Book List

Check out Sync Audiobooks for Teens – Now available through Cheshire Public Library

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Sync Audiobooks are now available through the Cheshire Public Library for young adults and teens! SYNC is a free summer audiobook program for teens 13+. Returning April 30th and continuing 13 weeks until July 29,  SYNC gives participants two thematically paired audiobooks for free each week.   You can download these titles through Sora, the student reading app available through Overdrive, available on multiple different platforms, including Android, Apple, and tablets.

This is a great opportunity to keep teens reading during the summer, and to encourage a lifelong love of reading! Different free audiobooks are available every week, so if you’re not interested in what’s available for one week, just wait a week and try again. For the week of May 21st, there’s a mix of genres available to download. First up is Sister’s Matsumoto by Philip Kan Gotanda. Described as “Three Japanese-American sisters return to their California farm in 1945, after years in an internment camp. But the once prosperous family finds it’s not easy to pick up the pieces of their former lives.”  It’s a great title for those who are interested in historical fiction, and stories with strong female characters.

Next up is Disappeared by Francisco X. Stork, a mystery of criminal intrigue with  characters who are drawn up into a web of lies. The book description: “Four months ago… Sara Zapata’s best friend disappeared, kidnapped by the web of criminals who terrorize Juarez. Four hours ago… Sara received a death threat – and, with it, a clue to the place where her friend is locked away. Four weeks ago… Emiliano Zapata fell in love with Perla Rubi, who will never be his so long as he’s poor. Four minutes ago… Emiliano got the chance to make more money than he ever dreamed – just by joining the web. In the next four days, Sara and Emiliano will each face impossible choices, between life and justice, friends and family, truth and love.”

This is just a taste of the books that Sync offers, and if you’re not interested in any of these, just wait another week! This program will be going until July 29th, for a total of 26 titles. Each week has a different mood, one week mysteries, the next romance, so there’s plenty for everyone. Below is the full calendar of titles, so you can see what’s coming up next.

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If you’re worried about school ending and summer slide, this is a great way to combat the fear of learning ending when the school year ends. Encouraging a consistent love of reading and learning is a great way to keep your teens reading and discussing books throughout the summer months.

Need help downloading?  Our Librarians are working remotely to reduce the spread of COVID-19. We are still available by email or phone Monday through Friday between 9am and 5pm to answer your questions, help you download digital materials, or resolve issues with your library account.

The Good and The Bad – Memorable Moms in Literature

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(We originally published this list in 2014, updated here to include links to the digital versions of each title where available.)

moms collage

Mothers play a lot of roles in literature, as in life. They can be protectors and nurturers,  oppressors and manipulators, or anything in between. One thing literary moms have in common, they are definitely memorable characters. For better or worse, here are some of literatures most memorable moms:

Sophie Zawistowski – Sophie’s Choice. Sophie, a Polish survivor of the German Nazi concentration camps, may be one of the most tragic characters in 20th century fiction.  The plot ultimately centers around a tragic decision involving her children which Sophie was forced to make upon entering the concentration camp.

Mrs. Bennet – Pride and Prejudice. Poor, misguided Mrs. Bennet. With 5 daughters to marry off, she’s got a lot of worries. Her priorities may not always be in the right place,  but she tries!

Charlotte Haze – Lolita. Falls squarely in the “bad” category.  She invites a pedophile to live in her home, doesn’t seem to think his avid interest in her young daughter is a little weird, then gets hit by a car and leaves said daughter with the world’s most inappropriate guardian. Lolita didn’t stand a chance.

Joan Crawford – Mommie Dearest. One of the yardsticks we measure bad mothers against, Ms. Crawford is probably known more for her poor parenting than for her lengthy film career. No Wire Hangers Ever!

Molly Weasley – Harry Potter series. Mother of Ron, Mrs. Weasley is a desperately needed mother figure for our hero Harry. She is the center of a large and raucous family, by turns gentle nurturer and fierce defender. A mom with a magic wand is formidable indeed!

Ma – Room. In this shocking and surprisingly tender story, woman and  her child are living in unspeakable circumstances. Jack’s mom, Ma, manages to make one small room feel like a whole world for her little boy, and is ultimately driven by her mother-love to try and break away from a very dangerous man.

