The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse is a beautifully illustrated book. With minimal words, it still manages to be funny, endearing, and optimistic.
Despite the beauty of the art style and simplicity of the words, I didn't find this book particularly memorable.

Tomboy is about a struggle a lot of girls who don't fit the hyper feminine goals that are expected of us by our parents and communities. I really like that Liz showed her growth and deepened her descriptions of her frustration until her revelation in the zine library. I also really enjoyed the epilogue as someone who occasionally has people assumed I'm a boy.

This essay read more as a memoir than a manifesto. It focuses in on the author and her friends' lived experiences, with a heteronormative and cisnormative worldview. The examples Adichie brought up are sometimes tangible and relatable, but not universally so. This essay addresses a narrow part of what feminism exists to combat, and while narrow it is still important. The points she is making lack an intersectional lens in terms of sexuality and gender diversity. Some of her talking points border on transphobia.

A wild continuation of the Lumberjanes series, Friendships to the Max was wild from start to finish. I've never seen the lore-filled mystical set up for a sequel be so immediately dropped and turned into a joke, and I loved every moment of it. Bubbles, is my favorite part, with Jen's newfound confidence being a close second.

Another Kind is a beautifully illustrated book filled with an extraordinarily diverse cast. Journeys of self discovery being peppered into the adventurous plot and contrasted against unmovable characters like Newt's dad make the book all the more endearing. Newt and Tibbs' discussion about pronouns makes for a great explanation for the age range of the intended audience. The only reason I didn't give this book a 5 star rating is because

I was really hoping to see the Kelpie from the beginning of the book be revealed to be Maggie's mom who would join the fight and reunite like Jaali and his dad. The decision to make the collector's prison into a sanctuary felt like a rushed choice to tie the book up neatly, when I don't think the people who were imprisoned there for years would want to continue being there, and Alex and Buck had already offered them a home. Overall, the final few pages were the only places I found something to take issue with. That being said, I think it's important to understand that I'm not the intended audience for this book, and happily ever after is an important facet of the way kids understand a happy story's ending.

The literary descriptions and firsthand accounts of the fair, and the effort and love put into it's design and creation made me wish I could have attended. The detailed descriptions of Holmes' murders and his disarmingly charming personality made me glad that I was born over a full century after 1893. I like greatly enjoyed The Devil in the White City, the second half was a far easier read than the first. I'm not sure if I've retained as much of the information about the fair's designers and the events that took place while it was open as I wanted to. While interesting, the section about the initial design process and the political lobbying that took place in order to get the fair to occur in Chicago read similarly to a textbook, in stark contrast with the narrative way the rest of the history was told. Overall, an informative and interesting read. I would use enjoyable to describe the writing, but not the content.

Winnie the Pooh was an adorably nostalgic read. It differed more than I expected from my original memory, though that may be a result of consuming one too many editions about the Disney version of events. There's more nitpicking about the different characters' idiosyncrasies and anxieties than I remembered. I love the illustrations. Roo looks like a chipmunk most of the time, and Eeyore's floppy feet are incredibly endearing in contrast with his morose nature.
The narrator plays a uniquely interesting role throughout the story. The narrator feels like he's coming along for the adventure despite not being one of the characters. It reads like a parent watching their child explore from just far enough away.

Lumberjanes is so dang cute! I love the characters, the way the writers replaced swearing with exclamations of the names of historical figures, and the neat ways the authors and illustrators use the subversion of gender roles to set the scene for further world building.

I look forward to seeing how having Jen by her campers' sides changes the way they try to solve the mysteries the first book set up.

This is everything I wanted from girl scout camp growing up, and more. The creators of this series are trying to create positive representation for a ton of marginalized identities in a setting that toes the line between reality and fantasy, and they're doing a great job so far. I'm really looking forward to reading the rest of the series!

This book was spooky in a way not a lot of books written for kids manage to be. It was filled with the deaths of nearly all of the small folk after the death of the little girl. Aurora falling in love (?) with the human man felt a bit odd to me because I initially though him to be the father of the little girl, as implied by the broken doll in his cabin. Otherwise, a darker implication could be that he caused the death of the little girl. The only character deaths that hit me particularly hard were Timothy and Jane. I enjoyed both of their characters and how they were opposites of one another, being examples of meek self hatred and confident bravery respectively, and both being dear to Aurora. The rest of the character deaths were glossed over and ignored by most of the cast of characters, but those two stood out as the only two to be genuinely mourned by the baby Timothy was raising, and Aurora. Zelie being the direct cause of both deaths, and Aurora being the exact of their retribution by killing Zelie and her servants feels like a fitting way to end the story. Overall, Beautiful Darkness exactly and disturbingly lived up to it's name.

A fun spin on a bedtime story for adults.