Staff Favorites
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Our Fall Favorites: |
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Picture Books: |
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| The Hound Dog's Haiku And Other Poems For Dog Lovers - Michael Rosen Haiku poetry and facts about 20 dog breeds, with striking woodcuts by artist Mary Azarian that capture the dogs' unique personalities. |
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I Want My Hat Back - Jon Klassen. A bear has lost his hat, and none of the woodland animals have seen it. . . but the reader will be sure to spot the hat, and enjoy the dry wit of this wonderfully paced humorous episode. |
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| The Mangrove Tree: Planting Trees To Feed Families - Susan Roth & Cindy Trumbore. The inspirational tale of local scientist D. Gordon Sato, and how his planting projects are creating forests in desert areas, and bringing a better standard of living to impoverished areas in Africa. Told in verse for reading aloud, and including longer passages with scientific, cultural and philanthropical information for older children – this is a book with wide age appeal. |
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Mary And Her Little Lamb – The True Story Of The Famous Nursery Rhyme - Will Moses. Will Moses delightful folk art is perfectly suited to this snippet of early American history. The real Mary went to school in Subury, MA in 1810 and nursed a lamb to health when it was a frail newborn. |
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Novels: |
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| Darth Paper Strikes Back - Tom Angleberger Wise fingerpuppet Origami Yoda and his creator Dwight are suspended from school, and it seems that Darth Paper is behind it. Interspersed with funny drawings, this lighthearted novel tells of the middle school class that tries to defeat Darth (and his maker Harvey) before the school year is ruined. |
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Wonderstruck - Brian Selznick Another tour de force from the author of The Invention Of Hugo Cabret , this time Selznick intertwines two children's stories, set 50 years apart. Ben's 1977 tale is told in words and Rose's 1927 adventures are depicted through illustrations, yet they each involve in surprising ways the Museum Of Natural History in New York City. |
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Summer Specials: |
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| The Penderwicks at Point Mouette Jeanne Birdsall Birdsall surpasses herself with each new book about the Penderwick family, and that's a real compliment – as the original was a wonderful throwback to modern classics like Gone Away Lake or Understood Betsy. In 'Point Mouette' Birdsall shakes up family dynamics when 3 of the sisters head to Maine with their aunt, while the eldest sister is away on her own well-deserved vacation from responsibility. Birdsall adroitly balances the ocean-side mishaps that the girls handle on their own with a much more serious family mystery that requires adult presence to untangle. There is independence in the Penderwick world, but refreshingly there are also helpful, respectful adults to call on when needed, and kindness and love connecting all. |
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The Romeo & Juliet Code - Phoebe Stone Fans of The Penderwicks will enjoy The Romeo & Juliet Code, as its author provides the same mix of adventure and stability. Set in the early days of World War II, a British girl comes to live with slightly eccentric relatives in Maine, and family loyalties are tested as she and a cousin become involved in untangling a spy code. The backgrounds of a small town and the windy, wild beaches and ocean are lyrically described. |
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| Between Shades Of Grey - Ruta Sepetys Orchards - Holly Thompson A short synopsis of each of these YA novels makes them sound much grimmer than they are. Between Shades: Stalin's purge of the Lithuanian intelligentsia in the 1940s, families split up and sent to labor camps in Siberia. Orchards: a teen involved in a bullying situation that led to a classmate's suicide is sent to live with relatives in Japan for the summer. Yet grim is absolutely the wrong word for each of these intelligent and beautifully written novels. They are engrossing stories that focus on emotional growth, and ultimately are hopeful affirmations of the human spirit. Throughout Lina's journey across Russia to Siberia, she and her brother take care of each other. They refuse to let depredations and harsh conditions take away the essence of what kinds of people their parents raised them to be.Lina, like the main character Kana in Orchards, is a very likable and believable heroine. Orchards also includes a strong emphasis on family, as Kana absorbs some of the cultural ways of her Japanese cousins, yet stays in touch over the internet with her sister in New York. The global settings of these books also offer a refreshing change from the myriad set in a generic, suburban US high school. |
