juushika

Title: The Skin You're In: A Collection of Horror Comics
Author: Ashley Robin Franklin
Published: Silver Sprocket, 2024
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 375
Total Page Count: 526,110
Text Number: 1923
Read Because: reading the publisher, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library c/o Hoopla
Review: A collection of eight comics, many short stories, one a novella, of queer horror: bodies, social dynamics, to meet or be the monster. I really want to like this, and sometimes do. It opens strong with "One Million Tiny Fires" and the closing novella runs overlong but has a perfect ending, and this is the strength: body horror as transformative, as destructive, as desirable, is beautifully queer and highkey aspirational. But all the other stories, I'd pass on. Short fiction collections often have issues with repetition and variably quality, especially ones like this that visibly grow with the artist. Some of the other plots are interesting, too many spent time with boring problematic men when I'd rather be getting weird with horror, and even at its most polished I'm not crazy about Franklin's art, which has heavy line weights and struggles to convey action, which, frankly, feels messy.

Title: The Harrowing
Author: Kristen Kiesling
Illustrator: Rye Hickman
Published: Harry N. Abrams, 2024
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 240
Total Page Count: 525,270
Text Number: 1920
Read Because: personal enjoyment, ebook borrowed via Hoopla from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A teen girl discovers she's inherited her mother's ability to sense future killers through hand-to-hand contact, and is shipped off a school to train other Harrows. What a great premise, and the telling is well balanced, troubled home life against budding romance with a likeable love interest against a cozy/ominous boarding school rife with mystery and ethical conundrums and strong supporting characters. Kiesling is willing to get dark, which the premise demands. But this needs another ~100 pages, because the reveals are rushed & neat, the ethics don't fare any better. Minority Report-plots aren't resolved when the system is made a little more forgiving, right, the problem is bigger than that; ( spoiler ), but we can agree it's not super great! So this lets itself down, but I still liked it & would try more by the author.

Title: At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance—A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power
Author: Danielle L. McGuire
Narrator: Robin Miles
Published: Books on Tape, 2019 (2010)
Rating: 5 of 5
Page Count: 365
Total Page Count: 523,740
Text Number: 1904
Read Because: I think I found this by browsing chthonic_cassandra's Goodreads, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: This is one of the most difficult books I've read, emotionally; and I've read a fair bit of true crime which intentionally places specific cases within the cultural context that birthed them; but this is many cases, spanning decades, and it's a brutal read. Like much academic writing, there's an excess of signposting and repetition; and, because the message is so emphatic, the repetition can make it feel preachy. But who cares. This is a crucial reframing of the historical narrative, centering the ubiquity of black women's experiences with sexual violence, using it to chart the changing tides of the civil rights movement and to uncover the formative role women played in building it—a necessary reclamation.

Title: Our Share of the Night (Nuestra parte de noche)
Author: Mariana Enríquez
Translator: Megan McDowell
Published: Hogarth, 2023 (2019)
Rating: 5 of 5
Page Count: 645
Total Page Count: 523,135
Text Number: 1902
Read Because: reviewed by chthonic_cassandra, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A father fights to free his son from the grip of a powerful cult and dark figure that they summon. This is long, and long always makes me worry about bloat; but there isn't much here that I'd trim back. A family saga, it unfolds in pieces, in perspectives, unlocking like a puzzlebox new information about the family, the substantial worldbuilding, and the cultural context. The focus on the perpetuation of power is ruthless, with more triggers than I could list here, but it's character-focused, not preachy, and the speculative premise gives momentum to what might otherwise be a depressing slog. I loved this: devastating, tender, captivating; one of my best reads of the year.

Title: Catherine, Called Birdy
Author: Karen Cushman
Narrator: Jenny Sterlin
Published: Recorded Books, 1996 (1994)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 200
Total Page Count: 522,235
Text Number: 1900
Read Because: reread as per review, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Our protagonist is thirteen in 1290, navigating life as the marriageable but spirited daughter of minor nobleman. This is a reread from my youth, but all I remembered going in was vague positive impressions, maybe that I liked the diary format. As an adult reader: I love the diary format. I'm a sucker for a justified first-person narrative, and no better justification than a journal spiced by cultural minutia and calendar-building elements, like marking time through Saint's Days. The details are dubiously accurate I'm sure, but it grounds the narrative in its setting; and, appropriately, Birdy doesn't manage some miraculous escape from her society, but finds a measure of safety and hope within it. Along the spectrum of period pieces where the heroine struggles with her contemporary social restrictions, this one is less rather than more egregious. I don't like the secondary theme of finding the hidden depths of/forgiveness for abusive family members, but it's a prevalent arc in YA, so I can overlook it. Sincerely a fun read; I'm glad I came back to this one.

