Amy's Free Library of Rock!

So let’s make a new calendar: Russian Christmas is the last day of the year. So Happy New Year! This is right on time! Honestly, I do gather the lists and write a lot of the descriptions over the course of the year, then the end of the year it’s final writings and editings and formattings and gathering links, but this year I kept getting distracted every time I sat down to work on it. “I know what your problem is,” Jason, who was diagnosed with ADHD as a child and went to a special high school where he learned coping strategies, said one such time. “Your problem is you’re TRYING to write. You need to go try to do chores, and suddenly you’ll be all about writing!”

And it’s true, that actually works. Sometimes. It did in that case and then I spat out the whole “Christmas” section below.

So if you’re new here, here’s my year, divided into Real Life and Media (and also Other Stuff I Wrote, that could technically be considered Media but I don’t know), and then put into lists which may or may not be ranked, and things are bolded and different sizes by outline level, so it’s easy to skim through just looking for stuff you’re interested in! Although you nevcr know, you might find something interesting in a section you didn’t KNOW you were interested in! Whatever you do, please feed my need for external validation by leaving me a comment about whatever you DID find interesting!

 STUFF THAT HAPPENED

Real Life Events

The definite biggest happening of the year was that the burnout I'd hinted at last year finally came to a head, and I realized that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't pull off being a full-time librarian (particularly one with a 40-minute commute). This was a massive paradigm-shaking decision, but one that has only proved more right over time, as I've taken the time to catch up on doctors appointments and do physical therapy, and I've become much more aware of my limits (emotionally and physically) since I'm not pushing them constantly. And every so often over the past few months Jason will just say, in a tone of wonder, "I'm glad to see you happy again," or "It's good to have you BACK," because I guess it WAS that noticeable!

As it turned out, my old boss from the library down the street called me the very evening my position was posted (that I was leaving it), and asked if I'd be willing to do storytimes for them on a contractual basis— paid per storytime— a couple mornings a week. I thought how ironic it was, how annoyed the arrangement would have made me a few years ago, Oh, and why don't you just make me your full-time official children's librarian? But now that I've HAD the opportunity to be a full-time-official children's librarian, I can say, Yes, I did that! But now I need less! And actually a couple mornings a week being paid specifically for storytime is exactly what I can handle! So I still get to do storytimes after all! And I can tell by how tired I am afterward that it's definitely all I can handle!

Now, it's good I have--a smaller but not nothing-- income after all, as I did worry that we wouldn't have enough money if I quit, and we'd just gotten a massive hole in our bathroom floor. The wood had rotted away under the tile and we're probably going to have to have the entire bathroom redone to fix the water-tightness, and in the process of moving the toilet to access the hole in the floor better Jason broke the toilet, too. So we've been down to one bathroom most of this year!

Also luckily, Sam has a full-time job and is now paying into the household expenses. Because he graduated from high school this year! I am the mother of a high-school graduate! My little baby boy (yes, that's how long I've had a blog)! Since he did VoTech he's straight out into the workforce, and has been learning all sorts of new adulting things this year.

One of the highlights of my year was the Honors College reunion in June. This was right when I was first debating leaving the library, so I was pretty stressed out at the time, and how good it felt to hang out with some of my old college friends— only two of my best friends could make it, Tracie and Jen, and we also met up with our friend Holly, but that was enough to just be so fun! It had been years since I'd seen Tracie or Jen and even longer since I'd seen Holly, but it felt like no time. And campus has changed a LOT. And because we were an Honors College full of nerds, one of our old (now REALLY old) professors did a lecture, and I was just like, oh yeah, this is great, I'm a nerd, I'm among my people again. And at the evening dinner we passed around a microphone for people to reminisce things to share, and I volunteered, just so I could share how amazing it had been back then to find a community where I actually felt like I belonged, and how nice it was to revisit that feeling today!

 Christmas

Christmas was good this year— bittersweet, but good. Full of laughter in my immediate family. With actual free time I returned to my hobby in previous years of sewing gifts for people, mostly sweatshirts, but also corduroys for Maddie and a jacket for my niece Betty. The problem is that JoAnn Fabrics has closed since the last Christmas I did this, and it's a lot harder to find cute fleece (for cheap. I did order some cute patterns from Spoonflower but those are much more expensive and I had to supplement with solid-color sleeves or whatnot). Supposedly Michaels inherited all JoAnns' product lines, but even online the selection of cute fleece prints is scanty. Ah well. To the point, this was the most recent time Jason out of nowhere told me "It's good to have you back," watching while I bustled around sewing and wrapping and singing carols, because "you always loved Christmas, and you just hadn't been into it the past few years," and that made me teary.

Which is where the "bittersweet" comes in, because I've been emotionally on-edge this year, maybe BECAUSE I have more time to think about things. I've been missing my dad this year even more than I'd missed him over the past three Christmases. You can tell my mom's heart's just not as into Christmas as it used to be, and I remember the Christmas Eve parties at their house— which HAD been mostly my dad's doing— and I guess something about this year made it really sink in— no, we never WILL have that particular experience again. Christmas is an eerie time of year, I say as someone who loves Christmas, but I also love psychedelic music which is ALSO eerie. It's like they say that Halloween is when the boundary between the living and dead is thinnest, Christmas has always felt like when the boundaries of Time are thinnest. Like Time as we know it is least linear. It feels like every Christmas that ever was and ever will be is happening at once. It's probably just that the music is reserved for this time of year, but it's the same music (for the most part) you've been listening to EVERY year at this time of year, and your brain connects them all that way, but the nostalgia hits hard and constant. And I love reliving the joy I've gathered from Christmas over the years, and I love spreading more of it, but I miss the people I used to see at Christmastime— the extended families— seems like extended family get-togethers died off after COVID and never picked back up. And I do my best to bring joy to the world like my dad did, but I'm not as social as him, so I can't, like, fill his shoes. And maybe I noticed it more this year because I HAD time and energy to spend on Christmas cheer at all?

Library Happenings

Obviously my library time was shaken up a good bit this year, which makes it feel a little weird, and some things I might have remarked on no longer seem important. But I shall do my best!

Top Five Summer Library Program Moments in Chronological Order Because I Can't Rank Them

The Collaborative Summer Library Program theme was "Color Our World," and I kept learning fascinating things about color all summer that I kept wanting to share but wasn't always easy to turn into an elementary-level activity. Here's a list of "moments" more than themes or activities— things I remember with great fondness!

• The Pumpkin— I don't actually mention Fausto Gilberti's Artist picture book bio series in the booklists below, they just missed the cutoff line I suppose, but it's a neat Italian series (translated) that really focuses in on what makes the artists in question interesting to kids. I picked Yayoi Kusama Covered Everything In Dots and Wasn't Sorry for an introductory read-aloud on the first day of the program, the theme of which was finding art in the world all around you, and I thought her story fit. The kids actually got really into it, surprisingly the older group even more than the younger group even if I WAS (gasp) reading them a picture book, because some of her artwork was just so wild, so it elicited a lot of "wow!"s and "WHAT?!"s. Now most of the book is cartoony illustrations, but on the last page is a photograph of one of her more recent series of works, basically lots and lots of pumpkin sculptures covered with lots and lots of dots for as far as the eye can see. Immediately after this, we made collages by cutting interesting things from old magazines. Suddenly one of the girls gasped and ran over to me with a decorating magazine. "Look what I found! It's one of her pumpkins!" And indeed, there was actually a set of Yayoi Kusama's polka-dotted pumpkins being shown off as a high-class decorating option in this magazine. It was a perfect moment of learning kismet. And she DID use the pumpkins in her collage.
• Wear Your Colors week—there's too many memorable moments to pick from this week, which focused on fiber arts. The kids did glue batiking with spray dye on T-shirts, and on the first day, while they were drying in the sun, a sudden rainstorm whooshed in, causing a bit of a panicky mess that became Quite the Story. One of the teen volunteers, who'd been getting into fiber arts herself, started a little crocheting club of a bunch of interested kids during recess and down time. Pom-pom making was the biggest and most surprising hit of the week. And I'd invited a special guest, a woman who owns a nearby alpaca farm and a yarn shop to go with it, who'd visited the library earlier that year, to come in to talk about/show them how she turns alpaca wool into yarn, and everyone was fascinated! The older kids even got to try out the equipment. That was a very successful week, on the whole.
• Fireworks video and [child's name redacted]— This is small as far as programs-for-the-group go, but it's the sort of thing that Makes It All Worth It, as they say. Fourth of July week was "Color Chemistry," so we ended the day with a video about how fireworks are made. On the second (older kids) day, a mother who had kids in both days came up to tell me that her younger son had spent the entire 40-minute ride home the day before (this library serves a VERY large rural area) excitedly describing in detail exactly how fireworks are made, and we both felt kind of lucky that the ingredients aren't things that are easy for a seven year old to come by, or there WOULD have been some attempts made at homemade fireworks, we're pretty sure! Anyway, definitely a Moment of the summer, hearing about all that excitement one little video had caused.
• 3D printing— the library had recently set up a 3D printer, and I thought it would be really cool if the older group could try it out for "Building Color" week, but I was nervous about asking. But on the contrary, our director thought that was a great idea and even suggested each kid make their own piece to take home, which I'd assumed we'd just be able to make one group piece to keep at the library. I found a little project on Tinkercad to make a little keychain with a name or initials on it, which I thought would be great for everyone to be able to personalize their own piece without spending too much time making things up from scratch. The kids caught on to using Tinkercad relatively quickly, and then each took their turn spelling whatever they wanted (within reason) on a keychain— most went with their names, but we had TWO "#1 DANCER"s, and one girl just spelled "GREEN" on a keychain that she did request be made in green. The youngest boy (who actually age-wise belonged in the younger group but was very smart and mature) made one that was really silly and made everyone laugh, which I of course now forget. My only real disappointment was that the one boy (the older brother of the one who now knows how to make fireworks actually) who I'd convinced to sign up for Summer Quest in the first place by telling him that the big kids were going to get to use the 3D printer, HAPPENED to be sick and stay home that week!
• Banana Piano and muffins— the last week was "The Color of Sound," and for stations I set up a full-chromatic-octave 12-key Banana Piano with a Makey Makey kit. Twelve bananas being used as a piano by elementary schoolers get pretty beat up after a half-hour play session, and we did this on two different days, so that was 24 bashed up bananas I didn't want to go to waste, so I made banana muffins and offered them up at our end-of-summer picnic as a gift from me to everybody. And those banana muffins were VERY popular if I do say so myself.
• Bonus: Field Trip— there was no better fit for a field trip to celebrate a summer of art, color science, and hands-on making, I thought, than my favorite former place of employment, the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh. And it was SO FUN. All the kids had a blast, and I did, too. It was fun to be back there to see a field trip from the OTHER side after having led such trips myself over 18 years ago! (And yes, I pointed out the sign in the lobby that still has my name on it because I'd happened to be working there when the expansion was built). And it reminded me just how much of my educational philosophy I developed from working there, things that have become instinctual when planning activities that, oh, I see are things I learned at the Museum! And on the flip side, I was seriously tickled listening to our guide do the Pre-Tour speech and I heard him use some lines/turns of phrase I'D originated for the speech over 20 years ago!

 Top Five Regular Storytime Themes

1. Bears: Do you have any idea how many books about bears there are? There was even a book in my old Outreach bags called No Bears that was about how sick the young narrator was of books with bears in them. And my favorite picture book of 2025 (granted I haven't read too many) is a bear book (see below). So considering I was doing storytimes at two different libraries this year I reused this theme at both, and had more than enough selections to choose from. You have to do "Going On a Bear Hunt" because this always kills (not literally, it's not that kind of hunt). I cannot remember what craft we did, but there's more than enough stories to take up the time.
2. Planting: I'd always wanted to do a long-term storytime project and I went for it this year— a two-parter program, one in mid-March where we talked about getting the garden ready for spring and planting seeds (also, read Plant the Tiny Seed, that's a must), and one in mid-May where we talked about flowers in bloom and made the required Mother's Day craft (which was a handprint flower). But at the March session I had them work together to plant a class marigold, then we set it in the window and checked in on it every week and watered it— there were different classes several days a week, and the volunteers tended to water ALL the pots, so they got plenty of water every day! They weren't ready for repotting by mid-may, so I used that as incentive for them to come back for our tomato-planting program in the off-season, so the marigolds could go in the garden with the tomatoes!
3. Skeletons: I was scheduled to do a STEM themed storytime on Halloween, and I thought, what's a spooky science topic and/or a Halloween theme that can be given a scientific spin? And so I came up with skeletons. There's a cute book called There's a Skeleton Inside You! And you can sing "Dem Bones," and a book called Give Me Back My Bones about a pirate ghost putting his skeleton back together. Soon before I left my local library the first time, I'd made felt pieces of the bones in this book so the group could put the skeleton together along with the story, but I have no clue where they'd gone in the past three years— I looked everywhere I could think of! So I made new bones out of cardstock and we put them together on the floor. Good times!
4. Owls/nocturnal: There are a lot of cute owl books, my favorite being Knight Owl, and Hello Moon by Downing (there's several books called Hello Moon) has a whole slew of nocturnal animals for the audience to identify. Last year Ms Vicki had found a really cute owl craft pattern with huge eyes made of fluorescent green paper so they'd look like they were glowing, so I thought I'd do the same at the new-old library, only I couldn't find any fluorescent green paper, so before I asked to purchase any I thought, but wait, let's take this a step up! And I made the eyes out of reflective tape instead.
5. Time: I decided to do Time as a topic for the end of Daylight Savings, even though part of me was like "seriously? How are you going to pull that topic off for your primarily toddler audience?" But I proved myself wrong— for toddlers you just focus on basic things like Day vs Night and the months (seasons) of the year, and you sing "Hickory Dickory Dock." There was a book called The Clock Struck One that added a whole clock's worth of additional verses that was a big hit. And then I had them make clocks out of paper plates and brass fasteners and little round number stickers— I found a bunch that went from 1-20, so if anyone can think of any ideas for stickers 13-20 that would be useful! The preschoolers carefully worked on placing the numbers in order around the plate and were very proud, the toddlers stuck the numbers anywhere on the plate and were very proud (I said those ones were a pretty good visual representation of what my actual sense of time is).

MEDIA REVIEWS

Books!

Top 10 2025 and 2024 picture books, because I don't have enough good 2025 ones to make a list, but a lot of 2024. And also we're skipping the "books crammed for the Mock Caldecott" category this year because only a few of those are actually worthy of this list. I sucked at getting Caldecott-worthy books into the library before the Caldecott this year.

1.  We are Definitely Human by X. Fang, 2024. This is definitely one of my new favorite story time picks—I read it in January and made an excuse to use it in as many storytimes/outreach visits as possible for the rest of the year, and bought a copy for both Jason’s youngest nephew (who thinks he’s getting too old for picture books since he’s started early chapters but he’s wrong) and my niece (who is still too young to really appreciate this one, but she’ll grow and I won’t have to worry about it going out of print before then). "Kind Humans help those in need," even when they're obviously VERY different from you—it's a great moral told in a very funny way. As a librarian in an age of state-sponsored xenophobia, I can't help noting that the author was an immigrant and this is definitely saying something about how one should treat immigrants, and does it show exactly how needed the message is when there was always one kid in every class who insisted the aliens excuse me definitely humans should be shot, even after it had been made clear over and over that they came in peace? I like the way I keep using the word "definitely" here and I didn't even do it on purpose.
2. The Bear Out There, by Jess Hannigan, 2025. Jess Hannigan is a new talent to watch—her artwork bold and clever, her storylines subversive and unexpected. I like this one even more than her first book (number 7 on this list) so I imagine she’s only going to get better. This fourth-wall breaking book is kind of a take-off on Goldilocks. It’s really silly and went over really well in the most recent “bear” storytime (see above—to be honest, finding this book was probably the biggest reason I decided to repeat the bear storytime!).
3. I'm sorry you got mad by Kyle Lukoff, illustrated by Julie Kwon, 2024. I read this right after I did the Mock Caldecott binge (without being too impressed with many of them), and decided this should have gotten some Mock Caldecott attention, too—I would have been more likely to vote for it! (I'd ironically seen it on some Mock NEWBERY lists though—and the words are great, I love Kyle Lukoff, and learning to apologize properly is important). There's just so much happening in these pictures. You can pick out Zoe before she's even explicitly pointed out. You can see all sorts of side stories going on. You can see kids reacting-- and not-- to Jack's anger. Julie Kwon did not get enough credit for this!
4. Life After Whale: the amazing ecosystem of a whale fall by Lynn Brunelle, illustrated by Jason Chin, 2024. Now this one was the Mock Caldecott binge I actually DID find Caldecott-worthy and got my number one vote—my coworker upstairs who did acquisitions even remembered it and asked me “Did you see that one about the whale?!” when I’d just mentioned Mock Caldecott coming up. Chin captures the majesty and feeling of it while still being scientifically accurate so, yeah, kind of amazing. And the words feel majestic, too. My only gripe, in evaluating it by Caldecott standards, was that sometimes I wished he would have drawn close-ups of ALL the animals the author is describing. But in the real-life ALAYMAs it ended up winning the Silbert for nonfiction, and that's probably more appropriate than the Caldecott anyway. I can say 100% that it deserves the Silbert.
5. Joyful Song: a Naming Story, by Leslea Newman, illustrated by Susan Gal, 2024. Oh this book really is joyful. I’d seen it on some Mock Caldecott lists but we didn’t have our copy in time, but even if we had I don't know if I'd have thought "CALDECOTT!" about it. But joyful? So very much. It is Jewish, is about a family with two moms of different races, and their neighborhood is incredibly multicultural-- there are people out there who would take great offense to this book, which just goes to show you how WRONG they are, because how could anyone find fault with such an utterly JOYFUL celebration of family and community?
6. Chooch Helped by Andrea L Rogers, illustrated by Rebecca Kunz, 2024.  Oh Chooch is adorable. I'm sure the narrator of this story doesn't want to hear that, but the picture where he's smiling at his birthday cake and the candles are reflected in his face just melted me. The story's simple and nice, but the pictures really are stand-out. We didn’t get this in time for our Mock Caldecott, either, but it won the real thing-- and it was the illustrator's first book, too! What a way to start off!
7. Spider in the Well by Jess Hannigan, 2024. See, new talent to watch, I tell you. And this plotline is like nothing I’ve seen in a picture book before—I had NO idea where the story was even going! It’s both very funny and full of interesting artwork. I especially like the shots of looking down into the well and looking up out of it (click the link you can see them).
8. Two Together by Brendan Wenzel, 2024. And here we have someone I remember being a New Talent To Watch but that was like ten years ago I think, and he has indeed put out SO many interesting books since. This was the book that actually won our Mock Caldecott, and I think I gave it one of my second-or-third votes. I love it but made myself confused possibly by thinking about the artwork too hard. Dog sees things in bold fingerpaints, cat in detailed crayon. But what's going on at the beginning and end? Is that how the reader would see them otherwise or what? But you see, that’s me absolutely thinking too hard, because just to experience it? It's very happy, and kind of psychedelic how the art styles combine. The rhyme is not quite perfect so I feel like it would trip me up reading aloud, but look at the pictures and be happy. As long as you don’t try to figure out the underlying artistic code of it all!
9. The Last Zookeeper by Aaron Becker, 2024. I am a big fan of Becker, and this was in our Mock Caldecott, and I could imagine the real Caldecott committee really studying this one-- it seems to get better the more you read it. The plot is barely anything (giant Wall-e helps the animals find safety), but there's so much detail that only comes out the more you look (Zookeeper is wind-powered and his friend/rescuer is solar powered! Noah's Ark references!) His previous books that did win Caldecott Honors had more plot than this one (despite them all being wordless), so I think that helped those and hindered this one. Still, brilliant artwork!
10. Zebra and Yak: the Backwards Alphabet Book by Paul Friedrich, 2025. Just pulled this off the new books shelf in my new-old library to pass time while waiting for the director, and was surprised how much I enjoyed it. This was cute, and could probably make a good read-aloud, though I haven’t had the opportunity to try it yet. I do need to get started planning another season of storytimes here.

 Top 10 Older Picture books

1. The Power of Snow by Bob Raczka, illustrated by Bryony Clarkson, 2023. It’s meant to teach exponents, but it's simple enough to simply explain to preschoolers "on every page there are twice as many snowflakes!" and you can SEE exactly what that means! Granted, when I read it to preschoolers, they'll often shout out things like "That's almost one hundred!" when I just said "Five Thousand and Twelve." So maybe their concepts about number size are not quite ACCURATE, but they still appreciate how big the numbers get!
2. Art is Everywhere: a Book about Andy Warhol by Jeff Mack, 2021. This one really impressed me. Maybe I shouldn't assume, but if I recall correctly these are Warhol's actual philosophies about art coming across in a kid-friendly way. It feels friggin' mind-opening. I used it at storytime the first day of Summer Quest because like the one about Yayoi Kusama (see above) it definitely made the point that, well, art is everywhere!
3. In Between by April Pulley Sayre and completed by Jeff Sayre, 2023. Really beautiful! Little baby-- or kid—in between that’s the point—animals! I miss April Pulley Sayre, she died too young, but had always put out such lovely nonfiction picture books about nature that you could actually use with really young kids. I believe this was her last book, her widower finished it up to put it out.
4. Christo and Jeanne-Claude Wrap the World by G. Neri, illustrated by Elizabeth Haidle, 2023. This one made ME go "wow" and smile a lot. Looking at this full list now, I see a lot of artist bios that I read for “Color Our World” that delighted me because somehow the concepts behind what many grownups see as “strange” or even “not art,” addressed to kids in these picture books, make perfect sense now and really highlight how to see the wonder in everything around you. Now that I've read it I remember someone on a podcast talking about having seen the exhibition "The Gates" when it was in NYC. “Surrounded Islands” is the one that really blows my mind though!
5. The Concrete Garden by Bob Graham, 2023. Aww, Bob Graham always writes such sweet stories, and this was SOOOO Color Our World themed. I didn’t find a place to use it in my actual programming, but I sure did put it on display.
6. The Boy Who Dreamed of Infinity: a tale of the genius Ramanujan by Amy Alznauer, illustrated by Daniel Miyares, 2020. Someone on BlueSky mentioned this guy and I said, "Oh, we have a book about him!" because it's a Wonderbook that didn't fit on the shelf properly so was face out where I saw it everyday, so I picked it up as soon as I got to work. Boy was this kid ever autistic-savant. Tried not to cry at his unique outlook and struggle to get others to understand it. Love the idea that numbers for him were something magical and outright religious, the words of God. Ended up giving him a shoutout in the chapter of “Tesseract” I was writing (see below) because I feel like Madeleine L'Engle would have loved him. I was amused and a little bewildered because this was the same week I first read “Power of Snow” (see above)—two books in the same week on the same mathematical topic (exponents!) and I loved them both, despite not loving numbers. But I love people who do love numbers making me love numbers for the course of their story! Side note, the author credits the India room at the Cathedral of Learning in her research acknowledgements, but there isn't any outright bio info of her to say if she's a Pittsburgher.
7. Like a Windy Day by Frank Ashe, illustrated by Devin Ashe, 2002. I confess, I don’t really love Frank Ashe’s Moonbear books, but he wrote a separate book about the sun, and this one about the wind, that I do just love. This one is poetry that makes me feel exhilarated more than calm. I like the artwork with the wind girl in the background "playing" with things that fly.
8. Mirandy and Brother Wind by Patricia C. McKissack, illustrated by Jerry Pinkney, 1988. Yes, note that the last book, this book, and the next book WERE all books I was looking at for my “wind”-themed storytime. I've often seen this book but had never read it, and I still didn't think I was going to when I picked it up now, because I could tell at a glance it was too wordy for my audience. But the voice caught me before I could put it down, and I had to read it just for my own pleasure, smiling all the while. It's a joyful book!
9. One Windy Wednesday by Phyllis Root, illustrated by Helen Craig, 1996. Ah, I am right to trust Phyllis Root to make a good read aloud. And this one's simple enough for even the youngest crowd to get a kick out of-- and I laughed, too! It’s now on my Favorite Read-Alouds list for quick reference whenever I need a book about wind OR about animal noises!
10. Emily's Blue Period by Cathleen Daly, illustrated by Lisa Brown, 2014. Aww, this is very sweet and sad but hopeful. I remember seeing it when it first came out but not reading it because, again, I could see that it was too long for a preschool story time. But this summer, when I had an elementary-aged group, and was looking for books with the combined theme of art/color and emotions? Perfect.

