Like Peas and Carrots, Partly Cloudy is about what makes a family and how to be a good citizen of the world. Madalyn has been accustomed to a very traditional family, where she and her mom and dad all live in the same place all the time. But now change is afoot. First her dad gets a job that takes him out of town most of the time, and then her mom decides to send her to live with her great-uncle so she can attend a better school. That leaves her without either parent for much of the week, and she has to make all new friends at a school where she’s the only Black kid in her class. She immediately vibes with one of her classmates, but quickly finds that Natalie harbors ugly ideas about Black boys and adults.

Partly Cloudy has a real slice-of-life vibe, in ways that I tend to find frustrating in books for older readers and adults, but really enjoyed here. Papa Lobo, Madalyn’s great-uncle, is a gem of a human being, and though Madalyn doesn’t quite get the hang of him at first, she’s quickly able to settle into life with him (even though he doesn’t have wifi). At the same time, she has two parents who are very involved in her life and to whom she’s very close, but Davis doesn’t shy away from the fact that financial problems are dictating a lot of the choices the family has to make. It was great to see representation of how many, many parents struggle to balance issues of finance with parenting, without any suggestion that they’ve fucked up fiscally or parentally. Madalyn doesn’t love her new situation, but she’s able to find the good in it, forming a close bond with Papa Lobo and making new friends at her school.

As a separate thing, I was delighted with the presence of Black Louisiana Catholics in this book! Papa Lobo goes to Mass every week — on Saturday, so he can hang out with his friends on Sunday — and throws out Creole phrases as well. Yay Louisiana!! And yay for representations of religious people not being close-minded jerks. (Contrary to what white evangelicals are constantly striving to make us believe, it is actually possible to be a person of faith without trying to take away rights from your fellow humans.)

The climactic event of the book is a fire that comes near enough to Madalyn’s life that her family’s affected by it. A of all, I feel so sorry for the kids today. What a crap life for them to live on this burning planet! Secondly, though, I was very heartwarmed to see the community pulling together to take care of each other in a time of disaster. Papa Lobo rightly insists that children deserve to be and feel safe, even if their parents raised them racist, while Madalyn insists on taking care of one of Papa Lobo’s nemeses — so they each have something to teach each other about the right way to act in times of crisis. Despite the miserable, ongoing counterexample of COVID-19, we do still do this for each other. We pull together in disasters. That’s a value worth cultivating, and Partly Cloudy knows it.

As for the racism, Madalyn’s immediate friend at school is a white girl named Natalie, and Madalyn quickly gets a sinking feeling that Natalie is kinda racist. She’s scared of Papa Lobo’s godson, Jean, and their mutual friends are quick to explain it away as the result of a bullying incident Natalie endured the previous year at the hands of a Black boy. But Madalyn’s not sure she should give Natalie a pass. When she finally talks to her mother, her mom wisely tells her that you get to choose when it’s worth it to you to try to educate, versus when you want to walk away. Because there’s such an onus placed on Black folks in real life to forgive and educate, I might have liked to see a little more pushback in the text to the idea that Madalyn should continue her relationship with Natalie. But in the end, the girls reconcile, and you can see that Natalie has been struck by the conversation Madalyn bravely had with her about the impact her words and ideas have had on Madalyn.

Partly Cloudy reminds us of the value of care, and of taking the time to really see those around us. Madalyn doesn’t love being apart from her parents, but she’s ultimately able to see the joy, fun, and value of making herself part of Papa Lobo’s life. Natalie has allowed the weeds of white supremacy to take root in her mind, but her friendship with Madalyn and the care that Madalyn’s family shows her during the fire help her to learn better and act better. Tanita Davis is relentlessly uncynical, and Partly Cloudy felt like a tonic in these wretched and angry times.

The post Review: Partly Cloudy, Tanita Davis appeared first on Reading the End.

But anyway! On to the links!

The cost of reporting while female.

I always love reading the Lithub discussions of how book designers come up with their book covers. This is a particularly good one.

If you want to read romance, but you’re not sure where to start, Kelly Faircloth has your recs. I can cosign just about every one of these that I’ve read, so trust and believe that this is a good list for a romance newbie.

Oh yeah and then Kelly Faircloth talked to a bunch of romance novelists about how to make consent sexy. What a great idea to ask this question of people who spend their professional lives doing that very thing.

