Completely Full Bookshelf

Well, I didn't get a book read this week, so I read three picture books on Saturday night so I could get a post together for you all! And hey—that's three books off my TBR list, which I'll count as a win. By the way, I got through all the things I was panicking about last week—I visited my three Halloween parties (I even had a little bit of fun—imagine that), and I got my short story submitted for class! Huzzah—now I should have some time this week to start a graphic novel that showed up in the mail. And since I'm throwing this post together on an enormous time crunch, my reviews will probably be pretty short—you can expect a longer post next week. But let's dive into these picture books! Wishes Written by Mượn Thị Văn and i llustrated by Victo Ngai Preview the illustrations on Amazon          This book has been waiting on my bookshelves for months—but I finally got around to reading it after seeing it recommended by Linda Baie at TeacherDance , Sierra Dertinger at

This week is shaping up to be INSANE. Besides my plan to attend three different Halloween parties (no comment), I am taking a creative writing course, and I have a short story that is due this Sunday—and I'm planning to write something pretty long that I haven't actually started drafting yet (I just have the outline), so I kind of need to get moving on all that. It probably won't be that bad to write—I just don't want to do it! I just want to go read books and play Animal Crossing  and NOT stay up late—seriously, I stay up 20 minutes past my bedtime and then I am noticeably exhausted the next day. College, y'all—it's a thing. Moving along, today we have a review of yet another truly AMAZING graphic novel (we've been on a great stretch following The Girl From the Sea  and Other Boys )—today's book is Nimona  by ND Stevenson. I wasn't sure if this book was MG or YA when I started it, but after reading it, I am quite sure  this book is better for a YA a

How are you all holding up? I've had some good and bad experiences involving technology lately. The bad: I was helping run an event at my university on Microsoft Teams, and we were using a Teams live event instead of a Teams meeting (it's like a Zoom webinar instead of a Zoom meeting, except you have to actually choose who/what is visible on screen at any given time by clicking on a bunch of stuff). What happened is, every time one of us went live on the audiences' screens, our entire Teams window disappeared (except for the buttons and the chat), so we couldn't see the slides we were reading off of! I had to pull mine up in my web browser while making awkward technology-rage small talk to the audience. Not a blast. And then the good of technology (which is  very  tangentially related to part of my review): back at the start of the pandemic, I started playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons  like about 30 million other people did (although I'd actually been playing ga

I hope you all are holding up well! I'm writing this review on Saturday afternoon , not Saturday night—that's how you know I'm relatively organized right now. (I used to have these done way earlier in the week, but this year, college has thrown a real wrench in that.) Also, as a judge for the Cybils Awards, I wanted to remind everyone that you have through Friday, October 15  to nominate your favorite kidlit books for the awards! You can  see the details here —I highly encourage you all to take a look and suggest some books for consideration! Now I just need to figure out what to nominate...   (Update on Sunday night: I submitted my first nomination, and you can expect to hear about it on the blog in the coming weeks!) Anyway, today I am recommending an absolutely fabulous YA graphic novel: The Girl From the Sea  by Molly Knox Ostertag. And I'll warn you, I just wrote a paragraph where I said I would "briefly" discuss something and then had to go back and del

So I have been a complete and utter blogging fiasco lately—I didn't comment on most people's blogs last week, I'm even further behind on my own comments, I haven't had time to read much at all, and I threw this review together on Saturday night/Sunday morning, which is not ideal! Chaos, seriously. At least I finally have my free time back (it was previously occupied by reading for several different book clubs), so I'm working on a graphic novel to review next week. Also, why is Blogger such a complete pain in the neck?! Now adding photos is all weird—they are supposed  to insert wherever you have the typing cursor positioned, but instead, they are showing up on the wrong rows, or—this one's new—inserting randomly in the middle  of a sentence. And I also keep having a different problem where clicking on one row of text puts the cursor in the row above it every single time and you have to close out of the post editor and go back in. Sigh—I hate this platform somet