What's New? Stacking the Shelves

Stacking the Shelves is a weekly meme hosted by Tynga's Reviews. Hop on over there to ogle what other bloggers got this week.

For Review:

Image: Penguin Random House

When Stars are Scattered by Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed. 264 p. Dial Books for Young Readers/ Penguin Random House, April 14, 2020. 9780525553908.

Publisher synopsis: Heartbreak and hope exist together in this remarkable graphic novel about growing up in a refugee camp, as told by a Somali refugee to the Newbery Honor-winning creator of Roller Girl.

Omar and his younger brother, Hassan, have spent most of their lives in Dadaab, a refugee camp in Kenya. Life is hard there: never enough food, achingly dull, and without access to the medical care Omar knows his nonverbal brother needs. So when Omar has the opportunity to go to school, he knows it might be a chance to change their future . . . but it would also mean leaving his brother, the only family member he has left, every day.

Heartbreak, hope, and gentle humor exist together in this graphic novel about a childhood spent waiting, and a young man who is able to create a sense of family and home in the most difficult of settings. It's an intimate, important, unforgettable look at the day-to-day life of a refugee, as told to New York Times Bestselling author/artist Victoria Jamieson by Omar Mohamed, the Somali man who lived the story.

Image: Penguin Random House

Lifting as We Climb: Black women's battle for the ballot box by Evette Dionne. 176 p. Viking/ Penguin Random House, April 21, 2020. 9780451481542.

Publisher synopsis: For African American women, the fight for the right to vote was only one battle. 

An eye-opening book that tells the important, overlooked story of black women as a force in the suffrage movement—when fellow suffragists did not accept them as equal partners in the struggle.

Susan B. Anthony. Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Alice Paul. The Women's Rights Convention at Seneca Falls. The 1913 Women's March in D.C. When the epic story of the suffrage movement in the United States is told, the most familiar leaders, speakers at meetings, and participants in marches written about or pictured are generally white.

The real story isn't monochromatic.

Women of color, especially African American women, were fighting for their right to vote and to be treated as full, equal citizens of the United States. Their battlefront wasn't just about gender. African American women had to deal with white abolitionist-suffragists who drew the line at sharing power with their black sisters. They had to overcome deep, exclusionary racial prejudices that were rife in the American suffrage movement. And they had to maintain their dignity—and safety—in a society that tried to keep them in its bottom ranks.

Lifting as We Climb is the empowering story of African American women who refused to accept all this. Women in black church groups, black female sororities, black women's improvement societies and social clubs. Women who formed their own black suffrage associations when white-dominated national suffrage groups rejected them. Women like Mary Church Terrell, a founder of the National Association of Colored Women and of the NAACP; or educator-activist Anna Julia Cooper who championed women getting the vote and a college education; or the crusading journalist Ida B. Wells, a leader in both the suffrage and anti-lynching movements.

Author Evette Dionne, a feminist culture writer and the editor-in-chief of Bitch Media, has uncovered an extraordinary and underrepresented history of black women. In her powerful book, she draws an important historical line from abolition to suffrage to civil rights to contemporary young activists—filling in the blanks of the American suffrage story.

Image: Penguin Random House

Echo Mountain by Lauren Wolk. 368 p. Dutton/ Penguin Random House, April 21, 2020. 9780525555568.

Publisher synopsis: The Newbery Honor–winning author of Wolf Hollow and Beyond the Bright Sea returns with the story of an unforgettable young heroine in Depression-era Maine.

After the financial crash, Ellie and her family have lost nearly everything—including their home in town. Forced to start over, Ellie has found a welcome freedom, and a love of the natural world, in her new life on Echo Mountain. But there is little joy, even for Ellie, as her family struggles with the aftermath of an accident that left her father in a coma. An accident for which Ellie has accepted the unearned weight of blame.

Determined to help her father, Ellie will make her way to the top of the mountain in search of the healing secrets of a woman known only as “the hag." But the hag, and the mountain, still have many untold stories left to reveal and, with them, a fresh chance at happiness.

Critically acclaimed author Lauren Wolk weaves a stunning tale of resilience, persistence, and friendship across three generations of strong women, set against the rough and ragged beauty of the mountain they all call home.

I absolutely adored Wolk's Wolf Hollow and Beyond the Bright Sea even though I didn't get to review them. Wolk's stories are layered and complex with absolutely gorgeous prose.

Image: Candlewick Press

Mermaid Moon by Susann Cokal. 496 p. Candlewick Press, March, 2020. 9781536209594.

Publisher synopsis: Sanna is a mermaid — but she is only half seavish. The night of her birth, a sea-witch cast a spell that made Sanna’s people, including her landish mother, forget how and where she was born. Now Sanna is sixteen and an outsider in the seavish matriarchy, and she is determined to find her mother and learn who she is. She apprentices herself to the witch to learn the magic of making and unmaking, and with a new pair of legs and a quest to complete for her teacher, she follows a clue that leads her ashore on the Thirty-Seven Dark Islands. There, as her fellow mermaids wait in the sea, Sanna stumbles into a wall of white roses thirsty for blood, a hardscrabble people hungry for miracles, and a baroness who will do anything to live forever.

Image: Candlewick Press

Smooth by Matt Burns. 363 p. June 16, 2020. 9781536204384.