“Wakanda is a fictional place, but Wakanda is also an idea.” Sayantani DasGupta (middle grade author!) on spaces created by and for people of color.

(There is probably a ton of amazing writing on Black Panther, y’all, but since I haven’t seen it yet, I haven’t read any of it. Please drop your favorite Black Panther takes in the comments for after I do see it.)

Who wants a list of anticipated 2018 debut novels? ME OBVIOUSLY.

Tanita Davis writes about Daniel Handler and the way we respond to racist vs sexual harassment.

On Bari Weiss and the concept of the perpetual foreigner.

The Oxfam sex scandal arises from the charity industry’s white savior mentality, says Afua Hirsch of the Guardian.

Have a wonderful weekend, one and all!

The post Seeing Kara Walker Tomorrow: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

1. What book have you been unable to finish?

Future Crimes, by Mark Goodman. I started it a while back, and it wasn’t that I wasn’t into it, but you know how if you kept getting lice as a kid because that one girl in your class had a crunchy granola mother who I guess didn’t believe in Nix Shampoo and wouldn’t do anything about her daughter having lice so everyone in fifth grade kept getting it over and over again, you know how to this day if you talk about lice your head starts itching even though you know it’s psychosomatic and everything’s fine?

No? That’s just me? (My head itches right now y’all.)

Well, anyway, reading Future Crimes got too stressful for me. It made my brain itch. I’ll go back to it sometime! Swearsies!

2. Which book haven’t you read yet because you haven’t had the time?

All of them? Can I answer “all of them” to this question? I’m giving the very specific answer right now of The Madwoman Upstairs, which I checked out with a regular (okay, largeish) bunch of library books and then a ton of electronic holds on new books arrived at once. With a shiny new Crooked Kingdom, Three Dark Crowns, Tessa Dare romance novel, and this sports romance novel by an author called Ruby Lang I only just heard about, the library books that are currently on their last renewal are falling by the wayside. Sorry, The Madwoman Upstairs! I’ll come back to you someday!

3. Which book haven’t you read yet because it’s a sequel?

Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies. I got it at a book sale thinking “well I won’t like Wolf Hall for sure but maybe I’ll like this,” and then I tried reading Wolf Hall and really loved it. (Go fig.) So now I have this nice hardback of Bring Up the Bodies, and I haven’t read it yet because Anne Boleyn dies! And even though Mantel’s version of Anne Boleyn isn’t the world’s most ever sympathetic, still I do not want her to get beheaded.

4. Which book haven’t you read yet because it’s brand new?

All the Real Indians Died Off: And 20 Other Myths about Native Americans, by Roxane Dunbar-Ortiz and Dina Gilio-Whitaker. I read Roxane Dunbar-Ortiz’s An Indigenous People’s History of the United States a few years back and thought it was terrific. I’m also trying to be more aware of indigenous American history and lives generally, and I’m hoping to read more from Indian authors in the upcoming year.

5. Which book haven’t you read yet because you read a book by the same author and didn’t enjoy it?

White Teeth and On Beauty, by Zadie Smith. I quite liked her essay collection, Changing My Mind, but wasn’t wild about her latest-but-one novel, NW. I am hoping that I’ll love her latest latest, Swing Time, and then that will ease the way for me to get back to reading these two earlier novels, which have been on my list for like a decade now.

6. Which book haven’t you read yet because you’re just not in the mood for it?

Happy Families, by Tanita Davis. Let me revise that: I am in the mood for it. I will always be in the mood for it. I loved her latest book Peas and Carrots, and I am confident that Happy Families will be similarly thoughtful, emotional, and great. But I have been saving Happy Families for some kind of feelings emergency, and even though 2016 has been terrible, there hasn’t been anything so cataclysmic as to merit digging into my emergency reserve of books that feel like hugs.

7. Which book haven’t you read yet because it’s humongous?

Don Quixote, okay, I admit it. I asked for it for Christmas probably over ten years ago, received it from one of my beloved aunts, and to this day I still haven’t read it. There’s a part of me that’s hoping Alice at Reading Rambo will host a readalong one time, but honestly it doesn’t seem like the kind of book she’d be excited to read along with other bloggers.

