he started crying that she would accuse him of such a thing, even in jest! I’ve learned that’s a common self-defense mechanism of liars. My own ex would say “How dare you accuse me of… ” such and so – and I’d always find out later that’s exactly what he’d done. As they say about Donald Trump, “Every accusation is a confession” – but at the time, when it’s your beloved husband making the accusation, it is amazingly effective at making a wife feel guilty for even a fleeting thought that he could have done anything bad.

Another thing that struck me was the compassion and dedication of the police officers who investigated and uncovered the truth of what Dominique had done. They had to go through graphic videos to compile the evidence. Would American authorities have shown the same diligence and care for sexually assaulted women or girls? The way they’re handling the Epstein files makes me not at all sure. So I appreciate that it was law enforcement who got this man – and his many recruits – put behind bars.

There were many stages in Gisèle’s healing journey, and of course she will always have work to do. But I was happy to see her spirit lighten when she found a home of her own on an island (instead of living with her kids, who were also traumatized) and made new friends in the neighborhood. And then she found a loving and compassionate man to be her new partner in life. (Or rather those new friends set them up.)

And then the biggest turning point was when she decided not to have a closed court case after all. She decided not to be ashamed of what they had done to her. Let the world know, so that these men would be ashamed. Shame has to change sides.

She knew she’d made the right choice when she started getting a flood of letters from other women. And women showed up in throngs around the courthouse to show her their love and support. Women across the world felt that she was standing up for us.

And I appreciate the title of the book. Gisèle Pelicot is a woman who celebrates life. She has not let the bullies win. Despite what was done to her, she refuses to be ashamed, and she refuses to let that ruin the rest of her life. The book ends with a joyful relishing of life – not a life without difficulties, but still a happy life.

Oh, and I love that they chose Emma Thompson to read the audiobook. I know her British accent is not a French one, but her cultivated voice gives Gisèle the elegance and grace she deserves as she tells her story of standing up for the truth.

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Review of Love at Second Sight, by F. T. Lukens

Audiobooks, Paranormal, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Love at Second Sight

by F. T. Lukens
read by Kevin R. Free

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2025. 11 hours, 41 minutes.
Review written May 29, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I love F. T. Lukens’ books! An Kevin R. Free reading them has gotten me feeling like I’m listening to a story told by a lovable friend.

Love at Second Sight is set in a world just like ours – except magic and paranormal abilities are completely normal. And so is being queer. In fact, queer is probably not the right term to use, because nobody bats an eye at Cam, our protagonist, having a crush on another boy. And everybody is fine with Cam’s best friend Al using they/them pronouns. People are cool with Al’s two moms.

But paranormal abilities, though all around them, are not quite as accepted by people like Cam’s parents. They’re hoping that for Cam’s Sophomore year of high school, he’ll make some new friends and spend less time with Al, who’s a witch. Cam doesn’t tell them about his crush on a werewolf. He’s starting at a new high school that has a much higher percentage of paranormal students than his old one.

And that first day of Sophomore year does not go well. First some little things go wrong, and then he gets stuck in the middle of a large fight between werewolves and sprites in the middle of a hall. He gets thrown against some lockers, and while he’s out cold, he has a vision of a girl who’s been stabbed and seems to be dying, and Cam in the vision is holding a bloody knife in his hands.

As things develop, it turns out that Cam has a paranormal gift that’s incredibly rare – he’s a clairvoyant who gets true visions of the future when someone touches him.

But that brings up the questions: Who touched him in the hallway? Who is the bloody girl? Can he warn her and save her life? And can he keep his parents from finding out?

After a video of Cam having another clairvoyant vision goes viral, Cam gathers a hodgepodge team of friends who help him deal with his new fame and help him identify the girl and try to save her. At the same time, all the various paranormal guilds and factions want to recruit him to form an exclusive relationship with them and give them an advantage over any adversaries.

There are plenty of obstacles and angst along the way, as well as time with that werewolf Cam has a crush on. The book is full of suspense with a mystery to solve, but plenty of humor to go along with it. And you can’t help feeling for a kid who thought he was a normal human suddenly having paranormal powers everybody wants a piece of.

Although the book is completely absorbing as a story and was not written as a parable, there are some parallels between how Cam is treated with paranormal abilities and how queer people are treated in our world. Those added resonance and made some horrible reactions feel all too believable. This also made me all the more satisfied with the lovely happy ending. This book left me smiling.

ft-lukens.com

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Review of The Black Mambas, by Kelly Crull

Children's Nonfiction Review, Science, Starred Review 0

The Black Mambas

The World’s First All-Woman Anti-Poaching Unit

by Kelly Crull

Millbrook Press, 2025. 42 pages.
Review written May 11, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

The story told in this nonfiction picture book (for upper elementary school readers) is just plain cool.

