Before I began book blogging, my main hobby was gardening. Over the years I have evolved from a tomato-only small plot gardener to a I’ll-try-almost-any-veggie-once kitchen gardener. I’ve tried square-foot gardening and plant-what-you-want-wherever-you-want gardening. I’ve rotated veggies and I’ve also kept them in the same space and refreshed the soil. It’s a fun hobby that […]
Fairytale retellings are a sweet spot for me and they are hard to resist. Beauty Reborn by Elizabeth Lowham is a retelling that is emotional and dark considering what Beauty has endured before even meeting the Beast. I found the plot to be surprisingly fast-paced, especially considering that there aren’t many characters to drive it […]
As an English teacher, I could not resist checking out Hester by Laurie Lico Albanese. My first encounter with Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlett Letter was as a high school English student. While my teacher hammered away at all of the symbolism in the book, I was really wondering about how Hester was surviving around all […]
“If you think you heard something…you didn’t.” Welcome to Appalachia folks and to the premise of Jackal by Erin Adams! I picked this book up expecting 2 or 3 things and got 6 or 7 very different other things instead in a very cool, roller coaster ride way. Black girls missing in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Racism? […]
Slip by Marika McCoola is a graphic novel about a teenage artist named Jade and her grief over her best friend’s attempted suicide. Most of the novel focuses on Jade’s struggle with her feelings over what her friend Phoebe did and that the two are separated because Phoebe is a treatment program. She works out […]
The Lazy Genius Way by Kendra Adachi is the book I needed in my arsenal right after I had kiddo #1. Now as a mom with 3 young kiddos, I found this book absolutely helpful in so many ways that I went out and bought it Halfway into reading the arc. It isn’t written specifically […]
The Queen of Horror has done it again! I read this book and finished it in two days. I’m actually ready to do a re-read in October just for fun. What Jackson does so well with this book is illustrate the different racial archetypes that exist in American society. She also lays out how racism […]
Adiba Nelson is going to take you for a ride with this book, Ain’t That a Mother! I was initially attracted to it because it looked like a book about motherhood and I don’t see too many of those with Black women on the cover. The subtitle, Postpartum, Palsy and Everything in Between also caught […]
Powwow Day by Traci Sorell is a beautiful book about a little girl who is suffering from an illness and is disappointed that she can’t dance at her tribal powwow. Whether you have attended powwows before or have never heard of one, you will love and learn from this book. The Indigenous representation of tribal […]
Josey Johnson’s Hair and the Holy Spirit by Esau McCaulley and illustrated by LaTonya Jackson is a beautiful Christian faith-based book. It is the story of a Father explaining to his daughter why God made people different and the blessing of diversity as they prepare to celebrate Pentecost. Author Esau McCaulley is a theologian who […]