Staff Picks: Books
Staff-recommended reading from the
KPL catalog.
Gabriel Coats, his mother, Sewing Annie, his fiancée, Mary, and his sister, Ellen buy their freedom after great suffering, and open a tailor shop and laundry in Washington, DC, just before the Civil War. Not surprisingly, their master tries to regain control of his former property and the family is forced to pay for their “freedom” again and again.
Stand the Storm is an uplifting love story of men and women attempting to free themselves from slavery. The strength of the story lies in the character development and the exploration of their relationships with each other during a time when former slaves fought for their lives almost on a daily basis.
I realize I knew little about slaves who had bought their freedom before the Civil War. This is a compelling story of injustice and sadness, yet also with joy and hope.
Book
Stand the Storm
9780316007047
I found Gifts of War, Mackenzie Ford’s first novel, an enjoyable historical fiction/romance that combined a World War I history lesson (including an amazing “you are there” description of the “Christmas Truce”) with interesting romantic intrigue. It’s a moral tale, exploring unintended consequences without being too preachy. Ever hear of an “Alice band?” If not, it’s something you’ll be compelled to check out on Wikipedia as you read the book. I enjoyed the book, but prefer tidy, though not necessarily always happy endings – you’ll understand if you read it. I also found it somewhat difficult to like the main characters. See what you think. I would definitely try another book by this author. Despite my reservations I thought this was an intriguing story.
Book
Gifts of War
9780385528955
It’s amazing how many hot topics Paula Danziger brings up in It’s an Aardvark-eat-turtle World! This 132 paged easy-to-read teen book is full of social issues such as divorce, remarriage, step-sisterhood/step-parenting, interracial marriage and more. Rosie tells the story of how her mother married her best friend’s dad. Exciting, huh? Well, no! From then on Rosie’s and Phoebe’s life is never the same. The two best friends could no longer stand each other. What was cute before becomes a big pain. Rosie sees now when she finally has her “real family” that it’s not her “dream family”. She and Phoebe went from “best friends, best sisters and best roommates” to thinking family and friendship takes too much work. But they later decide that it’s all worth it.
Some of Paula Danziger’s other books at KPL are The Cat Ate My Gymsuit, The Divorce Express, and This Place Has No Atmosphere.
It’s an Aardvark-eat-turtle World
0440940281
book
When You Reach Me has it all: great characters, a wonderful puzzle at its core, a great ending, and tons of heart. Twelve-year-old New Yorker Miranda is a latchkey child; a term that Miranda’s mom says “reminds her of dungeons and must have been invited by someone strict and awful with an unlimited childcare budget”. In the evening, Miranda’s mom is practicing to be a contestant on The $20,000 Pyramid. Miranda and her friend Sal have been friends since daycare. Sal stops hanging out with her after he is randomly punched in the gut by a bigger kid on the way home from school. Miranda knows from the mysterious notes she begins to receive that her friend may be in danger.
In kind of the same kind of way that The Higher Power of Lucky references Are You My Mother?, When You Reach Me references A Wrinkle in Time. Both of the books in the books are a bit like characters and are, for a time, like security blankets for the characters that carry them around. And speaking of the Newbery, I wouldn’t be surprised if When You Reach Me walks the hall and snatches the trophy. It’s the story of friendship and much more.
Book
When You Reach Me
9780385906647
The author of Three Day Road, Joseph Boyden, teaches writing at the University of New Orleans, where my brother is also on the faculty. Boyden's Canadian heritage comes through dramatically in this first novel as does his knowledge of World War I trench warfare, acquired through research and his grandfather's first hand accounts of battle. Three Day Road braids the stories of Native Canadian friends, Xavier Bird and Elijah Wiskeyjack, who enlist in the Canadian Army and become snipers on the western front, and an elder aunt, Niska, who retrieves her broken nephew at war's end. The journey by canoe to their northern wilderness village, Moose Factory, is the metaphorical three day road of the title. As the canoe glides through calm waters, Xavier and Niska, a prophetic Cree healer, share their wrenching stories in alternating voices and in stark contrast to the peaceful surroundings. This book brought to mind other favorite novels of war, All Quiet on the Western Front, Johnny Got His Gun, The Things They Carried, The Captain, and Beach Red. The weaving of rich Native cultural traditions into stark scenes of battle, however, offers a fresh telling of timeless tales. Three Day Road won the Books in Canada First Novel Award in 2005 and was a selection of the Today Show Book Club the same year. In 2006, it was shortlisted for Canada Reads, a unique literary competition sponsored by the CBC.
Book
Three Day Road
0143037072
I have always gravitated toward books set in the sixties, specifically those having to do with the Civil Rights Movement, perhaps because I was at such an impressionable age during that time. Regardless, I've recently added another to my list of favorites, The Help, a debut novel by Kathryn Stockett. Set in Jackson, Mississippi in 1962, the story is told in alternating chapters by two African American maids and the young white woman who has decided to write a book that anonymously chronicles their lives along with those of several other black maids in the city at that time. Central to their story, for instance, is the irony of being entrusted to care for the children of their employers while at the same time being relegated to use a separate bathroom for fear of diseases thought to be carried by black people. Strong characters, regrettably accurate accounts of race relations in the South at that time, and good pacing made this an especially captivating and fast read. I look forward to more by this author.
The Help
9780399155345
Book
After reading a New York Times Book Review cover story about the new Margaret Atwood novel, The Year of the Flood, I promptly placed the title on hold and then began reading 2003’s Oryx and Crake which is related to the new one but not necessarily a continuation. I admit that I have not read much of Atwood’s clearly impressive body of work, but I am blown away by the very compelling Oryx and Crake. If you love dystopian/end of the world/speculative fiction as much as I do, or just enjoy first class storytelling, it doesn’t get much better than this environmentally devastated, gene spliced nightmare world that Atwood so vividly imagines.
Book
The Year of the Flood
9780385528771
I just finished reading two books that center around the theme of the importance of friendship in the lives of women. I listened to The Girls from Ames by Jeffrey Zaslow and read Commencement by J. Courtney Sullivan. Girls is nonfiction that follows eleven childhood friends from Iowa as they mature and grow over forty years. Midwesterners will surely relate to the small-town adventures and tribulations the girls face, as well as the strong bonds created by the close-knit community. Commencement (a novel) begins when four very different girls meet their first year of college and remain friends after graduation. The books' approaches are very different but both succeed in illustrating the tight relationships women have with one another.
Book
The Girls from Ames
1592404456
Congratulations and good luck to National Book Award finalists Bonnie Jo Campbell and David Small, both of whom spoke at the library about their newest works, American Salvage (fiction) and Stitches (Young People’s Literature). Award winners will be announced on November 18th.
Book
American Salvage
9780814334126
London in the early 1900’s is the setting for the first book in a promising new series by Kenneth Cameron. Jack Denton, an American in his fifties, is living in England after moving from the United States. He wrote best selling crime novels in the States, and achieved notoriety there after tragic events in his own life.
Now in England, Jack is approached by a terrified man who claims to have witnessed a murder by Jack the Ripper. Jack discounts the tale, until a young woman is discovered murdered, and he begins his own investigation. Scorned by the police and hampered by them as well, he encounters London’s dark side as he tries to uncover the truth.
Well drawn and quirky characters add much to this story, and so do the descriptions of London as a great city in the midst of industrial growth and change. You can almost feel you are there, walking down a wet, dimly lit alley….
Book
The Frightened Man
9780312538965