Catherine recommends "Firefighter Flo!"

“Hey, yo! Firefighter Flo!” This picture book, by Andrea Zimmerman, starts with an exuberant call to Firefighter Flo, and the jaunty pace keeps going till the last page. The story is a classic – the fire station gets a call, there’s a building on fire and a dog in danger. The fire rescue team saves the day. There are many books with similar plots; as a parent of a boy who was once obsessed with fire trucks, I’ve read a lot of books about fire fighters, fire engines, fire dogs… This one easily ranks in the top! The rhyming text flows smoothly, and on almost every page there are great sounds: Rings, Stomps, Clangs, and Screeches; Bangs, Whooshes, Smashes, and Crashes! Pictures by Dan Yaccarino complete the fun. This book would be a pure delight to read aloud to any child.

Recommended for Children

 

Taryn Recommends "Goth Girl, Queen of the Universe"

 

 

Jess has bounced between different foster homes for most of her life so she knows better than to set down roots, so it’s fitting that none of the kids at her new high school don’t give her the time of day. Mostly because they think she’s a witch because she’s goth. There is one kid however that seems to want to spend some time with Jess. Oscar wants Jess to use her style and fashion skills to help his cosplay team compete and hopefully win their competitions. Jess blows him off, until she gets a message from her estranged biological mother through Instagram to see if they can meet. Jess wants nothing more than to meet her mom in New York City, but there is one problem, a bunch of paperwork that would never be approved by her social worker. Once Jess learns that there is a cosplay competition in New York City, she agrees to join Oscar’s team so that she can make it to see her mom. As Jess works with her team to make these cosplay costumes work, she begins to realize that it’s actually fun and so is having friends. As the big competition nears, Jess has to decide just how far she’ll go to achieve the “family” that she’s looking for.

I absolutely fell head over heels for this book! It has everything that I could have asked for: nerdy references, found family, and it didn’t sugarcoat the real issues that Jess goes through as a foster child. Not only is this book set in Detroit, but the author is from Michigan, is a former foster teen herself, and even has a Master’s degree in library science. I found that the author’s personal experience made the book that much better and found that I could not put it down.

This is a Young Adult novel, but I think that adults can appreciate the themes that are touched on in this book.

 

Kara recommends "Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow"

Gabrielle Zevin is one of my favorite authors, and her latest novel does not disappoint! 

From Amazon:

On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn’t heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won’t protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts.
 
Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before.

This book is best for adult readers.

 

Alicia recommends "Lessons In Chemistry" by Bonnie Garmus

What was life really like for women in the late 1950s and early 60s?  Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not an average woman, she is a female chemist at an all-male research facility.  The only non-misogynist male at the facility is Calvin Evans, a brilliant scientist.  When they meet the chemical attraction is immediately evident and they soon are a couple.  Because life is messy and there is not always a happy ending to every story, Elizabeth finds herself a few years later on her own with a child. Elizabeth is the popular host of an afternoon cooking show called, Supper at Six.  She is teaching the afternoon housewives and children how to cook with chemistry.  Along with recipes that include H2O and a quarter teaspoon of sodium chloride, she is blunt, honest and the public "eats" up the witty unconventional comments. Filled with uncommon characters such as six-thirty the dog, Mad her daughter and a host of others.  This was funny, witty, and poignant. 

Catherine recommends "Three Strike Summer"

Gloria Mae Willard wants nothing more in life than to play on a baseball team. She could strike out anyone, if she only had the chance to show off her pitching skills – but she has yet to find a baseball team that will let a girl play. When her parents have to sell their house in Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl and move to California where they work as migrant farmers, everything in Gloria’s life seems like it has turned upside down. There is barely enough food to eat, they live in a shanty, they have no freedom to go where they want, and they can’t even eat the peaches that surround them in the orchard. Yet in the midst of the family’s turmoil, Gloria learns there is a secret baseball team – and this time, she is going to find a way to play. I was immediately drawn into this story of a stubborn girl who learns to stand up for herself and for her community. I think anyone who reads this will want Gloria to be on their team!

I would recommend this for middle grade readers – upper elementary and middle school.

Justine recommends Danse Macabre by Stephen King

In Danse Macabre, Stephen King gives an overview of the horror genre from the years 1950-1980.  Originally published in 1981, the book functions as both a historical retrospective and a time capsule of the period it was written in, when Stephen King was new to his success and grappling with the issues of the early 1980's.

"Ranging across the whole spectrum of horror in popular culture and going back to the seminal classics of Count Dracula and Frankenstein, Stephen King describes in his ideas how horror works on many levels, and how he brings it to bear in his own inimitable novels."

Although this is an older title, it's a newer edition to our collection.  Check it out today!

Katie recommends "The Door of No Return"

For anyone who knows me, you know I love a novel in verse! Kwame Alexander’s new one does not disappoint.

This book is POWERFUL. The first book in a soon to be trilogy, The Door of No Return follows Kofi Offin, an 11 year old boy from Ghana in the 1860s. Alexander beautifully weaves details of Ghana’s geography and culture into the descriptions of every day life. I just felt an intense sense of dread as I read this, knowing that something awful was coming and I just…couldn’t stop reading. This book is beautiful, brutal, and a little bit hopeful.

I would recommend this to more mature middle grade readers (grades 5 and up), as some scenes include graphic violence. Definitely recommend to teens and adults as well. The audiobook is fantastic.