Rosh's Reviews

AUTHOR: Elizabeth Acevedo ILLUSTRATOR: Andrea Pippins GENRE: Illustrated Spoken Word Poem PUBLICATION DATE: May 3, 2022 RATING: 2 stars. In a Nutshell: An illustrated version of the author's famous spoken-word poem. Didn't get much of the poetic merit (no surprises there, given my lack of fondness for poetry), but liked the powerful message and the vibrant illustrations. Might work differently for readers more impacted by this format of poetry. I have wild hair. Though thinner now with age and hormonal upheavals, my hair still looks like I forgot to brush it after I woke up. Over the years, many friends have asked me to straighten my hair. They claim it's easier to manage. No one asks me whether I'm bothered by my messy waves or if I prefer straight hair to curls. They just assume that their straight hair IS better. ( Fact: I think straight hair is boring. I love curly hair as it has a personality of its own! I am very jealous of women who have ringlet curls .) Isn'...

EDITOR: Sandra Proudman GENRE: YA Retelling Anthology. RATING: 3.7 stars In a Nutshell: A well-written YA anthology that takes sixteen classic stories/fairy tales and gives them a Latinx spin. Excellent as a retelling collection. Quite good as a YA work. Recommended! My friends know that I don’t have any fondness for YA fiction. Its characters are usually so self-centred and whiny that I can’t stop rolling my eyes at them. However, the YA anthology subcategory has brought out story collections with some unusual and inclusive themes over the last couple of years. This anthology too appealed to me by virtue of its central intent and hence I grabbed it, despite the YA tag. Luckily, the *risk* was much worth it. 😉 This collection of sixteen stories takes classic short stories, poems and fairy tales, and reimagines them in a new setting with Latinx characters at the helm. The original stories span a variety of styles: Frankenstein, Goldilocks, Pride & Prejudice, Theseus and the Minota...

AUTHOR: Will Canduri TRANSLATOR: Andrea Labinger ILLUSTRATOR: Megan Herzart GENRE: Short Stories. RATING: 2.4 stars. In a Nutshell: I wanted this collection to work for me. But it just didn’t. This short story collection contains 28 stories that are quite diverse from each other. They cover a variety of genres ( crime, horror, dystopian, sci-fi, mystery… ), periods ( historical, contemporary, futuristic ), lengths (with the shortest story being just a page long), and character perspectives ( first, second and third person .) As such, the stories don’t feel repetitive. This should have made the stories work well for me. But somehow, the writing style didn’t suit my taste. The plots were too meandering for my liking, with sometimes there being no logical connection between the start and the finish. At times, the ending was too abrupt. Many stories were quite conversation-dominated, a stylistic choice that never works for me. The stories are supposedly “steeped in Spanish culture and tr...

  AUTHOR:  Sheila Colón-Bagley ILLUSTRATOR: Alejandro Mesa GENRE: Children's Picture Book, Christmas RATING:  4.5 stars. In a Nutshell: An exceptional bilingual (English + Spanish) picture book honouring Dia de Los Reyes from a Puerto Rican perspective. Takes inspiration from a classic Christmas poem and gives it a Three Kings twist. Loved it!  Story Synopsis: The entire story comes to us through the first person perspective of a little Puerto Rican girl, whose extended family has gathered at her place on ‘la noche before Three Kings Day’. After they complete their yummy dinner and have fun singing and dancing, the kids gather to make gift boxes for Los Reyes Magos. After the guests leave, our wee narrator and her sister are too excited to sleep, but Mamá and Papá convince them to go to bed. What happens next? “Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse…” These famous opening lines belong to the belo...

AUTHOR: Patricia Engel GENRE: Anthology, Latin American Fiction. RATING: 4.3 Stars. In a Nutshell: One of the best character-oriented anthologies I have read in a long time. Focussed on Latin-American experiences in their native land and in the US. An emotional medley of sadness and hope. When I begin any anthology, I like to have an author’s note or a foreword at the start, telling me how the collection came into being and what’s the common theme to the set. This anthology begins directly with the first story. As such, I didn’t know what exactly to expect and had to go with the flow. What I didn’t expect was a gathering of such realistic human experiences, filled in equal measure with happiness and heartbreak, despair and hope, togetherness and loneliness. The ten stories of this anthology had been previously published in various literary magazines and compiled together for the first time. Each of the stories is thought-provoking in various ways. The themes covered are strong by the...