  Best Longer-than-Picture Books, no time range, because I didn’t read enough to warrant separating them:

1. What is color? the global and sometimes gross story of pigments, paint, and the wondrous world of art by Steven Weinberg, 2024. Fun, interesting, full of weird trivia that I was dying to share with the Summer Quest kids the minute I read it. I ended up making a matching game of colors and their sources of pigments, with interesting facts on the back, that did get a lot of good responses! The weird only problem I have with this book is I feel like there could have been a lot more. Surely these aren't the only sources of pigments in the world! I want to hear about the rest!
2. The Lady Janies series by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows, 2016-2024. I try to use podcasts (see below) to motivate me to do housework, but being home so much now, I was actually running short on podcasts to match the housework. Then I realized, wait! Audiobooks! I’ll get to read for my own enjoyment again AND get stuff done! But what should I start with? It had been so long since I’d picked out a book purely to read for myself. Now, literary agent Jennifer Laughran, who I follow on various social medias and has very good taste (she was the first person I saw talk about Hamilton. She insisted to everyone it was going to be The Next Big Thing. I suppose this is part of what makes her a really good agent), had mentioned this YA series a few times in answer to the question “How do I get out of a reading slump?” because they are funny, easy to read, and most importantly absolutely nothing like anything else out there. So when I saw My Lady Jane while browsing Hoopla for audiobooks I gave it a go, and it was exactly as she described. Well not absolutely nothing like anything else, as it and the rest of the books are very obviously influenced by The Princess Bride in humor and voice (and occasionally outright references, not that there aren’t also a lot of cultural references from any other source you can imagine. There’s a character in My Contrary Mary who keeps having what she thinks are failed prophecies but are actually the plots of famous movies in our time, and it never failed to make me laugh). Anyway, so the premise is, take some interesting people from history, tell their stories but throw in some aspect of the supernatural, and make sure there’s a happy ending even if the actual history didn’t end that way (the supernatural bits help with this. So for example, your beloved didn’t DIE, they just turned into a frog! All is well!). And also, be funny. The only drawback to my plan of getting housework done to these is I get so sucked in that I can’t stop listening once the housework is done, and I end up just sitting around playing games on my phone for hours to listen to the rest.    
3. The Secret of Lillian Velvet, by Jaclyn Moriarty, 2023. This is the entirety of what I have in the “Notes” column for this book on my BookRiot Reading Log Spreadsheet:* “(disability rep [one of the tracking columns on the BookRiot sheet] probably includes protag, everyone in the Kingdoms and Empires is neurodivergent I swear. Jaclyn Moriarty should be my best friend) (honestly, it might be a weird parasocial delusion but Jaclyn Moriarty SHOULD be my best friend).” Which is to say, reading a Jaclyn Moriarty book just makes me go “KINDRED SPIRIT? Someone on the same weird planet as me?” and decide again that probably we should be Best Friends. Oh yeah, I should probably mention that this is the most recent book in the delightfully unexpected middle grade fantasy Kingdoms and Empires series.
4. The First State of Being, by Erin Entrada Kelly, 2024. When I was supposed to be putting the new Newbery winner on the New Winners' display on the day it won, I got distracted and started reading it, instead. I enjoyed it, but admittedly part of that comes from nostalgia of the 1999 setting: the “historical” references kept making me laugh (one of the characters was reading a Christopher Pike book and when she explained the plot summary I went "OH I READ THAT ONE!") But I also just generally enjoyed the time travel plot, which is a lot bigger in the story than the summary gives it credit for—even more prominent than the one in When You Reach Me, yet another Newbery winner that crossed historical fiction and time travel (yes, 1999 is historical fiction). I actually think I enjoyed this more than When You Reach Me barring all the latter's Wrinkle in Time references. Wrinkle in Time references do beat out 90s Teenager references.
5. This Boy: the early lives of John Lennon and Paul McCartney by Ilene Cooper, 2023. Confession: this is one of those books I bought for the library collection because I wanted it. And believe it or not there was information in here even I didn't know before-- mostly about John's family, because his parents were PROBLEMATIC (they also probably had ADHD, and John most definitely had ADHD, I’m sure of it), but he adored his mother at least and was heartbroken by her death, so of course he blew off her total irresponsibility when he talked about her in interviews, and I've mostly just read all the primary sources in my Beatles-education. Like who knew primary sources could be biased. But I learned a little more about Paul's family, too, and the book helped put their childhoods in context in general in a way sources not aimed at kids sixty years later never do! If I have any criticism it's that I PERSONALLY would have liked to hear more about George, too, but he's not in the title so, that’s a me problem.
6. The Color of Sound by Emily Barth Isler, 2024. Since the last week of Summer Quest was called “The Color of Sound” (see the Banana Piano above), I had to read the first chapter to see if it would be a good read-aloud for the older group. And whaddya know, the main character is suffering from burnout, just like me! So I had to read the rest of it, too! It also amused me how many parallels the main character had with the way I was writing Viktor Hargreeves in “The Beginning of Something Else Entirely” (see below in fanfic I wrote)—she has synthesia and experiences the world an awful lot the way I write Viktor “hearing the background music,” and they’re both on strike from playing the violin and have to learn to reclaim music in the course of the story! Also, this is a timeslip story, and Viktor’s whole life has—well, a lot more than timeslips but still. In fact this book is primarily realism, just with a time-slip and some historical elements thrown in. Kind of a magic realism?
7. A Strange Thing Happened in Cherry Hall by Jasmine Warga, 2024. Speaking of reading first chapters looking for good first chapters to read to Summer Quest, this one worked on me-- I had to keep going! It's such a unique story-- not QUITE a ghost story, kind of a mystery, kind of a realistic kid-friendship story, and several chapters are from the point of view of an artistic turtle. It felt a little slight to me on the whole, but I'm 47-- it's perfect for a slightly lower-than-upper middle grade.
8. Wrath of the Triple Goddess by Rick Riordan, 2024. Originally took this out of the library in February to read with the kids. Never found time to read with the kids. Still had it when I left the library I took it out from in August (boy can you get away with stuff when you’re listed as “staff” in the system). Finally gave up and just started reading it on my own time, sending it back to its home library through the system van! Truth was, I enjoyed it all right, but I know I would have enjoyed it a lot more if I was reading with the kids. Maddie makes us make time to watch the Percy Jackson TV show (see below in moving pictures) one hour a week, but reading the latest Percy Jackson Senior Year adventure just takes up too much time! As I said above, it’s weird picking out books for just me when I’ve spent the past ten years or so picking out books for me AND Maddie AND Sam. Or for library kids!   

 *This is the link to 2025's spreadsheet info. I can't find the 2026 one yet, though I suppose I can copy my 2025 one.

Most interesting Rereads

What's annoying is I swear I read some picture books this year that I've read before but in which the experience made me go "Oh, that is perhaps one for Most Interesting Rereads!" but I didn't write them down and now of course I don't remember. As for novels I did reread at least bits and pieces of A Wrinkle In Time (as if I need to) and the Blossom Culp books that I have, both for fic-writing purposes, see Fanfic I Wrote, Below.

Oh oh wait, I say as I'm editing up the "Top Summer Library Program Moments" section (yes, I do compose this in bits and pieces all out of order), I remember what (at least one of) the most memorable picture book reading was now! During "Over the Rainbow" week, which was also Water Play week, so the theme was light and color (and making rainbows), I read Hello, Red Fox by Eric Carle to the younger class. The premise of the book uses opposite colors and after-images— you're supposed to stare at each picture and then at a blank page, to see each animal in its "true" color instead. This requires a fairly bright light to work, and in the past when I've read this to a group, the chances of it working varied greatly because so many preschool carpet areas were relatively dimly lit or at least had indirect lighting, but this time we'd be outside in the sun! And it was fun watching more and more kids get it— a few never figured out how to do it right, but the others, it took some practice, but when it finally clicked and they saw the colors like magic, that was pretty fun. But even more memorable was the next day— I didn’t read it for storytime with the older kids because it's very basic, but while everyone was taking turns changing out of their wet clothes at the end of the day, I had activity stations out to keep the already dry/changed kids occupied, and the first batch of girls had already done all the inside activities except the Glowstick Party (which I needed to wait for another adult to pull off, and she was still outside with the still-wet kids), so I pulled out the book and explained what to do, just as an activity rather than a story, and they went nuts over it, in the best way. They hijacked every freshly-changed kid who came in after that to show off their nifty magic trick. I saw that as a clear win!

Oh I have another one, that I just remembered while getting distracted reading LAST year’s round-up! I read a few first chapters of The Mona Lisa Vanishes (that link goes to last year’s round-up) to the older Summer Quest group, then went to check it in at the end of the day, only to discover that there was a hold on it. Then I saw who had placed the hold—one of the kids from Summer Quest! (Actually one of the same girls who was making everyone try Hello Red Fox later in the summer, come to think). She’d gone straight to the circulation desk after being dismissed just to make sure she was the first one to read the rest!

Moving Pictures

The Grand Total of Moving Pictures I have watched this year, in order of when I watched them!

• “Thunderbolts*” (Disney+)—the first thing I watched this year I watched in August so what does that tell you. Anyway, I've been out of the MCU loop, I had no idea this existed until my fic-writing buddy Stephsageek started posting chapters of a fic for it (see fanfic below), and it appeared to be about traumatized superheroes -powered people, which is my jam (see three quarters of my works on AO3), so like the week I left my job Steph had posted another chapter and I said, You know what? I suddenly have a lot more free time and I want to read this fic, this has inspired me to watch this movie this week. And Steph went, oh, cool, then in return I'll start watching Legion and read YOUR fics! (She has now gotten through the first season and become a Loudermilk fanatic because obviously). But the point is, yes, it's my jam! Yay, traumatized super-people learning about the Power of Friendship!
• Leverage (Hoopla)—another thing Tumblr introduced me to. I never heard much about it in real life, but a surprising variety of my Tumblr people (people with like nothing in common otherwise!) have posted enthusiastically about it and it sounded fun, every episode a heist by a troupe of modern-day Robin Hoods. I have now watched the first season of the original run, because Hoopla offered a Binge Pass checkout for it, and so I've got the idea of it now— I'd like to hear what people's must-see episodes of later seasons are, so I can make sure to watch those (because there isn't a binge pass for later seasons, and you see how much--or little-- watching I get to in a year anyway). It is indeed very fun, and I can't get over the character of Parker, who is the most wacked-out example of authentic autistic representation ever and this was in, what, 2008 or something? That was before you could even be diagnosed AuDHD. But they made this character who is genuinely autistic but absolutely nothing like most autistic characters you see (especially at that time). Her special interest just happens to be breaking and entering.
• Only Murders in the Building (Hulu)— I think I've liked the odd-numbered seasons better than the even numbers, and I liked those, too. So yes I thoroughly enjoyed this fifth season then! Every week I would be struck with the overwhelming sensation of Watching Mystery Shows With My Mom— this is SO her thing, and I keep asking if she's seen it yet but I don't think she's even figured out HOW to access it. Anyway, the things that delighted me most this season were Loretta's Undercover Work (what an excellent use of the character!), Oliver's backstory, and that Theo had a very small appearance after being completely absent from Season 4.
• Percy Jackson and the Olympians (Disney+)—I’m not sure, I keep getting the feeling in Season Two that it’s trying too hard to be just like every other upper-middle-grade fantasy property put to film—but then again maybe that’s just me getting old? I had a similar reaction to the latest book in the series after all (see above). But it’s still fun, and the end credit animation never ceases to be fascinating. Also having been reading the Senior Year series I keep forgetting that Percy and Annabeth aren’t dating yet at this point, and I keep having moments of going “why are they acting so—oh they’re still not actually that close yet, I forgot.”
• Oh, I forgot! I DO have a number 5 (and six, and potentially 7 and 8 but that would be cheating) to round this out: The Muppet Script Reading Series (here at Dynasty Typewriter)— Matt Wilkie, a big Muppet nerd who hangs out in the ToughPigs arena (see below), but also happens to work in the improv scene in LA in real life, decided to organize a script reading of The Muppet Movie for charity, and recruited a whole bunch of big names in the improv community (Marc Evan Jackson plays Kermit) to perform it. This turned out to be so successful and so plain fun for everyone involved that he's kept it up with MORE Muppet movie scripts— they just did Christmas Carol a couple weeks ago, but so far I've just watched the first one and Caper. You have to pay $15 to watch, but it's for charity, and it IS very fun, so enjoy!

 Podcasts!

• My podcast listening still revolves primarily around Children's Literature and Muppets, with podcasts I've talked about before here. One additional Muppet podcast I have to call out this year though is the "70 Years 70 Muppets" campaign series at ToughPigs. Muppet Studios at Disney actually contacted ToughPigs about producing a podcast to tie in to their list of Muppets of the Week they were featuring during the anniversary (slightly-longer-than) year, and ToughPigs came up with a really creative premise: each week would be covered by a different staff member and they had full license to feature the character in whatever way they liked. So you had interviews with the podcasters' family members and interviews with the actual Muppet performers and interviews with people who just happened to share an occupation with the Muppet in question. You had off-the-wall silly episodes (see, anything by Shane) and unexpectedly fascinating episodes (see Drake's interview with Kathy Mullen for the Gaffer the Cat week, which is probably one of my favorite episodes and I'd never given the slightest thought to Gaffer the Cat before). You had episodes brimming with love for a character, episodes from a bewildered state of what is there even to say about this character, and at least one episode totally hating a character that I thought was nonetheless handled very well. You never knew what to expect from the podcast week to week, but every week was absolutely delightful. It just ended last week and I already miss it!
• But in the spring one of the hosts of Muppeturgy mentioned a (her words) "lovely" podcast called "Strong Songs" devoted to picking apart what makes different songs great. Now, I think I'd heard of the podcast before but thought it had a dumb name so didn't look into it further, but the way she described it here made my brain perk up and think "THAT IS EXACTLY MY THING!" and I immediately went onto the ToughPigs Discord (Muppeturgy isn't a ToughPigs podcast but all the other Muppet podcasters do hang out there because that's just what Muppet fanatics do) to ask for more info, and before I knew it I was bingeing the whole thing from the first episode and keeping a list of music it introduced me to that I needed to seek out further (see below). I have learned so much, for while our tastes are generally similar (definite exceptions excepted), he has a jazz background, which I have no experience with, and there are a lot of things I just wasn't even aware of that he points out. It's awesome. You can hear him answer my question about musical notation in this episode.
• And in a spinoff of that, Strong Songs cross-posted a miniseries (six-and-a-bonus episodes) podcast called "The Wonder of Stevie" — now, I like Stevie Wonder all right, some of his songs stand out as flat brilliant (and "Sir Duke" is definitely on the list of Top Favorites Just Under "Here Comes the Sun" But Which Are Unable to be Sorted Further), and I generally enjoy most of the others I know, but I wouldn't have called myself a Big Fan or anything— but the host, music critic Wesley Morris, is SO enthusiastic, and the stories he told were so fascinating, that I got sucked in immediately and thoroughly enjoyed this whole series— and ALSO discovered some new music, see below! Also, the show is produced by the Obamas— yes those Obamas— who are big Stevie Wonder fans, so sometimes Morris will interview them as fans, and he always cracks me up because you can hear his voice go into this "Oh, no biggie, just talking to MR. PRESIDENT here, you know" thing and it makes me laugh every time. (Side note, remember when Presidents generally tended to be halfway decent human beings? I kept thinking, My, what a decent human being, I miss having a decent human being for a President. End side note).
• Also I noted that youtube videos about music can often be listened to without watching, so they became podcasts too. One that stands out as particularly interesting are all the interviews music producer Rick Beato conducts with a huge variety of musicians— I guess "variety" not so much in genre (he seems to have the most contacts in the rock and particularly grunge circles) but in fame? Because one video he's chatting with freaking David Gilmour, then with some up-and-coming kid with a YouTube channel, then with a studio musician you've never heard of who turns out to have played on a ridiculous number of big hits, then with a sound engineer or mixer, and what's great about these interviews is he talks to everyone the same way— well, he did fanboy over Gilmour a little bit— but I mean, he focuses on the music and how they go about creating music, a musician chatting with another musician about this thing they both love and hyperfixate over. You can tell the interviewees are totally comfortable talking with him like this, in a way they might not be with some random reporter in a publicity situation, so they also tend to have interesting stories you probably haven't heard before as opposed to canned responses in a typical style interview— or interesting stories you haven't heard before simply because no one ever thought to interview the non-famous interviewee before.
• Also listened to a bunch of YouTube Music/Album reaction videos, but mostly those aren't worth recommending so much as they're just a fun alternate way to listen to an album; but I will call out this dude, Isaac Brown, who's in the middle of reacting to all the Beatles albums in order (as I copy this link I see that he accidentally posted a Led Zeppelin reaction to the top of this playlist, but don’t let that confuse you, it IS the Beatles playlist). I find myself reacting to the reactions, mostly of the "you ain't seen nothin' yet!" variety, but also because he'll ask questions about what he's hearing and I will respond out loud, just because Beatles info. I have an automatic response issue with Beatles info.

 Music!

•  So "The Wonder of Stevie" (see above) focused on a "streak" of amazing albums Stevie Wonder put out one after another in the 70s. Morris outright called out, in one of the later episodes, that while there's a subgenre referred to as "Album Rock," and all the great rock bands have whole albums that they're known for, no one talks about "Album R&B," that Black and R&B artists are usually known for their individual songs, as "hitmakers," instead, and yet Stevie's whole albums deserved to be appreciated as ALBUMS too. And boy, was he right! I definitely have a new appreciation for Stevie Wonder as "Album R&B" or whatever now, and Innervisions and Fulfillingness's First Finale have made my Frequently Played Albums list. (Me committing a heresy: I know Songs In the Key of Life is supposed to be The Greatest, but while the highs are REALLY HIGH— "Sir Duke" is on it after all— , as an album I get kind of bored in between the highs? *gasp* I'm sorry, I'm tasteless. Whereas Innervisions and FFF keep me going "oh THIS is EXCELLENT" the whole way through).
•  I started following a "Do You know this song?" poll blog on Tumblr, and one day what I thought was a delightful foreign song was revealed to be by an American band called Dengue Fever, made up of a white guy who visited Cambodia and fell madly in love with Cambodian 60's psych rock, some friends he begged to help him recreate it, and one actual Cambodian immigrant they found who, it turned out, had been a real pop star in Cambodia before she moved. So eventually they developed their own unique American variety of Cambodian-style psych rock, and I went, okay, I need to hear more of these guys, obviously. So I binged their albums for a month on Freegal (which my now-old library subscribes to but my local-old-and-new-again library does not, so one of the negatives of quitting my job was the day I discovered my library card no longer had Freegal access) and ended up downloading quite a bit. Like listen to this stuff. Can anyone claim that doesn't rock hard? No, you cannot.
• I was listening to a bunch of music reaction videos on YouTube as I said, and one was on Floyd's Atom Heart Mother album, which I'd never listened to, since it had a reputation of being Not Good— but I liked it. I outright LOVED one number from it, "Summer '68"— which was apparently Rick Wright's contribution to the album songwriting-wise, which makes sense, because me and piano, and Wright's keyboarding is one of the things I love best about Floyd.
•  Oh, I just noticed that I SAID I was keeping a list of music I'd discovered or at least wanted to explore further on Strong Songs, but haven't named any here (the Stevie Wonder being through the podcast I found THROUGH Strong Songs)! I still have the list up on a (computerized) sticky note here, so let's see. Some standout examples I see are Sufjan Stevens, whom I'd heard of but had no idea what his music actually sounded like (answer, not a bit like I would have guessed, and it actually reminded me a bit of Paul Simon of all people); the first time I actually ever heard a Phish song, "Limb By Limb"— my sister is a huge Phish fan yet somehow I'd never actually heard them? And I ended up buying Muse's album Origin of Symmetry pretty much immediately after the Strong Songs episode about two of its tracks. 

 Fanfic (I Read! See lower for fanfic I wrote!)

The One I Can't Rank Because Someone Wrote It Especially for Me

"Blossom Culp and the Convincer Effect," by psychomachia for Rockinlibrarian, (Blossom Culp Series - Richard Peck, T, 8,393, words). So like, Blossom Culp was my imaginary best friend when I was 14, so I was thrilled to discover that somebody had nominated this series for the Yuletide fic-writing exchange and I was like Okay sign me up for one of THOSE! (And when all the numbers were in of who had requested and offered what, I kind of figured this would be the fandom I got because no one besides me had offered in the other two fandoms I requested!) And so I have this post-series genuinely spooky adventure of Blossom and Alexander attempting to navigate an old theater with a ghost who just really wants to finish his show!

 Top 10 Other Fanfics I Read This Year

I've long since finished the TUA-fic-in-alphabetical-order binge so I don't have to divide it into categories. To be truly honest, I've also read less period, and I'm chapters behind on some of the fics that are even on this list. I also haven't read much from this year's Yuletide because I was so excited to see Blossom Culp fic that I ended up bingeing that instead (I read the three Blossom Culp fics from this year's Yuletide. One of which I wrote, so I guess TWO Blossom Culp fics have been the extent of my Yuletide 2025 reading). But that said, let's kick this off with some Yuletide 2024 instead:

1.  "On Sale Now, Sold Out Always," by Missy for lemonwedge_onasaturday, (This is Spinal Tap (1984), G, 106 words)—putting this one first on account of I've read it the most, because it's shortest— one of the many things I love about the Yuletide exchange is the Madness collection, where people will post random little weird things like drabbles and poetry based on people's prompts, like this, which is a short letter Derek Smalls sent to his fan club about his new solo album, the title of which album still cracks me up but I can't tell you because that's basically the whole point of reading this thing— the titles are so perfectly canonical-sounding I wonder if Missy had just had a "List of phrases that sound like Spinal Tap songs" on file to pull for just such an occasion. This description is possibly longer than the fic now, so just read it, in Derek's voice for best results.
2. "Cartes Postales," by mikeneko for salifiable, (Blossom Culp Series - Richard Peck, T, 21,631 words)— Somehow mikeneko wrote this for Yuletide 2012— I ASSUME the amount of time between assignments and due dates hasn't changed THAT much in 13 years, so the fact that this is basically a whole new book in the series, both in length and quality (and chronologically, like, if there WAS a fifth book this is when it would happen and it's the sort of thing that would happen too), is beyond impressive! Who writes the entire next book of a series for friggin’ Yuletide? WAIT: CONSPIRACY THEORY: what if mikeneko IS Richard Peck? They haven’t posted on AO3 since 2015 and Peck died in 2018! Coincidence? Yes probably.
3. "Captain's Log," by rarefiedrest for Undercamel_of_Pluto, (Dredge (Video Game), G, 12,497 words)— so my Tumblr peep Pluto had posted a thought about the game Dredge, which I hadn't even heard of, but apparently it's Cthulhu-Mythos-seafaring-horror about a fisherman whose wife fell victim to whatever's haunting the Deep, and Pluto suggested that it'd be interesting if the fisherman had died and the wife was the main character instead, and went on to describe why, and I was like I know nothing about this game but I'd totally read this story. Then Pluto reblogged a link to this fic, because Rarefiedrest had also thought it sounded great so set out to WRITE the story! And despite still being clueless about the source material, I've been hanging on to every word of this deliciously atmospheric epistolary tale of foreboding and madness (almost— the most recent chapter is still open in a tab unread. But I'm looking forward to reading it whenever I stop doing all the other things!)
4. "Empty Graves," by Unpretty, (Superman - All Media Types, DCU, T, 6,539 words)—speaking of Tumblr, this is one I read on Tumblr, then saw the post was linked to the story on AO3, so I followed the link just to bookmark it in the very likely event it would rank high enough in my reading memory to make this year-end list, which, as you see, it did. Now I'm kind of a Marvel-over-DC girlie, but I know the basics of Superman, which is all I needed to know to appreciate this tale of Martha Kent going all mama-bear on a bunch of time-traveling assassins targeting her son, and then promptly forgetting about it because time travel shenanigans. It's fabulous, as many others have apparently discovered before me, judging by the stats on this thing. But if you haven't read it, go do that!
5. "A Confessional That Never Closes," by Stephsageek, (Thunderbolts (Movie 2025), M, 52,701 words)—and speaking of Marvel now, see the note about the Thunderbolts movie above, because this is the continuing story (both that the FIC is the continuing story of the MOVIE and that I'm continuing the NOTE of the movie here). So then I read and thoroughly enjoyed Steph's fic, which deals with a lot of similar themes and concepts as my own fic "The Beginning of Something Else Entirely" (see below), because like I said, traumatized super-people are my jam, and this is another story of bonding/found family, recovery from recent events, and healing from old wounds.
6. "haircut & post office," by owlinaminor, (Kairos (O'Keefe) Series - Madeleine L'Engle, Austin & Murry-O'Keefe Families - Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time (2018), T, 2,374 words)— my long-delayed fic "Tesseract" (SEE BELOW IN CAPS BECAUSE I'M EXCITED) is tagged "Alex/Kate," implying the presence of a romantic relationship, and my fic, though not a romance per se, especially in this chapter focuses on Mr.-and-Mrs.-Murry as true life-partners, definitely Couples Goals, and while working on that chapter I wondered if anyone else had written them from that angle. The Alex/Kate tag only has 17 fics to begin with, and disappointingly most of those are actually focused on other people-- they'd been tagged mostly as a background thing. But this one, telling the Kate-POVed account of the week post-Wrinkle, was exactly what I'd been looking for, so in-character and focused on them as grownups. I mean, yes I do adore middle grade fiction and all, but I AM 47, I appreciate a good look at the grownups in the book I've been obsessed with since I was nine.
7. "Summer Ghosts, Again," by LydiaOLydia for Aeriel, (Blossom Culp Series - Richard Peck, T, 11,077 words), on the flip side, that doesn't take away from me bingeing these stories about a couple supernatural-trouble-prone teenagers who I was obsessed with when I was 14, does it? The fact that I've had all these THOUGHTS about what happened post-series in my head for over 30 years without sharing them, then suddenly I find a stash of fics from like-minded people who apparently had many of the same thoughts all along? This was one of the first I read (since it was most recent pre-Yuletide '25— it was a Yuletide '21*— apparently Yuletide is the excuse now-grown Blossom Culp fans use to make public all their THOUGHTS), and I was stunned by how on-the-same-page I'd been all along with random strangers about these characters. Like in both my fic-based-on-my-30yo-headcanons-see-below and this one (spoilers for both these fics), Alexander tracks down Blossom at the newspaper where she works, and she at first won't talk to him since she's still furious that he jilted her several years ago, when he'd panicked at the various implications of Their Future** and figured his best option was to (pardon the term) ghost her— the circumstances and writing of each are very different, but for even the basic outline of that to be so dead-on it's like, the part of me that believes that All Stories Are True In Some Other Dimension is like, Well, our headcanons are obviously CORRECT, then, that IS what happened! (There are more repeating details coming out among the other fics, too, that were not stated in canon, but were apparently foreshadowed enough that everyone came to the same conclusion maybe? Like it's a little amazing how many different people decided that they'd lost their virginity-or-nearabouts to each other in The Barn Loft round about senior year, considering this is based on a young-YA-practically-MG series and it would have happened in 1917-18, but I guess that's another thing that just Happened in the Dimension Where it's Real? On the other hand, the aforementioned Mikeneko-who-is-probably-not-Richard-Peck, in a different fic, had Alexander lose his left leg in The War, just like I had (again see below—not my leg my story), which is frankly a WEIRD coincidence. Pretty sure Richard Peck—the real one—didn't foreshadow that one). Anyway, this particular story is very cozy and Correct to me, which is why it makes this list.
8. "Fear of the Ethereal," by LuckyyWritess, (The Umbrella Academy (TV), E, 18,118 words)— Look, I know what you're thinking. But I PROMISE I didn't put this in here just to throw an Explicit Fiktor fic at you unawares. I do understand that my average blog reader has no interest in Fiktor-smut! No, I'm highlighting this story (which does happen to contain a bit of smut, fair warning) because of the really clever worldbuilding. It's an AU where all the marigold-babies are gods in a pantheon, and all their canon powers translate to godhood and make perfect sense. Their personalities as well, and other canon events, are reinterpreted for this setting in really creative ways. Viktor is the up-and-coming powerful new god and the God-of-Time is smitten with him. So yes, it IS also a (sometimes smutty) romance between Five and Viktor, but hey they're not even pseudo-related in this one and even if they were that's totally normal for gods!
9. "put your heavy heart to rest," by backpacks-lite (TumblingBackpacks), (The Umbrella Academy (TV), T, 1,732 words)— here, perfectly platonic 5+7 content, happy now? This is pure canon, of Viktor's reactions to Five's return in season 1, but what makes it special is that it's told in a lovely 2nd person prose-poetry style, quite beautiful.
10. "Never Again," by Peevesie_Writes, (Howl Series - Diana Wynne Jones, G, 2,349 words)— I found a lot of the fics I read this year mostly by clicking on tags in my own fics to see what other people had written on the topic, and clicking the "Howl & Megan" tag yielded a small-but-high-quality treasure trove of complicated sibling relationships, three of which made my Bookmarks as potential end-of-year highlights. I picked this one because it condenses a lot of emotions and backstory and explanations of how the past affects the present in a relatively short story. Sad but kind of brilliant.

