Books About 9/11 for Kids and Teens

September 11, 2018June 7, 2018 / Louise / Leave a comment

Every time the 11th of September rolls around, I can’t help remembering where I was when I heard about the devastating attacks of that day. It feels strange today to realize that there’s now a whole generation of Americans who only know about the events of that day through movies and books. Though it is an important part of our recent history as a nation, it is ultimately for parents to decide how much discussion about the subject they need to have as a family. Sometimes a book can be an entry point into a difficult conversation.

Fireboat: The Heroic Adventures of John J. Harvey by Maira Kalman. A fireboat, launched in 1931, is retired after many years of fighting fires along the Hudson River, but is saved from being scrapped and then called into service again on September 11, 2001. (Ages 4-8)

America Is Under Attack: September 11, 2001: The Day the Towers Fell by Don Brown. A straightforward account of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center in New York. Watercolor illustrations show the destruction of the plane crashes as well as the emotions of the people involved. (Ages 8 – 12)

I Survived the Attacks of September 11, 2001 by Lauren Tarshis. Part of the popular “I Survived” series, the familiar format may make the subject matter easier for middle grade readers. Noah is looking forward to spending his 11th birthday with his brave New York City firefighter dad when the outing is interrupted by the September 11 attacks, to which his father must respond at the risk of his life. (Ages 8-12)

Nine, Ten : a September 11 Story by Nora Raleigh Baskin. This chapter book relates how the lives of four middle school-age kids living in different parts of the country intersect and are affected by the events of September 11, 2001. (Ages 10 – 13)

The Memory of Things by Gae Polisner. Racing to safety after witnessing the first Twin Tower collapse on September 11, 2001, sixteen-year-old Kyle, having been separated from his family, impulsively brings home a traumatized girl who has forgotten who she is. (Ages 12 and up)

All We Have Left by Wendy Mills. In interweaving stories of sixteen-year-olds, modern-day Jesse tries to cope with the ramifications of her brother’s death on 9/11, while in 2001, Alia, a Muslim, gets trapped in one of the Twin Towers and meets a boy who changes everything for her as flames rage around them. (Ages 12 and up)

Some other nonfiction titles for young readers on this subject are: September 11 We Will Never Forget by Peter Benoit, September 11 Then and Now by Peter Benoit, Ground Zero Dogs by Meish Goldish, A Nation Challenged : a visual history of 9/11 and its aftermath, text and photos by the New York Times.

Sherlock Holmes’ Younger Sister

September 4, 2018August 6, 2018 / Mary / Leave a comment

Did you know that Sherlock Holmes has a younger sister? Me, either, until I encountered the amazing Enola Holmes.

Author Nancy Springer has written an intriguing children’s series about the exploits of Enola, a girl left on her own on her fourteenth birthday when her mother walks out of the house and disappears. Once her two much older older brothers Mycroft and Sherlock Holmes, learn what has happened, they decide that the best thing would be to place Enola into a boarding school.

The free-spirited Enola has other ideas. Her mother has left behind codes and clues, leading Enola to hidden stashes of money. Once she has enough, she slips away and travels on her own to London, where she turns her talents to becoming a perditorian, a finder of the lost. Having mastered the art of disguise, Enola manages to stay two steps ahead of Sherlock and Mycroft while solving crimes in London.

I confess, I love reading children’s books. This series in particular is entertaining for adults as well as kids because it is not over-simplified. Enola frequently uses terms such as “proboscis” and “perditorian” and the solutions to the mysteries are not obvious. London’s social rules are humorously and sometimes poignantly viewed through the eyes of Enola, who often is outraged at the restrictions society places on women. The darker, crueler side of London is also depicted in sobering scenes of poverty, filth, crime, and disease.

It was also announced this year that Millie Bobby Brown (of “Stranger Things” fame) will be starring in a film series based on the Enola Holmes series.

Kids will love the clever Enola, who can disguise her self so well, she often walks right past her two older brothers without them even recognizing her! Adults will delight in Enola’s interactions with her brother Sherlock, which are written with wit and humor. As a Sherlock Holmes fan, I greatly enjoyed this portrayal of the world’s most famous fictional detective. He genuinely cares for what he views as his wayward sister and comes to respect her intelligence and courage. He and Enola have some very amusing adventures before the ending of the series.

There are six titles in all, and I wish there were more. Highly recommended for all readers interested in mysteries, Sherlock Holmes, and Victorian London.

Notable Children’s Books of 2018

July 17, 2018July 12, 2018 / Louise / Leave a comment

Summer Reading. Those two words can strike panic into parents and kids alike. Finding quality books for children to read can be quite a challenge – you can always ask a Children’s Librarian for suggestions, or how about a whole group of them? The Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of the American Library Association (ALA), is the world’s largest organization dedicated to the support and enhancement of library service to children, and they know a thing or two about Children’s Literature.

Each year a committee of the ALSC identifies the best of the best in children’s books. According to the Notables Criteria, “notable” is defined as: Worthy of note or notice, important, distinguished, outstanding. As applied to children’s books, notable should be thought to include books of especially commendable quality, books that exhibit venturesome creativity, and books of fiction, information, poetry and pictures for all age levels (birth through age 14) that reflect and encourage children’s interests in exemplary ways.

The annual Notable List is long, but we have simplified it somewhat by creating Pinterest Boards for the three grade-level lists: Younger Readers (preschool – grade 2), Middle Readers (grades 3 – 5), and Older Readers (grades 6 – 8). With book covers, descriptions, and links to each book in our catalog, you can browse the Boards, see which books are on the shelf or place requests for books that are out, all from the CPL Pinterest account. You may even see something else that strikes your fancy while you’re there!

