Staff Picks - LibGuides at Boulder Public Library

Amanda recommends The Princess and the Pony by Kate Beaton

05/06/2025

Boulder Library

children's, picture books, multiracial, .Amanda's reviews

This is one of my favorite books to read with rough-and-tumble kids. Princess Pinecone would LOVE to get a real warhorse for her birthday. And her family tries...but they don't quite get it right. What follows is a fun book for horse kids, brave kids, fantasy kids, and kids who are really good at looking at challenges in a new way.

Publisher's description:

Princess Pinecone would like a real war horse for her birthday, instead of which she gets a plump, cute pony--but sometimes cuteness can be a kind of weapon, especially in a fight with dodgeballs and spitballs and hairballs and squareballs.

Get The Princess and the Pony from our online catalog.

Kaley S. recommends Mornings in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa

04/23/2025

Boulder Library

adult fiction, lived experiences, immigrants, Arab, multicultural, multiracial, refugees, .Kaley S.'s reviews

This beautifully written and poetic book addresses the complexities that came about for Palestinians and Jews before, during, and after the establishment of Israel. Ultimately revealing the human nature that ties us all together, this deeply moving and profound novel shines light on the ripple effect that harm can do to a person, a city, a state, a culture, and a world. The book begs the reader to determine that passion can blur the lines of love and hate and blind us to an exit of a cycle.

Publisher description:

This is Amal's story, the story of one family's struggle and survival through over sixty years of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, carrying us from Jenin to Jerusalem, to Lebanon and the anonymity of America. It is a story shaped by scars and fear, but also by the transformative intimacy of marriage and the fierce protectiveness of motherhood. It is a story of faith, forgiveness, and life-sustaining love. Mornings in Jenin is haunting and heart-wrenching, a novel of vital contemporary importance. Lending human voices to the headlines, it forces us to take a fresh look at one of the defining political conflicts of our lifetimes

Find Mornings in Jenin in our online catalog

Claire recommends Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People by Tiya Miles

02/26/2025

Boulder Library

lived experiences, ability diverse, BIPOC, Black, multicultural, multiracial, religiously diverse, .Claire's reviews

A luminous and lyrical account of the life of Harriet Tubman. Night Flyer draws from spiritual biographies in the late 1800s, reflections on Tubman’s ecological awareness of the natural world and the imperfect sources we have from those who interviewed her in old age. The portrait that emerges attempts to grasp so many mysteries and complexities of Tubman’s life—from her faith, mysticism, and dreams, to her family relationships. A powerful and riveting read and a finalist for a NBCC Award.

Publisher's description:
From the National-Book-Award-winning author of All That She Carried, an intimate and revelatory reckoning with the myth and the truth behind an American everyone knows and few really understand. Harriet Tubman is, if surveys are to be trusted, one of the ten most famous Americans ever born, and soon to be the face of the twenty-dollar bill. Yet often she's a figure more out of myth than history, almost a comic-book superhero-the woman who, despite being barely five-feet tall, illiterate, and suffering from a brain injury, managed to escape from her own enslavement, return again and again to lead others North to freedom, speak out powerfully against slavery, and then become the first American woman in history to lead a military raid, freeing some 750 people without loss of life. You could almost say she's America's Robin Hood, a miraculous vision, often rightly celebrated but seldom understood. Tiya Miles's extraordinary Night Flyer changes all that. With her characteristic tenderness and imaginative genius, Miles explores beyond the stock historical grid to weave Tubman's life into the fabric of her world. She probes the ecological reality of Tubman's surroundings and examines her kinship with other enslaved women who similarly passed through a spiritual wilderness and recorded those travels in profound and moving memoirs. What emerges, uncannily, is a human being whose mysticism becomes the more palpable the more we understand it-a story that offers us powerful inspiration for our own time of troubles. Harriet Tubman traversed many boundaries, inner and outer. Now, thanks to Tiya Miles, she becomes an even clearer and sharper signal from the past, one that can help us to echolocate a more just and sustainable path.