Honorable Mention: "Closed Loop System," by One_of_Them (greenbean_paste), (The Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells, T, 1,532 words)— this is actually a game of Minesweeper in which every move unlocks a bit of dialogue (usually funny). Supposedly there are four different endings, but I haven't the slightest idea how to find those, possibly because I'm no good at Minesweeper— I've just found two, in which You get Eaten By a Bug (which happens a lot), and In Which You Don't. So I'm recommending just on the basis of how cool the concept is, although perhaps I don't know the full of it.

*I didn't start doing Yuletide until '23, which is why this is the first year I saw Blossom in the nominations

**His actual motivation isn't in the fic I wrote, yet, but that WAS it, as will be shown if I finish the tie-in Alexander-POV chapter

STUFF I WROTE! 

Stuff I Wrote, Here on Dreamwidth Edition: 

• Should I not be counting last year's Annual Roundup? Someday I might actually finish one of these by new year's eve again.
• In which I explain about my burnout and decision to quit the full-time job
• This year's Yuletide Request Letter!

Stuff I Wrote, GeekMom Edition: No? But I have time again, I may go back to it at some point.

Stuff I Wrote, Tumblr Edition: So I've noticed Tumblr has become my social media of choice, which is kind of annoying because most of my real life friends aren't on it. But it's in chronological order and the ads are unobtrusive, so it's so much more enjoyable to use than Facebook or Instagram! I don't make ALL that many original posts there, but I do some, so here are the highlights of those this year:

•  In which I was geeking out over the Legion soundtrack again so decided to make a big post with imbedded music links about why
• In which I am given full permission by a follower (actually it’s Rarefiedrest, see fanfic list above, hence the comment about “weird fish horror”) to share some nostalgic stories about how awesome my dad was
• the time I let Tumblr know Hoagie was home safe from his day-and-a-half Outdoor Kitty adventure. Oh, I didn't put that in the year's highlights above, maybe because it was short and had no lingering effects. Hoagie got out and was missing for a day or so in April! But he came back the very next day, as the song about a different cat goes.
• When I found out Brian Wilson had died and was bewildered that no one was talking about it
• in which I outline my plans to catalog my dad's 45 record collection
• In which I try to get all the writers who follow me to sign up for Yuletide

Random short bit that made me laugh so I'm sharing it even though it's short: I keep forgetting Megan Whalen Turner follows me and then I get a "Megan Whalen Turner reblogged your post" notification and go "WHAT??? oh yeah I forgot," every time.

I tried to get people to play the Lyric Game with me three times (still talking about Tumblr here):

• https://www.tumblr.com/rockinlibrarian/784021952100777984/the-lyric-game-redux-redux-answers-and-another
• https://www.tumblr.com/rockinlibrarian/785101735493599232/answer-post-for-the-lyric-game-redux-redux-part-2
• https://www.tumblr.com/rockinlibrarian/792616696056889344/answers-and-music-links

 And here’s a bunch of Writing Asks (still on Tumblr):

• An ask about the most difficult part of my current project and I go off about a podcast episode about Anne of Green Gables
• An updated survey (in July) about AO3 stats.
• A survey about all kinds of ficwriting habits.
• Two parts: an ask to list the file names in my writing folder and an ask about some of those file names, particularly the Howl’s Moving Castle ones

 Times I linked on Tumblr to the fics I'd just posted on AO3, if you want to read the notes I wrote about each. (Otherwise, just see the links below!)

• BoSEE 4
• IMotRKwaMOTTLbaS-MDtPTSC that’s what I get for attempting to shorten these by initials
• NWS 3
• NWS 4
• Tesseract! That’s only one word so I’m not just calling it T!

And combining the two: Yuletide Reveals and End of Year AO3 Writers Survey! Technically that was posted on January 1 of this year, meaning 2026, but that was the earliest I could talk about the Yuletide things I'd written! (Oh, so I wouldn't have posted this Annual Roundup by New Year's Eve, anyway, even if I HAD finished by then. I'm not going to NOT post about two of my fics of the year!)

 Stuff I Wrote, Fanfic Edition:

I technically ranked these, but it really goes 1st place, 4-way-tie for 2nd, 3rd-only-because-it's-freewritten-crack. BY THE WAY I LOVE COMMENTS. YOU SHOULD READ AND COMMENT.

"Tesseract,” (Kairos (O'Keefe) Series - Madeleine L'Engle, Marvel Cinematic Universe, G, 7,256, words)—CHAPTER TWO!  I'd posted Chapter One in December of 2021, and I PROMISED I hadn't abandoned it, I WAS still working on it, I WOULD finish it someday— and Someday was this October (well, for chapter two— there are still another couple chapters to go)! This fic, if you don't remember after all that time, is the prequel to A Wrinkle in Time that posits that Alex Murry had actually been working for SHIELD on THEIR Tesseract project before his disappearance, so it's a fun crossover. This is a fairly long chapter and it does cover over three years of story, in which, on the homefront, the Murrys try to figure out their strange nonverbal toddler Charles Wallace in an age when autism was considered a type of schizophrenia; and in the workplace, the Tesseract project gradually transforms from what the MCU claimed it was about into what we know it turned out to be by the events of Wrinkle. It's a really cool chapter and I'm really proud of it, not least because it took me four years.

“New World Symphony,” (The Umbrella Academy (TV) , T, 20,563, words)—TWO chapters, Three and Four! This is my post-S3 everyone-falls-into-a-new-universe-that-already-has-no-powers-no-adoption-places-for-them-and-also-Five-and-Viktor-are-married story. Chapter 3 centers on their first major fight as allegedly-a-couple, and most of the rest of the family including some Sparrows make an appearance. But Chapter 4 is one I had written a lot of already a long time ago and was just WAITING for myself to hurry up with Chapter 3 so I could share it, it's the chapter that switches to Five's POV after having been Viktor's up until now and is about him learning to let go of his pent-up guilt. Hey, did I mention my thing about traumatized superpersons?

“Psychomagnetism" for Snacky, (Blossom Culp Series - Richard Peck , G, 4,257, words)—As I said above, I was really excited to see Blossom Culp nominated for Yuletide and wondered who had possibly done a thing like that, so when everyone's request letters went out I went to see who else had requested Blossom, and Snacky's request letter made me go, "Wait, I've already written this story!"…mostly, because I'd STARTED putting all my headcanons about what happened post-series into a story several years before, but never finished because I assumed no one would care. Here was someone who cared! And Yuletide has the option of writing additional Treats for people who aren't actually your assigned recipient. What a perfect excuse to finally finish this up and post it! I guess I already talked a bit about this fic above! Also Snacky got a Wrinkle In Time fic for Yuletide last year, so we should probably be friends.

“The Many Masks of Amahl Farouk" for skazka, (Legion (TV 2017-2019) , T, 3,413, words)— this is my actual Yuletide ASSIGNMENT, I was like, whoo, Legion I'm an expert at writing Le— oh, they want a Farouk-centered story. Farouk is the only Legion character I've never actually written before. Oh well, a challenge! And I think I pulled it off! It's Farouk chatting about all the faces he's worn in the course of his disembodied life as if he's doing an interview, and, I realized, one of the only times I've actually written a whole story from a villain's pov.

“The Beginning of Something Else Entirely,” (The Umbrella Academy (TV), Legion (TV), M, 25,051, words)—because Farouk is long gone by the time this story takes place and all. Anyway, CHAPTER FOUR of this one went up this year. This of course is my post-S4 TUA fix-it in which the recently-erased Hargreeves find themselves in a pocket universe where Summerland is carrying on post-Legion, and everyone gets traumatized-superperson therapy! In this chapter Lila does Memory Work, Viktor starts the Prime-8s and sings James Taylor with Five thereby creating Summerland's new Music Therapy program, and Oliver Bird finally manages to assemble a complete barbershop quartet.

“The Inaugural Meeting of the Ruthless Killers Who Are Much Older Than They Look But Are Single-Mindedly Devoted to Protecting Their Siblings Club,” (The Umbrella Academy (TV), Legion (TV 2017-2019), G, 1,091, words)—this was a silly bit of freewriting I did last year BEFORE starting "Beginning," when I was debating crossing over TUA and Legion but didn't have any ideas yet. So I threw Five and Kerry into the astral plane and had them interact. Also Lester Papadopoulos aka the-god-Apollo-stuck-in-teenage-form-as-punishment randomly shows up. Not so randomly, he just wanted to know why he wasn't invited in the first place. Anyway, I just was reading it this year and decided to finish it up and post it so here it is!

TA-DA! I know it's long, and I included lots of links to MORE stuff to read, but if you've come this far, DO leave me a comment about anything here that strikes your fancy!

What happened is, I got a new computer for Christmas! I set about transferring files and downloading preferred software–Firefox, Scrivener– but I decided to upgrade Scrivener to the newest version, which meant all my files got upgraded, too. And THEN my new computer promptly stopped working two days later.

Well, yay for staying firmly in the warranty period!

So for the whole between-Christmas-and-New-Years (and a week or so beyond) that I USUALLY spend pulling my Annual Roundup together, I had, well, my old painfully slow computer, which also pertinently would now no longer open my Scrivener files (which luckily were all still saved on the cloud. And most of my other files were also still saved on my old computer. So I didn’t LOSE any information luckily).
So now I no longer had ACCESS to my file of Notes on Stuff that I keep throughout the year!

But wait. That’s not all.

I finally got my new, WORKING computer back, so I opened up my Scrivener file– only to discover that I’d never MADE a 2023 Notes on Stuff folder!

So if the only really great detailed stuff in this update is the booklists, you have the BookRiot Reading Log spreadsheet stored on Google Docs to thank! Because I DID take thorough notes when it came to stuff I READ this year!

Anyway, here’s my 2023, don’t forget to comment and converse with me about it!

STUFF THAT HAPPENED
Life Events in no particular order

1. So, if your last contact with me was LAST year’s roundup, you may have noticed how depressed the library-related write-ups sounded. My job was getting pretty miserable, and I wasn’t doing what I loved anymore, and it wasn’t like I was even getting paid well for it (though I couldn’t just quit, because we couldn’t afford that, either). But it was draining on my self-esteem and I didn’t believe I COULD get a new job, either. With a lot of vital encouragement from former coworker Dana, though, I finally got up the courage to at least LOOK what was out there, and wouldn’t you know it? There was a position for an actual Children’s Librarian in Waynesburg, just under a 40-minute-drive-mostly-highway away. So dangit, I applied, and dangit, I got the position.

Here’s the thing. Eva K. Bowlby died back in the 1950s and left her house/estate to the city of Waynesburg with the CLEAR STIPULATION that it would be used as a CHILDREN’S library. Oh sure, there’s a grownup library too, and grownup programming, but the FOCUS is Youth Services, which means our professional goals actually align! And I was going from being constantly belittled, doubted, and having responsibilities taken away from me at the Sarris library, to being IN CHARGE OF THE MOST RESPECTED DEPARTMENT of Bowlby Library– which was a little daunting! But you know? I’m doing all right. I’m not perfect, and the job isn’t perfect either, but I am SO MUCH HAPPIER now and the patrons are apparently happy, too. More in the Library Happenings section.

So like I said, I forgot to note the exciting things happening throughout the year AS they happened, so what sticks out are the BIG things. Like that.

2. Oh, and since I’ve only met her twice, I nearly forgot another big change in the EXTENDED family: in July, Maggie– my 39-year-old apparently-child-free sister–had a baby, Betty. I gave her a stuffed Betty Lou for Christmas. Maddie goes into fits of hysterical shrieking because her baby forehead is so big. Anyway, I’m convinced my Dad had something to do with this development, from beyond, because of the timing (she got pregnant as soon as possible after his death)– if not just to reincarnate himself back into the family, at the very least just as a sign, a reminder, that life goes on.

3. Uh, Sam got his driving permit. Yes, I’m the mother of a driving teenager. This is less scary than you might expect, Sam being Sam and A) obsessed with cars from toddlerhood and therefore learning everything possible about them, so INTELLECTUALLY knowing what he’s doing; and b) from the same age, spacially gifted– innately knowing how to make machines work; and most importantly, c) also from the same age, being a very CAREFUL, RULE-CONSCIOUS kid. I mean he already MIGHT be a better driver than me. He only just qualified to take his test, but he still hasn’t learned how to parallel park. But soon, I’m sure.

Okay. Oh!

4. Jason brought home a semi-wild pig! This is totally one of those weird little things that would have made the list if I was keeping track of everything as we went along– it happened early in the year, before I was even looking for a new job. Not a pet pig, he went on a pig hunt. Yes, these things exist. And it was GENERALLY slaughtered and quartered beforehand, but I had to cut it into serving sizes myself. After almost a year, we are now down to two racks of ribs, which we still haven’t QUITE figured out how to cook properly. I am kind of happy to not feel compelled to have pork three times a week any more.

5. Oh, I’ve got one more thing to round this off, even if it might not FEEL like a real life happening to anyone but me. I participated in Yuletide, the annual massive fanfic exchange dedicated to giving fic in “rare” fandoms a boost– what qualifies as “rare” is a fandom with 1000 or less fics of 1000 words or more on AO3– I clarify this because I was genuinely shocked that the fandom I was assigned still qualifies– but, see more below! The whole experience was super fun for me as a writer (and reader!) on many different levels, so I think it deserves this last bullet point!

Christmas
This is where I normally talk happenings and famous presents, but the happenings feel too far gone now, and you’ve already heard about my biggest present. Oh, we were laughing because Jason’s presents for me almost all had to be sent back! The computer broke, the underwear was too small, my brother got me the clock the night before! The only one I got to keep and love unconditionally was a nice throw blanket he’d gotten as a freebie sample at work! (It could be personalized with the company name, and J was doing the buying of Personalized Company Stuff to give employees, so the personalization company was like “buy this blanket for your employees!” and J was like, “Nah, but I’ll give it to my wife, okay?) It IS a very nice blanket.

Library Happenings
This is of course extra big this year. It seems so long since I even had library programs to talk about, and now all of a sudden I have a whole department in my hands.

Top Regular Programs I am Now In Charge Of
1. Summer Quest: I only ever marginally pitched in with Summer Reading programs at the old library, and I STILL occasionally had Summer Reading-related stress dreams. Now I was in charge of the whole thing! Worse, my only adult helper (I had several teen volunteers as well, some of them more actually helpful than others) got a new job and left two weeks in! And yet, despite the occasional chaos, I think it went very well. Summer Quest was the day-long weekly program for elementary-aged kids– younger ones on Wednesday, older on Thursday. Everyone seemed to be happy with it, and I heard lots of stories about kids talking excitedly about the things we’d done, like:
–Top Activities from summer quest. Apparently a lot of other librarians were complaining that the Collaborative Summer Reading Program theme of “All Together Now” was hard to plan programs and activities around, and honestly I do not get that. This theme cries out for teamwork building and getting along, and there are SO MANY fun activities to do with that!

1. Improv Games: The subject of “kindness” made me think of good listening which lead me to “Yes, and–” which led me to a ridiculous afternoon of improv games. After some large group warmups (Walking in different imaginary settings, coming up with a unique use for an oddly-shaped block), we used a set of customizable dice to roll different improv games for randomly chosen kids to do. At the end I had them act out the Three Little Pigs (plus more) like I used to do at the Children’s Museum, and it was hilarious.
2. Robotics and coding: This I came to on the subject of “Making a Difference” – though admittedly also because my boss had also gotten a grant for BristleBot kits that we were required to use this summer. But when you’re coding, every little step makes a difference, right? We read “How to code a sandcastle,” then used the Primo Cubetto robot we have to practice programming. Then we built the BristleBots, which converted even the most “This is stupid” kids by the end, and they spent recess making their Bristlebots dance together. Or fight. One or the other.
   
3. Multicultural Cooking Activity: The obvious choice for the subject of  “Crossing Borders,” it did get pretty chaotic, but resulted in lots of kids trying– and liking!-- new foods and a few deciding they liked cooking, too. We split everyone up and assigned everyone different tasks. Would definitely have been easier with another adult. My own kids even came along that day to help out.
   
4. Build the tallest tower out of weird supplies: The subject of this week WAS straight up “Teamwork,” so it was filled with team-building challenges like 60-second Lego builds and round singing and, memorably, making a Rube Goldberg Machine. That last may have been a little TOO complicated (and it was very hard to convince them that it wasn’t a marble run and they physically COULDN’T make one marble do everything); but the tower building challenge was just the right amount of challenge, and was very exciting.
   
5. Telephone on paper/Painting relay: Two more activities from “Kindness” week also stemming from the concept of “Yes, and”ing, though not improv. The painting relay required the group to try to paint a scene, one person at a time for one minute each, so you had to play off whatever the people before you had done. The younger group took this more seriously than the older group, who were prone to Pollocking the whole paper on their turns just to be obnoxious; but all groups had a wacky time with Telephone on Paper, where you pass around a strip of paper, folding it over each time, alternating between guessing what the person before you just drew and trying to draw what the person before you wrote that the first person drew.
   

2. Ready for Kindergarten: On Mondays during the summer, for less time than the elementary kids but still three hours, I led preschoolers through school-readiness exercises. I was nervous about this, because I’m not certified in early childhood education or anything, but really it was a storytime taken through the next level, and whatever activities I came up with weren’t hard to tie to school.

3. Storytimes: of course there’s basic storytimes throughout the year. I have a part-time coworker, Haley, who actually IS an early childhood educator (but she has a 1.5 year old so she doesn’t want a full-time job. In fact half the time her toddler comes with her. Which makes me jealous in retrospect at how much my kids were unwelcome at my last job), who mostly covers the baby and toddler storytimes, while I take the preschool and evening ones.
--Top themes from regular storytimes

1. Election Day: this will probably be even more interesting this year. It’s really a delightful way to teach kids about the election process without the baggage of grown-up Politics. We read two books: Clifford for President and Duck for President. Then the kids took turns voting by circling their choice’s picture on the ballot and put the ballot in a toy mailbox inside a Voting Booth (a three-sided poster board), while everyone made “Vote For” posters while they were waiting their turn. Then we counted (counting practice!) the votes together. I caught this conversation on the way out one of the days: 4yo, with mild disgust: “I voted for Clifford, but Duck won.” 4yo’s mom: “I know the feeling.”
2. Sharing: I always like to focus– or broaden– themes during holiday weeks to something related to the holiday, but not necessarily ABOUT the holiday, and “Sharing” is one of my favorite Thanksgiving topics. We read Around the Table that Grandad Built (see below) Feast for Ten (more COUNTING PRACTICE!) Thank you, Omu! (see some previous year’s list, I love that book), did an interactive flannelboard of The Doorbell Rang, and a magnet board activity of working together to put pictures together (each child had, say, a window or door but only together could we all build a house). And then we did snack time by making a fruit salad together. The smallest kids dumped in berries, the slightly bigger kids chopped bananas and strawberries and pre-peeled apple slices with butter knives, and everyone took turns mixing it up. “I didn’t know I could DO that!” one 3yo exclaimed proudly, and isn’t that just what we’re going for?    
   
3. Lights and Candles: Another example of broadening your “holiday” themes– the last storytime in December– this community has like NO religious diversity, it is frighteningly Evangelical Christian, so nobody would have a problem with the library doing anything straight-up Christmasy– but there already WERE like three straight-up Christmasy events going on that month (see below for some of them), so I’m sticking to something more universal for this storytime. We started with The Dark by Lemony Snicket, then read a board book called My First Chanukah and did a lighting-eight-candles fingerplay, then read a Disney Frozen board book that had real twinkling lights in it that end up on a tree, so we really covered all bases. And THEN they covered pieces of contact paper with scraps of colored tissue paper and we wrapped it around electric tea lights, so they had their own little “stained glass” nightlight decorations, which they all thought was the coolest and made an excellent grand finale to storytime season.
   
4. Berries: Honestly I wanted to do Berries just so I could read Berry Song, and We Wait for the Sun and Jamberry and The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear (which was probably the winner)-- we did NOT have time for Blueberries for Sal but I pulled it just in case. And then we painted with berries! And also ate berries!
   
5. A Two-fer: “Superheroes” and “Boo! Monsters”:  I’m just putting these together because the craft was variations on the same, and it never ceases to amaze and delight me how you can give kids all the same art supplies and they’ll all come up with something totally unique if you let them. We have Ellison die cutters with both mix-and-match superhero paper dolls and mix-and-match monster parts, and the results were always just special. LOOK at all these wonderful monsters! 
   

4. Family Place Play: The new library is a Family Place Library, a system of libraries focusing on early childhood development through giving families the resources they need to help their children thrive. All Family Place Libraries have to host relatively regular Parent/Child Workshops, which are developmentally-appropriate free play sessions with special guest community experts in to answer grownups’ parenting questions. We expanded the 5-session minimum Parent/Child Workshop into a ten-week regular playtime for three-an-unders and their families. Now, my biggest role in this was just setting up. Since the playtime was MEANT to be between the child and their caregiver, or sometimes with the other kids, I was kind of the third wheel in the room, just watching. But watching is interesting! People who don’t spend much time with babies tend to forget, or not ever realize, that babies (and toddlers) are not just blank slates before they can talk– they have opinions and great big feelings and they are FIGURING OUT SO MUCH STUFF, and when you watch them in a situation like this, you see all the gears turning and the revelations happening and it’s cool. And I keep wanting to talk about my own kids when they were very small, because it reminds me of the unique things they did that proved they were certainly their own people right away.

Top Special Events
1. Polar Express Night: I’ve never been in charge of such a successful program, at any library. 48 people turned out in their pajamas (well, SOME were in their pajamas) for hot cocoa and cookies and the Polar Express movie and leftover gingerbread house decorating– I had had a specific gingerbread house workshop the week before, but there were a bunch of no-shows, so I just pulled the leftovers out again here and boy were they popular– and there were simple craft paintings and a fake-snow-made-of-baking-soda-and-conditioner sensory box and wooden trains and a very weird set of snowglobe crafts and an engine you could go inside to drive! (Observe photo collection here). Everyone raved about it, even the families who left early because their kids got tired! It's already in the album linked above, but please again admire the Polar Express I built!


2. Fetch’s Sleepover: first time I ever got to do one of those taking-pictures-of-inanimate-objects-goofing-off photo shoots, check it out.

3. Turkey Trot: So every year the library has a 5K the weekend before Thanksgiving as a fundraiser, and it’s massive, and all we (Haley and I) were told was that we needed to have activities for kids for when they finished the kids’ race and were waiting for their growups to finish the 5K– not when or for how long. So it turned out about an hour in, we got COMPLETE CHAOS for an hour, and then everyone went home. But at least everyone was occupied (with games, snacks, and crafts) during that hour of chaos.

4. Teddy Bear Picnic: This apparently was also originally a fundraiser, but now it’s just an annual tradition that again Haley and I were thrust into in hopes of living up to everyone’s expectations, which luckily we did. We had stories and a teddy bear parade and a stuff-your-own-plushie activity and bear masks and bear food like berries, (swedish) fish, honey (grahams), ants on a log, and peanut butter and jelly because of course they do, and now the pictures from this event are my work computer screen saver and it’s a good time (sorry, I don't actually have a LINK to those pictures).

