Books I Loved in 2023

I compiled an incomplete list of the books I read in 2023 that I loooved. Incomplete because I did not keep notes throughout the year. Sorry.

The books are broken down into age categories: picture books, middle grade, young adult, and adult. As you will see, I have eclectic tastes!

Enjoy!

(this picture is not of the books I read. It’s just a nice picture.)

Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash

Picture Books

• Mr. S by Monica ArnaldoLook, sometimes your teacher is maybe a sandwich. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ A very funny book that had my daughter and me gasping with shock at the plot twists and pointing out Easter eggs in the illustrations.

• Great Carrier Reef by Jessica Stremer and Gordy WrightStremer did something truly amazing with this nonfiction book; she conveyed really difficult ideas with simple to follow language. This book follows an old aircraft carrier as it’s converted into an artificial reef. Great for kids interested in ecology and boats.

• The Truth about Dragons by Julie Leung and Hanna ChaAn absolute knockout. The illustrations are gorgeous, showing a biracial boy exploring the idea of both European and Asian dragons. Great for literally any kid who doesn’t hate dragons. If they hate dragons, maybe still try it because maybe they don’t know there’s more than one kind of dragon.

• The End of Something Wonderful: A Practical Guide to A Backyard Funeral by Stephanie V. W. Lucianovic and George ErmosThis classic how-to picture book teaches kids the art of the backyard funeral, and how it’s OK to read funny books when you’re grieving for a small pet.

• Cities: How Humans Live Together by Megan Clendenan and Suharu OgawaThis is a longer nonfiction for older picture book readers, through elementary, I’d say. It includes information about how cities work and how they formed in the first place. Great for kids who love Richard Scarry’s Busytown books and are ready for something a little meatier.

• Nature’s Rule Breakers: Creatures that Don’t Fit In, by Jessica Fries-GaitherThis energetic nonfiction talks about how nature often doesn’t fit into binary definitions, such as diurnal/nocturnal, herbivore/carnivore, male/female. A great read for any kid who loves animals and nature.

• My Parents Won’t Stop Talking by Tillie Walden and Emma HunsingerBasically what it says on the tin. The main character’s moms won’t stop talking about inane things with the neighbors, meanwhile THE PARK IS WAITING. The poor kid spirals into an exaggerated panic that is hilarious and relatable.

Middle Grade

As it turns out, a lot of the middle grade books I’d recommend this year are graphic novels. Sorry/not sorry!

By the way, while I’m talking about it, reading graphic novels “counts” as reading. It’s a different skill than reading texty novels, and it’s great for kids to read both. Graphic novels can be just as rich and complex as chapter books, and can access different parts of the brain. They may also be easier for kids with reading disorders, or who are nervous about reading.

• The First Cat in Space Ate Pizza by Mac Barnett and Shawn HarrisA totally weird graphic novel for younger middle grade readers about a cat sent to save the moon. Very silly. Actually, I’m going to say this is great for folks starting around age 7, but my 11 year old read this book three times while we had it home from the library.

• Mexikid by Pedro Martin A great graphic novel memoir about a kid who goes on an RV road trip to Mexico with his giant family to pick up his mysterious grandfather. Really funny, covers a lot about Mexico and growing up in the 80s.

• Twins by Varian Johnson and Shannon Wright This graphic novel is about twin girls who try to get their own identities in middle school, but they both end up competing to be 6th grade president. Johnson is himself a twin, and it’s the most authentic book I’ve read about being a twin.

• Sal and Gabi Break the Universe by Carlos HernandezNot a graphic novel! This is another funny fantasy book about a kid (Sal) who goes to a new magnet school in Miami. He’s really good at magic tricks, but he can also rip holes in the fabric of space and time and bring his dead mother back to life, as one does. My favorite parts of this book are Sal’s friendship with Gabi and the descriptions of the school’s awesome library. It’s from the Rick Riordan Presents line, most of which are really great for kids interested in adventurous books based on mythology and folktales from other cultures.

• Little Monarchs by Jonathan CaseThis moving, eerie graphic novel is set in a dystopian future when the the sun has turned deadly. The only protection from the sun disease is from derived from the scales from monarch wings. The story follows a girl and her guardian as they try to develop a longer lasting vaccine so people can come out from hiding in the shadows.

• The Parker Inheritance by Varian JohnsonA contemplative novel. Kids solve a puzzle inherited from a previous generation. Lots of information about civil rights in the South. It’s a technically more difficult read with longer chapters and paragraphs, which makes it really rich. Best for kids with longer attention spans.

• Last Day on Mars by Kevin EmersonHumans have one day to escape Mars before the sun mysteriously goes super nova and destroys the solar system, but an explosion in a lab threatens one family’s evacuation. surprisingly moving story about family and saying goodbye to your childhood home. This book is the start of a trilogy.  

• The Last Mapmaker by Christina SoontornvatA sea adventure about a girl who goes on a voyage as a mapmaker’s apprentice. Great for kids who like sea adventures with a touch of fantasy and mutiny. I also loved Soontornvat’s, A Wish in the Dark, which was a South Asian-inspired fantasy retelling of Les Mis, and is as amazing as you’re thinking it is, with a description like that.  