Title: Leech
Author: Hiron Ennes
Narrator Abigail Thorn
Published: Macmillan Audio, 2022
Rating: 4.5 of 5
Page Count: 325
Total Page Count: 520,135
Text Number: 1894
Read Because: horror available now on audio—a totally blind pick! what a winner, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: An instance of the Institute travels to the farthest reaches of the north to discover how one of its bodies died without its knowledge. This is layers within layers of worldbuilding, from a parasitic hivemind to a rising competitor to the post-apocalyptic, highly speculative world that spawned them, and I love the styling: larger than life, gothic, chilly, horror-touched as parasites ought to be, with a prickly cast & an extremely dynamic narrative voice, especially on audio—Thorn goes absolutely ham with voices; it may be the most vibrant audiobook I've ever read. I'm compromised by my love of/fascination with the Institute, so the later emotional beats, while thematically grounded, didn't grab me as strongly as they wanted to; I'll be interested to see if I like them better on reread. Because I'll certainly reread. I think this is missing some readers who expect sci-fi or horror and are getting both plus an experimental first person PoV, and definitely this is a weird book, but the total and thoughtful commitment to that weirdness is a delight, not a drawback; I loved the hell out of this book.

Title: The Whispering Rabbit
Author: Margaret Wise Brown
Illustrator: Cyndy Szekeres
Published: Golden Books, 1975 (1965)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 25
Total Page Count: 524,325
Text Number: 1907
Read Because: reading the author, borrowed from Open Library
Review: This is so cute that it made me lose my mind a little. Sweet, pastel, adorable art (Szekeres illus.), but not obnoxiously so. But the narrative is what won me: the invitation to creative invention which is so small, so gentle, so quiet, so thoughtful and sweet is a delightful, gentle premise and must make for a great bedtime book.


Title: The Important Book
Author: Margaret Wise Brown
Illustrator: Leonard Weisgard
Published: HarperCollins, 1977 (1949)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 25
Total Page Count: 524,350
Text Number: 1908
Read Because: reading the author, borrowed from Open Library
Review: This is just poetry, isn't it! I appreciate the arbitrary simplicity of each importance, fundamentally non-definitive and therefore open to counter-definition, to reader involvement. The bold art and emphasis on graphic design compliments this nicely; there's a poster vibe to each panel. Brown has a penchant for list-oriented, experimental work, and while this is no Goodnight Moon it's a fascinating alternate example of the same general approach.


Title: Pussy Willow
Author: Margaret Wise Brown (1997 edited from the original by Diane Muldrow)
Illustrator: Leonard Weisgard (1951), Jo-Ellen C. Bosson, 1997
Published: Golden Books, 1951, 1997
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 25, 25
Total Page Count: 524,400
Text Number: 1909-1910
Read Because: reading the author, borrowed from Open Library
Review: Very charming, not very deep, teaching the wheel of the year, ending, delightfully, with the line "Everything that anyone would ever look for is usually where they find it." But I get grumpy about outdoor cat narratives even if they were published in 1951, and this doesn't have enough to counterbalance in my eyes.

Weisgard illus. 1951 are much more saturated and dark, with a bold graphic quality. Bosson illus. 1997 is pastel, cute, a little wonky, stylistically reminiscent of Home for a Bunny, and the text is edited from the original. It's a simplification (compare: "Time passed: hours and minute and nights and days. And Pussy Willow grew more fur." (1951) vs "Nights passed and days passed and Pussy Willow grew more fur." (1997)) and cuts down on the number of encounters with other creatures. I don't mind the latter so much, as it makes for an easier read for a young audience, but MWB's voice is so much more distinctive in the original; the rewrite lacks detail and character.


Title: Big Red Barn
Author: Margaret Wise Brown
Illustrator: Rosella Hartman, Felicia Bond
Published: W. R. Scott, 1956; HarperCollins, 1989
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 40, 35
Total Page Count: 524,610
Text Number: 1915-1916
Read Because: reading the author, borrowed from Open Library
Review: This is MWB at her most list-y, physical and specific. But the wording is restrained, with only a few evocative lines ("And that is where the children would play, but in this story the children are away, and only the animals are here today"), and the only movement is the transition to night. Hartman's illustrations (1956) are sketchy, red and green against graphite, and grow outright ominous as night comes—memorable, somber. Bond's illustrations (1989) are pretty jank and much cuter, happier, more vibrant and less memorable, although the transition to night, vibrancy faded away, lands cozy rather than creepy. Either way, I'm not crazy about this. I'm not convinced the Hartman illustrations work, but they're just about the only memorable bit of this book.

