Something in the Woods Loves You

Written by: Jarod K. Anderson

First line: In Ohio, winter is landscape poetry.

Why you should read this book: Magical and heart wrenching, these essays braid the poet's childhood memories of Ohio's plants and animals with his intentional present day reconnection with nature, and its evolution as a tool in his arsenal against depression. This book touched me on a deep level, probably because it resonated with so many of my personal experiences, both beautiful and terrible, but the prose is  also a luscious dive into the wilderness, an immersive experience of midwestern flora and fauna through the lenses of nostalgia, depression, and recovery. This book is for anyone who has ever loved the woods. 

Why you should read this book: You hate the woods. 

So Far from God

Written by: Ana Castillo

First line: La Loca was only three years old when she died.

Why you should read this book: This is a story in the tradition of Spanish magical realism, but set in modern-day New Mexico. Sofi has four daughters and no help from her good-for-nothing ex, but she keeps it together throughout her life, working hard while strange things happen to her family, beginning with the death of her youngest daughter, who proceeds to fly out of her coffin before they carry her into church, and announce that she has visited heaven and hell. Things do not get any simpler or easier for Sophie, but she does her best for her children as long as she is able, and for her community when her children don't need her. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: There's a lot of Spanish in this book and a lot of it seemed to be slang or regional dialect, so the internet couldn't translate everything.

Among Flowers

Written by: Jamaica Kincaid

First line: One day, in the year 2000, I was asked to write a book, a small one, about any place in the world I wished and doing something in that place I liked doing. 

Why you should read this book: For reasons that may not seem reasonable to people who aren't professional writers and very avid gardeners, the author takes a grueling weeks-long hike through the mountains of Nepal to collect seeds. Along the way her life is threatened by Maoists; her conscious is wracked with guilt; she suffers from heat, cold, and various other privations not typically sought out by successful Americans; and she has, apparently, the time of her life. The result is a surprising and tidy travelogue unlike any story that I've ever read.

Why you shouldn't read this book: Usually, when I encounter a word I don't know, I look it up and write down the word and its definition, but if I had stopped to look up every single Latin plant name in this book, it would have taken me twice as long to read. 

Enola Holmes: The Graphic Novels Book One

Written by: Nancy Springer and Serena Blasco

First line: Enola, you'll manage well on your own, won't you?

Why you should read this book: I usually find graphic novel adaptations woefully inadequate, but as I haven't read the original book (although I did see both films on Netflix) this one seemed decent to me. Young Enola, the little sister of Mycroft and Sherlock, has no interest in being forced into a corset or the role of a lady, and when her mother disappears, she employs her considerable intellect to escape the confines of the life others have laid out for her. Donning a variety of disguises, she runs away to London and sets up shop as a specialist in missing persons cases, managing to find several missing persons while successfully evading her brothers, without making much headway in finding her mother. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: I'm guessing the original novel is better. It usually is. 

Big Tree

Written by: Brian Selnick

First line: "Hello, stars."

Why you should read this book: It's the rare story told almost completely from the point of view of plants, and not just any plants: the main characters are two prehistoric sycamore seeds, desperate seeking a safe place to set down and grow roots before all their fluff falls off and they can't travel anymore. Merwin is the cautious realist who seeks to protect his impetuous dreamer sister Louise as they escape a forest fire, journey beneath the waves, and travel by butterfly, among other adventures. Is Louise communing with an ancient power, or does she just have a vivid imagination, and will her visions help them find a place to grow, and help fulfill a bigger destiny than any sycamore seed has ever imagined?

Why you shouldn't read this book: Other than the art style, it doesn't have much in common with Hugo Cabret. 

The Waters

Written by: Bonnie Jo Campbell

First line: Once upon a time M'sauga Island was a place where desperate mothers abandoned baby girls and where young women went seeking to prevent babies altogether.

