“Every Tree Has a Story” by Cécile Benoist, transl. from the French by Sylvia Rucker, illus. by Charlotte Gastaut

This is such a gorgeous book, and I’m so glad I bought it and FINALLY got around to reading it. I picked it up at one of my favorite bookstores because I couldn’t look away from the cover. I was transfixed by the illustration and knew I had to own a copy, and now after reading it, I’m glad to have this as part of my collection.

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Genre

Kids Nonfiction — Nature & Environment

Series

n/a

Pubbed

2018

From Goodreads

This visually stunning book is an exploration of unique trees—from the tallest Sequoia in California, to a very special forest in India, to a lone Acacia in the Sahara desert—offering a window into different cultures around the world.

Spectacular art enhances twenty fascinating stories about unique species, traditions, and the people who both nurture and destroy different trees from every corner of the world. This beautiful book improbably tells the story of women’s equality in India; endangered species in the Seychelle Islands; and the green belt movement in Kenya—among other true tales of the tallest, broadest, most interesting, significant trees on every continent.

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Six for Sunday: Fav Picture Books, Just a Few

Six for Sunday is a bookish meme created and hosted by Steph at A Little But a Lot.

(I totally forgot about this meme. Life is still busy, so I’m barely keeping up on here.)

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This Sunday’s topic:

Favorite Picture Books

Not many adults read picture books to enjoy it themselves. People most often believe that picture books are intended only for children, but I think adults can also find enjoyment and sometimes even solace in them. Plus, the story is often accompanied by gorgeous illustrations that make it worth picking up the book to admire them.

Here are some of my favorite picture books. Of course, I couldn’t choose just 6, so I went with 8 instead. I’ll also link to my review of each, in case you’d like to see more of the art.

The Arrival by Shaun Tan

Some folks consider this a picture book and others call it a graphic novel. I tend to lean toward the latter, but either way, it’s a great one to pick up and one that all ages can enjoy. It’s a silent story told without words about a man seeking a safe place for his family to live after a monster invades his homeland. The illustrations are stunning and often make me think of old photographs.

Top 5 Tuesday #67: Top 5 covers of 2021

Top 5 Tuesday is a weekly meme created by Shanah, the Bionic Book Worm, and now hosted by Meeghan at Meeghan Reads.

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This week’s topic:

Top 5 covers of 2021

(What are some of your favourite covers that you have seen this year? Maybe these were reprints, redesigns or alternate covers that came out this year, or maybe they are brand new books.
Whatever they are, tell us all the pretties you have been coveting.)

I love a meme about book covers 😊 and I’ve been looking forward to one like this all year, lol! My favorite thing about December is looking back on all the things I read in the year and chatting about the best of the best.

Well, here are my favorite covers of books I read this year.

The Ruthless Lady’s Guide to Wizardry by C.M. Waggoner

The Ruthless Lady’s Guide to Wizardry is a gaslamp fantasy novel about a poor fire witch who lucks into the chance to make some money by serving as a bodyguard, along with other women, to protect a young lady from being assassinated before her wedding. I read this early in the year with Millie from Milliebot Reads and really enjoyed it. The protagonist is one of my favorites that I’ve encountered this year.

Top 5 Tuesday #66: Books on My Wishlist

Top 5 Tuesday is a weekly meme created by Shanah, the Bionic Book Worm, and now hosted by Meeghan at Meeghan Reads.

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This week’s topic:

Top 5 books on my wishlist

(No matter what you celebrate in December, be it Christmas, Hanukkah, Hogmanay, Jolabokaflod, Koliada, Kwanzaa, Krampusnacht, Nikoldjan, Pancha Ganapati, St Lucia Day, St Nicholas Day, Winter Solstice, Yule, Erastide, Hogswatch, Festivus, Kaldoran, Snoggletog, Yulemas, Decemberween or Chrismukkah, tell us what books are on the top of your wishlist!!)

I have several books on my wishlist, but here are the ones that are at the top.

The Deep by Mayur Vayeda & Tushar Vayeda (illus.)

It’s a beautifully crafted picture book created using the Warli style of painting. The creators are from the indigenous Warli community in western India. I believe the book is about their experience travelling from the familiarity of their home all the way to Japan, and it also explores how water connects all life.