Find Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People in our online catalog

Saoirse recommends The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017 by Rashid Khalidi

11/08/2024

Boulder Library

history, lived experiences, equity, Arab, multicultural, multiracial, religiously diverse, refugees, .Saoirse's reviews

Palestinian historian Khalidi writes a nuanced and lived experience history that explores the historic and present experiences of Palestinians. It is fundamentally a critique of imperialism, Southwest Asian geopolitics, Israel, the United Sates, Western Europe, and Palestinian political leadership. I've wanted to know more about Palestine and Israel for a long time. Palestinian historian Khaldidi's account of 1917-2017 in the region is a deeply engaging and informed critique not often heard in the U.S. Most especially his experience of 1982 Israeli invasion of Beirut personalized this history. Highly recommend listening to on audiobook.

Publisher's description:
A landmark history of one hundred years of war waged against the Palestinians from the foremost US historian of the Middle East, told through pivotal events and family history In 1899, Yusuf Diya al-Khalidi, mayor of Jerusalem, alarmed by the Zionist call to create a Jewish national home in Palestine, wrote a letter aimed at Theodore Herzl: the country had an indigenous people who would not easily accept their own displacement. He warned of the perils ahead, ending his note, “in the name of God, let Palestine be left alone.” Thus Rashid Khalidi, al-Khalidi’s great-great-nephew, begins this sweeping history, the first general account of the conflict told from an explicitly Palestinian perspective. Drawing on a wealth of untapped archival materials and the reports of generations of family members—mayors, judges, scholars, diplomats, and journalists—The Hundred Years' War on Palestine upends accepted interpretations of the conflict, which tend, at best, to describe a tragic clash between two peoples with claims to the same territory. Instead, Khalidi traces a hundred years of colonial war on the Palestinians, waged first by the Zionist movement and then Israel, but backed by Britain and the United States, the great powers of the age. He highlights the key episodes in this colonial campaign, from the 1917 Balfour Declaration to the destruction of Palestine in 1948, from Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon to the endless and futile peace process. Original, authoritative, and important, The Hundred Years' War on Palestine is not a chronicle of victimization, nor does it whitewash the mistakes of Palestinian leaders or deny the emergence of national movements on both sides. In reevaluating the forces arrayed against the Palestinians, it offers an illuminating new view of a conflict that continues to this day.

Find The Hundred Years' War on Palestine in our online catalog.

Raquel recommends The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Mandanna Sangu

09/04/2024

Boulder Library

adult fiction, fantasy, BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, multiracial, .Raquel's reviews

This book feels like a warm magical hug, the epitome of cozy fantasy. I love how cozy and uplifting this book is, especially for those of us looking for our own found family. Definitely a light but meaningful read, perfect for getting out of a reading slump.

Publisher description:
A warm and uplifting novel about an isolated witch whose opportunity to embrace a quirky new family-and a new love-changes the course of her life. As one of the few witches in Britain, Mika Moon knows she has to hide her magic, keep her head down, and stay away from other witches so their powers don't mingle and draw attention. And as an orphan who lost her parents at a young age and was raised by strangers, she's used to being alone and she follows the rules...with one exception: an online account, where she posts videos "pretending" to be a witch. She thinks no one will take it seriously. But someone does. An unexpected message arrives, begging her to travel to the remote and mysterious Nowhere House to teach three young witches how to control their magic.

Find The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches in our online catalog

Monnie recommends James by Percival Everett

07/10/2024

Boulder Library

adult fiction, .Monnie's reviews, BIPOC, Black, multiracial

James offers a dignified take from a slave's perspective on the classic Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain. It's a quick read, but it packs a punch. Thoughtful, imaginative, with a couple of curve balls. By the author of Erasure, on which the movie American Fiction is based.

Publisher description:

When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond. While many narrative set pieces of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remain in place, Jim’s agency, intelligence and compassion are shown in a radically new light.

Find James in our online catalog

Jennifer recommends The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

02/26/2024

Boulder Library

family life, .Jennifer's reviews, lived experiences, BIPOC, Black, Indigenous, multiracial

Love Songs is an unapologetically Black, feminist (womanist) novel; it is also an American novel. Ailey Pearl Garfield is a scholar, a feminist, a survivor of childhood sexual trauma, an historian, a girl, is of Indigenous, white, and Black heritage, and has impeccable home training. Spending the majority of this book's 879 pages with her is so delightful. And, though I cried several times during this book, I also cried because it was over. This gift of a book is pedagogical. It helped me to see the flaws in racial assumptions that I didn't even know I possessed. I can't wait to read this one again.

