Here are 6 things worth sharing this month:
1. Reading/readers: Have you met Afoma of Reading Middle Grade? Her site is a wealth of information about middle grade and YA books and includes author interviews and blogs on various subjects. I’ve used her middle grade lists to find all the best reads, so be sure to check her out if you have young readers in your life or you love reading children’s literature (like me). She’s also on Instagram and has a fantastic Facebook group that gathers together lovers of children’s literature.
2. Reading: I recently finished the YA book We Are All So Good at Smiling, by Amber McBride, and it was fantastic. It’s a lovely novel in verse that explores clinical depression in sort of an ethereal way. I loved the language and the fantasy-like quality about it. McBride is also the author of Me (Moth), which is another novel in verse I highly recommend.
3. Watching: My husband and I just started watching Apple TV’s series Loot, starring Maya Rudolph, Michaela Jaé Rodriguez, Nat Faxon, and Joel Kim Booster, among others. This is my second time watching through it, but I wanted to share it with my husband, because it’s so good! Maya Rudolph plays a wealthy woman who divorced her husband and now has to figure out what to do with her $87 billion settlement—and the rest of her life. It’s funny and heartwarming, as I’m coming to expect from Apple’s comedies!
4. Reading: If you’re looking for an intriguing adult nonfiction read, be sure to pick up The Woman They Could Not Silence: One Woman, Her Incredible Fight for Freedom, and the Men Who Tried to Make Her Disappear, by Kate Moore. It was a fascinating account of Elizabeth Packard, whose husband had her committed to a mental institution, which spurred her journey into working for women’s and mental health rights. It reads like a fiction book, which is, in my opinion, the best kind of nonfiction to read! Moore is also the author of The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women,which is next on my TBR list!
5. Reading: I’m not sure what made me pick up Dan Santat’s new(ish) graphic memoir, A First Time for Everything. But I’m glad I did. Santat highlights a time in his life when he felt awkward and invisible. A trip to Europe changes his perspective and infuses him with a little confidence. I sped through this one, not just because it’s a graphic novel but because the story was fun and engaging. Santat is probably best known for his picture book, After the Fall (How Humpty Got Back Up Again), which sits on our shelves here at home and is often requested for read-aloud by one of my kids, and The Adventures of Beekle, which is a heartwarming story about an (un)imaginary friend.
6. Watching: Every summer my kids and I watch documentaries together on Tuesday mornings. This week we finished watching through the Disney+ series Becoming, which tells the story of entertainers and how they became who they are today. It’s deeply inspiring and touching (you’ll probably cry, if you’re like me) and is a great series to watch with kids. My kids are still talking about some of the things they learned.
If you want to go deeper into some of these books, be sure to check out my YouTube show, On My Shelf:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtmdj4SXf2Csy5uu6WEyLDtYlvg9t1FqE