I saw The Red Tree discussed some time ago some where ago, all memory of specifics gone, but it's what got me started on reading Tan so it was gratifying to finally wrap back to it. I still struggle some with his work; these first two reviews are from 2020 (? what is time??) & as per my review of The Red Tree, Rules of Summer actually left a stronger impression than my initial mixed reaction; but I also feel like there's some picture books which manage to be weirder and more memorable with less desperate effort. Still a valiant effort! Anyway, he still has short fiction/bind-ups I haven't read, but I'll get to them if I get to them; I'm not going to hang on to 100% his body of work.


Title: Rules of Summer
Author: Shaun Tan
Published: Arthur A. Levine Books, 2014 (2013)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 50
Total Page Count: 328,825
Text Number: 1156
Read Because:
Review: This is my favorite Tan book so far. It's expansive and transporting—the scale of the panels and the artful cognitive dissonance of the normal placed just so within the bizarre (or vice versa) is fantastic and reminds me of the best Van Allsburg, but with Tan's distinctive steampunk/urban aesthetic. The use of color and texture is phenomenal.

I wish I liked the narrative as much. Building from the arbitrary rules of summer play into a present, bizarre landscape based on those rules is delightful; but that effective sense of scale also turns "struggling to keep up with a sibling's rules" into "jailed for a literal thousand years" which makes it less playful (and not as wholesome as the resolution wants to be) and more unsettling, more cruel. There's room for that in picture books, but room isn't made here; it creates a tonal whiplash. I wish the conflict remained in the siblings vs. their world (or younger sibling vs. older sibling's concept of the world), rather than sibling vs. sibling.


Title: Eric
Author: Shaun Tan
Published: Scholastic, 2020 (2008)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 50
Total Page Count: 373,775
Text Number: 1376
Read Because: reading the author, hardback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library
Review: This shares themes with but is less ambitious than some of Tan's other work, and may be the better for it. It's slight but sweet and effective, with distinctively cute/weird art and a clever use of grayscale.


Title: The Red Tree
Author: Shaun Tan
Published: Lothian Children's Books, 2001
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 30
Total Page Count: 510,205
Text Number: 1841
Read Because: reading the author
Review: Fantastic, literally and descriptively: a lot of that big, strange Tan art, which means rich colors and rambling dieselpunk dystopias, existential and nihilistic vibes. Like basically all depression metaphors, the happy ending is utterly unearned but still satisfying. Some picture books aren't really for kids, and I don't mind that—they can be graphic short stories, briefly evocative and particularly visually indulgent because of the constrained length. Rules of Summer is still the best Tan, though; he can get so unsubtle, depression here, conformity in Lost & Found, to say nothing of his really message-heavy works, but Rules of Summer plays up the weird to good effect.


Title: Rabbits
Author: John Marsden
Illustrator: Shaun Tan
Published: 2003
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 30
Total Page Count: 510,235
Text Number: 1842
Read Because: reading the artist
Review: Tan's art—surreal, alien, with geometric character designs and an evocative sense of scale—elevates a text which is such an on-the-nose allegory for colonialism that it feels flat, feels something worse even than didactic: simplistic.

Title: When Jessie Came Across the Sea
Author: Amy Hest
Illustrator: P.J. Lynch
Published: Candlewick, 1997
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 40
Total Page Count: 515,140
Text Number: 1866
Read Because: little free library find (someone in my neighborhood has been offloading a bunch of Jewish picture books and I am Here for It)
Review: I'm glad that explicitly Jewish picture books exist; the more explicitly [demographic] [medium] out there, the better the odds that there will be great ones. But I don't know that this is one of the great ones: It's a relatively straightforward, earnest but sanitized, immigration narrative. Including "rest in peace" is weird—this might be a different story if written today, when it could be even more Jewish. I recognize Lynch's art from The Haunted Lake, and it's exquisite and richly detailed and classical. All perfectly nice but not especially memorable.


Title: One Fine Day
Author: Nonny Hogrogian
Published: Aladdin, 1974
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 30
Total Page Count: 515,170
Text Number: 1867
Read Because: little free library find
Review: A reversed for want of a nail slash cumulative song narrative apparently based on an Armenian folktale, this has a lot of structural repetition while eschewing literal repetition—not a combination I often see, and I like it! It does a picture book a distinct disadvantage to introduce a fox into a vaguely autumnal setting & palette and then not draw his most distinctive feature; still, lovely rich texture and golden colors, with slightly janky art. Interesting, atmospheric, not a keeper.


