Staff Picks

Kanzi's family is new to the USA from Egypt, and she wants to fit in with the kids at school. A classmate teases Kanzi when Mama calls her habibti, but her teacher invites her to share something special from home, and Kanzi brings a quilt her Teita made. With Mama's help, the class creates a bulletin-board quilt with everyone's name written in Arabic characters, which sparks another class to make a similar display of names in Japanese characters. I love the support Kanzi finds from her teacher and mother for sharing elements of her culture!

 

Publisher's description: Kanzi’s family has moved from Egypt to America, and on her first day in a new school, what she wants more than anything is to fit in. Maybe that’s why she forgets to take the kofta sandwich her mother has made for her lunch, but that backfires when Mama shows up at school with the sandwich. Mama wears a hijab and calls her daughter Habibti (dear one). When she leaves, the teasing starts. That night, Kanzi wraps herself in the beautiful Arabic quilt her teita (grandma) in Cairo gave her and writes a poem in Arabic about the quilt. Next day her teacher sees the poem and gets the entire class excited about creating a “quilt” (a paper collage) of student names in Arabic. In the end, Kanzi’s most treasured reminder of her old home provides a pathway for acceptance in her new one.

Parents and non-parents alike will fall in love with this beautiful, heartfelt memoir that dives deep into the joys and challenges of childbirth and pregnancy. Knisley peppers her own experience with historical facts and anecdotes that make for a compelling and visually appealing read. Each page is a mini love letter to her child, as well as to women and parents everywhere.

 

Publisher description:

If you work hard enough, if you want it enough, if you’re smart and talented and “good enough,” you can do anything. Except get pregnant. Her whole life, Lucy Knisley wanted to be a mother. But when it was finally the perfect time, conceiving turned out to be harder than anything she’d ever attempted. Fertility problems were followed by miscarriages, and her eventual successful pregnancy plagued by health issues, up to a dramatic, near-death experience during labor and delivery. This moving, hilarious, and surprisingly informative memoir not only follows Lucy’s personal transition into motherhood but also illustrates the history and science of reproductive health from all angles, including curious facts and inspiring (and notorious) figures in medicine and midwifery. Whether you’ve got kids, want them, or want nothing to do with them, there’s something in this graphic memoir to open your mind and heart.

 

I won't give away the horrific twist that comes near the beginning of this novel, the moment when I realized exactly what I was about to read. Going in, you know this is the story of a desperate attempt by humanity's last descendants to colonize a terraformed world already inhabited by a non-human civilization. The shock comes with a moment of recognition followed by some of the smartest worldbuilding I've ever encountered. My advice: don't read the reviews. Go in cold and enjoy a stellar example of modern evolutionary science fiction. Fans of Sue Burke's Semiosis duology and Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep will find a lot to like here.

 

Publisher's description: 

The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age--a world terraformed and prepared for human life. But all is not right in this new Eden. In the long years since the planet was abandoned, the work of its architects has borne disastrous fruit. The planet is not waiting for them, pristine and unoccupied. New masters have turned it from a refuge into mankind's worst nightmare. Now two civilizations are on a collision course, both testing the boundaries of what they will do to survive. As the fate of humanity hangs in the balance, who are the true heirs of this new Earth?

 

This book is a full account of the surreal meltdown of Reactor No.4 of the V.I. Lenin Nuclear Power Plant in Chernobyl. From fatal flaws in Soviet engineering to grueling shiftwork in nuclear plants, Higginbotham tells the story of the worst nuclear disaster in world history and the desperate coverup, blame, and cleanup that followed. I learned both Soviet and nuclear history from this book, making this an enjoyable read for the twentieth century history nerd in me.

 

Publisher's description:

Journalist Adam Higginbotham's definitive, years-in-the-making account of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster--and a powerful investigation into how propaganda, secrecy, and myth have obscured the true story of one of the twentieth century's greatest disasters. Midnight in Chernobyl is an indelible portrait of one of the great disasters of the twentieth century, of human resilience and ingenuity, and the lessons learned when mankind seeks to bend the natural world to his will--lessons which, in the face of climate change and other threats, remain not just vital but necessary.

 

"Wow. Wow, this was absolutely incredible," is the feeling I walked away with after finishing Know My Name. Many of you probably remember the speech that went viral during the 2016 sexual assault case of Emily Doe vs. Brock Turner. This speech was the victim impact statement Emily Doe gave at the trial of Brock Turner, who was eventually convicted for assaulting her. It was shared millions of times on the internet. Mothers shared it with daughters. Sisters shared it with sisters. Best friends shared it with all their female friends. Know my Name is the brave, brilliant, and breathtaking memoir from Emily Doe, who has come forward as Channel Miller. It details Miller's harrowing experiences, from the night of her assault, to the frustrating ways in which she was disappointed and abused by the American justice system, to her life today as she reckons with her past. This memoir is so well written, so beautifully told, and so powerful.. I cried, I wanted to scream, I felt a lot of emotions. I'm in awe of Chanel. This should be required reading for everybody.

