Rosh's Reviews

AUTHOR: Moira Butterfield ILLUSTRATOR: Ro Ledesma GENRE: Children's Nonfiction PUBLICATION DATE: August 19, 2025 RATING: 4 stars. In a Nutshell: A funny and informative picture book about the various hics and toots of the human body. Educational in content and entertaining in tone. A good choice for any child (and adult) interested in anatomical noises. 😉 You already know that the human body makes sounds. Not counting our verbalised intelligible communication, we still create plenty of noises. Involuntary audible sounds through farts, burps, stomach gurgles ( It’s called “borborygmi”! I never knew! ), hiccups, and so on; hidden involuntary sounds inside of our body that we are never aware of such as heartbeats; sounds coming because of age or illnesses such as creaky joints or coughs; voluntary sounds we make while blowing raspberries or shushing someone at the library; and even voluntary noises such as claps – the book covers it all. There are also several examples of animal (and...

AUTHOR & ILLUSTRATOR: Li Chen SERIES: Detective Beans, #2 GENRE: Children's Graphic Novel PUBLICATION DATE: September 9, 2025 RATING: 4 stars. In a Nutshell: A children’s graphic novel about a young cat detective and his (mis)adventures in Cat Town. Anecdotal in style, with multiple adventures: some short, some long. Adorable illustrations. Silly and fun all the way! Recommended to the right age group: beginner independent readers. Almost as impossible to resist a cat book titled “Detective Beans” as to resist cat toe beans, right? When I saw the title, I expected a fun-filled graphic novel full of confuddling cases and clever detective work. Well, I did get most of this. What I didn’t expect was for the lead character to be a cat of school-going age! 😹 This graphic novel is the second in the Detective Beans series. Sadly, my library doesn’t yet have a copy of the first book, so I had to jump directly into this. But as this is just a children’s book, there is no major hurdle i...

AUTHOR: Annette LeBlanc Cate GENRE: Children's Picture Book. PUBLICATION DATE: January 7, 2025 RATING: 3.5 stars. In a Nutshell: A silly little picture book about a mother duck and her ducklings. Cute illustrations, rhyming text, funny scenes. Could have worked as a good resource for beginners to counting, but has a major unaddressed problem. Plot Preview: One night, Mama Duck is fast asleep with her seven eggs tucked firmly under her wings. Unknown to her, the eggs start cracking and hatching, and soon, seven little ducklings, who don’t want to disturb their tired Mama, step into the wild alone to explore their new surroundings. When Mama wakes up in the morning, she is horrified to see the empty egg shells and rushes to find her babies. She is successful in her quest, probably a bit too successful because somehow, she ends up with more babies than there were eggs! What happens next? (I hope spoilers are okay for picture books! But if not, skip the second para below.) If taken at ...

AUTHOR: Yuu Minaduki GENRE: Manga PUBLICATION DATE: April 15, 2025 RATING: 1.5 stars. In a Nutshell: A yaoi manga about trauma and grief and hope and moving on. Tremendous promise, tremendous disappointment. Lacklustre in almost every way. This is an outlier review. Plot Preview: After the sudden death of his parents and his sister in an accident, Yuichi finds himself the sole guardian of his seven-year-old nephew Ayumu. Seeking a fresh start, the two move into a new neighbourhood with the ocean nearby. Yuichi hopes that the serenity of the location will help them both find peace and bonding. As Yuichi’s skills in the kitchen are less than ideal, the two frequent the neighbourhood deli, run by Ryo. Yuichi and Ryo soon become close, but it is clear that their individual pasts still hold much trauma. Bookish Yays: 🌊 Ayumu. 66.67% of my star rating is for him. 🌊 It’s standalone, unlike most manga. 🌊 The artwork. Quite good. Probably the saving grace for those who enjoy manga-style...

EDITORS: Molly Llewellyn and Kristel Buckley GENRE: Anthology PUBLICATION DATE: June 3, 2025 RATING: No rating. In a Nutshell: A anthology of “gay crime” stories. The queer content was decent but the crime content left me somewhat dissatisfied. Also, the R-rated content and language in many stories wasn’t to my reading taste. So this collection wasn’t my cup of tea, though I did find a few gems herein. The moment I saw that amazing punny title, I knew that I would have to get my hands on this collection. Seeing gay + crime within the same title stoked all embers of my curiosity. The fact that the book was included in the GR Reading challenge for Pride reads was the icing on the cake. However, the expectations created by the title were met only to some extent. This anthology has sixteen stories, each of which feature an LGBTQIA+ character and a crime. Sounds like a fun combo, right? But it doesn’t exactly work that way. Thanks to the contributing authors coming from varied backgrounds...

