Are you looking for something to read? 
​Check out our weekly suggestions!Are your students looking for book recommendations?
Send them to browse through the picks for this or past years.
​
For the picks from 2021 click here
For the picks from 2020 click here.
For older picks click from 2019 click here.
For the even older picks click here.

I loved this story and the entirely relatable exploration of belonging first to oneself before anyone or anything else. I also really appreciate the fact that Gervais writes from experiential knowledge. As a self-identified hard of hearing author, Alison Gervais advocates for more stories with positive representations of disability stating, “It’s time we see more Deaf characters in books. It’s time we see more books celebrating sign language and Deaf culture." So this weekend, I echo Gervais's call for all of us to celebrate Deaf culture and powerful disabled female protagonists like Maya through picking up a copy of The Silence Between Us. It is a beautifully written, page turning tale of self-love. 

Thank you so much for following along with me for the picks this month, Women's History Month! I hope you found some books you loved, and I hope you continue to read stories celebrating all women throughout the year. Signing off for now.

Keep Reading!
xo
Cammie ​

If you are anything like me, Spring Break season has started or will start soon. So this weekend's picks are two trilogies for the series readers that enjoy beginning a tale that has more story to offer after the first book is finished! 

​The first trilogy pick for this weekend is for the true crime, podcast listening, mystery loving folx. One series I've loved over the last few years and just recently finished is Holly Jackson's A Good Girl's Guide to Murder series. ​

The story arc starts with the series title, A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, which introduces readers to protagonist, Pippa Fitz-Amobi. In the first book of the series, Pippa decides to investigate a seemingly "closed" case of the murder of local resident Andi Bell by, her then boyfriend, Sal Singh. However, to Pip, this case isn't as open and shut as the police and residents of the small town want everyone to believe. Through her investigation, new secrets emerge that raise the question of if the real killer is still out there? And if they will keep Pip from discovering the truth? The series continues with Good Girl, Bad Blood. After the investigation into murder and the publication of her true crime podcast, Pippa Fitz-Amobi finds herself wrapped up in a new investigation into the missing person's case of Jaime Reynolds. Though she had sworn off her investigating days, Jaime's disappearance on the anniversary of Andi Bell's murder is too much of a coincidence for Pip to ignore especially since the police won't do anything about it. With the help of Ravi Singh, Pip begins digging again and this time everyone is listening as she chronicles the unfolding secrets through her podcast. Will she find Jaime before it's too late? The concluding and final book in Jackson's series, As Good As Dead, finds Pip in the aftermath of her successful true crime podcast and weeks before her journey to start her first year in college interrupted by mysterious messages asking: who will look for you when you're the one who disappears? Pippa soon realizes these messages are escalating into threats leaving her and her loved ones at risk from an unknown stalker. When she starts to find connections between the stalker and a local serial killer caught six years ago, Pip wonders yet again if the wrong man was convicted of a crime. And the question that follows is if the real killer plans to make her his next victim? These three books had me turning pages and reading during the day. Jackson certainly perfects the dark and twisty by blurring the lines of our notions of what and who is "good" as well as raising important questions about justice. And if you want to know what Pip was like before beginning her true crime investigations, a short prequel, Kill Joy, was released in celebration for World Book Day! This series is the perfect mystery to keep you reading all weekend!  

If the dark and twisty is not your style, then I might suggest another trilogy I've loved (pun intended) that celebrates identity, family, friendship, and LOVE, Jenny Han's To All the Boys I've Loved series.