 

Publisher's description:

She was known to the world as Emily Doe when she stunned millions with a letter. Brock Turner had been sentenced to just six months in county jail after he was found sexually assaulting her on Stanford's campus. Her victim impact statement was posted on BuzzFeed, where it instantly went viral--viewed by almost eleven million people within four days, it was translated globally and read on the floor of Congress; it inspired changes in California law and the recall of the judge in the case. Thousands wrote to say that she had given them the courage to share their own experiences of assault for the first time. Now she reclaims her identity to tell her story of trauma, transcendence, and the power of words. Entwining pain, resilience, and humor, this memoir will stand as a modern classic.

 

Truly Devious has it all--murder, mystery, history, and hormones. Readers are sucked into two storylines--the 1930s, when a kidnapping and murder at prestigious and remote Ellingham Academy became one of the world's most famous unsolved mysteries, and the present day, when current Ellingham student Stevie investigates the cold case, deals with an anxiety disorder, and navigates her new friendships and love interests. It's fast-paced, thrilling, quirky, and fun!

 

Publisher's description:
Ellingham Academy is a famous private school in Vermont for the brightest thinkers, inventors, and artists. It was founded by Albert Ellingham, an early 20th century tycoon, who wanted to make a wonderful place full of riddles, twisting pathways, and gardens. A place, he said, where learning is a game. Shortly after the school opened, his wife and daughter were kidnapped. The only real clue was a mocking riddle listing methods of murder, signed with the frightening pseudonym "Truly, Devious". It became one of the great unsolved crimes of American history. True-crime aficionado Stevie Bell is set to begin her first year at Ellingham Academy, and she has an ambitious plan: She will solve this cold case. That is, she will solve the case when she gets a grip on her demanding new school life and her housemates: the inventor, the novelist, the actor, the artist, and the jokester. But something strange is happening. Truly Devious makes a surprise return, and death revisits Ellingham Academy. The past has crawled out of its grave. Someone has gotten away with murder.

 

The Heart Principle is another fantastic book by Helen Hoang. Simply calling it a romance between Anna and Quan would be doing a disservice to the book and to the readers, because it is so much more. In The Heart Principle, Hoang covers dealing with an adult Autism diagnosis, elder care, the death of a parent, family, cancer, burnout, and the importance of compassion for yourself and others.

 

I have been mulling over this review for days because I wanted to express how much I liked this book, but at the same time how hard some of it was for me to read. Anna's struggle with her family and her desire to make everyone happy to her own detriment was tough to digest, but so well-told I couldn't put it down.

 

Publisher's description:

When violinist Anna Sun accidentally achieves career success with a viral YouTube video, she finds herself incapacitated and burned out from her attempts to be perfect in other people's eyes. If Anna ever wants to move forward, she has to learn to listen to her own heart, but that's not easy when her greatest fear has always been disappointing others. Her solution is to create a low-stress environment, with no expectations to fulfill, where she can experiment with being herself and going after what she wants. Translation: Anna is going to embark on a string of one-night stands. The more unacceptable the men, the better. That's where tattooed, motorcycle-riding Quan Diep comes in, but nothing goes according to plan.

 

The title The Sentence takes on several meanings throughout the book, from a prison sentence to an actual sentence that our indigenous protagonist, Tookie, thinks can kill people. Louise Erdrich's characters are living through early COVID times in Minneapolis, trying to figure out what was happening at the time of George Floyd's murder. If you like books and bookstores, you will enjoy reading about the survival of a small independent bookstore based on the real Birchbark Books. Oh, by the way, the main theme is solving the mystery of a haunting at this fictional bookstore.

 

Publisher's description:

A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store's most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls' Day, but she simply won't leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading with murderous attention, must solve the mystery of this haunting while at the same time trying to understand all that occurs in Minneapolis during a year of grief, astonishment, isolation, and furious reckoning.

 

This is one of the best books I've ever read, and certainly the best one that was told from multiple points of view. The story flows easily and gracefully between the two main characters: Werner, the German son of a coal miner who ends up working for the Wehrmacht, and Marie-Laure, the blind French daughter of a museum worker. It's a brilliant examination of fate, free will, human connection, and the consequences of war on the individual. The characters are interesting and sympathetic and strong. And I cried at the end :) 

- Kylie, tenth-grade teen volunteer

 

Publisher's description:

The paths of a blind French girl and a German boy collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.