The Black Mambas are a group of women park rangers who protect the wildlife of the Olifants West Nature Reserve in South Africa’s Greater Kruger National Park.

The book explains the problem of poachers and how and why animals living in the reserve were being killed. Then it talks about local young women being recruited and learning the job – and the training and physically hard work they do to detect signs of poachers and stop them. Women are empowered to protect their communities.

This book is super informative and lavishly illustrated with photographs. It’s also inviting to young readers. Right at the front, there are head shots of twenty members of the Black Mambas, with their first names and the question, “Can you find all of us in the book?” They have little quizzes like identifying animal tracks and thinking how you would patrol given a map where poacher tracks have been found. (Note: Some of the quizzes seem a little too hard. On the page asking you to find “all four snares in this area,” I couldn’t find them at all and didn’t see a place with answers. Other simpler quizzes, like the one matching tracks, did have answers on the page.)

I especially liked the page with the Code of Honor. The reader is asked to “Stand proud and say these words with us.” The Code of Honor begins:

I am a Mamba hear me clear,
Poachers be warned, I have no fear.
Fauna and flora I pledge to protect,
There is always something to detect.
Eyes and ears serve the ground,
Here and there and all around.
From dusk to dawn, this promise I keep,
Protect the voiceless while they sleep.

The book includes photos of things they recovered at a poacher camp, as well as close-ups of the animals they protect (which are still dangerous).

They also have an educational component, teaching the children of surrounding villages to protect and take pride in their animal neighbors.

This is a gorgeous book about a group of women doing powerful and valuable work.

kellycrull.com
transfrontierafrica.org/blackmambas

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Review of The Favorites, by Layne Fargo

Audiobooks, Award Winners, Contemporary, Fiction Review 0

The Favorites

by Layne Fargo
read by Christine Lakin and a full cast

Books on Tape, 2025. 14 hours, 41 minutes.
Review written March 9, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
2026 Alex Award Winner

The Alex Awards are given to ten books every year for the best books published for adults of interest to teens. I placed holds on the ones that our library had in eaudiobook form, and this was one.

This book is the story of a fictional Olympic ice dancing pair whose story is full of scandal as well as pathos. This book is set up to be a documentary of their real story, produced ten years after their final appearance skating together.

As a mock documentary, this was perfect for audiobook. They did use a full cast, so it feels like the actual people – friends, rivals, and officials who knew the pair – commenting on the big events in their lives.

Katarina Shaw and Heath Rocha met when they were children in a small town north of Chicago. When Kat was 9 years old and had just lost her mother, she saw Sheila Lin win gold in the Olympic games as an ice dancer. Kat wanted nothing more than to be just like her. Then Heath Rocha, an orphan in foster care, came along and learned to skate so he could be her partner. They operated on a shoestring budget until they were 16 years old and got the attention of none other than Sheila Lin – and got to train with her one summer in her academy in Los Angeles.

And so their notorious career began. They were recruited to stay on in order to push Sheila’s children to greater heights, the twins Bella and Garret Lin.

This book reads like a gossip magazine. Kat and Heath were obsessed with one another – but not necessarily good for each other. Their relationship, as well as their ice dancing, has many ups and downs as the book goes on.

I’ve never actually been a fan of gossip magazines, and the book felt long (I’m spoiled by reading a lot of children’s books.) – but I still never seriously considered quitting listening. It did have me hooked. Since I started reading it right after the Winter Olympics, it felt timely. (Though I found myself wishing I’d started it before – I would have paid more attention to ice dancing.)

There’s plenty of drama here. Love and obsession. The question of which is more important: people or gold medals? Manipulators out for their own purposes. But by the end, we do see growth and even some wisdom in the characters. I did like reading this after hearing Alysa Liu talking about skating for the love of the art. I think Kat and Heath got there by the end. And the journey is quite a ride.

laynefargo.com

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Review of Everything We Never Had, by Randy Ribay

Audiobooks, Award Winners, Historical, Teen Fiction Review 0

Everything We Never Had

by Randy Ribay
read by Ramón de Ocampo, Jesse Inocalla, Manny Jacinto, and J. B. Tadena

Listening Library, 2024. 6 hours, 42 minutes.
Review written April 29, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
2025 Asian/Pacific American Award for Young Adult Literature Winner
National Book Award Longlist

Everything We Never Had is a story of four generations of Filipino-American men. The first was Francisco, who came after World War II and tried to make money to send home to his family – but found instead prejudice, hatred, and low wages.

