Big Al and Shrimpy by Andrew Clements; illustrated by Yoshi

Big Al is a very large fish and Shrimpy is a very, very small fish. The two become fast friends. When they venture to the Big Deep, they play by throwing rocks down and listening as they tumble down to the bottom. As Big Al pushes on a large white rock, his fin gets stuck in a crack on the rock and down he goes. How will Shrimpy and the other fish save the day?  Read Big Al and Shrimpy to find out!

-Julie B.
 

Llama Llama Time to Share by Anna Dewdney

 When new neighbor, Nelly Gnu pays a visit to Llama Llama’s house, Llama Llama must learn how to share his toys. But when Nelly Gnu starts to play with Llama Llama’s Fuzzy Llama, there is dolly drama! Llama Llama has decided he doesn’t want to share anymore. Will Llama Llama learn to share his doll? Perfect book for young children learning to share.

-Julie B.

Sanctuary by William Faulkner

Appropriately, I finished Sanctuary around five in the morning between two of the last blazing hot days in August. A few years ago I tried and failed to read Absalom, Absalom! but really wanted to give Faulkner another chance after watching Paul Newman simmer through The (very Tennessee Williams-influenced, very Hollywood) Long, Hot Summer. The poster for that barks: "The people of Faulkner...the language of Faulkner...the world of Faulkner!" Well, that's a gross over-simplification. 

While Sanctuary's more straight-forward plot is accessible, his writing still caused me to trip in a way his Nobel Prize in Literature still doesn't convince THIS humble Missourian is entirely artistic and intentional. It gives the impression of a disorienting, kleidoscopic whirl, where not even the characters speaking to each other in the same world seem to be able to connect. Or maybe that was the moonshine. 

The plot is gripping, though, and frightening. It concerns Temple Drake, a college girl who hops from dances with collegiate boys to car dates with the townies. After one of her dates drunkenly crashes his car on the way to a bootlegger, Temple is stranded among dissolute lowlifes in a ruined plantation house. The following events are nightmarish and the novel deals unflinchingly with the aftermath. It's honestly still a shocking, disturbing read, full of sex, violence, and the thankless struggle for justice and love. If you want a "cleaned up" version, the first movie adaptation with Miriam Hopkins is fantastic: The Story of Temple Drake. 

-Michael G. 

Nameless by Grant Morrison, illustrated by Chris Burnham

Recommended to me, if you can call such a dubious statement, with: "Can I show you an illustration I think is hot but might make you think I'm messed up?" Nameless is a nightmare-logic horror story, mostly set in space in an alien prison, but also in haunted minds and a Victorian house of occult abominations.

A layered, existential Lovecraftian story without actual Lovecraft, Morrison draws instead from myths and writings that originated pre-Lovecraft and may also have inspired the master of cosmic horror. It's frightening, disturbing, and the illustrations are excellent. This vision of an omnipotent, invisible lifeform polluting minds and threatening "eternal agonizing torture in a cosmic concentration camp" is a terrifying version of Christian God. 

- Michael G. 

The Pout-Pout Fish in the Big-Big Dark by Deborah Diesen; ill. by Dan Hanna

 Rhyming text about a clam who loses her pearl in the ocean.  Mr. Fish tries to help her find the pearl but there is one problem:  he is afraid of the dark and the further he swims down the ocean, the darker it gets.  Will he be able to save the day and brave the dark to find Ms. Clam’s pearl?  Read this whimsical book to find out.

-Julie B. 

Terry’s Many Hats by Terry Crews with Laura Baker; ill by Tanisha Cherislin

Terry has big dreams and a lot of hats to go with his them including a football helmet, a painter’s beret, and a scientist’s hat, among others.  When everyone tells Terry he can only do one thing, Terry proves them wrong.  Read this book to find out what Terry does!

-Julie B. 

Pure Men by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr

"They are pure men because at any moment, human folly can kill them, can subject them to violence all while sheltering behind one of the many perverted masks it dons to express itself: culture, religion, power, wealth, fame..."

Probably one of my favorite books of 2026, "Pure Men" is an analysis of the homophobia deeply engrained in the city of Dakar, Senegal. This fictional story follows Ndéné, a university literature professor who becomes entranced with a recent video of a violence towards the corpse of a góor-jigéen, otherwise known as a gay man. 

