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Book reviews by library staff and guest contributors
For someone with two young children, I can relate to the – sometimes! – grumpy mornings of little ones. In this book, Grumpy Pants by Claire Messer, Penguin is in “a very bad mood.” The rain is falling on Penguin’s yellow hat and jacket. Penguin stomps all the way home and takes off his grumpy coat, grumpy boots, and grumpy socks. He’s still grumpy! In the midst of all his grumpiness, he pauses to take a deep breath and counts – 1, 2, 3. Then he dives into a splashy bathtub.
Expertly researched and timed perfectly to coincide with viewing of The Gilded Age on HBO, Vanderbilt dissects new versus old money and new versus old New York scenarios from that time period in American history. Along the way it leaves the reader baffled at how and why a family fortune was lost in just a few generations.
Booklist puts out many top 10 lists. If you're looking for some new history books to read, then check out Booklist's Top 10 History Books. I know that a number of them are on my to-be-read list.
Piñatas, cakes, rockets, presents, music…what else do you need for a party? Little Lobo and friends are back in this third ¡Vamos! book - winner of this year's Pura Belpré Youth Illustration Award - and are headed across the bridge for a big celebration in a city on the other side of the river in another country.
We kicked off a new year for the Lakeview Mystery Book Group with Ann Cleeves The Long Call and a great start it was. We enjoyed this first in a new police procedural series from the author and had a lively discussion as well.
Another of the the ALA Youth Media Awards honorees that won a number of deserved accolades was Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre written by Carole Boston Weatherford, illustrated by Floyd Cooper.
2022 Awards and Honors:
Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Award Honor
Coretta Scott King (Illustrator) Book Award Winner
Coretta Scott King (Author) Book Award Winner
Caldecott Medal Honor
Donna Seaman's "Core Collection: New and Innovative Black History" in the current Booklist is just in time for Black History Month. It's always nice when someone else puts together an excellent reading list. There are biographies, family histories, memoirs, histories, women's stories and I hope that you can find one (or more) that stimulates your interest. I know I have.
The ALA Youth Media Awards were announced last week and Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley was honored in a number of categories (very deservedly so!).
2022 Awards and Honors:
AILA American Indian Youth Literature Award, Young Adult Honor
William C Morris YA Debut Award Winner
Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature Winner
Molly Gray doesn’t see the world like other people do. The eponymous maid in Nita Prose’s debut mystery, Molly also knows that most people don’t see her either. Not really, at least. At the luxury hotel she works at in Manhattan, her single-minded devotedness to her job mostly makes up for that deficiency, and as long as she can keep the Regency Grand in tip-top shape and maintain her A+ devotion to employee excellence, she can cope with the problems that crop up.
This is partly true. I had been planning to read this book for over a year but it moved to the top of my reading list because I was influenced by the news that Lisa Bonet and Jason Momoa had recently split. Let me start by saying that I think Lenny Kravitz is the coolest human living on planet earth today. This book covers the first 25 years of Lenny's life and I'm hoping that by the time a book about the next 25 years is published, Lenny and Lisa will be reun
