megreadskidsbooks

[megreadskidsbooks]

The Henna Wars

Written by Adiba Jaigirdar

Genre or category: fiction, romance, LGBTQ

Target Age Group: Grades 8-12

Summary:

Nishat is a Bangladeshi teen living in Dublin who comes out to her family as a lesbian. She enters into a business competition in school where she starts doing henna, but her plan is copied by two other students. Through rumors, romance, and fierce competition, the book discusses cultural appropriation, racism, and homophobia as Nishat learns to embrace every aspect of her identity.

Justification:

I am reviewing this book in the LGBTQ category. This book was a selection for the YALSA's Best Fiction for Young Adults list in 2021, which recommends books for ages 12 to 18 to libraries who can use the list for guidance on collections and reader’s advisories. The book was also on Time Magazine’s list of 100 Best Young Adult Books of All Time.

Evaluation:

For this review, I will be evaluating language, symbolism, and setting.

The book combines is written in English, but it uses Bengali words where the main character would use them in her speaking, which contributes to the immersion into Nishat’s cultural identity. Her younger sister calls her “Apujan” which is a combined term of respect and endearment for an older sister. Nishat’s narration speaks of different foods, conversational Bengali words, and expressions without direct translations to English, and the choice to keep these words in Bengali without providing explicit translations for each word as it comes up is a strong choice by the author to provide authenticity to Nishat’s experiences. At the beginning of the book, Nishat says she had to look up the translation for lesbian in Bengali, because it is not a word that she has been introduced to despite growing up speaking the language, and this experience mirrors how her parents reacted when she came out to them, because the idea of having a lesbian daughter was as foreign to them as the words were to Nishat. She also had her name mispronounced several times, and each incident became increasingly offensive to me as someone whose name gets mispronounced equally as often.

Nishat’s identity is rooted deeply in the culture of her parents and her childhood in Bangladesh, but she is growing up in Ireland at a school where she is required to learn Irish and to speak in English. Food is used as a symbol of individuality and belonging in the book. Nishat experiences people disliking the smell of her lunch when her mother packs her Bangladeshi food, and one of her classmates starting rumors about how her father’s restaurant gives people indigestion, but those experiences are paralleled by her love of her cultural food. She explains how she loves breakfasts over summer break when she has time to sit down and eat traditional Bangladeshi food instead of cereal, and how she goes to her cousin’s wedding and they serve Indian food but she has to use Western cutlery to eat it instead of using her hands, making her feel out of place at an event that is supposed to be for people like her. At the end of the book when she invites Flávia to her house, Nishat’s mother, after spending most of the book seemingly ignoring her daughter out of shame for her identity as a lesbian, makes a fuss over cooking a lot of Bengali food for the girls, showing how she has grown to accept Nishat and the possibility of her having a girlfriend instead of a boyfriend.

The book takes place in Dublin, Ireland, which informs Nishat’s experiences integrating her Bangladeshi culture with the culture of her peers. Dublin is a major city center, and larger cities are usually less culturally conservative than smaller towns, but Nishat attends a Catholic all girls school, and Catholicism is a religion notorious for valuing shame. This means that when Nishat is outed to her school, she does not feel like she can stand up for herself. Dublin also does not have a large minority population, and she is one of a few non-white students in her grade at school. She experiences both casual and intentional racism and homophobia, but then in the end she is able to stand out on the street and kiss a girl and no one stops to pay attention to them. The setting provides that space for interpersonal relationships in Nishat’s life to be extremely influential, but also allows see that there are people outside her current social network who will be excited to meet her eventually.

Sharing so many aspects of my identity with Nishat, I strongly connected to this story, which is likely why it took me so long to read it despite owning it and intending to read it since the week it was released. I think the journey Nishat goes through with her parents was dramatic, but not unlike my experience coming out to my mother. I had already comfortably found a group of accepting friends before I understood my identity, so I did not experience any of the homophobia Nishat did at school, but my heart broke for her over and over. For these reasons, it’s hard for me to provide a rating, because the negative aspects of Nishat’s experiences hit me so much harder than the positive ones. I would definitely recommend the book to, as the book’s dedication suggests, “queer brown girls” (Jaigirdar, 2020).

References

Jaigirdar, A. (2020). The Henna Wars. Page Street Publishing.

YALSA. (2017, December). Best Fiction for Young Adults. https://www.ala.org/yalsa/best-fiction-young-adults

[megreadskidsbooks]

The Deep Dark

Written and illustrated by Molly Knox Ostertag

Genre: Graphic novel, fiction, LGBTQ

Target Age Group: Grades 9-12

Summary:

Magdalena is about to graduate high school, caught between working and taking care of her grandmother. An old childhood friend returns to the small desert town to work on a photography project, and the two end up rekindling their friendship, but Mags has to decide if her new feelings are worth revealing the secret she’s kept her whole life.

