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Best Fiction for Young Adults (#BFYA2023) Featured Review of The Last Mapmaker by Christina Soontornvat

The Last Mapmaker by Christina Soontornvat
Candlewick Press
Publication Date: April 12, 2022
ISBN: 9781536204957

Twelve year old Sai is assistant to Mangkon’s most celebrated mapmaker. No one knows that she has been harboring a secret; her father is a conman. When they set out on a journey to chart the southern seas, she has no idea that the ship may actually be heading to the fabled Sunderlands, a land thought to be guarded by dragons. As Sai struggles to conceal her identity aboard the ship, she discovers that she is not the only one with a secret.

Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers (#QP2023) Featured Review of And We Rise by Erica Martin

And We Rise
by Erica Martin
Publisher: Viking Books for Young Readers
Release date: February 1, 2022
ISBN: 9780593352526

Poignant and educational poems chronicling the Civil Rights Movement and the important people involved. Divided up into different sections each chapter highlights a major timeframe in the history of the movement. From Rosa Parks, to the Supreme Court decision of Brown vs. Board of Education, to Martin Luther King’s march on Washington, these poems give a visual and sensual look at these events. The poems take some creative license in depicting the real life people and their emotions at the time, but the other important facts are accurate.