Francisco’s son Emil hated the way his father was never home, always traveling to organize the farm workers. He chose a different path and planned to go to college and make something of himself.

Emil’s son Chris wanted to play football and study history. But his father wanted him to focus on studies that would get him a good job some day.

And Chris’s son Enzo is dealing with anxiety. There’s talk of a pandemic, and his father asks him if he will give up his room so Lolo Emil can stay with them instead of in the retirement community. Enzo knows that Chris doesn’t like being with his father, and Emil doesn’t like being with them, but they can’t let him get sick and die.

I liked the way this book gives us insights into the things each generation had to deal with, including lots of history – and how it led to misunderstandings. The stories are interwoven a bit at a time, so I didn’t get the insights on most until after I’d already seen ways they weren’t a very good father. So this is an interesting exercise in learning to see from new perspectives.

Each man as a father tries to give his son everything he never had. Some are more successful than others. In the present-day pandemic, three generations need to learn to get along.

randyribay.com

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Review of Sometimes We Pray, by Mary Wagley Copp, illustrated by Felishia Henditirto

Contemporary, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

Sometimes We Pray

by Mary Wagley Copp
illustrated by Felishia Henditirto

Charlesbridge, 2026. 36 pages.
Review written April 20, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

Here is a simple and inclusive book about how all kinds of people from all over the world in all kinds of situations and all kinds of ways all pray.

The book is simple – it doesn’t talk about who or what different groups pray to. Instead, it talks about what we have in common – we pray. And it does show the variety of ways that happens.

I love the story at the back of why the author wrote the book:

One day, in the middle of an ELL (English language learners) class, two of my Syrian students stood up with their prayer rugs, went to a corner of the room, and knelt in prayer. Another student, a former pastor from Burundi, suggested that we sit silently as they prayed. The class obliged. A student from Haiti made a sign of the cross and others bowed their heads, as we sat in silence. When the class resumed, a lengthy conversation ensued – as best we could with the variety of languages we spoke – of what prayer meant to each of us. The curiosity of the students, coming from vastly different cultures, was heartening. In making space for, listening to, and hearing different perspectives, we found connection and discovered many shared values. Sometimes We Pray is inspired by that class. It is an offering to initiate similar explorations. During my research, many people shared their perspectives and practices, and I am grateful for their generous and open spirit.

The main text of the book stays simple, suitable to read to a child:

Sometimes we kneel.
Sometimes we bend and bow.
Or lie flat.

We might pray with each step. [Here there’s a picture of Buddhist monks walking in a labyrinth.]
strumming each string,
inspecting each incredible leg, [Here there’s a picture of a child looking at a praying mantis.]
or maybe…
marveling at a star.

The book goes on to talk about positions of prayer, what we do with our hands, times we pray, ways we pray, places we pray.

I like the part at the end that does include praying in difficult times:

Sometimes we wonder if prayer works.
Someone we love gets sick…
and doesn’t get better.

Someone is hungry or
doesn’t have a home.
The rain doesn’t stop or
never
comes.

But we keep praying, wherever we are.

We might be praying the same prayer,
sowing the same seeds, or…
marveling at the same star.

The beautifully painted pictures accompany a few lines on each spread. They portray people of many different cultures and religions, from many different parts of the world – and viscerally show us how much we are all alike in this way.

This isn’t a book I’d use to introduce a child to prayer. As a Christian, I’d use the tried-and-true “Prayer is talking to God.” But once a child has seen how their own family prays, this book is a glorious way to point out that others may do it differently, but so many others of us here on earth do pray.

marywagleycopp.com
felishiahenditirto.com

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Review of How the Word Is Passed, by Clint Smith, adapted by Sonja Cherry-Paul

History, Starred Review, Teen Nonfiction 0

How the Word Is Passed

Remembering Slavery and How it Shaped America

by Clint Smith
adapted for young readers by Sonja Cherry-Paul

Little, Brown and Company, 2025. 305 pages.
Review written May 27, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

I’m going to put this on my Teen Nonfiction page of the website, but it’s appropriate for upper elementary school on up. I didn’t feel talked down to when I was reading it, and it was interesting and engaging all the way.

This is a book about how we tell the story of slavery. And I’m afraid there were many eye-opening facts I didn’t know. The author visits seven historic sites and talks with the curators there about the history of slavery at that place – and how it’s smoothed over or how people are trying to confront it. He tells us about each visit and the people he met, and the book is a fascinating melding of the past and the present – helping the reader better understand just how much slavery underpins our lives today.

For the first stop at Monticello, the author went on a tour specifically about Thomas Jefferson’s relationship with slavery. This book doesn’t have a lot to say about Jefferson’s relationship with Sally Hemings – probably because it’s a children’s book. But it still has plenty to say about the contrast between Jefferson’s words in the Declaration of Independence and the way he treated his slaves.

