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The Accidental Law Librarian by Anthony Aycoch
Along a Long Road by Frank Viva
Amy and Roger's Epic Detour by Morgan Matson
As Simple as It Seems by Sarah Weeks
Beating the Lunch Box Blues by J.M. Hirsch
Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys
Binky the Space Cat by Ashley Spires
Birds of a Feather by Francisco Pittau and Bernadette Gervais
The Bride's Kimono by Sujata Massey
Claude Monet: The Painter Who Stopped the Trains by P.I. Maltbie
City of Thieves by David Benioff
Devil May Care by Elizabeth Peters
A Dog's Heart by Mikhail Bulgakov
The Dogma of Cats for Kids by Debra Snyder
Drive by Andrew Bush
Everything but the Horse by Holly Hobbie
Firestorm by Nevada Barr
The Floating Girl by Sujata Massey
For the Love of Autumn by Patricia Polacco
Fuddles by Frans Vischer
I'm a Shark by Bob Shea
A King's Ransom by Jude Watson
Lettice the Flying Rabbit by Mandy Stanley
The Man with the Violin by Kathy Stinson
The Many Faces of George Washington by Carla Killough McClafferty
The Power of Thinking Differently by Javy W. Galindo
Saints by Gene Luen Yang
Soulless: The Manga, Vol. 2 by Gail Carriger
Tina's Mouth: An Existential Comic Diary by Keshni Kashyap
The Whale: In Search of the Giants of the Sea by Philip Hoare
Wind Song by Carl Sandburg

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Between Shades of Gray: 12/10/13

cover art

Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys is the story of a girl and her family and their fight to survive as they are taken into custody by the Soviets.

Lina, the protagonist, tries to make sense of their uprooting and to stay sane through her artwork. She doodles in the dust of the train. She doodles on scraps on paper and later on a note book she's given. Later she tries to use her drawings to send messages of their whereabouts to their father — who has been imprisoned as an enemy of the state.

This is another audio I wish I had read in print. With so many novels narrated by young female protagonists, the audios so often end up with overly chipper readers. Between Shades of Gray suffers from too upbeat a reading even as Lina is describing atrocity after atrocity.

Three stars

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