Just finished "Healer of the Water Monster" by Brian Young. I'm reading a bunch of juvenile fiction right now in a quest to have some good recommendations for my kids to read in a few years when they're old enough, and this one definitely makes the cut, with deeply-integrated #OwnVoices Diné cultural elements, good (to my reading) handling of complex topics like divorce and depression, and cool magical elements. This is exactly the kind of new generation of kids' fiction I'm looking for that drops the regressive themes present in so much of what I read at that age. For example, I just before this I read Howl's Moving Castle and then The House of Many Ways by Dianna Wynne Jones, and while the first was pretty much great, the sequel has a whole benevolent monarchy thing that's central to the book in a way that weighs down the politics of the book a lot. Unsurprisingly, the indigenous perspective is a refreshing one.
#AmReading #ReadingNow #Bookstodon