Though Jefferson understood the devastating impact that selling an enslaved person to another plantation could have on the rest of the enslaved population, he still sold more than one hundred people over the course of his life. He separated children as young as thirteen from their parents by sale, he bought children as young as eleven, and he separated children under ten from their families by transferring them between his own properties or giving them to his own family members as gifts.

Jefferson believed that he might free himself from any guilt over the brutality of slavery by avoiding its most extreme forms of physical violence. But as an enslaver, there was no such thing as avoiding the violence of slavery – to own an enslaved person was itself to make yourself a participant in the inherent violence of the institution. Additionally, when he felt it necessary to maintain the order that made his life possible, Jefferson did engage in some of the very brutal practices he claimed to so deeply loathe.

When an enslaved man who worked in Monticello’s nail factory was caught a year after he escaped, Jefferson wrote, “I had him severely flogged in the presence of his old companions.” Although he attempted to create distance between himself and the abuse by assigning the whipping to an overseer, Jefferson knew, just as slave holders throughout the South knew, that the spectacle of public assault was a means of both asserting authority over, and maintaining order among, enslaved workers.

The other places the author visits include Whitney Plantation, where they attempt to show what plantation life was like for the enslaved people; Angola Prison, where mostly Black men are incarcerated, and where they try to smooth over the history of enslavement in that place; Blandford Cemetery, where Confederate soldiers are honored with beautiful stained-glass windows but don’t talk about what the Confederacy stood for; Galveston Island, where they reenact the story of Juneteenth, when enslaved people in Texas first learned they’d been freed; New York City, where enslaved people were auctioned off, and where a Black settlement was leveled to create Central Park; and finally Gorée Island in Senegal, where human beings were shipped across the ocean, passing through the Door of No Return.

I like the way the book is filled with facts, but it’s told as an absorbing story. He interacts with people who live in each place and talks with them about what that history means to them.

This ends up being a powerful book. I’m glad this information has been put in a form accessible and interesting to children, because this is an important part of our national history, and shouldn’t be glossed over. So far, I’m going to recommend this book to kids from about fifth or sixth grade up – but also to adults. Is this more concisely told than the adult version? I’m going to put that one on hold to see, but so far this one is packed with a satisfying amount of information, told in an absorbing way.

clintsmithiii.com
sonyacherrypaul.com
lbyr.com

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Review of Dream On, by Shannon Hale and Marcela Cespedes

Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Graphic Novel 0

Dream On

written by Shannon Hale
illustrated by Marcela Cespedes
colors by Lark Pien

Roaring Brook Press, 2025. 236 pages.
Review written May 26, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

I always love it when a children’s book features a big family. We kids from big families are underrepresented, because all those characters are hard to keep track of. This is a graphic novel about a middle school kid named Cassie who’s dealing with friendships and family relationships – so pretty much your classic middle school graphi novel. It reminds me very much of Shannon Hale’s autobiographical Real Friends series, because Cassie, too, is imaginative and not willing to give up pretend play as quickly as her friends are.

One of the features of this book is that early on, Cassie opens a letter that tells her she’s “already won” three fabulous prizes. So she keeps the mailer and thinks about what she’ll do with the prizes when she gets them. And she doesn’t order magazines – it says “No Purchase Necessary” – and doesn’t enclose any money, but she does put stickers for the magazines she likes in the spots on the order form.

The magazines start coming. What will her mother say when she finds out Cassie sent that in? That’s scarier than thinking about what she’ll say when they all get into their new car so they don’t have to go places in two shifts.

So at home, Cassie dreams about that – and finally getting attention from her mother. (The reader doesn’t have to try to keep track of the siblings in her family. There are a lot.) At school, there’ a new girl who’s coming between Cassie and her long-time best friend. And the new girl thinks Cassie’s favorite teacher is weird. Is she maybe right about that? It’s so hard to tell.

I like Cassie’s character because I was an imaginative kid, too – though I’d pretty much stopped admitting to it by middle school. But I also remember the fascination of those “YOU may HAVE ALREADY WON!!!” letters in the mail. My older siblings were quick to disillusion me, but I may have, well, ordered some magazines when I was a young adult. And daydreamed at least a little about what I’d do if I won. So Cassie’s predicament was easy to imagine.

This book came out in 2025, but our order was a casualty of Baker and Taylor going out of business, and it accidentally didn’t get reordered and the holds have piled up. But I’m happy it’s arrived just in time for summer reading, and the second book in the series, coming out in August.

shannonhale.com
mackids.com

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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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