Staff Picks

Immerse yourself in this beautifully illustrated graphic novel that follows the story of Mags and Nessa as they navigate queer love, heartache, secrets, and power.

 

Publisher description: 

Everyone has secrets. Mags's has teeth. Magdalena Herrera is about to graduate high school, but she already feels like an adult with serious responsibilities: caring for her ailing grandmother; working a part-time job; clandestine makeouts with a girl who has a boyfriend. And then there's her secret, which pulls her into the basement each night, drains her of energy, and leaves her bleeding. A secret that could hurt and even kill if it ever got out — like it did once before. So Mags keeps her head down, isolated in her small desert community. That is, until her childhood friend Nessa comes back to town, bringing vivid memories of the past, an intoxicating glimpse of the future, and a secret of her own. Mags won't get attached, of course. She's always been strong enough to survive without anyone's help. But when the darkness starts to close in on them both, Mags will have to drag her secret into the daylight and choose between risking everything... or having nothing left to lose.

Find The Deep Dark in our online catalog

Immerse yourself in the lush and rugged Colorado wilderness on a sweeping epic of love and fate. Using local history and personal narratives, Colorado author Shelly Read tells the story of a woman from the now-flooded town of Iola, CO, and follows her in her quest for truth and answers.

 

Publisher description:

Seventeen-year-old Victoria Nash runs the household on her family's peach farm in the small ranch town of Iola, Colorado--the sole surviving female in a family of troubled men. Wilson Moon is a young drifter with a mysterious past, displaced from his tribal land and determined to live as he chooses. Victoria encounters Wil by chance on a street corner, a meeting that profoundly alters both of their young lives, unknowingly igniting as much passion as danger. When tragedy strikes, Victoria leaves the only life she has ever known. She flees into the surrounding mountains where she struggles to survive in the wilderness with no clear notion of what her future will bring.

 

Find Go as a River in our online catalog

Young George and his family live a peaceful life in Los Angeles in the 1940s until armed guards arrive at their home after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. People of Japanese descent are quickly rounded up and punished by the U.S. Government during a period of strong anti-Japanese sentiment. Forced to live in work camps in California and Arkansas, the Takei family strives to maintain a normal upbringing for their three young kids. Packed with real historical details, a gripping autobiographical narrative, and beautiful illustrations, this book exemplifies the best of historical fiction and graphic novels alike.

 

Publisher's description:

A stunning graphic memoir recounting actor/author/activist George Takei's childhood imprisoned within American concentration camps during World War II. As a four-year-old boy, George Takei found his own birth country at war with his father's -- and their entire family forced from their home into an uncertain future. In 1942, at the order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, every person of Japanese descent on the west coast was rounded up and shipped to one of ten "relocation centers," hundreds or thousands of miles from home, where they would be held for years under armed guard. This is Takei's firsthand account of those years behind barbed wire, the joys and terrors of growing up under legalized racism, his mother's hard choices, his father's faith in democracy, and the way those experiences planted the seeds for his astonishing future.

 

Get lost in the funky rhythms of this sweet picture book! Perfect for anyone who loves putting their little one to sleep with a song and a dance.

 

Publisher's description:

With a simple clap of hands, an itty-bitty beboppin' baby gets his whole family singing and dancing. Sister's hands snap. Granny sings scat. Uncle soft-shoes--and Baby keeps the groove. Things start to wind down when Mama and Daddy sing blues so sweet. Now a perfectly drowsy baby sleeps deep, deep, deep. Lisa Wheeler and R. Gregory Christie pair up for a celebration of music, imagination, and big families--but they know that even a jazz baby needs to snooze. Oh yeah.

 

If you're looking for a book that will immediately change your life--this is it! Breathing is something we do thousands of times each day, but Nestor's research and insights about how we breathe can fundamentally change the way we live, and how a simple repetitive act can alter our health.

