MADreads Reviews

The soundtrack of America encompasses heartbreak, joy, revolution, and survival.

Did you know that books can be so much more than just stories to read? I love when a book also encourages me to play, too!

The tiniest of words can create the BIGGEST of feelings – or at least that’s true in Ten-Word Tiny Tales of Love by Joseph Coelho.

Maya is excited and nervous to share her Korean family's tradition of birthday soup, or miyeok guk, with her friends at her birthday party.

Chooch is the baby. Well, he's not really a baby anymore, but anytime Chooch makes a mess, everyone says, "He's just usdi. Let him help." To Sissy, it feels like Chooch can get away with anything. He helps Elisi paint a mural, Etsi sew moccasins, and Edutsi make grape dumplings. Anyone who has ever let a toddler "help" with something can imagine how this goes, and when he helps Sissy make a clay pot she finally loses patience.

I LOVE baseball!  When I was a kid it was my dream to be the first girl to play major league baseball.

Stuntboy by Jason Reynolds is the story of Portico and Zola and their new friend Herbert, who used to be

A little girl using a power wheelchair does not want to get bundled up in a heavy coat, itchy hat, and stiff boots to go out into the cold and wind.  She does not like going to new places, but her mother assures her it will be all right.  They head to a park where an ice sculpture event takes place.  The artists are drilling, sawing, chiseling, and more to create something out of ice.  The girl and her mother talk about why someone might spend so much time creating something that will melt and are not in agreement about whether it's worth it or not.  

A young boy takes on the legacy of farming from his Papa/grandpa in The Last Stand by Antwan Eady and Illustrated by Jarrett & Jerome Pumpherey (Alfred A. Knopf, 2024). Papa sells pumpkins, peppers, plums, and eggs at the local Farmer’s Market. But, each year the market has fewer and fewer stands – until - Papa’s stand is the very last one. Papa takes his job of farming very seriously and steadfastly harvests crops and eggs every Saturday. “Papa’s hands are black and wrinkled. And each wrinkle tells me a story.

When Belle's class draws owls, Ms.

Sounds of the desert come together to form a song that takes the reader through a night full of memories and familial connectedness. The illustrations beautifully accompany the text and make the story feel like a hug.

The book begins at the end of a day with the sun brushing the tops of the mountains and follows the course of a night until the sun rises again. The author and illustrator move in tandem to tell the beautiful story of family, tradition, and the landscape of the desert. This is a beautiful story that I would recommend to any family!

World-renowned humanitarian and chef José Andrés's love of cooking started as a boy in Spain cooking paella for family over an open fire.  As he grew older, attended cooking school, and traveled the world, he dreamed of the stories he could tell with food.  While feeding sailors on a famous Spanish Navy ship, José wished that everyone everywhere had enough food to eat. 

A handful of new picture books feature characters and stories from popular books for older kids, introducing these worlds to younger readers!

Aaron Becker once again proves how powerful wordless picture books can be. The Last Zookeeper tells the story of Noa, the last robot of a crew of seawall construction team, as he works to save abandoned animals at a flooding zoo. Full of imaginative ingenuity, Noa builds a boat and sails away into the horizon with the animals.

Will he be successful in saving them all? Will they simply survive, or is there something wonderful awaiting them? Be sure to read this gorgeous and heartwarming story to find out!

This picture book is a black, white, and neon pink look at a classroom skeleton named John who retires and moves to the country to live with Grams and Gramps in a cottage in the woods.  Grams and Gramps have lived in this cottage for a long time, and it is described as a little bit crooked and a little bit under the weather.  This perfectly describes what my fixer-upper home is like, with an inspired twist on words.  John the Skeleton is a book in translation, and as such, it opens the reader to concepts, words, and illustrations that have a distinct Northern European flair.  Gramp

This gorgeously illustrated nonfiction picture book shows the unique ecosystem of a whale fall. A massive blue whale dies, and her decomposing body nourishes various marine life, from scavengers to microorganisms, on the ocean floor over more than a century. Jason Chin’s watercolors beautifully depict the process in all its phases.

Joy comes in many forms in The Yellow Bus by Loren Long. We see the new yellow school bus carrying children from home to school. “And they filled her with joy.” Then, the bus has a new life driving older riders to the library and to country parks. They, too, “filled her with joy.” The illustrations show the sunshine yellow of the bus and everything in and around the bus drenched in color. Beyond these bright colors, the rest of the page is muted and in greyscale. This makes the yellow bus always pop off the page.

Monday is the best day of the week (according to Mabel). 

Long before the days of cellphones and food delivery apps, demae (cycling deliverymen) used bicycles and amazing acrobatic balancing skills to deliver trays of steaming soba (buckwheat) noodles to hungry residents of Tokyo. The neighborhood kids all wonder, how do they manage those tottering towers of tasty food and stacks of breakable dishes while steering through the crowded streets with one hand on the handlebars? What would happen if the kids tried that too?