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Shipbreaker - Paolo Bacigalupi Lately, there has been a spate of new books imagining what a future with a scarcity of oil would be like. (Empty, Carbon Diaries 2015, etc) In Shipbreaker, it's worth risking your life to crawl into old ship hulls in search of pockets of oil or valuable scrap metal, and Nailer is one of the many poor hoping to strike it big with a find. When a luxurious sailboat from one of the powerful controlling oil cartels is stranded on a beach, Nailer finds a trapped girl in the wreckage and is faced with a dilemma. Should he make a fortune off the contents of her boat, or risk his life for the uncertain reward of returning her to safety? |
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| Me, Jane - Patrick McDonnell Enjoyable as a picture book of a nature obsessed young girl (with illustrations that cleverly use some of Jane Goodall's early sketchbooks), and also as an example that childhood dreams are worth following and perhaps even the most outlandishof them will come true. |
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The Voyage of Turtle Rex - Kurt Cyrus Large scale artwork brings to life a pre-historic sea and the giant turtles that roamed it. A great mix of science and storytelling. |
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| Clever Jack Takes the Cake - Candace Fleming One of the best recent read alouds! You have to feel for Jack as his scrumptious cake takes abuse from an enchanted forest full of hungry fairy tale creatures. By the time he shows up at the castle birthday party the cake hardly looks like a treat fit for a Princess. But she, and this story, have a great deal of humor and heart. |
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Stories for September |
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The Cow Loves Cookies – Karma Wilson The farmer feeds all his other animals what you’d expect (hay, corn, etc) in this jaunty, rhyming book populated with friendly horses, pigs, geese and chickens. The surprise ending makes it clear just why and how the cow is special, and where those cookies come from. |
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| How Rocket Learned To Read - Tad Hills A little yellow bird proves such an inspiring teacher that soon Rocket the dog is learning his letters and practicing writing (in the snow and mud), until the bird returns again in Spring with new stories they can read together. |
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Wonder Horse: The True Story of the World’s Smartest Horse – Emily McCully The true story of Bill Key, a black veterinarian in the late 1800’s, and the horse, Jim, who was trained by Doc with patience and love to recognize letters and numbers. Jim the horse performed at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair and was examined by professors from Harvard who confirmed his act was not a hoax. |
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| The Knife Of Never Letting Go The Ask And The Answer Monsters Of Men Books 1-3 in the Chaos Walking Trilogy by Patrick Ness (Young Adult) Lately there have been many popular books that feature young adults trying to restore a society which has been ruined by the ‘grown-ups’, through a combination of the adults’ greed, violence or from tampering with the environment/genetics. (Just to mention a few: Hunger Games, the Uglies series, Life As We Knew It.) The Knife Of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness may be seen as an offshoot of this genre, but this very impressive trilogy ultimately has many provoking things to say about violence being inherent in mankind, and what it takes to break a cycle of revenge and warfare. That may sound like great discussion material and political commentary (think All Quiet on the Western Front for the new millennium), and it is, but each book reads like a fast paced adventure as the likeable Todd and Viola try to puzzle out what has gone horribly wrong on this planet colonized by settlers from Earth. Todd has grown up there in ignorance, but Viola is new to this place where mens’ private thoughts can be heard by everyone in a noisy mishmash, where the women seem to have died in a plague, and where the indigenous people, the Spackle, loom as a constant threat. Ness doesn’t waste his time with any plot repeats, each volume brings new revelations, betrayals, and tests of Todd’s and Viola’s capability for forgiveness in the hope of peace. He doesn’t shy from hard questions about terrorism or the seductiveness of power. It’s hard to read this trilogy without thinking of the many seemingly unstoppable conflicts in our real world, and my guess is that Ness wants to leave his readers, young and old, with a challenge to change the future. |
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