Monday, October 13, 2025
Bloodmarked by Tracy Deonn
Monday, October 6, 2025
The I Love You Book by Todd Parr
This colorful book celebrates the unconditional love between parent and child in various situations such as when playing peek-a-boo-boo, feeling sad, scared, brave, cuddling, and other times throughout the day. Reassures the child that they are loved every day no matter what the situation.
Age Group: 0-6.
- Julie B.
Julie B. is a classroom volunteer with Ready Readers, a non-profit organization that strives to expand literacy for young children in low-income communities through high-quality books, strong relationships and literacy-related experiences.
Monday, September 29, 2025
The Bad Seed by William March
William March's Rhoda has seeped into our cultural lexicon, so that like The Stepford Wives or Cujo, you don't need to have read the book (or seen the movie) to know that a well-dressed, polite child wearing formal, old-fashioned clothes is most likely a psychopathic killer. This child doesn't just braid her own hair, she loops them into "hangman's nooses." Her shoes have iron cleats to conveniently transition from outerwear to deadly weapon. You better hope you don't have anything she wants.
Monday, September 22, 2025
The Children's Blizzard by Melanie Benjamin
The uncomfortable images the title of this book conjures up! I didn't want to know the story behind it. Like me, you may resist opening it, but once you have gotten past the first pages and been introduced to several characters, don't expect to come up for air for a while. In fact, expect your regular routine to be disrupted as you delay meals, sleep, and morning showers while your cat or dog complains of neglect. It is not only a compelling story but a shockingly revealing bit of history as well.
The story told herein is in many ways like a Little House on the Prairie for grown ups, but not in the gently told way of Laura Ingalls Wilder's books.
Remember all the catastrophes the Ingalls and Wilder families endured on the prairies - the fire that engulfed Laura and Almanzo's home, a locust plague that destroyed an entire year's crop, droughts that rendered the labor of other years useless? The chronic poverty, harsh weather, frequent new beginnings, and the relentless struggles to establish stability? These devastating setbacks weren't merely one extended family's bad luck; this was typical of farm life in the upper Midwestern territories in the 1800s. The Ingalls and Wilder families were just two of thousands that suffered such misfortunes repeatedly. One of the revelations to me in reading this historical novel was that of a dishonest campaign perpetrated in European countries to lure immigrants to the upper Midwest. The U.S. government wanted settlers. "Have you longed for the magic of a prairie winter, gentle yet abundant snow to nourish the earth, neither too cold nor too warm, only perfection in every way?" - an ad in a European newspaper might say. In fact the opposite was true; living and farming conditions on those plains in the 1800s were so rough that over 60% of the homesteaders that had been attracted by such advertising ended up abandoning properties and dreams to return to the unpromising circumstances they had hoped to leave behind in Europe and the eastern United States. Of those who stayed, many didn't survive.
This novelized account of that time and place concerns one particularly deadly catastrophe (the historic part) - the January 12, 1888 blizzard in Nebraska and the Dakota territory during which hundreds of people - the majority of them children - froze to death. Why mostly children? The book will tell you.
The best novelists are able to create a cast of characters who come from vastly different life experiences and are on differing trajectories when their paths cross and lives intertwine within the framework of a compelling story. Characters that give us new perspectives, making us see the world in ways we hadn't previously been able to. This novel does that, engaging readers with a small assortment of people and their varying motivations and motives, and the ways they help and hurt each other. On occasion the perspectives of wildlife do what people can't: foxes, hawks, wolves, coyotes, rabbits, even prairie dogs help us to see and feel what the earth is doing during this colossal storm. Through a hawk's eyes as it searches from the sky for a meal on the morning after the storm, we begin to see the cruel toll of the ghastly event in an impersonal way - briefly - before zooming back in to learn the fates of the individuals we have become so interested in.
Author Melanie Benjamin drew on archived news accounts and written memories of people who lived through the storm to create sympathetic fictional characters caught badly unprepared for this shattering event that in real life left so many dead, so many lives changed, and so many families and communities throughout the upper Midwest bereft. In this bittersweet novel much more unfolds after the storm - unimaginable pain, gradual healing, growth, a few surprises among the characters, occasional redemption. The unredeemable fate of one character in particular though - Gerda - will remain in my mind for a long time.
