Lona recommends: Maddi’s Fridge by Lois Brandt
Genre: Realistic fiction
Reading level: Elementary school
Summary: Sofia learns that her friend Maddi can’t afford groceries, and tries to figure out a way to help her deal with food insecurity.
Lona says: If I was still teaching, I would use this for first grade and do a whole unit with this!
This title is available at Foster Public Library.
Kylie recommends: Friends with Benefits by Marisa Kanter
Genre: Romance
Reading level: Adult
Summary: Lifelong best friends say ‘I do’ to a marriage of convenience, trading vows for a financial safety net and benefits.
Kylie says: This book is perfect for fans of friends to lovers romance. If you liked Would You Rather by Allison Ashley this one is for you.
Audrey recommends: I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger
Genre: Science fiction
Reading level: Adult
Summary: A futuristic folk tale about a man on a mythological quest across Lake Superior.
Audrey says: I loved reading Rainy’s enthusiastic first-person narration and its unique use of language, and meeting all the charming characters that inhabit this not-too-distant America. Enger’s writing fully inhabits a world that is familiar and yet unfamiliar, and maintains a folkloric quality that resembles an oral tradition tale like The Odyssey or Beowulf.
This title is available at Foster Public Library.
Cathy recommends: Winter’s Gift by Jane Monroe Donovan
Genre: Picture book
Reading Level: Preschool
Summary: A man living alone rescues a horse in distress.
Cathy says: It’s a feel-good story. Fit for Christmas, for anyone who loves horses, for anyone who wonders why they help others, and for compassion for the elderly.
This title is available at Tyler Free Library.
Cathy recommends: Penguin and Pinecone by Salina Yoon
Genre: Picture book
Reading Level: Preschool
Summary: Friendships can spring up at any time, but what happens when one friend moves away?
Cathy says: It’s a sweet story of caring and dealing with physical separation of two friends. It also looks at the affects of the passage of time on each of the friends.
This title is available at Tyler Free Library.
Audrey recommends: Piglettes by Clémentine Beauvais
Genre: Contemporary fiction
Reading level: YA
Summary: Three teenagers, brought together by an “ugliest girl in school” contest, make a plan to bike across the country and gate-crash the President of France’s garden party.
Audrey says: The eponymous “three little piglettes,” Mireille, Astrid, and Hakima, are unexpectedly brought together by their classmate’s unofficial “ugliest girl in school” poll. The girls become fast friends, and quickly learn that they each have a reason to disrupt the Bastille Day garden party in Paris. They retrofit an old pickup into a bike-powered food truck and fund their trip by selling homemade sausages on the way. The character interactions are fantastic, the situations are hilarious, and the development that each girl goes through to reach Paris is full of heart. Mireille is the most sarcastic unreliable narrator of all time and it makes an already great story even better.
This title is available at Foster Public Library.
Cathy recommends: The Night Guest by Hildur Knutsdottir (translated by Mary Robinette Kowal)
Genre: Psychological thriller
Reading level: Adult
Summary: One woman’s search for the cause of her chronic fatigue leads to answers she cannot accept.
Cathy says: The reader is brought in with concern for the protagonist’s common malady. One can’t help but follow, with increasing horror, her journey to the shocking conclusion.
This title is available at Tyler Free Library.
Audrey recommends: Bull by David Elliott
Genre: Novel in verse
Reading level: YA
Summary: The Ancient Greek myth of Theseus, retold from the perspective of the Minotaur at the center of the labyrinth.
Audrey says: David Elliott’s poetry sets a high bar for all other novels in verse. An ancient story finds a modern voice as he playfully mixes archaic vocabulary with modern colloquialisms. Elliott is inspired by established poetic forms, but plays with their execution. He further complicates the story by giving the “monster” a voice. This version of the story truly humanizes these abstract characters, which is ironic to say about a tale of gods and bull-men. Each is the hero in their own version of events.
Greek myth retellings are everywhere now (think Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller, Lore Olympus by Rachel Smythe, and Ariadne by Jennifer Saint) but none I’ve read have packed such an effective punch as this one.
Audrey recommends: The Best at It by Maulik Pancholy
Genre: Realistic fiction
Reading level: Middle grade
Summary: Rahul enters seventh grade with one mission: to find one activity that he can be the BEST at.
Audrey says: This quick read was packed with more heart and character than I thought possible. Rahul, a gay Indian-American with OCD, has a lot of reasons he feels like he’ll never fit in, and he believes the only way to overcome these “shortcomings” is to achieve some kind of wild success. Luckily, Rahul has a fun-loving grandfather and a loyal best friend, who both advocate for Rahul when he would rather erase himself. Readers with perfectionist leanings will see themselves in Rahul’s absurd, accomplishment-based logic, and learn to give themselves the grace that a friend would extend.
Audrey recommends: Positively 4th Street by David Hajdu
Genre: Nonfiction
Reading level: Adult
Summary: Hajdu expertly captures a brief window of the Folk Revival movement between 1960-1966.
Audrey says: I couldn’t put this book down. Hajdu writes nonfiction like a novel, turning the lives of Richard Fariña, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Mimi Baez into a compelling narrative. He can take you into the infinitesimal interpersonal drama among these creative personalities, and then zoom out to show the nationwide shift from rock n’ roll teenyboppers to folk revival hippies. He uses suspense and foreshadowing brilliantly, keeping the story engaging even if we know how it ends. Most of all, Hajdu treats his subjects as people. He neither excuses their behavior nor condemns them for it. They lie, they take credit for others’ work, they chase partners who are too young for them, they let their egos get in the way of their relationships, but moreover, they are human.
Check it out before the new Bob Dylan movie, A Complete Unknown, comes out in December!
This title is available at Foster Public Library or via the eZone as an ebook or audiobook.
