CET Writes

This 2018 Maverick List honoree and @CTXTeenComicCon guest speaker brings lush artwork and magical realism to the #WeNeedDiverseComics movement. #LibrariesRRock #RRockReviewsHS ​ #MaverickList #yartxla #CTXComicCon   |   @nidhiart ,  @01FirstSecond

In this brilliant sequel to Openly Straight, Ben finds his way, his voice, and his love as Konigsberg continues the tale with this beautifully raw and complex addition to the burgeoning body of LGBTQ YA literature. #LibrariesRRock #RRockReviewHS ​  |   @billkonigsberg ,  @AALBooks

Jones’ team of creators artfully navigates a very heavy topic in a multifaceted approach that refuses to oversimplify or reduce down to a FEW talking points. Bravo! #LibrariesRRock #RRockReviewsHS ​ #MaverickList #yartxla   |   @LEEandLOW ,  @PoetTonyMedina

In this 2019 #MaverickList honoree,  @strangelykatie creates a gentle world in which miniature dragons have more in common with house cats than beasts of destruction. Check it out to see what kind of Tea Dragon you will be!  @OniPress   |   #CETReviews #RRockReviewsMS #RRockReviewsHS

With messaging, more subtle than the original,  @MollyOstertag 's sequel to Witch Boy enriches the series premise and strengthens the characterization of the denizens--making it clear that this tale is more than a one-off.  #CETReviews #RockReviewsMS #RockReviewsHS   |   @GraphixBooks

In this 2020 #MaverickList nominee, fans of middlegrade, slice-of-life realistic fiction with female strong protagonists will find a new love in this modernization of an old classic.  #CETReviews   #RockReviewsHS   #RockReviewsMS   |   @ndgoarts ,  @littlebrown

Rarely have I read a book so real and laughed so hard! As  @JerryCraft sugar coats nothing without seeming attacking, this title is skillfully and beautifully balanced. #weneeddiversecomics #CETReviews #RRockReviewsHS #RRockReviewsMS #MaverickList   |   @HarperCollinsCh ,  @LibrariesRRock

This 2020 #MaverickList nominee, hurls the reader two years into the future, a world where the rules have changed & crush is forbidden, so hold on tight as the ride is anything but smooth.   #CETReviews   #RockReviewsHS   |   @babsdraws ,  @brendenfletcher ,  @cameronMstewart ,  @ImageComics

In volume 2,  @gracecellis and  @shaebeagle continue this fantastic paranormal romance that delightfully navigates some surprisingly heavy topics with dexterity and levity!  #CETReviews   #RockReviewsHS   |   @ImageComics ,  @LibrariesRRock  

In this 2019 #SPOTTX honoree,  @av_geiger goes beyond merely providing a good mystery. This book is fodder for some interesting thought experiments that center on mental health and social media.  #CETReviews #RockReviewsHS   |   @SourcebooksFire ,  @LibrariesRRock  

Both Abelard and Lily so deeply resonated with me that I felt like I was reading a love story between two halves of myself as I watched each struggle to find their happy. #TheLoveLettersofAbelardandLily #CETReviews #RRockReviewsHS #SPOTTX   |   @LibrariesRRock , @HMHteen

This 2019 #TayshasList honoree presents a perfect argument for social justice & restorative practices. #CETReviews #RRockreviewsHS   |   @DashkaSlater ,  @fsgbooks ,  @yartxla ,  @LibrariesRRock  

Having barely survived a demon possession,  Mia must move in with her Milanese extended family where she’ll stay alive by learning the family heritage and mastering the family trade of demon catching with the ancient lore of bell, book, and candle.  In the course of these studies, she begins to understand that the world is far more complex than she ever believed it to be and the powerfully seductive forces at play can’t be easily categorized.  Beyer constructs a narrative in which the quick and the dead, the animate and the inanimate, as well as the characters and the setting have had a long standing multi-generational intimacy. As the plot unfolds, the audience quickly realizes that the protagonist seems to have a walk-on part in an expansive drama that has been playing out for a very long time.    Nonetheless, for this scene Mia seems to play the role of both Dante and Cervantes simultaneously-functioning as not only the damned but also the guide through th...

"It's 1888, and seventeen-year-old Verity Newton lands a job in New York as a governess to a wealthy leading family, "but she quickly learns that the family has big secrets. Magisters have always ruled the colonies, but now an underground society of mechanics and engineers are developing non-magical sources of power via steam engines that they hope will help them gain freedom from British rule. The family Verity works for is magister, "but it seems like the children's young guardian uncle is sympathetic to the rebel cause. As Verity falls for a charming rebel inventor and agrees to become a spy, she also becomes more and more enmeshed in the magister family's life. She soon realizes she's uniquely positioned to advance the cause" but to do so, she'll have to reveal her own dangerous secret." - From the Publisher This is a fantastic read - a real page turner. Lovers of steampunk and speculative history will find a new heroine in Miss ...

