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Staff Recommendations
Spring 2010
Children's Books | Adult Books | Teen Books
Below you'll find materials recommended by library staff.
Children's Books
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The Wheels on the Bus, illustrated by Ronnie Rooney (E CHILDRENS) This popular and catchy rhyme is presented in a very appealing format. The font size on the page and illustrations will appeal to you and your toddler. In the end there is a page of "Song activity" and "Benefits of Nursery Rhymes and Activity Songs" which are helpful to know. Repeating nursery rhymes and doing the actions with your child are a very important part of early literacy skills that prepare your child to read. --Uma |
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Truckery Rhymes, by Jon Scieszka (E SCIESZKA) Jon Scieszka has rewritten classic rhymes with different trucks. These rhymes are delightful and cleverly written and if your child loves trucks, he/she will enjoy this book immensely. The illustrations are equally eye-catching and funny. --Uma |
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When It's Six O'Clock in San Francisco, by Cynthia Jaynes Omololu (E OMOLOLU) Do you have family and friends that live in other places in this country or perhaps around the world? This is a great picture book to learn and talk about different time zones. Omololu takes us from 6:00 a.m. in San Francisco to 9:00 a.m. in New York; on the way we visit Montreal, Santiago, London, Cape Town, Lahore, Beijing, Sydney and Honolulu. --Uma |
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One, by Kathryn Otoshi (E OTOSHI) Blue felt good with all colors except Red. Red picked on Blue, which made him feel bad. Until One came along. One had a different shape and was funny. This is a very creative and nice book that encourages a child to be courageous in the face of bullying. --Uma |
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Potato Chip Puzzles, by Eric Berlin (J BERLIN) This is a great book, filled with riddles for the reader to solve along with the book's characters. Winston and his friends are invited to represent their school at an all-day puzzle contest to win a fifty-thousand dollar prize. The prize is offered by an eccentric millionaire who owns a potato chip factory. Their school team must figure out difficult puzzles at different locations while working against teams from other schools. In addition they must also figure out who is undermining all the teams' efforts to win. The solutions to all the puzzles are at the back of the book. --Susan M. |
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All Shook Up, by Shelley Pearsall (J Caudill Shelf PEARSALL) A boy turns thirteen and as he puts it, is shipped off to his divorced father's house for four months. When he has to start school there, he can't decide which is worse, trying to fit in with the cool kids or keeping secret the fact that his father is an Elvis impersonator. Will he survive?. --Susan M. |
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The Sixty-Eight Rooms, by Marianne Malone (J MALONE) Malone's first novel features sixth-graders Jack and Ruthie, who become enthralled with the miniature Thorne Rooms at the Chicago Art Institute during a school field trip. Jack and Ruthie find a magical key that allows them to shrink to a height of 5 inches and gain access to the Thorne Rooms. Most of the novel takes place during one evening when the pair secretly manages to stay overnight in the museum, thus allowing them to explore the rooms in detail, discover real worlds and real people from history and solve a few mysteries, including what happened to security guard Mr. Bell's long-lost photographs. Ruthie's fascination with the rooms is contagious, and readers who have not yet visited the Thorne Rooms in person will soon want to do so. --Dana |
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Girls of Greatness, by Lisa Dean (J 305.23 DEA) What does it mean to be a girl of greatness? This book is inspirational and motivational to read. Lisa Dean guides girls through the importance of positive thinking, dreaming in color and making a difference. --Uma |
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The Painting That Wasn't There, by Steve Brezenoff (J BREZENOFF) Gum, Sam, Egg and Cat are friends and classmates. They all like Ms. Stanwyck's art class. They all go on a field trip as a part of their art class. While at the museum Gum and his friends discover something fishy and are able to solve a mystery using their expert talents and wit. --Uma |
Adult Books
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Life List: A Woman's Quest for the World's Most Amazing Birds, by Olivia Gentile (598.07234 GEN) Phoebe Snetsinger (1931-1999) once rode a horse for ten hours over rocky terrain of mountainous Colombia in the rain to see a rare bird. She even skirted around war torn Zaire to sneak into Rwanda to add several birds to her life list. She also missed her mother's funeral, her daughter's wedding, and her husband's magic shows while birding overseas. That's how she became the first person to ever see 8000 of the world's approximately 9700 recognized bird species. In Life List: A Woman's Quest for the World's Most Amazing Birds, journalist Olivia Gentile takes readers around the world with a woman who turns an admirable idea turned into a wedge between her and her family. --Rick |
