Staff Recommendations

May 2008

Children's Books | Adult Books | Teen Books
Audiobooks | Movies | Music

Below you'll find materials recommended by library staff.

Children's Books

Cookies: Bite Size Life Lessons, by Amy Krouse Rosenthal (E Rosenthal) A charming book explaining different values such as respect, trustworthiness, and generosity through the making and sharing of cookies. Classic watercolors by Jane Dyer provide an old fashioned feel while different animals embody humans throughout the story. A good pick for preschool and up, and you might be tempted to make a batch of cookies when you finish this title. --Shannon, Head of Youth Services
Recycle Every Day, by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace (E Wallace) The popular author of Apples, Apples, Apples charms us again with her beautifully illustrated story about Minna, a young rabbit girl learning about recycling. Minna is working on a poster contest at her school and learns about easy ways we can all make a difference like carrying canvas bags, biking, composting and growing a garden. This is destined to be an environmental classic for kids in preschool through second grade. --Shannon, Head of Youth Services
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Greg Heffley's Journal , by Jeff Kinney (J Kinney) In this hilarious take on the middle school experience, Jeff and Rowley, school "wimps" extraordinaire, must survive daily trials among larger, stronger, and shaving boys. Suddenly Rowley grows more popular, and Jeff more frantic to retain his friendship. Good for fourth grade and up, 217 pages. --Shannon, Head of Youth Services
George Did It, by Suzanne Tripp Jurmain (J B Washington) A brief biography of America's first reluctant president, George Washington, is a perfect pick for the early elementary ages. Interesting facts are given both through text and illustration such as Washington's dental issues or even financial problems simply making the trip to the capitol to be sworn in. A good picture book styled biography that will engage children. --Shannon, Head of Youth Services

Adults Books

Windy City: A Novel of Politics, by Scott Simon (Fic Simon) This is book succeeds on every level. It's an engrossing story about local politics: "This is Chicago... The dead can vote. Surely we can figure out a way to register a man who's still alive." It features colorful characters, several of whom bear more than a passing resemblance to real civic leaders. It's a terrific whodunit. There are bitter and sweet love and family interests; there's even a cat. Humor? Plenty of it, including witty dialogue and such malapropisms as, "I am humbled by the spontaneous combustion of outpouring I have received." There are thoughtful observations on how aldermen balance ethics and pragmatism: if something is right, how can they bend the rules to make it happen? Many Public Radio listeners may find it hard to believe that someone with Scott Simon's reporting talent is also a gifted novelist, but this book proves that he is indeed. And, for another superb - but very different - Simon novel, check out Pretty Birds (Fic Simon) --Christine Ricker, Circulation Department
Plum Wine, by Angela Davis-Gardner (Fic Davis-Gardner) The year is 1965; Barbara is a lonely young American teaching English at Kodaira College in Japan. Her closest acquaintance, another professor named Michi-san, dies suddenly and bequeaths to her an old tansu chest, which is full of "Umeshu"--Japanese plum wine. Barbara is astonished to find that wrapped around each wine bottle is a delicate rice paper covered in Japanese writing. Barbara enlists the help of Seiji, a young man who lived next door to Michi-san and whose survival of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima has scarred him in many ways. As Barbara and Seiji embark on the laborious process of translating Michi's papers, they discover it is the story of Michi's life-her love, her shame, and most of all, her family. The intimacy that develops between Barbara and Seiji leads to an intense love affair - but then Seiji betrays Barbara in a way that even she couldn't imagine. This novel is beautifully written, full of Japanese folklore, ceremony, and tradition, as well as the devastating effects on the Hiroshima people just twenty years after WW II. Recommended for readers who enjoyed Lisa See's Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, a leisurely-paced treat. --Jamie, Reference Librarian
The Zookeeper's Wife, by Diane Ackerman (940.5318 Ack) It is the late 1930s. Antonina is married to Warsaw Zoo director, Jan Zabinski; thus she is "the zookeeper's wife." With their young son, Ryszard (Polish for "lynx") they enjoy a full life teeming with the birds and mammals that live in the zoo and in their home. The trio is curious, humorous and deeply committed to each other and their nonhuman charges. Any reader interested in animals (especially local readers with the Brookfield Zoo in their backyard) will be spellbound by the routines of caring for hundreds of winged, clawed and hoofed creatures. But that is only the halcyon beginning of this amazing narrative. When Nazis bomb the zoo in 1939, life as the Zabinskis knew it is forever changed, but they respond to horror and tragedy with courage and creativity, risking their own lives to help over 300 Jews to hide on the zoo grounds or escape to safety. This blend of family, fauna, war and rescue is rendered especially compelling by being filtered through Antonina, who the author describes as "a woman of exceptional empathy and alert senses, who had a mysterious gift for calming ornery animals or people, including German soldiers ... [her] story needed to be told, because it's a tale of heroic compassion, something 'ordinary' people rise to in every era ..." --Christine Ricker, Circulation Department
Freedom for the Thought We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment, by Anthony Lewis (342.7308 Lew) Though the First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution protecting free speech was established in 1791, the first favorable ruling in the Supreme Court was in 1931. According to author Anthony Lewis, it took the efforts of numerous federal judges and Supreme Court justices through time to finally uphold the right of free speech. Among the heroes in this book are Learned Hand who was ruling in favor of First Amendment rights before most other federal judges, Oliver Wendell Holmes who took up the cause after the First World War, and Louis D. Brandeis whose dissenting opinions eventually swayed the Court. A point that Lewis makes throughout the book is that our constitutional rights are not protected simply by the existence of the constitution. There have to be brave jurists willing to uphold the rights when legislatures, governors, and presidents try to circumvent them. The job of protecting our rights never ends. Freedom for the Thought That We Hate is a quick and compelling read that discusses many aspects of what is protected by the First Amendment. --Rick, Adult Services Librarian

