Staff Picks

Cute book with so many adorable illustrations showing Baby Capybara living authentically and finding friends he can be himself with. Super fun and chaotic!

 

Loud and splashy Baby Capybara must change his ways if he wants a bevy of peaceful birds perched on his back, but when an unexpected critter splashes onto the scene, he realizes he does not need to change himself to find friends.

 

I had never heard of Jennifer Boylan before, and after reading Cleavage, she is a name to remember for sure! She fosters a safe space to learn about, hear, and understand transgender perspectives. A great book to explore the different experiences of transgender people, but also to become acquainted with the similarities! Boylan offers really unique insight to her life and lived experiences and captivates the reader to continue reading until the book is done!

 

Publishers description:

What is the difference between men and women? Jennifer Finney Boylan examines the divisions-as well as the common ground-between the genders, and reflects on her own experiences, both difficult and joyful, as a transgender American. Jennifer Finney Boylan's She's Not There was the first bestselling work written by a transgender American. Since its publication twenty years ago, she has become the go-to person for insight into the impact of gender on our lives, from the food we eat to the dreams we dream, both for ourselves and for our children. But Cleavage is more than a deep dive into gender identity; it's also a look at the difference between coming out as trans in 2000-when many people reacted to Boylan's transition with love-and the present era of blowback and fear. How does gender affect our sense of self? Our body image? The passage of time? The friends we lose-and keep? Boylan considers her womanhood, reflects on the boys and men who shaped her, and reconceives of herself as a writer, activist, parent, and spouse. With heart-wrenching honesty, she illustrates the feeling of liminality that followed her to adulthood, but demonstrates the redemptive power of love through it all. With Boylan's trademark humor and poignancy, Cleavage is a sharp, witty, and captivating look at the triumphs and losses of a life lived in two genders. Cleavage provides hope for a future in which we all have the freedom to live joyfully as men, as women, and in the space between us.

 

A very cute story that has a really refreshing take on death that I hadn't seen before. The theme takes a gentle and meaningful approach to dealing with grief and the unanswered question of what comes next after death, endearing you to its characters to the point where you feel like you yourself are experiencing their feelings, all in a cute and cozy setting, taking place primarily in a tea shop with a bunch of kooky and interesting characters popping in for a drink away from busy life. FUN!

 

Publisher's description:

A ... queer love story ... When a reaper comes to collect Wallace from his own funeral, Wallace begins to suspect he might be dead. And when Hugo, the owner of a peculiar tea shop, promises to help him cross over, Wallace decides he's definitely dead. But even in death he's not ready to abandon the life he barely lived, so when Wallace is given one week to cross over, he sets about living a lifetime in seven days. Hilarious, haunting, and kind; an uplifting story about a life spent at the office and a death spent building a home.

 

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.