5. The Summer Quest Field Trip: Wanted to tie the field trip to something Teamwork related to fit the theme, and finally the improv activity made me think, A SHOW. The nearest community theater doing a children’s matinee was an hour away, but we went anyway, and saw a play called “Cinderella Caterpillar,” which I think my fellow coworker-chaperone laughed way harder at than any of the kids did. The kids got to get all the players to sign their programs as a souvenir, and then we had a picnic, because it was an outdoor theater, and then they spent at least an hour playing on stage themselves. That in itself was cool! But like two days before, my boss said, “There’s some more money in the budget for field trips, you should stop and get ice cream for everyone on the way home.” And I looked at the map and wouldn’t you know it, exactly halfway on our route was a restaurant attached to a dairy farm that makes their own ice cream and has a playground with big slides built into the hill– it’s a great place my own kids have been to on field trips too. So we stopped there and had MORE fun! There was a perfectly timed rain shower for exactly the amount of time it took to ride the bus from the theater and to eat ice cream inside the restaurant, that then immediately cleared up.

Top Other Stuff that Happened at the New Library
1. Sorting the Closet: there was a chaotic supply closet that I used my first break between programming seasons to completely reorganize and inventory and I’m PROUD of that, baby!

2. Sorting the Office: this one’s a bit trickier and I’m still working on it! It involves lots of old files, some of which are useful, and some of which are completely out of date! There are books of literal Clip Art, the kind you had to photocopy, before you did that sort of thing on the computer! There are shelves and shelves of old Mailbox magazines! There’s a lot of stuff I’m not supposed to get rid of because it actually belongs to my boss, who started out as the children’s librarian there, but I don’t always know WHAT! It’s quite the interesting treasure horde!

3. Collection Development: if there’s one thing that frustrates me about my new job compared to the old, it’s that my boss does NOT like to weed anything, and there is NOT a lot of room. And there’s some seriously out of date stuff in that collection. But I am doing my best within my parameters to get the collection a LITTLE less chaotic and easier to use!

4. Christmas party: One very long day I was in town for something like 13-14 hours, starting with a Family Place Play session in the morning, a regular in-library workday in the afternoon, then making Frosty the Snowman buttons at a booth at the town Light-up Night celebration in the evening– I couldn’t just GO HOME in between because it’s a 40 minute commute one-way– and then we had our staff Christmas party at a small local combined pottery-shop/restaurant, which served us THE most comfort-foodish Baked Potato soup as well as a meat and cheese board and wraps; and we had a secret santa exchange and the girl who had me made me a gift basket of all sorts of random treats named after Beatles songs, it was great; and then we played a Murder Mystery Roleplay game (though it wasn’t murder, it was non-lethal poisoning) and I solved it, and we LAUGHED a LOT, and afterward somebody or other asked if I’d had a good time and I was actually a little stunned. “YES,” I realized. “Yes, I really did!”

So now it's time for everyone's favorite section:

MEDIA REVIEWS

Books!

2023 Picture Books
1. Nell Plants a Tree, by Anne Wynter, illus. by Daniel Miyares. Oh this is lovely! Poetic and flowing but simple enough for even a toddler storytime, though older kids will more appreciate how the pictures show time going by and how Nell was a girl when she planted the tree and a grandmother when the tree is full-grown.

2. Mister Kitty is LOST! by Greg Pizzoli. I am looking forward to using this in a story time. There’s counting, guessing, and subversion of expectations– a perfect recipe for child interaction and all-ages entertainment.

3. Stranded! A Mostly True Story from Iceland, by Aevar por Benediktsson, illus. by Anne Wilson (not the rock star). What sold me on thinking libraries need this technically-nonfiction book was that it kept making “great read-aloud” lists. And it does seem to be perfect for next summer’s CSLP theme, “Adventure”-- but I actually bought it as a gift for J’s nephews before I bought it for the library, and got distracted reading while I wrapped it. It is a wonderfully fun book, delightfully told, and with illustrations that add a literally-mythic quality to the author’s grandfather’s unbelievable (but mostly true!) story.  

4. Evergreen, by Matthew Cordell. This book made me wish I had more elementary aged storytimes because it's just a bit too long for preschool. Then I realized this will fit next year's summer theme, too, as it’s about a shy (not quite as much as Scaredy) Squirrel having an Adventure, and I can read it to my elementary group then!

5. How Does Santa Go Down the Chimney? by Mac Barnett, illus. by Jon Klassen. Remember there was awhile there I had like three Barnett/Klassen books per year-end list? It seems like a long time since I did. This is an excellent book to share with thoughtful kids who like to examine all options. Klassen's work always makes me smile, and the words are straightforward but fun, and are just slightly rhythmic with some internal rhymes, so, a good read-aloud. The part about dogs got me and was what tipped me over into “okay, I love this.”


2022 Picture Books I Crammed for Mock Caldecott Time, which happened before I even considered I might have a new job in just a few months so feels ages ago:
1. Action! How Movies Began, by Meghan McCarthy. A simple (enough to read aloud) yet thorough (enough for even grownups to feel like they’re learning something) history of movie making. It ties the first times various innovations were used to more recent movies to show the parallels, which is very cool, and the illustrations highlight parallels as well, which is how it got on the mock Caldecott lists! And it got one of my votes, along with Blue and Berry Song (see last year’s list of New Books).

2. Color the Sky, by David Elliot, illus. by Evan Turk. I remember “arguing” with a kid about why this was on the Mock Caldecott table, because they were “just scribbly crayon drawings.” But oh, the ENERGY those crayon drawings capture! There’s a lot of energy in the verse (about birds of many colors) as well. You could take off flying with this book yourself.

3. Nigel and the Moon, by Antwan Eady, illus. by Gracey Zhang. Sweet story about a kid who whispers his dreams to the moon when he's shy to share what he wants to be in the day. The pictures are sweet, too, if not quite what I’d deem Caldecott-worthy– it was the story I liked most!

4. The Three Billy Goats Gruff, by Mac Barnett, illus. by Jon Klassen. Here they are again! This is a worthy addition to the folktale collection, and a lot of fun. Barnett adds some fun food rhymes to the traditional refrains, and Klassen continues to draw the best expressions. There’s an interesting use of space, as well. Great example of why Klassen is one of my absolute favorite illustrators despite (or because of?) his deceptively simple style!

5. How to Eat a Book, by Mrs. and Mr. MacLeod.  It’s a mildly silly story about the joy of getting sucked into a book (literally), but the cut paper illustrations are a little mindblowingly psychedelic. Curious what the authors might do next.

What’s funny is this is being posted so late that I have already done my Mock Caldecott cramming for THIS year, too. So theoretically I could make next year’s list right now. But I won’t, because spoilers.
(PSST: Remember, Simon and the Better Bone, An American Story, Big, and Stars of the Night– descriptions and ranking subject to change depending on the rest of the year, but those are the ones I liked best, if you’re using my opinions to do your own purchasing and really want to know. Edit to add: Simon and the Better Bone just won our Mock Caldecott. Edit again to add: Big just won the real Caldecott. Yay, month-late roundups!) (Incidentally, I can't remember what won last year's Mock Caldecott. I have looked it up on the FSPL Facebook page but apparently that didn't get posted).

Older Picture Books, which may include 2022 (but I don’t actually think do. Oh, there’s one):
I’m having trouble ranking these: they might just be a ten-way tie. Or they might go something like this.

1. A Polar Bear In the Snow, by Mac Barnett, illus. by Shawn Harris, 2020. And Barnett squeezes on a third time, but the pictures are definitely the real star here. Harris could have gone the easy route: I have no doubt Barnett was thinking of the joke when he came up with the title-- but the artist instead has done some really cool things with torn white cardstock and a sparing use of black and blue ink. It immediately gave me Story Time Art Project ideas. Unfortunately I read this at Sarris like a week before leaving, and we haven’t GOT the book at Bowlby. (Gee, who has the power to change that, anyway?)

2. Around the Table that Grandad Built, by Melanie Heuiser Hill, illus. by Jaime Kim, 2019. Nice Thanksgiving book: it manages to be very classic in tone and themes while showing a diverse family with a variety of foods. An excellent addition to a Thanksgiving collection.

3. The Christmas Mitzvah, by Jeff Gottesfeld, illus. by Michelle Laurentia Agatha, 2021. Speaking of good additions to holiday collections, this is a really lovely story! When I first read reviews of it back in 2021, I remember not being sure how a story of a grownup doing grownup things would be accessible for kids (though it didn’t stop me from putting it on the wish list. Can’t remember if I ever got around to buying it for Sarris. It was already at Bowlby though). But this book pulls off just the right tone, and the pictures help, too. It's just a big smile in a book.

4. Bartali's Bicycle: the true story of Gino Bartali, Italy's Secret Hero, by Megan Hoyt, illus. by Iacopo Bruno, 2021. Fascinating story about a champion cyclist who secretly worked for the Italian Resistance in WWII.

5. My Baby Blue Jays, by John Berendt, 2011. This is apparently an adult-focused Pulitzer-winner, but when he decided to chronicle the family of blue jays outside his window with photographs, then describe what he saw, he explained it on a kid level very well! I always like having simple real-life nonfiction sorts of things like this to sprinkle into storytimes, and the preschoolers all diving forward to get a closer look at the pictures is exactly the sort of reaction I’m going for.

6. Ways to Welcome, by Linda Ashman, illus. by Joey Chou, 2020. This is simple and sweet and exactly what it says on the tin–ways to show kindness, as well. Perfect choice for the All Together Now Summer Reading theme, and unlike a lot of these kinds of everyone-getting-along books, the rhymes actually scan really well.

7. Super Sloth, by Robert Starling, 2019. A very cute everyone-is-talented-in-their-own-way story.

8. The Happy Day, by Ruth Krauss, illus. by Marc Simont, 1949. I found this among the Big Books on one of my first days at the new library and felt called to read it immediately. Indeed it fit my upcoming spring theme storytime, and amused me with its unique refrains (who thinks to include SNAILS in a story like this?). I mean, I know Ruth Krauss knew what she was doing (and Simont’s no slouch either), but I’d never heard of this book before, so who knew it stood the test of time?

9. Mushroom Rain, by Laura K. Zimmermann, illus. by Jamie Green, 2022. Fascinating facts about mushrooms presented in poetic prose with very pretty pictures.

10. Time is a Flower, by Julie Morstad, 2021. Wonderous poetic and artistic musings on the nature of time. The pictures themselves are poetic too.


2023 Longer Books
1. Huda F Cares? by Huda Fahmy. This was hilarious. It's a not-very-wordy graphic novel, so I read it in one sitting (accidentally), when someone accidentally put it on the Children's New Book shelf instead of the YA, and I just flipped it open as I started to carry it away and started laughing out loud immediately. It is cataloged as YA (and I haven’t read the first book in the series to say if this applies there, too), but if this one had stayed in the children’s section, it could have been perfectly appreciated by a middle-grade kid, too, since it's about that universal wonder, sibling relationships (and bc it's a very conservative family– the not-as-universal theme is of being Very Visibly Muslim In Public– it hasn't got the "naughty bits" you might find in a lot of YA, either).  It verges on uncomfortable cringe humor– I kept tensing for disaster!-- but everything works out in the end, so it’s pure delight.

2. The Chalice of the Gods, by Rick Riordan. It’s fun to read Percy and Co. have an adventure that's not world-shattering for once. This is actually taking place in the months between the end of Heroes of Olympus and the beginning of Trials of Apollo, so you canonically know nothing HUGE happened in that time– it’s just a series of fun, funny, often dangerous hijinks– not will he get out of this, but how will he get out of this?

3. The Night Raven, by Johan Rundberg, trans. from the Swedish by A.A. Prime. To be perfectly honest, I’m still not quite sure what to think of this one. I wonder if some subtlety of the plot was lost in translation, because I'm still not entirely sure what happened and why; and the young main character’s relationship with the police detective gives me slight predator vibes even if that's not what’s intended. But Mika is a great protagonist, headstrong and sort of surprisingly snarky (the kind of person who will just say something ridiculous straight-faced and throw you off for a few seconds to a minute), and the kids and I are definitely looking forward to the next English translation (there are already four books in the series out in Sweden). And just as far as well-writtenness goes, it beats out all the other contenders for third place here. It's objectively good! I'm just a little confused by it still!

4. Deephaven, by Ethan M. Aldridge. Pulled this off the New shelf– it was part of the Junior Library Guild shipment, so I hadn’t read much if anything about it beforehand– and went WHOA, if this doesn’t have Maddie-would-like-this written all over it. Mysterious boarding school? Dark occulty secrets lurking? Nonbinary, slightly-autistic-coded protagonist has to solve the mystery before someone else gets hurt? The plot is a little simpler/more middle-grade than some of what we’ve been reading lately, but as we were approaching the last quarter of the book I said, “You know what? I have a feeling this is just the start of a series.” And while the immediate plot was firmly wrapped up, and there's nothing explicitly STATED about a series, there are still plenty of hints that there could be lots more mysteries in the future.    

5. The Sun and the Star, by Mark Oshiro and Rick Riordan. Sorry, Oshiro is no Riordan– it just didn’t have the same gripping narrative style as the rest of the Riordanverse. And I kind of take offense of their portrayal of Hypnos because I’ve already started writing a fic in which Hypnos is way more interesting (but still true to the original myth!). But there’s still lots of fun mythological details, and a particularly lovely scene between Will and Persephone that I really enjoyed.

Honorable Mention: Simon (sort of) Says, by Erin Bow. I started reading this on my own because I knew my kids wouldn’t be interested (they weren’t), and while I really enjoyed what I read, it’s a lot harder to make time to read just for me (hence, the one book on this particular list I DID read just for me was read in one sitting at work), and I never FINISHED it before I realized I needed to stop hogging it and just return it to the library already. I have a feeling it would be higher on this list if I had finished it, but since I didn’t, I’ll settle for the honorable mention. (Edit: it just won a Newbery Honor so I was glad I'd taken it back so I could put it on my winners' display!)


Older Longer Books
1. The Astonishing Chronicles of Oscar from Elsewhere, by Jaclyn Moriarty, 2022, whom I adore so very very much for her kindred ADHD brain. Oddly there is outright acknowledgement of ADHD in this one, even though every one of her characters seems to have some neurodivergent aspect or another. It’s just there’s one character from our world (the eponymous Oscar), instead of from The Kingdoms and Empires, so he gets a proper diagnosis.

2. Hello, Universe, by Erin Entrada Kelly, 2017. I was looking for long reads to "introduce" to the older Summer Reading Quest class by reading first chapters–I mean, I read the first chapters TO them to introduce them, AND I was reading first chapters myself beforehand just to find the books in the first place. This was the first one that jumped out and made me want to keep reading! It was a sweet story and an easy read with memorable characters. Not quite sure about the bully character's development, but otherwise.
    
3. The Lockwood & Co. series, by Jonathan Stroud, 2013-2017. My kids were really into horror in at least the first half of the year (carrying over from last year), and there was a show of this coming out– what’s funny is we completely forgot to watch the show after we finished. Took awhile to read, but we thoroughly enjoyed it. I had started to read it myself years ago but didn’t get past the first chapter– the voice just wasn’t holding my interest. This time I was hearing Lucy with entirely new ears or something– I got her this time around.

4. Ophie's Ghosts, by Justina Ireland, 2021. Pittsburgh history, Black history, ghosts and lore and mystery: a little something for everything we were in the mood for, and educational, too. This book managed to be both sad and fun.    

5. The Truly Devious series, by Maureen Johnson, 2018-2020. Speaking of Pittsburgh not-history, the main character of this series is from Pittsburgh and we totally didn’t know until we read it. But most of the story takes place at a remote mountain boarding school in Vermont, and there’s a modern-day mystery and a past mystery being told in alternate chapters. Maddie said the historical parts were the more interesting ones, but I think that’s because those stuck closer to the mystery itself, while the modern parts also dealt a lot of regular realistic (relatively) teenage social interaction– I found those bits fun, but then, I don’t have to BE a teenager any more, so I dig that my kids are more into escapism– so was I at their age!

Notable Rereads:
Yeah, somewhere along the way we crossed over from horror to mystery, and I decided it was time to introduce my kids to Agatha Christie. We read two:
1. And Then There Were None, by Agatha Christie– my personal favorite, and I thought it would be a good start since it’s got a major horror trope (everyone dying one by one!) at its center. And wow, it really hit me just how many common tropes come from this book right here. I ended up getting sucked into its many many citations on TV Tropes (one trope of which– Ten Little Murder Victims– even gets its name from this book. Technically). The kids' reactions were fun– I enjoyed Maddie’s early, “They’re ALL terrible people! They ALL DESERVE to die!” And they kept making predictions and I was bursting with knowing exactly how close and/or not they were.

2. Murder on the Orient Express, by Agatha Christie–on the other hand, I actually forgot how this one ended (I remembered in PART, but ONLY in part, so it was a fun reread for me just for that). This was the first straightforward detective-interviews-suspects-and-thinks-a-lot type mystery my kids ever read, very different from their usual thriller-type reads, and I was pleased how interested they stayed regardless. Maddie was extremely satisfied with the ending. Also, when we read Truly Devious, which were the two Christie novels directly referenced in the story? These two! I kept being all, “Ah-hah, you SEE? Aren’t you glad I read those books to you?!”

Onto something completely different, 3. Coraline, by Neil Gaiman. From back in the horror era– in fact this was the very first book on my reading log spreadsheet for the year.  This is a good read-aloud: I appreciated the classic feel of the book better than I ever had, reading it in this capacity.

Moving Pictures!
I watched VERY LITTLE this year. Of course I could be missing some on account of having not kept track, but I don’t think I watched a single movie (for the first time at least), and I started several shows that I forgot to finish (granted, two of them WEREN’T finished by the end of the year). But here are the few notable exceptions:

Two I watched in full!
Muppets Mayhem, Disney+: I think I’ve said before that the Electric Mayhem is genuinely one of my favorite bands– certainly my favorite FICTIONAL band at least. So much that a friend called me out on Facebook: “You ARE watching this, aren’t you?” It managed to be the one thing I binged when I was down with COVID in July (OH! That was another happening. Apparently COVID went around Maggie’s baby shower. Sam got it there and maybe Maddie– or Maddie got it from Sam at home– then Jason got it from those two, and I think I held out because I was the only one to have gotten a booster in the past year, but finally after a week of everyone else being sick they wore me down, too). Anyway, so, the Muppets Mayhem was, like most Muppet shows, kind of a mixed bag, but it quickly became so loveable you don’t care about the weaker parts anymore. The music of course rocked, and the jokes were on the whole funny, and the Get Back episode– because of course I’m going to mention the Get Back episode– was absolutely perfect.

Only Murders in the Building, Hulu: Maybe thanks to reading so many mysteries with the kids this year, I kept having the urge to watch this again. I hadn't gotten around to watching season two, and then when I heard season three was out, I said, well that SETTLES it! And I finally binged both those seasons while making Halloween costumes. The humorous murder mystery is one of my favorite genres, but I always forget until I’m in the middle of one again!

Three I watched in part!
Loki, Disney+: It’s funny, I saw season one before I saw the Umbrella Academy, and now I was kind of curious how the TVA would hold up against the Commission in my perceptions– but Loki definitely holds its own as far as pure time hijinks go. I love time hijinks! (See #1 on the Fanfics I Wrote list for MORE fun with time hijinks!) And I love the Legionesque aesthetic of the show! It’s so many of my favorite bits of television all at once! But I started my binge of Only Murders in the middle of the season, and that put my viewing routine off-schedule, and I never caught back up…

Fargo, Hulu: another one lost to a put-off viewing routine! I saw the first episode– and it turned out two episodes dropped on the first night! But I only noticed the first one! Before I could even catch up with the second, the third dropped during Thanksgiving Vacation when everyone was home and cutting into my viewing time! So… I still have to catch up. So far from one episode, Season 5 seems more promising than Season 3 was at least, but since every season is completely different, I won’t really know until I WATCH THE REST, now, will I.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Disney+: Now, I HAVE watched every episode of this so far, primarily because Maddie won’t LET us miss a single episode, but considering it only started at the end of December, most of it has been watched THIS year. Absolutely confusing the statistics, getting this out so late! But it’s very enjoyable. Maybe I’ll say more about it in the 2024 roundup.

Top Fanfics I read!
I’m still– but more sporadically– reading Umbrella Academy fic in alphabetical order by author, so again that’s where most of what I read and bookmarked this year comes from. I thought I’d read a lot more fandoms after Christmas (when the Yuletide gifts all went online), but it turned out a) I’m still confused from writing this in mid-January, and I read a lot of the Yuletide fics in 2024; and b) I went through and marked a whole lot of Yuletide fics “For Later,” but haven’t actually gotten around to reading them yet. So those will show up next/this year, I guess. Meanwhile, here’s five non-TUA fics I did read, and loved enough to bookmark to perhaps tell you about:

Top 5 Non-Umbrella Academy fics I actually read IN 2023:
1. “No Reservations: Narnia” by Edonohana (Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations RPF, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis, T, 6,228 words) – This is one of those “famous” fanfics that people-who-don’t-make-a-habit-of-fanfic-reading have read– Anthony Bourdain himself apparently read it even, and enjoyed it a lot. Someone linked to it on Tumblr and I finally joined the crowd as well– it’s great fun, imagining Bourdain and his crew exploring the cuisine and cultures of Narnia! The sensory details are exquisite. Pretty sure I smiled the whole way through.

2. “Five Subfolders of Existence” by storiesfortravellers (The Good Place (TV), T, 1,536 words) –  storiesfortravellers was my Yuletide recipient, so in deciding what to write for her I clicked to see the sort of stuff she’d written. The answer was “a lot,” so I narrowed that down to just Good Place fics, because that was, spoiler alert for the “Stuff I Wrote” section below, what she’d requested (that I could write. It was the only thing on her request list that I’d seen!). This is told in lists, a look inside Janet’s…brain seems too small of a word, but it’s a human’s feeble attempt (or not so– seems a pretty good attempt to ME) to express all that goes through Janet’s figurative head during a simple fleeting moment with Jason. It’s a fun format that manages to express a lot of emotion in a very not-a-robot way! I left a note in my bookmark to come back to kudo and comment on it later so I wouldn’t give away that someone was snooping around her old Good Place fics before the Yuletide reveals, and luckily saw that note while putting this list together so I could actually do that!
    
3. “You Can't Find the Woods (When You're Hiding in the Trees)” by panAcademic (Legion (TV), X-Men - All Media Types, M, 14,448 words so far) –New Legion fic? Is it possible? Yes! panAcademic was on a roll earlier in the year (and also incidentally inspired my own Greatest Fic of the Year see below), including this wildly layered trip through David’s system’s inner world– which, it turns out, takes place during the middle of season 2. The season that makes the least amount of sense anyway! But seriously, you’d be hard pressed to figure that out in the first few chapters, which all take place internally and are appropriately surreal. David’s got some interesting new alters with some unique roles. And I hope they keep going because supposedly when we get out in the real world we’re going to see the other characters we know and love too (ie Loudermilks). So far there’s just Lenny, but Lenny is written so very Lennyishly.

4. “1/3 Of What You're Saying” by pale_and_tragic (Only Murders in the Building (TV), T, 4,810 words) –I’d only just started my Only Murders binge when Yuletide requests went out, and I noticed a few Mabel/Theo shipping requests, and I said, “Oh, that’s an interesting ship, I can see that I guess,” but by the time I was halfway through the binge I’d decided “Oh I totally get what they’re saying now, I am fully on-board Team Theo,” and I was almost tempted to comment on all those requests congratulating them on their good taste. Anyway, this Yuletide fic is not only a lovely slow-burn Mabel/Theo friends-to-lovers, it’s also got an actual murder mystery to solve, and dream imagery, so an excellent time and my favorite of the Yuletide fics I actually READ in 2023!
    
5. “miscommunications” by carterhaugh (All the Wrong Questions - Lemony Snicket, G, 1,314 words) –  This was the Yuletide fic written specifically for ME! It’s an utterly Snickety conversation between young Lemony and Moxie from within the course of the story, all about the nature of Truth. Which is itself an extremely Snickety topic.

Top Five Returning Favorites from ANY Fandom (the ones I’ve got on Subscribe so I catch each new chapter as it comes out) that I Feel Like I Must Also Mention:

1. “When My Fist Clenches, Crack It Open” by versaphile (Legion (TV), Mature, 876,030 freakin’ words) – And that’s 229 chapters…out of 229! YES! They did it! The most epic Legion fic has come to an end at last, and if I MAY have cried a little just knowing I wouldn’t have a new chapter (particularly a new chapter involving Loudermilks that I don’t have to write myself) possibly waiting on the horizon to surprise me? Yeah, so?

2. “Through Every Open Door” by Gin_Juice (The Umbrella Academy (TV), Not Rated, 165,004 words so far) – I am reasonably certain Gin_Juice is my favorite fic writer. Every update is just pure awesome from start to finish. I haven’t even read all of her really old stuff yet! This ongoing fic is an alternate season three where, instead of eating itself up, the multiverse has started throwing up anachronisms all over reality, and there’s only one screwed up family– or two– who can fix it.

3. “Joining Together” by sharkneto (The Umbrella Academy (TV) , T, 185,149 words so far) – a physics professor takes a didn’t-get-lost-in-time Five under her wing and it’s absolutely the best thing that could happen to him. It’s a prequel to “Holding It Together” which I think made my list last year? Yes it did. Sarah and her husband Rob are seriously the most loveable OCs and deserve recognition for that.

4. “Apollo and the Aftermath” by ceruleancats (The Trials of Apollo - Rick Riordan, Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, T, 35,249 words so far) – Did this one make the list before? Well anyway it’s got an excellent Apollo voice narrating, and its latest developments involve Dionysis, being the god of madness, taking on the role of therapist for Apollo, which is something you didn’t know you needed to see until now, didn’t you.

