MADreads Reviews

Someone whose taste in books runs parallel to mine kept raving about this book, so I've been wanting to read it for a while. I'm so glad I finally did.

World-renowned humanitarian and chef José Andrés's love of cooking started as a boy in Spain cooking paella for family over an open fire.  As he grew older, attended cooking school, and traveled the world, he dreamed of the stories he could tell with food.  While feeding sailors on a famous Spanish Navy ship, José wished that everyone everywhere had enough food to eat. 

Avast me hearties! What adventure awaits today? Cleaning the living room? NO! Not when there’s a storm a-brewing and the ship needs sailing.

Miss Hortense has lived in the Birmingham suburb of Bigglesweigh since she emigrated from Jamaica in 1960. She's lived in the same house for decades and is a retired nurse.

A handful of new picture books feature characters and stories from popular books for older kids, introducing these worlds to younger readers!

Aaron Becker once again proves how powerful wordless picture books can be. The Last Zookeeper tells the story of Noa, the last robot of a crew of seawall construction team, as he works to save abandoned animals at a flooding zoo. Full of imaginative ingenuity, Noa builds a boat and sails away into the horizon with the animals.

Will he be successful in saving them all? Will they simply survive, or is there something wonderful awaiting them? Be sure to read this gorgeous and heartwarming story to find out!

I've loved Sarah MacLean's historical romances, so I was eager, and a little nervous, to read her change-of-pace contemporary novel, These Summer Storms.

The publishing calendar starts to heat up in May, as shelves start to fill with titles the industry hope to see readers packing into their summer vacation luggage. This May is esp

This picture book is a black, white, and neon pink look at a classroom skeleton named John who retires and moves to the country to live with Grams and Gramps in a cottage in the woods.  Grams and Gramps have lived in this cottage for a long time, and it is described as a little bit crooked and a little bit under the weather.  This perfectly describes what my fixer-upper home is like, with an inspired twist on words.  John the Skeleton is a book in translation, and as such, it opens the reader to concepts, words, and illustrations that have a distinct Northern European flair.  Gramp

This gorgeously illustrated nonfiction picture book shows the unique ecosystem of a whale fall. A massive blue whale dies, and her decomposing body nourishes various marine life, from scavengers to microorganisms, on the ocean floor over more than a century. Jason Chin’s watercolors beautifully depict the process in all its phases.

Abbott's new novel is both a thriller and an exploration of the sibling dynamics of the Bishop sisters.

Joy comes in many forms in The Yellow Bus by Loren Long. We see the new yellow school bus carrying children from home to school. “And they filled her with joy.” Then, the bus has a new life driving older riders to the library and to country parks. They, too, “filled her with joy.” The illustrations show the sunshine yellow of the bus and everything in and around the bus drenched in color. Beyond these bright colors, the rest of the page is muted and in greyscale. This makes the yellow bus always pop off the page.

Aphrodite Du Bell hates her name. The eponymous heroine of J. J.

Monday is the best day of the week (according to Mabel). 

Every month there are new titles purchased for the Too Good to Miss collections at our libraries. If you're not familiar with TGTM (as we call it here in 

Where peace is lost, may we find it.
Where peace is broken, may we mend it.
Where we go, may peace follow.
Where we fall, may peace rise.

Atlas is defined by Merriam-Webster as:

1. capitalized: a Titan who for his part in the Titan's revolt against the gods is forced by Zeus to support the heavens on his shoulders
2. capitalized: one who bears a heavy burden, and
3(a): a bound collection of maps often including illustrations, informative tables, or textual matter. 

Max in the House of Spies by Adam Gidwitz (author of

Reading Elizabeth O’Connor’s Whale Fall, you will become completely immersed in the beautiful, weathered coastal landscape of a Welsh island in 1938.