Justification:

This book was one of four which received the Printz Honor in 2025. The formal title of the award is The Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature, and the winners and honors embody “literary excellence” (YALSA, 2013). The award is for books with a target audience ages 12 to 18, and the website clarifies that although the award list is aimed at teens, the criteria is based on literary elements and not on popularity.

Evaluation:

For this review, I will be evaluating setting, color, and format.

The setting provides a mysterious, isolated mood for the book. The story takes place in the desert outside of Joshua Tree, California, and the first major flashback in the story is of a child getting attacked in the wilderness. Because the flashback is also illustrated in color against the story’s grayscale, the desert setting is literally illustrated to be both beautiful in its color and landscape, and terrifying in the vast unknown it holds. The desert setting also allows for plot development, because the large rocks are a common location for characters to sit and have conversations, as well as providing hidden spaces when Aaron tries to threaten Nessa.

The illustrations in this graphic novel were brilliant in the use of color. The majority of the novel is in grayscale, but for scenes with flashbacks, they appear in full color. There are also flashes of red in the scenes with blood, which increases the dramatic impact of these scenes. The use of a bold color in an otherwise black and white visual field emphasizes the importance of the parts of the story that are in color, as in the scenes where Mags’s monster saves Nessa from her ex-boyfriend. The end of the book is also in color, which illustrates the journey Mags has gone through in accepting the monster as part of her life, and in turn, accepting herself.

I read this book in a digital format, but on my laptop instead of on an ereader. My ereader screen is in black and white, and from experience I knew I would enjoy a graphic novel more if I read it in a format where I could see and appreciate the color, which I am glad I did because the color was an important visual element of the story. Reading this graphic novel digitally also allowed me to zoom in on details of the illustrations, which is not an option for physical books. As somewhat of a book traditionalist, I still prefer to read graphic novels in print because that is the format they were intended for when they were being written and illustrated. However, the accessibility of digital books – I checked this one out from my local library using their ebook service CloudLibrary and was able to read it the same day without leaving my house – is a major benefit when trying to encourage more people to read.

Of the graphic novels I have read, I would give this one a 4/5 star rating. I appreciated how the LGBTQ characters were presented without ceremony, and though their identities informed their characters, they were not defined solely by their identities. I also thoroughly enjoyed the vibrancy of the illustrations and how simple the designs were while managing to come together to form a beautiful visual journey in addition to an emotional one. Some of the content felt jarring to me as an adult even though it was intended for a teen audience, so I would recommend readers go into the book aware of its contents as far as depictions of grief and violence, but all of those elements combined were what made it such a compelling story.

References

Ostertag, M. K. (2024). The Deep Dark. [eBook edition]. Scholastic Inc. https://ebook.yourcloudlibrary.com/library/Denton-document_id-aq54sfg9

YALSA. (2013, March). The Michael L. Printz Award Policies and Procedures. https://www.ala.org/yalsa/booklistsawards/bookawards/printzaward/aboutprintz/criteria

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The Dream Catcher

Written and illustrated by Marcelo Verdad

Genre or category: fiction

Target Age Group: Grades preK-3

Summary

Miguel lives with his abuelito and sells dream catchers that he weaves, collecting coins every day to reach his dream. He learns how to appreciate where he is while still working toward his dream.

Justification

This book won the Pura Belpré Youth Illustrator Award in 2025. This award celebrates “the Latino cultural experience in an outstanding work of literature for children” (ALSC, 2025).

Evaluation

For this review, I will be evaluating tone, color, and composition.

Miguel weaves and sells dream catchers while his grandfather sells cold coconuts to people in Oaxaca, and he collects coins every day to achieve his dream of flying on an airplane with his abuelito to be with his parents. The underlying story is one of a child who lives apart from his parents and wants to see them again, but it is portrayed in a hopeful way for young children to understand and connect to. The tone is light and speaks of dreams, some whimsical and some realistic, and the lightness helps children stay interested in the story. The same story could be told in a very dark and depressing way, where the emphasis is on the feeling of a child missing his parents rather than appreciating where he is and working toward his dreams every day.

The illustrations in the book get increasingly colorful throughout. The story starts in shades of brown and gray when Miguel is at home, and then as he sees more people and learns about their dreams, the illustrations get increasingly colorful. The colors mirror the ways Miguel’s world expands, reaching a peak at the sunset when the pages are covered in color. The only set of pages that deviates from this pattern is when Abuelito is explaining how some people dream of the people they miss, and the colors return to gray. As Miguel returns home, the imagery returns to shades of brown and gray but they are bolder colors, except for a bright and colorful photo of Miguel and his parents in his room. The colors of Miguel’s room in the dark evoke a feeling of resolution, because they are bolder than at the beginning of the book, showing that Miguel has learned to appreciate where he is.

