This fits the nighttime vibe in which I’m posting, but please, do not sleep on this book. A Monster Calls is a YA book by Patrick Ness. It is profoundly sad (like, seek out just to get that cry in sad) but so beautifully told about a boy coming to terms with his mother’s cancer. I have thought about it since I picked it up last month.
📖 If you are seeking in inroad to discuss grief with a young child, pair this with Where Do They Go? By Julia Alvarez!
📖 If you are here for the metaphorical monsters that come towards us, pair this with Dusti Bowling’s lyrical middle grade novel called The Canyon’s Edge!
📖 If you seek a dark fantasy with a strong grandmother on the side, pair this with The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert!
So, this was an interesting read for me! I feel like I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai had a LOT to say, though I sometimes wondered if that was its Achilles. I liked the narrative structure, the central character, and I always love a boarding school setting. I’d definitely encourage folks to read it because samepagebookblog loves a conversation!
📖 If you want to dive right in with your young one, pick up picture book Let’s Talk About Race by Julius Lester and Karen Barbour!
📖 I really enjoyed the podcast element interwoven throughout the story, so if you seek that as a catalyst for school change, pair this with middle grade Dress Coded by Carrie Firestone!
📖 Off the Record, a YA book by Camryn Garrett, strongly mirrors Questions with its secrets and exposes, its call to action and its #MeToo relevancy.
Are any other Abbot Elementary fans out there? I NEVER miss an episode, a perfect cap to my Wednesday nights in which I cry, laugh, and “mm-hmm” in agreement. What I see as the special sauce of the show is exactly what This Is A School, by John Schu, nails so well – that people make the institution, and not the other way around. I can speak to that power in my own work as an educator, particularly in a year that’s been, well, topsy-turvy at best. A school is only as good as the people inside of it, and you’ll definitely want to look inside this book.
📖 If you appreciate stories where a building tells the story of its inhabitants, pair this with middle grade novel The Epic Fail of Arturo Zamora by Pablo Cartaya!
📖 If you like school stories and the power of the people within them (good, or not-so-good) check out YA book Posted by John David Anderson!
📖 The People We Keep by Allison Larkin – the title says it all, doesn’t it? It’s not the home that makes the heart, or the playground structure of the school, for that matter… it’s WHO we collect that counts.
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