The story deep dives into the dehumanizing treatment of gay men and its roots. It shows how homophobia plants itself in every part of society down to the individuals own personal decisions. It becomes internalized, to where a gay man might not even realize they are upholding the very values that kill those within his own community. This hatred is fostered towards men who are a natural part of humanity, men who want nothing more than to express themselves, men who are harming nobody else by doing so, men who are--by comparison to the societies they live in--pure.

Story aside, the novel is written with incredibly magnetic prose, easily shaping beautiful characters while giving us a vivid look of what is happening inside of both their heads and the protagonist's. The was the fastest book I've read all year, and I would read it again. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested diving into the discussion of homophobia. Just be mindful: this book can be triggering due to the violence and hatred displayed. Please let me know if you've read it because I'd love to discuss!

- Leo

A Good Day for a Hat by T. Nat Fuller; ill by Rob Hodgson

Mr. Brown (the bear) has many, many hats for all occasions.  Today he seems to need them all because as he steps outside the scene changes from rain to snow to a marching band, a magic show, a rodeo and many other occasions.  He finally decides to be prepared for anything and wears all his hats.  The last occasion is the best of all, his birthday, and his friends have the best birthday hat for him.

-Julie B. 

One Leg on Earth by 'Pemi Aguda

  

"One Leg on Earth" is a novel centered around a girl who has freshly moved from her home town to the larger city of Lagos, Nigeria after having earned an internship at the construction center for a new development called "Omi City". She is quite anti-social, struggling to find the way to connect to others and be grounded in her own life. Everything takes a turn when she becomes pregnant.... at the same time as pregnant women are mysteriously being overcome with the urge to take their own life.

    The book follows her as she navigates these complex emotions of where she has found herself. In its journey, it touches on themes of connection, community, belonging, culture, and parenthood. It is intriguing to explore what it is like to be in a new city, searching for people to call home.

    While I find myself typically drawn to these types of books, I found it difficult to be engaged. I love the premise, but I struggle with the prose, often skimming over the page. It would have been better fleshed out as a short story, as it may have fallen victim to the length of a full novel. The main character also feels a little unbelievable in her thoughts and actions on certain occasions, making it hard to understand and relate to her. However, this is personal preference.While this is my perspective, I encourage readers to form their own opinions about the book. Feel free to check it out and share your thoughts!


- Leo

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke

Last winter, after the third or fourth time a friend of mine shared some influencer’s post to their story in hopes of winning the giveaway the influencer was running (hence the need to share the post to their story), I had the thought that social media influencers are, in many ways, no different than pastors preaching the prosperity gospel. Instead of asking for money, they ask for our attention and time, and so many of us willingly give it up in an attempt at reaching… something. I’m not sure what, as it depends on your flavor of influencer, but we wouldn’t be so captured if we didn’t think we could get something out of it, even if it's only a chance to peek into the windows of a (supposed) dream life. Which is why I think the premise of Yesteryear is so intriguing.

In Yesteryear, Natalie Heller Mills turns her nascent dream of a farm and a family into reality through the help of social media (and a $5 million check from her father-in-law). Her children wear the perfect palette of neutrals woven out of natural fibers, eat a healthy diet of food grown and raised on their own land, all of it far away from any liberal influences. It’s everything a good Christian woman could ever want, and it's what she peddles each day from her social media accounts. Who cares if she doesn’t know the first thing about farming? Who cares if her husband, the coddled youngest son of a career politician destined to be president someday (in his mind, at least), spends most of his time spiraling slowly down a right-wing rabbit hole of online misinformation and conspiracy theories? She’s Natalie Heller Mills, and she’s self-proclaimed as “perfect at being alive.” But when she wakes up in the past, with a husband who isn’t quite her husband, and children who aren’t quite her children, she finds herself put to the greatest test of her life.

It would be easy to reduce Yesteryear down to being simply a satire of a specific breed of social media influencing (namely, tradwives), and while it is that, it’s also in some respects a demented coming of age tale of a woman who managed to make one defining decision for herself and her future, but immediately bailed out the moment it didn’t align with her expectations. Natalie is not a likable character, and it’s hard to find sympathy for her. She is horribly judgmental, and uses her religion not only as a spiritual armor against evil, but as a weapon to be wielded against any person, particularly other women, she deems as less than. Going viral online and suddenly finding herself with millions of followers is just proof of her superiority over all the Angry Women out there who look at her pictures and watch her videos and secretly wish they could be just like her (may the checks that this attention gets her always clear, forever and ever, amen).