The art for the book was “created using acrylic paint, paper, and digital collage” (Verdad, 2024). The illustrations evoke the feeling of paper dolls, with how the characters move and how they dress portrayed using simple shapes and lines instead of having complex bodies and clothing. Having the characters look like this makes the book feel playful; as the characters on the page dream of castles and loved ones, I as a reader felt inspired to be creative in achieving my own dreams of filling the world with color.

References

ALSC. (2025). Pura Belpré Award. https://www.ala.org/alsc/awardsgrants/bookmedia/belpre

Verdad, M. (2024). The Dream Catcher. Hachette Book Group.

[megreadskidsbooks]

Go Forth and Tell: The Life of Augusta Baker, Librarian and Master Storyteller

Written by Breanna J. McDaniel, illustrated by April Harrison

Genre or category: nonfiction, biography

Target Age Group: Grades K-3

Summary:

Augusta Baker grew up listening to stories, and she carried her love of stories into her life as an adult to compile books from African American writers to make sure everyone’s voices were being heard.

Justification:

This book won a Corretta Scott King Honor in 2025 in the illustration category. These awards are given to African American authors and illustrators of books for children and young adults. These books must “demonstrate an appreciation of African American culture and universal human values” (CSKBART, 2012).

Evaluation:

For this review, I will be evaluating illustrative medium, theme, and characterization.

The illustrations in this book are made in a collage medium, which complements the storytelling present throughout Augusta’s life. The pictures are colorful and diverse in media used, united in composition by the collage element. Many of the illustrations use words clipped from print sources, adding to the effect of painting Augusta as a source of words and stories. The narration speaks on Augusta’s passion for collecting and telling stories, and the way the illustrations appear to be pieced together contributes to the feeling of bringing different elements together in one place, like a library full of books. I was blown away by this creative choice, because the ways the art style complemented the storytelling was immediately clear even before reading about Augusta's life.

The theme of the book revolves around storytelling. In describing Augusta as a master storyteller instead of just a librarian, the author expands the scope of Augusta’s influence to include all the work she did in her life outside of being a librarian. The book goes over her life and history, and the theme of storytelling is present from when she was listening to her grandmother tell stories all the way through to her as an adult teaching university students the importance of telling stories. Another review by a librarian noted that the importance of telling stories was emphasized because part of Augusta’s mission was to tell stories of people whose stories were not being told otherwise, especially in the age when racial integration was highly controversial (Bird, 2024).

Augusta is characterized consistently as a lover of stories, and as the book follows her accomplishments in life, her characterization is reinforced. She goes from listening to stories, and then telling them, and then collecting them in both personal and professional ways, eventually becoming the first Black children’s librarian in New York City. Her characterization in the book continues beyond her death, speaking of her legacy as a storyteller and the ways she has affected people’s lives to this day.

References

Bird, B. (2024). Review of the day: Go Forth and Tell by Breanna J. McDaniel, ill. April Harrison. https://afuse8production.slj.com/2024/08/18/review-of-the-day-go-forth-and-tell-by-breanna-j-mcdaniel-ill-april-harrison/

CSKBART. (2012). The History of the Coretta Scott King Book Awards. https://www.ala.org/cskbart/about

McDaniel, B. J. (2024). Go Forth and Tell: The Life of Augusta Baker, Librarian and Master Storyteller (A. Harrison, Illus.). Dial Books for Young Readers.

[megreadskidsbooks]

Adela’s Mariachi Band

Written by Denise Vega, illustrated by Erika Rodriguez Medina

Genre or category: Fiction

Target Age Group: Grades preK-2

Summary:

Adela’s family has a mariachi band, but she’s too small to play any of the instruments, and when she tries to dance with her sisters, she trips on her skirts. Through trying different things, Adela finds a way to join her family’s band using her own skills.

Justification:

This book is on the Texas 2x2 reading list, which is a list of distinguished books for children from age 2 to grade 2. The list consists of books with remarkable illustrations and are often humorous, recommended to teachers and caregivers for story times or bedtime.

Evaluation:

For this review, I will be evaluating style, character design, and voice.

The author makes stylistic choices in her writing through her use of onomatopoeia and comic book-style displays of emotions. When Adela tries to play the instruments, through the use of words, the instruments make noise. Especially because this book is on a list of books intended to be read together with an adult, there is an excellent opportunity to turn reading the book into a dynamic, sensory experience, which can encourage children to read more books in the future, both with an adult and on their own.

