In August we plunge into nonfiction and novels, movies and music and adventures, fire and water! Here are our recent reads and staff picks for the last bright weeks of summer.
Cindy’s Picks
I have three recommendations for August. Desert Queen is a biography by Jyoti Rajan Gopal that’s lavishly illustrated with a vibrant desert palette by Svabhu Kohli. It’s a beautiful story of a young boy from India who was captivated by dance. He became the drag performer Queen Harish, the “Whirling Desert Queen of Rajasthan”! Desert Queen is a touching (and at times harrowing) story of metamorphosis and self-acceptance.
From author Joshua S. Levy comes The Jake Show, a novel about seventh-grader Jake Lightman, whose parents’ divorce is tearing him in half. His “mother wants him to play the role of ‘Yaakov, a Torah-loving kid who never watches TV.’ His secular father wants ‘Jacob’ to focus on science and math.” As Jake thinks,”There was one thing all versions of me had in common—Yaakov, Jacob, Jake. They were all by the book. No ad-libbing. No improv. This wasn’t reality TV. I couldn’t storm off, scream at the camera, form alliances they’d never expect. This wasn’t a documentary either. The story couldn’t go anywhere, be anything, depending on what I chose to do next. I was a character, not a person. And only people have choices.” But Jake makes two new, awesome friends. When they invite him to go to Camp Gershoni with them for the summer, he knows he has to do it, whether his parents want him to or not.
My final recommendation is from the author of Roll with It: Jamie Sumner. “The problem with letting someone else tell your story is that they always get it wrong…which means the one thing you can never do is let another person speak for you.” Deep Water is the story of 12-year-old, Tully Birch, who wants to brave the waters of Lake Tahoe to break the record for the youngest person ever to complete the famous “Godfather” swim. She’s hoping maybe her mother will come back if she does. This beautiful novel in verse promises to be heart-rending and compelling.
Emily’s Pick
As a kid, I loved reading any Choose Your Own Adventure books I could get my hands on (and seeing if I could find the right path to keep the characters alive), so I was very excited to hear about Peng Shepherd’s All This And More.
Marsh has lost her job, is recently divorced, has failed at dating, and is worried about her changing relationship with her teenage daughter. Then she gets the chance to change her life on an astounding reality TV show that uses a new technology, “quantum bubbling.” Marsh and the bubbly host Talia travel back to key points in her life, where Marsh makes different choices, trying to find the right path to her perfect life. And of course, it’s all streaming live nonstop to a worldwide audience who are commenting about her every move.
Readers follow Marsh’s story down different paths, but things definitely aren’t straightforward. Surprising people and elements keep popping up in every timeline, some changes aren’t sticking, and some relationships are harder to mend. Plus…what about everyone else who gets dragged along with her? The reader can make choices, too. It’s a well thought out and addicting read – I kept wanting to flip ahead and see if I’d made the right choice, and definitely started it all over again once I got to an end!
Fionna’s Picks
Here are a few titles I’ve enjoyed recently:
Mostly on the serious side…
…but with a nice helping of romance:
Irene’s Pick
This graphic novel is a good read for the summer!
More Picks by Staff
Vicky’s Pick
As I write this, the Park Fire in California is now the fifth largest in the state’s history, and so far this year, wildfires have burned over 3.5 million acres across North America. With these sobering statistics in the air, along with so very much smoke, I’d like to recommend Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World, by John Vaillant. In it he chronicles the 2016 Fort McMurray fire in the heart of northern Alberta’s tar sands country. He describes fires that can create their own weather, that require new metrics and new vocabulary, that burn for months. Moving back and forth between the science of fire and the people and events in and around Fort McMurray, Vaillant pens a gripping, horrifying, unforgettable narrative. He also delivers a damning history of science’s awareness that our dependence on burning fossil fuels could affect our planet’s ability to sustain us: and it has. He holds out a few morsels of hope, though: one of them being South Portland’s Clear Skies ordinance, which in 2014 blocked the transportation of tar-sands oil to Portland Harbor. Anyone who talks to me for more than a few minutes stands likely to hear me mention Fire Weather as one of the most important books I’ve read in a long time. Now you’ve heard me too.
Elizabeth’s Picks
Maybe it’s the heat or the thunderstorms this summer—these picks are brought to you by the ocean, sea creatures, the rain, even titles that simply reference water. There are ships at sea, there is drought, there are floods, there are stories of who gets water—water that is safe to drink—and who controls it or can’t control it at all. And there is swimming, science, music, life underwater, fictional futures. Lots to read!
Shark scientist Jasmin Graham’s book Sharks Don’t Sink is a great summer book (and a recent 2×2 Tuesday pick, along with Why We Swim and When the Island Had Fish). Here are a few more titles for kids, teens, and adults that caught my eye. You can also reach out to our library workers for more on a particular subject.
As always, thanks for reading! You can find all the titles we reference here in the booklist Deep Water: August Staff Picks.
For more reading ideas, check out books from our booklists, search our new books, or try our Your Next Great Read reading service for a personalized booklist of reading ideas from our staff.
posted: , by Elizabeth