Publisher's description: To come to terms with who she is and what she wants, Ailey, the daughter of an accomplished doctor and a strict schoolteacher, embarks on a journey through her family's past, helping her embrace her full heritage, which is the story of the Black experience in itself.

Find The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois in our catalog.

Rachel recommends Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror by Jordan Peele

12/13/2023

Boulder Library

adult fiction, lived experiences, .Rachel's reviews, Black, multiracial

A deliciously creepy horror anthology that focuses on Black experiences but has a little something spooky for everyone. This collection brought so many new authors to my attention, scared me in a ton of different ways, and reminded me how great Jordan Peele is!

Publisher description:
A cop begins seeing huge, blinking eyes where the headlights of cars should be that tell him who to pull over. Two freedom riders take a bus ride that leaves them stranded on a lonely road in Alabama where several unsettling somethings await them. A young girl dives into the depths of the Earth in search of the demon that killed her parents. These are just a few of the worlds of Out There Screaming, Jordan Peele's anthology of all-new horror stories by Black writers.

Find Out There Screaming in our online catalog

Jason recommends The Fraud by Zadie Smith

11/08/2023

Boulder Library

adult fiction, historical fiction, equity, BIPOC, multicultural, multiracial, .Jason's reviews

Zadie Smith doesn't disappoint with her new novel set in Victorian England. Its focus is a real-life trial that went on for years, but it's also about much more: race, class, gender, and sexual politics. Smith plays with structure in interesting ways, and her observations are trenchant and insightful.

Publisher description:

It is 1873. Mrs. Eliza Touchet is the Scottish housekeeper–and cousin by marriage–of a once-famous novelist, now in decline, William Ainsworth, with whom she has lived for thirty years. Mrs. Touchet is a woman of many interests: literature, justice, abolitionism, class, her cousin, his wives, this life and the next. But she is also sceptical. She suspects her cousin of having no talent; his successful friend, Mr. Charles Dickens, of being a bully and a moralist; and England of being a land of façades, in which nothing is quite what it seems. Andrew Bogle, meanwhile, grew up enslaved on the Hope Plantation, Jamaica. He knows every lump of sugar comes at a human cost. That the rich deceive the poor. And that people are more easily manipulated than they realize. When Bogle finds himself in London, star witness in a celebrated case of imposture, he knows his future depends on telling the right story. The "Tichborne Trial"--wherein a lower-class butcher from Australia claimed he was in fact the rightful heir of a sizable estate and title--captivates Mrs. Touchet and all of England. Is Sir Roger Tichborne really who he says he is? Or is he a fraud? Mrs. Touchet is a woman of the world. Mr. Bogle is no fool. But in a world of hypocrisy and self-deception, deciding what is real proves a complicated task.

Find The Fraud in our online catalog

Syd recommends It Came From the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror edited by Joe Vallese

10/30/2023

Boulder Library

adult nonfiction, essays, horror, lived experiences, .Syd's reviews, gay, lesbian, LGBTQIA+, multiracial, queer

There are many tropes in horror that speak to queer people in (often contradictory) ways. This collection of essays guides us through favorites such as The Exorcist, Jennifer's Body, and Get Out to explore the reasons why such a dark film genre can attract such a diverse and marginalized community.

Publisher's description: Horror movies hold a complicated space in the hearts of the queer community: historically misogynist, and often homo- and transphobic, the genre has also been inadvertently feminist and open to subversive readings. Common tropes—such as the circumspect and resilient “final girl,” body possession, costumed villains, secret identities, and things that lurk in the closet—spark moments of eerie familiarity and affective connection. Still, viewers often remain tasked with reading themselves into beloved films, seeking out characters and set pieces that speak to, mirror, and parallel the unique ways queerness encounters the world. Twenty-five narrative essays by contemporary LGBTQ writers reflecting on queerness in horror film, from Hitchcock to Halloween.

Find It Came From the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror in our catalog.