Great book about intertwining lives in Appalachia. I didn’t love the first chapter but stuck with it. Barbara Kingsolver is just great at character development. A lot of characters in this book won me over with them and it’s very satisfying how they all grow together. I’d recommend it if you’re a fan of her writing in general or nature fiction.

Read this a million years ago. Decent page turner.

2.5 stars. The author never met a metaphor he didn’t like. There are some nuggets about baseball that are interesting but the pace is glacial.

I hadn't read a McCarthy book since The Road years and years ago and this was terrific. I always thought this was some sort of soapy western based on the the movie adaptation, which I admittedly have not seen. There's a romance aspect to this, and it is indeed a novel with a romantic heart. However, this is a novel more about the love of the West than interpersonal romance.

Great dialog. I'd recommend it if you're already a fan of Westerns.

Definitely one of the weirder Newbery winners. This book is about Miguel, one of many sons in a New Mexico shepherding family. Miguel is 12 and really wants to be a vital member of his working family but struggles with recognition and validation from his father.

I’m here for the unusual plot. Definitely enjoyed the locale, not sure I’d ever read a book about Taos before. The dad in this book was a dismissive prick and it was hard to read through those scenes at times. But this book was written in 1953 so I’m hardly surprised.

if you’re reading this book, you’re probably an adult reading through every Newbery winner like me, but I’d be hard pressed to find an 11-12 year old whose attention was held by this.

Very enjoyable read about the career of an art crime FBI agent. The chapters about the Gardner heist recovery were so frustrating because it seems like he was making real headway!

I’d recommend it if you enjoy art or crime capers. 3.5 stars.

It might seem goofy to rate a children's book about animal life cycles and poop 5 stars, but 5 stars is all Goodreads gives me to work with, so there you go. I am rating this on how much my children have enjoyed this book, which is to say: a tremendous amount.

We have checked this out from the library 3 separate times.

I have one son who is an avid reader and one son who is a somewhat reluctant reader. They have both asked for this book to be re-checked out (somewhat unheard of). On the second time we checked it out, my reluctant reader son said, "Can we re-read some of the Secret Diary pages again?" I didn't even remember that the book was divided up that way, but there you go. It really made an impression on him.

The illustrations in this are so cute. I'd really recommend it if you have kids interested in life sciences and nature. But who knows, you might capture some unexpected attention just because of how irreverent and fun it is.

Well I cried. All I knew about this book is it was sad, and I didn’t know where the sad part was and thus I was waiting to be emotionally destroyed at every turn.

It’s a great book if you love dogs and borders on genocide if you love raccoons.

The Commerce was a merchant ship from up river CT which was lost off the coast of the Saharan desert. If you are unfamiliar with the story I will simply say the shipwreck was the least of their problems.

I'm a sucker for a shipwreck book. If you've read Endurance or In The Heart of the Sea, you'll love this.

Lovecraft Country-esque horror novella about fighting the Ku Klux Klan. The execution is lacking and the book employs of a lot of probably my least favorite mechanic in fiction, phonetic dialect. Wanted to like this, just didn’t. But it is short. 2.5 stars.