Book Haul #75: Head to the Library

And so we’ve come to the last part of this book haul — the library books. I almost went overboard with these too. It was my first time entering a library to borrow books since the pandemic, and I was both excited about it grabbing everything that caught my eye. But I cooled myself and managed to walk out with just a few books. Yeahie me!

Here’s what I got.

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Library

PHYSICAL

Book Haul #72: Last of the Last

The last book haul I did was supposed to be my last one for the year. *Sigh* I’ve been kidding myself. I always fail miserably whenever I try to limit my book buying, but I’m going to try again since my birthday is now out of the way and I can’t think of any book I feel the need to urgently get.

For the next couple months (let’s say 4 months), I’ll get my books from the library if I don’t have it (exceptions for book club/buddy-read books). So let’s try this book buying ban again.

In the meantime, here are some stuff I recently got!

Purchases

Physical

Book Recs: 20 Picture Books by Black Authors

The uproar in response to police brutality against Black people has strengthened the Black Lives Matter movement and has forced everyone to (again) recognize and admit how ingrained systematic racism is in our society and the many areas that lack diversity.

An area where this discussion is also happening is book publishing, which is known for its lack of diversity among authors, the types of books published, and even among the professionals who work in this sector — editors, designers, publicists, agents, etc. Recently, the hashtag #PublishingPaidMe popped up on Twitter to discuss the disparity between how much authors of color are paid in contrast to White authors, who more often receive large advances for their books. In this New York Times article, renown author Jesmyn Ward talks about fighting for a higher advance despite winning several awards for her books.

We all need to work harder to stop and prevent racism in our society. To help, many people have turned to books to learn more, which has caused books about racism and Black experiences to now flood the best-seller lists. To encourage more people to read and engage with content by Black creators, media outlets, social media, bloggers, and booktubers are all recommending books by and about Black people and Black experiences.

While I am grateful to see these recommendation lists, they often solely contain adult books. I want to contribute a list of recommendations, but instead of adult books, I’ve decided to feature children’s picture books. Racism affects all facets of society. To combat it, we must also encourage more diverse children’s literature, including picture books.

Book Haul #55: No Library Books This Time

I haven’t posted a book haul since July. I’d sworn off acquiring more books because of the huge pile of them I got at the ALA conference that surpassed the available space on my shelves, so they’re still in bags on the floor waiting for a home. That made me feel bad, so I told myself “No More Books!” But, of course, I didn’t listen to myself. So here’s what I got:

Hold up.

Before I show the books, I just need to say that for someone who ran out of shelf space, I’m surprised that I acquired no library books and just one e-book. Not even lack of space is a deterrent for me buying more books. Smh. I will get a handle on this soon though.

Purchases

Illustrated children’s books

“Flotsam” by David Wiesner

This will be a week filled with reviews of illustrated books and comic books. Putting it that way makes it sound like I’ll dump loads of reviews on here this week, but it’ll be just 3 of them. For me, that’s a lot since I usually manage to churn out only a few reviews every couple weeks. I like to pair up my reviews of illustrated books and comics, but I only read one illustrated book. So here is its lonesome review.

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Flotsam by David Wiesner (illus.)

Genre:

Fantasy

Pubbed:

January 2006

Goodreads summary:

A bright, science-minded boy goes to the beach equipped to collect and examine flotsam — anything floating that has been washed ashore. Bottles, lost toys, small objects of every description are among his usual finds. But there’s no way he could have prepared for one particular discovery: a barnacle-encrusted underwater camera, with its own secrets to share … and to keep. 

My Thoughts:

Flotsam is a wonderful children’s picture book with quite an imaginative story that’s told without words. I think I’m leaning toward such books. The absence of words draws my attention to other details and makes me focus on other ways we communicate.

Top 5 Wednesday #24: Kids Books for Adults

It seems that I have a trend here of posting these memes things late because here’s my Top 5 Wednesday post on Thursday. Then again, my whole week has been skewed since Monday felt like Sunday, which made me think Tuesday was Monday, so all this can be excused since I’m confused about what day it is.

Top 5 Wednesday is a weekly meme created by GingerReadsLainey and now managed by Sam from Thoughts on Tomes. For more information on this meme, visit the Goodreads group.

This week’s topic:

Children’s books to read as an adult

Well, here are 5 children’s books I’d recommend to adults. This will be a combination of middle-grade novels and picture books, which are usually the forms of children’s books I consume.

For the artist…

Nightlights by Lorena Alvarez (illus.)