5. “Little Soldiers In A Row” by damagedpickle (The Umbrella Academy (TV), M, 65,141 words so far)  –the Subscription feature is the handiest part of reading on AO3. You must subscribe to anything unfinished, no matter how long it’s been, because you never know when suddenly something will update out of nowhere (yes, everyone who’s been waiting on “Tesseract” since December of ‘21, I’m talking to you). This one pulled that on me this year, and I hadn’t linked to it in the past, so have some now, if you’d like something really depressing and angsty but in a good way! This is an AU where there are no superpowers, but Reggie adopted everyone and treated them pretty much the same way he did in the universe where they DID have superpowers, as a psychological experiment, and it’s remarkable how removing the supernatural element just makes the whole thing seem that much worse. But, you know, in a well-written way.

Top Five Umbrella Academy Fics from the TUA Masked Author event, because I reread them more times than the rest in an attempt to guess the authors (which I didn’t. Well, none of THESE five, I don’t think: I actually was like the third-best guesser overall), which gives them an unfair advantage:
1. “To Resurface an Acorn” by glimmerglue, (The Umbrella Academy (TV), G, 2,923 Words) -- So imagine that when Five takes everyone back to the ‘60s, they arrive as only voices in his head? On the plus side, they’re all together! On the downside, they’re all stuck together in one already-maddened guy’s head! There’s so much interesting potential posed in this fic! I respect the author's decision to leave it at this, but that doesn’t stop me passionately wishing for more.

2. “Grace Through the Doorway in Time, and what she found there” by Undercamel_of_Pluto, (The Umbrella Academy (TV), Alice In Wonderland - Lewis Carroll, T, 9,398 words) -- First let’s enjoy that for the second year in a row someone has chosen one of my favorite books as the framework for their TUA Masked Author piece. Then, after the author reveals, let’s appreciate that Pluto is a well-known fan ART maker, and had actually never WRITTEN (or at least posted) a fic before. But mostly, let’s appreciate this fic itself, which has ‘60s human Grace fall into a metaphorical rabbit hole that turns out to be just a totally realistic (for them) day at the Umbrella Academy, but certainly SEEMS all topsy turvy through the looking glass from her point of view! It's such a fun twist!
 
3. “Deep Down” by KawaiiCommunism, (The Umbrella Academy (TV), G, 1,035 words) – Poor Allison often gets turned into either “the mom” or “the villain” depending when a fic was written, so I found this a refreshingly balanced and believeable look inside her psyche a couple of years before the show takes place.

4. “Of Monsters and Men” by MyDarlingClementine, (The Umbrella Academy (TV), G, 1,516 words) -- An excellent exploration of character development– I know a lot of people want Five to be the uncontrollable killer he is in the comics, but I think the guy who will listen to his (still messed-up) scruples is a lot more interesting.

5. “Scales and Scars” by rebel_by_default, (The Umbrella Academy (TV), T, 5,708 words) – Look, this fun-yet-deep “conversation between two emotionally stunted former assassins” was on my shortlist of POSSIBLY being rebel, whose work I’ve read a great deal of, (shout out to “Life is Just This (It's Living),” which ALMOST made the below list on account of being perfect platonic 5+7 content),  I just didn't make that my final guess. I had a lot of little triangles of possible authors for possible fics and I just picked the wrong ones, you know?  

Top 10 OTHER Umbrella Academy Fics, I think, not counting ones that have continued from last year, and not counting fics with over 1,000 kudos because in effort to narrow down my options I figured they didn’t need my advertising:

1. “Certain Ends” by frimfram (The Umbrella Academy (TV), M, 20,144 words) --full disclosure, I beta’d this one, which is why I’m ranking it first: I’m not going to bother trying to be objective about it. This is a delightfully evocative Christmas Carol-full ghost story, and it didn’t get enough hits, being that it’s a Christmas story that finished updating in February. If I had gotten this roundup written AT Christmastime…! But seriously, read this one whatever time of year. The sensory details are scrumptious and spooky. And there are Muppet references.

2. “The Art of Memory” by redaurorarora (The Umbrella Academy (TV), T, 22,210 words) --I looked back at my bookmarks and said, “I REALLY should have sorted these better,” because I couldn’t tell which ones were REALLY GOOD vs. ones I just enjoyed a lot, to pick out which would make the list, but this bookmark was just straight up gushing so here it is. It’s a post-Season 3 reboot where Five is now apparently Reggie’s only son, and how much does he remember? The characterization is spot on, the word choices elevate everything even more. There were so many really good lines. Top of the pops.

3. “The Time Traveller's Life” by LittleRit (The Umbrella Academy (TV), T, 169,165 words so far. It totally just updated while I was writing this) --first longfic I tackled this year—last year—was LittleRit’s still-in-progress epic supposing what would happen if Five kept randomly and uncontrollably popping back and forth through time—how would that affect canon? How would that affect his apocalypse experience and relationship with the Commission? There are a LOT of timeline shenanigans to keep track of in this, and Rit keeps dropping in all sorts of details that suddenly mean something many chapters down the road, so, hooray for keeping that all straight!

4. “Where You Gonna Run To?” by ToriAnne (The Umbrella Academy (TV), T, 52,264 words so far) --It’s a what-if-they-hadn’t-been-adopted fic, but events are transpiring to bring them together anyway; and their stories for what happened with them instead all just make so much sense. I had not bookmarked this one, but as I was attempting to make this list I kept thinking “But what about that one where…?” and the clearer it was that none of the bookmarked fics fit the bill, the more I had to just dig back in my history until I found this. It sticks out that way.  
 
5. “why'd you look so tough?” by myeyesarenotblue (The Umbrella Academy (TV), G, 2,286 words) --now, I can’t speak for the writer, whom I don’t know at all, but this fic was written in between when pictures from Season 3 were being released/Viktor’s transition was announced, and when Season 3 actually came out, so I imagine they just saw those pics of freshly-transitioned Viktor and said, “Hey, it looks like he’s raided Ben’s wardrobe”—and from that tiny observation they wove this beautiful little scene of grief and self-discovery twisting together, wrapping up so many layers and tiny canon threads together in Ben’s old leather jacket I mean a story.

6. “Two Steps Forward, One Step Back” by RaspberrySwish (The Umbrella Academy (TV), T, 11,297 words) – Is it kind of obvious yet that I’m a big fan of absurd humor? I had forgotten this one, and ignored my bookmark, confusing it with an earlier fic I’d read, so I’m glad I clicked through to read it again just to be sure. This one supposes a hypothetical point when the Hargreeves are facing something like their seventh apocalypse and, after a stupidly entertaining scene of them making bets on what’s going to cause the next one, they decide to go back in time to when they were teenagers, murder their dad, and kidnap I mean adopt themselves. It’s ridiculous. I love it.

7. “My Brother's Brother” by spyspyspyder (The Umbrella Academy (TV), G, 1,765 words) -- yes, to my own bewilderment I’m still obsessed with the relationship between Five and Viktor—no that’s wrong. I’m bewildered by my brain’s need for them to be kissing. Their relationship IS fascinating enough platonically, and I wish I could gush about it more objectively because for some reason a lot of people just stop listening to you the moment you start shipping adoptive brothers. So I appreciate this fic so much for doing what I cannot: showing bits of that fascinating relationship through glimpses caught by other people over time, keeping it strong and inevitable and ironic but also still platonic.  I brought this up in the comments, and the author replied, “I definitely see them as two planets set to orbit each other in any universe, in whatever relationship context,” and that is so perfect and correct.

8. “(Feels Like) Heaven” by Melivian (The Umbrella Academy (TV), T, 34,795 words so far) --More The Good Place sneaking in to these lists, as this is a Good Place AU, and nicely done, too. The humor is spot on and appropriately quirky, and the casting fits in ways I never would have thought of. I don’t care about Klaus and Dave as a ship really—I feel like Dave was mostly in the show just to inspire Klaus to sober up—but it works perfectly and rather beautifully here as they become the Eleanor and Chidi of this neighborhood.

9. “He Sleeps with the Fishes: The Hoffa Job” by Stephsageek (The Umbrella Academy (TV), M, 29,048 words so far) –I almost forgot this one actually started this year, not last, as it’s a continuation of the series Steph started last year about Five and Lila being Commission partners pre-show era. There are so many moving pieces in this absurd encounter (multi-chapter, but it’s all happening in one scene, basically!), including a cameo by Carrie Fisher; and she keeps hinting there’s a sea monster, too, but the sea monster hasn’t shown up yet.

10. “Learning Fear” by Repeatinglitanies (The Umbrella Academy (TV), T, 30,638 words) --now this is unabashedly a Fiktor fik (or Fiveya, it’s from 2019), but almost—almost!—incidentally: there are cults and vigilantes and completely chaotic convergences of secret organizations! I did not expect a “Five-and-Vanya-raised-separately-meet-as-teenagers-and-bond-while-trick-or-treating” to develop into the wild ride this one turned into. It makes the list on uniqueness alone. Again with the absurdity. I have a (story) type.

Stuff I wrote!  

Stuff I Wrote, Here on Dreamwidth Edition: Only my “Dear Yuletide Writer” Letter, designed to give whoever was assigned to me for Yuletide an idea of what I’d like. The way Yuletide works is, starting in September or October, they collect nominations of “Rare” fandoms, then put out the list, and you have to choose between 3 to 5 fandoms that you’d like someone to write for YOU, and then you ALSO choose between 5-10 that you would be willing to write for OTHER people. But you only write a letter about your requests, since what you WRITE will be a surprise. Anyway, I nominated, requested AND offered Legion, just because the idea of someone ELSE writing Loudermilk fic for me to read was so lovely; but then I saw someone had nominated Sal and Gabi??!?!?!?!?! I wish I knew who, because in the end nobody else requested or even offered that one, and there ISN’T any fic already written, and I CAN’T write it myself because I am not fluent enough (at all) in Cuban-American Spanglish to do Sal’s voice justice! SIGH, I want more Sal and Gabi in my life. I did finally match on my THIRD choice, though, as you saw above, and incidentally was assigned something I only offered, not requested, because I figured enough other people would request it because it apparently only still qualified because half its fics on AO3 were less than 1000 words, but SEE BELOW…

Stuff I Wrote, GeekMom Edition: Um, I occasionally participated in the threads in the GeekMom Talk Facebook Group. Do you think if I ever get the motivation to write something GeekMommish again, they’ll take me back?

Stuff I Wrote, Fanfic Edition:

1. “The Magic Man of Oz” (Legion (TV), T, 15,004 words, but only 9,000 of those words are story, the rest are bonus features, so you can skip those if you want) – This is my masterpiece of the year, and it breaks my heart there aren’t more people who can appreciate it! Someone on the Legion fan Discord server posed the idea of a Wizard of Oz AU, and we all started casting the characters, and as soon as someone suggested that Oliver should be the narrator I HAD TO WRITE IT. I worked really hard! Legion meshed beautifully into the Wizard of Oz! Oliver as narrator made it cracky and 4th-wall-breaking! The union of Flying Monkeys and Time Eaters made for the most tripped-out wild fight scene I have ever attempted to write! Please, please, send this to everyone you know who has watched all three seasons of Legion for best effect but you know what my beta reader hasn’t watched ANY Legion and still enjoyed it so MAYBE YOU WILL TOO! (I even wrote an Answer Key to explain all the references, if it helps!)

2. “In Which Jason and Chidi Rob a Bank” (The Good Place (TV), G, 2,785 words) – Now, if you want something a little more mainstream... I say jokingly, as yes THIS was my Yuletide assignment. YEAH I KNOW, rare? But I’m not going to argue, as I’ve always wanted to write the novelization of this show, and when I got into the writing I was honestly surprised I HADN’T ACTUALLY written any of these characters (except Vicky oddly enough) before, because it felt so natural! The recipient wanted something about Jason and Chidi, so I asked the kids what Jason and Chidi should DO together, and Maddie said “They rob a bank” and that WORKS. I LOVE this absurd show! Anyway, to my absolute delight, not only the recipient but also LOADS OF OTHER PEOPLE loved it, leaving comments to the effect of “This is like watching an episode of the show!” which has to be one of the highest compliments a fanfic writer can receive. And in just the short time since Christmas, it has already become my second-highest kudoed fic ever! But don’t let that keep you from reading it, too! It is, if I do say so myself (because lots of other people said so!) quite funny.

3. “A Captain With Seven Children...What's So Fearsome About That?” (The Sound of Music - Rodgers/Hammerstein/Lindsay & Crouse, The Umbrella Academy (TV), G, 14,754 total so far but that’s 3,354 words posted this year)   – Before “The Magic Man of Oz,” this was my I-worked-really-hard-please-appreciate-this Masterpiece of the year– not the first three chapters, which you might have read last year (and WERE pretty good, dangit, so if you haven’t read them you can do that now, this is one you actually DON’T need prior canon knowledge to appreciate), but the FOURTH chapter, finished and posted THIS year: “High on a Roof Stood a Lonely Seven,” which is the Big Turning Point in the Story, in which Maria’s meddling pays off and the Big Secret about Viktor-then-Vanya blasts its way out into the open! I mentioned the unusual fight scene in “Magic Man,” but THIS was the work for which I first had to teach myself how to write fight scenes in the first place! Still a highly unusual fight scene (if not as unusual as the one in “Magic Man”)-- I don’t think I COULD write a NOT-unusual fight scene. Why bother if you’re not going to go all out?

4. “How to Catch Up with your Therapist after a Couple of...Busy Months” (The Umbrella Academy (TV), T, 9,322 words) And before I participated in Yuletide, I joined a totally different fanfic event, The Umbrella Academy Masked Author event (where people had to guess the originally anonymous authors)! And because I didn’t have time to get to a completely NEW fic to submit, I ended up submitting something I had already vaguely alluded to writing on the TUA fan Discord server, convinced my General Invisibility would keep anyone else from remembering (though one person, who wasn’t actually participating, DID therefore guess by title alone!). There’s a line in the next fic on this list implying that Viktor convinced Five to start seeing his old therapist, and when I wrote it I went “Wait, that implies VIKTOR is HIMSELF seeing his old therapist again. Bet THAT was an interesting catch-up session.” So I wrote it out, a basic dialogue between the two, Viktor describing the whole first three seasons of the show from his own viewpoint, and the therapist getting more and more shell-shocked. By the end I figure it may be just as difficult to convince the therapist to take Five on as a patient as it would be to convince Five to see her, and that’s saying something.

5. “Morning-After Meltdowns” (The Umbrella Academy (TV), M, 3,930 words) – So right, I’ve grown no less obsessed with this non-canonical pairing between adoptive siblings, and the joy of working with two highly-emotionally-repressed characters is figuring out how to get them to actually admit anything to each other. Last year I wrote a flashback-induced mind-meld; this year I took the more realistic path of drunk sex (which also theoretically takes place the night of the flashback-induced mind-meld). As usual, I do not write onscreen smut, so sorry– it’s basically trying to piece together in the morning what happened to get them into this place the night before. It’s much better than the title. And I hated the title I first posted it with even more.

6. “Anonymous: Renegade Teenage Hormones” (The Umbrella Academy (TV), T though the second chapter should probably be M, 5,688 words) – Okay, this one is STILL on AO3 anonymously because I don’t necessarily want someone seeing it on my dashboard without warning. This is me giving you warning!* It’s still not smut, but when you obsessively ship messed-up-adoptive-siblings sometimes you do have to read smut in order to get your fill, and this story was inspired by– in fact is a direct sequel to– someone else’s story that was apparently written to fill a Kink Meme. But that story was (I know this may be shocking to some people) technically a scene from a theoretical YA novel! It was the sort of awkward thing that would HAPPEN to a couple of horny teenagers (when the story took place) in a YA story, and I couldn’t help pondering the awkward teenaged angst that would surely transpire the next day. And so I wrote it! I just didn’t want a link to a Kink Meme right on my AO3 front page so you'll have to get it this way!  
 
7. “Not Just Stupid Kids” (The Umbrella Academy (TV), T, 5,388 words total but just 1,025 posted this year) -- And last year’s FIRST venture into Fiktor-writing bumped back up my recently-posted list this year, again because I was reading someone else’s fic and got, not what happened next, but what happened before in my head, so right in the comments I started writing this little scene of Klaus taking advantage of that nice long Pennsylvania Roadtrip to needle Five over/fish for clues about his feelings toward Viktor’s announcement, but then I decided it fit nicely into THIS fic, too, as a BONUS SCENE taking place soon after the first chapter! I was surprised that this was the most of adult Klaus I’d ever written, too. Some characters just have voices that flow.

8. “The Pipeweed Mafia Epic” (The Lord of the Rings RPF, The Hobbit RPF, Inklings RPF, TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis, T, 8,986 words) – YES, THIS IS IT, the Infamous Pipeweed Mafia Epic! I got bored, and since I figured out how Real Person Fic worked on AO3 (and considered there were FAR worse things done with the real people in AO3’s RPF collection than just drug dealing and putting Andy Serkis in a coma), I figured I would finally put it up for the world. With a few additional lines added, too! Not remotely COMPLETE or anything. It probably never will be. But this was the silliness I started writing to prompts on the day Diana Wynne Jones died, convincing me that I COULD write again, if I just allowed myself to stop taking everything so seriously! It’s incomplete nonsense, but it’s MY incomplete nonsense! And there’s an Aslan in a Bucket!

*By the way, you do realize this post is full of a WIDE VARIETY of appropriate-for-audience ratings, right? Please mind the ratings! Just because I reviewed Mr. Kitty is LOST! does not mean EVERYTHING on these lists is appropriate for fans of Mr. Kitty is LOST!

Works in Progress
As I did last year, I filled out an “AO3 Writer Wrapped” on Tumblr that went into statistics and favorites and things about the years’ works in a little more detail. I answered a question about Works in Progress there that was pretty much the SAME works in progress I had LAST year, but I’d like to add at least one more here:

I spotted a Yuletide request that made all the neurons in my brain light up at the same time, and said, “Oh I HAVE to write that one: if I don’t get assigned to, I’m writing it up as a Bonus Treat!” I didn’t finish it in time to post with the rest of the Yuletide gifts (I barely finished my ASSIGNED fic in time), and then I had those Computer Issues, but this is really cool and I’m pretty much called to write it– it’s based on a picture book, relatively well-known in kidlit circles but not so much in the Outside World, and is exactly the sort of twisted brain challenge I am so excited by after writing “The Magic Man of Oz.” I will say no more than that since it’s still technically a gift, but I am really excited about it, and I’m sure you’ll see it soon! Well, relatively soon. For me.


So, as usual, that’s the round up! I know it’s long, but please comment and chat with me about anything here that caught your attention!

This year exhausted me. But I have been diligently keeping track of experiences all year so as to give you this recap now, nonetheless! Someone asked last year if I work on this all year or do it all at once at the end of the year, and this year is exactly an example of why I keep notes all year long (it’s not full out WRITTEN so much until the end of the year, but it’s relatively outlined). If I hadn’t, there’d be no way I’d REMEMBER what I’ve read or watched or done this year, because my brain is fried. So, read on for us both to be reminded! Also, leave me comments! Discuss this with me! So it doesn’t feel like a waste!

Life Events NOT in Chronological Order this year because some are actually bigger than others

1. My dad died on November 6. I don’t know how much I’ve said about my dad’s health online in the past few years—he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s about…four years ago? And that developed a side of dementia, which worsened quickly. The worst part of the past three years of pandemic was that it kept interfering with my ability to visit my dad, who I was losing. Anyway, both Parkinson’s and dementia are the sorts of diseases that don’t outright kill you, but kill you anyway? As was the case with my dad. He couldn’t walk safely anymore, he was supposed to stay in his chair, but he couldn’t remember that. He fell and hit his head, and didn’t wake up. They put him in hospice care at the hospital and we hung out there. On November 5th it occurred to me that this man who’d passed his love of music down to me so thoroughly NEEDED to have music, so I went through all the music on my computer and put together a playlist of all the stuff I knew he particularly liked, and we listened to it all that day in the hospital and honestly, it was SO GOOD for all of us. We’d keep telling stories about the different songs that would come on and how they’d remind us of him. It was a good way to spend our last day together. I kept playing that playlist the next few days, too.

2. On the opposite end of the gaining-and-losing-family-members spectrum, in April we took the kids to the Humane Society for their birthdays to adopt a cat. They picked this absolute monkey of a kitten named Hoagie (his litter were all named after deli orders)— we thought of renaming him— I was all for Monkey Joe but nobody else liked that— but Hoagie ended up sticking. I’m pretty sure he believes he’s actually a mountain lion. He climbs, he stalks, he attacks. But while we were there, I fell in love with this shy but polite old gentleman named Sir Ralphie, who’d had a bit of a rough time. And while we were waiting for Hoagie to get big enough to bring home, I read stuff on cats and watched Sir Ralphie and said, “You know, the cat books say kittens adjust better with older cats to look up to. Also cats are better about being left alone when everyone goes to work or school if there’s more than one to keep them company.” So my point is, eventually I convinced Jason that we should also adopt Sir Ralphie, too. The poor traumatized kitty hid for the first couple of days, but eventually realized we were nice, and now he sleeps beside me and is definitely MY kitty, thanks.

3. Part of my rationale for letting the kids adopt a kitty was the idea of it acting as a sort of therapy animal for Maddie, who was having a REALLY rough time with Middle School. Because they were just MISSING so much school, I figured that until meds and therapy took hold, it would be better to pull Maddie out and enroll in cyberschool instead. Maddie was in no state to employ the self-discipline required for cyberschool, so I basically had to sit there and walk them through it. But it worked, and was kind of fun at times, but really took up way too much of my time and energy. Luckily, by the fall, Maddie was ready to go back to public school, and has been doing pretty well all things considered.

4. Sam, meanwhile, has been involved in SO MUCH STUFF. He started Vo-Tech at school (cars, obvs), but also kept up with light-and-sound crew, helped start an e-sports team, and JOINED MARCHING BAND. But Amy, you say, didn’t both your kids disappointingly quit playing instruments after elementary school? Why yes they did! But one of Sam’s best friends is co-captain of the colorguard, and convinced him to go out for flags! He’s the only boy on flags but that doesn’t seem to bother him. It has been fun for me to go cheer on the band— it’s the only time I’ve ever felt nostalgic for high school!

Christmas

 Like I said, I’ve been beat and time-crunched, so made the executive decision not to make home-sewn gifts this year. I also decided I didn’t have the time and energy to decorate to the extent I do usually. Besides, we weren’t sure how the cats would react to the decorations. As it turned out, the cats were surprisingly indifferent to the decorations, with the exception of Hoagie and jingle bells, so we’ll probably go back to full decor next year assuming my energy returns. Anyway, it was a good call, because I’m the most Christmasy person in the household anyway, so we were all content.

 We had Christmas Eve at my sister’s house, because Mom certainly couldn’t be expected to have us over. The big Christmas Eve House Party had always been my DAD’S thing, you know. It was good for us to do something entirely different, because Christmas Eve WILL never be the same again, and it’d only hurt to pretend otherwise. There were some must-haves— an early dinner of meatball minestrone, punch and mini hot dogs and chocolate covered oreos later— and that was good. My cousin Monica— who would have attended the Christmas Eve House Party if it had existed— had dropped off surprise presents for everyone earlier, Lego sets across the board. How fun is it to get a Lego set? She got me this amazing succulents set. My siblings, independently of each other, got me various seasons of The Good Place on DVD, all except Season Three which was out of stock, which I had put on my wishlist because we got rid of Netflix, seeing it was simultaneously the most expensive and yet the least used of our subscription services. Guess I can get rid of it if I get a hard copy of my favorite show on it, first!

 I had wrapped up a tube and a box with catnip and treats and lots of curly ribbon to theoretically keep the cats occupied with their own “presents” so they’d leave ours alone, and this worked (when they finally broke through to the catnip they were pretty amusing about it, too). Both the cats and kids actually let us sleep until 7:40-something, which Maddie informed us was officially sunrise according to the Weather Channel. Everyone was amused and pleased and content with their gifts, though I mostly got towels. Honestly, though, I know not to expect much from my immediate family! Because my sister-in-law’s family couldn’t make it out until later in the week, we had the rest of the day to just chill, which was good because I’d developed an awful sore throat. Nonetheless I spent a good portion of the day making dinner, because I wanted a festive dinner, and we didn’t know we weren’t going to my inlaws until after I was NOT going to the store anymore before the holiday, so I was proud of myself for the deer roast—the recipe of which I even switched at the last minute when my defrosted roast turned out to be bone-in and I’d first picked a recipe that had to be boneless— and green beans amandine and homemade rolls and chocolate pudding pie. Yeah, it was good.

We finally met up with J's family this past Friday night, where Max, the youngest nephew who exudes ALL the ADHD and adores Maddie, had developed the hobby of taping everything to everything. This was the highlight of the evening, although maybe we shouldn't have been encouraging it.  I of course always get books for the nephews, and was gratified when the oldest immediately sat in the middle of the chaos to read them. I myself got some nice shirts and this great Shaun Tan book.

 As has become our habit, we spent New Year's Eve eating way too much party food and forcing the children to watch movies they'd never seen before. This year it was Austin Powers (which Sam was a little embarrassed by and Maddie simply proclaimed "dumb"), Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory (which went over better, and Maddie recognized "World of Pure Imagination" immediately as something I randomly sing a lot), and Arsenic and Old Lace (which the kids enjoyed more than Jason because he apparently can't handle black and white?) Well anyhoo. That ended at exactly 11:57 PM, so Sam put on Animal Crossing for the countdown.

