A page from Sabrina Ward Harrison’s nonfiction book, “Spilling Open: The Art of Becoming Yourself.”
It’s nearly summer. The days are just starting to warm up, and we’re stocking up on great reads. Whether you’re still as busy as ever or you’re about to enjoy a bit of a vacation, we hope you have a chance to answer the call to slow down and pick up a book! Here’ s a few Staff Picks for June: books we’ve read and loved, been inspired or thrilled by, books that taught us something, books that just plain hooked us, and a few brand-new, about-to-be-published books that we’re looking forward to reading this summer.
Children’s Services
Carrie’s Pick
“It’s 1964 and Sunny’s town is being invaded.” It’s Freedom Summer in Mississippi and Sunny’s life is changing.
This amazing fiction story is interspersed with factual accounts of the Summer of 1964 including pictures, speeches, and personal accounts. I learned more about Freedom Summer from this book than I ever learned in history class. -Carrie, Children’s Services
Quotations from Revolution (from the perspectives of two different characters in the book):
“There was a colored boy in our pool. A colored boy. And I touched him, my skin on his skin. I touched a colored boy. And then he ran away like he was on fire.”
“So I run. I run like a fox away from a hound dog. Sweet Lord, save me! . . .I was hot, so hot, and now I’ll be hotter than the other side-a heaven, but I couldn’t help it, just wanted to see it. They closed our pool so long ago, drained the water clean out, and now none of us have a place to swim except the muddy Yazoo or the Tallahatchie, and why not that sparkling clean water for me, in that bis-as-Noah’s-ark pool, that pool for white folks – who says it has to be just for white folks? Don’t everybody need a pool? Ma’am say that’s just the way it is and I want to know why.”
Don’t forget: the Children’s summer reading program, “I Heart Reading in Portland: Sail Into Reading,” starts June 15!
Teen/YA
Kelley’s Pick
Quotation from Panic: “The rules of Panic are simple. Anyone can enter. But only one person will win.”
First off, I’m sorry folks, but this is nothing like The Hunger Games. So all you haters out there who haven’t read this and dismiss it as a HG ripoff: Just. Stop. I’m not overreacting; just go to Goodreads and see for yourself all the reviewers who feel the need to tell everyone else that they won’t read Panic because it’s “trying to be the Hunger Games.” Actually, don’t do that. Just take my word for it and read the book instead.
Panic is a great summer read for teens, and for any YA-reading adult who remembers their high school summers: drawn out, lazy, humid, restless. Lauren Oliver does an expert job of capturing the feeling of what it’s like to be a teen with no money and nothing to do in a small, Upstate New York town (I’m from Upstate New York, and I’m telling you: she nailed it).
Years ago, faced with the prospect of another boring, endless summer, a group of teens in the small town of Carp invented a game that everyone simply calls “Panic.” The game is shrouded in secrecy, strict rules, and a history of tragic accidents that may or may not be related. (Like Fight Club, people who play Panic don’t talk about Panic.) Any graduating Senior earns the chance to play, and every player earns the chance to win a very large sum of money if they win. Can’t play? You can always watch, as long as you swear complete secrecy to the game. What do the players have to do? Only the judges know, and no one knows who the judges are.
Heather never thought she would take part in Panic, but an explosion of impulsiveness at the first trial throws her headfirst into the game. Dodge always knew he would compete; he’s been waiting for it, and it’s not the money he’s after. The duel narration between these two characters allows for maximum insight into the mechanics of the game and the desires of the contestants. It’s not just boredom that drives Heather and Dodge to endure the risks of Panic, and it’s their interior lives that add richness and depth to a thrilling plot.
I have very high standards for audiobooks, and in the audiobook version narrator Sarah Drew does an excellent job creating unique, consistent voices for both Heather and Dodge, as well as a cast of supporting characters. She makes the tense moments vibrate with urgency and real fear. If you’re looking for a tender pair of coming-of-age stories nested within a backwoods game designed by sociopaths, then this one is for you.
-Kelley, Teen Librarian @ the S. Donald Sussmann Teen Library
The Teen Summer Reading Program, Summer Reading is My Superpower, also starts June 15.
Adult Non-Fiction Staff Picks
Steve P’s pick
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis
It may have been written in 2004 and the movie may have been released in 2011: but hey, it is nearly summer and it is baseball season! A great story and still relevant as a showcase of baseball personalities and for the art and science of baseball decision making in all its craziness. -Steve P.
Laura’s Pick
Relish: My Life in the Kitchen, by Lucy Knisley
You won’t have to worry about bad food if you follow the beautiful and easily digestible illustrations of recipes at the end of each chapter in this creative and compelling (and Alex Award winning!) memoir from Lucy Knisley, who was a foodie before everyone else. Perfect for reading all year round but her stories of the outdoors and the freshest of the fresh ingredients will make mouths water particularly on a bright summer day. Let’s get cooking, readers! -Laura, Children’s and Teen Services
The helpful “Cheese Cheat Sheet” page from Relish.
Quotation from Relish: “I love the treat and pleasure of eating when it becomes an act of focused giving and sharing…[T]here’s a lot to be said for eating as a social act. It’s a treat, even when the food is bad.”
RIYL: Word play, synesthesia, entymology, nostalgia, Nabokov
-Hazel
Quotation from Speak, Memory: “All one could do was to glimpse, amid the haze and the chimeras, something real ahead, just as persons endowed with an unusual persistence of diurnal cerebration are able to perceive in their deepest sleep, somewhere beyond the throes of an entangled and inept nightmare, the ordered reality of the waking hour.”
Lisa’s PickA great Beach Read! This novel by Brenda Bowen has a cottage on an island off the coast of Maine, a family left behind in New York City, and…a tattooed librarian. What more could you want? It’s a fantastic story about the need for just a little alone time. In a crazy world of kids, spouses, bills, work and stuff, it’s easy to relate to a fantasy about running away for a few weeks. Ms. Bowen’s characters do it and they do it with style. Little Lost Island is wonderfully captured in all its quirkiness and eccentricity. I hope you find your Little Lost this summer. -Lisa, Outreach Manager
Quotation from The First Bad Man: “Sometimes I looking at her sleeping face, the living flesh of it, and was overwhelmed by how precarious it was to love a living thing. She could die simply from lack of water. It hardly seemed safer than falling in love with a plant.”
George’s Pick
Last but not least…PPL’s Adult Summer Reading Program is up and running, from now until July 31! You can also check out one of our monthly book groups (at the Main Library, Peaks, and Riverton) and join them.
We look forward to seeing you at the library, and hope you enjoy all your reading this June.
posted: , by Elizabeth
e Country: Stories, Mia Alvar