Young Adult

• Feed by M.T. AndersonI know I’m about 20 years late with this, but I’ve only just read it. It was hard to get into at first, but the unique first-person voice is compelling, as is the super eerie reality of this futuristic world. Basically, Americans now have tech in their head that hooks them directly into the feed, which sends them content (and ads) constantly. Then a group of kids lose access to their feeds for a few weeks after an incident on the moon. When I finished the book, I just had to stare into space for a while and remember how to be a person.

• Turtles All The Way Down by John GreenLate to this party, as well. I haven’t really understood OCD, so this book was an eye opener. It’s a very moving, heart wrenching, sometimes disturbing book about a girl with OCD just trying to exist and be healthy. The external plot is a mystery she’s trying to solve and a new friend she makes in that process, but that’s not really why you read it. Incredibly moving, this book sticks with you for a while (although I left it off my list originally because I forgot I read it in 2023!).

• Inheritance Games (start of a trilogy) by Jennifer Lynn BarnesA girl who teeters on the edge of homelessness suddenly inherits the world’s largest fortune–and the grandsons of the man who died get nothing. The trilogy is then about her and the grandsons solving puzzles built into the mansion she inherits to figure out why she inherited the money, while fighting off the family’s enemies (and her enemies within the family). The puzzles are interesting, the book is very page turny, and the grandsons are very into consent (there’s a little bit of kissing, a lot of teenage angst with a typical YA love triangle), both in seeking consent and also ensuring other men are respectful towards women. There’s some implied sex (in the 3rd book, the main character and her boyfriend sleep in the same bed, but you never see anything on page other than kissing). I think book 1 is probably fine for 12 years old and up, certainly 13 and up. Maybe slightly older for books 2 and 3, and older still for the next book, The Brothers Hawthorne, which isn’t part of the trilogy and wasn’t as good anyway, IMO. 

• Graceling by Kristin CashoreA classic fantasy YA about a girl gifted with a killing talent. She’s forced to work for a king to terrify and murder people who anger him, but then she rebels and turns her gifts to unseating evil rulers. Lots of political intrigue and plotting in the early part of the book. The later part is a straight up survival story. There’s a love story with some implied sex.

• The Mermaid, the Witch and The Sea by Maggie Tokuda-HallPirates, queer love story, mermaids, sword fights, witches, near drownings. Beautifully written by Maggie Tokuda-Hall, one of my favorite authors. This is technically YA, but it’s a bit violent in parts. There is an implied sexual assault that happened before the story takes place that is alluded to.

• The Door of No Return by Kwame AlexanderTechnically, this is a middle grade, but I didn’t know where to put it on my list. I don’t think my middle grade readers could get through it, but I think high school readers could. It has some very intense scenes and an off-page rape. Regardless, this novel-in-verse is about a 11-year-old boy who lives in Upper Kwanta in Ghana. One day he is kidnapped and handed over to European slave traders, and it turns just as terrifying as it sounds. The poetry is beautiful.

Adult

• How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures by Sabrina Imbler This coming-of-age memoir is about a biracial person who wrestles with their identify, their profession, and comes to understand their queerness through ten sea creatures. Each chapter is a perfect essay. Trigger warning: there’s one chapter (that can be skipped)–the Sand Striker chapter–where they try to come to terms with sexual assault experiences in their past. 

• Christmas on the Island by Jenny Colgan. This novel, which I think would be great for a Christmas-themed book club, is about the residents of an island in the far north of Scotland who have to deal with various life issues like pregnancies and cancer and recovering from trauma. I liked it a lot, it’s not just fluff, there’s some deeper issues that I found really moving. It’s the third book in a series, but I didn’t read the first two and it was fine. Bonus: the audiobook narrator has a wonderfully charming Scottish accent, but she’s terrible at American accents, which actually made it better for me.

• Lavender House by Lev A.C. RosenThe sequel to this mystery just came out, but I haven’t read it yet. It’s about a queer cop in postwar San Francisco who is kicked off the force when he’s discovered in a gay bar. He’s hired as a PI by a soap dynasty to solve a murder. It’s packed with a lot of smell imagery and found family. 

• Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. SutantoAnother mystery that takes place in SF, but the mystery is really just the excuse for the book to happen. You don’t read it for the mystery, you read it for the main character, a 60-year old woman who owns a failing teashop in Chinatown. A guy dies in her shop, and she’s convinced it’s murder and goes about trying to solve it (while thinking about some matchmaking between her prime suspects). Lots of fun narration, food descriptions, tea descriptions. Hilarious. I absolutely LOLed while listening to the audiobook while walking my dog.  

• Woman in the Library by Sulari GentillAnother murder mystery, this one about someone writing a mystery, about someone writing a mystery, about someone writing a mystery. It’s not as trippy and tortuous as Inception; the layers are presented in an easy-to-follow way. It mostly takes place in Boston but also sort of in Australia? Gripping tension and plot twists for the entire book.

• Until the End of Time by Brian Greene A beautifully lyrical and moving nonfiction physics book about entropy. You heard me. Entropy.

Writing Craft Books

• Intuitive Editing: A Creative and Practical Guide to Revising Your Writing by Tiffany Yates MartinI’ve read other craft books that break the editing process into three levels: big picture edits, scene/chapter level edits, and line edits. But what I like about this book is the encouragement to triage, to not necessarily do the edits in a prescribed order, but instead to decide what’s needs the most help and do that first.

Are there any books I should read in 2024? Let me know in the comments!