Tear Soup: A Recipe for Healing After Loss

Tear Soup: A Recipe for Healing After Loss by Pat Schwiebert and Chuck DeKlyen

Tear Soup is a large format illustrated children's book that is well suited to reading aloud and, despite its childrens format, is suitable for all ages. It is a guidebook in story form for dealing with grief. Illustrated with color drawings by Taylor Bills, it tells the story of how Grandy deals with a crippling loss by making tear soup from the tears she has cried. As she makes the soup, she flavors it with memories and the caring thoughts of friends and relatives, mapping out ways to deal with grief on every page. After the story ends, there is a list of "Cooking Tips" and two pages of Real Life resources for "Where to find help."

The Messenger Boy Murders

The Messenger Boy Murders by Perihan Mağden

Returning home from his travels, Stravrogin is asked by the local book store owner to investigate a disturbing string of messenger boy murders that has recently plagued the city. As he unwillingly takes up the case of the mysterious deaths, he is met at every turn with unusual people and circumstances. It is like an adult fairy tale where the rules of life are gently suspended and you are immersed in a strangely mysterious, yet logically consistent, place and time. I was enthralled and look forward to reading more by Perihan Mağden.

Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians

Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians by Brandon Sanderson

On his 13th birthday Alcatraz Smedry received his inheritance, a bag of sand sent to him by the father he has never seen. He thought the sand was a strange joke until the evil Librarians came to steal it.
We all know that Librarians are nice people who recommend good books, but in this book meant for young children, that’s just what they want you to think! In this book they’re actually dangerous. In this book they are a cult of evil librarians keeping people from the truth and secretly ruling the world. They control what gets read, what gets seen, and what gets learned, and because of that they have power over everyone. In the world the author has created most governments don't even know that they're being manipulated by these evil librarians. Alcatraz was fooled like everyone else until his Grandpa Smedry shows up and talks Alcatraz to go with him to the main public library to retrieve the stolen bag of special sand before the librarians can melt the sand down and turn it into a glass lens of power. I don't like that the author portrays librarians as evil, deceitful, and cruel to young children who probably will come in contact with this book in their local public library. These days librarians are being attacked by small minded adults who do not want any views but their own to be available to the public, but to turn that story around and blame librarians for preventing freedom of information rather than championing it seems sinister. Do a little mental exercise and change the librarians in the story to priests and ministers, and imagine what kind of reaction this book would get.

Cheshire Crossing

Cheshire Crossing by Andy Weir

Cheshire Crossing takes characters from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, and Peter Pan, and follows Alice Liddell, Dorothy Gale, and Wendy Darling after they are united at "Cheshire Crossing" by the mysterious Dr. Ernest Rutherford and Miss Mary Poppins. Originally writen and illustrated by Andy Weir from 2006 to 2008 as a four issue fanzine, it was later released as a graphic novel, illustrated by Sarah Andersen, from Ten Speed Press in 2019.
Dr. Rutherford believes that the girls can travel to other worlds and wants to study how they do it. The girls end up travelling to and between their three destination worlds, along with good and evil characters of these worlds as well, stirring up troubles as they go. Things can get confusing but they always remain fun and all ends up well.
Andy Weir is best known for his science fiction novel The Martian and his short story "The Egg". This is a much more playful early work.
The original 4 issue series is available free online.

The Hotel Dick

The Hotel Dick by Axel Brand

The Hotel Dick is the first of a series of four detective novels that follows the exploits of Lieutenant Joe Sonntag of the Milwaukee Police Department and are set in the late 1940s. The novel starts off when a hotel detective named J. Axel Brand is shot in the hotel brbershop while getting his morning shave. The only witness to the crime is the barber who swears that the movie actor Spencer Tracy is the shooter. A quick check with Tracy's studio reveals that he has an alibi and could not be the murderer, leaving Sonntag to puzzle over the eyewitness account as they begin questioning anyone who might have had a reason to dislike the hotel dick.
Full of atmospheric references to Milwaukee in the late Forties supplied by the author who grew up there, this is a puzzling mystery and a good introduction to this series.
Axel Brand is a pseudonym for Richard Shaw Wheeler (1935 – 2019) who is known for his award winning novels set in the American West.

Night Medicine

Night Medicine by Axel Brand

Night Medicine is a one of a series of detective novels that follows the exploits of Lieutenant Joe Sonntag of the Milwaukee Police Department that are set in the late 1940s. The title refers to the kinds of medicine that are illegal, such as abortions and assisted suicide, and therefore often provided in secret. The police in this novel are called in when the patients of such "night medicine" die from their treatment. It starts when a young woman's body is found drained of blood lying at the Milwaukee City Zoo. The pathologist believes she had a botched abortion that caused her to bleed out, but there is no clue as to who washed and dressed the girl's body and left her there in the zoo next to the big cats cages, arranged almost as if in a funeral home on a bed of ferns.
In the 1940s, abortion and suicide were considered murder, and those who assisted in them were murderers. When a patient died, the police were called in to find those involved. During the course of his investigation, Sonntag deals with not only legal, but also ethical and political issues, and the novel provides a window into the debate at that time over a woman's right to choose as he investigates the death of this young woman.
Axel Brand is a pseudonym for Richard Shaw Wheeler (1935 – 2019) who is known for his novels set in the American West. Night Medicine is the third of four detective novels set in Milwaukee that he wrote in 2015 as Axel Brand.

Transitions: A Mother's Journey

Transitions: A Mother's Journey by Élodie Durand

This English translation of a French graphic novel deals with a parent's learning that their child is a transgender man. Told from a mother's point of view, it portrays a lot of the questions and concerns that parents of transgender offspring often face while their child is transitioning. It will be useful to heteronormative adults, especially family members, who want to understand the transition process.