I’m a writer and editor and specialize in reviewing books written for adults and writing educational standards-based books and articles for kids and teens. My work has been published in The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, The Oregonian, Publishers Weekly, and other publications.

Featured Reviews: Adult Books

The House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea

In the advance reading copy of his eighth work of fiction, literary heavyweight Luis Alberto Urrea writes that as a kid, he never saw his Mexican American family represented in the pages of American literature. Sure, there were immigrant stories. But none of them featured characters who “made tortillas and listened to Pedro Infante.” Urrea thought someone should rectify that problem. The House of Broken Angels is his attempt to do so — and what a raucous, moving and necessary book it is. Especially now. Inspired by the … [Read More...]

What We Lose by Zinzi Clemmons

There’s a glaring paradox in Zinzi Clemmons’ semi-autobiographical first novel, What We Lose. It’s structured like a mishmash smattering of photographs, hand-sketched graphs and short chapters of half-formed thoughts, yet it carries the thematic weight and import of a well-steeped and fully realized work of art.  What’s more, the contrast works brilliantly. Let me explain. The novel loosely circles around a straightforward story. When Thandi is in college, her mother is diagnosed with incurable cancer. … [Read More...]

Featured Reviews: Adult Books

The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath by Leslie Jamison

Throw a rock and you’ll hit someone with a drug or alcohol addiction. Or someone who knows someone with an addiction. Throw another rock and you’ll hit the tell-all they published about it. Or the recovery novel they’re working on. Or the notebooks full of poems on the topic. Alcoholism in particular is a popular subject. It’s also a frustrating, demoralizing illness millions of people grapple with and have tried to overcome — including Leslie Jamison. Jamison’s memoir and first full-length work of … [Read More...]

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

The opening scene of Jesmyn Ward’s new novel, Sing, Unburied, Sing, is not for the faint of heart. In it, Jojo watches with equal fascination and horror as his grandfather, Pop — the man who raised him — slaughters a goat. “Pop slits. The goat makes a sound of surprise, a bleat swallowed by a gurgle, and then there’s blood and mud everywhere,” Ward writes. Later, she describes the slickness of the skin as it peels off the goat’s bloody hide like a banana. It’s a … [Read More...]