Staff Picks

Eka loves visiting her Grandfather in Tokyo because she can slip out and sing, dance, and march with her spirit friends (yōkai) in a glorious night parade. She can't do this in New York where her family now lives, so she cherishes her participation in the wild procession and longs for her next visit.

 

Publisher's description:
The night parade is about to begin . . . The ground thunders in Tokyo. A gust of wind blows. The pitter patter of paws and claws draws closer. The air is thick with swirling, swooping demons. It's Eka's favorite evening of the year, the one night she refuses to miss. But it's become harder to travel to Japan now that she's living across the world in New York. Unsure of when she can return next to see her yokai friends, Eka tries to forget that this could be her last parade for some time. Instead, she'll march, sing, dance, hoot, and screech until sunrise. Because on this night, there's no time to waste--the night parade awaits.

Find Tokyo night parade in our catalog

 

Publisher's description:

Jason Fitger is a beleaguered professor of creative writing and literature at Payne University, a small and not very distinguished liberal arts college in the Midwest ... His once-promising writing career is in the doldrums, as is his romantic life, in part as the result of his unwise use of his private affairs for his novels ... In short, his life is a tale of woe, and the vehicle this ... novel uses to tell that tale is a series of ... letters of recommendation that Fitger is endlessly called upon by his students and colleagues to produce, each one of which is a small masterpiece of high dudgeon, low spirits, and passive-aggressive strategies.

 

The Rest of Us Just Live Here is an amazing book that is centered around four people who aren't exactly the main protagonists of any other story. They aren't the chosen ones, they just happen to live in the same world that all the weird things happen in. I have never read a book like this before but Patrick Ness pulled it off well. The chapters are engaging and even tell you what is happening with the Indie kids (they are typically the ones to do all of the heroics and world saving). However the book just focuses on smaller problems in the life of Mikey and his friends.

- Kyra, ninth-grade volunteer

 

Publisher's Description:

What if you aren't the Chosen One? The one who's supposed to fight the zombies, or the soul-eating ghosts, or whatever the heck this new thing is, with the blue lights and the death? What if you're like Mikey? Who just wants to graduate and go to prom and maybe finally work up the courage to ask Henna out before someone goes and blows up the high school. Again. Because sometimes there are problems bigger than this week's end of the world, and sometimes you just have to find the extraordinary in your ordinary life. Even if your best friend is worshipped by mountain lions.

 

This short novella caught my eye at #52 on the New York Times Book Review: Best 100 Books--and I read it in one gulp, captivated by the flawed but lovely and unforgettable protagonist. The wildfire he endures will be familiar to most Westerners. So will his paradoxical yearning for both remoteness and connection.

 

Publisher description:

Suffused with the history and landscapes of the American West--its otherworldly flora and fauna, its rugged loggers and bridge builders--this extraordinary novella poignantly captures the disappearance of a distinctly American way of life. It tells the story of Robert Grainer, a day laborer in the American West at the start of the twentieth century--an ordinary man in extraordinary times. Buffeted by the loss of his family, Grainer struggles to make sense of this strange new world. As his story unfolds, we witness both his shocking personal defeats and the radical changes that transform America in his lifetime.

 

In a beautifully illustrated picture book, Kari Percival takes little ones on a journey through a garden and all the friends that come with it! From greeting bees to growing peas, this is a sweet and messy guide to starting a garden and getting dirty outside.

 

Publisher's description:
The beautiful simplicity of a garden is depicted through digital woodcut illustrations and engaging nonfiction text presented as a series of sweet questions and gentle replies. Less of a traditional how-to and more of a how-to-appreciate, this soothingly sparse text paints an inviting and accessible picture of what a garden offers. And with an all-child cast, the absence of an adult presence empowers readers to view the garden and its creatures through their own eyes, driven by curiosity and wonder.

Find Say Hello to a Worm: A First Guide to Outside in our catalog

Philips incorporates several different perspectives that showcase the multiple ways we interact with beavers and how they interact with us. Made me fall in love with the semi aquatic goofballs. It's also a good book for those who don't always read non-fiction!

 

Publisher's description: 
In the rich naturalist tradition of H Is for Hawk and The Soul of an Octopus, BEAVERLAND tells the tumultuous, eye-opening story of how beavers and the beaver fur trade shaped America's history, culture, and environment. Before the American empires of steel and coal and oil, before the railroads, there was the empire of fur. Beginning with the early trans-Atlantic trade in North America, Leila Philip traces the beaver's profound influence on our nation's early economy and feverish western expansion, its first corporations and multi-millionaires. As Leila's passion for this weird and wonderful rodent widens from her careful observation of its dams in her local pond, she chronicles the many characters she meets in her pursuit of the beaver: fur trappers and fur traders, biologists and fur auctioneers, wildlife managers, PETA activists, Native American environmental vigilantes, scientists, engineers and beaver enthusiasts. What emerges is a startling portrait of the secretive, largely hidden world of the contemporary fur trade and an immersive ecological and historical investigation of these animals that, once trapped to the point of extinction, have rebounded to become one of the greatest conservation stories of the 20th century. Now, beavers offer surprising solutions to some of the most urgent problems caused by climate change. Beautifully written and filled with the many colorful characters-fur trappers and fur traders and fur auctioneers, wildlife managers and biologists, Native American environmental vigilantes. She meets a Harvard scientist from the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana, using drones to create 3-dimensional images of beaver dams. She meets an environmental restoration consultant in the Chesapeake whose nickname is the beaver whisperer. BEAVERLAND transports readers into scenes of beavers in their ponds and the scientists and fur trappers in pursuit of them, widening arcs of information to reveal the profound ways in which beavers and the beaver trade shaped history, culture, and our environment. 

 

I became a reader during the era of publishing conglomeration, completely unaware of the industry's transformation. Sinykin's exploration has forced me to rethink my perception of authors and my contribution as a book consumer. Recommended to those curious about why any book gets published.

 

Publisher description:

In the late 1950s, Random House editor Jason Epstein would talk jazz with Ralph Ellison or chat with Andy Warhol while pouring drinks in his office. By the 1970s, editors were poring over profit-and-loss statements. The electronics company RCA bought Random House in 1965, and then other large corporations purchased other formerly independent publishers. As multinational conglomerates consolidated the industry, the business of literature-and literature itself-transformed. Dan Sinykin explores how changes in the publishing industry have affected fiction, literary form, and what it means to be an author. Giving an inside look at the industry's daily routines, personal dramas, and institutional crises, he reveals how conglomeration has shaped what kinds of books and writers are published. Sinykin examines four different sectors of the publishing industry: mass-market books by brand-name authors like Danielle Steel; trade publishers that encouraged genre elements in literary fiction; nonprofits such as Graywolf that aspired to protect literature from market pressures; and the distinctive niche of employee-owned W. W. Norton. He emphasizes how women and people of color navigated shifts in publishing, arguing that writers such as Toni Morrison allegorized their experiences in their fiction. This deeply original book recasts the past six decades of American fiction.

 

With only a word or two per page, this book's expressive illustrations show the interactions between a grumpy older cat and an energetic kitten—and what happens when the kitten's exuberance goes too far. This is a hilarious way to explore the concept of opposites!
 

Publisher's description:
"Meet Kitty! Kitty wants to play! Meet Cat. Cat just wants to nap. Bold, whimsical artwork and plenty of humor engage little ones in a sly and stylish introduction to opposites. This deceptively simple concept book introduces readers to grumpy, old, exhausted Cat, who just wants to be left alone, and to happy, new, energetic Kitty, who longs to make friends."--Publisher marketing.

Find Kitty & Cat: Opposites Attract in our catalog