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Book reviews by library staff and guest contributors
A loving Cherokee family waits at the mountain's base for a young pilot to return from war. Told in song, this picture book provides a larger to smaller view where the action and words are incorporated into the grandmother's weaving, building to a surprise finale. Author Traci Sorell's website describes her as an author of inclusive works for inquisitive young minds and this picture book showcases that beautifully, blending history, culture, and art in an uplifting way.
Shanti waves good bye to her village in India and hello to her new town in the United States. Life in her apartment with Ma and Baba feels much like life in her village, but outside, in town things are strange. Shanti goes back and forth, remembering her village, and learning her new town. Back and forth, again and again, In Between. Most of the time, Shanti goes from village to town with great joy, but sometimes it is hard.
After his caper novel on the moon, Weir is revisiting the idea of a lone human in space. Here the human is Ryland Grace who wakes up on a ship in space and has no memories of how or why he is there. Bit by bit (very small bits at first) he begins to put the pieces together and as he does so the reader is taken back into his recent past to see what brought him here; alone on a space ship, far from earth, with only a couple of dead crew mates as companions.
This is an absolutely charming book filled with 75 songs and poems from Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood and The Children's Corner. Sweetly illustrated by Luke Flowers on full-page spreads and as inclusive and timeless as ever, the collection explores universal topics such as feelings, acceptance, friendship, bravery, and growing up.
In books, television and movies I love gray characters. I don't mean mole people who never see the sun, but those who are complicated (mostly because that's how real people are) and who aren't wholly good or wholly bad. Meredith Duran has written a romance that has both a heroine and a hero who are definitely in the gray category and they are all the more intriguing for it.
After Bree's mother is killed in an accident, the sixteen-year-old escapes the grief engulfing her home life by joining a program for scholarly high schoolers at UNC - Chapel Hill. While there, she stumbles into a complex world of magic and Arthurian legend that quickly takes over her life. But this is no simple re-telling of King Arthur's round table -- this story goes to much deeper and more interesting places than you might expect.
There is something so honest and true about Loretta Lynn. I had no idea she was best of friends with Patsy Cline during the early 1960s until I read this book. And what a friendship they had. I'm not sure how much dust they kicked up, but there were definitely some shenanigans.
Me and Mama by Cozbi Cabrera, centers on the special relationship between a young girl and her mother. Starting with the morning “when the house smells like cinnamon” and the papa and little brother are still asleep, a little girl wants to be “everywhere mama is”. “Good morning to you” – her mama sings, as the little girl walks down the stairs.
"I could have become a mass murderer after I hacked my governor module, but then I realized I could access the combined feed of entertainment channels carried on the company satellites. It had been well over 35,000 hours or so since then, with still not much murdering, but probably, I don't know, a little under 35,000 hours of movies, serials, books, plays and music consumed. As a heartless killing machine, I was a terrible failure."
Local legends and lore abound in this middle grade graphic novel about a young girl named Snapdragon who befriends the town witch. It turns out the elderly witch, Jacks, is a licensed animal rehabilitator who also assembles roadkill skeletons and sells them for profit on eBay. This is wonderfully weird, but not exactly otherworldly.