This story explores the question of what would happen if all your crushes found out about how you feel about them...all at once! In book one, To All the Boys I've Loved Before, Lara Jean Song keeps her love letters in a hatbox given to her by her mother. However, these aren't letters she's received; they are letters to each boy she's ever loved--five letters in total. Laura Jean has poured out her feelings because the letters are just for her eyes. Until, one day the hidden letters are mailed out and her love life suddenly becomes much more interesting than even she anticipated. In Han's second novel, P.S. I Still Love You, Lara Jean finds herself in an unexpected situation, actually in love with one of her crushes. But then, another crush from her past returns making Lara Jean question: is it possible to love two people at once? Finally, in the last book of the series, Always and Forever, Lara Jean, everything is going so well for Lara Jean--she is having the best senior year she could hope for and is madly in love with her boyfriend. BUT, change is on the horizon. When Lara Jean's plans become interrupted, she has to finally face the challenging decisions in front of her. Han's conclusion to Lara Jean's story raises the question we all face: when your heart and your head are saying two different things, which one should you listen to? This series is so heartfelt and Lara Jean remains one of my favorite characters I've ever met while reading. I hope you enjoy her journey of finding self, family, and love as much as I did! 

Until next week, keep reading!
xo,
​Cammie 

​Are you looking for something to read? 
Check out our weekly suggestions!
Are your students looking for book recommendations?
Send them to browse through the picks for this or past years.
​
For the picks from 2021 click here
For the picks from 2020 click here.
For older picks click from 2019 click here.
For the even older picks click here.
​

This weekend let's take a dive into the world of speculative fiction with the winner of the Newbery Medal and Pura Belpré Award, The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera. 

This story is a story lovers tale. Set in a futuristic world where Earth has been destroyed by a comet, the story begins with, "Había una vez . . ." Then we meet our protagonist, a girl named Petra Peña, who wants nothing more than to be a storyteller, like her abuelita. But Petra's world as she knows it is coming to a close. As the child of scientists chosen to leave  Earth for the journey to a new planet, Petra is tasked with the continuation of the human race in a new world. Put into suspended animation for hundreds of years, she wakes to this new planet only to find that she is the only one to still remember life on Earth, and the leaders of this new world are comprised of a sinister Collective focused on erasing the sins of humanity's past. The Collective have manipulated the suspended animation to purge the memories of all aboard the ship during their journey to the new world and purged those deemed "defective" all together. Petra now faces the challenge of carrying the stories of humanity's past, and with them, the hope for the future. The question remains can she make the stories live again?

I loved this novel for so many reasons. First, the writing--just incredible! Higuera envelopes the reader in her beautifully woven tale across space with magical Mexican folklore. Second, as all excellent science fiction stories do, The Last Cuentista makes the reader contemplate the importance of storytelling as a pathway tying the future to the past and asking the question, can the stories of the past save the future?  Finally, the love and cleverness and hope embodied in the character of Petra brings readers light in the midst of darkness. A testament of the power of storytelling and the ways our shared histories make us connected to one another, this novel was exactly the right book at the right time for me. I hope you will find it just as compelling and spellbinding as I did! 
Until next week, keep reading!
xo,
​Cammie 

My last picks for the weekend are for the fiction lovers. While there are so many beautiful memoirs and essays written by phenomenal female YA authors, fictional worlds are full of brilliant, game changing characters, too!
​
My third pick blends reality and virtual reality in Brittany Morris's debut novel, Slay. By day, seventeen-year-old Kiera Johnson is an honors student, a math tutor, and one of the only Black kids at Jefferson Academy. But at home, she joins hundreds of thousands of Black gamers who duel worldwide as Nubian personas in the secret multiplayer online role-playing card game, SLAY. No one knows Kiera is the game developer, not her friends, her family, not even her boyfriend, Malcolm, who believes video games are partially responsible for the "downfall of the Black man." But when a teen in Kansas City is murdered over a dispute in the SLAY world, news of the game reaches mainstream media, and SLAY is labeled a racist, exclusionist, violent hub for thugs and criminals. Even worse, an anonymous troll infiltrates the game, threatening to sue Kiera for "anti-white discrimination." Driven to save the only world in which she can be herself, Kiera must preserve her secret identity and harness what it means to be unapologetically Black in a world intimidated by Blackness. But can she protect her game without losing herself in the process? This book had me gripped from start to finish while simultaneously challenging me through Kiera's perspective to think deeply about boundary breaking and self-advocacy.