"As apprentice to his father, the second-best medical scientist in the empire, Jonathan leads a quiet life in a remote aerial city until the king arrives, calling on them to find the cure to a plague that has struck the capital city and put the queen's life at risk, but the newly discovered chemical, fantillium, that may help will also put at risk all that Jonathan holds dear." - From Follett Illusionarium is an action-packed page-turner that will keep readers on their toes from cover to cover. Fans of steampunk, adventure, and fantasy will decidedly enjoy this title. Illusionarium b y Heather Dixon  Secondary  Greenwillow Books 361 pp.  Published 2015  ISBN 978-0-06-200105-4 $17.99   Steampunk, Fantasy

The House on Mango Street  is a fictional account of the coming-of-age of Esperanza Cordero which is loosely based on Cisneros’ own childhood in the Hispanic quarter of Chicago.  According to Cisneros in an interview that appeared in the Holt, Rinehart, and Winston’s textbook  Elements of Literature , “all my fiction stories are based on nonfiction, but I add and cut and paste and change the details to make them ‘more real’—to make the story more interesting....  I’m doing what every good fiction writer does.  I’m taking ‘real’ people and ‘real’ events and rearranging them so as to  create  a better story, because ‘real’ life doesn’t have shape.  But real stories do.”  Reminiscent of Gloria Naylor’s  Women of Brewster Place  (1982), the first person point of view of this “real story” encourages the audience to intimately connect with the vignettes that have been stitched together to depict Esperanza’s burgeoning maturation in the...

In her preface to this edition of  Forever... , Blume, in addition to cautioning readers to take more precautions than her pre-HIV/AIDS characters do, expresses gratitude that “some things, like  feelings , never change.” The timelessness of teenage drama and awkwardness at the dawn of adulthood contributes to the evergreen quality of a work which references such 1970s staples as fondue parties and vinyl records. The realistic treatment in both word and action of Katherine and her peers as they haltingly progress beyond adolescence appeals to modern readers at the same stage of life with its immediacy and matter-of-fact manner, while providing audiences who have passed through this baptism by fire with a familiar set of tropes which ring true even if the details differ from their own experiences. Temporal affairs and technologies have changed the venues, communications, and risks, but the character-driven interactions remain recognizable from generation to generation. Among...

The wizarding world woven by Rowling in her first volume of the Harry Potter series is inhabited primarily by characters who find its wonders unremarkable. Desensitized to what denizens of the non-magical, “Muggle” world would consider monumental powers and strangely capricious institutions, this parallel magical society is opened to orphan Harry Potter when he receives an invitation to attend Hogwarts, its premier boarding school, freeing him from the comically harsh home life of his aunt and uncle, the Durselys. Potter quickly discovers that he is a celebrity in this insular community, and in short order rejects false friends, finds true ones, and sets about uncovering a mystery which will lead him to confront the one who orphaned him. Keeping a quick pace, Rowling presents Potter as a character riddled with self-doubt as a result of his punishing upbringing at the hands of the Dursleys, certain that around each corner is his expulsion. However, life under such oppression has read...

Jeyn Roberts’ sequel to  Dark Inside ,  Rage Within  provides vignettes of major protagonists just before massive earthquakes and a mass-murder apocalypse transform the world. Picking up six weeks later, presumably after the events of the first book, it follows the exploits of a band of survivors who have found each other in Vancouver, British Columbia. The Baggers, a subset of humans who have spontaneously become ruthlessly homicidal and well-organized, are hunting survivors down, and taking some to a holding area downtown. Group leader Aries manages her band through the losses and instability of a changed world until the two enigmatic men she has befriended both vanish, prompting her to lead the rag-tag collection of young adults in a raid on the Baggers’ compound. Roberts uses a shifting perspective with each chapter, bouncing back and forth between the main characters’ points of view, with each having several chapters bearing their name, except one. By noting which...

Arras is slipping out of the Guild's control and Cormac Patton needs Adelice to help reestablish order. However, is the price of peace too high? Can she put aside her own personal grievances and let go of her past in order to fight for mankind's future?  This final book in the Crewel World trilogy returns Ad to Arras where she will ostensibly work with Cormac in order to avoid the undoing of existence itself. However, as might be expected Patton is duplicitous, proving that there is no honor among thieves. Unfortunately, this deception not only thwarts the protagonist but also the novel’s plot. Just as she spends too much of this tale mired in the politics of this universe, stymied by her own feelings of inadequacy, and unable to jump start her forward progression, the audience is similarly quagmired in this purgatory of Adelice’s making - hoping for a salvation that is too long in coming and does little to soothe the injuries that were sustained. Unraveled   (Crew...