It's Monday - Don't-Miss Books for the New Year

              Visit Kellee and Ricki at UnleashingReaders and Jen at Teach Mentor Texts to see what they've been reading, along with others who post their favorites. I hope your holidays were what you wished, that you had a great time with family and friends and books! It was busy for me and I didn't get much reading time before the guests arrived, but did finish The Toll before any arrivals!

           You can find my #MustReadin2020 post here! 

        Yes! I finished it! It took a long time to read this final story full of characters that need examining which Shusterman did with thoughtfulness, to rush into a scene when one's heart beat faster, to slow down when something made sense, but was a new idea created for our own world. Early on I marked, "At last all was well. Until the moment that it wasn't." Then as people in power revealed who they really were, I noted this: "People will get used to the way things are, see that it is for the best, and they'll settle." Finally, I marked the following as important: "A successful lie is not fueled by the liar; it is fueled by the willingness of the listener to believe." Readers take what is personally meaningful from an author's words so I can't know that every reader noticed these, but Shusterman made them meaningful to me, and left me with hope for our world as he left hope for this one he created, too. It's a special ending to this trilogy. 

         Thanks very much to Candlewick Press for the following copies!

         For anyone who has a loving pet called a "dog", this book will show you what you already know, that dogs have thoughts like humans, deep down more than others imagine. Cosmo, the golden retriever tells the story of his family of a mom and a dad, a sister named Emmaline and Max, the boy to whom he became a big brother twelve years ago. Mostly now that he is thirteen, he's concerned about some aches and pains and the evil sheepdog in the neighborhood. Then Max enters them in a canine freestyle dance competition, hoping to mend the tension that has appeared between the parents, the one that has the dad sleeping on the couch. There are moments when one forgets that Cosmo is a dog, except when he slips in his regret that he has no opposable thumbs! His point of view shown by Carlie Sorosiak lets us peek into a dog's mind with both humor and poignancy, like his "Humans play fetch with hard balls on TV, about baseball, and "It's a very good thing that only one of us has body fur. Otherwise, it might be difficult to tell us apart." It is a marvelous dog story that happens to include all the good and bad of humans, too, and from Cosmo's POV!

          Tami Charles tells this story of the 'freedom soup' tradition on New Year's Day in Haiti, shared with her by her husband's Ti Gran. After fighting for twelve years, Haitian freedom happened on January 1st, 1804! Together, young Belle and her Ti Gran dance through the time making freedom soup, a tradition followed by Haitians every January first. Jacqueline Alcántara's illustrations fill the pages with the beat of freedom as they prepare the soup. Colorful and filled with joy on every face, it's wonderful to see the family and friends arriving and sharing this special soup together, and the apartment house also full of those celebrating by eating their own 'Freedom Soup'. Charles adds a recipe and a brief history of how the soup came to be in the backmatter.

Up next: Allies by Alan Gratz

Happy New Year!