CCBC Weekly Book Reviews
The View from the Very Best House in Town
Sam, white, and Asha, Indian American, both autistic, are best friends until Sam is accepted to Castleton Academy for seventh grade. At Castleton, Sam is bullied until popular girl Prestyn takes a sudden interest in him.
May 23, 2022
Ten Blocks to the Big Wok
A bilingual (English/Chinese) counting book follows little Mia and her Uncle Eddie on a walk through Chinatown. They are headed to the Big Wok restaurant for dim sum.
May 16, 2022
Cress Watercress
Cress Watercress is a young rabbit whose family is on the move. Papa didn’t come home from his last foraging trip; Mama is now supporting Cress and her baby brother, Kip, on her own.
May 9, 2022
Snow Angel, Sand Angel
Claire and her brother, Timbo, each make winter-themed dioramas for a school project. Timbo’s is cotton balls of snow and glitter; Claire’s is about migration—their home, the Big Island of Hawaiʿi, is a winter refuge for many birds.
May 2, 2022
Blue: A History of the Color as Deep as the Sea and as Wide as the Sky
Do colors have histories? Brew-Hammond reveals that blue most certainly does. Although people have always been able to see the color blue in the sky, lakes, and oceans, recreating blue is another matter.
April 25, 2022
Alias Anna: A True Story of Outwitting the Nazis
Zhanna Arshanskaya and her sister, Frina, are two talented musicians growing up in Ukraine in the 1930s.
April 18, 2022
Aviva vs. the Dybbuk
Next to the synagogue, in the building that houses the mikvah (ritual bath), Aviva lives with her mother, Ema, and a dybbuk—visible only to Aviva—who delights in wreaking minor havoc.
April 11, 2022
Star Child: A Biographical Constellation of Octavia Estelle Butler
An inspired biography uses poems and prose to explore the life of groundbreaking African American speculative and science fiction writer Octavia Butler.
April 4, 2022
Mina
“Mina lived in her own little world where nothing ever bothered her. Except for one thing.”
March 28, 2022
Lulu and Milagro’s Search for Clarity
Peruvian American sisters Lulu and Milagro aren’t exactly close and certainly weren’t planning to spend spring break together.
March 21, 2022
Just Right Jillian
The girls in Jillian’s fifth-grade class try hard to look alike. They wear the same bland, neutral colors and ho-hum hairstyles on the same days each week. Jillian, bored by this unofficial uniform, longs to be herself—and speak up more, too—but she’s afraid to stand out.
March 13, 2022
Star Fishing
“It’s the kind of night when you just can’t fall asleep. You feel as though everyone in the world is asleep but you.” A small child dressed in bunny pajamas is wide awake in the peaceful calm of a deep-blue-hued bedroom, longing to play.
March 7, 2022
I Must Betray You
When 17-year-old Cristian Florescu is called to his school office and confronted by a member of the Romanian secret police, the Securitate officer tells Cristian that he and his family won’t be punished for the illegal American dollar Cristian possesses if he’s willing to become an informer.
February 28, 2022
Maizy Chen’s Last Chance
Eleven-year-old Maizy Chen travels from Los Angeles with her single mom to spend the summer in Last Chance, Minnesota. They are there to help with the family’s Chinese restaurant, the Golden Palace, because her grandfather is ill.
February 21, 2022
Love, Violet
There’s only one classmate who makes “Violet’s heart skip,” and that’s brown-skinned Mira. In Violet’s imagination, she “astound[s] Mira with heroic feats” and embarks on adventures with her.
February 14, 2022- More Books of the Week