Fresh Reads, Honest reviews, Educator-approved
My Friends follows Louisa as she uncovers the history of a mysterious painting and the “lost souls” who created it twenty-five years prior. While it tackles heavy themes like addiction and abuse, it is ultimately a luminous testament to found families and the loyalty of misfits.
A devastatingly elegant portrait of a young man navigating sexual awakening in a country that forbids his existence. Moving from a “miracle childhood” to a survivalist boarding school experience, the novel explores the heavy price of silence and the resilience of love.
Can a novel be a standardized test? Alejandro Zambra’s Multiple Choice is a 4-star experimental masterpiece that mimics the Chilean Academic Aptitude Test to critique conformity and authoritarianism. Moving from playful to political, it challenges readers to find answers in a world where the “correct” choice doesn’t exist. An essential, thought-provoking tool for high school ELA and Social Studies classes exploring rhetoric, history, and the power of compliance.
Remarkably Bright Creatures, an exploration of friendship, reckoning, and hope, tracing a widow’s unlikely connection with a giant pacific octopus.
When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town.