Everything Sad Is Untrue: (A True Story)
by Daniel Nayeri
Middle School    Levine Querido    368 pp.    g
8/20    978-1-64614-000-8    $17.99
e-book ed.  978-1-64614-002-2    $9.99

Framed loosely as his twelve-year-old self’s responses to a series of school assignments, Nayeri’s fictionalized memoir swirls through his own memories as well as stories from his family history, circling around major events and pausing to include his Oklahoma classmates’ reactions to his tales of early childhood in Iran. This structure means the story takes some time to pick up speed — which it does once it goes into more focused detail about Nayeri’s family’s journey: their quick escape from Iran after his mother’s life was threatened because she had converted to Christianity; his father’s decision to stay behind. The buildup comprises tangent upon tangent — Nayeri alludes frequently to Scheherazade’s stringing together of stories in the 1,001 Nights — but those tangents are absorbing and full of universalizing detail and humor (there’s more than one poop anecdote). This tale is constantly focused on its telling, with references to an imagined audience and reminders of who characters are. The actual audience is a bit of a puzzle, as the twelve-year-old narrator’s tale spans a wide range of ages in his life and those of his family members, and the overall sensibility seems more adult than not. An author’s note acknowledges the fallibility of memory as well as some deliberate alterations; it is, as Nayeri puts it, “both fiction and nonfiction at the same time.” SHOSHANA FLAX

From the November/December 2020 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.

From the September/October 2020 issue of The Horn Book Magazine. 

Apple: Skin to the Core
by Eric Gansworth; illus. by the author
Middle School, High School    Levine Querido   352 pp.    g
10/20    978-1-64614-013-8    $18.99
e-book ed.  978-1-64614-004-6    $18.99

Gansworth, an enrolled member of the Onondaga Nation, grew up on the Tuscarora reservation, making him always “the outsider inside.” The theme of being an outsider appears frequently in this memoir in verse. So does the complicated legacy of Indian boarding schools, which three of his grandparents attended, and the slur “Apple,” meaning “red on the outside, white on the inside” (based in assumptions that the author challenges). Gansworth’s first-person narrative tells a deeply personal story, full of family history and references to popular culture. As in his novel If I Ever Get Out of Here (rev. 9/13), the music of the Beatles is central, with section titles alluding to the band’s history and Abbey Road songs providing poem titles within one section. The full pages of mostly long-lined, sometimes dense verse (including some prose poems) are occasionally relieved by Gansworth’s gouache illustrations, featuring a complex interplay of images from popular culture and traditional wampum belts documenting and celebrating “survival and cultural continuity,” and by photographs gathered from various sources. This introspective memoir confirms by its very existence that, though the boarding schools tried to erase Indian culture, Native peoples “are still / here, / still standing, still walking, one resilient step at a time.” Back matter includes further information about the author’s poetry and art and explains musical connections. DEAN SCHNEIDER

From the November/December 2020 issue of The Horn Book Magazine. 

Every Body Looking
by Candice Iloh
High School    Dutton    416 pp.    g
9/20    978-0-525-55620-6    $17.99 

REVIEW TO COME

Dragon Hoops
by Gene Luen Yang; illus. by the author; color by Lark Pien
High School    First Second/Roaring Brook    446 pp.
3/20    978-1-62672-079-4    $24.99

“I’m just not a sports kind of guy,” begins Yang in this comics-format offering that brilliantly combines journalism, memoir, and sports history. Yang, who taught math at Bishop O’Dowd High School in Oakland, California, during the events of the book, provides readers with an inside look at the school’s elite basketball team’s season as it attempted to win the California State Championship in 2015. Weaving the details of that team’s efforts with a primer on the history of basketball, Yang skillfully juggles the stories of multiple players and coaches as well as his own journey from basketball novice to avid fan. In the appended notes, Yang explains his art and narrative choices chapter-by-chapter with page and panel notations, from the sneakers and the hairstyles of the individual players to times when certain conversations happened differently than depicted. While the action on the court is absolutely transfixing (with page layouts often using trapezoid-shaped panels whose diagonal lines amp up the dynamism), the story shines just as brightly off the court when Yang’s focus shifts to his own dilemmas and profound insights regarding art and storytelling. Single-season reportage is a popular subgenre of sports writing in the adult publishing world (try In These Girls, Hope Is a Muscle for a basketball classic), and here is a perfect entryway into this form for teen readers. A bibliography is also appended. ERIC CARPENTER

From the May/June 2020 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.