Perhaps you have watched the stunning new Mulan movie (available for free streaming now on Disney+). The gorgeous cinematography would have been lovely on the big screen. My teens loved the animated film and were eager to see the update. My husband and I enjoy movies like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, so we were also eager to see it. Mulan did not disappoint. Hayley also saw it, and we discussed the movie over Christmas break. In a sea of feminist plots and pro-woman narratives, we felt that Mulan handled itself well. Chinese actresses played key roles (as opposed to white American actresses), the film mirrored other Chinese films stylistically (such…

The “prequel” to the new Disney Mulan movie, this middle grades story weaves together Chinese legend with Mulan’s own tale to great effect. Mulan: Before the Sword (Disney Mulan) by Grace Lin. Disney Press, 2020. 384 pages. Reading Level: Middle Grades, age 10-12 Recommended For: Ages 8 and up Mulan is a well-recognized figure in modern American culture. After all, in the animated film, she (along with her trusty dragon sidekick) saves the emperor! Cue the funny one-liners and fantastic soundtrack. Mulan was actually based on a real Chinese legend and is similar, in some ways, to the Western character of Joan of Arc. In Mulan: Before the Sword, Grace…

Raw, funny, and honest, Dancing at the Pity Party is a close look at grief after the loss of a mother. Dancing at the Pity Party: a Dead Mom Graphic Memoir by Tyler Feder. Dial, 2020, 201 pages. Reading Level: Teen, ages 12-15 Recommended for: ages 12-up Our culture has a bizarre relationship with death. We don’t like to talk about it except in bland platitudes and over-the-top horror movies. Death is sad and sometimes really scary, but oscillating between euphemisms and torture porn does not a healthy relationship with mortality make!Dancing at the Pity Party Tyler Feder was only 19 when she lost her mother to cancer. She had…

After an hour of listening and scribbling madly as announcements were read, I can now pass on what we learned from this year’s ALA Youth Media Awards (including Newbery & Caldecott). The reason we pay so much attention to this is not that we’re simpatico with the American Library Association. But the ALA exerts tremendous influence on children’s literature. If we factor out huge bestsellers like The Wimpy Kid, librarians are the chief gatekeeper of what appears in the children’s section of bookstores and libraries. Award-winning books with shiny stickers will appear in displays and on recommended titles and purchase lists. Newbery and Caldecott winners stay in print forever. I’ll…

Next Monday, Jan. 25, during its annual Midwinter Conference (which is virtual like everything else this year) the American Library Association will announce the winners of the most coveted awards in children’s literature. There are several categories, but the oldest and most prestigious is the John Newbery Award for Excellence in Children’s Literature. We’ll let you know the actual winners on Monday, but we also like to try our hand at predicting. So, with a spin to the Wheel of Fortune . . .   Janie: I look to current social and political trends to make my guesses, though that’s not always reliable. Each year’s Newbery committee is notoriously quirky!…

We wrap up our Newbery Buzz series for this year with a discussion of Echo Mountain a historical novel set during the Great Depression. Joining us will be Pamela, a longtime friend and sometime contributor to Redeemed Reader. Janie: Echo Mountain has reaped three starred reviews in the most prestigious journals. Its author, Lauren Wolk, won a Newbery silver medal for her first novel, Wolf Hollow, three years ago. So it’s likely this book has been under discussion ever since it was published last spring. Here’s a brief synopsis: Ellie’s family (her parents, older sister Esther, and little brother Sam) took a severe hit when the stock market dropped and…

The Barnabus Project, Our Little Kitchen, and I Am Every Good Thing are all contenders for this year’s Caldecott award for illustration. The Barnabus Project by the Terry, Eric, and Devin Fan (the Fan Brothers). Tundra, 2020, 72 pages. Reading Level: Picture book, ages 4-8 Recommended for: ages 4-10 Barnabus lives under a bell jar in a secret lab far below the Perfect Pets pet store. Mouse-size, with mousy ears and tail, he also sports miniature elephant’s feet and trunk. Barnabas is comfortable being himself, but the man-sized creatures in the green rubber suits have marked him as a “Fail.” He’s not the only one: the secret lab is filled…

Three more possible Newbery contenders we never got around to reviewing. When You Trap a Tiger by Tae Keller. Random House, 2020, 302 pages Lily, her older sister Sam, and their mother are moving in with their Halmoni (grandma). Lily is happy about it and Sam is angry, but Sam has been generally miserable since their father’s death some years earlier. And now Halmoni is dying of brain cancer. Shortly after the move, Lily sees a tiger in the rain—a hallucination, or could it be somehow real? As the tiger appears to be stalking her, Lily realizes that Halmoni sees it too. It turns out that the tiger is a…

Continuing our discussion of possible Newbery winners, we pick up a book that has everybody talking: Janie: Betsy, there are two books that I think will be considered very seriously by this year’s Newbery committee. We talked about King and the Dragonflies, but we should also consider Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You. This book is nonfiction–unusual for consideration, but by no means unheard-of. It’s also a young-reader version of an earlier book for grownups, and that’s a first, as far as I can remember. Stamped is called a “remix” rather than a “young reader edition,” but the material is taken from an earlier book called Stamped from the Beginning, by…

We’ve been scanning the starred review lists and listening in on the chatter to tell you about the likely Newbery contenders for this year. So far we’ve pondered King and the Dragonflies, Chirp, The List of Things That Will Not Change, and Skunk & Badger. For today . . . Janie: For our fourth Newbery Buzz talk, Hayley and I are tackling Everything Sad Is Untrue, by Daniel Nayeri. I’ll lay my cards out up front: I found this book amazing, in theme, structure, literary quality, and characterization (see my review). But it’s definitely not conventional. Hayley, could you give us a summary of the plot? Hayley:  Absolutely.  This is a unique…