Staff Picks

As a first-generation American who has been the family interpreter since I was a child, this book brought tears to my eyes! It is an honor and a privilege to interpret for my parents who do not speak English fluently, but at times it was too much for a young child to handle. This picture book perfectly encapsulates the experience of many first-gen kids who do their best to help their parents, whilst acknowledging the weight of responsibility.

 

A sharp and heartfelt picture book about a young soccer-loving girl who's an interpreter for her Spanish-speaking parents.

 

 

 

Ever wanted to step inside your favorite book series--literally? That's what happens in this new book by the author The Dead Romantics. Eileen is feeling a bit lost in real life, so she retreats into her fave cozy read, only to end up actually living inside it in an adorable fictional town!

 

Publisher's Description:

English professor Eileen "Elsy" Merriweather feels frozen in place after her fiancé breaks up with her a week before their wedding. Thankfully, there's the promise of a "week of wine and happily ever afters" when her Super Smutty Book Club vacations together in a cabin in the Catskills. When Elsy gets lost in a storm on the way there, however, she winds up in Eloraton, the fictional small-town setting of bestseller Rachel Flowers's hit Quixotic Falls series, the romances that brought the Super Smutty Book Club together in the first place. Flowers died before she could finish the series and Eloraton is stuck at the point where she stopped writing. The owner of the local bookstore, Anderson Sinclair, is the only person aware there's anything odd about the town. He warns Elsy not to make ripples or change things, but she feels compelled to help her favorite characters find the happy endings their author planned for them.

 

This collection of essays is arrestingly beautiful. Helen Macdonald's writing about the natural world is full of her own sense of wonder, appreciation, love, and awe. Reading these short pieces was a wonderful respite from pandemic life--as well as inspiring me and making me think of animals and natural places in new ways. Read this today--it's wonderful and important.

 

Publisher description:

In Vesper Flights, Helen Macdonald brings together a collection of her best loved essays, along with new pieces on topics ranging from nostalgia for a vanishing countryside to the tribulations of farming ostriches to her own private vespers while trying to fall asleep.

Meditating on notions of captivity and freedom, immigration and flight, Helen invites us into her most intimate experiences: observing the massive migration of songbirds from the top of the Empire State Building, watching tens of thousands of cranes in Hungary, seeking the last golden orioles in Suffolk's poplar forests. She writes with heart-tugging clarity about wild boar, swifts, mushroom hunting, migraines, the strangeness of birds' nests, and the unexpected guidance and comfort we find when watching wildlife.

By one of this century's most important and insightful nature writers, Vesper Flights is a captivating and foundational book about observation, fascination, time, memory, love and loss and how we make sense of the world around us.