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Book reviews by library staff and guest contributors
In the first book of what will be the Burning Kingdoms trilogy Tasha Suri takes the reader into a intricately built and richly detailed fantasy world based on the history and epics of India. She centers her story of empires and colonialism on two strong young women who find that their "destinies [will] become irrevocably tangled".
This little guide starts out as the career story of a young black art history major from private liberal arts women's college Smith. Kimberly Drew navigates academic coursework with part-time jobs, internships and gallery opportunities while also creating, curating and providing content for a contemporary black art blog on Tumblr. She was at work at a new job as an assistant at a privately owned art gallery for ten days when Eric Garner was killed in the New York City borough of Staten Island and when about three weeks later Michael Brown was fatally shot in Ferguson, Missouri.
Part of a phenomenal new series of board and picture books, Storytelling Math, What Will Fit follows a little girl at a Farmer’s Market as she looks for the perfect item to fit into her basket. She tries a beet (too small), a zucchini (too tall), and a few other items before finding something that fits perfectly. This installment of the series focuses on spatial sense. Others focus on early geometry, patterns, and other math concepts.
The following article in Booklist caught my eye: "Trend Alert: Memoirs in Essays". A memoir in essay is a "book-length collection of linked essays, centered on an author's self or life" according to this article from LitHub (which also has some good title suggestions). So I decided to do some more exploring. Below are some books from the article as well as other titles that I discovered along the way.
After the hellish experience of the past few years, Aki Ito finally feels like it might be possible to be happy again. She and her parents are about to leave Manzanar, the California desert internment camp into which her family and other Japanese-Americans were forced by the government following Pearl Harbor, for an unfamiliar Chicago neighborhood the government has deemed acceptable for ‘resettlement’.
I am shallow enough to say that I do sometimes pick a book by it's cover. So, confession made, I'll say if I knew nothing else about Harper St. George's new historical romance series, I would have picked up the books for the gorgeous covers alone. Luckily for me, the stories have fulfilled the promise of those eye-catching covers.
This sunny, inviting board book is dedicated to the former Canadian Indian Residential School students and their families as encouragement to find happiness, love, joy, and celebration in big and small ways. Contemporary children participate in cultural activities like baking bannock in an oven and universal moments like singing, dancing and walking barefoot in the grass. Author Monique Gray Smith is of Cree, Lakota and Scottish descent and writes award-winning children's and young adult books. She's also an international inspirational speaker and consultant working with Indigenous commu
As I've mentioned in the past, Booklist does many annual top 10 lists. Today I ran across their new one for biographies with a focus on trailblazers who changed the world.
Do you remember where you were on September 11, 2001? I was at home, watching the news, I stepped away to help my young daughter and when I came back, the South Tower was gone.
A few years ago, my son's fifth grade class read Towers Falling by Jewell Parker Rhodes. I read along with him, and it was one of the first times that I understood that to my children, and so many others, September 11, 2001 was not a powerful memory or a deep wound, but a historical event.
It shouldn’t be a huge surprise that Michelle Zauner, a musician who goes by Japanese Breakfast, has an interest in food. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It might however be a surprise that Zauner has written such a thoroughly lovely and reflective memoir, called Crying in H Mart, that celebrates Korean food among the sometimes strained bonds of family and cultural identity, in light of her mother’s unexpected cancer death.