Thank you to patron Richard B. for recommending this informative, absorbing novel that I put off starting because of its title and then couldn't stop reading.
- Marianne W.
Monday, September 15, 2025
Legendborn by Tracy Deonn
Generations upon generations of history and legacy weave through the life of this 16 year old girl.
Monday, September 8, 2025
Big Boy Joy by Connie Schofield-Morrison; illustrated by New York Times bestselling illustrator Shamar Knight-Justice
A joyful ode to playing on a playground narrated by a Back boy who climbs up a high slide and crashes, makes new friends, races, swings, makes imaginary worlds with toy dinosaurs, and plays in water puddles. His big boy feelings and lots of energy spread big boy joy for all to share. With beautiful and bright illustrations, a book children ages 3-5 will be sure to enjoy.
- Julie B.
Julie B. is a classroom volunteer with Ready Readers, a non-profit organization that strives to expand literacy for young children in low-income communities through high-quality books, strong relationships and literacy-related experiences.
Friday, August 22, 2025
Tilt by Emma Pattee
The novel I have been recommending to everyone recently is Emma Pattee's Tilt. As with Headshot, it was recommended on The New York Times book review podcast episode on Mrs. Dalloway. The individual who recommended it described the plot as if Mrs. Dalloway went out "to buy the flowers herself" but then a massive earthquake devastated London and she had to walk home through the ruins.
Thursday, August 7, 2025
Children of Anguish and Anarchy by Tomi Adeyemi
Monday, July 21, 2025
Two Poets - Frank X Walker and Mosab Abu Toha
When I mentioned to coworker Michael - who was putting together a poetry exhibit at the library - that there were a couple of recently published books of poetry that I had found 'harrowing,' he raised an eyebrow at the word I used and suggested reviewing the books here.
It is an apt word for the poems in these two books. The poems, based on fact, are full of bitter tales of family separation and longing, loss and displacement, and scenes of annihilation of people and places. Coming to terms with the daily threat of death before you have barely had a chance to experience life is an overall theme in each book.
Poets Frank X Walker and Mosab Abu Toha are from ethnic groups whose people have been viewed throughout history as disposable, and while the contexts of these two poetry collections are different in place and time, the themes expressed have such strong parallels that it made sense to review them together. One collection is set in the context of the American Civil War and the other in present day Palestine.
Walker, a professor of English at the University of Kentucky and a former Poet Laureate of the state, has published 13 books of poetry. His poems often focus on specific historical events. His latest is called Load in Nine Times and draws on actual events while imagining the thoughts and emotions of Black Civil War soldiers and their families. These carefully composed poems give us a view of the horrors endured by men who eagerly signed up for soldiering in the Union army in exchange for the commonly understood expectation of emancipation from slavery for themselves and their wives and children.
Walker often does many months of research on a historic event before writing a poem about it, and several of the poems in Load in Nine Times imagine the thoughts of real people whose stories he found in archival records. The horrors described take time to emotionally digest, and these poems often left me feeling haunted. The two poems "Unsalted" and "How Salt Works" are about the 1864 massacre by Confederate soldiers at Saltville, Virginia of 46 Black soldiers who had been inadequately armed for battle and then abandoned on a muddy, freezing battlefield by order of their commander after they had been wounded. Other poems describe equally depraved behavior by commanding officers of both armies.
The poems reveal that like so much else in the American story, the military experience was much worse for Blacks than for white soldiers. And yet I was left with the impression that this terrible experience of going into battle with all its terrors and risk was still preferred to remaining enslaved. This series of poems provides such a close look at our gruesome history that the book felt a bit sacred to me once I had finished it; there is deep respect due to the people who suffered these experiences. At the back of the book, a timeline of Civil War developments and turning points plus several pages of notes discussing specific events that inspired some of the poems provide a helpful interpretive context.
Forest of Noise is a collection of poems by 32-year-old Palestinian writer Mosab Abu Toha. His poems have been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Paris Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and many other periodicals. He has won several prizes for his poetry. Like most Gazans, Toha has lost numerous family members, neighbors and lifelong friends who have been killed in the onslaught of retaliation by the Israeli Defense Forces in response to the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israeli civilians. He, too, writes of bereavement, longing and unfathomable destruction of the people and community he has known all his life. So many people are missing from the world he knew that he writes of "Frying pans [that] miss the smell of olive oil. Clotheslines everywhere pine for soap scent," the doorknobs missing the touch of human hands and the ubiquitous rubble where the homes, olive and orange tree groves, and gathering spots of family and friends used to be. Like Walker, Toha brings you right into the immediacy of deep grief and it stings.
