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Book reviews by library staff and guest contributors
If reading history books is up your alley, then check out Booklist's newest top 10 list It includes ancient history, life during the US Civil War, the war in Ukraine, American servicewomen in World War II, and much more. Are there any you would add to the list?
Christine Mangan's first novel Tangerine had Patricia Highsmith vibes. Fair commentary. A description even more true I'd say in this, her sophomore effort in which author Frances "Frankie" Croy travels to Venice to lick her wounds and meets an engaging young woman who inserts herself into Frankie's life with dire results.
An American Story, illustrated by Dare Coulter and written by Kwame Alexander, is the winner of the 2024 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award for outstanding illustrations by an African American artist.
In the author's note, Alexander shares that he wrote this book after realizing that his daughter's teacher had a fear of teaching kids about slavery- she had never been taught how.
This American story opens with the question, "How do you tell a story that starts in Africa and ends in horror?"
Beaming with lightness and brightness, Marla Frazee’s In Every Life shows the great expanse of human experience. With sparse and lyrical text, the book reads like a poem or song. The illustrations show a wide array of people in soft vignettes, along with wordless double-paged spreads. Quietly spectacular scenes show hikers voyaging up a mountain, an adult and child looking out at an expanse of shoreline, and a trio of kids enjoying a windy and flowery hilltop.
This book gave me goosebumps. Setting off on a quest through two different forests, to discover two different, but equally enchanting truths about dragons, a little boy’s adventures come lavishly to life with edge to edge full color ink illustrations. This book is an exploration of Eastern and Western Dragon mythologies, both true and meaningful celebrations of the child’s mixed cultural identities. It is hard to pick a favorite line, a favorite description or depiction in these pages.
Big, illustrated and written by Vashti Harrison, is the winner of the 2024 Randolph Caldecott Medal for most distinguished American picture book for children, a 2024 Coretta Scott King Author Award Honor Book and a 2024 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award Honor Book.
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 LibLearnX: The Library Learning Experience in Baltimore today.
A list of 2024 award winners follows:
An ode to fathers & sons, A Walk in the Woods by Nikki Grimes, Jerry Pinkney, and Brian Pinkney, wends through trees and wildlife to find a special gift. The boy in the story has recently lost his father. In his grief, he discovers a note – a map!
A biography of Thomas Beckett is not exactly something I'd pick up every day. This was actually a jumping off point from an article I was reading that pushed me into a deeper dive. I'm glad for the push as John Guy's detailed account of the martyr is both history and page-turning suspense.
In Sophia N. Lee’s remarkable picture book, Holding On, we meet a delightful granddaughter and her beloved Lola (the Tagalog word for grandmother). Lola loves to tell her granddaughter “If you want to hold on, you gotta sing your songs”, and Lola’s house is full of music and memories. Along with photos, special objects, favorite foods, and stories, Lola’s songs are how she remembers and shares her life and loved ones.
