I loved this smart, funny peek inside the high stakes world of San Francisco private schools. It has everything: social satire, family drama, friendship, a lot of laughs, a touch of romance, and lots to think about after. If you’ve been looking for that Where’d You Go, Bernadette feeling, try this. Bonus: The co-authors live in …
Do you miss your bookstores? Be sure to follow them on social media. Many are posting videos and photos to give you a little bit of that happy bookstore feeling for when you’re mostly shopping online or over the phone with them. Here’s a quiet morning with birdsong outside Waucoma Bookstore in Hood River, OR: …
This book continued to haunt me weeks after I finished it, like some dark, lyrical cloud. Hurricane Season exists sharply in the present—the ways in which violence affects every sense; this prose will make you squirm—but is simultaneously outside of time, folkloric. Melchor’s writing is devastating and propulsive: As much as I sometimes wanted to, I could …
This gorgeous picture book features affirming, uplifting, nurturing text and stunning artwork representing 22 national parks. (Don’t miss the backmatter that gives more details about the parks shown.) When I read this book at storytime and invited the audience to join in the refrain of “you are home,” the inclusion, warmth, and pride brought tears …
Treat yourself to an immersion in the community feeling and sense of self-worth that shine throughout this gorgeous book. It’s difficult to choose, but I think my favorite pages might be the second-to-last about tipping the barber. This picture book has earned many crowns: Winner of the 2018 Kirkus Prize for Young Readers A Newbery …
As farmers’ markets and CSA boxes offer up the richest bounties, you might crave fresh recipe inspiration to go with your fresh produce. Seattle chef Makini Howell, owner of Plum Bistro in Capitol Hill, shares over 60 plant-based recipes in her gorgeous cookbook of “gratifying vegan dishes,” Plum. These recipes are delicious ways to incorporate …
What a clever and realistic accounting of how we demonstrate what it looks like to stand up and be a true friend: through sickness and health, through buggers and bullies, swiping pocket change and wiping out on skateboards, first crushes and first kisses. This story is told through ten vignettes of individual kids who are …
Compelling narrative. Fantastic pre-teen middle reader that does an excellent job of exploring race and race-related issues via the clever mechanism of a young Black student who begins her middle school journey with some color-blind ideas and anti-Black biases that prevent her from forming meaningful relationships with other Black students. Great book to approach students …
While still a teenager, abolitionist Harriet Tubman received a head injury that left her with pain, dizziness, and visions. Coates reimagines her visions as something more. This tale of Hiram Walker, and enslaved half-white, half-black child of a slave and a plantation owner in the Antebellum South, weaves subtle magical realism into life as he …
Otaku by Chris Kluwe will have to be compared to Ernie Cline’s Ready Player One because they have a lot in common. Stop me if you’ve heard this one: a dystopian world that’s gone to hell and it would really suck if there wasn’t some kind of global virtual reality game for people to get …