Here are some lines from his poem "Under the Rubble," which I first read in The New Yorker, before I knew who this poet was:
In Jabalia Camp, a mother collects her daughter's
Flesh in a piggy bank,
hoping to buy her a plot
on a river in a faraway land.
A group of mute people
were talking sign.
When a bomb fell,
they fell silent.
The scars on our children's faces
will look for you.
Our children's amputated legs
will run after you.
He left the house to buy some bread for his kids.
News of his death made it home,
but not the bread.
A father wakes up at night, sees
the random colors on the walls
drawn by his four-year-old daughter.
The colors are about four feet high.
Next year, they would be five.
But the painter has died
in an air strike.
There are no colors anymore.
There are no walls.
Where should people go? Should they
build a big ladder and go up?
But heaven has been blocked by the drones
and F-16s and the smoke of death.
...Even our souls,
they get stuck under the rubble for weeks.
These are important books at a time when American history is being suppressed, erased and deceptively revised, and when the people of Palestine are feeling abandoned by the whole world as the entire population of Gaza continues to be under relentless assault, and profiteers wait for a chance to redevelop the places Palestinians call home. These two collections of poems are treasures.
- Marianne W.
Wednesday, July 16, 2025
Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel
Eight young women gather in a bare-bones boxing gym in Reno, Nevada to compete for the title of best teen girl boxer in America. There are seven matches. During each match, we alternate between the minds of the two competing girls, slamming from one to the other, but also flitting into the minds of the viewers. Time isn't linear, either, and we get glimpses of their futures (without revealing the outcome of the match).
The energy is like heat coming off the page and I read this in a frenzied two days. Each character is specific and heart-breaking in their own way. Bullwinkel anchors them with phrases that repeat like a leitmotif, reminding you this is the character that never left her home town, this is the character who had a kid die while she was on duty as a lifeguard, this is the girl who has a "weird hat philosophy."
Bullwinkel's narrative is kinetic and she has a gift for describing what it is to be embodied. I had so much respect for the young women these characters represented: women who are dedicated to a craft, devoted to challenging themselves, regardless of whether or not they are being watched.
This was recommended on the New York Times book review podcast on the episode where they discuss the 100th anniversary of the publication of (my favorite novel) Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. The guests were asked to recommend books to read after the experimental stream-of-consciousness narrative of Mrs. Dalloway. Both books are currently on the shelf at our library. I encourage you to check them out!
-Michael G.
Tuesday, July 1, 2025
Kiss of the Basilisk by Lindsay Straube
- review this book in a way that makes sense
- keep it somewhere around PG or PG-13
- not freak out my coworkers and our patrons by my reading choices.
Thursday, June 26, 2025
The Seep by Chana Porter
After an alien invasion solves the world's problems, Trina's wife wants a fresh start. Specifically, as a baby. She wants to become a literal baby (again).
Wednesday, June 11, 2025
Children of Virtue and Vengeance by Tomi Adeyemi
The words reverberate through the entirety of this story as a lesson learned and a lesson shared.
A continuation of "Blood and Bone", "Virtue and Vengeance" follows Zélie, Amari, and Tzain as the tension of the war in Orïsha continues to rise. The king is now dead, but with the return of magic, there is now the new threat of tîtáns, people who are half kosidán half maji and wield uncontrollable power. The biggest threat of them all, is the queen.
The book continues with its signature shifts in perspective each chapter, continuing to follow Zélie, Amari, and Inan, each following their own beliefs in how they can end the war. As the title suggests, vengeance and grief are large themes in this book. We see the toll war takes on each one of the characters, and how that grief (or their attempts to prevent it) can motivate the characters to do actions that blur the lines of morality.
Family, community, and love. This book explores the lengths we're willing go to protect them.. and to avenge them. As I listened to this story, I was completely immersed in the world and invested in these characters. And now, I'm speeding through the third book! I highly encourage checking out this series, hoping that you will fall in love with it too, just like I have.
- Leo H.