molly_dettmann's reviews
1873 reviews

This was an okay read. I liked how it portrayed the main character figuring out his queer identity while navigating his homophobic baseball team but the artwork wasn’t the best and it fell a little flat overall. I think it would’ve worked better as a memoir because some of the fictional real life references  just felt really off as opposed to being a more cohesive and grounded in reality story. 

A short read all in text conversation, but had an interesting twist and mystery.

The artwork is really pretty and the story is an interesting connection of nature and human.

Mostly filler, but left on a cliffhanger!

No note, just goofy and cute

This graphic nonfiction/comic style history of voting in the USA was certainly interesting and touched on a lot of people and definitions. I loved the simple style and the lettering was super cute, in my opinion. It did read slower and some parts definitely were more interesting than others. We start with the author grappling with why people weren’t excited to vote in 2016 to right into the Revolutionary War to today and how voting rights have changed and been fought for over time. Overall it can be a little bit of a lecture on the importance of voting so I don’t know how many teens will connect with this but I dug it. 

I thought this was a really solid realistic fiction (though maybe a bit historical being set in 2008) where we have a teen boy deciding to get his grades and life together so he can go to college but ending up involved in helping his siblings. One brother is going through PTSD post Iraq tour and the other sister tried giving up her music career to help their older brother. There’s a sweet romance and lots of dark moment a with the older brother but overall was a really interesting and authentic look at PTSD and what it means to be there for your family. 

It’s really hard being a librarian now. So quickly are some of the best in our profession defamed and threatened all because of the work they do providing books for youth. Amanda Jones faced just that when she spoke up for her public libraries and attempts to censor books and outright lie that libraries have pornography in their children’s collections. This memoir details the beginnings of all this including her fight against the defamation. She also gives such a sweet snapshot of her hometown in Louisiana and insight into her life growing up with a love of literature, a strong faith, and her journey to becoming a school librarian . I’m proud that we have school librarians like Amanda fighting for us all and highly recommend everyone read this book. 

This was definitely more of a dark and hellish dystopian with a plot line that reminded me just a smidge of Gladiator with some Hunger Games than I thought it would be. I was interested enough to keep reading and got through the first book pretty quickly but I’m not sure personally if I’ll continue the series. 

This was a really engaging way to shed light on the 1992 Los Angeles uprising (also known as riots but the book goes into how uprising is a more appropriate term). I was a  baby when this all happened and I vaguely knew the story from various pop culture references here and there, but wow, this book put me into 1991-1992 and I felt the anger, despair, unrest, and more as LA burned and lives were lost because of brutality that had built up over time. I mourned for Latasha Harlins, Rodney Glen King, and Edward Song Lee as their stories were used to share more insight to what happened during that time and also what led up to it. This was a powerful read that I highly recommend for young adult collections.