and she reads

These are the books I read last week for our controversial or challenged childrens books segment. Interesting to see what can actually be told in a way that appeals to children.

About illegal immigrants. When Border Patrol comes she hides her friend and his mother from them.
A man and his son live in the airport. Sad but with a hopeful moment at the end.
About the LA riots. A hard topic well tackled as evidenced by the Caldecott it received.
It's a picture books but is it really meant for children? A lot of violence and very distressing subject matter. This was shelved in the art section of our adult nonfiction.
A little girl living during WWII who discovers a concentration camp.
An American soldier in Vietnam. I was surprised that these books tackled the war topic for children. I didn't really like the illustrations for this one.
A cute but very controversial picturebook that's made a lot of news headlines.
I'm not sure why this one was controversial other than the possible indications that the cats were in a gang... ?
A classic my-dad-is-gay book. Boring and not well illustrated.

By Column McCann
This book was a little like Crash (the movie). Multiple lives in New York, generally told from the first person, that come together in the end. But it was less serendipitous and more random - things happened and they weren't usually good things. And of course there was the element of the the Man Who Walked Between the Towers - a children's book I read recently and a documentary as well. Overall, I liked this but had a lot of interruptions while reading it so its been hard to keep the storyline straight in my head.

Well, my attempt to review/describe/list the books I read begins now. There will be some children books here and there because I'm taking a Children's Materials for Libraries class this semester.

I'd like to be able to look back at what I read even if it's just a list of things. I hope to do some short reviews as well just so that I can practice. Hopefully this will be slightly interesting but it's mostly for me.