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Book reviews by library staff and guest contributors
I think it’s pretty safe to say that we’d like to have Mary Roach in our high school science classes. Her ‘can-you-believe-this’ odd factoid interjections would likely liven up most classrooms while making those facts that teacher presents stick all the better.
Once again, I find myself captivated by a book that begins with a sad and messed up family, careens through tragedy and ends up with glimmers of light at the end of the tunnel.
It's fall! And Bella, like so many four and five year olds, CANNOT sit still. All she wants to do is be outside. She whirls and twirls and crinkles and crackles in the leaves, she stretches and reaches, picks and plucks fall apples, but her favorite fall coat is becoming too small. Thanks goodness for grandmas. This beautifully illustrated picture book will have your toddler whirling and twirling with it's vivid language, but also might help start a conversation about how sadly, not all things like favorite coats and seasons last for ever.
Meddelin Chan's tightly knit Chinese-Indonesian family runs a full-service wedding business that provides cakes (Big Aunt), hair and make-up (Second Aunt), flowers (Meddie's mom), entertainment (Fourth Aunt), and photography (Meddie). A spectacularly rich couple hire the Chan's for their biggest event yet, a grand wedding to be held at an exclusive resort on an island off the coast of California. Things go wrong almost immediately. Some of the "wrong" includes a dead body, groomsmen too drunk to get dressed for the wedding, a major theft and an impending storm.
It may seem incongruous that The Ninth Hour, Alice McDermott’s exquisite family saga of faith, sacrifice and grace, should begin with a suicide. When Jim shoos his young wife Annie out of their Brooklyn tenement to do some shopping, locks the door behind her and turns on the gas, it looks as bleak as could be for the young widow. Early-twentieth century Brooklyn is a tough place for its many inhabitants, and particularly so for a young Irish widow with a baby on the way.
The fall sports season has started and what better way to start it with a top 10 list from Booklist. The latest is for new sports books. This diverse list includes books about polo in the inner city, tennis stars, soccer players, a woman boxer, football in WWII, and Victorian spiritualists. Are there any titles that you would add?
There are some books that make me feel like I'm smiling from the first page to the last. I finish the book and immediately want to tell everyone about the delight I had in reading it (I think I've already mentioned it to multiple co-workers). Such was the case with A Marvellous Light, a debut queer fantasy novel full of "magic, contracts, and conspiracies".
Twelve topics related to Native Americans' experiences are represented in this picture book designed as a student information fair. The story starts in a classroom with students signing up for ten-minute long presentations. Topics range from assimilation and allotment to relocation, the Indian New Deal and language revival. In the subsequent pages, each topic receives a full spread illustration depicting the topic during the time period in which it took place, always ending with the words, "We are still here!"
PI Nils Shapiro has seen some dirty crime scenes, but none like this. In an otherwise immaculate house in Minneapolis’s snobbiest suburb, there are heaps of vacuum bag dust—and under one of those heaps is the corpse of Maggie Somerville, freshly divorced and Edina’s first murder victim in decades. The killer obviously knew what he/she was doing—the presence of so much dust makes forensic analysis impossible and an overnight snowstorm obliterated any exterior trails. This seemly impossible case is the set up for Matt Goldman’s debut Gone to Dust.
Mila Has Two Beds shares a story familiar to many children – going between two houses and two parents. Mila says goodbye to “Sweet Daddy” and her dog, Pepper, and returns to the “Mommy-house” and “smiling Mommy”. The illustrations are drenched in color and show happy and cozy scenes and each parent’s house. Mila has a different bed, a different toothbrush, and a different bedtime routine at each house. Even the goodnight wishes are different: “Good night, my darling,” says her Mommy, and “Nighty-night, little princess,” says her Daddy.