Sarah Wheaton – Sarah, Plain and Tall. Sarah answers an ad for a mail-order bride, and travels from Maine to Kansas to meet her future husband and become and instant mother to his two children. A multiple award winner, including the 1986 Newbery Medal.

 

Charlotte – Charlotte’s Web.Charlotte the spider is very much a wise and loving mother figure to Wilbur the pig in this classic children’s book. She becomes his staunch defender, eventually saving his life. The end, with Charlotte’s life ending as her babies are coming into the world, is a total tearjerker.

Daenerys Targaryen – A Song of Ice and Fire series. A rather non-traditional mom, Daenerys is the Mother of Dragons in George R. R. Martin’s wildly popular fantasy series. She’s had her hands full raising these fiery children. Whether she’s a good or bad mother has been debated, but there’s no doubt she’s her hands full raising these little monsters.

Eleanor Iselin – The Manchurian Candidate. Bad mom, no debate here. Creepy and evil, this mom is the mastermind of a sinister plot that involves controlling her brainwashed son to unwittingly act as an assassin on orders from the KGB.

 

It’s Nutmeg Book time again!

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The Nutmeg Book Award is the “Children’s Choice” award for Connecticut, encouraging children across the state to read quality literature. Every year, on May 1, the new nominees for the award are announced. These nominees get grouped into four categories: Elementary (Grades 2-3), Intermediate (Grades 4-6), Middle School (Grades 7-8), and High School (Grades 9-12). Children then have a year to read the nominated titles and vote for their favorite.

Some things may look a bit different this time around, but we are still excited to announce the newest Nutmeg nominees! Many of the titles on these lists have ebook and/or audiobook versions available through RBdigital or Overdrive/Libby. In addition to the physical & digital copies of the Nutmeg nominees that CPL has purchased, the Connecticut State Library has also purchased all of the Nutmeg titles that were available in ebook and/ or audiobook (see them here). These copies are included in our library catalog, and can be checked out with your Cheshire Library Card.

Without further ado, here are the new 2021 Nutmeg Nominees!  How many have you read?

Elementary (Grades 2-3)

 

Intermediate (Grades 4-6)

 

Middle School (Grades 7-8)

 

High School (Grades 9-12)

For help accessing the library’s digital collection, try checking out the guides on our website. You can also email us, or call and leave a message for library staff at (203) 272-2245. Someone will get back to you as soon as possible.

A Lighthearted Romp Through the Spaceways

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Our Teen Librarian, Kelley, shares some of her favorite sci-fi:

Recently I rediscovered a book that I loved long ago: The Witches of Karres by James H. Schmitz. I enjoyed it just as much, if not more than before. The book is a rarity among older science fiction, it doesn’t show its age with ridiculous predictions or stilted dialog and literally feels as if it could’ve been written yesterday. Partly, I believe that this is because it is as much a fantasy book as a science fiction book, but mostly it’s because the author’s writing is funny, imaginative, and clever, and his characters are delightfully quirky and likeable.

Between the 1940s and the 1970s Schmitz wrote a large number of short stories and several, fairly short, novels. His fiction is characteristically light-hearted, fast-paced, amusing and entertaining. It straddles the SF/fantasy genres, can be equally enjoyed by adults and younger readers, and (very unusual for the time and genre) features female characters who are every bit as strong and interesting as the men. This spurred me on to read more of Schmitz’s work, happily most of which are again available, both digitally and in hard copy, and a lot of it is available online for free.  I read all of it- Eternal Frontier, the Agent of Vega story sequence, all of his series set in the “Hub”, and all of the numerous independent tales. Twelve of his stories are available from Project Gutenberg , and more are available from Free Speculative Fiction Online (including the entire full-length novel The Witches of Karres). I loved them all, but I still love Witches best.

The Witches of Karres was originally a novelette published in the December 1949 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. Schmitz expanded the novelette into a novel in 1966, and it is unusual in being relatively long. As is common with this author, it is set in a far-flung future in which humanity has spread across many planets in a substantial part of the galaxy. The story is about Captain Pausert, an amiable, well-intentioned, but inexperienced young space ship captain who finds himself increasingly embroiled in wild adventures when he rescues a young female slave from an abusive owner. Events snowball from there, and he soon finds that he has purchased three young sisters. But these are no ordinary girls; they are from Karres, the witch world, and skilled in manipulating klatha – the universal force which powers witchcraft. This is the start of a whole series of adventures in which Pausert and his feisty and formidable young allies face multiple threats and problems as a result of attracting the attention of some powerful and dangerous organizations, with the survival of civilization being ultimately at stake.

