MADreads Reviews

Anne Capestan knew she’d be punished for her itchy trigger finger, but the sentence is like no other she’d ever heard of. After firing one too many bullets, the Parisian police commissaire was lucky to still have her job, but is stunned when she learns that she is to lead a new police squad in charge of cold cases. But Capestan’s squad consists entirely of the police officers that have run afoul of the police judiciare, and since they cannot be fired, they can at least be relegated to some brigade, starved of funds and support until they quit in frustration.

This is a beautiful, quiet book about grief and friendship and recognizing when the people you love are broken. It's also about the power of sticking with those close to you until they are on the road to healing.

Ethan and his family are getting a fresh start in the hot, coastal town of Palm Knot, Georgia, or at least they are trying to. While there's a promise of finding new friends and rebuilding family relationships, Ethan's guilt of who he was and what he did continues to haunt him. Whispered phone calls at night, family secrets and the secrets of his possible new best friend, Coralee, ultimately contribute to Ethan's understanding of the importance of remembering and forgiveness. This is a capably written story that discusses death, forgiveness, and the effects of guilt on a young mind.

Bim! Bam! Boom!, Frederic Stehr
With fresh language, Stehr revisits an activity as old as kitchens and toddlers – the pots and pans band.

The Wonderful Habits of Rabbits, Douglas Florian
Join a family of playful bunnies as they cavort through their day, and then settle in for snuggles at bedtime.

Skip to the Loo: a Potty Book, Sally Lloyd-Jones & Anita Jeram
All of the animals are using their potties.  This celebration of successful transitioning to using the potty can be sung as well as read.  And the illustrations are adorable!

"For the record, I wasn't around the day they decided to become Dumb. If I'd been their manager back then I'd have pointed out that the name, while accurate, was not exactly smart. It just encouraged people to question the band's intelligence, maybe even their sanity. And the way I saw it, Dumb didn't have much of either."

The Mystery Writers of America bestowed their annual Edgar Awards April 26, recognizing the best in crime writing in several genres and formats. The evening's top prize for fiction went to Attica Locke's Bluebird, Bluebird, an East Texas set whodunit featuring a black Texas Ranger investigating the deaths of a black man and a white woman that soon promises to unearth long-buried romantic and racially motivated crimes.

The Airport Book is perfect for anyone planning an adventure particularly if that adventure includes flying in an airplane!) or anyone who is curious about what happens at the airport.  Follow a family of four as they pack for their trip, take a taxi, go through airport security, board the plane, and fly all the way to Grandma and Grandpa’s!  This is one of those fascinating picture books that takes the reader behind the scenes, and each repeat read will offer new details and interesting tidbits to explore. 
For ages 3 – 7

Even if you haven’t heard of trap music, you’ve heard it. A hip hop subgenre born out of the American south, with fast and hard drums and lyrics about the drug underworld, trap music has taken the world by storm — dominating all of hip hop, America’s most consumed music, and infiltrating pop music in general.

This graphic novel series is set in Cannon Cove, where a popular adventure movie called The Gloomies was filmed in the 1980s. Decades later, fans of the movie continue to visit and annoy the residents who cater to the tourism with mild resentment. Then a cool group of teen "misfits" who begrudgingly live in the sleepy coastal town discover something unexpected, mysterious and adventurous: a pirate map belonging to the legendary Black Mary!

I'm re-upping this review as the new adaptation of All Creatures Great and Small on PBS is bringing James Herriot's books to mind. If you're watching the lovely new version and have already done your Herriot re-read but are still wanting to feel those feelings, The Call is a great companion work.

Winter may be retaining its grip on us with white knuckle intensity, but yet another sign of spring is here with the appearance in LINKCat of May’s big titles. And what a lot of titles there are. To the highlights: 

A very promising beginning to a new series set in Regency London. The rise of science...the lure of alchemy...ghastly murder in a church...an Earl a suspect! From the backstreets of the stews to club of the aristocracy the reader is lured into an unexpected conspiracy and danger.

I tried it, and I liked it! I’m not usually into angsty teen romance novels, but Sugiura provides plenty of layers to this one. Sana is discovering her sexual identity (lesbian), she is discovering her father’s infidelity (he is having an affair of sorts), and at the same time she is struggling with her peers’ racism (she is of Japanese descent), and her own racism (she falls for a Latina girl at her high school and stumbles with her own preconceived beliefs).

The title of this book might put you off, but the topic is real and it is important. There is a kind of decluttering in Sweden called dostadning. Do means "death" and stadning means "cleaning." The author, Margareta Magnusson, suggests ways in which we can prepare our homes and possessions to make the most of them while we are still living and to ease the burden on others after we have died. She promotes minimalist living and choosing clothing, furniture and artifacts with care, especially as we age.

In her latest in the Ravenals series, Kleypas has loosely based the heroine on a real historical figure, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, the first (and only, for many years) female doctor in England. Kleypas' Dr. Garrett Gibson is also the lone female physician of her time and she does work in London and those are broadly the only things they have in common.

The Bear & Hare books are such fun to share with young readers! Toddlers and preschoolers will enjoy the humor and charm of each one – and you will, too! To practice counting and have a first introduction to hide-and-seek, check out Bear & Hare, Where’s Bear? (Simon & Schuster, 2016). The pacing is perfect – and the illustrations are very silly. Readers get to practice counting from 1 to 10 several times as bear and hare take turns hiding. When Hare can’t find Bear at the very end, and is feeling sad, Bear appears quickly and gives his friend a much needed hug of reassurance.

Winner of the coveted 2018 Randolph Caldecott Medal for the most distinguished American picture book for children, Wolf in the Snow artistically explores themes of moving beyond fear and mistrust of “the other” to a place of caring and helping. Cordell’s watercolor illustrations depict a little girl and a wolf cub who find each other in a blizzard that renders each of them lost from their families and homes.

Unusually for me, I was reading two non-fiction books concurrently, this one and The Taste of Empire. Like that one, this one is good, interesting and also about more than the title suggests.

Author Chloe Benjamin read from her new book The Immortalists to a packed house at the first Wisconsin Book Festival event of 2018. It was a cold night but spirits were high at Cooper's Tavern as the author shared the news that her book was about to debut on The New York Times bestsellers list. Now Benjamin has been named the featured author at this year’s Book Club Café. Stay tuned for more details about that big event!

A perfect book for spring! In this non-fiction book, Wisconsin author Miranda Paul weaves a brilliant and accurate account of the water cycle through the seasons in whimsical and engaging rhyming verse. With awesome full page, water color illustrations following a family of kids jumping in a lake in the summer, splashing in puddles on their way to school in the fall, and having a snowball fight, your Wisconsin family will see themselves and their adventures reflected, while still learning all the forms water takes and all the places we encounter it around us.