Library

 Library stuff. Hmmm. Library stuff mostly made me sad this year. We lost SO many staff members— not to death, to other jobs— and everyone new we attempted to hire quit within a week. EVERYONE new. This happened MULTIPLE TIMES this year. And no wonder, because we’re all overworked because we can’t keep staff. Because we’re underpaid, but that’s nothing new. And to be honest, I’m NOT overWORKED as much as I’m forced to spend almost all my time doing the not-fun things I did not sign onto librarianship for. I’m actually more BORED than overWORKED. Because I have to keep my cheerful public servant face pasted on for more hours a day than I used to, and because we no longer have a children’s desk (which STILL sucks), the majority of my interactions are now helping people with computers, unlocking the dang bathroom (WE SHOULD REALLY KEEP THEM UNLOCKED, WE ARE TOO UNDERSTAFFED FOR THIS), and enduring small talk (and not-so-small talk, not sure why so many people feel the need to tell you their entire life story when they return a book a day late, WE DON’T EVEN CHARGE OVERDUES ANYMORE) from grownups. OCCASIONALLY I get to help people with kids’ books and my life has meaning again. OCCASIONALLY I get to do programs. I deliver outreach books, but haven’t started outreach story times again, because we need people on-desk too much to pay me for time OFF desk, even though I outlined how I could schedule outreach to not interfere with library opening hours anyway. I really miss outreach storytimes. They gave me life. Anyway, the fact is I am unhappy because I no longer love my job, but I don’t know what to do about that.

Programs

As I hinted, not much in the way of programs. I continued to do the Bedtime Story videos through May, then we stopped that. I was supposed to do two days of storytimes in the fall, then we hired a new program specialist (because Barb left), and that got cut back to one, and when ONE of those weeks the director noticed I had only one person show (which was by far the slowest week all season) she even batted around the idea of cutting THAT one, too— I think she just doesn’t want me on storytimes? But I CANNOT spend THAT MUCH FREAKING TIME on circulation desk. YES I’m good at it, because I’m good at putting that friendly face on, but it’s TIRING. I AM NEURODIVERGENT FOR GOSH SAKES, IT’S MASKING AND IT’S EXHAUSTING AND ALSO IT’S BORING.

Anyway, though, so on Mondays I’m doing Yoga Storytime again, which is fun but a little redundant because I’m cycling through the same books over and over; and an all-ages storytime, which ends up being mostly babies when I prep for preschoolers. I miss the actually-all-ages Family Night evening storytime I used to do. 

The cool new program, though? A monthly Saturday Sensory Storytime. This has been a great success (and since numbers at sensory storytimes HAVE to be low, so as not to be overwhelming, nobody holds low numbers against me). The parents and kids have been very happy with it, and it really HELPS that I’m neurodivergent with two neurodivergent kids— I’m on the same page as my families, and they’ve thanked me for my understanding.

This is normally where I’d list my top favorite storytime topics of the year, but I’m tired and sad.

 I kept reading picture books in the hope of actually doing a variety of storytimes again, though, which brings us to:

Media Reviews!

Top 10 2022 Picture Books

1. Field Trip to Volcano Island, written and illustrated by John Hare. As delightful as Field Trip to the Moon, slightly more delightful than Ocean Deep. The little twists weren't obvious and made me smile.                                                          

2. Berry Song, written and illustrated by Michaela Goade. Michaela Goade is officially one of my favorite illustrators now. Because Water Protectors and I Sang You Down… (see below) have very blue-heavy covers and I’m susceptible to blue, and this cover had no blue and was a close-up of people, I was like, "surely it's not as pretty as her others," and then I'd turn a page and gasp. No, this book is definitely as pretty as her others, and the words (her first words credit!) are musical and joyful.                                             

3. Blue: a history of the color as deep as the sea and as wide as the sky, by Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond, illustrated by Daniel Minter. Speaking of being susceptible to blue, of course I’m going to like a book dedicated to my favorite color. But it’s not just pretty pictures, it’s a very interesting history-- I feel like blue has earned its place as my favorite just for being interesting now!                                                              

4. Pina, written and illustrated by Elif Yemenici. Pretty stop motion models! I’m such a sucker for model/miniature illustration, but these are particularly good. And this is a really sweetly told story about a socially-anxious little cat who has to venture outside— it’s a story that respects introversion while showing it’s okay to step out of your comfort zone sometimes.

5-10. I can’t choose between or sort these ones, so here, have a bunch of new picture book recs:             

• The World Belonged to Us, by Jacqueline Woodson, pictures by Leo Espinosa. A joyful nostalgic look at being free-range kids in the city. Very 1970s. In fact it pretty much screams out “Old School Sesame Street.” Do today's kids like it, or is it just nostalgia-bait? I heard one reviewer say they asked some kids, and they do, but it's like reading a fantasy to them: imagine living so free!
• Rosa's Song, by Helena Ku Rhee, pictures by Pascal Campion. This is a tale of friendships in a community with a lot of turnover and it absolutely made me teary eyed.
• Every Dog in the Neighborhood, by Philip C. Stead, pictures by Matthew Cordell. I have not tried it in a storytime yet—I might have gotten a child reaction for you if the copy I bought for Jason’s nephew hadn’t gotten lost in the mail— but this seems to read aloud well, if a little longer than some audience attention spans. There’s a whole background story about grandma getting into community activism that makes an amusing foil.
• Out of a Jar, written and illustrated by Deborah Marcero. Kind of a companion book to In a Jar, one of my absolute favorites a couple years ago (or last year? What is time?), and while it’s not quite as delightful as the first, it’s still good. This one is about bottling up feelings.                                          
• Counting to Bananas: a mostly rhyming fruit book, by Carrie Tillotson, pictures by Estrela Lourenco. I was very impressed that this is a debut: Tillotson really knows how to write this style of read-aloud, that's for sure. It’s a lot of fun and I can’t wait to actually USE it in a storytime.
• Knight Owl, written and illustrated by Christopher Denise. This is a delightful and surprisingly unpredictable story. The pictures are full of fun jokes.

Top 5 2021 Picture Books In General Because I Did Not Have a Mock Caldecott to Cram For

*Sigh* I’m setting up a passive Mock Caldecott display for January, though, so next year you can have this category back!

 1. Moon Pops. Written and illustrated by Heena Baek. And as it happens my number one on this list wouldn’t have even been eligible for the (Mock) Caldecott, as it’s a Korean import. I read a couple of Heena Baek’s books this year, and her collage/model pictures are both ingenious and hilarious. I want to stare at them for a long time. This one was my favorite of them as it has the best story.                                                       

2. I sang you down from the stars, by Tasha Spillett-Sumner, illustrated by Michaela Goade. HAVE I MENTIONED HOW MUCH I LOVE MICHAELA GOADE? Her art is so swirly and ethereal. This book is a lullaby to a new baby with Indigeonous tradition woven in. And the beautiful young Native mother on the cover reminds me so much of Irma Loudermilk— OBSERVE:

--that I am extra fond and I have decided it is fanart in my mind, if the baby was only a skinny blonde white-looking boy (See "Stuff I wrote, Fanfic Edition" #5, below, if this makes no sense to you).

3. We wait for the sun, by Dovey Johnson Roundtree and Katie McCabe, pictures by Raissa Figueroa. Lately there’s been a call for more stories of BIPOC joy, to counteract that so much BIPOC fiction focuses on pain and injustice. And I’m shamed into understanding that firsthand when I hear about a book that’s a true story about the author’s formerly-enslaved grandma and sneaking around and I immediately assume it’s a serious slice of oppression. But instead this is an absolutely joyful, lovely story about going berry-picking (which makes it the SECOND lovely joyful story about berry picking on this list), with gorgeous deep colors in the illustrations.

4. Bathe the Cat, by Alice B. McGinty, pictures by David Roberts. I was doing a bathtime storytime and pulled this out and was disappointed to discover that it wasn’t actually about bathing the cat so was not thematically appropriate, but it’s a very funny read aloud that I’m going to HAVE to find some other thematic excuse to use in a storytime. The cat, in order to AVOID a bath, has mixed up the family chore list to humorous results. In a subtle note of diversity, the family happens to have two dads.

5. Out of Nowhere, written and illustrated by Chris Naylor-Ballesteros. Sweet friendship story with a contrast between narration and pictures-- a beetle is looking for their friend the caterpillar, who, unbeknownst to the beetle, has metamorphosed. There’s nothing trite about the resolutions, either.                                                    

Top 5 Older than 2022 and 2021 Picture Books I First Read This Year

 1. We Are Little Feminists (series). Okay, this is an absolute (and pleasant!) surprise of a top choice. You would think books, especially board books, published by an independent grassroots organization with a Mission™ —to be as Inclusive™ as possible-- might skimp on actual writing, but these board books have not only lovely-and-very-diverse photo illustrations, but the texts are simple, effective, and flow really well. These are dang good little board books! I would not be adverse to reading them over and over.

2. Warbler Wave, by April Pulley Sayre. Sayre died recently and that's such a sad loss because she's such a treasure, making science so beautiful and poetic in these photo books. I love to pull them out for storytimes when I want to stick in some learning-about-nature. This one I almost used in a storytime about bird migration, but only just didn’t.    

3. How to Give Your Cat a Bath (In Five Easy Steps), by Nicola Winstanley, pictures by John Martz. THIS one WAS actually about giving the cat a bath (although failing), and it made for a delightful read aloud at that aforementioned bathtime storytime. It got some hearty laughs from both kids and grownups.

4. Circle, written and illustrated by Jeannie Baker. Also considered for the aforementioned bird migration storytime, but ultimately out of that day’s audience’s attention span, this feels slightly upside down to a North American, because it starts in the south (the book’s from Australia, it turns out), and goes— not just north, but the entire length of the globe. The pictures are a cool multimedia collage.  

5. Pepper & Boo: A Cat Surprise! written and illustrated by Charise Mericle Harper. To be honest, I have been more drawn to cat books in general since becoming a cat owner. I picked up and randomly read this easy reader a couple weeks after getting the cats, and decided, yep, accurate cat portrayal here.

Top 5 Longer than Picture Books of 2022

1. Akata Woman, by Nnedi Okorafor. The "woman" in the name worried me, and Okorafor herself when I asked on Twitter didn’t really clear it up— Sunny’s growing up, was this going to be “more mature” than the previous books? What I was really asking was, will I be embarrassed reading it to my children? Well, I DID decide after reading it that that it would definitely need to go in YA instead of Intermediate where the first two were, but the only embarrassing bits were swears that I could skip. Otherwise, it was the same creative storytelling as the rest of the series, if not even more creative. So much great imagery that still sticks with me, even though this was one of our earlier reads of the year!

2. Gallant, by V.E. Schwab. Old-fashioned gothic horror. We all enjoyed it, if you might not think so because somehow with just two chapters left we got distracted and didn't finish for months— it was atmospheric and Maddie left a series of illustrations on post-its in the library copy, and afterward asked for MORE like that. Didn’t quite hit the exact mood again this year, but I did find a genuinely scary middle grade horror series:   

3. Spirit Hunters: Something Wicked, by Ellen Oh. The third book in this series, but it’s the one that came out in ‘22 so it’s the one getting listed first. One thing about this series is that it does the horror genre trope of the characters making what the audience knows are bad decisions, and the kids kept yelling at the book. Maddie was very annoyed with the characters for not making connections as quickly as she does. I was worried maybe the kids disliked the books from these reactions, but then they very enthusiastically demanded the rest of the series and were disappointed that this last was just published so the next one won’t be out for awhile.

4. Aru Shah and the Nectar of Immortality, by Roshani Chokshi. Time to say goodbye to the first of the Rick Riordan Presents series, and we’d enjoyed it so much. This last book was a lot of fun, although it did leave a few loose ends.

5. Amari and the Great Game, by B.B. Alston. As fun as the first book, though not quite as good— it seemed like it was trying to tell two different books at the same time and not quite perfecting either. But I’m still looking forward to the next one!

Top 5 Longer than Picture Books Older Than 2022 I First Read In 2022 (most of these are from 2021. In fact we started the first one almost as soon as it went through processing, that just happened to be at the very beginning of 2022)

1. Tristan Strong Keeps Punching, by Kwame Mbalia. First of all, Gum Baby. She has got to be one of my favorite characters of the past few years. Second of all, reading this while people are attempting to ban "CRT" books was really poignant. Stories are important dangit!  

2. The Last Cuentista, by Donna Barba Higuera. Um, speaking of which, this one’s a bit devastating-- though it wouldn't have phased me as a kid! The symbolism of the stories, and Dreamers! I wasn’t sure it was quite Newbery quality across the board, but the mind library chapter was so absolutely stunning I decided it earned the Newbery on the strength of that chapter alone. (The other night I dreamed a story about parallel universes and was enjoying it so much I started, in the dream, writing my Newbery Acceptance speech about the joy of another science fiction book winning, anyway).  

3. The Troubled Girls of Dragomir Academy, by Anne Ursu. Maddie left post it illustrations of this one in the library book, too. Great voice, reads aloud well.  

4.Spirit Hunters and Spirit Hunters: Island of Monsters, by Ellen Oh. I pretty much said it all in the third book’s annotation above, but they’re genuinely creepy middle grade horror which the kids spent yelling at the characters to make better choices.

5. The Cursed Carnival and other Calamities, edited by Rick Riordan. This collection of Rick Riordan Presents-related short stories most notably reminded me exactly how much I flippin’ love Sal and Gabi*— their story opened the book and introduced the concept in general, seeing that they’re all about crossing over multiple universes. There were random crossovers scattered like easter eggs between many of the stories, not just that one, though I think Carlos Hernandez and Kwame Mbalia were teasing each other specifically with theirs (there was lots of unexpected GUM BABY which made us all laugh so hard). We didn't read all the stories since we didn't know some of the series— that pointed out the holes in the library collection for me! Riordan also includes a stand-alone about Finn MacCool which was also, um, cool. Cumaill?
*putting this list together has reminded me AGAIN to check Access PA and have my coworker who does ILLs ILL me Hernandez’s collection of grownup short stories, because that voice is worth dipping into grownup books for, and supposedly there’s a story about a grown-up Sal in it, too. I’ll tell you about that next year, supposedly.  

 Top 5 Rereading Experiences

Actually, I can’t think of any really memorable rereading experiences this year. We started A Christmas Carol again last week, but even that broke off when I got a sore throat.

Moving Visual Media:

I have no idea how to sort this. There are only two movies on the list, a couple of the “TV Shows” are really more mini-series, only two of the others count as “returning favorites,” plus a reboot— there were several of my previous favorite mini-series shows, particularly Only Murders in the Building and Breeders, that I didn’t even get around to watching this year to BE “returning favorites”— I don’t know if I should cut it down to five, I’m not even sure what order to put it in. So here, brief reviews of everything I watched, in the order that I watched it:

•  Black Widow— I loved the family aspect of this movie— how it was ABOUT family, I mean, and how what makes a family “real” is about more than just blood. A lot of refrigerator logic plot holes— one character was clearly supposed to die but the threads leading there just sort of stopped, instead, as if The Powers That Be said, “No wait, we might want to use them later.” But it was all so delightful I couldn’t mind.
• Hawkeye— I wanted to watch this before Christmas was over since it was set at Christmas. I got to it while sick on January 9, while our tree was still up and the Matviyas hadn’t yet had Christmas anyway, due to everyone being sick. It was a lot of fun, and I really liked the background Christmasness of it.
• Umbrella Academy— Actually having a deadline to watch all the Netflix-exclusive shows we’d always wanted to see but never gotten around to made us each go on our own binges in late May when we canceled it. This one I’d often seen compared to some of my other favorite shows (maybe because a friggin’ lot of the crew has worked with Noah Hawley), but honestly I had no idea what to actually expect from it going in, and I was delighted by it. There was just the right amount of quirkiness to elevate the suspense (and, just like Black Widow, is ALSO about forced non-blood “family” becoming FAMILY). I had to make a new burner/trial Netflix account just to watch the third season when it came out a month later (ALSO that random part 2 of Stranger Things, coincidentally, so I guess that was timed well). Most notably, it really lends itself to entertaining fanfic, and I swear that’s where the vast majority of my reading-for-fun has gone this year: Umbrella Academy Fanfic. See below. Actually, that’s probably also why I haven’t watched as much as usual this year. Because I was too busy reading Umbrella Academy fanfic in my downtime.
• Stranger Things— You know how the kids on Stranger Things tend to name the monsters after the D&D monsters they’re currently battling? We actually played the Vecna campaign a couple years ago— it was one of the first major campaigns we played with the kids— so we found it very amusing. This season itself was kind of scattered, as if the writers couldn’t decide what to focus on, but still fun. Also, having watched Black Widow earlier in the year, I was amused thinking that Hopper had actually spent his time in the gulag filming Black Widow. Also-also, Sam’s MARCHING BAND did a Stranger Things-themed show this year and it was good. The band arrangement of “Running Up That Hill” is actually loads better than the original.
• Ghostbusters Afterlife— we checked this out of the library for a family movie night, and indeed one of the things I loved most about it was how kid-centric it was— the most truly family movie of the franchise. Though, I mean, OLDER kids. The kid actors were terrific. Podcast was totally channeling Dan Ackroyd and they weren’t even playing relatives. Also I cried at the end.
• Ducktales 2017 reboot— Maddie fell in love and got Sam and I into it too. Since the original was my favorite TV show as a kid, I really appreciated all the callbacks scattered throughout like inside jokes. The reboot keeps the adventurous feel of the original while leaning into the silliness, and I enjoyed recognizing a lot of voices from other favorite shows of mine. It’s great sharing this with my kids now. Oh, I got Maddie so much Ducktales stuff for Christmas, too.
• Andor: is it bad that my two biggest takeaways are a) the title sequence is REALLY COOL/WELL DONE, and b) Cassian Andor is an Extremely Handsome Man. He’s got this 1970 Paul McCartney look going. Also, J and I were discussing just how rich and familiar the Star Wars universe is and how we wish our kids were into it so we could play more of the RPG.
• Mysterious Benedict Society: The second season was fun, though not quite as well-done as the first season (also strayed farther from the books). The kids are still perfect. I appreciated all the bits of Kate and Milligan trying to figure out Family— they’re like my OTPlatonicP— I needed more of that last season AND in the books. There’s a running theme of people trying to figure out Family in these Moving Visual Media reviews this year, isn’t there.
• The Afterparty: Maddie developed this obsession with Ben Schwartz— in part because of the Ducktales reboot, actually— and through that discovered this GROWNUP miniseries and correctly determined that Sam and I would like it, too. Its concept is a bit better than the execution— a murder mystery, with each episode focusing on the testimony of a different witness, but each witness’s story takes on the trappings of a different film genre. I think they could have leaned into that concept a little harder. But it was still rather delightful.

The Top Fanfics I READ— makes more sense to take them out of the “stuff I wrote” category that I put them in last year.

As noted, I read a crapton of Umbrella Academy fic this year. So let me divide the Top read fics into “Not Umbrella” and “Umbrella” to be fairer to the other fandoms:

Top 5 Non-Umbrella Academy Fanfics I read

 1.  “Back in the (US)SSR” by Ginevra_Benci (The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Agent Carter (TV)) Be not fooled by “Avengers Movies” being listed as the first fandom here, even though every other chapter or so is from Natasha Romanov’s POV: this is straight-up like getting to watch Agent Carter again. The voice and banter fills a hole in my heart! I just feel like I’ve got a friend here: you clearly know My Show! Thank you for returning it in part to me! 

2.  “Advisory” by hhertzof (Kairos (O'Keefe) Series - Madeleine L'Engle, Young Wizards - Diane Duane)   I have often said that the Young Wizards series is one of the few true read-alikes to Wrinkle and the other Kairos books, and this fic takes that to the logical conclusion: Nita finds herself in New England, seeks out a local Advisory wizard for help, and guess what, it’s Meg! Obviously. Conversation reframes the Kairos books as Ordeals and it honestly makes so much sense. 

3.  “Death Rode Into Hell” by OldToadWoman (The Good Place (TV), Discworld - Terry Pratchett)    The tales of the multiple times Discworld’s DEATH met (or nearly met) Jason Mendoza before their final encounter at the safe. The senses of humor mesh perfectly. Jason IS a Pratchett character, if Pratchett had ever based anything in Disc-Florida. 

4.  “The Farm House” by Wholesome_Soup (Doctor Who (2005), Doctor Who, Time Quintet - Madeleine L‘Engle)    In which the Doctor strikes up a passing friendship with Charles Wallace. Fun fact, the only full season of Doctor Who I’ve ever watched was Eleven’s first, and it was because the first episode was pitched to me as “Wrinkle In Time-feeling.” This captures that energy, although not Eleven.  

5.  “Your Beguiling Personality” by half_a_glass (Howl Series - Diana Wynne Jones, Howl's Moving Castle - All Media Types)   You might recall that the majority of top-fics-I-read last year were DWJ-related, and as “The Invitation: an Epilogue” is STILL going strong as my most popular fic, I had many opportunities to click through and see what new has been posted, that captures the book characters and not the sad excuses for them from the movie (SORRY I’LL STOP). Here is just a snippet of Howl and Sophie being Howl-and-Sophie-ish at each other, which is reason enough to read it.

Top 10 and Some Bonus Umbrella Academy fics I Read This Year

 1. “Broken Clocks” by Gin_Juice (a two-part series of “Broken Clocks” and “Lost & Found”)  Probably I wouldn’t have gotten so completely sucked into Umbrella Academy fic if this hadn’t been one of the first ones I found. Gin Juice (who you’re safe reading anything by, these only make the list instead of any others because I read them first) writes stories that feel just like watching the show at its best: funny, twisty plots and absurd details, hitting the emotions in all the right ways, perfect.

 2. “Klaus's Moving Castle” by destinyandcoins and LittleRit. Hey, let’s combine last year’s fandom-I-read-the-most-from with this year’s! I cannot get over how well this works. Five is Sophie with the opposite problem, and Ben is Calcifer to Klaus’s SO perfect Howl that I found myself unable to even read my OWN Howl fics without picturing him looking exactly like Klaus now. I’d also like to point out that it’s clearly based on the BOOK not movie, and they’ve got the DWJ voice down. Funnily enough, both authors wrote concise, poignant, beautiful and completely-not-funny short pieces of Five in the Apocalypse (epistolary by destinyandcoins and Prose poetry by LittleRit) that both also made my notes of possible best fics of the year, as completely opposite in mood as they are from this!

 3. “Fighting (Pre)Determinism” by chibi_tantei. One of the best things about Umbrella Academy fic is how many writers really take the challenge of exploring time travel seriously, and this story is mindblowing time storytelling, with a great take on Delores that stands out (I kept looking back at my read history thinking “Which was the one with the Delores…?”).

 4. “Lonely Man (i am so lonely too)” by Celestialfeathers. This is a GORGEOUS and moving story about Claire turning out to have prophetic powers and dealing with that and with what “real” is, particularly when Allison does not want to deal with it at all. I knew it would make this list the moment I read it.

  5. “Holding It Together” by sharkneto, who has created an alternate timeline where there's a psychologist and an astrophysicist who genuinely help the Hargreeves with their myriad issues (while throwing in some nailbiting plot too). They’re one of the rare instances of original characters in fanfic that are lovable enough that recently Sharkneto posted a snippet of story just about THEM, before they even met the Hargreeves, because people were asking for it! Sharkneto generally specializes in Five-centric insightful character-studies-with-plot, which I appreciate since we have the same favorite character and all—Seriously, Number Five Hargreeves, you and Gum Baby, welcome to the Newest Inductees to my list of Favorite Fictional Characters of All Time, emphasis on the “All Time” on his part. I love me a mad genius, and this takes a mad genius and piles on SO MANY MORE LAYERS, so traumatized it comes out the other side as absurdity, probably the reason Umbrella Academy lends itself to such great fanfic because he’s a never-ending well of convoluted plot potential who is next to impossible to tie down with any boring SHIPPING plots because he’s really impossible to ship— upon deciding which I somehow almost immediately started shipping him with his adoptive brother—but that’s beside the point. No wait, actually, it’s not, because it’s that the friendship between him and Viktor can just be SOO TENDER that I am a sap for it whether it’s platonic or not, and anyway I think the first Sharkneto fic I read was “Sometimes Age Comes Alone” which features a great amount of that tenderness, platonically, that I bookmarked it under my “5+7” tag anyway. And for something less angsty, here’s Sharkneto exploring my favorite definitely platonic pair-up with Five (yeah, look, no problem shipping him with an adoptive sibling, but with his sister-in-law? That’s just going too far), Five and Lila do a train-heist-esque plot in “Cease-fire on the Cleveland Express”!

 6. “The Best of the Best. Well, Except for Us” by Stephsageek. Also taking the best best frenemies and giving them lots more time to get into hijinks together, let’s pair Five and Lila up as partners at the Commission from the start! You get a buddy-assassin adventure with historical facts mixed with complete absurdity! I would laugh out loud over the twists each new episode would bring and Maddie would always give me this look and I’d be like, “It’s the new chapter of that fic, again! Yes the same one it was last time! Now the Nazi Werewolves she teased are here!” (Note that the sequel DOES ship the two romantically, but technically this Lila hasn’t even met Diego so it’s not so bad).

