Children's Review: Not a Box

Not a Box
Antoinette Portis

Rating: 5/5
Plot: 5/5
Characters: 5/5
Writing: 5/5
Illustrations: 5/5

I have forever been in love with this book. Not a Box details the inner lives of millions of imaginative children who can go on adventures with little flash and just the assistance of a box and a garden hose. The story is simple, the writing clean and unadorned. The images are the truth of the story, showing first the main character's physical reality with the box and followed by a red-sketched version of the same image only improved by the character's imagination.

One of the joys of this book for me is that the main character is entirely without gender. This story is designed to appeal to girls or boys or kids who haven't figured it out yet. Being a rabbit, the main character is also without human ethnicity and the simple style of storytelling transports any child into the not-a-box of this character. This is also an excellent choice for read-aloud storytimes, as the limited story and bold strokes of the illustration are very easy for children to grasp and expand on. Highly recommended for anyone who ever went to the moon in a box.

Adult Review: Trowchester Blues

Based on a promotional eBook received from NetGalley in exchange for a review.

Trowchester Blues
Written by Alex Beecroft

Overall Rating: 5/5
Plot: 5/5
Characters: 5/5
Writing: 5/5

Michael May, police investigator for the London Metropolitan Police, has a meltdown of epic proportions after seeing the crime scene of yet another young woman he failed to save. In response to this meltdown, he turns in his badge and retires to his family home, the site of his own troubled childhood. Bisexual and divorced after years of living straight, he discovers an incredibly attractive and eccentric bookstore owner, Finn, and they strike up a relationship. What Michael doesn't know is Finn's history with his own Metro Police department as a former fence...

I could go on and on and on about this book. The relationships between Michael and Finn, Michael and his former partner, Finn and his flamboyant book club, Finn and his Ghost, Michael and the homeless girl who takes up residence nearby, Michael and his childhood demons... This book bursts at the seams with relationships and they are all fantastic. They are developed and interesting and any one of them could have been a novel on its own. Beecroft weaves them all together into a whole that is fast-paced, sexy, and an utter delight to read.

I really appreciate the author's attention to representation of sexuality, since the main character is bisexual and clear about this. He isn't gay and closeted. He defines himself as bisexual and the difference is important to him. Beecroft also highlights some major issues in the LGBT community: teen homelessness in the form of the teenaged lesbian kicked out of her home because she had a girlfriend. And there is a gender-neutral teen who is accepted fully by their parents. In general, this book made me smile, made me blush, made me cheer, and made me contact my branch manager, begging to have the series added to our library's collection. I want to recommend this to everyone who's open to reading about same-sex characters.

This means you: go read it. Right now. Shoo.