Staff Picks: Colleen Conway Ramos’s Favorites

I love all of Corinna Luyken’s books but her latest, The Tree in Me, will always hold a special place in my heart. This beautiful ode to the strength, mystery and potential inside every child is filled with Corinna’s soft, lyrical writing and an explosion of bright, happy colors on every page. It is a book that celebrates the natural world around us and encourages children to be outside and to connect to one another and is one that I think belongs in every child’s library.

When anyone asks me for a great middle grade read, I must mention Brenda Woods as I think she has the pitch perfect voice for this age group. Saint Louis Armstrong Beach is about Saint, a budding musician living in New Orleans when Katrina hits. He’s not worried at first, but when the water starts to rise and he realizes he can’t find Shadow, the beloved stray dog he cares for, he stays behind when he’s supposed to be evacuating the city. Then Saint realizes Miz Moran, his elderly neighbor, has evaded relatives and is still in her home, determined to stay. Together, they must find a way to survive the hurricane. As with all of Woods’ stories, it tackles deep, complex issues with a deft hand, and touches on themes of identity, race, class, and often forgotten or underrepresented bits of history.

Merit has refused to marry a prince, leading to a curse by a fairy godling that will force her to live as a beast forever unless she marries before her 18^th birthday. Tevin has always been a pawn in his family’s many cons, using his beauty to woo unsuspecting girls out of their fortunes. When Tevin’s mother runs afoul of Merit’s beast, she trades Tevin for her own freedom. This gender swapped take on Beauty and the Beast turns the fairytale on its head, with whip smart funny dialogue, a heroine to root for, original worldbuilding that feels both magical and real, and a swoony romance readers will love.

I have been unable to stop talking and thinking about this book since I first read it two years ago, and I doubt that I ever will. Set in New England after a deadly fly flu has wiped out most of the world, the story follows several survivors, including Nico and her dog, who are on a journey planned by her father that will find a portal that could everything. This is a book I would hand to a teen who loved Grasshopper Jungle or The Fifth Wave as easily as an adult who loved Station Eleven or The Road. While on the surface Electric Kingdom seems like a story about the end of the world, it’s really a book about new beginnings, about finding hope and love and forging new paths. With its complex characters, intricate pacing, haunting imagery and imaginative plot twists, it is one of those books where as soon as I turned the last page, I wanted to go back and read it again; I cannot think of a higher recommendation than that!