Unabridged Podcast

Welcome to Unabridged! Ashley and Jen (shown left to right in the photo) talk books, share recommendations, and celebrate all things bookish. On our blog (see our posts below!) we share bookish faves, pub day shout-outs, show notes, and book reviews.

Want to get more involved? Check out our 2023 reading challenge, join our buddy reads or book club on Instagram, or sign up on Patreon!

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Oct 8, 2021
3 min

Jasmine Warga's OTHER WORDS FOR HOME - A Beautiful Portrayal of Coming from Syria to America

by Ashley Dickson-Ellison (@teachingtheapocalypse) Jasmine Warga's Other Words for Home (Amazon | Bookshop.org) Friends, I absolutely LOVED this brilliant middle-grade novel in verse. I had seen recommendations from several bookish friends (including multiple Unabridged Ambassadors!) who read this and had great things to say about it, and I was eager to try it out. (Also, I seem to be on a middle-grade kick here! I haven't really read that many middle-grade books this year, b

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Sep 13, 2021
4 min

Unexpected Joy - 7 YA Lit and Middle-Grade Book Recs that Deliver More than You Expect

by Ashley Dickson-Ellison (@teachingtheapocalypse) On Wednesday, we'll be sharing book recommendations for books we've read that surprised us in the best possible ways and turned out to be more than we expected. In keeping with my recent bookish fave posts featuring YA lit and middle-grade recommendations, I wanted to hone in on a few young adult lit and middle-grade books that also brought me unexpected joy because they were more than I anticipated when I started them. B. B.

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Feb 19, 2021
3 min

Safia Elhillo's HOME IS NOT A COUNTRY - Finding a Way to Inner Peace

by Ashley Dickson-Ellison (@teachingtheapocalypse) Thank you to #partner NetGalley for the advance copy of this book, Safia Elhillo's Home Is Not a Country. This one comes out on March 2nd! In this YA lit novel in verse, teenager Nima explores what her life would be like if she were a different daughter and friend. Living alone with her mom and separated from the homeland where her mother grew up, Nima feels that she doesn't really belong anywhere. She clings to the music and

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Dec 26, 2020
2 min

Featured Books for January 2021

January Double Feature In January, Adib Khorram's Darius the Great Is Not Okay will be both our Book Club pick AND our Buddy Read choice. You can join us for the episode that releases on Wednesday, January 6, or participate in our two Instagram chats . . . or both! Want to look ahead? Scroll down to see our February picks! Here's the synopsis from the publisher: "Darius Kellner speaks better Klingon than Farsi, and he knows more about Hobbit social cues than Persian ones. He'

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Dec 15, 2020
5 min

Pub Day Shout-Outs! December 15, 2020 Special Edition

by Ashley Dickson-Ellison (@teachingtheapocalypse) As we move toward the holidays and the end of the year, there are not many books coming out this week. I wanted to use this as an opportunity to highlight a few of my favorites that I've read so far from our pub day shout-outs! Fredrik Backman's Anxious People Description from Publisher: "Looking at real estate isn’t usually a life-or-death situation, but an apartment open house becomes just that when a failed bank robber bur

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Nov 23, 2020
5 min

9 Books Considering Culture: Coming of Age as Children of Immigrants

by Ashley Dickson-Ellison (@teachingtheapocalypse) In this bookish fave, I wanted to share some of my favorite middle grade and young adult lit recommendations that comment on the experience of children of immigrants. While each story is unique and their life experiences are all quite different, these books have common threads, such as an examination of the different facets that create identity and an exploration of the periodic tension between the parents' native culture and

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Nov 4, 2020
8 min

150 - November Book Club - Ibi Zoboi and Yusef Salaam's PUNCHING THE AIR

In this Book Club episode of the Unabridged podcast, Ashley, Jen, and Sara discuss Ibi Zoboi and Yusef Salaam's Punching the Air. After our Bookish Check-in, we share our opinions about the book and some favorite quotations, and then each of us offers another book we think would pair well with this YA novel in verse. Finally, we end by sharing some new favorites we've discovered lately. Bookish Check-in Ashley - Akwaeke Emezi’s The Death of Vivek Oji Jen - Yaa Gyasi’s Transce

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Nov 1, 2020
3 min

Featured Books for November 2020

November Double Feature In November, Ibi Zoboi and Yusef Salaam's Punching the Air will be both our Book Club pick AND our Buddy Read choice. You can join us for our leisurely Facebook discussion at the end of the month or for two, more fast-paced Instagram chats . . . or both! Want to look ahead? Scroll down to see our December picks! Here's the synopsis from the publisher: "The story that I thought was my life didn’t start on the day I was born "Amal Shahid has always been

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Oct 28, 2020
12 min

149: Read-Aloud Book Recommendations for Parents and Teachers

In this Unabridged Podcast episode, we're discussing books for all levels that we believe would work really well for read aloud choices. We were thrilled to be joined by Holly Hicks, a third-grade teacher and Unabridged Ambassador who has experience choosing and sharing read-aloud picks with her third-grade students. We also share our own experiences with read-aloud picks both at home and in the classroom. Bookish Check-in Ashley - Kate Clayborn’s Love Lettering Jen - Marissa

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Oct 3, 2020
4 min

Featured Books for October 2020

October Books In October we're excited to share an amazing novel, Tommy Orange's There There, our Book Club pick, and Brandy Colbert's YA novel The Voting Booth, our Buddy Read choice. Check out our Book Club discussion on episode 146—it releases on Wednesday, October 7—and let us know if you'd like to join our new Book Club Group on Facebook or our Buddy Read chat on Instagram discussing The Voting Booth! You can DM us @unabridgedpod. Here are synopses from the publishers fo

