Outstanding Books of the Month – December 2023
Each month we post an annotated bibliography of books that were rated ‘Outstanding’ at our previous meeting and nominated for our year-end Distinguished List. You can see full reviews of these books and many more in our BayViews blog. Interested in becoming a member? Join, come to our monthly meetings, and hear about these Outstanding books in person!
Fiction
The Story of Gumluck the Wizard, by Adam Rex, Chronicle, August 2023.
A naïve but helpful wizard named Gumluck is introduced in this first book in a cozy fantasy series for early elementary readers. Quirky and caricatured monochrome sketches adorn each page, while a sarcastic raven narrator adds laugh-out-loud commentary to the gentle fantasy with low-stakes drama. (Grades 3 – 4)
The Blood Years, by Elana K. Arnold, Balzer + Bray, October 2023.
Set in Romania, during World War II, this breathtakingly intimate account of two sisters is based on Arnold’s Jewish grandmother. Nuanced characters, thorough research and a rich sense of place combine to deliver a powerful story of the bloody business of surviving to choose your own path. (Grades 8 – 12)
Non-Fiction
Motion, Lola M. Schaefer, illustrated by Druscilla Santiago, Charlesbridge, February 2024.
Introduction to what motion is, in a smooth flowing, interactive and engaging storyline. (Grades Kindergarten – 2)
What’s a Germ, Joseph Lister?: The Medical Mystery That Forever Changed the Way We Heal, by Lori Alexander, illustrated by Daniel Duncan, Clarion, October 2023.
Surgery in the 1860s was bloody and butchering. Lister’s innovations transformed hospitals from death houses to places of recovery. Clear prose, dramatic framing and plenty of gruesome details reveal the perils of the past, and how one person’s dogged scientific inquiry saved millions of lives. (Grades 5 – 7)
Long Time Coming, A: A Lyrical Biography of Race in America from Ona Judge to Barack Obama by Ray Anthony Shepard, illustrated by R. Gregory Christie, Calkins Creek, August 2023
This unusual collective biography in free verse celebrates U.S. Civil Rights movement icons Ona Judge (slave of Martha Washington), Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells Barnett, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Barack Obama. (Grades 7 – 12)
Poetry
My Head Has a Bellyache: More Nonsense for Mischievous Kids and Immature Grown-ups by Chris Harris, illustrated by Andrea Tsurumi, Little Brown, July 2023.
This followup companion to I’m Just No Good at Rhyming offers a collection of “zany poems and nonsense” that are just as much laugh-out-loud fun as the original. (Grades 2 – 6)
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