Orphans & Foster Homes

Lasagna Means I Love You by Kate O’Shaughnessy

Children, Family, Juvenile Fiction, Orphans & Foster Homes

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So much love for Lasagna Means I Love You! A lovely novel about how food tells our stories and what means family. When sad circumstances leave Mo alone in the world, she discovers the path to a new beginning is filled with tears, frustration, laughter, love and a full tummy!

Lasagna Means I Love You by Kate O’Shaughnessy, (List Price: $17.99, Knopf Books for Young Readers, 9781984893871, February 2023)

Reviewed by Susan Williams, M. Judson, booksellers in Greenville, South Carolina

The Ogress and the Orphans by Kelly Barnhill

Children, Fantasy & Magic, Mysteries & Detective Stories, Orphans & Foster Homes

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This beautiful tale is cleverly oozling with allegory–but it boils down to a simple message: knowledge, education, and the written word are power, kindness matters, and together we are stronger. Kelly Barnhill has crafted a masterpiece chock full of mistrusting citizens in a ruined village, an ogress with a big heart, orphans who pay attention, crows with a language of their own, a scarily charismatic mayor who isn’t who he seems, and an unnoticed stone at the heart of it all. This reader was thoroughly bedazzled and charmed by its brilliance.

The Ogress and the Orphans by Kelly Barnhill, (List Price: $28, Algonquin Young Readers, 9781643750743, February 2022)

Reviewed by Damita Nocton from The Country Bookshop in Southern Pines, NC