Caro Claire Burke does an excellent job in teasing this story out. She sets things up quickly, then alternates chapters of Natalie’s life leading up to the moment of her time travel with her experiences of now living in the past. There’s an eeriness to the chapters that depict Natalie’s farmstead life, particularly in the moments when she interacts with Mary, who is now her eldest daughter in this strange past. Mary has an adult weariness about her, the kind of weariness that only comes with being forced to grow up too soon, to be mother to both your younger siblings and your actual mother. The more time Natalie spends with Mary, she also realizes the toll this has taken on Mary, and finds herself strangely upset over the thought that someday soon, Mary will have to leave home to become a wife and mother too, just like Natalie, with no other option for her life. And this is just a fraction of the themes Burke touches on in this book. I haven’t even gotten into Burke’s use of gender roles, politics, being online, and wealth in crafting this story, and it would take a more experienced reviewer than me to deftly pull those pieces together.

I won’t get into too much detail about the ending. Wanting to know how Natalie ended up in the past kept me reading, and I think Burke’s choices in explaining how this happened were unexpected and far from any theory I may have had leading up to the end. I can understand why some might find the ending unsatisfactory, but I also think the conventional explanations would have been taking the easy way out, so I was pleased with the direction Burke took.

Yesteryear is a book that will leave an impression on you, and will have you begging your friends to read it too so you have someone to discuss it with. And if you feel inclined to share this review on your social media pages, feel free! Unfortunately, I have nothing for you to win as an incentive to do so. But I thank you for your attention anyway. Don't forget to follow us online!

Also, if Caro Claire Burke wanted to write a version of this story from the perspective of Natalie’s husband, Caleb, I would 100% read that. He may be a manchild, but I strangely found myself more sympathetic towards him than Natalie. Now that I've read Marianne's excellent review, I perhaps need to ruminate on why I feel that way...

No Heaven for Good Boys by Keisha Bush

 

"No Heaven for Good Boys" is the story of two young boys living as talibe in the city of Dakar, Senegal. Their day to day life consists of begging on the street for change, finding new ways to eat, and something still fitting in small ways to be a child. Each night, they return home to their marabout who beats them if they do not reach their daily money quota. 

While this is horrific, the story drives home how commonplace this seems because they are two of many and people never seem to do anything. Furthermore, the book is often highlighting the divide between the rich and the poor, the privileged and the less fortunate. The arbitrary boundaries of religion and culture make any chance of rescue almost taboo, seeming to trap the boys in their situation. The book drives this home by jumping to the perspective of one of the boys' mothers, who struggles against the powerless brought by this boundary.

After finishing this book, I grieved it. Reading the experiences of a 6 year old who is going through such unimaginable amounts of struggle is hard, but it is someone's reality, and his story must be told.

Feel free to check out this book and let me know what you think!

- Leo

Cursed Daughters by Oyinkan Braithwaite

“If you cannot respect this family and this function, at least respect yourself.”

"Cursed Daughters" is a story of generational trauma, following the lives of several Nigerian women of the same bloodline. The story is deeply entrenched in what it is like to be a woman and to have those gender expectations placed upon you. As the title suggests, there is a spiritual element to the story, mystifying their experience into something worth awing at.

I found this book entrancing as it jumped between the perspectives of the women. It follows a very nonlinear story pattern, jumping across years, but stays very coherent all the way through. The information provided in the past provides context to the present, and vice versa. It is an art in writing.

Give this book a try and leave your thoughts. The library's Black Author Book Club is meeting on Wednesday, July 29th (2026) to discuss the book, so come on out! If you liked this book, try Oyinkan's other book "My Sister, the Serial Killer"!

- Leo

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke

The 2026 novel Yesteryear begins - seemingly - as a time travel story about a woman at the center of a family farm run on "traditional" values of simple living, hard work and wholesome, organic food production. Oh, and female subservience. And a woman's willingness whether she likes children or not to have as many of them as physically possible until reaching the end of her fertile years. A mix of ideologies and beliefs that isn't wholesome for anybody, it turns out in this story.

It all begins when 24-year-old Caleb Mills and 19-year-old Natalie Heller meet in a church group near Boston. Natalie, a student at Harvard, is an attractive and naive young woman from small town Idaho. Caleb, a graduate of the university unsure of what to do with his life, is from a politically powerful west coast family. All they seem to have in common is having been raised in conservative Christian families, though Caleb's life experience has been more worldly than that of Natalie.

