When I saw this book described as Mulan meets Project Runway, I was understandably disbelieving, but that is literally exactly the plot of the first half of Spin the Dawn. Our heroine, Maia, dresses herself up as a man and takes her fathers place as he is summoned to the palace to serve as the Emporer's imperial tailor (this opening premise is just unmistakenly Mulan-esque). However, when she gets there, she discovers that 11 other tailors have also been invited to compete for the title, and so we settle in for the first half of the book: the competition (this is the Project Runway of it all). To be honest, I preferred the second half for a variety of reasons but one of which was because I, personally, have become a bit tired of books that revolve around competitions/tournaments. It's just a trope I've read a lot recently and think is becoming a bit overplayed.

However, delightfully, the book continues into the second half, when Maia is tasked with creating three mythical dresses and sets out to find the magical ingredients she needs to create them. This is another staple plot: the Quest. However, the quest provides the author with more freedom to explore their world, which I really enjoyed in this book. Like Mulan, Maia struggles with impersonating a man and the book repeatedly drives home the message that, as a woman, society would never have let her get as far as she has.

I've been really into books that feel like fairytales lately, and Spin the Dawn is a perfect example of that. It's fun, the characters are lovable, it isn't trying to be anything it isn't. I really, really enjoyed Spin the Dawn and I wholeheartedly recommend it to all my fellow lovers of YA fantasy and fairytales.

ARC provided via NetGalley

I genuinely cannot remember the last time I read anything this precious and soft.

There's nothing but good times and happiness in this little graphic novel and I have a feeling this book might become a pick-me-up I come back to when I'm looking for some of that happiness.

Reading about the Mike Brown protests now, almost 6 years later, is a weird thing for me.

At the time I was 14, about to start high school, and while I don't live in Ferguson itself, I was close enough that the tanks prowling the streets became normal. I remember vividly the day that the indictment was decided -- I remember sitting at my TV with my family, waiting tensely, and I remember getting the call that school had been canceled the next day mere minutes after Darren Wilson was declared innocent.

While Lowery's account is surely closer to the action than I was ever allowed to be, he perfectly captured the feeling in the city during those months.

It's happened again and again and again -- there was another round of major protests in St. Louis when I was a little older (and this time much closer to my home, since I live more or less near to where the newly elected mayor lived at the time) and now, as I'm writing this, in Minneapolis, the city I was born in.

This is a book review, so I'm just going to say that Lowery does a great job with this -- tying together the story at large with his own personal anecdotes -- and that while I've read countless articles on each of these events, the cohesiveness of this book is both incredibly convenient extremely well done,