Books for Teens

Tomorrow, When the War Began, by John Marsden (YA Marsden) When Ellie and her friends return home from a camping trip in the Australian bush, they find a terrible shock: their families are gone and their houses are abandoned. Soon they learn that their country has veen invaded, and everyone in their town has been captured. Now they must make a decision: should they run back into the brutal bush and hide, give themselves up, or stay and fight the enemy? This is the first book in the series. --Jamie, Reference Librarian
Chicks With Sticks: (Knitwise), by Elizabeth Lenhard (YA Lenhard) Scottie and the girls are back in this third installment of the Chicks With Sticks series. Scottie, Amanda, Bella, and Tay - four very different girls but the greatest of friends - have been through a lot together. They've survived boys, the closing of their favorite knit shop, and other problems, but now the biggest one of all faces them: graduating high school. With community service projects and college applications keeping them busy, will they still have time for each other? Includes four knitting projects. --Jamie, Reference Librarian
Truancy, by Isamu Fukui (YA Fukui) In this futuristic story, the world is ruled by a totalitarian government. The Mayor runs the harsh school system with the help of his brutal Educators. On the opposite side is a group of former students called Truancy, who fight against the Mayor's oppressiveness. Main character Tack is fifteen and just trying to survive in all the craziness. But when one of Tack's friends is killed, he vows revenge and joins the Truancy. The author was only fifteen when he wrote this chilling book! --Jamie, Reference Librarian

Audiobooks

Jack Plank Tells Tales, by Natalie Babbitt (J Book-on-CD Babbitt) Jack Plank was a washout as a pirate for he did not really like the noise and danger of attacking other ships. He preferred watching the seagulls, feeling the sea breeze, and peeling a few potatoes for soup. His shipmates on the Avarice kept him on for years because he was pleasant to have around, but in hard times when booty was scarce, they put him ashore at a port called Saltwash, now in Jamaica. The innkeeper Mrs. DelFresno told him that he could stay for one gold sovereign per day, provided he behaved himself and got a job within a week. Every day Jack joined the residents of the inn for dinner to say that he did not find a job that day. For reasons he explained in stories, he could not be a farmer, baker, fisherman, or take any of the other recommend jobs. His stories involving sad trolls, beautiful mermaids, gullible ghosts, and other fantastic creatures kept his dinner companions entertained. This audiobook is very entertaining. --Rick, Adult Services Librarian

The Canon: The Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science, by Natalie Angier (BOCD Angier NF) I am 3.5 billion years old. More about that in a moment. Natalie Angier rues the attitudes that parents, educators, and other common folk often express about science. Believing the kids do not stand a chance until adults are re-educated, she takes readers through a tour of all the sciences. Here she starts with her many splendid science stories and observations that awe and entertain. One of the sections that I liked best was about numbers and the age of the earth. She holds that the earth is really quite young, which may be hard to believe considering that it is 5.7 billion years. She points out that the number is not unimaginably large. Take the ages of all people currently living and add them up, and the formation of the earth can be reached over twenty times. As I said before, I am 3.5 billion years old. So are you. According to Angier, it was about 3.5 billion years ago that the first single cell organisms appeared, and the DNA within them evolved to form all the life that followed. All of the code from our initial and intermediate ancestors is still in our DNA. Life has never died out in that time, and we are the continuation of what went before. We are not really individuals. We are communities. Angier gives us much to contemplate. --Rick, Adult Services Librarian

Movies

Soldier's Story (DVD Sol) A Soldier's Story is a 1984 film about racial segregation in World War II in which an military investigator seeks to discover who murdered the friendless Sargent Waters on a foggy night right outside camp. Did a local member of the Ku Klux Klan kill the black soldier as a "get out of Louisiana" message aimed at the African Americans in training? Did a white officer who felt Waters was disrespectful shoot him? Could it have been one of his own men, all of whom came from the Negro baseball league? The film was based on a Pulitzer Prize winning play and nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. The story follows Captain Davenport, an African American investigator well played by Howard E. Rollins, Jr., as he questions anyone who knew the victim. Among the men from the company that he interviews is Private First Class Peterson, played by a very young Denzel Washington. In flashbacks, Waters is played by Adolph Caesar, who was nominated as best supporting actor. The film has a very theatrical quality, as one might expect from a movie based on a play. At points lighting spotlights characters telling their memories. Dialogue has a scripted and quotable feel that one used to find in movies. It also seems almost like a musical, as it starts with Patti LaBelle as Big Mary singing in the local colored bar, and several other scenes follow with Larry Riley as C. J. Memphis singing in the mess hall or back in the bar. Our film discussion group liked it. --Rick, Adult Services Librarian

Music

Def Leppard Vault: 1980-1995, Def Leppard (CD 781.66 DEF) Summer's almost here, the perfect time to put the top back, pop in some Def Leppard and crank it up! Relive the Big Hair days with this CD containing all of Def Leppard's favorite hits. From the inexplicably singable "Pour Some Sugar on Me," to the vocals you and your friends love to harmonize on "Photograph," to the devastating ballad "Love Bites," this album will bring back fond memories of fist pumping and fishnet stockings. --Jamie, Reference Librarian

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