7. “Lucidity” by BrokeTheLights. This was one of the very first UA fics I read, because I looked them up in the first place because I finished Season Two and thought, “I wonder if anyone has written any good fics exploring the relationship between Klaus and Ben?”— purely platonically, because it was an interesting enough relationship as is! (Season 3 has inspired an uptick in Klaus-slash-Ben fics, on account of Sparrow-Ben, but, no, I’m looking for the Ghost and the Medium Putting Up With Each Other, not shipping). (I also read the comics this summer, but they did not make my list of top books read because really the show took all the best parts of the comics and made them BETTER, with the exception of Diego and Viktor’s— Vanya’s, she’s not trans in the comics— punk band, that was the only thing the comics did better— anyway, the thing that made me saddest in the comics, even beyond that Five and V weren’t even FRIENDS in that one, was the very sad lack of Ghost Ben. GHOST BEN IS IMPORTANT). ANYWAY, so I found this one and it was EXACTLY what I was looking for. And so I kept poking around and got sucked in and it’s been taking up my free time ever since.

 8. “Long Overdue” by BubblyWashingMachine. Okay, I probably shouldn’t admit how morbidly satisfying this one was. And that has nothing to do with it technically being a Fiktor— or in this case Fiveya, it was pre-transition*— fic, because that’s more of a background deal though it’s partially motivational. No, it’s just pure, violent revenge fantasy in which Five has gone back in time to brutally murder Harold Jenkins— brutally, I say! It’s cathartic, delicious, and darkly funny. I KNOW! Gratuitous violence AND pseudo-incest in one fic, I’m such a sicko! (*this is why my bookmark tag is just “5+7,” I don’t care what era it’s from—I DO give a side-eye to anyone not using Viktor’s preferred name and pronouns in anything that was written and takes place Season 3 or later, but otherwise, it’s 5+7, I’m not splitting hairs. Also, “5+7” is very short. Just like them!)

 I feel like I’m being untruthful by not including more 5+7-tagged fics in this list, but I keep looking at them thinking “Is that objectively GOOD or is that the 5+7 talking?” So okay. Here’s a few disgustingly romantic ones, here’s a couple nice post-or-during-season-3 ones so these don’t all say “Vanya,” here’s a user that writes platonic 5+7 so tenderly the voice in the back of my head shouting “NOW KISS!” won’t shut up. Okay, happy?

 9. Okay, let’s counteract that with two completely crack-hilarious ones I can’t decide between: “Twenty-three minutes and thirty-six seconds” by DemonaHW is a very funny and delightfully random adventure about an unexplained temporal anomaly at the Academy; “Open Twenty-Four Hours” by Feech is the iconic diner fight scene if Pinky Pie— yes, the My Little Pony (in Equestria Girls form, but that still gave my mind’s eye a Roger-Rabbitty headache)— happened to be there. Made me wish Maddie had seen Umbrella Academy so as to appreciate it.

 10. And finally for the holiday season, “I’ll Be Home For Christmas (If Only In My Dreams)” by disco_tea is how you WRITE a Christmas in the Apocalypse story. You know you can’t fix everything, but you still need that touch of Christmas Miracle, and this pulls off that bittersweet balance PERFECTLY.

Stuff I wrote! 

Stuff I Wrote, Here on Dreamwidth Edition:

The only thing was my pseudo-eulogy for my dad, which I already linked to. But I got a lot of positive feedback on it, from people who’ve probably never read a single other thing I’ve written, so it’s pretty good, I guess.

Stuff I Wrote, GeekMom Edition:

I think I’ve pretty much given up attempting to write for GeekMom on the whole, but when an actual science fiction book won the Newbery, I HAD to spit out my used-to-be-annual Youth Media Awards announcement for all the geeky parents.

Stuff I Wrote, Fanfic Edition:

 1. “Exploration of the Astral Plane: An Immersive, Multidimensional Study, by Cary Loudermilk, PhD, and Oliver Anthony Bird.” (Legion (TV)) - #1 because I FINISHED it! After YEARS! (well, two years) Nearly a whole year of which was being blocked on how to actually get Oliver lost! But I finally did and it’s pretty good! It’s also sad, but it has to be. :P I mean, the end does. The first four chapters are a lot of fun. The last few chapters have fun bits, too, they’re just also sad.

 2. “A Captain With Seven Children...What's So Fearsome About That?” (The Sound of Music - Rodgers/Hammerstein/Lindsay & Crouse, The Umbrella Academy (TV)) —Despite my having started READING a buttload of Umbrella Academy fic, I had no plans to write any myself until I found myself dreaming about these seven superpowered kids whose father was played by Christopher Plummer, and I went, Oh, My Brain, I See What You Did There, that is… that is actually a very brilliant crossover, thank you, Brain, I shall have to write this now. Christopher Plummer is NOT in my version, but Julie Andrews is— Maria has been plucked out of 1930s Austria and sent to nanny a DIFFERENT seven children of a overly strict father. IT IS SO MUCH FUN TO WRITE THIS. You will not believe how well it fits until you read it. 

3. “Not Just Stupid Kids” (The Umbrella Academy (TV)) —So this was a surprise on several levels. First of all, I never expected to become such a passionate Fiktor shipper— or any kind of shipper; and so I wrote this in an attempt to settle my I-only-like-canon-ships mind by showing how it could fit into canon, in the background. But it was embarrassing, so I posted it anonymously. And then, surprise again, it became my most popular fic of the year. Anonymously. Not sure what that says about people’s opinions of ME. So then, surprise again, it inspired me to write MORE:  

4. “On Soul Mates and Nemeses” (The Umbrella Academy (TV)) —Kind of a sequel, this one is me exploring the inevitability and symbolism and just WHY I feel so strongly about this stupid ship. It’s quite long for a one-shot, but I enjoyed it.    

5. “Everything I Know About Writing the Loudermilk Twins” (Legion (TV)) —Let’s counter that with the utterly platonic super-close pseudo-sibling relationship that holds the number one place in my heart! Being one of the only people writing Legion fics, and currently pretty much THE only person focusing on the founders of Summerland, I just felt like I wanted to ramble about all the Loudermilk headcanons I’ve developed, but there’s no one really to ramble WITH. So instead, I wrote this sort of writing-guide thing that spells it all out. Shockingly, people have actually read and kudoed it. You should too! Because I don’t know, why the heck not?

 6. “Introduction to Infernal and Eternal Crossover” (Community (TV), The Good Place (TV)) — Back on the Random Crossovers I Actually Dreamed theme, my subconscious mixed up my two favorite sitcoms of the 21st century one night and I was like, That works. The actual dream I had wasn’t much of a story I could grasp, but I COULD write Dean Pelton pitching the concept of it (Community College Is the Bad Place) to Shawn at a demon meeting. So I did. Now I’m calling on other people to actually write stories in this shared universe for me, it’d totally be fun.   

7. “Chapter 19.5: Hidden. Safe. Somewhere.” (Legion (TV)) —This is a little missing-scene fic that fixes what I always felt was a loose thread at the end of Legion season 2, and is quite sweet. Unfortunately, what I can only assume was a weird glitch that kept randomly guest-kudoing it kind of soured it for me. I know, you’d think lots of kudos would be a good thing, but it’s too obviously an artificial glitch, because Legion fics just don’t GET that kind of attention, particularly not random little throwaways like this. So I got annoyed that it technically got the most kudos of the year, and came dangerously close to even tying “The Invitation: an Epilogue” for most kudos ever, because it’s not TRUE. I’ve gone back and reread it again now and it IS very sweet, if not deserving of 83 kudos, so I’m rather sad the stupid glitch ruined my feelings toward it. 

I filled out an “AO3 Writer Wrapped” ask-survey thing on Tumblr, further exploring various things I wrote this year, which includes some samples and stuff too. You can click through and read more. I mean. I suppose I’d REALLY prefer if you clicked through TO AO3 and read my ACTUAL FICS and also LEFT COMMENTS on them. But hey. If you’re bored or love me very much.

And that's a wrap! That's all I have for you this year! Or last year now! Anyway, this is again a reminder to LEAVE ME A COMMENT! Here? On my fics? On Facebook or Twitter or Tumblr? Anywhere! I just want some sign I'm not talking into thin air! Anything you might have had a thought about in the course of reading this, I want to hear from YOU! YES, YOU!

Real Life Stuff

 Life Events In Mostly Chronological Order

 1. In March, while the library was in another period of Curbside Only Services, I was weeding the juvenile nonfiction section with the aid of a rolling stool— for sitting, not standing— but nonetheless I SAT on it wrong, it shot out from under me, throwing me backward into the bookshelves where I conked my head and got a concussion. So whoo, me.

 2. So, like, I’m enough of an out of shape klutz that I don’t need to take any MORE avoidable risks with my health, so as soon as we each were able to— the youngest turned 12 just days before vaccines opened for 12yos!— we all got vaccinated against Covid-19, and just in time, because I surely would not have felt comfortable with the next item on this list if we hadn’t been:

 3. In June we drove down to Jacksonville, FL, home of the immortal Jason Mendoza, to visit with my sister-in-law and her family. The little cousins loved the big cousins something fierce. We took some hikes, went to the beach and got really really sunburnt, and took a day trip a little further south to see the Daytona Speedway— which turned out to be interesting even for the non-car-people among us, but was heaven for Sam— and St. Augustine, which I enjoyed more than the rest of my family, although we all enjoyed Cousteau’s, a waffles-and-ice-cream place.

 4. Then in August we FINALLY went camping again after two years missing it, to Gettysburg. We took lots of tours, which reminded me of my dad, who used to be able to GIVE most of those tours by heart— except for the Ghost Tour, which I’d never done before, and proved to be really interesting!

 5. But generally, health around here kind of sucks, mental health particularly. Maddie’s anxiety is at crisis levels but it’s hard to get help when EVERYONE is stressed and all the potential resources have enough else to be dealing with, anyway. Which includes me. Honestly, I could use some help. But so could EVERYONE, so how can I even ask? But maybe being stressed is why Maddie and I have both been the ones in this household to get Breakthrough Covid… TWICE. At least, assumed twice. The first time, in October, I tested positive and Maddie tested negative, although we had the exact same symptoms. The second time, this past WEEK, MADDIE tested positive and I tested negative, although Maddie is much sicker than I am. But NEITHER of us got as sick as we COULD have gotten, because VACCINES DO WORK, DANGIT— maybe they didn’t stop us getting sick, but they DID stop us getting BADLY sick. In fact if this WASN’T a pandemic, none of my symptoms either time might have even convinced me to call off work, that’s how mild they were. Maddie’s current bout is definitely miserable sounding, at least, but no worse than a bad cold. GET VACCINATED.

Christmas

 This is usually the portion of the roundup where I go into everyone’s Christmas Loot for the year, but nothing’s jumping out as particularly exciting. I’ve gotten lots of nice sweaters. I made clothes for people, as usual, too, including a wolf hoodie for Maddie, and then I had a lot of faux-wolf-fur left over so I made another for little cousin Max, so that Max can wear his wolf suit and make mischief of one kind and another (Max really is a wild thing, it’s very appropriate). He looks pretty cute in it, according to the picture I was sent, because while we were supposed to have Christmas with J’s side of the family on Monday, by then Maddie had already tested positive, and although Max is a wild thing, he is too little to be vaccinated and he has asthma, too, so we couldn’t risk it. My family, on the other hand, was supposed to get together on Christmas Eve, but even before Maddie got sick, my sister postponed that one because, although SHE felt fine, there had just been a massive Covid outbreak at her workplace. She never did test positive, herself, but it turned out to be for the best since Maddie ended up getting sick the day before Christmas Eve! So as of this writing, we have not yet had Christmas with the Matviyas. But we WILL! It’s only been postponed! We’re getting the full twelve days and more out of this Christmas, I tell you!

  Library Happenings

Stuff that Happened With the Library, Besides Me Bumping My Head, In Not Exactly Chronological Order:

 1. At the beginning of the year we were in Curbside mode, which meant no in-person programs, which meant still lots of video programs! I don’t know if I mentioned last year that the children’s department was switching off Saturday video storytimes, too? Anyway, that was how I squeezed in my annual Mock Caldecott, through my January “Saturday Family Storytime” slot. I only got three responses, including my own, but that was enough to name a clear winner (The Oldest Student, see below for more reviewiness) AND a clear Honor book (We Are Water Protectors, which of course went on to win the REAL Caldecott and which I reviewed in LAST year’s roundup. Oh yeah, and I did use it for Mundo later, but in March, not April, for "World Water Day").

List within a list: My Top Only 5 Saturday Family story time videos!

1. Mock Caldecott 
2. Happy Birthday Fred Rogers! 
3. World Whale Day  These last three are kind of tied for third place, but the Whale one got two Likes on YouTube…
4. Earth Haiku  …The Haiku one Like…
5. Pets  …and this one no Likes EVEN THOUGH IT’S QUITE NICE ENOUGH THANKS, so I’ll just let the discerning public put them in this order, here.

 2. I also took the Bedtime Stories video for the Spring season, then Anne took it over in June, but she left in October so now I’m doing Bedtime Stories again. Here’s a link to the entire Bedtime Stories playlist, because none of them are sticking out enough for me to pick my top five.

3. But in June, the library opened up to limited in-person services again, and most earth-shakingly, the whole Childrens/YA Department moved downstairs to the main floor. YA got tagged onto the end of the Adult books, and Children’s moved into the downstairs meeting room. The idea is of course to save money by only having the upstairs open for special occasions— now EVERYTHING is a meeting room— and because we’ve been short-staffed, we don’t have to worry about staffing upstairs, or just one person being upstairs alone which is a safety concern (and I’m worried my concussion might have had something to do with pounding that line of thinking in, because I HAD been up there alone and it WAS just luck that someone else happened to come up within minutes for me to say “help” to). Our director did her best to spin this as a positive move, but after half a year I’m still convinced it sucks. Teens no longer have their safe hangout space (not that indoor hangout spaces are currently safe at all, but POST-pandemic!), and small children don’t have the same freedom to be kids (ie, loud), butted right up next to the quiet grownup library like this. And there’s no more play area, which has disappointed many a group of young visitors and their harried grownups— which, again, is understandable in a pandemic, but AFTER??? And most selfishly, I used to RULE the upstairs. I knew where everything was and what to do in every situation and ALL THE BOOKS— but now I’m in the Grownup section, because there’s no reference desk in the new children’s room, and yes I get to help people with children’s stuff occasionally but I mostly have to do grownup stuff which is NOT my area of expertise, and I STILL don’t know where everything is (not book-wise, I know where the books are; but like, where-is-the-masking-tape-stored-wise) or all the grownup desk policies after half a year and I JUST MISS having a whole children’s library, OKAY?

 4. In person programs also returned, though during the summer we had the benefit of doing them all outside. “Outside,” though, was a park ten minutes away. This wasn’t a problem for the Summer Quest camp so much, because it’s a big enough deal that people sought it out, but I supposedly had an evening storytime at the park this summer, too. No one EVER came. I couldn’t even get rare passers-by to come. But come fall, we’re back indoors, in the now wide-open upstairs “meeting rooms,” in which I took up Yoga Storytime on Monday mornings again, and started a Thursday morning storytime that our director really wanted to be INTERACTIVE!!! and Ms Barb and I were like Isn’t that what we already DO? but anyhoo so I put together a booklist that really leaned INTO interactiveness and for about a month I did that and it was great fun, but then we had like a mass exodus of staff and no longer had enough staff to HAVE Thursday story times, so that was that.

 5. I also staffed two EVENT programs this fall for which I got to dress in costume. Wait, THREE event programs, but I reused the first costume for the second. Fan Fest, our library Not-ComiCon, came back, and I made an awesome Squirrel Girl costume, and manned a Shrinky-Dink making room. Then I wore Squirrel Girl again for our Halloween walk-through trick-or-treat. Then we had storytime with Mrs. Claus, and guess who was Mrs. Claus! (sorry, no pic). Fun stuff. But is it a coincidence that BOTH my bouts of breakthrough Covid set in within a week of both Fan Fest and Mrs. Claus’s storytime? HMMMMM.

And most importantly, library-relatedly:

 Top 5 Mundo Monday Episodes!

I thought maybe I’d do a top 10 for Mundo since I love them all so much, but it turned out there were exactly five in the Must Include category before I got into a much murkier which-ones-are-REALLY-the-best next five, so top 5 is what you get. I mean, watch all of them, I worked really hard, but here’s the cream of the crop:

 1. "Everybody Counts"  As soon as I started flipping through this wild Norwegian “counting book” I knew I needed to use it on Mundo, but how? It’s a complicated seek-and-find you can study for hours? That didn’t stop me giving at least an OVERVIEW (for half an hour) of how it works! It’s super fun, and now you need to find the book yourself so you can find all the secrets and hidden storylines and so forth!

2. "Dayenu!"  This was pure joy to make. I THINK I’d heard this traditional Passover song before, but I had to look it up first— whew, good thing I didn’t have to do it ALL in Hebrew!— but then I got the hang of it and learned to harmonize with myself (and WHY the heck did I give Mundo such a high-pitched voice!) and it’s just a very joyful video, you should watch it just to smile.

3. "Black History Month"  The endpapers of today’s book, Carter Reads the Newspaper, are stuffed full with Black historical icons, and librarian that I am, I felt compelled to identify every one and tie them— when possible— to at least one other book we have in the library. SO many great stories! You will learn (just hints of) so much!

4. "Celebrate Your Name"  When you grow up in the 1980s with a name like “Amy Matviya”— a first name second only to “Jennifer” in commonness, a last name unpronounceable by pretty much everyone you meet— you have a lot of feelings about names. When I found out “Celebrate Your Name Week” exists, I KNEW it had to be a Mundo episode, with Alma and Your Name Is a Song being such perfect stories for it. AND THEN, someone took out Your Name is a Song and KEPT IT OVERDUE! “Celebrate Your Name Week” was technically long gone by the time I got my hands on it, but I made this video anyway, because NAMES!

5. "Going to School"  Mundo went to once a month in the fall, and the videos were allowed to be longer, too (”Everybody Counts” and “Black History Month” were outliers in the earlier part of the year because I JUST COULDN’T HELP IT), so I got to use more books. My First Day had JUST arrived and I stole it before it even finished going through processing, because it was such a perfect opener. Then I found This Is the Way We Go To School which was PERFECT, thematically, but it was also thirty years old, and I could already see at first glance-through that some of it was out of date (THERE WAS STILL A USSR!), so I ended up doing a lot of research so I could annotate with updated information and that was very interesting!

 So we’re not doing Mundo anymore in the coming year, because it takes up too much time now that we’re back to in-person services AND short-staffed, but honestly, I wonder if this might not be my calling? Sharing stories through education and puppetry? I mean my whole working for Sesame Street obsession paired with my story obsession? I was listening to Matt Vogel’s Below the Frame podcast (which I mentioned last year) a few weeks back and, you know, a lot of his guests do several different things for Sesame Street and/or whatever, most commonly puppeteers AND writers, and one of them a few weeks ago said something like, “Well, I had experience writing for puppets,” and I was like THAT’S A THING!?! I now have experience writing for puppets! And truly I’m only middling at puppeteering and video editing and acting on camera, but if I could get a real job WRITING something like Mundo Monday, I mean, that’s what I’m aiming for, isn’t it? 

 But in the meantime, speaking of sharing stories:

  Media Reviews

BOOKS:

Top 5 2021 Picture Books

1. My First Day, by Phung Nguyen Quang and Huynh Kim Lien. I bought this Vietnamese book with the thought of possibly using it for Mundo, and it really did come right on time and was PERFECT for opening the “Going to School” episode. I love how the whole journey is told through school metaphors, even though it doesn’t explicitly SAY that’s where he’s going until he gets there. I love the pictures so animated and flowing!

2. The Rock from the Sky, written and illustrated by Jon Klassen. Have I mentioned lately that I love Jon Klassen? I love Jon Klassen. I love the way his seemingly simple illustrations have such hilarious expression. I love the dry, absurdist humor. I love that his vision exists in the world.    

3. Milo Imagines the World, written by Matt de la Pena, illustrated by Christian Robinson. Have you seen that Christian Robinson has designed a whole line of kids decor and junk for Target this year?  That’s awesome. Christian Robinson needs to be all mainstream like that. I meant to use this for Mundo sometime, but never got the chance.

4. Wonder Walkers, written and illustrated by Micha Archer. This would have been a perfect book to use at my outdoor summer storytime, if anyone had shown up. I probably like this best of all Archer’s books I’ve seen. A lot of them seem too sentimental to me, but the level of, well, wonder in this one is just right.

5. The Octopus Escapes, written by Maile Meloy, illustrated by Felicita Sala. I brought this to Florida to read to J's nephews. They ARE like escaping octopuses.     

Top 5 2020 Picture Books I Crammed in January In Prep For the Mock Caldecott even though it was just a video this year                              

1. In a Jar, written and illustrated by Deborah Marcero. I love this delightful friendship fantasy so much— I mean described like that you already know it’s my sort of book: Delightful. Friendship. Fantasy! I stubbornly dragged a box of jars (and this book) to the park story time every week hoping someone would show and we could make Memory Jars together.

2. If You Come to Earth, written and illustrated by Sophie Blackall. She may already be a multiple Caldecott-er, but I’m not really a huge Blackall fan generally. THIS book, though, is epic! It’s basically a letter to potential alien visitors about what to expect from our weird human society, and it’s ironic that THIS one isn’t one of her winners, because the pictures do a LOT.    

3. The Old Truck, by Jarrett and Jerome Pumphrey. I mistakenly judged this by its cover until multiple mock Caldecott lists made me open it! The artwork is actually made with handmade stamps, which is kind of mindblowing when you see it. And the story itself is beautifully circular between a girl and the truck.

4. The Oldest Student: How Mary Walker Learned to Read, written by Rita Lorraine Hubbard, illustrated by Oge Mora. I love Oge Mora so much, the marvelous things she does with collage! This as I said WON our Mock Caldecott, and I don’t know how much that has to do with my glowing description in the video. I mean I tried to be balanced about every book and what was Caldecott-worthy about it, but it’s possible I wasn’t ENTIRELY objective in my enthusiasm!   

5. Honeybee: the busy life of Apis Mellifera, written by Candace Fleming, illustrated by Eric Rohmann. No shade to him but I actually liked the words better than the pictures in this Mock Caldecott hopeful— they caught the FEEL of bee life! It’s the sort of nonfiction that reminds you that just because something is factual doesn’t mean it can’t be art.                                   

Top 5 Older than 2021 (and some might be 2020 but I didn’t read them for the Mock Caldecott) Picture Books I First Read This Year

1. Everybody Counts: A Counting Story from 0 to 7.5 Billion, written and illustrated by Kristin Roskifte. This book is just mindboggling. And hilarious. It starts out looking so simple and then you start to see how it all intersects, and HOW many stories are playing out in the background, and even when you turn to the so-called “Answers” page it gives you even MORE to discover. I have scanned and studied each page for that Mundo episode and I’m still certain I’ve missed a lot.

2. Tiny Feet Between the Mountains, written and illustrated by Hanna Cha. Actually, I’m almost certain I read this last year but forgot to put it on the spreadsheet, so it didn’t make last year’s roundup. Which is WRONG because it's delightful and definitely one of my recent favorites! I read it in my “Not So Scary Scary Beasts” Mundo episode, which was definitely a contender in the possible top ten Mundo episodes, along with The Girl and the Wolf which just missed making THIS list, but hah I just snuck it in now, look at that.    

3. The Boring Book, by Shinsuke Yoshitake. This isn’t actually a boring book, although it might be mistaken for such at first glance since it’s a little wordier than most modern American picture books (this is from Japan. I’ve got a lot of imports in these lists today! So far we’ve had Vietnam, Norway, and Japan. We’ve got Canada, Australia, and the UK coming up, too, but I guess those don’t count so much since they didn’t have to be translated!). It’s subversive. I cackled aloud sometimes. I read it in a Bedtime Stories video to allegedly put my audience to sleep.     

4. My bed: enchanting ways to fall asleep around the world, by Rebecca Bond, illustrated by Salley Mavor. Speaking of which, this was actually the FIRST book I read for Bedtime Stories. I was kind of channelling Mundo into it since it’s a Mundo-like subject in a bedtime book. I am most taken not with the words, though, as much as the very pretty handsewn models that make up the illustrations.

5. What's My Superpower? By Aviaq Johnston, illustrated by Tim Mack. Here’s the Canadian one— Inuk, specifically. I have used so many books from this publisher, Inhabit Media, which specializes in Inuit authors and storytellers, in my Mundo vids. This one isn’t, like, an Inuit folktale or anything though, it’s a modern story that just happens to take place in an Inuit community— but I still finally found a place for it in my “You Matter” Mundo episode! I love me a super-positive character that’s written in a fun way— Janet from The Good Place? SQUIRREL GIRL? Which, speaking of which, positivity IS really Squirrel Girl's true superpower, what she actually uses to defeat bad guys, so maybe this story’s heroine isn’t so far from being a superhero after all.

Top 5 Longer than Picture Books of 2021

 1. The Stolen Prince of Cloudburst, by Jaclyn Moriarty (and this is the Australian one). I am convinced more all the time that Jaclyn Moriarty is a kindred spirit and also totally has ADHD. That’s part of where that comes from, of course. I feel like she really ought to be my best friend. The latest Kingdoms and Empires book to hit American shores (there’s apparently a newer one out in Australia ALREADY though!), and it’s as unexpected as all the rest, making me laugh and cry in equal measure.

2. Amari and the Night Brothers, by B.B Alston. This was sold to me as “A Wrinkle In Time meets Men in Black,” and I can see both influences. It also feels a lot like those certain boy wizard books in tone, and will most definitely appeal to fans of the same. Honestly, it just feels like a Classic, and I feel like I’ve been TRYING to get everybody at the library to try it without success, which is wrong, because it NEEDS to be a story every fantasy-loving kid reads!          