Why you should read this book: For Bonnie Jo Campbell's forthcoming (WW Norton, January 2024) novel, I have to abandon my typical 4-sentence format. If you're not familiar with my creative relationship with Bonnie Jo Campbell, you can learn a great deal about it here on my visual art website. If you do know about the 4 volumes of comics based on her work I've published, you probably won't be surprised to learn that I drew the map that will appear as the frontispiece of this new novel, and that I read an early draft (the version she sent to the publisher) last year and that I just finished reading the ARC. I'm deeply inspired and I've just been telling people for well over a year to keep an eye out for this book, because I think it's going to knock people's socks off. 

Obviously, this is a biased account and not a true book review. Because I freaking love this book. 

Like most of Campbell's work, it's set in rural southwestern Michigan, is deeply tied to the land, and features a quirky and colorful cast moving through circumstances that perfectly balance comedy and tragedy. It covers new ground by opening the world up to a fairy tale sensibility and the possibly of true magic.

Hermine "Herself" Zook, age unknown, has always lived on M'sauga Island, and has long been the resident witch of the town of Whiteheart, guided by the spirit of her mother, Baba Rose, who haunts her right arm and also the eternal flame of her stove. In addition to providing natural remedies to those who need healing, she also adopts unwanted babies, and, if approached properly, provides herbal abortions. And thus the tale unfolds. Now raising her granddaughter Dorothy "Donkey" Zook in her footsteps, Hermine finds herself increasingly at odds with a hypocritical world that want to use and control her strength even as the poison of modernity seeps into the swamp from every direction. 

I have a million things to say about this book, which I'm saving for the comic I want to write about it. However, if you like rural noir, fairy tales, strong female characters, strange children, the state of Michigan, nuanced debates about ethics and religion, or detailed descriptions of the natural world, you will probably like this book. 

Pre-order it from your local bookstore or public library and be the first to know. 

James and the Giant Peach

Written by: Roald Dahl

First line: Here is James Henry Trotter when he was about four years old.

Why you should read this book: Rollicking good fun for kids, this story is a tiny bit gentler than some of Dahl's other novels for young readers, full of invention and a touch of danger and just enough transformation to create a fairy tale sensibility. Orphaned at a young age, James escapes his abusive guardians with the help of a bag of magic, which he clumsily spills into the roots of a decrepit tree. Traveling in a giant peach, with the companionship of a group of giant, friendly insects, a little boy with no friends finds his way to a world with no lack of them.

Why you should read this book: Aside from a little sizeism directed at the terrible, abusive guardians, this book stands up pretty well for its age.

I Love Our Earth

Written by: Bill Martin Jr and Dan Lipow

First line: I love our earth...where green grasses ripple, and gray mountains rise, where blue oceans curl, and brown deserts swirl.

Why you should read this book: A crowd-pleaser for young readers, each page pairs a sweeping panoramic vista or up-close portrait of nature, paired with images of happy, active, multi-cultural children. There aren't a lot of words, but there are a lot of details, and the pictures are both beautiful and yet accessible. This book seems to make kids happy.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You hate our earth.

Hug Me

Written by: Simoana Ciraolo

First line: Felipe was descended from an old and famous family who liked to look good and always behaved properly.

Why you should read this book: Slightly silly but very sweet and delightfully illustrated story of a cactus who has a lot of love to give. His attempts to receive love from his family fail and lead him to an ill-advised relationship with a helium balloon, which, obviously, ends badly, before he embarks upon a safer intimacy with a rock. I can't help but think this story is a metaphor for growing up as a WASP, and that all of the events have correlation in the real world.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You don't like hugs.

The Walls around Us

Written by: Nova Ren Suma

First line: We went wild that hot night.

Why you should read this book: This dark and cunning ghost story weaves a tangled thicket of murder and revenge, twisted through time and sprouting from the fertile soil of the Aurora Hills Juvenile Detention Center in upstate New York, almost all the way to the Canadian border. Told in dual point of view, the story splits between the quiet and detailed observations of Amber, a girl long locked up in the facility for the murder of her abusive stepfather, and Violet, a talented ballerina with her sights set on Julliard, with nothing in her way except for the memory of her one-time best friend, Ori, who was sentenced to Aurora Hills for murdering two girls behind the dance studio. In the place where their worlds collide, both girls will find justice, although perhaps not in the way they hoped to find it.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You've forgotten your own crimes.