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The Virgin Suicides, by Jeffrey Eugenides (FIC EUGENIDES) This is maybe the most endearing novel I have ever read. It is the story of a Michigan town in the 1970s obsessed with the lives and deaths of the five Lisbon sisters. The novel is told through the memories of the boys who loved them as teenagers. Cecelia is the first Lisbon sister to take her own life and the book opens with her first attempt, then lets us watch, through the eyes of others, the chain of events that follows. That we only see the girls through their neighbor's eyes and can never fully know exactly what goes on in the Lisbon household makes the sisters all the more interesting and the reader, too, becomes obsessed with them. Eugenides hits on the sad naivety of all characters involved, from the girls themselves, to their parents, and the neighbors who eagerly discuss them. His descriptions of Detroit suburbs are also spot-on. This novel will simultaneously make you feel the giddyness of listening to your high school crush read aloud in class and the disturbed notion that something really terrible and unknown to you might happen which is pretty much adolescence in a nutshell. --Annie |
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Making Rounds with Oscar, by David Dosa (362.175 DOS) David Dosa doubted that Oscar, the cat at the hospice, knew when patients were near death. So he watched closely to learn what was really going on. In Making Rounds with Oscar, he tells what he found. In doing so, he also tells a lot about work and life in nursing homes, the concerns of family members of patients, and the process of dying. The cat story is really a softening element that lets him write about these less than happy subjects. As already seen by book sales, many readers will want to read this book. It would be also an excellent choice for book club discussions and use by support groups. --Rick |
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Let Me Finish, by Roger Angell (B ANGELL) I have always thought of Roger Angell as a literary sports writer focused mostly on baseball. With spring training in progress in both Florida and Arizona, I thought that it might be good to read Let Me Finish, Angell's collection of essays that serve as a memoir. To my surprise, there was only a little baseball in the book, but this was no problem. Angell thoughtfully remembers his parents, his friends, life on the road, drinking martinis, and working at The New Yorker, all interesting subjects. Reading Let Me Finish is listening to Angell tells good stories on the back porch. --Rick |
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The Chicago Music Scene: 1960s and 1970s, by Dean Milano (977.311 MIL) Turning through the photo-filled pages of The Chicago Music Scene: 1960s and 1970s, you get a good lesson in Chicago folk, blues, country, jazz, and rock.Veteran Chicago musician Milano appears in a handful of the photos, making a point about Chicago musical acts - the lineups were always changing. Bands would often change singers, lead guitars, or drummers. A substitute bass player might be needed for a gig at a jazz club. Some talented musicians appear in several sections of the book with folk, jazz, and rock acts, as they often crossed the fuzzy lines separating the musical genres. The word "fusion" is used by Milano several times. Like other books of the Images of America series, The Chicago Music Scene is 128 pages of photographs with captions, telling a broad story of a place through pictures. In such a book, the writing of the captions is critical, and I wish Milano had had a little more editing. I am sometimes confused as to who the individuals are in the group pictures. I am not certain Milano himself knows in every case. Still, he takes us back into a time and place that many of us would like to visit. --Rick |
Books for Teens
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Swallow Me Whole, by Nate Powell (YA GRAPHIC NOVEL POWELL) Although Nate Powell's graphic novel is somber at points, it's beautiful just the same. The author and illustrator's inky and delicately detailed drawings tell the story of ruth and Perry, two teens struggling with mental illness on top of the commone trials of adolescence. Powell, who has worked with developmentally disabled adults for ten years, treats the subject of mental illness with compassion and draws you into his characters' worlds. Affecting story. Beautiful artwork. And a great example of the complexity of the graphic novels that are coming out these days. --Annie |
Music
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Far, by Regina Spektor (CD 781.66 SPE) You've probably heard Regina Spektor's songs in the background on shows like Grey's Anatomy or in the new movies 500 Days of Summer and My Sister's Keeper . But don't keep this singer-songwriter in the background forever. Spektor's newest album, Far , begs to be brought to the forefront. The artist's lyrics contain as Rolling Stone put it in their glowing review of Far , "the loopiness of Fiona Apple, the too-much-information of Tori Amos and the slanted critical eye of Liz Phair." Her songs and strong yet playful voice encompass the spirit of children humming made-up songs to themselves while they play, which makes for an excellent sing-along CDand an all-around enjoyable listening experience. --Annie |
