Children’s Books with Non Traditional Families

February 12, 2015January 29, 2015 / Sharon Tyler / Leave a comment

Children love to see something of themselves and their families as they read. Sometimes spotting something of themselves in the main character’s personality or home life is what helps them connect to a book or foster a love in reading. When growing up in a family that is everything you need, but not the expected mom and dad with 2.5 kids and a dog, it is sometimes hard to make that connection. Thankfully, since the ‘expected’ family is becoming less of a norm for a variety of reasons I thought it would be helpful to share some children’s books with alternative families to help every child find a book that they can relate to. Here are some picture books and easy readers to share with some young readers about a variety of families.

And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell; illustrated by Henry Cole
At New York City’s Central Park Zoo, two male penguins fall in love and start a family by taking turns sitting on an abandoned egg until it hatches.

I Love You Like Crazy Cakes by Rose Lewis; illustrated by Jane Dyer
A woman describes how she went to China to adopt a special baby girl. Based on the author’s own experiences.

The Family Book by Todd Parr
Represents a variety of families, some big and some small, some with only one parent and some with two moms or dads, some quiet and some noisy, but all alike in some ways and special no matter what.

In Our Mothers’ House BY Patricia Polacco
Three young children experience the joys and challenges of being raised by two mothers.

Two Homes by Claire Masurel; illustrated by Kady MacDonald Denton
A young boy named Alex enjoys the homes of both of his parents who live apart but love Alex very much.

Black is Brown is Tan by Arnold Adoff; pictures by Emily Arnold McCully
When it was first published in 1973, Black is Brown is Tan featured the first interracial family in children’s books.

There are many more kinds of families, and many more books about how wonderful each is. Here are a select group of more books on the subject:Uncle Bobby’s Wedding by Sarah S. Brannen, Everywhere Babies by Susan Meyers; illustrated by Marla Frazee, The White Swan Express: a Story about Adoption by Jean Davies Okimoto and Elaine M. Aoki; illustrated by Meilo So, Who’s in a Family? by Robert Skutch; illustrations by Laura Nienhaus, I Have Two Homes by Marian De Smet; illustrated by Nynke Talsma, Who’s Whose? by Jan Ormerod, Raising you Alone by Warren Hanson, All Families are Special by Norma Simon; illustrated by Teresa Flavin.

My list is not comprehensive, there is no way to include every good book on the subject. If I missed a great one you have run across please share it in the comments so we can all check it out!

Uniquely Tasty Cookbooks

February 5, 2015January 22, 2015 / Sharon Tyler / Leave a comment

If you browse the cookbook section of the library, Amazon, or any bookstore you are liable to run into a wide variety of cookbooks about traditional cuisines and diets that are intended to make you healthier. However, there are also a large number of less expected or strangely specific titles that tend to get lost in the shuffle, such as recipes all featuring nutella or using a waffle iron with unexpected food. Here are some of the most unique and tastily temping or worrying cookbooks that I have seen go by at the circulation desk.

1. Nutella: the 30 Best Recipes edited by Johana Amsilli

2. Will it Waffle?: 53 Unexpected and Irresistible Recipes to Make in a Waffle Iron by Daniel Shumski

3. The Mac + Cheese Cookbook: 50 Simple Recipes from Homeroom, America’s Favorite Mac and Cheese Restaurant by Allison Arevalo and Erin Wade

4. Melt: 100 Amazing Adventures in Grilled Cheese by Shane Kearns

5. Weelicious Lunches: Think Outside the Lunchbox with More than 160 Happier Meals by Catherine McCord

6.Meatloaf: Recipes for Everyone’s Favorite by Maryana Vollstedt

7.Green Eggs and Ham Cookbook: Recipes Inspired by Dr. Seuss! concocted by Georgeanne Brennan and photographed by Frankie Frankeny

8. Muffin Tin Chef: 101 Savory Snacks, Adorable Appetizers, Enticing Entrees & Delicious Desserts by Matt Kadey

9. Fifty Shades of Kale: 50 Fresh and Satisfying Recipes that are Bound to Please by Drew Ramsey, MD & Jennifer Iserloh ; with photographs by Ian McSpadden

10. No Bake Makery: More Than 80 Two-Bite Treats Made with Lovin’ Not an Oven by Cristina Suarez Krumsick

For more unique and tasty reads you might want to check out: The Book Club Cookbook: Recipes and Food for Thought from your Book Club’s Favorite Books and Authors by Judy Gelman and Vicki Levy Krupp, The Craft Beer Cookbook: from IPAs and Bocks to Logers and Porters, 100 Artisanal Recipes for Cooking with Beer by Jacquelyn Dodd, Serious Barbecue: Smoke, Char, Baste, and Brush your Way to Great Outdoor Cooking by Adam Perry Lang, with J.J. Goode and Amy Vogler, Cast-Iron Cooking with Sisters on the Fly by Irene Rawlings, Super Seeds: Cooking with Power-Packed Chia, Quinoa, Flax, Hemp & Amaranth by Kim Lutz, Orange is the New Black Presents the Cookbook: Bites, Booze, Secrets, and Stories from Inside the Big House by Jenji Kohan, Tara Herrmann, Hartley Voss, and Alex Regnery, The Book of Burger by Rachael Ray, Thug Kitchen: Eat Like You Give a F*ck, Insanewiches: 101 Ways to Think Outside the Lunchbox by Adrian Fiorino, Fifty Shades of Chicken: a Parody in a Cookbook by FL Fowler, Irish Pub Cooking by Larry Doyle, or Mom ‘n’ Pop’s Apple Pie: 1950’s Cookbook; Over 300 Great Recipes from the Golden Age of American Home Cooking compiled and edited by Barbara Stuart Peterson.

