Review by my 5 year old: I like that they play guess the animal and I like that they have very easy ones.

Review by me: easy reader that is both very simple and actually has a fun story. A rare commodity, and valuable

Characters are emotionally real, and the story is well told. Would totally hand to a child, along with a box of tissues.

From an adult perspective however, I must say it seems that poor Edie's parents calculated how to most traumatically tell her family's story, put on a few finishing touches to make it worse, and went with that as their plan. I just wanted to shake some sense into them! Arg.

This book appears at first glance to be positive-- it's about diversity, after all. But it seems to be primarily about how white christians are the norm, and others should be tolerated. For example, turn please to the descriptions of religions:
Judaism: "Our Jewish friends believe in God and the Torah"
Islam: "Muslim: These are our friends who practice Islam and believe in God and the prophet Mohammed"
Christianity: "These friends believe that God sent his son, Jesus, to show *us* how to love one another." (emphasis my own)

All the images have the children's eyes closed, but the asian characters have their eyes both chosed and slanted, which seems problematic at best. And all the other descriptions make me vaguely uncomfortable in different ways. A Bindi and a turban in the Sikh style, respectively, are explained to be "cultural tradition" without reference to the specific religions those traditions come from. A wheelchair is for "our friends who may be sick." And on and on.

I would not recommend this book to anyone, and especially not for library purchase.

A bit wordy, but I'll forgive it as a solid piece of nonfiction about the wonders of the natural world.

Though there is no magic, this book reads like a fantasy novel, which means I felt right at home in it, and really enjoyed it. I also enjoyed the setting, and many of the characters. The plot fell together perfectly, but..a little too quickly. I'm not one to turn down a storybook ending-- it IS a storybook, after all. But I do wish it had been brought together such that the pieces click together slowly, instead of all at once. The villagers go from wanting to kill Chaya to supporting her goals in 2 seconds of monologue! Still, I really enjoyed this book and look forward to more from Farook.

Book read through NetGalley

I always love time travel, but best of all is time travel that hangs together in a cohesive way, with deep world-building and attention to what time-travel can do to timelines. This book really manages that. I also appreciate the ending, though it feels...hard to take, a bit. You'll see what I mean. I only didn't give it 5 stars because there wasn't much in the way of plot, and also the sidekick got less limelight than she deserved.

I read the first Thief book when there was only one, as a 10 or 11 year old, and have been following along ever since. This was worth the wait. BRB, I'm gonna go reread it now. And then go back and reread the whole series. And then...actually don't wait up for me.

Extremely fun and silly. Just when you think things are getting out of hand, our protagonists are suddenly attacked by alligators wearing mind control helmets! Perfect and absurdist.

My only complaint is that The Library is an archive, not a library. Libraries exist to share information, this Library exists to preserve, which is the goal of archives. But on the hole, I'm okay with that confusion existing.

Stupendously goofy, perfect pandemic read.