Jane's life changed 7 months ago when she was abducted while trying to pick up her best friend's birthday present. The narrative of the book flips back and forth between the present and the time she was abducted. This works pretty effectively, although towards the end they started to blur together for me. I think the complicated range of emotions one might feel during that experience seemed realistic. I just wasn't sure what the captor's whole deal was. Like, what did he expect to happen eventually?

A really important look at our prison industrial system and the toll it has taken on Black people. A lot more people should read and grapple with it.

When I realized this was a book from 14 different perspectives about Japanese-American incarceration/internment in the United States during World War II, I was a little skeptical. Fourteen different perspectives? How was I going to keep them all straight? Chee makes it fairly easy. The writers have different styles, sometimes even different formats, and I really appreciated that. I also learned things about the camps, even though I thought I had a pretty good idea of what life was like. An excellent work.

Yadriel is a member of the brujx community in Los Angeles. He desperately wants to prove himself as a brujo, but his family won't let him. Yadriel, with the help of his cousin Maritza, takes matters into his own hands. Things don't go quite as planned, and soon they are unraveling a mystery that could destroy all the magic in his family forever.

I enjoyed this story a lot. I did predict one twist part of the story, but I don't think that ruins it. I loved learning about these methods of magic, and I'm happy to have read two stories with transmen protagonists this year. Quite good.

So good.

Ada is going to a HBCU where she suddenly will encounter a whole new world. Told in verse, this novel flips back and forth through Ada's life, showing us the present and the past combined. This book touches on so many hard subjects. I think Iloh will be an author to watch.

If you thought that the right to vote was fought only by white women, think again. This book will introduce you to the many black women who fought for that right, before the 19th amendment and afterward. Dionne examines the intersection of getting Black men the vote vs white women (or all women, or all people), and shows the way voting for people of color was suppressed after Reconstruction, through the Civil Rights era, and into the present day. An important book for people to read.

Purely on a personal level--I need to remind myself to read sidebars after reading the full text. The formatting of this book was a little hard for me, especially with the black boxes with small white text. I wonder how the audio handles it.

Ellie can raise the ghosts of dead animals, a trait she shares with her Six-Great grandmother. When her cousin dies suddenly in a car crash, he reveals to her in a dream that he was murdered. Ellie and her family go to Texas to figure out what happened and support her cousin's family.

This is a mystery where the person whodunit is revealed fairly early on, but the method of collecting the evidence to prove it is a big part of the story. It's fun to see a magical world, with fairy rings for near instant travel. I also loved the way Lipan Apache rituals are used in the story, and mostly respected. I liked it a lot.

I really enjoyed this one. Avery is plucked from her life where she is barely surviving to being the heir to a major fortune. There are tricks and games and riddles and a crazy large house, and there are traps for her everywhere. I thought it was fast-paced and quite enjoyable. Little quibbles with the romance plotline. The ending leaves space for a sequel.

Really good book about getting involved in social justice for upper elementary/middle school level readers.