Extremely Belated April Reading Wrap Up

Current read: Make Up Break Up by Lily Menon

Current listen: A Promised Land by Barack Obama

Hello all! This is...not a Youtube video. May is CRAZY BUSY for teachers, and with more and more people fully vaccinated my social life is beginning to actually be a thing that takes up my time. And then when I finally did have time to film last weekend, I totally lost my voice. Thus, no video. 

April was also just a weird reading month for me. The Oscars were in April this year, and the movie awards season is another really intense hobby of mine. Most of my hobbies are pretty intense tbh. The internet calls what I do the "Oscars death race," where you try to see every single Oscar-nominated film before the Oscars actually happen. This year was not NEARLY as fun without movie theatres, so I procrastinated to the point where I had to find time to watch 15 movies the week before the Oscars. I even took a personal day to watch several really sad international films. Not a lot of reading time in there.

With that being said, i was still able to finish 10 books in the month of April. Here is what I read!

A Good Kind of Trouble by Lisa Moore Ramee  

I had seen a LOT of buzz about this one, but it ended up just having a little bit too much middle school drama for me as an adult. That being said, this is a great story about a middle school aged girl discovering activism, and it openly discusses BLM in a positive light. My kids will love it, and I'm glad that it exists. 3.5/5 stars

Hollowpox: The Hunt for Morrigan Crow by Jessica Townsend 

This is the 3rd book in the Nevermoor series. I am COMPLETELY OBSESSED with this middle grade fantasy series, and this newest release continued to raise the bar for the series. I've talked about the Nevermoor series in videos before - click here for my March reading wrap up. Think Harry Potter levels of magic and wonder, but with a strong and fierce heroine at the center of the story and also a really sassy cat the size of a large bear. The audiobooks are also wonderfully narrated by Gemma Whelan, who played Yara Greyjoy on GoT. I need more people to know about and read this series. 5/5 stars

Written in the Stars by Alexandria Bellefleur 4 stars

This was SUCH a fun read, and somehow my only romance read of April? I told you it was a WEIRD month. This was a sapphic romantic comedy with great characters and some excellent chemistry between Darcy, a no-nonsense actuary, and Elle, an influencer and an astrologist. It was both a Pride and Prejudice retelling AND a fake-dating book, which seemed ambitious but turned out to be totally adorable. The representation throughout the book was great, and both characters developed and grew without it feeling too contrived. 4/5 stars

Almost American Girl by Robin Ha

I have closely followed the #weneeddiversebooks campaign for many years, and they have just recently begun awarding a Walter Dean Myers award for excellence in literature written by diverse authors. I saw this year's list of award winners and realized this was only one I hadn't already read. This was a graphic novel memoir about Robin Ha's experience moving from Seoul to rural Alabama at age 14. This book shed new light on Korean culture, and it will be relatable to any young person who doesn't feel like they fit in. I think it would be especially helpful not just to Asian young people, but to immigrant kids or other kids who have to balance different cultural norms. 4/5 stars

The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom 

This book, the winner of 2019 National Book Award for nonfiction, completely changed my perspective on the city of New Orleans. This extremely compelling memoir covers 100 or so years of Broom's family history and their relationship with the city of New Orleans. As with any New Orleans story from recent years, Katrina features prominently, but what makes this book different is the fact that it takes place in EAST New Orleans. East New Orleans is a world away from the French Quarter, and despite the fact that East was one of the worst-hit areas during the hurricane, I knew next to nothing about what the people there experienced. 5/5 stars

Chance: Escape from the Holocaust by Uri Shulevitz  

I have no memory of how this book ended up in my library holds. It was an illustrated memoir of the author's experience as a Polish Jew during World War 2. The author grew up to become a Caledcott winner, so the illustrations are unbelievably stunning. This is an undeniably important book, and a Holocaust story that is different from many others out there -- a refugee story rather than an imprisonment story. It makes me sad how relevant this refugee story from 80 years ago is in 2021. 3.5/5 stars

The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang 

This book was far and away my favorite read of April. This series has gotten SO MUCH LOVE on Booktube, and I'm so glad I decided to see what all the fuss was about. This is a Chinese-inspired fantasy loosely based around the opium wars. It stars Rin, a war orphan from a rural province who aces the exam to enter the Empire's most prestigious military academy. This is probably the most military-based fantasy I've ever read, which I was very skeptical about, but the action scenes are so well-written and never got repetitive or ploddy. The thing that made the biggest impression on me about this book, though, was how Rin's womanhood was addressed in the novel. She is such a well-written, strong character, but R.F. Kuang also does not shy away from the practical problems that women warriors would have. Can't wait to pick up the next book in this series. 5/5 stars

The Hill We Climb by Amanda Gorman 

I did go ahead and pick up the commemorative edition of Amanda Gorman's inauguration poem, and I highly recommend just having this one on your side table when you need a pick me up. It's just such an inspiring poem, and I just so appreciate and respect her work and look forward to seeing what is next for her. 5/5 stars

When You Trap a Tiger by Tae Keller 

This was the 2021 Newbery award winner, and it should be widely read by both kids and adults. The story follows Lily, a biracial girl who moves with her mother and her sister to live with their ailing Korean-born grandmother. Lily makes a deal with a tiger (a figure from her grandmother's Korean folktales) in exchange for restoring her grandmother's health. This was a BEAUTIFUL story about Asian identity and family, and I looooooooved the magical realism throughout. 5/5 stars

She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey 

I hesitated to read this one, worried that it would be a rehash of Ronan Farrow's book Catch and Kill. It turned out to be a COMPLETELY different story, even though both books are about the Harvey Weinstein story. While Farrow's book focused on the Weinstein surveillance apparatus and his attempts to use his power to suppress the story, Kantor and Twohey focused on the story itself. This was a woman-centered take on the situation, with a focus on the victims and their families and the journalists' journey writing it. Both books are great, but I preferred this one. 5/5 stars

Thanks for reading! No worries if you prefer a video format -- I have several videos planned for late May and June, including a Pride month TBR! And for now, that's all she read!