Aside from obvious attractions, it appears that Natalie's lack of worldliness (and presumed lack of discernment) are strong attractions for Caleb. After his campaign of relentless love bombing, the two are married within 3 months. Nevermind the creepiness of her suiter's suffocating behavior toward her; everything else about the vortex Natalie is letting herself be sucked into appears attractive enough. If she was meant to follow Christian family and faith traditions, it might as well be with this impressive family. Instead of the easy life she expected however, during the first year of marriage she finds herself bound to a child-like man who has no ambition whatsoever and who refuses to take responsibility for anything in their life together. As if anyone with such negligible ambition could get into Harvard! 

After a period of financial support from his parents - conditioned on an agreement with her father-in-law that the couple continue growing their family - Natalie realizes that it's up to her to figure out a way to earn a living for her young family. But having given up a full scholarship to Harvard in the middle of her sophomore year to marry this wastrel with whom she is now pregnant with a second child, how is she to do that?  

Thinking over possibilities, she concludes that the only viable one is to become an influencer in the online world of traditional wives - the so-called tradwives. Other women have found it to be lucrative, and for this occupation she has had a lifetime of preparation, having been raised in an ultra-conservative faith community and indoctrinated with beliefs in large families, female subservience, and homemaking over professional ambitions. This perhaps explains the apparent ease with which she walked away from a full Harvard  scholarship when she decided to get married at age 19.  

Her in-laws, exasperated with their son but a little skeptical, don't have any better ideas, and they want Natalie to take their aimless son off their hands. They agree to help the couple set themselves up for this enterprise by purchasing a farm in a remote and beautiful part of Idaho. After settling into it, Natalie's plan falls into place. She begins to create a phony persona and a phony life on Instagram and in videos portraying how an attractive young Chirstian family ostensibly living off the land manages its daily routines. She does it so well and convincingly (to some) that before too long she has thousands of fawning followers and lifestyle aspirants. Meanwhile the family continues to grow along with the family enterprise. A line of popular, ridiculously overpriced Natalie-branded merchandise is developed and soon its website is overwhelmed with purchase orders. Followers enchanted with Natalie and Caleb's rural life don't question how these lifestyle products are manufactured within this "natural" lifestyle. Caleb - learning from YouTube videos and online forums - throws himself into gardening and livestock acquisition and management. He has found that farm life makes him feel purposeful for the first time in his life. Or so he says. And so it appears.

Natalie is so attractive and charming in her videos that within a couple of years - to their astonishment - she and Caleb have a cottage industry earning hundreds of thousands of dollars a month. But ah, if only she liked children, especially her own! And if only the children didn't find being constantly filmed for public consumption to be so trying! 

In addition to ardent fans, Natalie's videos attract a lot of haters, whom she dubs The Angry Women. The Angry Women are relentlessly skeptical and critical. Natalie tries to ignore the criticisms. Despite the entirely farcical structure of her enterprise, for Natalie it is a psychic contest between The Angry Women and "good Christian women" like herself and her loyal followers. 

Eventually Natalie begins to experience herself as a schism of two distinct personalities that she refers to as online and offline Natalie. Offline Natalie becomes an increasingly angry woman, the impact of which is felt harshly by her family - offline, of course.

In addition to online and offline Natalie there is another duality in the story line: a parallel story that looks like time travel. The short chapters of this novel are organized to switch back and forth between this family's life in the present and its life on the same farm in the year 1855. Their life in 1855 though, is so cold and harsh that re-entering it every other chapter started to feel like a side track I wanted to skip. Natalie herself is constantly trying to figure out how to escape from the 1855 homestead and from her brutal husband. She has little affection for their children, who in return don't show her the affectionate respect one would expect. It's not clear until the very end of the book why we are exposed to this grim, alternate reality.

Back in the present, keeping up the pretense of a perfect and perfectly homespun life nurturing a continuously growing family with love and simple, wholesome, organic food in front of the whole world eventually drives Natalie to exhaustion and an addiction to pills that "calm her down." I stopped reading around this point to listen to a 1966 Rolling Stones song called "Mother's Little Helper," remembering lyrics that capture the dynamics of this family's predicament. 

Had Natalie and her followers read Betty Friedan's 1963 study The Feminine Mystique they could have predicted the outcome. Both Friedan and the Rolling Stones as well as the housewives of the 1950s and '60s had the copyright on the unsustainability of tradwife life.

-Marianne W.