Staff Picks

I loved this book! It's the story of an ambitious dragon who might be destined for evil. It seems like it's for older kids than the Wings of Fire: Original Series.

 

Publisher's description:

Long before the SandWing and the Dragonet Prophecy, Darkstalker, half NightWing and half IceWing, is hatched under the three moons--born into a divided heritage, he is destined to become the most powerful and dangerous dragon Pyrrhia will ever know, and it will take the combined efforts of a SeaWing named Fatham and a NightWing seer named Clearsight to come up with a way to save all the kingdoms from his anger.

 

 

Jenn Shapland's My Autobiography of Carson McCullers is a beautiful exploration of queer historiography. In an interpersonal use of the archive, Shapland walks the reader through her discovery of Carson McCullers within the documents Carson has left behind. While writing on Carson's life, Shapland simultaneously is documenting her life in the process. Shapland delicately explores the conflict between traditional historiography and queerness within the treatment of the archive, exploring new ways a historian can write history and treat queerness.

 

Publisher's description:

While working as an intern in the archives at the Harry Ransom Center, Jenn Shapland encounters the love letters of Carson McCullers and a woman named Annemarie—letters that are tender, intimate, and unabashed in their feelings. Shapland recognizes herself in the letters' language—but does not see McCullers as history has portrayed her. And so, Shapland is compelled to undertake a recovery of the full narrative and language of McCullers's life: she wades through the therapy transcripts; she stays at McCullers's childhood home, where she lounges in her bathtub and eats delivery pizza; she relives McCullers's days at her beloved Yaddo. As Shapland reckons with the expanding and collapsing distance between her and McCullers, she sees the way McCullers's story has become a way to articulate something about herself. The results reveal something entirely new not only about this one remarkable life, but about the way we tell queer love stories. In genre-defying vignettes, Jenn Shapland interweaves her own story with Carson McCullers's to create a vital new portrait of one of America's most beloved writers, and shows us how the writers we love and the stories we tell about ourselves make us who we are.

 

Eva Evergreen, Semi-Magical Witch is a chapter book for middle-grade readers with plenty of action and magical adventures--and absolutely zero romance. The young witch Eva must embark on her novice quest under the shadow of her supportive, elite witch mother. Along her way, she discovers her own strength, builds lifelong friendships, and is faced with saving a town from a would-be disaster. An empowering story with an equally compelling follow up, Eva Evergreen and the Cursed Witch.

 

Publisher's description

Eva must travel to a seaside town to complete her training and earn the rank of Novice Witch before her thirteenth birthday, or be banned from using magic forever. It's a simple enough test. The only problem? Eva only has a pinch of magic. She summons heads of cabbage instead of flowers and gets a sunburn instead of calling down rain. And to add insult to injury, whenever she overuses her magic, she falls asleep. When she lands in the tranquil coastal town of Auteri, the residents expect a powerful witch, not a semi-magical girl. So Eva comes up with a plan: set up a magical repair shop to aid Auteri and prove she's worthy. She may have more blood than magic, but her "semi-magical fixes" repair the lives of the townspeople in ways they never could have imagined. Only, Eva's bit of magic may not be enough when the biggest magical storm in history threatens the town she's grown to love. Eva must conjure up all of the magic, bravery, and cleverness she can muster or Auteri and her dreams of becoming a witch will wash away with the storm.

One of the characters in this book, Jeffrey, wants to be a musician, but his mother wants him to go to military school. When some new friends, the Penderwick sisters, arrive for the summer, he finds he can be himself for the first time. The other books in this series are good, too.

 

Publisher description:

While vacationing with their widowed father in the Berkshire Mountains, four lovable sisters, ages four through twelve, share adventures with a local boy, much to the dismay of his snobbish mother.

 

I like this collection because it has A LOT of comics in it. I like the series overall because Hobbes as the imaginary friend makes me nostalgic for when I was a super-little kid even though I myself didn't have an imaginary friend (I'm still a kid, but I'm not super-little any more). Also, Calvin is super bad, and that's really funny. I laugh out loud every time I read this. If you like this one, you should also read The Indispensable Calvin and Hobbes and, for a shorter one, Attack of the Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons.

 

Publisher description:

Beginning with the day Hobbes sprang into Calvin's tuna fish trap, the first two Calvin and Hobbes collections, Calvin and Hobbes and Something Under The Bed Is Drooling, are brought together in this treasury. Including black-and-white dailies and color Sundays, The Essential Calvin and Hobbes also features an original full-color 16-page story.

 

I like adventure stories. This one is about a girl in Nigeria who discovers she has special powers and finds herself and her friends who also have powers having to use them when there is a ritual killer on the loose. The sequel is also good, but it was a little scarier than the first one at points so maybe wait until you are older to read that one.

 

Publisher Description:

Twelve-year-old Sunny lives in Nigeria, but she was born American. Her features are African, but she's albino. She's a terrific athlete, but can't go out into the sun to play soccer. There seems to be no place where she fits in. And then she discovers something amazing--she is a "free agent" with latent magical power. Soon she's part of a quartet of magic students, studying the visible and invisible, learning to change reality. But will it be enough to help them when they are asked to catch a career criminal who knows magic too?