Books Read, Week of 3/17/14

I'm playing catch-up here. Funny that Easter Sunday is the quiet day that works for me to do this. It's not quiet! But perhaps quieter than usual...

Here's one view of the books I read this week:

And here's another view:

Those covers for Boxers & Saints are so beautiful that I have to show them both ways.

I was really looking forward to reading Midwinterblood, especially after it won this year's Michael L. Printz Award. It just sounds like my kind of book. I was excited to see it was in School Library Journal's Battle of the Kids' Books, which made me pick it up sooner rather than later. And I got a copy from my parents for my birthday! It's a quick read, but I found it unsatisfying. Mac Barnett's judgment (it was up against P.S. Be Eleven) expresses many of my feelings -- although I'm not an expert in premodern Scandinavian literature, like he is, so I missed some of those things. (Cool author facts!) I love what he wrote about P.S. Be Eleven, also. Such a lovely book. But that's for me to tell you about later...

Now, I get to tell you about the lovely set of books, Boxers & Saints by Gene Luen Yang.  Reading American Born Chinese several years ago (another Printz Award winner), I quickly became a fan of Yang's. This work is just as beautiful. Skye read them first, and insisted I pick them up immediately. I'm glad I did. I enjoyed this interview with the author, and you can read/see an excerpt from Boxers there, too.