Reviews written by Kim Baccellia, Staff Reviewer

What worked: I loved this sequel to TOKYO EVER AFTER. Izumi is endearing, hilarious, and someone I would love to be my BFF. In TOKYO DREAMING readers find that HIH Princess Izumi is still trying to fit in with royal life. Her 'Shining...

What worked: I'm a huge fan of Stacey Abrams and love this non-fiction biography. As a former first-grade teacher, this biography is perfect to include during Black History Month. I love that the biography gives bite-sized bits of information on Abrams, along with keywords that can be discussed with students....

What worked: Mesmerizing paranormal where dual timelines of secrets convey into a nightmare. I'm usually not a fan of stories that jump back and forth in time, but this one works. Readers first meet seventeen-year-old Ivy when her boyfriend Nate nearly hits a mysterious woman on the road. What's strange...

What worked: Intriguing plot of teen side-stepper, Laz, who is able to step into different timestreams or different realities. It's kind of like someone manipulating string theory where there are millions of different possibilities out there. Laz wakes up in a coffin-like pod in a deserted cloning facility and finds...

What worked: Powerful, haunting tale of nine-year-old Betita's time in a US deportation camp. This is the Spanish version of the novel LAND OF THE CRANES. As a former bilingual teacher, Salazar's story resonated with me on the many stories my own former student's families shared with me with the...

What worked: Powerful, haunting dystopia where Native Americans are harvested for their bone marrow in the belief it will cure the inability to dream. In this world after a plague, most can no longer dream. So people steal indigenous people and use their marrow, hoping this will bring the dreams...

What worked: Fascinating novel of twins who are separated when Hitler's troops invade Leningrad in 1941. Told in diary-style writing with intriguing maps and photos of that time. There are notes woven throughout from a Soviet investigator who highlights laws the twins broke and is determining their fate. ...

What worked: I loved this Christmas picture book! Beautifully illustrated portrayal of a young Black girl and her family's annual Christmas traditions. The illustrations do a great job of showing the family, including the love the young girl has for her grandmother. There's so...

What worked: Intriguing true story of Virginia Hall. She refused to accept that women couldn't do the same things as men at a time when it was frowned on. Her story is one of courage, tenacity, and the strong determination to do what others said she couldn't. ...

What worked: Satisfying conclusion to a new plus-sized superheroine. I loved the further antics of Faith and her friends. In this sequel, Faith is trying to deal with her grandmother going into an assisted living facility while making sense of her nemesis Colleen's return to school. In the first book,...

What worked: Strong, inspiring historical of two enslaved children's escape from a plantation to a hidden place in the swamps. This story is based loosely on The Great Dismal Swamp, a place where previously enslaved runaways sought freedom until the end of the Civil War. I didn't know about this...

Seventeen-year-old Joy Abara, a Hali commoner, and Felix Hamdi, a royal playboy are Kindreds. They come from totally different backgrounds but share one thing. At birth, they were linked together as Kindreds. They share all their thoughts and also intense feelings. Joy knows she can never be anything more than...

Beautifully illustrated biography of Luz Jimenez. I totally love books that show people that are part of my own Mexican heritage. This picture book is the perfect addition to not only school libraries, but personal ones as well. Luz Jimenez's story is told with the...

This sequel picks up right where THE RAVENS ends. Scarlett Winter is now president of Kappa Rho Nu, the exclusive sorority house at Westerly College. It's also the place of the most powerful coven of witches. Only instead of Scarlett starting her presidency off with a bang, one mishap after...

What worked: Powerful recollections of Congressman John Lewis and his role in the civil rights movement. What I loved was how readers see what happened after President Johnson signed The Voter Rights Act in 1965 and how hard it still was for all, mostly Black Americans, to exercise their rights...