Planting the Trees of Kenya: The Story of Wangari Maathai

Written by: Claire A. Nivola

Why you should read this book: A beautiful melding of biography and environmentalism, this is the true story of the life of Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan girl who grew up in a lush, tree-covered land, spent five years in America studying biology, and came home to find her country nearly deforested and suffering from poor land stewardship. A one-woman dynamo, she convinced the largely unlettered women of Kenya that they could improve their situation by planting trees--over thirty million of them, at the time of the book's writing--and changed the face of her nation. Maathai won the Nobel Peace Prize for her work, and seems to have largely protected her people from privation, but never considered her action brave or extraordinary.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You're chopping down truffula trees just as fast as you can.

Yuvi's Candy Tree

Written by: Lesley Simpson and Janice Lee Porter

First line: I escaped on a donkey in the dark.

Why you should read this book: A fictionalized account of the real-left journey of a Jewish girl from famine-stricken Ethiopia fleeing to a Sudanese refugee camp and then to her ultimate destination, the land of Israel. She dreams of food, bread and candy, as her family is beset, again and again, by thieves and thirst, and imagines sweets growing from trees when she reaches Jerusalem. To her delight, in Israel she learns that "juicy and sweet" oranges grow by the side of the road, and that you can eat as many as you want, because "they grow back."

Why you shouldn't read this book: You think people should just die where they are instead of immigrating someplace more prosperous.

Flowers for Mariko

Written by: Rick Noguchi and Deneen Jenks

First line: Mariko had been waiting almost three years for this day, when she and her family were finally allowed to leave Camp.

Why you should read this book: The war is over and Japanese-American families are free to leave the internment camps where they have been imprisoned during the war, but most of them have nothing to go back to. Mariko's father, a gardener, finds that his truck has been stolen, and while he planted flowers and dreamed of the future in the Camp, now he does not even notice the work that Mariko has been doing, using the knowledge of plants the he imparted to her. Finally, her father is able to collect and repair enough broken tools to restart his gardening business, and recognizes how his daughter has inherited his legacy.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You're out of work and don't have any skills to fall back on.

The Legend of the Bluebonnet

Written by: Tomie DePaola

First line: Great Spirits, the land is dying.

Why you should read this book: This simple retelling of an old legend recounts a time of drought, when many people have died, and the Comanche people are praying for rain. Upon learning that the gods feel people have become too selfish and require a sacrifice of each individual's most valuable possession, the adults equivocate and rationalize to avoid giving up their favorite things, but a little orphan girl who owns nothing besides a doll given to her by her dead parents understands the true meaning of sacrifice and saves her people. To symbolize their acceptance of her gift, the gods send the bluebonnet, or wild lupine, to indicate their pleasure, and bring back the rains.

Why you shouldn't read this book: Not comfortable with other people's polytheistic traditions.

Every Thing On It

Written by: Shel Silverstein

First line: Although I cannot see your face/As you flip these poems awhile,/Somewhere from some far-off place/I hear you laughing—and I smile.

Why you should read this book: Fans of Silverstein’s previous collections of ridiculous rhymes for precocious children and immature adults have cause to rejoice. Every Thing On It is more of what made the author’s poetry for young people famous: ridiculous reversals, tender magic, bad manners, creatures that eat children, and illustrations that feature strangely proportioned humans and unusual animals. Mixed in with the giggle-worthy poems are some more thought-provoking themes demonstrating Silverstein’s growth as a writer and his more introspective side.

Why you shouldn’t read this book: You disapprove of nonsense, bad behavior, and whimsical deaths.

Lucy and the Green Man

Written by: Linda Newbery

First line: First light, first misted light.