Publisher synopsis: Fifteen-year-old Kevin has acne, and not just any acne. Stinging red welts, painful pustules, and massive whiteheads are ruining his life. In an act of desperation, he asks his dermatologist to prescribe him a drug with a dizzying list of possible side effects — including depression — and an obligatory monthly blood test. But when he meets Alex, a girl in the lab waiting room, blood test day quickly becomes his safe haven — something he sorely needs, since everyone, including his two best friends, is trying his last nerve. But as Kevin’s friendships slip further away and he discovers who Alex is outside of the lab, he realizes he's not sure about anything anymore. Are loneliness and self-doubt the side effects of his new acne meds? Or are they the side effects of being fifteen?

Told in a bitingly funny first-person narration, this debut novel crackles with wry and wistful insights about the absurdities of high school, longing and heartbreak, and a body out of control. A surefire hit for teen boys and reluctant readers, Smooth gets under the skin of a tenth-grader who is changing — inside and out.

Kevin’s acne is horribly, hideously bad. Can a risky treatment fix his face — and his entire life? A witty and sharply observed debut.

Image: Candlewick Press

In Search of Safety: voices of refugees written and photographed by Susan Kuklin. 256 p. Candlewick Press, May 12, 2020. 9780763679606.

Publisher synopsis: “From 1984, when I was born, until July 16, 2017, when I arrived in the United States, I never lived in a place where there was no war.” — Fraidoon

An Iraqi woman who survived capture by ISIS. A Sudanese teen growing up in civil war and famine. An Afghan interpreter for the U.S. Army living under threat of a fatwa. They are among the five refugees who share their stories in award-winning author and photographer Susan Kuklin’s latest masterfully crafted narrative. The five, originally from Afghanistan, Myanmar, South Sudan, Iraq, and Burundi, give gripping first-person testimonies about what it is like to flee war, face violent threats, grow up in a refugee camp, be sold into slavery, and resettle in America. Illustrated with full-color photographs of the refugees’ new lives in Nebraska, this work is essential reading for understanding the devastating impact of war and persecution — and the power of resilience, optimism, and the will to survive. Included in the end matter are chapter notes, information on resettlement and U.S. citizenship, historical time lines of war and political strife in the refugees’ countries of origin, resources for further reading, and an index.

Five refugees recount their courageous journeys to America — and the unimaginable struggles that led them to flee their homelands — in a powerful work from the author of Beyond Magenta and We Are Here to Stay.

Image: Candlewick Press

Freedom Soup by Tami Charles. Illustrated by Jacqueline Alcántara. 32 p. Candlewick Press, December 10, 2019. 9780763689773.

Publisher synopsis: The shake-shake of maracas vibrates down to my toes.
Ti Gran’s feet tap-tap to the rhythm.

Every year, Haitians all over the world ring in the new year by eating a special soup, a tradition dating back to the Haitian Revolution. This year, Ti Gran is teaching Belle how to make the soup — Freedom Soup — just like she was taught when she was a little girl. Together, they dance and clap as they prepare the holiday feast, and Ti Gran tells Belle about the history of the soup, the history of Belle’s family, and the history of Haiti, where Belle’s family is from. In this celebration of cultural traditions passed from one generation to the next, Jacqueline Alcántara’s lush illustrations bring to life both Belle’s story and the story of the Haitian Revolution. Tami Charles’s lyrical text, as accessible as it is sensory, makes for a tale that readers will enjoy to the last drop.

Join the celebration in the kitchen as a family makes their traditional New Year’s soup — and shares the story of how Haitian independence came to be.


Purchased: I used the last of my AZ gift cards to buy these for the library:

Image: Simon & Schuster

Infinite Hope: a Black artist's journey from World War II to Peace by Ashley Bryan. 112 p. Caitlyn Dlouhey Books/ Atheneum/ Simon & Schuster, October, 2019. 9781534404908.

Publisher synopsis: From celebrated author and illustrator Ashley Bryan comes a deeply moving picture book memoir about serving in the segregated army during World War II, and how love and the pursuit of art sustained him.

In May of 1942, at the age of eighteen, Ashley Bryan was drafted to fight in World War II. For the next three years, he would face the horrors of war as a black soldier in a segregated army.

He endured the terrible lies white officers told about the black soldiers to isolate them from anyone who showed kindness—including each other. He received worse treatment than even Nazi POWs. He was assigned the grimmest, most horrific tasks, like burying fallen soldiers…but was told to remove the black soldiers first because the media didn’t want them in their newsreels. And he waited and wanted so desperately to go home, watching every white soldier get safe passage back to the United States before black soldiers were even a thought.

For the next forty years, Ashley would keep his time in the war a secret. But now, he tells his story.

The story of the kind people who supported him.
The story of the bright moments that guided him through the dark.
And the story of his passion for art that would save him time and time again.

Filled with never-before-seen artwork and handwritten letters and diary entries, this illuminating and moving memoir by Newbery Honor–winning illustrator Ashley Bryan is both a lesson in history and a testament to hope.

Ashley Bryan is a treasure. I can't wait to read this.

Image: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The Crossover (Graphic Novel) by Kwame Alexander. Illustrated by Dawud Anyabwile. 224 p. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, September, 2019. 9781328960016.

Publisher synopsis:“With a bolt of lightning on my kicks . . . The court is SIZZLING. My sweat is DRIZZLING. Stop all that quivering. ’Cuz tonight I’m delivering,” raps twelve-year-old Josh Bell. Thanks to their dad, he and his twin brother, Jordan, are kings on the court. But Josh has more than basketball in his blood—he’s got mad beats, too, which help him find his rhythm when it’s all on the line. 

See the Bell family in a whole new light through Dawud Anyabwile’s dynamic illustrations as the brothers’ winning season unfolds, and the world as they know it begins to change.

I cannot keep Alexander's books on the shelf! That's a good thing. 


If you leave a comment, leave the link to your stack. I will pop by and to check out your stack!