And- if you found Witches as utterly funny and charming as I did, you are in luck! The story has been continued by other authors (but are not unfortunately available online for free). The Wizard of Karres, by Mercedes Lackey, Eric Flint and Dave Freer, The Sorceress of Karres by Eric Flint and Dave Freer, and (forthcoming) The Shaman of Karres also by Eric Flint and Dave Freer are direct sequels but were written long after James Schmitz’s death in 1981, the first being published in 2004. The authors make a good job of matching Schmitz’s light and amusing writing style and they pack in enough new ideas to keep readers involved and entertained. These stories are not quite as terrific as the original, of course, but still great fun, as are all the James H. Schmitz stories linked above. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do!

If you enjoy The Witches of Karres, here are some other titles from our downloadable audiobook collection you might like:

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The Easter-Passover Connection

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During the next week many people will celebrate the Jewish holiday of Passover (April 8-16) or the Christian holiday of Easter (April 12). Some will celebrate both, some neither. Either way, they are both prominent holidays on the calendar, and have more in common than you may have thought.

Both holidays fall on different dates every year, although they always fall in the springtime, and the dates often overlap. Do you know how the dates for each holiday are determined? Passover is a fixed date on the Jewish calendar, the 15th day in the month of Nisan. The Jewish calendar follows the cycles of the moon, while the Gregorian calendar (the most widely-used) is a solar calendar, using the Earth’s orbit around the sun as its measure of time.

This explains a little of why Passover begins on a different date on the traditional Gregorian calendar each year, but why Easter? You have to dig into history a bit to understand the connection. Historically,  the events of Holy Week (the week leading up to Easter Sunday) are are believed to have taken place place during Passover, a holiday which predated the birth of Christ by many centuries. Some theologians and historians have theorized that Christ was actually sharing a Passover meal with his disciples at what became known as the “last supper”.

So we know both holidays historically took place near each other on the calendar, but it wasn’t until the 4th century that things got standardized. Jewish scholars assigned Passover a fixed date  – the 15th of Nisan – on their calendar, and the Christian Council of Nicaea decreed that Easter would be observed on the first Sunday following the first full moon after the vernal equinox. Then there’s Orthodox Easter, which goes by the Julian calendar (differing from the Gregorian calendar by 13 days). It can all get pretty confusing!

Need to convert dates from one calendar to another? Click here.

Whether you’re a religious observer, or just in it for the chocolate eggs,  here are some fiction finds to kick back with during this holiday season:

Passover:

The Dinner Party by Brenda Janowitz. After Sylvia Gold discovers that her daughter has invited the very wealthy parents of her boyfriend for Seder, she agonizes over making the right impression, but when old memories and grievances surface, she learns the importance of acceptance.

All Other Nights by Dara Horn. How is tonight different from all other nights? For Jacob Rappaport, a Jewish soldier in the Union army, it is a question his commanders have answered for him: on Passover in 1862 he is ordered to murder his own uncle, who is plotting to assassinate President Lincoln.

Sunday the Rabbi Stayed Home by Harry Kemelman. Rabbi David Small uncovers a Passover plot than undeniably raises more than Four Questions — threatening to ruin not only his holiday Seder but his role as leader of Bernard’s Crossing’s Jewish community.

 

Easter:

The Cruelest Month by Louise Penny. When the charming, seemingly idyllic town of Three Pines is rocked by a killing during an impromptu Easter séance at a local haunted house, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is confronted by a web of baffling questions as he searches for a killer.

Easter Bunny Murder by Leslie Meier. Spring has sprung in Tinker’s Cove, and Lucy Stone has a mile-long to-do list from painting eggs with her grandson, to preparing the perfect Easter feast, to reviving her garden after a long, cold winter. She hardly has time to search for a killer with a deadly case of spring fever.

Alibis & Angels by Olivia Matthews. With the Lenten season fast approaching, Sister Louise “Lou” LaSalle looks forward to a final day of indulgence before giving up her favorite sweets. But one Briar Coast resident won’t get the chance to repent. Opal Lorrie, the mayor’s director of finance, just turned up dead in the parking lot of the Board of Ed.