LitBit Speaks

Ollie and Moritz might never meet, but their friendship knows no bounds. Their letters carry on as Ollie embarks on his first road trip away from the woods--no easy feat for a boy allergic to electricity--and Moritz decides which new school would best suit an eyeless boy who prefers to be alone. Along the way they meet other teens like them, other products of strange science who lead seemingly normal lives in ways Ollie and Moritz never imagined possible: A boy who jokes about his atypical skeleton; an aspiring actress who hides a strange deformity; a track star whose abnormal heart propels her to victory. Suddenly the future feels wide open for two former hermits. But even as Ollie and Moritz dare to enjoy life, they can't escape their past, which threatens to destroy any progress they've made. Can these boys ever find their place in a world that might never understand them? Star-crossed lovers move over! You've got nothing  on Ollie and Moritz! And they're not...

In this glorious celebration of observation, curiosity, and imagination, Brendan Wenzel shows us the many lives of one cat, and how perspective shapes what we see. When you see a cat, what do you see? What can I say? I think this book is absolutely marvellous. It's a truly stunning debut (yes, a debut!!!) I had no idea what to expect when I first saw the cover reveal earlier this year, and when I got my first glimpse at a Chronicle Books event, I was floored.  Each spread utilizes a unique style of art and perspective in order to show the differences in how various other animals see  the cat. Wenzel's illustrations and text encourage young readers to think more consciously about perspective and how differently things can be understood depending on context and underlying biases. This book is much more than it may appear on the surface! Highly Recommended (NOTE: This review is from an Advance Reading Copy - Out Aug. 30, 2016)

Every morning is beautiful when Noah visits his Grandparents. When Grandpa and Noah wake up, they take off singing and hardly stop: walking the dog, splashing through puddles, and eating French toast with cinnamon.  But one summer Grandpa seems to have forgotten how to do the things they love. Does he even know who Noah is?  Grandma steps in energetically, filling in as best she can. But it is Noah who finds the way back to something he can share with Grandpa. Something musical. Something that makes the morning beautiful again.  This is a story about how love helps us  find even what we think is lost. It isn't often that something as complex and emotionally nuanced as alzheimer's is explored in a picturebook. Arthur Levine has written a story that is incredibly sensitive and insightful, filled with descriptive and imaginative language. The book is an emotional rollercoaster, moments of happiness contrasted with moments of heartbreak, confusion, and frustration....

Growing up in the shadows cast by two world wars, Annabelle has lived a mostly quiet, steady life in her small Pennsylvania town. Until the day new student Betty Glengarry walks into her class. Betty quickly reveals herself to be cruel and manipulative, and while her bullying seems isolated at first, things quickly escalate, and reclusive World War I veteran Toby becomes a target of her attacks. While others have always seen Toby’s strangeness, Annabelle knows only kindness. She will soon need to find the courage to stand as a lone voice of justice as tensions mount. The year I turned twelve, I learned how to lie. I don't mean the small fibs that children tell. I mean real lies fed by real fears--things I said and did that took me out of the life I'd always known and put me down hard into a new one. It was the autumn of 1943 when my steady life began to spin, not only because of the war that had drawn the whole world into a screaming brawl, but also because of the dark-hear...

Paul is a fish who used to go around in circles. He made big circles and little circles. He circled from left to right and from right to left. He circled from top to bottom and from bottom to top. What else was there to do? Until one day Bernadette drops in and shows Paul that there is a whole world out there, right outside his bowl, with so many things to see. A banana-shaped boat! A blue elephant with a spoutlike trunk (be quiet when she’s feeding her babies)! A lovely lunetta butterfly, with tortoise-shell rims! Simple saturated paintings play off this charming ode to an active imagination — and the way that life changes when a bewitching creature opens your eyes. For the longest time, all Paul saw was his bowl. He saw up and down and side to side, and he went around and around, and there was a whole lovely little world that Paul knew very well. But then one day Bernadette is introduced to Paul's bowl, and he's introduced to a whole new way of seeing the world outsi...