English & Korean 4+ Tae Kwon Do Martial Arts Korean Creators Perseverance Respect Dan-ah Kim summary The Grandmaster’s Daughter is a sweet and simple story that shows incidental representation of girls with black belts and tells the reader a bit more about the martial arts practice. Every morning, Sunny can be seen outside of the…
Category: Feminism
When I See Red
English 4+ Anger Social-Emotional Learning Mental Health Emotional Well-Being Britta Teckentrup summary I kid you not, as soon as I finished reading this book I immediately sent a picture of it to a bookish group chat with the sentence “holy shit this book is so good”. Perfection in a book. Our unnamed, ungendered main character…
Fearless: The Story of Daphne Caruana Galizia, Defender of Free Speech
English 6+ Historical Figure Protest Journalism Free Speech CW: Pet death, Daphne’s death mentioned in back matter. Gattaldo summary I had never heard of Daphne Caruana Galizia, a journalist from the island of Malta, before seeing this book from Candlewick. Upon reading, I was flabbergasted that I’ve never heard of this amazing journalist working for…
Magick & Lore: Halloween is here!
English 6+ summary One look at me and you know I hail from the land of potatoes: Ireland (and Scotland). But the aspect I most love about my Celtic heritage? It’s that we invented trick-or-treating of course! Samhain, All Souls Eve & Day, Halloween. They’re all basically about the same thing. The veil between the…
Read This to Get Smarter: About Race, Class, Gender, Disability & More
English YA (12/13+) Education Anti-Oppression Blair Imani summary Y’all, think back to the person that you would go to for answers when you were a teen. Maybe they were an older sibling, maybe a friend’s older sibling. A cousin, a cool neighbor or babysitter. That one person who you could trust to not bullshit you…
Abrams Dinner Party & a YA Read!
English YA (13+) Food/Cookbooks LGBTQ+ Relationships Sex Positive YA Romance Humor summary Cheese. One of the best substances in the world. In my opinion, the more a cheese tastes like a barnyard the better. When I got the book Cheese, Sex, Death from Abrams Books as the next installment of #AbramsDinnerParty it was obviously a…
Nice White Ladies
English YA+ White Supremacy Complicity Unconscious Bias White Feminism Jessie Daniels summary “No amount of positivity, light, and love will help us defeat the patriarchy if white feminists can’t tolerate being criticized” (8). If you’re a white lady, you should be reading this book. If you’re a “nice” liberal white lady, you should be reading…
The Last Cuentista
English & Spanish 10+ Science-Fiction Space Dystopia Folklore Storytelling Donna Barba Higuera Cover by Raxenne Maniquiz summary Latinx Heritage Month may be coming to a close, but that doesn’t mean that our reading lists should be any less packed with amazing Hispanic & Latinx creators. Today I have an awesome sci-fi read for ages 10…
Notable Native People
English with tribal affiliations. MG & Up History Colonialism Historical Figures Indigenous Voices Adrienne Keene & Ciara Sana summary I recognize that y’all might not believe me when I say that I’ve been looking forward to this arriving for weeks. Peeking into the mailbox with my fingers crossed that this beautiful book would be waiting…
The Dire Days of Willoweep Manor
English 12+ Tropes Breaking the Fourth Wall Gothic Romance Stories Sci-Fi Heroines Shaenon K. Garrity & Christopher Baldwin summary I love a good self-aware book, and Willoweep (a graphic novel) has this in spades. It begins with our main character dramatically reading her book report, much to her stern teacher’s dismay. She’s ordered to explore…