The full 2018 Notable Book List can be found on the ALSC section of the ALA website. Past lists for each year going back to 1995 are also archived.

What other things would you like to see us feature on our Pinterest account? Let us know in the comments!

Winter is Here, Jon Snow

January 23, 2018December 7, 2017 / Susan O. / Leave a comment

Some people love winter, love the brisk air, the blinding glare, the crystal-clear night skies, soft fluffy snow and cups of steaming hot chocolate. Other people hate the freezing cold, the knifing winds, the treacherous roads, bare trees, and endless brown mud and slush clinging to shoes, cars, and pet feet tracking through the house.

For me, winter is a romantic time, curled by a fireplace (wood, gas, or electric) before a window with long velvet drapes (one of my favorite possessions), reading a book in a favorite chair while snow swirls outside the window and an animal lounges at my feet. It means a stew bubbling on the stove, fresh bread in the oven, or perhaps fresh shortbread cookies and a cup of Earl Gray tea by that fire. Perhaps it’s a holiday, with candles and lights and decorations, waiting for company to make it through the snow. Yeah, yeah, there’s no groundsman to shovel the walks when it’s over, I have to do it myself, but for a few hours I’m lost in an old English fantasy, there’s a mystery in the air, a challenge ahead, but love and fortune win in the end (note: I have never achieved this fantasy, but I keep hoping).

English Tales of Winter

Which made me think: why are all those images we cling to English fantasies? Sure, that period of literature is within what’s called the Little Ice Age, which ran from the 1300’s to the 1890’s, killing off the Vikings in Greenland and creating all those iconic Currier and Ives scenes, but it also put those chunks of ice in Washington Crossing the Delaware, and in 1816, with the dust of the exploded volcano Mount Tambora in the air, summer never arrived, and temperatures were still below freezing in June. Where is the American winter tale? American stories tend to be about blizzards, hardship, starvation, and ghosts. Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allen Poe, and Washington Irving are hardly on par with Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights. Reading about the Donner party probably isn’t a good idea before eating stew.

American Tales of Winter

The only American “winter” tales I know well are children’s literature: The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder, Left By Themselves by Charles Paul May, the semi-historical Seven Alone by Honore Morrow, and the absolutely timeless endearing tale of Mandy, by Julie Andrews Edwards (Yes, Mary Poppins herself. Adults will love this, too!). But where are the adult books? Problem is, not much adult American literature of that period gives off that type of security.

That period of literature we think of is called the Romantic movement and includes Gothic literature, dealing with mystery, spiritualism, ghosts, hauntings, and torturous love – Frankenstein, Les Miserables, Dorian Gray, Hunchback of Notre Dame, A Christmas Carol, Oliver Twist – some of our most famous classics, running from about 1760 through the Victorian age, around 1890. America in 1776 was not only new and still forming, it was mostly unsettled, and people in the colds of Fort Duquesne, Fort Niagara, and Fort Cumberland were more concerned with staying alive than writing literature. Of course you still had authors, but not to the degree England – a stable civilization for 1200 years – did. While Heathcliff was brooding the lonely moors, Americans were exploring and giving us stories like Last of the Mohicans, Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Moby Dick, and The Scarlet Letter. Not the same, and certainly not the same as being snowed in and wringing one’s hands on the family estate. The American experience is uniquely American in that regard.

Just because our snow stories don’t go back to King Wenceslas (ok, Wenceslas was Bohemian/ Czechoslovakian, but the song, 900 years later, is English) doesn’t mean American literature isn’t good, it just means it’s different. Maybe you’ll have to settle for cotton twill drapes and a medium double-latte with a space heater and a Snuggie. If you love gothic literature, delve into a classic or something newer; there are hundreds of books (and films!) to choose from. If you love reading about snowy days while curled in a chair listening to the winds howl, try some of these modern tales (and films):

Office Girl by Joe Meno

The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon

Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris

Snow by Orhan Panuk

Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

Wolf Winter by Celia Ekback

Winter Solstice by Rosamunde Pilcher

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson

The Shining Stephen King

Smilla’s Sense of Snow by Peter Høeg,

Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin

Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin

Our staff’s favorite books of 2017

December 20, 2017December 13, 2017 / Louise / Leave a comment

What was the best book you read in 2017? This is the question I posed to my fellow staff members at CPL. Interestingly, I got no duplicate answers! We have a wide variety of reading preferences among our staff, which means there’s something for everyone in this list. Maybe your next great read is below:

Our Library Director Ramona picked the audiobook edition of News of the World by Paulette Jiles, read by Grover Gardner. In the aftermath of the Civil War, an aging itinerant news reader agrees to transport a young captive of the Kiowa back to her people in this exquisitely rendered, morally complex, multilayered novel of historical fiction.

Teen Librarian Kelley really liked Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day by Seanan McGuire. In this urban fantasy, Jenna, who died too soon, works to regain the years that were lost to her. But something has come for the ghosts of New York, something beyond reason, beyond death, beyond hope; something that can bind ghosts to mirrors and make them do its bidding. Only Jenna stands in its way.

Bill is our Head of Adult Services, and he picked the Bruce Springsteen autobiography Born to Run as his favorite read of 2017. In 2009, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band performed at the Super Bowl’s half-time show. The experience was so exhilarating that Bruce decided to write about it, which is how this extraordinary autobiography began. Springsteen traces his life from his childhood in a Catholic New Jersey family and the musical experiences that prompted his career to the rise of the E Street Band and the stories behind some of his most famous songs.

Children’s Librarian Lauren went with The Sun is Also a Star, a young adult novel by Nicola Yoon. In this story Natasha, whose family is hours away from being deported, and Daniel, a first generation Korean American on his way to a prestigious college admissions interview, cross paths in New York. They unexpectedly fall in love during an intense day in the city.