An unseen narrator who has a story to tell is also tasked with keeping all the participants’ contributions “nice, polite, and appropriate for kids.” Five animals assemble, along with a talking taco, a tan-skinned pirate, and a pale-skinned child astronaut. But as the narrator explains the guidelines (“I want us all to agree you will […]
Zoe can’t wait to throw a party for her friends and their toys. She’s even built a little house out of blocks, with a pool on the roof for the occasion. But Car and Miles—a figure who, like Zoe, uses a manual wheelchair—can’t climb the steps to the roof. Chagrined, Zoe sets out to build […]
Francine Garcia’s parents must leave her and her toddler brother, Alfond, with Auntie Flora; Francine’s infant brother Ramón needs heart surgery, and her parents will be spending the next month in Atlanta while he undergoes the procedure. Though Francine’s upset about the disruption to her routine and the separation from her parents, she finds solace […]
Clayton combines speculative fiction with Catholic theology in this reflective self-helper. Through 35 guided meditations, readers are encouraged to imagine themselves on a quest led by Ignatian principles. The author, who believes that stories reflect divine truths, proposes spiritual practices for worldbuilding, including trusting your imagination, being specific, seeing the world as grace-filled, and embracing […]
Raised in France by a single mother (who, per the author, reveled in manipulation and emotional abuse), at age 19 Ranucci put an ocean between them by moving to New York City. The New Age movement emerging at the time resonated with her own spiritual questions, feelings of interconnectedness, and hope for transformation and self-knowledge. […]
It’s the start of the hockey season in October 1992, and Georgina “Georgie” Law is preparing to spend all her free time at the Gardens, cheering on her beloved Toronto Maple Leafs. Georgie is a high school history teacher who inherited season tickets—and an all-consuming love for the team—from her late father. The Leafs, along […]
Each dwelling is a distinctive, unexpected shape. At Lucy’s, there’s a cat silhouetted in one of the round, eyelike windows. “Does [the house] have…ears?” Not only do the attic dormers look just like cat ears, but the lunette over the door evokes a nose and the mailbox has feline features. A cross section shows Peter […]
The “Farm” is a former elementary school converted to the campus of a Baptist women’s recovery program. The author, who is Jewish, arrived there when her financial and social support networks disintegrated and she had lost custody of her children. Through flashbacks, Stone reveals that her once-happy life, full of middle-class creature comforts (“soft bed […]
Award-winning naturalist, poet, and painter Kaufmann (The California Field Atlas, 2017, etc.) invites readers to redefine stewardship of the earth, by uniting “ecological science, ethical responsibility, and the needs of the human community” with the needs and intelligences of the non-human community. Ethical responsibility is central to an “ecological philosophy” that may lead to “people […]
“Kids: Don’t try this at home” warns McGee, depicting earwig hatchlings preparing to chow down on their mom. Matriophagy, though, is just one of the gruesome practices highlighted in this rousing grossfest as the author describes with exaggerated relish how assassin bugs inject their prey with an innards-dissolving poison (“Yum! Cockroach smoothie!”), depicts with crunchy […]