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Book reviews by library staff and guest contributors
The most tragic shipwreck in history may be one very few people remember. It’s not the Titanic. It is the World War II sinking of the German military transport ship Wilhelm Gustloff in January 1945. On a ship designed to carry 1,465 passengers and crew, 10,582 desperate refugees from the Balkans and Eastern Europe, fleeing the advancing Russian troops, crammed on-board. Two torpedoes fired from a Russian submarine sank the ship and 9,343 passengers drowned, including 5,000 children.
This fascinating social history tracks the institution, or what is now known as an "institution", of marriage through all its practical, political, religious, and romantic iterations and uses. There are surprising arrangements and partnerships between families, clans, or individual people at just about every point in history from pre-history to today. Like most social histories, a major takeaway that the "good old days" never existed, and that the soaring divorce rates are directly tied to the very new idea that marriage is based on romantic love, intimacy, and personal fulfillment.
I liked Jewell Parker Rhodes' book Towers Falling. So it was with great anticipation that I picked up her newest, Ghost Boys. Ghost Boys confronts another difficult, and all too real issue in today's society. Twelve-year old Jerome is shot and killed by a police officer while playing with a toy gun in a park near his house. Now, as a ghost, Jerome sees the devastating aftermath of his killing on his family, his friend, and his community. Jerome meets the ghost of Emmett Till and hundreds of other ghost boys roaming the earth as their tragic history keeps replaying.
One of the awards announced Monday in Seattle is the William C Morris YA Debut Award. This is a lesser known award (compared to the big hitters like Newbery and Cadlecott), but it's the one I look most forward to. They release a list of finalists in December, so right there you have a handful of brand new YA authors you know you should keep an eye on. And the choices are always thoughtful, exciting, and fresh.
Purple and Black is brilliantly done - a gem of a book (if I may be so cliche). Tightly woven. Thought-provoking. And all of that in a slender 113 pages. This is a fantasy novel, but don't let that prevent you reading it. It's only a fantasy in that it has a made up country. Everything else about it reads like historical fiction.
This year's Newbery Medal went to Merci Suarez Changes Gears, a snappy and emotional novel about a middle school, family, and how little life changes add up fast. Sixth grade is not off to a great start for Merci-- things she's always loved to do are no long "cool", friendships seem to suddenly come with all these unwritten rules, and her beloved grandfather is acting more and more confused.
Sophie Blackall has won the Caldecott Medal for her incredible ode to lighthouses and the extraordinary lives of lighthouse keepers and their families. Blackall has illustrated such a broad range of books for children, including a board book featuring a GLBT family, the chapter book series, Ivy & Bean, and picture books about wild boars who go out to dinner, an only child who wishe
The American Library Association (ALA) announced the top books, video and audio books for children and young adults, including the Caldecott, Coretta Scott King, Newbery and Printz awards at its Midwinter Meeting and Exhibits in Seattle today.
If there is one thing the collective body of literature about frontier life has told us, it's that life on the prairie was rough stuff. In Caroline Starr Rose's riveting novel in verse, a lone little girl goes up against the Kansas grasslands, where being alone means being ALONE, and winter can come as early as it wants.
This is a collection of five elegant and horrifying graphic short stories that take place in or around the woods.
