Author Archives: Sally Snyder

Announced yesterday, A First Time for Everything has won the National Book Foundation Award for Young People’s Literature.

It is on my Summer Reading Program list for 2024 and is a memoir of a three week school trip to Europe in 1989, the summer after 8th grade.     In middle school Dan learned to be “…quiet. Small. … invisible.”  (p. 11)  Then one day, at the end of a school assembly Dan was unexpectedly asked (forced) to give his speech as practice for the speech tournament.  It was a poem by A. A. Milne.  He was ridiculed.

Then he took the three week school trip to Europe.  Quiet at first, he slowly begins to have fun with some of the other students.  And actually enjoying the trip.  He does get lost in the middle of the night in France, but manages to steal a bike and find his way back (not proud of stealing the bike).     Kirkus says, “Full of laughter and sentiment, this is a nudge for readers to dare to try new things.” (12/15/22)

Other Finalists for the Award for Young People’s Literature were:

Visit their web page to learn more. You can also see the winners and finalists in the other four categories on this web site.

Dan Santat is an author and illustrator of a variety of children and teen books, including After the Fall (How Humpty Dumpty Got Back Up Again), The Aquanaut, Sidekicks: A Graphic Novel, and Lift by Minh Lê and illustrated by Dan Santat.

Santat, Dan. A First Time for Everything. First Second/Macmillan, 2022.

A full color graphic novel for tween readers, ages 8-12 or so. Avery (11) the second-oldest of seven children in the loving Lee family, is beginning to feel squished by her siblings.  When her older brother is given a room of his own, and her room of two is becoming a room of three, (younger brother Max is moving in with Avery and her sister, Pearl), she prepares a list of reasons she should have her own room, to no avail.

Avery loves her family, she just gets a bit embarrassed and frustrated by them.  She also has some good friends who she spends time with – and they share some inside jokes as well.

Now Avery has decided to earn money in order to have a room built for her in the basement.  Walking dogs and selling lemonade do not work out well.  Then she learns the family may be moving to Oregon for her mother’s new job, and a room of her own is not even an issue anymore.  She doesn’t want to move away from her friends and all she knows.

There is plenty going on and readers will relate to Avery’s ups and downs.

Megan Wagner Lloyd. Squished. New York, Graphix, Scholastic Inc., 2023.

What would you wish for? 

The Well is a full color graphic novel published for high school readers.  Li-Zhen, called Lizzy, lives with her grandfather and for the first time she will travel to town by herself with some goats to sell, riding in a sailboat in which her friend Eli now rows.  While in town, she snitches some coins from a sacred fountain to pay for her return trip. After returning home she is visited that night in her sleep.  The well demands repayment, not in coins but in wishes.  Lizzy must find a way to provide what has been wished for, or she will be drowned.  The well’s servant says it is the wishes connected to each of the three coins that are valuable, not the coins.  She has to talk friends and strangers into helping her and she only has a day to accomplish each task.  Each task is different, and the last task may kill her.   

One of the things that appealed to me about this book is the care put into wishing.  Little children wish for candy or toys, they said, but wishing should be more thoughtful.  Eli tells Lizzy that her mother explained it this way: “…first you’re supposed to think about what you have, what you are grateful for.  Then think about what you want out of life.”

For the first task she asks for help from Eli, and they end up kidnapping a woman who has wished to return to her island, but now no longer wants to go there.  The island was destroyed by the leviathan.  The well doesn’t care about current wants or changes in wishes.  It wants her to give what was wished for on the stolen coin, however long ago the wish was made.

This past summer I saw the movie “Three Thousand Years of Longing” with Idris Elba playing a genie.  Wishes are a big part of his existence.  That movie and this graphic novel made me think more about wishes.  Fairy tales often have wishes involved, almost always tricking the wisher.  I liked what Eli said in the book about wishing.  It can be done too quickly with little contemplation as to the likely result of the wish.  Maybe wishes should stay in our hearts and not be spoken out loud.

(The Nebraska Library Commission receives free copies of children’s and young adult books for review from a number of publishers.  After review, the books are distributed free, via the Regional Library Systems, to Nebraska school and public libraries.)

Wyatt, Jake. The Well. First Second, 2022.

Nora (17) (not her real name) was rescued from her con-artist mother five years ago by her older half-sister, Lee.  Nora was part of each con her mother planned and carried out. She was Rebecca, Samantha, Haley, Katie, and Ashley.  Being each one taught her things that she will soon need.  Five years of living with her sister, going to therapy, going to school, her boyfriend Wes, who is now her ex-boyfriend, may have taken some of her edge off, or not.

Nora, Wes, and Nora’s new love Iris (Nora is bisexual) meet at the bank to deposit the money their fund-raiser collected.  Once in the bank they find themselves in the middle of a bank robbery, and things are not going well.  There are two robbers, one the brains and the other is always quick to panic.  Nora will need all of her skills to keep everyone safe: her friends, the teller, the guard, and a girl who was waiting for her father.

Each chapter heading notes the time, how long they have been captive, and what “weapons” they have.  Some gruesome things happen, both in the past and in the present.  Nora, Wes, and Iris were each abused as children and this situation brings out some of that.  They each have found a way to survive and heal.

Tension is strong throughout the book.  Nora maintains her cool and manipulates the robbers when she can.  When one tactic doesn’t work, she changes to another.  It is clear that everyone is in danger.  She exudes confidence, but inside she knows everything can quickly go wrong.

Flashbacks occur regularly, filling the reader in on what Nora did with her mother, as she was each of the girls her mother created for her.  These pages are slightly gray to stand out from the rest of the book.

This book will pull you in and not let go.  It has continued to be on my mind since I read it earlier this month.  It received a starred review from Booklist and Kirkus.  It is written for grades 9 and up, and new adults might also pick it up off the shelf.

Sharpe, Tess. The Girls I’ve Been. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2021.