Why you should read this book: Lucy loves working in the garden with her grandpa, and listening to his stories about Lob, who does useful odd jobs to special people. Most people can't see Lob, but Lucy and Grandpa can, so, when Grandpa dies and Lucy must return to London, she becomes distraught, worrying what will become of the mystical green man. Lob's journey to find a suitable place for a garden spirit highlights the ways in which the modern world is often unwelcoming to magic and wonder.

Why you shouldn't read this book: It's important to you that your child not exhibit any signs of creativity, and that their imagination be squelched if they do.

The Hunger Games

Written by: Suzanne Collins

First line: When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold.

Why you should read this book: In a horrifying speculative future, most of what was once North America lives in terror of the tribute owed to their Capitol; every year, two dozen children are sent to battle to the death for the amusement of the empire and to remind those at the lowest echelon of society the deadly price of defiance. Katniss Everdeen, whose black market hunting and gathering business has kept her family alive for years, is no stranger to extreme survival, but when she takes her sister's place in the Hunger Games, she has no doubt that her own death is imminent. An exciting, bloody, and fast-paced page turner of a novel, complete with deep questions about liberty and responsibility.

Why you shouldn't read this book: Extreme, graphic, kid-on-kid violence.

The Land of the Painted Caves

Written by: Jean M. Auel

First line: The band of travelers walked along the path between the clear sparkling water of Grass River and the black-streaked white limestone cliff, following the trail that paralleled the right bank.

Why you should read this book: If you read the first five novels in the Earth's Children series and are dying to know what happens to Ayla and Jondalar, that would be a decent recent to pick up this monstrosity. If you are interested in reading pages and pages of detailed descriptions of prehistoric cave paintings (which go on for so long that even the main character, whose joie de vivre helps her feel excitement for pretty much everything in the world, admits that she is bored of cave paintings) or willing to slog through hundreds of pages of repetitious exposition with little action, conflict, or character development to learn one researcher's opinion on the ephemera of prehistoric religion, those would also be reasons to tackle this tome. I cannot think of another reason why anyone would want to read this book, which is badly in need of editing and lacks most of the graphic sex scenes, emotional turmoil, and ancient innovation that made the previous novels so delightful.

Why you shouldn't read this book: If you cut out every passage that summed up plots or relationships detailed in the previous five books or earlier in this one, it would be about fifty percent shorter. If you also cut out the tedious greetings, various characters' impressions of the protagonist's accent, dull hunting scenes, long-winded explanations of climate, flora, and fauna that has been explained in the other books, and the description of all the painted caves, you'd be left with a book that was about eighty-five percent shorter and reasonably interesting, although still mostly predictable and really poorly written.

The Nature of Arizona

Edited by: James Kavanagh

First line: James C. Rettie wrote the following essay while working for the National Forest Service in 1948. In a flash of brilliance, he converted the statistics from an existing government pamphlet on soil erosion into an analogy for the ages.

Why you should read this book: A handy little overview, this guide begins with a great description of the history of life in earth, then discusses evolution in general before delving into the specifics of the region's land and climate. The bulk of the book is color coded and divided by groups: mammals; birds; reptiles and amphibians; fishes; invertebrates; trees, shrubs, and cacti; and wildflowers, with short descriptive blurbs and color drawings of each species. Multiple appendices list attractions by region of the state, popular hikes, desert survival information, and more, making it a useful reference for tourists or newcomers to the state.

Why you shouldn't read this book: The size and scope of this book means that there is no depth to any entry, and that many species are omitted entirely.

The Gift of the Willows

Written by: Helena Clare Pittman

First line: Yukiyo Takasama of Shinjo was a potter.

Why you should read this book: A potter nurtures a pair of willow saplings he finds on the banks of the river where he gathers his clay. Thanks to his kindness, the trees grow strong, even through weather that kills other trees. When the weather turns dangerous and the potter, his wife, and his infant child must flee their home, the tenacious trees aid them in their escape.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You're clear cutting your land to make a few bucks on lumber.