3. Broken (in the best possible way), by Jenny Lawson. Somebody snuck a grownup book in here! But who isn’t a fan of Jenny and her equally-ADHD twistedness, though ADHD is the least of her issues…which of course is the point of the book, finding humor in even the darkest places. I laughed out loud more at this one than I had at Furiously Happy, but not quite as much as Let’s Pretend This Never Happened— but that’s still an awful lot!

4. City of the Plague God, by Sarwat Chadda. There’s a last-minute author’s note at the beginning saying we totally didn’t mean to release this book about a supernatural pandemic during an actual pandemic, but, um, here it is? And okay, the real-life parallels occasionally inspired shrieking in my audience! And the magical plague-ending was far too good to be true! But this was a fun read regardless, full of cool Mesopotamian myth and creative twists-- you just have to imagine it happening in a parallel universe that hasn’t gone through the past two years. Note: his sequel, which is something about a Chaos God, is still set for upcoming release and I’m like, Can you just, maybe, NOT? Just in case??

5. Kiki Kallira Breaks a Kingdom, by Sangu Mandanna. The last import on the list, the UK one. It involves Indian mythology, but being that we’ve been reading all the Aru Shah books (the latest of which JUST missed this list), that feels more familiar than the Britishness does! Unfortunately the MOST familiar thing about this book is that it’s about a young artist with severe anxiety, like someone else I know. But it’s delightful fun nonetheless, except for ONE particular loss that made Maddie up and say, “Okay, I don’t like this book anymore!” No really, it’s good.        

Top 10 Longer than Picture Books Older Than 2021 I First Read In 2021, because the last six are pretty much tied for fifth place.

1. Little Leaders: Bold Women in Black History, written and illustrated by Vashti Harrison. It’s a collection of one-page biographies, written on a simple reading level and each illustrated with rather chibi-esque portraits, which is why it’s mindblowing how much genuinely fascinating information she managed to cram into each one. I was just looking up a few of the people for my Black History Month video (see above) and got sucked in. I kept saying WHOA! and REALLY? I need to get the rest of the series now.

2. Tristan Strong Destroys the World, by Kwame Mbalia. Loved it maybe more than the first one. Also cried again. The power of STORIES!!! And there’s still Gum Baby!

3. The Witch's Boy, by Kelly Barnhill. For some reason we had two copies of this at the library— I think I bought it twice by accident— and in the process of moving everything downstairs I had to weed one copy out, and since it seemed like something my kids might like I kept it for myself. Then promptly forgot I’d done so until we needed a new book days before my next library shift, and then it was like, Oh, hey, look at this! A unique sort of fantasy, and some of the imagery still pops into my head without prompting months later.     

4. Ghosts of Greenglass House, by Kate Milford. Maddie brought the first book up in conversation right at the beginning of Advent, and I went, hey, there’s other books in that series, and the sequel takes place at Christmas, too, want me to pick it up for us? That was a yes. So we read it this past month by our tree, and I kept seeing stuff about the Waits everywhere, and it was great fun, possibly even more than the first one?

5. When You Trap a Tiger, by Tae Keller. I was all Hey kids, let’s read the Newbery winner, it’s a fantasy for once! It’s actually more magic realism than fantasy, but I for one really appreciated that the tiger WAS real (though a ghost), not just a dream or hallucination, at least.  

6. The Ambrose Deception, by Emily Ecton. One of Maddie’s online friends recommended this, so Maddie was like, Hey, can we read this book? And I was like, I’m pretty sure we have that at the library, I’ll bring it home. And it’s a lot of fun, a quirky, Westing Game-like puzzle mystery. It really should get more attention!

7-9. The Kane Chronicles, by Rick Riordan. What? A Riordan series we hadn’t yet read? We quickly fixed that once Maddie got the whole series as a birthday gift. Or Christmas gift. Some kind of gift? Must have been birthday, because we were reading one of them on the Jacksonville trip in June. Anyway, that’s beside the point. I went in afraid these would feel formulaic— Percy Jackson but with EGYPTIAN gods!— but he really did shake things up enough that it felt exciting and new and just as much fun as his other books.

10. Solutions and Other Problems, by Allie Brosh. Another grownup book! Which is also another humorous memoir from an ADHD woman with mental health issues! This one was somehow both simultaneously funnier and sadder than Hyperbole and a Half was— she was clearly writing out of a very dark time, but found the humor in it nonetheless. And the funny bits were REALLY wheeze-inducing funny.     

Top 3 Rereading Experiences, because although I’ve reread many books for storytime, none of them are sticking out, so I’ll just go with what I reread with MY kids:

The Dark is Rising series, starting with The Dark Is Rising, because we actually started it at the end of last year and it’s another Christmas-set book. I forgot how trippy some of these books get! Love it. And I don’t get why The Grey King won the Newbery because it’s actually the most boring book in the series. Silver on the Tree is wild, though. That one should have won instead. Yes I know it doesn’t work that way.

Nation by Terry Pratchett. Okay, I remembered objectively that this was a great book, but when I read it again to the kids? OH, this IS a GREAT book. Intense and devastating yet humorous and hopeful. This was the only book on this year’s BookRiot spreadsheet that I gave a full five-star rating to. I’m stingy that way. But books don’t get much better than this!

 The Graveyard Book, which I think we started during our first covid isolation when I couldn’t go out and GET a book so I checked what was available on Libby that they might like? And it was Halloweeny, too!

 MOVING VISUAL MEDIA

 I had to make a spreadsheet to figure out how to sort these! There was overlap between movies and series, not enough “returning favorites” to make that a separate category; I thought of splitting them by streaming service but Disney+ dominated and we got ONE count em ONE DVD out of the library… anyway I’m going to go with “Movie,” “Limited Series”— for multipart movies and series that aren’t coming in multiple seasons; and “Series,” because that seemed to work out most evenly, giving lists of five that weren’t unfairly excluding anything super important.

Movies

1. Tick Tick Boom (Netflix)—  Confession: I never got into Rent. It hit just as I was getting OUT of my Broadway Musicals Phase. So I didn’t go into this with any preconceived feelings toward Jonathan Larson, it just seemed interesting. And I unabashedly loved it. I loved the storytelling of it— the narration stringing together the scenes acting it out; I loved the music— better than anything from Rent, I thought actually (*gasp*); I laughed and cried! I’m kind of freaked out that he wrote about feeling like a time bomb was ticking down in his brain and that actually turned out to be basically true! It was wonderful, I definitely recommend checking this one out.

2. Muppets Most Wanted (Disney+)— I never got around to actually seeing this when it was new, which I feel mildly guilty about because apparently that was a common thing and the movie bombed at the box office even though it is both objectively and subjectively better than The Muppets 2011 was. It was delightful, hilarious, and actually focused more on the Muppets than on the humans, yay.

3. Captain Marvel (Disney+)— I forget what I was doing when I went through catching up a bunch of Marvel movies on Disney+ that I’d missed. It turned out I enjoyed this one the most— I honestly thought I’d be into the Ant Man movies but they ended up getting kicked off this list by Encanto this week because the only really memorable part of them was Luis— yeah, he really is the best and should narrate everything— but when I went from them to Captain Marvel something switched in my head and went, “Yeah, this is more like it.” And I don’t know why! It just gelled more for me! Also, Coulson was in it. I miss him. Is this the first year in a long while I haven’t had a season of Agents of SHIELD in this roundup? But oddly, both this and the Ant Man movies both filled in backstory I was missing when I watched WandaVision (see below), AND ended up adding detail to a fanfic I would start writing even later in the year (see belower). Turns out the Marvel parts of that story would be influenced most by Agent Carter, Ant Man, and Captain Marvel. Who knew.

4. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part (the library)— it’s weird how long it takes to get around to something when it isn’t on your streaming services. Sam has been saying, “Why haven’t we watched the 2nd Lego Movie yet?” for YEARS. Or, since whenever this came out. I FINALLY brought it home from the library one day and we FINALLY sat and watched it and it’s ALMOST as good as the first one. Also the mom is played by the Judge from The Good Place, which totally went right over the kids’ heads.

5. Encanto (Disney+)— Maddie had seen bits and pieces of things online, so when we found ourselves stuck at home on Christmas Eve and decided to watch a movie, Maddie demanded this one! It was fun and visually stunning, though maybe not the most memorable of recent Disney movies on the whole. But we enjoyed it a lot, and Maddie is obsessed. 

Limited Series

1. Get Back (Disney+)—You’d think Beatles things wouldn’t excite me any more. I’ve seen it all, I know it all? But there was stuff in this that felt new anyway! And it was great just to sit there being there with them! And funny to watch them just working out songs that I have so memorized, like, how do they not know the words to this one? Oh because they HAVEN’T WRITTEN THEM YET. And I kind of dug having so many other non-Beatlemaniacs getting into this at the same time. This guy came into the library, rough-looking older man who doesn’t know how to wear a mask correctly, but he checked out the companion book to this special and I said, “Oh, I was just watching that before I came here today!” and we got into an enthusiastic discussion about it— who would have thought we’d have anything to talk about? 

2. WandaVision (Disney+)— Oh yeah, my kind of TV show. If anything I wanted it to be WEIRDER (I am a Legion fan, after all). But the way they played with genre and format for the sake of telling a particular story was totally awesome. And I loved the eerie theme music at the end so much I’d sit and watch the whole credits every time even though they were really long— besides, I was never ready for the episode to be over!

3. McCartney 321 (Hulu)— Speaking of which, when this ended I also went “that’s all? No, I want more! So what if it’s just my favorite composer talking about his songs, he has A LOT MORE SONGS STILL!” I read a review that said, “This is for the real music/Beatle/McCartney nerds out there,” and I was like, “Whelp, that’s ME!”

4. Over the Garden Wall (Hulu)— No wait, this we definitely watched in place of our evening read-aloud during the covid quarantine in October, the nights my voice was too scratchy to read. I was like, “I’ve always heard this was good and perfect for Halloween-time,” but I must say I didn’t know what we were getting into. It was very funny and very weird, and Sam’s review sums it up best: “I have no idea what the freak I just watched, but I loved it!”

5. Marvel’s 616 (Disney+)— I was just looking for something short to fill a bit of time and found this series of documentaries. I was thoroughly sucked in in just the first minute about Japanese Spider-Man (and laughed a lot). Each “episode” is totally different in style and some are more compelling than others, but on the whole they were fascinating and fun.

Series

1. Only Murders In the Building (Hulu)—I binged this on the October covid sit-in, too, just for me. My mom is always asking what I’ve watched good recently and I’m always like, I don’t know, but I saw this and was like MOM! You would totally love this one! It is a humorous mystery starring some of your favorite actors! It’s on Hulu though! And I’m not entirely sure my mom totally understands what Hulu IS? Anyway, side note: the actress who plays Jan looks EXACTLY LIKE JASON’S AUNT BUT BLONDE. I was going nuts trying to figure out why she looked so familiar, and felt even more nuts when I looked at IMDB and there was NOTHING there that I would have seen enough to inspire THIS level of familiarity, and then it hit me! And we’ve now got their Christmas picture hanging up and every time I see it I’m like “OMG it’s Jan from Only Murders oh wait that’s still just Aunt Lynnie.”

2. Loki (Disney+)— This is the first and so far only MCU show I’ve watched with my kids! Maddie pointed out how awesome the title fonts were every time! They’re familiar with Loki mainly from the Magnus Chase books, and that was apparently enough to appreciate the MCU version. It really was a delightfully fun show. And we are all team Alligator Loki. And Mobius better get his jet ski next season.

3. The Mysterious Benedict Society (Disney+)— Speaking of books and my kids, I asked them some months back what their favorite thing we read together was that was NOT Harry Potter or Lemony Snicket or Rick Riordan, and I was surprised and delighted that this was the immediate answer. Such that when they saw ads for this D+ series they were messaging them back and forth to each other and not even remembering to include ME in the excitement until later! I am surprised that this series got almost NO buzz— I heard about it when my kids told me, which was the day before the first episode aired— but it was really good! And almost surprisingly true to the book! The casting of the kids was EXCELLENT (though I never quite adjusted to Constance’s accent— and I understand WHY they couldn’t actually cast her to age but still that would have been fun) and everyone else was pretty good too. I wanted more to a certain reunion at the end, but that part makes me inordinately sappy anyway. I assume next season will be the next book!

4. The Babysitters Club (Netflix)— Whereas each season of this is several books and seems all too short! I’m still impressed with how they managed to update storylines while keeping it feeling absolutely true to the originals, to the point where you forget what did and did not actually happen in the books! But I can’t believe they killed off [redacted] BETWEEN SEASONS! I was like WAIT, he’s just GONE??? He was barely THERE!

5. Breeders (Hulu)—Probably because they jumped ahead a few years and the kids are closer in age to my own, a lot in this season hit a little too painfully close to home, so the drama outweighed the comedy for me! I mean I cried more than I laughed and this is supposed to be a(n admittedly dark) comedy, but it was in a good way? But speaking of great casting of kids, I could have sworn the kids from last season just supernaturally matured extra fast instead of that they just cast older kids, because MAN. Those ARE the same kids, just with different names. And they aged really fast.

 Honorable Mention: I put a lot of CrashCourse (YouTube) on while I was sewing this year. Psychology, Philosophy, all the Literatures, History, Film, Geography, Intellectual Property… uh, yeah. A LOT of CrashCourse. Because it’s halfway between a podcast and a thing you have to WATCH, so it’s good for sewing.

The Podcasts, by the way

My favorite podcasts are still Fuse 8 and Kate, Movin’ Right Along, and Below the Frame, but the podcasts I added to my rotation this year are:

Muppeturgy, an analysis of each episode of The Muppet Show by Real Theater People. I tend to glom onto Muppet podcasts, don’t I. The Movin’ Right Along folks do other podcasts in shorter seasons, too, that I like— I particularly enjoyed To Introduce Our Guest Star earlier this year.

The Secrets of Story Podcast, run by Fuse 8’s husband Matt and author James Kennedy, who mostly argue with each other, which can sometimes get annoying, but other times they do make funny or rather brilliant observations about story structure. The episode that likened sucking an audience into a story to recruiting them into a cult was particularly wild.

 
Other Stuff I Wrote

My Single Solitary 2021 GeekMom Article

"Speak Up for the Freedom to Read!" Nothing like the combination of being angry AND knowledgeable to break ones article-writing block. I am still so bothered by how much power totalitarians are gaining simply because the rest of us are just too dang tired to fight back. Book banning is at least something I feel competent enough to keep speaking up against.

The Grand Total of my 2021 DreamWidth Posts

Both of them (not counting last year’s Annual Roundup, which was actually posted January 1st) are actually about the same subject as this portion of the roundup:

"I Wish I Had a Critique Group. Too Bad I Have Nothing to Critique,"  was actually more about feeling lonely for creative companionship than particular writing, but

"Unfinished Stories and Other Notes of Scatterbrained Life" goes into quite a lot of what I’m going to write updated notes about from here on in in this section:

The Top (all) 10 Fanfics and Related Stuff Published in 2021

On the other hand, I DID write a lot of fic this year. These are in order of how badly I want you to read them. Read them, please do, and leave me comments! I’m needy like that!

 1. “Two (or Three) Mutant Freaks Against the Fourth Grade” (Legion (TV)) --  I will keep harping on this one because it is objectively one of my MOST FAVORITES and yet SOMEHOW has gotten the least number of hits of any of my fics except my latest (see below). And you don’t even need to know anything about the show to appreciate it! It’s just a sweet middle grade story about a new kid with ADHD trying to make friends with the class weirdo with ASD and they end up bonding over the HUGE SECRETS they both are harboring! How can you not love it? Please shower love over my favorite story, please?

 2. “Tesseract” (Kairos (O'Keefe) Series - Madeleine L'Engle, Marvel Cinematic Universe) -- Now, this may soon become my favorite of my own fanfics, and it is the newest so that could account for it having currently the least number of hits, but on the other hand it is NOT a cult fandom but two rather big ones so why HASN’T it gotten many hits, but on the other other hand, I admit this is only the first of several chapters and perhaps people don’t want to be left hanging, although of course it is backstory and everyone who knows the original story (one half at least) knows where it’s going. ANYWAY, so when two of your favorite stories both incorporate the same not-exactly-common concept into their story lines, you end up making up headcanons like “It was totally SHIELD that hired Mr-Dr. Murry to study the Tesseract,” and maybe you don’t automatically start writing a story for the headcanon, but a couple months ago I said, “Hey, why DON’T I write a story for that headcanon?” and it’s really fun and I can’t wait to post ie finish the rest of it because Chapter 3 has already made me cry several times, it’s great! So check out Chapter One and tell me how excited YOU are for me to finish the rest, too, because that will give me more incentive to overcome my executive function disorder!

 3. “A Strictly Scholarly Collaboration: the Original Romance of the Mind” (Legion (TV)) --  Another one that MAY be fanfic for a cult TV show but it can totally stand alone for people who don't know the show, as a bantery college romance with psychic shenanigans! In which the hero is the ADHD kid from story #1, all grown up and rakish! But you don’t even need to read that one first! Although you should have since I told you to read it! And then you can read:

 4. Or 3.5 “Two (or Three) Mutant Freaks and the Strictly Scholarly Collaboration” (Legion (TV)) --  …because it’s basically bonus scenes for #3, that place it into the universe of #1, ie, the universe where Cary and Oliver became friends in elementary school and so would already be besties when Melanie eventually came into their lives! It doesn’t QUITE stand alone, as it basically dovetails into #3, and assumes SOME basic understanding of Cary and Kerry’s relationship, but you’ll have that since you’ve already read #1!

 5. “Two (or Three) Mutant Freaks and the Adolescent Melodrama” (Legion (TV))--  Or maybe you’ve even read this one, which takes place BEFORE that in the Childhood Friends AU, Cary and Oliver’s high school years! It’s also kind of my treatise on asexuality through fiction! This also has the highest ratio of kudos to hits of all my fics so you know at least other people think it’s a good one!

 6. “Exploration of the Astral Plane: An Immersive, Multidimensional Study, by Cary Loudermilk, PhD, and Oliver Anthony Bird.” (Legion (TV)) --  Okay, this one DOES assume previous knowledge of the characters, but only what you would have already gleaned from reading #1, 3, 4, and 5. It directly leads INTO show canon events, but still 20 years before the show actually takes place, so all the prerequisite you need is in what I already told you to read, and it’s worth it because this is delightful and stuffed FULL of psychic shenanigans! On the negative side, things ARE about to go bad from a fictional standpoint, and from a real life standpoint I’ve been kind of STUCK on the next chapter for… many months now. Which is surely frustrating if you really want to get INTO the story!

 7. “The Invitation: an epilogue” (Howl's Moving Castle - All Media Types) --  This is lower in the list because it’s quietly becoming my most popular fic, kudos-wise (just one short of my Endgame fic already!) (WAIT, last minute update! Another kudos just came in today! It’s now TIED with Endgame!), so it doesn't really need extra advertising, but still pretty high because anything Diana Wynne Jones is wonderful and, dare I say, there’s a REASON for all the kudos? This takes place mere minutes after the end of the book— so you do need to have read the book— and yes, I honestly believe Howl and Sophie decided to get married immediately, for all the reasons Howl ends up listing in this story but ALSO because he knows in his heart this is the best way to keep him from slithering out of it at the last minute!

8. “The Puppy-Fly Effect” (Back to the Future (Movies)) --  Yes, and this is only lower in the list because it’s the first fic I’ve posted this year, which increases the likelihood that you’ve already read it! It’s another headcanon backstory! I suppose it’s mostly still understandable if you haven’t seen Back to the Future, but who hasn’t seen Back to the Future?! If you haven’t, go fix that first, THEN read my stories!

 9. “The Fall of [Spoilers Redacted]: a Freestyle Ballad by Lester “Apollo” Papadopoulos” (The Trials of Apollo - Rick Riordan) --  This is my attempt at writing a proper funeral ballad! I don’t know why I thought I could, but it was sure fun trying! And it’s not ACTUALLY that bad— some of it is even pretty good! As for whether you need to have previous knowledge of the books, hmm, well it definitely has SPOILERS for the first three books of The Trials of Apollo because it’s basically a RECAP of the first three books of The Trials of Apollo, so basically it’ll TELL you the story you’re not reading? Although there are also more than a few vague lines that are basically inside JOKES if you’ve read the books. So, I guess that’s why I haven’t listed this one higher. I don't know whether or not you had to have read the books before. And I'm also self-conscious of my poetic abilities. Although proud of them at the same time.

 10. “Rewind” (Original Work) --  Now technically I should have listed this one at the top, because it requires no previous fandom knowledge AT ALL since it’s an entirely original story! But I’m also less attached to it that way, since the characters— well, the main character doesn’t even have a name! It’s more of a plot-based writing exercise than a character-based one. I signed up for a fic writing challenge— such a challenge was how I got into fanfic in the first place— though this one is only tangentially related to fandoms— it hearkened back to a challenge the Inklings had once given each other. The challenge was that you have to explore a theme from a Christian worldview— mine is mostly about Humility (”Let go and let God” was my basis) with a touch of Stewardship and Grace— through a particular genre category— as Team Tolkien I had to do either High Fantasy or Time Travel, and I went with Time Travel, because it’s curiously a theme that shows up a lot in my fic! It’s much more PLOTTED OUT than I usually write stories, because it had to be, so, it’s pretty cool, you should check it out, even if I did list it last! This is still the list of TOP ten stories, even if there WERE only ten!

This Year’s Works In Progress:

 Obviously, the end of “Exploration of the Astral Plane” and most of “Tesseract.” I’ve got a few more Legion one-shots, too, with a small one that takes place in between seasons 2 and 3 that is almost complete.

 All the DWJ fanfic reading—see below-- inspired me to write my own headcanon crossover between HMC and Chrestomanci, in which Chrestomanci strongly suggests that Cat take on Morgan Jenkins-Pendragon as an apprentice. I don’t have much, but what I have is kind of perfect. I want to reread some more Chrestomanci to get me back in the voices, though!

 I’ve also made an attempt to wrangle my long and complex Ghosts I Have Been headcanons into a simple fic. Written in first person voices of hundred-year-past young adults in Missouri. Really have to do some rereading to make sure THOSE voices are right, too, before I share!

The Top 10 FanFics I READ

I guess this actually belongs up in the Media Review section, except it’s so closely tied to my writing fanfic. Usually, to find fics, I’d just click on the fandom name on one of my own fics and see what showed up that was interesting, which is why most of these are from fandoms I have fics in. But reading fanfic in general is something I’ve definitely done more of this year than I ever have before. Here’s the ten that, when I looked back through my AO3 history, stuck out as most memorable (in a good way). 

 I am not sure what order to put these in so let me split it up by fandom?

 I probably read the most in the various Diana Wynne Jones fandoms, which often cross over:

 “Little Saucepan,” by Batastrophe, a work both funny and touching in which Howl takes Sophie and Morgan to a real Welsh rugby match.

 “In Which Sophie Questions Howl's Hobbies,” by HannaM-- This has no right to work so well. It’s a meta crack fic in which Howl writes fanfic and somehow it’s both ridiculous and PERFECTLY PLAUSIBLE.

 “a map of those who used to live here,” by Pieandsouffle-- Lovely HMC backstory of how Michael came to be Howl’s apprentice. It may never be finished, but what is there is wonderful, so I hope it will be someday!

 “A Tale of Too Many Worlds,” by Rhymer23 --a Howl’s Moving Castle/Chrestomanci crossover that manages to be epic, in character, funny, and moving all at once.

 “Letters between the Related Worlds,” by Maman --  Another, much simpler HMC/Chrestomanci crossover told as a series of notes between the characters. I commented that I just wanted the letters to keep going!

There’s not enough Legion TV fic, especially fic that actually deals with MY favorite characters (Summerland Generation One! The Birds and Loudermilks! The ones that were created especially for the show and so don’t appear in the comics and that’s sad!), and when you take out sex-heavy fic there’s even less, but here are three I really loved this year:

 “Phenomena,” by Thornvale -- The most surreal and confusing yet gripping and in-character Legion fic I’ve read. And actually starring Summerland Generation One, for once! I LIKE when people put this much effort into Legion backstory!

 “Enter the Maze,” by Hexiva  -- Lovely surreal and twisty little brainwarp that also contains a bit of Oliver being delightful! YAY! Sometimes fics based at the time of the show DO feature delightful Oliverness!

 “When My Fist Clenches, Crack It Open,” (specifically chapter 187) by Versaphile -- Okay, while Versaphile is my #1 fic-writing cheerleader and I like to support what they do, I will admit this is an insanely long fic and I don’t expect you to read it unless you’re a Legion fanatic or someone who really wished Season Three could have just been David getting the therapy he really needed; BUT I have to shout out to this chapter, chapter 187, which is not only intense and surreal and amazing, it also uses one of my favorite picture books as a really appropriate basis, and it is absolutely the best thing I read in fanfic this year!

 It occurs to me that MOST Legion fic writers actually write fics that are surreal and trippy like the show, while here I am writing middle grade about people making friends. OH WELL, such am I.

 I have read bunches of Trials of Apollo fic, including some ongoing ones that are STILL ongoing, but only one made this top ten when I set out to pull the BEST ones out:

 “see you yesterday,” by JustMcShane -- Lovely post-series adventure for Apollo and Meg, that manages to bring in more and different mythology!

 And occasionally, through clicking on other users and such, I do end up reading fics in fandoms I HAVEN’T written for. I have no idea how I stumbled on this one now, but it IS probably my favorite of those I found:

 “Happily Ever After,” by PenguinsOnJumpers  --They haven’t finished with part “After” yet, but the first two parts are a rather brilliant mashup in which the Marauders of Harry Potter backstory find themselves in The Good Place as run by Michael and Janet. It really works and will satisfy fans of both properties!