 

Publisher's description: 

No matter what you eat, how much you exercise, how resilient your genes are, how skinny or young or wise you are, none of it matters if you're not breathing properly. There is nothing more essential to our health and wellbeing than breathing: take air in, let it out, repeat 25,000 times a day. Yet, as a species, humans have lost the ability to breathe correctly, with grave consequences. Science journalist James Nestor travels the world to figure out what went wrong with our breathing and how to fix it. Why are we the only animals with chronically crooked teeth? Why didn't our ancestors snore? Nestor seeks out answers in muddy digs of ancient burial sites, secret Soviet facilities, New Jersey choir schools, and the smoggy streets of Sao Paulo, Brazil. He tracks down men and women exploring the science behind ancient breathing practices like Pranayama, Sudarshan Kriya, and Tummo and teams up with pulmonary tinkerers to scientifically test long-held beliefs about how we breathe. Modern research is showing us that changing the ways in which we breathe can jump-start athletic performance, halt snoring, rejuvenate internal organs, mute allergies and asthma, blunt autoimmune disease, and straighten scoliotic spines. None of this should be possible, and yet it is. Drawing on thousands of years of medical texts and recent cutting-edge studies in pulmonology, psychology, biochemistry, and human physiology, Breath turns the conventional wisdom of what we thought we knew about our most basic biological function on its head. You will never breathe the same again.

 

This hilarious collection takes the worst reviews of National Parks and turns them into illustrations peppered with fun facts! Both outdoor and indoor enthusiasts will enjoy looking at and reading about our National Parks in a whole new way.

 

Publisher's description: 

Subpar Parks, both on the popular Instagram page and in this humorous, informative, and collectible book, combines two things that seem like they might not work together yet somehow harmonize perfectly: beautiful illustrations and informative, amusing text celebrating each national park paired with the one-star reviews disappointed tourists have left online. Millions of visitors each year enjoy Glacier National Park, but for one visitor, it was simply Too cold for me! Another saw the mind-boggling vistas of Bryce Canyon as Too spiky! Never mind the person who visited the thermal pools at Yellowstone National Park and left thinking, 'Save yourself some money, boil some water at home.' Featuring new material, the book will include more depth and insight into the most popular parks, such as Yosemite, Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, and Acadia National Parks; anecdotes and tips from rangers; and much more about author Amber Share's personal love and connection to the outdoors. Equal parts humor and love for the national parks and the great outdoors, it's the perfect gift for anyone who loves to spend time outside as well as have a good read (and laugh) once they come indoors.

 

Find Subpar Parks in our online catalog.

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.

 

Sophia's story is both relatable--she goes through growing pains just like every young adult, and very unique--her parents are spies for the U.S. government. Having moved and grown up all over the world, the author takes a look back at her life and her parent's profession to create a beautiful and honest memoir. The end of the book describes the hoops she had to jump through in order to not give away any of her parent's secrets. This is a great read for young people and adults alike!

 

Publisher description: 

Young Sophia has lived in so many different countries, she can barely keep count. Stationed now with her family in Central America because of her parents' work, Sophia feels displaced as an American living abroad, when she has hardly spent any of her life in America. Everything changes when she reads a letter she was never meant to see and uncovers her parents' secret. They are not who they say they are. They are working for the CIA. As Sophia tries to make sense of this news, and the web of lies surrounding her, she begins to question everything. The impact that this has on Sophia's emerging sense of self and understanding of the world makes for a page-turning exploration of lies and double lives.

 

 

This book was simultaneously joyful and sorrowful to read. Johnson's essays touch on many tough issues of sexuality, bullying, racism, and homophobia. He ultimately seeks joy and acceptance of both himself and the various communities he is part of. This is a great read for anyone who identifies with Johnson, or who seeks to better understand the important message he has to tell.

 

Publisher's description:

In a series of personal essays, prominent journalist and LGBTQIA+ activist George M. Johnson explores his childhood, adolescence, and college years in New Jersey and Virginia. From the memories of getting his teeth kicked out by bullies at age five, to flea marketing with his loving grandmother, to his first sexual relationships, this young-adult memoir weaves together the trials and triumphs faced by Black queer boys.

 

Find All Boys Aren't Blue in our online catalog.