The characters are illustrated in bright colors, playing instruments and dancing. The way scenes are drawn brings a sense of motion to the book, encouraging involvement from readers for reading and acting out the scenes. Readers are told that Adela is small, but the illustrations support that visually, showing how Adela’s arms cannot reach around her uncle’s vihuela, or how she is the smallest face in her family picture. The illustrations also show that Adela is very emotive, and that despite her frustrations with being the smallest in her family, she delights in finding a way to join them in the end.

The author includes several Spanish words and names for instruments in the otherwise English story, as Adela would hear them spoken in her family. This makes the story more immersive, and gives readers the opportunity to expand their language skills by looking up pronunciations or translations. I love when a story doesn't translate every word into English, because it also helps readers practice using context clues, both visual and textual, to understand what the author is saying. Many of the sounds Adela makes in the book also reflect Spanish pronunciations of emotions, like oy and iee instead of English expressions like aw or oh. This use of language brings the reader closer to how Adela is experiencing her world.

References

TLA. (2025). 2025-2x2 Reading List Announced!. https://txla.org/news/2025-2x2-reading-list-announced/

Vega, D. (2024). Adela’s Mariachi Band (E. R. Medina, Illus.). Charlesbridge Publishing.

[megreadskidsbooks]

Pedro’s Yo-Yos: How a Filipino Immigrant Came to America and Changed the World of Toys

Written by Rob Peñas, illustrated by Carl Angel

Genre or category: nonfiction, biography

Target Age Group: Grades 3-6

Summary:

Pedro Flores, a Filipino immigrant, is credited with bringing the popular children’s toy, the yo-yo, to America. This book portrays his journey from the Philippines to the United States, and the things that inspired him to recreate a toy from his childhood for his new community. The yo-yo gained popularity and the Duncan Toys Company bought the trademark for the toy and began distributing them to an even wider audience.

Justification:

This book was one of the winners of the Texas Bluebonnet Awards for 2025, which makes a list of quality fiction and nonfiction books for grades 3 to 6. They select books to help children develop critical reading skills, and to honor “creative, talented, and diverse” authors from Texas (TLA, 2025).

Evaluation:

For this review, I will be evaluating structure, character illustration, and point of view.

The book is structured in chronological order, which makes it easier for young readers to understand the context of Pedro’s story. It introduces the toy first, which many children will be familiar with, and then tells the story starting with Pedro’s childhood and moving through the timeline of his life, providing political and cultural background to place his story in history. I think this way of telling the story, as opposed to starting with his creation and then telling the reader the history, helps place the story in a setting from the beginning, which can help children understand the series of events that led to the decisions Pedro made in his life. One of the most effective history classes I've taken taught in this way, connecting cultural and political changes through the invention of an item, or the evolution of a trend. Giving the thing, the yo-yo in this case, a place in the context of history makes it easier to make connections of cause and effect between people and events beyond just on a timeline.

The illustrations portray the diverse cast of characters with sensitivity to the physical characteristics of people of different races and from different ethnic backgrounds, without exaggerating features of these characters to make it understood that they are somehow different from the default, and without making everyone appear the same. The colorful illustrations are also captivating in their detail, and they add to the story by showing things like the logo on Pedro’s yo-yos and the subtle differences in Pedro’s age compared to his fellow students.

The author uses third person in his narration, despite also being a Filipino immigrant and choosing to write this story to honor his heritage. This separation from the author makes it easier for the reader to connect to the story, because using first person in nonfiction can have an exclusionary effect, making the reader feel disconnected from the narrative. The author’s choice to tell a story so closely tied to his own childhood without making it a personal story is effective in bringing the story of Pedro to a level where it can be appreciated by readers without feeling the author’s emotions, which is important when telling a nonfiction story.

References

Peñas, R. (2024). Pedro’s Yo-Yos: How a Filipino Immigrant Came to America and Changed the World of Toys (C. Angel, Illus.). Lee & Low Books.

TLA. (2025). 2025-2026 Texas Bluebonnet Award List Released. https://txla.org/news/2025-2026-texas-bluebonnet-award-list-released/

[megreadskidsbooks]

Welcome!

This is a list of all the books I have reviewed.

PreK-6

Pedro’s Yo-Yos: How a Filipino Immigrant Came to America and Changed the World of Toys, by Rob Peñas, illustrated by Carl Angel

Adela’s Mariachi Band, by Denise Vega, illustrated by Erika Rodriguez Medina

Go Forth and Tell: The Life of Augusta Baker, Librarian and Master Storyteller, by Breanna J. McDaniel, illustrated by April Harrison

The Dream Catcher, written and illustrated by Marcelo Verdad

7-12

The Henna Wars, by Adiba Jaigirdar

The Deep Dark, by Molly Knox Ostertag