AUTHOR: Juan E. Zambrano GENRE: Middle-Grade Graphic Novel. PUBLICATION DATE: June 17, 2025. RATING: 4.5 stars. In a Nutshell: A middle-grade graphic novel about a boy who dreams of becoming a witch. Great human and animal characters, wonderful storyline, excellent balance of humour and seriousness, good life lessons, adorable art. Much recommended to the target age group! Plot Preview: Pacheco always dreams of practising magic, even if his father and his grandfather, both fishermen, are opposed to the idea. After all, boys can’t be witches! But when the family business begins to suffer, Pacheco is sure that he can use magic to help his family and his village, even if it means begging the grumpy witch Doris to take him on as an apprentice. Once he begins his training. He discovers a whole other world, with a new set of rules and restrictions. Can Pacheco bend the existing norms and prove that boys indeed have what it takes to perform magic? Bookish Yays: 🔮 Pacheco: lead character ...

AUTHOR:  Padma Prasad Reddeppa GENRE: Middle-Grade Fiction. PUBLICATION DATE: May 6, 2025. RATING: 2.5 stars. In a Nutshell: A middle-grade fiction set in 1970s South India. First person narrative, meandering plotline, interesting child characters, lacklustre adults, emotionally intense themes. Didn’t click with me as much as I had hoped. Plot Preview: 1974. Nine-year-old Pavithra (known to us as ‘Pavi’) lives with her extended family in Madras. Life is an adventure with companions such as cousin Ruku, younger brother Arun, and granduncle Chanki. But there’s always a shadow over Pavi. Her mother’s brother Selva died exactly five months after she was born, and some family members seem to hold Pavi’s birth as the trigger for the loss. Pavi obviously never knew Selva personally, but she feels like she has a strong tie to him. When the grownups in her life don’t offer her satisfactory answers, she uses her imagination to find the way ahead.  The story comes to us in Pavi’s fi...

AUTHOR & ILLUSTRATOR: Ashley Spires SERIES: Most Magnificent Thing, #3 GENRE: Children's Picture Book. PUBLICATION DATE: September 5, 2023. RATING: 4.5 stars. In a Nutshell: The third picture book of the ‘Most Magnificent’ series. Unlike the earlier two, this one has no plot but is a guide book aimed at creative thinkers. Quite interesting and imaginative with much helpful advice, but will have limited appeal compared to the rest of the series. Though the third book of the Most Magnificent series, this book stands apart in its approach. This first two books had a clear plot, where a little girl struggled with making her invention and thinking of an idea respectively. This third book is more of a nonfiction, with the title indicating exactly what the book contains: a A-Z guide for little makers. From Brainstorming to Fixing to Rethinking and a lot more, every single letter of the English alphabet gets a page or two of dedicated focus. The content doesn’t stop just at saying th...

AUTHOR: Angela McAllister ILLUSTRATOR: Sally Agar GENRE: Folktale Collection. PUBLICATION DATE: RATING: 4.5 stars. In a Nutshell: A beautiful illustrated collection of folk tales and legends from around the world, with every story being connected to a water body. Amazing stories, great diversity, excellent illustrations. Angela McAllister delivers again! Much recommended to little story lovers. I have been a fan of Angela McAllister’s folktale collections ever since I read ‘A Bedtime Full of Stories’ in 2021. Her books always feature appealing magical tales, legends and lore from across the world. And when I say ‘across’, I mean ‘across’ in every sense of the world. Unlike many story collections that claim to have global stories but end up with a majority of the stories being from USA and some parts of Europe, McAllister’s collections span every continent, and even contains stories from indigenous tribes. I have come to see her children’s compilations books as a reliable source of g...

AUTHOR: Molly Olguín GENRE: Short Story Collection. PUBLICATION DATE: April 29, 2025 RATING: 3.2 stars. In a Nutshell: A short story collection interspersing fantasy and horror into a mesmerising combo. Precise writing, intriguing characters, compelling plots. Had all the endings worked for me, this would have ended up as one of my favourites of the year. Regardless, the imaginative and distinct storylines still make this book a good option for short fiction lovers. This collection of twelve stories doesn’t have any author’s note to introduce the binding theme to us. However, the blurb has this interesting one-liner to offer: ‘a collection of stories sprinkled into the soil of fairy tale, left to take root and grow wild there.’ How poetic is that! The dominant genre is fantasy-horror, but many stories also feel literary. Each of the tales has a fresh storyline, generating no feelings of déjà vu or familiarity. The narratives are distinct in plot, characters as well as emotions. The ch...

