I Want to Be a Vase by Julio Torres, illus. by Julian Glander

 With its bold, aspiring statement title, humorously quotidian central figure, and vibrant digital 3D art, I Want to Be a Vase is a fascinating creation. It concerns what happens when a toilet plunger decides one day that it wants to be a vase. Confusion among the other objects in the apartment ensues, with the vacuum cleaner the loudest naysayer. 

The plunger's determination to become its own version of a vase frees other objects to explore more meaningful work: The stove pot wants to hold trash, the mirror wants to be a pillow ("a sharp, breakable, dangerous pillow!"), and the mug wants to be light (just light, not a lamp). 

The vacuum looses its innards over the perceived chaos, but eventually comes around when it realizes that when everyone has a job they are happy with, its own work can be accomplished faster and easier. 

It's a playful, nuanced story about self-actualization. Reading it to a class of children, I found it to be a little wordy and sly, worth really sitting with and exploring its ideas one-on-one, but I was delighted by the children's observations. One normally very sleepy and quiet boy observed of the first three pages (a view of a city at the foot of a mountain range; the city; the window in an apartment building) that what it was doing "was like a movie," which really seemed sophisticated for a five-year-old. At the end of the story, the Book itself tells the reader it would love to be a hat, and so we took turns with the students trying on different looks, which was a really fun way to end story time. 

-Michael G. 

Half His Age by Jennette McCurdy

Seventeen-year-old Waldo realizes on the first day of senior year that what she wants, more than anything, is her forty-year-old creative writing teacher. Her attraction to him is sparked by his honesty, his frank admission of disappointment in the way his life has turned out. It seems so unlike the evasions and defenses of everyone else she knows. His fine lines, his paunch, even his B.O excite her more than the slim bodies, pouty lips, and floppy hair of her previous lovers. Her pursuit of him is relentless. 

Former child actor Jennette McCurdy made waves with her best-selling memoir I'm Glad My Mom Died and Half His Age is her debut novel. By its very premise and aggressive/suggestive cover, it aims to shock and discomfort. 

As soon as I heard about it on the New York Times podcast I placed a hold and once it was available I read it in three sittings over the course of 24 hours. It's bitingly funny, sad, and thrilling. Waldo dispatches love, boys, her absent mother (who hops from man to man pathologically) with swift and merciless humor, and she herself is not immune from her own cynical judgement. Her binge-eating junk food until it hurts ("I've always derived a strange pleasure from the pain of junk food. Icees vacuumed up through a straw in less than a minute so the brain freeze hits hard. Nachos packed with so many pickled jalapenos that my nose runs. Kettle chips heaped into my mouth, my hand a claw excavator, forcing them in as their rugged edges cut my gums.") and filling online carts with fast fashion she knows she'll never wear are cyclical coping mechanisms for the loneliness and disconnect she feels. 

There is something in Waldo that is akin to the (anti-)heroines of Otessa Moshfegh's Eileen and unnamed protagonist of My Year of Rest and Relaxation: Disaffected and lonely, with an intelligence and humor that eviscerates. 

Will Waldo get what she wants? What does she want, really? McCurdy mixes a blend of unhinged and seductive to comic effect, creating a character and a voice full of desire and rage that is completely her own. 

-Michael G. 

Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash

After Catherine unilaterally decides to open her marriage, the Floyd family descends into chaos, involving multiple over-the-top scandals, each fit for an episode of a zany tv show. 

With its rapid fire wit and colorful characters in a harbor town, this family comedy shares DNA with the cartoon Bob's Burgers. The father fumbles his good intentions, the fabulous mother loves her booze, the daughters are fearless, wacky, and brilliant. There's even a larger-than-life billionaire villain. One of the side characters I loved was "War Crimes Wes," the veteran boyfriend of the eldest daughter who is a staunchly adoring man with no imagination and something like Crohn's Disease, which gives him a pained stoicism everyone immediately respects. Each chapter focuses on the perspective of one character, usually rotating among the family members, but including others, like Wes. 

Though the Floyds share a house, they each live largely separate lives. It is satisfying and lovely to see how they meet up in the end in a patchwork sort of way that affirms what a healthy family looks like. 

-Michael G.