Title: Asher and the Capmakers
Author: Eric A. Kimmel
Illustrator: Will Hillenbrand
Published: Holiday House, 1993
Rating: 4.5 of 5
Page Count: 30
Total Page Count: 515,200
Text Number: 1868
Read Because: little free library find
Review: While seeking an egg for Hanukkah latke, Asher is instead swept up by capmaking fairies in a journey to Jerusalem. The illustrations resemble colored woodcuts with dark, slanting linework, dynamic and twisting; that magic and borderline-spooky edge is in the writing, too, which borrowed from Celtic mythology to whisk its protagonist away. Kimmel also wrote Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins, so, dude loves a spooky Jewish story and, guess what, me too. (Tablet offers a few more spooky suggestions from his catalog.) Atmospheric, weird, and one I'm keeping for a winter reread.

Title: Bumble Bugs and Elephants: A Big and Little Book
Author: Margaret Wise Brown
Illustrator: Clement Hurd
Published: HarperCollinsPublishers, 2006 (1938)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 30
Total Page Count: 508,535
Text Number: 1830
Read Because: reading Margaret Wise Brown, borrowed from Open Library
Review: This was too young for me. It's probably suited to its audience, but the lack of narrative also means a lack of movement and wonder. But I do love Hurd's art, the lineless style and limited color palette belying a surprising complexity of shapes.


Title: Night and Day
Author: Margaret Wise Brown
Illustrator: Leonard Weisgard
Published: Harper & Brothers, 1942
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 40
Total Page Count: 508,575
Text Number: 1831
Read Because: reading Margaret Wise Brown, borrowed from Open Library
Review: A white cat who loves the day and a black cat who loves the night try to win each over to their side of the argument. I struggle with picture books about cats for the usual reasons (not true to cats; idealizing outdoor cats), but when I can compartmentalize a little, like here, they also charm me. Weisgard's art is fantastic—I'm a sucker for picture books with minimal use of color and a lot of movement and texture, and this is that: the round, sweet silhouettes of cats set against daytime and nighttime scenes, vibrant and diverse, and I even like how Weisgard draws people! MWB has a knack for the dark and for brief, evocative descriptions ("The night was soft and dark around them. And the silence was big in their ears."); for engaging fear and setting it aside without condescension; and with endings—a story about how everything has its own unique beauty ought to end with both cats loving both times, but, no, night wins out, the night world quiet and all their own, and I love that for them.


Title: Two Little Gardeners
Author: Margaret Wise Brown, Edith Thacher Hurd
Illustrator: Gertrude Elliott
Published: Golden Books, 1951
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 25
Total Page Count: 508,600
Text Number: 1832
Read Because: reading Margaret Wise Brown, borrowed from Open Library
Review: Two child-gardeners plant and tend and harvest a vegetable garden. It's hard to imagine this in any other style: MWB is at her very most detailed-list-of-things here, and Elliott's art is similarly intricate, carrot by carrot, cabbage by cabbage. Cute, certainly dated, this has strong teachable vibes and not much actual story, but I also kind of love it for its charm and its unerring commitment to the concept.


Title: Fox Eyes
Author: Margaret Wise Brown
Illustrator: Garth Williams
Published: Pantheon Books, 1977 (1951 for the Carlot)
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 30
Total Page Count: 508,630
Text Number: 1833
Read Because: reading Margaret Wise Brown, borrowed from Open Library
Review: A fox causes consternation by spying on the secrets of his neighbors. The weird cover art is almost indicative of the tone, here: Williams's illustrations are desaturated neutrals and shadows shot through with the distinctive red of the fox, a delightful contrast; but his fidelity is slippery, a little comic, a little uncanny, despite the fluffy, soft textures. MWB's depiction of the world and its secrets is evocative in that simple, precise, playful way she has: "Even his rabbit smell was frozen to no smell, as he crouched there, invisible as something that does not move or smell or look like much." Her endings are often surprising, and this is no exception. An inadvertent trickster, the foolish, cunning of a fox settles down with his secrets and forgets them posthaste. A weird one! It feels a little off-kilter, but intentionally so.

I wish I could read the Charlot edition, since I loved his work so much in Two Little Trains; from the few spreads I could find, it has a totally different atmosphere, minimalistic line illustrations the secrets, the fox's changing face a bold, saturated splotch of color in reaction to each one.