AUTHOR & ILLUSTRATOR: Ashley Spires SERIES: Most Magnificent Thing, #2 GENRE: Children's Picture Book. PUBLICATION DATE: September 6, 2022. RATING: 4.5 stars. In a Nutshell: The second picture book of the ‘Most Magnificent’ series and just as adorable. Great idea, great characters, great life lesson. Much recommended. Can be read as a standalone. Plot Preview: The unnamed little girl and her pet-dog-cum-creative-assistant are back. She still loves tinkering and has a new idea every day for a new project. But one day, she hits that dreaded wall that so many creative people fear: her mind draws a blank. No idea! What will she do? What can she make? With her beloved assistant in tow, she tries her best to think of a new idea, but nothing seems to work. Is this the end of her tinkering days? Yet again a simple concept but a relatable one. Even the most creative people have days when no idea comes to mind or comes to fruition. This might lead to sadness, annoyance, or frustratio...

AUTHOR: Jehanne Moharram ILLUSTRATOR: Chaymaa Sobhy GENRE: Folktale Collection. PUBLICATION DATE: June 17, 2025. RATING: 3 stars. In a Nutshell: A collection of fables and fairy tales from Arabic-speaking lands. I enjoyed the variety of the stories and loved the illustrations. But the writing could have been smoother. Still, a good option for diverse storytelling for kids. This book contains nine traditional fables and folktales from the Arabic-speaking world. Thus the stories aren’t limited to the Middle-East but also cover some parts of North Africa. The books begins with the author’s note. Instead of just giving a generic writeup, she talks of the prevalence of storytelling in Arab cultures and her approach towards selecting and rewriting this classic tales. I like how she made sure that the stories were diverse in theme as well as geography. Some tales also have attractive magical components such as jinns and talking animals. Many of the stories herein were already familiar to m...

AUTHOR: Sapna Punjabi GENRE: Cookery PUBLICATION DATE: April 8, 2025. RATING: 3.75 stars. In a Nutshell: A good cookbook for those wanting to try the two staples of Indian cuisine: dal (lentils) and chawal (rice). Great variety of recipes, combined with the power of ayurvedic knowledge and nutritional expertise. Love how it doesn’t compromise on authenticity of process or accuracy of nomenclature just to make the recipes *palatable* to Westerners. I found the recipes easy enough for beginners. But the ingredients and recipes are mostly familiar to me as I belong to this culture, so my opinion won't exactly be representative of Western opinion. Dal-chawal in its various options is comfort food for most Indians. While there is no standard “Indian cuisine” ( we have a variation in cuisine after every few hundred kilometres! ), dal and chawal are used in myriad ways across the country. Chawal is the Hindi word for rice. Dal is Hindi for all types of lentils. The book expands the defin...

AUTHOR: Matt Coyne GENRE: Children's Picture Book. PUBLICATION DATE: March 18, 2025 RATING: 3 stars. In a Nutshell: A picture book that focusses on the feelings of an only child. Good use of a variety of monsters, but the message itself is somewhat vague and weak. The illustrations are cute, but I wanted the story to be better handled. Plot Preview: In the monster town of Bonglibod, Little Monster lives happily with her mom and dad. However, things change on class photo day, when Little Monster realises that every other child in school has at least one sibling. She’s the only child to be an “only child”. On the way back home, Daddy Monster sees his daughter looking glum. When asked the reason, she replies that their family is an odd one as it has only three members, and goes on to offer plenty of examples of large families in Bonglibod. How will Daddy Monster tackle this issue? ( Well… not by making lovey-dovey eyes at Mommy Monster in a bid to create more siblings for Little Mon...

AUTHOR & ILLUSTRATOR: Lee Dean GENRE: Historical Graphic Novel PUBLICATION DATE: March 18, 2025 RATING: 3 stars. In a Nutshell: A graphic novel about a pregnant girl who feels alone in the world. Good use of the 1970s historical setting and the Florida Keys location. Somewhat literary in style, complex characters, slightly unstructured plot, no closure at the end, old-style illustrations. This is for those who are more about the journey than about the destination. Plot Preview: 1976. Greer Johnson is pregnant with her boss’s baby. At his insistence, she is forced to move from Miami to Florida to stay with his acquaintances, Donald and Kate Bender. The Benders, an old childless couple, have their own reasons for allowing Greer into their house. However, their constant interference bothers Greer, and she longs for someone to understand her. With only a Cuban immigrant gardener around, Greer resorts to flights of fancy to save herself from the dreary days. But will her imagination b...