One Thousand Years of Manga, Brigitte Koyama-Richard
The best stuff in this book are the hilarious early sketches and woodcuts that were dashed off (a rough translation of the word manga) in centuries past, including a wonderful frog battle that was very similar to Scott C.’s painting Ninjas All Over the Place, an excellent Fart Battle, and various anthropomorphic mice, monkeys, elephants and cool yokai. Translated from French, pretty great. Three stars.

Through No Fault of my Own: A Girl’s Diary of Life on Summit Avenue in the Jazz Age, Coco Irvine
The actual diary of Coco for one whole year when she was 12 and 13, living in a mansion (later given to the office of the governor of Minnesota), going to a private school, and also getting into trouble and having a crush on A Boy. The tone is absolutely perfect, capturing her exasperation and obliviousness along with the High Drama of EVERYTHING. It’s published as a local interest book by U. of Minnesota, but her dad was an executive with Weyerhaeuser, adding a PNW connection. I enjoyed it so much I wondered if a 12 year old would see any of the humor involved at all, much as I couldn’t enjoy The Diaries of Adrian Mole at that age. Four stars.

Memento Nora, Angie Smibert
I said it was good dystopia, but not not great dystopia, and then George Orwell punched me in the mouth. I liked the information on underground printmaking and document smuggling (especially after seeing artifacts from the French Resistance this summer), but the three character voices weren’t as distinct as I would like and not all of the implications of the alternate world were explored as much as I would like (but then I am an alternate world nerd). They also said “shit” a lot, which didn’t interfere with my enjoyment but may slow me down when taking it to middle school classrooms. Censorship!!! Two stars.

Fat Vampire: A Never Coming of Age Story, Adam Rex
On the heels of the censorship comment above comes a book with all sorts of things that will upset the parents of delicate little flowers but that reminds me of how great a YA book can be. I was totally blown away at the depth of the characters, plotting, and even some (not very heavily veiled: nice for the less-experienced reader but not too heavy handed for the more) metaphor. Is metaphor what I mean? It was funny and scary and tragic and inspiring. Five stars and a hearty handshake to Adam Rex.

Bomboozled! How the U.S. Government Misled Itself and Its People Into Believing They Could Survive a Nuclear Attack, Susan Roy
A fascinating combination of the behind-the-scenes motivations of the Civil Defense programs in the US and the ads, articles, plans and model shelters in glorious color. I had assumed that shelters had been accepted by the general public, but not so much: people felt they were too expensive, too scary to contemplate, might not be effective, and that they might not want to live in a post-nuclear-war environment. The most interesting aspects to me were the psychological reasons for encouraging preparedness, to manage the anxiety people felt and to justify MAD as a political stance. Also, that most shelter plans didn’t include a toilet and a couple who spent 3 days in their shelter maxed out their toilet capacity at day 2! I had also never noted the shift from “bomb shelter” to “fallout shelter” at the point that bombs became powerful enough that no shelter would protect people in the area that was attacked and the fallout would be spread even further. Four stars for a really good history (it started out as a masters thesis in architecture) with excellent reproduced primary sources.

Wire Mothers: Harry Harlow and the Science of Love, Jim Ottaviani & Dylan Meconis
I’ve really liked Ottaviani’s science-based graphic novels, so I’m reading some older books before I get to the new one on Feynman (so excited). It turned out that I had read most of the salient info about the wire/cloth mother experiments, but this added some good stuff about Harlow’s life. Meconis’ art is lovely, reminded me of Jason Lutes, very fluid. Four stars.

Writing movies for fun and profit!: how we made a billion dollars at the box office and you can, too!, Robert Ben Garant & Thomas Lennon
Not exactly the flip side of William Goldman’s screenwriting books, but almost– certainly much further into the desperate scrabble for profitable movies. Overall, an incisive look into what it takes for a script to become a studio movie and some really great industry tales. Four stars.