(But Jenny, couldn’t you just host the readalong? I hear you ask. Okay, yes, probably I could do that. Alice is just so much betterrrrrr at it and she’ll definitely keep dooooooooing it and I’m so laaaaaaaaaaazy and I’m just like not a leader I am really more of a facilitator slash sheep. So.)

8. Which book haven’t you read yet because because it was a cover buy that turned out to have poor reviews?

Wow this is really specific. I don’t buy books based on the covers almost ever, because I want my library to be (I’m sorry to use this word but) curated. So I’ll do something closeish: I was very excited to read The Gene by Siddhartha Mukherjee, because on paper it sounded perfect for me, all sciencey and accessible. But then I read a thing where apparently a bunch of scientists who study this stuff as their jobs do not think Mukherjee has a good handle on it at all. DILEMMAS.

9. What is the most intimidating book in your TBR pile?

My Uncle Napoleon, by Iraj Pezeshkzad, which is so intimidating it is now officially the oldest book on my TBR list. Not only is the book 500+ pages long, it’s also in translation, which is very intimidating to me. My track record with translated novels is not the greatest track record. Anyway, the good news is that in compiling this post, I discovered a super beautiful cover for the book that made me feel like three degrees less intimidated.

10. Who do you tag?

Look, this tag made me dig deep into my TBR shame, and I don’t want to pressure anyone else to do that who doesn’t want to. Do the Intimidating TBR Tag if you wish! Maybe it’ll remind you that you should get off your butt and read My Uncle Napoleon already or else take it off your TBR list and admit it’s never going to happen.

The post The Intimidating TBR Tag appeared first on Reading the End.

“But Jenny, you should read Tanita Davis! Perhaps this new one, Peas and Carrots!”

“Oh, gosh, it seems like she has a sort of middle-grade aesthetic going on, and I tend to prefer older-skewing YA, so I’ll maybe give her a miss.”

“Jenny, no really, Tanita Davis, she’s right up your–”

“Shhhhh, I’m busy.”

FOOLISH FOOLISH FOOLISH JENNY. Have I not yet learned that I should listen to bloggers and their wisdom? Even if I have reservations? Peas and Carrots is about two girls, Hope and Dess, who become foster sisters without either of them particularly wanting to be. In alternating chapters, they tell the story of how Dess is folded into the Carter family.

Couple things. That are great about this book.

1. The foster care system has really, really serious flaws. The whole thing may need to be scrapped and started over at some point, that’s how serious I think the flaws in it are. At the same time, there are lots and lots of people trying to work within the system to make kids’ lives better. This second point can get lost sometimes in pop culture. Or always. It was refreshing to come across a book about a foster family who wanted, and worked for, only the best outcomes for their foster kids. PLUS, it’s one of very few books I’ve ever read that included child protection workers who weren’t evil.

2. Sister stuff. Neither Hope nor Dess was dreaming of having a new sister. Hope has enough going on in her life without adding a grumpy white racist teen sister into the mix, especially one who calls her fat and hopeless. Dess just wants to be with her baby brother again, even if he now calls Mrs. Carter Mama and barely remembers Dess. But they develop — what? Eh? What’s that you say? A grudging respect between sisters?

YES. THEY DEVELOP A GRUDGING RESPECT.

3. Appropriate boundaries! I love boundaries more than I love most people, places, and things. If ever you are wondering how to set a boundary, come talk to me. I am the Queen of Boundaries. Also great at setting boundaries is the foster family in Peas and Carrots. While the Carters are incredibly compassionate toward Dess, they also make their expectations clear, and they reiterate to her what kind of behavior (kindness first!) is valued in their family culture. A+ boundary-setting.

4. Nothing actually is resolved. Dess doesn’t get a permanency ruling. The sick baby doesn’t magically get healed. We don’t find out if Dess is in as much danger from her father and his gang as she believes she is. Peas and Carrots offers the possibility a better world to Dess, but it never promises her (or us) a perfect one.

Although (or because) the only stakes in Peas and Carrots are emotional ones, I couldn’t put this short book down. I sneakily read it on my lap when I was supposed to be selling books for work. Shhhh, don’t tell work.¹ Now I will have to go out and read everything Tanita Davis has ever written.

What is your favorite book about BOUNDARIES, team?

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