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Brownstone, by Samuel Teer (illustr. Mar Julia) (2024)
⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Premise: A New York teenager meets her father for the first time one summer and learns about her Guatemalan heritage.

Review: This is sweet and effective, if very, very simplistic. It does deal with some hard subject matter — child abandonment, biracial identities, homophobia, and gentrification — but in ways that came off a bit too easy. ⬇️

Such a beautiful story about a son and his dad who have to move from their favorite blue house. It showed all the faults with the house that they loved and how they made their new home loved just as much as the blue house. Wonderful graphics.

This was fantastic! A young teen meets her father for the first time when she goes to spend the summer with him in the brownstone he‘s renovating. They navigate language barriers and she feels like a major outsider in the neighborhood. Very sweet story.

A memoir of journalist Emily Witt‘s trips and wild parties often with her love interest/object of obsession Andrew. She describes a few experiences that I found interesting (Ayahuasca, specifically) but mostly it‘s a repetitive journal of the hard partying scene in nyc. The second half of the book included some more of her experiences covering stories for various publications. Less than impressed with this.

I can see why this won the 2025 Printz! I LOVE this family! The artwork and text twist together in a completely organic way and I adore both. Almudena‘s summer living with her father and slowly expanding her friends and family is masterfully woven into the renovation of her father‘s brownstone. All of the characters are unique and have their own moments of growth on and off page. I love all of them.

Love this!❤️❤️❤️❤️

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️I enjoyed this character-driven book club pick! It follows a mother and her 3 adult daughters-all in their early 20s and living in those moments of relationship change, while also living through gentrification and other societal changes of the early 1950s. I was impressed with how realistic the characters felt and the way that the author wove their stories together-you understand everyone‘s motivations, whether you agree with them or not.

The story was well executed. It tackled the complex issue of gentrification (specifically in a Chinatown context) in an accessible way. At the end of the book, there were a few pages with background information on Chinatowns, gentrification, community activism, and a short note on the language used (Chinese dialogue is used throughout the story).

Full Review: https://oddandbookish.wordpress.com/2025/01/09/review-noodle-bao/

I‘m back home in Canada & it‘s all Canadian authors in this December 18th episode! #booktube

https://youtu.be/lXJD3Exclio

4.5 stars! So good!