Wonderful middle grades graphic novel about a fictional girls basketball team in 1970s Indiana.

The girls are inspired by real-life basketball players. I think I would have appreciated a non-fiction retelling more, but this was still a great read.

This did not grab or hold my attention at all unfortunately.

This is definitely a page turner. I could have done without some of the more back story laden chapters but in general, this was a gripping account of a murder in Tokyo in the early 2000s.

Itch-scratchingly weird. I really enjoyed this graphic memoir that starts, and starts, and starts anew.

It has a very neuro-atypical bent, so I'd recommend it if you're interested in memoirs from that point of view or like to explore another perspective.

Best book about baseball I’ve ever read.

The third section of this collection is *so* good.

I've seen quite a few of Limon's poems on poetry blogs over the years, I didn't realize they originated in this collection.

This one stopped me in my tracks when first I read it.

The Raincoat

When the doctor suggested surgery
and a brace for all my youngest years,
my parents scrambled to take me
to massage therapy, deep tissue work,
osteopathy, and soon my crooked spine
unspooled a bit, I could breathe again,
and move more in a body unclouded
by pain. My mom would tell me to sing
songs to her the whole forty-five minute
drive to Middle Two Rock Road and forty-
five minutes back from physical therapy.
She’d say, even my voice sounded unfettered
by my spine afterward. So I sang and sang,
because I thought she liked it. I never
asked her what she gave up to drive me,
or how her day was before this chore. Today,
at her age, I was driving myself home from yet
another spine appointment, singing along
to some maudlin but solid song on the radio,
and I saw a mom take her raincoat off
and give it to her young daughter when
a storm took over the afternoon. My god,
I thought, my whole life I’ve been under her
raincoat thinking it was somehow a marvel
that I never got wet.

This isn’t some quick buck flashy title book. I usually avoid most topical political books for this reason. This is a really comprehensive look at the rise of QAnon by a journalist who has a (morbid) fascination with the movement.

However weird/dangerous I thought QAnon was, it’s ten times worse.

Very quick read.

This is such a great book. I'm sure it's intended as a non-fiction classroom resource, but I read it front to back.

I read Hoops by Matt Tavares earlier in the year and really enjoyed it. An entry in Hoose's We Were There, Too! was devoted to the girls basketball team that Tavares' graphic novel is based on. Tavares glowingly acknowledged this book so what can I say, I'll follow a footnote anywhere.

This is a roughly chronological accord of first hand accounts of children in the US from just pre-Western colonization to the early 21st century (my pub. date was 2001). The first hand accounts are then introduced to context of whatever event the child was involved in. There's also a summation of what the child did in their adult life, which I really appreciated.

The Colombian Exchange, Revolutionary War, Civil War, the Labor movement, a lot of the beats that primary / middle grades social studies teach are included in it.

It's really well done.

Interesting book about a girl living in an island off Cape Cod near a leper colony in the 1920s.

This graphic novel about a photography highlighting the Dust Bowl is beautifully illustrated. The story is a bit thin, but it's more about the visual feel and overall impact of the Dust Bowl on middle America. It's interspersed with real photos from the era, but the main character and story are fictional.