I love middle grade reads, so this is my longest list this year. In no particular order, here are the books to which I gave a five-star rating in 2020.This is a book for keeps.More often than not, in India, books that address homosexuality are categorised as young adult or adult books, but with this book more than any others before, I disagree. To Night Owl from Dogfish is clearly a middle grade book. The characters, the themes, the tone - everything, for me, is middle grade. Avery and Bett learn that their dads are going to get married, and they start exchanging emails, laying plans to ensure that they don't get to know each other. They don't want two families to become one, thank you very much. They don't want to become sisters.Their fathers want to send them to summer camp together. They want to refuse to go and when that fails, they determine not to talk to each other. … [Read more...]
Across the Line
What a powerful, beautiful book.Across the Line is one of the South Asia Book Award Honor Books 2020. I was intrigued by the title and the cover image, but I didn't know anything about the book, except that it was South Asian, probably Indian. And the name naturally suggested to me the partition.I was not wrong. And yet, Across the Line is much more. It's about the cultural baggage we continue to carry, so many years after India was divided. The story begins in 1947 when the line was drawn, dividing the nation. Mountbatten chose to leave India to its mess, even though he knew that a bloody massacre was likely to follow. The story alternates between New Delhi and Rawalpindi, tracing the lives of two families that happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.And then, before we know the whole story of the characters we meet in August 1947, we move to the more recent … [Read more...]