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Sep 1, 2020
4 min

Pub Day Shout-Outs! for September 1, 2020, featuring Woodson, Cole, and Zoboi and Salaam

by Ashley Dickson-Ellison (@teachingtheapocalypse) Here are three books coming out today that I'm excited to read! Jacqueline Woodson's Before the Ever After Description from Publisher: "National Book Award winner Jacqueline Woodson's stirring novel explores how a family moves forward when their glory days have passed. "For as long as ZJ can remember, his dad has been everyone's hero. As a charming, talented pro football star, he's as beloved to the neighborhood kids he plays

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Aug 31, 2020
4 min

6 Great Novels in Verse to Read Right Now

by Ashley Dickson-Ellison (@teachingtheapocalypse) I don't know about you, but this is a VERY busy time for me! When things feel crazy, I am always on the lookout for quick reads that I'm going to love. This list features some of our favorite authors (both to read and for the classroom) including Jason Reynolds, Jacqueline Woodson, and Elizabeth Acevedo. These novels in verse (along with one memoir in verse) are all middle-grade or YA lit books, but I believe they are all gre

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Aug 19, 2020
28 min

139: Great Book Recommendations - Our Season 4 Recs for Each Other

In today's episode of the Unabridged Podcast, we each do our best to recommend a book that our friends and co-hosts will love. Be sure to listen to our Bookish Check-in and our Give Me One, where we pick a favorite karaoke song. We'd love to know what books you'd recommend for each of us! Bookish Check-in Ashley - Thanhha Lai’s Inside Out and Back Again Jen - Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic (@bookishladiesclub buddy read) Sara - Lori Gottlieb’s Maybe You Should Talk to

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Jun 13, 2020
32 min

Bonus: Re-release of Jason Reynolds Highlight with LONG WAY DOWN, GHOST, and WHEN I WAS THE GREATEST

In this bonus episode, we wanted to share a re-release of an episode highlighting three novels by Jason Reynolds, one of our favorite Black authors for young people and for the classroom. We feel his body of work has applications across many age levels and grades. You can check out his body of work here. We tried to go very light on the spoilers in this episode, but a few minor spoilers were hard to avoid as we revealed what we loved about these books. Timeline Introduction a

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Jun 10, 2020
46 min

129: Re-release of Angie Thomas's THE HATE U GIVE Book Club Discussion

In light of the unjust loss of Black lives in America and of the Black Lives Matter movement, we wanted to share an episode from 2018 where, for our book club, we discussed one of our favorite YA literature books for the classroom, Angie Thomas's The Hate U Give. In the episode, we discuss the novel and share pairings including Gabrielle Union's We're Going to Need More Wine, Clemantine Wamariya and Elizabeth Weil's The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes Aft

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Jan 22, 2020
2 min

Welcome - Introduction and Overview

Just getting started with Unabridged Podcast? Welcome! We're Ashley, Jen, and Sara, and we are teachers and podcasters who are passionate about books. We have four kinds of posts here on our blog. On Mondays, we post about our Bookish Faves, on Tuesdays we do Pub Day Shout-outs, on Wednesdays our episodes drop, and on Fridays, we post book reviews. (Be on the lookout on Thursdays, too; we sometimes have an extra post then!) There are many ways to connect with us! In addition

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Sep 4, 2019
1 min

89: Elizabeth Acevedo's WITH THE FIRE ON HIGH - On Her Side

We're thrilled to discuss Elizabeth Acevedo's sophomore novel, With the Fire on High. Protagonist Emoni is a high school student, a mother, a granddaughter, and an amazingly inspired chef in training. Listen in for our discussion of the ways that Acevedo counters our expectations for this character. We offer pairings and recommendations for the ways that teachers can use this book in their classrooms. After you listen, join us on social media throughout September to participa

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Apr 3, 2019
2 min

67: Beth Macy's DOPESICK and Jarrett Krosoczka's HEY KIDDO - Obviously, We Read Both

In this Unabridged podcast episode, we talk about two books that look at drug addiction and its impact on families. Beth Macy's nonfiction book Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America shows the bleak situation of the opioid crisis in America by focusing on the situation within three communities along I-81, the "Heroin Highway" in Virginia. Jarrett J. Krosoczka's Hey, Kiddo: How I Lost My Mother, Found My Father, and Dealt with Family Addiction

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Jan 16, 2019
2 min

56: Unabridged Awards - I Will Qualify Them All

-Alternate Titles- Address the nervousness OR Anticipating it is exciting OR Not a lot of table space for a drum roll OR I guess that was obvious OR What is wrong with you? OR We're going to take a bit of a dip OR Just phenomenal Favorites by Category Mentioned in Episode Jen - Most devastating, gorgeous novel that alternates between time periods - Rebecca Makkai’s The Great Believers Most satisfying end of a long series that I’ve been reading for years - Sarah J. Maas’s King

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Oct 3, 2018
1 min

41 - Every Time I've Read It I've Found Something New to Love: Angie Thomas's THE HATE U GIVE

People like us in situations like this become hashtags, but they rarely get justice. I think we all wait for that one time though, that one time when it ends right. Maybe. ~Angie Thomas's The Hate U Give Note: We read a few passages from the text of the novel that include strong language. Spoilers are inevitable throughout our discussion, so consider whether or not to listen if you haven't yet read the book! Timeline Introduction and Summary of The Hate U Give: 0:00 - 02:10 M

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