Our Patrons Pick Their Favorite Books of 2014

February 3, 2015January 16, 2015 / Linda / Leave a comment

For the last several years, The Department of Human Services of Cheshire has had a mitten tree in the library’s lobby, requesting the public to donate holiday gifts for needy girls and boys. Our patrons have always been very generous and we thank you very much!

This year, after the gifts were gathered up to be delivered, we turned the mitten tree into ‘what was your favorite book of 2014′ tree.

Here’s what you said:

Children:

A Cheese Colored Camper – Geronimo Stilton
Because of Mr. Terupt – Rob Buyea
Biscuit – Alyssa Satin Capucilli
Daddy Hugs – Karen Katz
Diary of a Wimpy Kid – Jeff Kinney (3)
Dragons – Lucille Recht Penner
Frozen adapted by Sarah Nathan and Sela Roman
Gathering Blue – Lois Lowery (YA)
Humphrey Series – Betty Birney
I Spy series – Jean Marzollo & Walter Wick
I Survived Series – Lauren Tarshis
I’m Too Fond of My Fur – Geronimo Stilton
Isabelle – Lawrence Yep
It’s Hard to be 5 – Jamie Lee Curtis
Junie B., First Grader At Last – Barbara Park
Last Olympian – Rick Riordon (YA)
Little House on the Prairie – Laura Ingalls Wilder
Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
Looking for Alaska – John Green (YA)
Miss Daisy is Crazy – Dan Gutman
Molly Moon Series– Georgia Byng
Number the Stars – Lois Lowry
Okay for Now – Gary Schmidt (YA)
One For The Murphys – Lynda Mullaly Hunt (YA)
Out of My Mind – Sharon M. Draper
Polar Express – Chris Van Allsburg
Rainbow Fairy Series – Daisy Meadows
Rangers Apprentice Series – John Flanagan
The BFG – Roald Dahl
The Blood of Olympus – Rick Riordan (YA)
The Fault in Our Stars – John Green (YA)
The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien (YA)
The Last Battle – C.S. Lewis
The Lost Warrior – Erin Hunter (Graphic Novel)
The Maze Runner – James Dashner (YA)
The Penultimate Peril – Lemony Snicket
The Secret of the Snow – Thea Stilton
Warriors: Bramble Star’s Storm – Erin Hunter

Adult:

A Man Called Ove – Frederick Backman
A Week in Winter – Maeve Binchy
All the Light We Cannot See – Anthony Doerr
Being Mortal – Atul Gawande (Nonfiction)
Child of Mine – David & Beverly Lewis
Clifton Chronicles – Jeffrey Archer
Daughter of Fortune – Isabel Allende
I Am Malala – Malala Yousafzai (Nonfiction)
Pegasus – Danielle Steel
Ready Player One – Ernest Cline
Sin Undone – Larissa Ione
Somewhere Safe with Somebody Good – Jan Karon
Summerset Abbey – T.J. Brown
The Aviator’s Wife – Melanie Benjamin
The Bible
The Boys in the Boat – Dan Brown (Nonfiction)
The First Phone Call From Heaven – Mitch Albom
The Invention of Wings – Sue Monk Kidd
The Language of Flowers – Vanessa Diffenbaugh
The Leftovers – Tom Perrotta
The Lost Empire of Atlantis – Gavin Menzies (Nonfiction)
The Silkworm – Robert Galbraith
The Spirit of Steamboat – Craig Johnson
The Walk Series – Richard Evans
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy – John LeCarre
Vienna Prelude – Bodie Thoene
Written in My Own Heart’s Blood – Diana Gabaldon

If you don’t see your title here, there were a few mittens that we could not decipher.

Susan’s Picks from 2014

January 27, 2015January 16, 2015 / Susan O. / Leave a comment

I feel terrible for only squeezing in 27 books this year, a new low for me, but considering I wrote or edited three books in between, I don’t feel so bad. I am an unforgivable nerd, wallowing in science, history, psychology, and biography to the point I read almost no fiction at all anymore. I feel bad when people ask me to recommend something and I have no clue what to offer because the last really good book I read was on the histology of Ebola, or they’re looking for romance recommendations and my idea of a great romance is the novelization of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Here are the best and worst I read this year, not counting a reread of Chris Wooding’s Retribution Falls, which I love so much I gave out ten copies at Christmas:

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The Riddle of the Labyrinth: the Quest to Crack an Ancient Code, by Margalit Fox. Fox covers the work by Michael Ventris, who eventually untangled the mystery of the early Greek/Mycenean Linear B glyphs, but spends much of the book discussing Alice Kober’s work, so much of it uncredited yet without which Ventris would not have succeeded. When Kober – who spent the majority of her life working on the syllabary – dies just a year before the pieces fall into place, you want to cry for her. If you love a good detective novel – this is a true story that shook the history world. (I warned you about the nerdism).

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Detroit: An American Autopsy, by Charlie LeDuff. An incredible book about the decay of Detroit, a city so far gone America has forgotten it exists, while the people still try to survive in a place without – well, anything. No jobs, no police, no grocery stores, and most recently, no water. Made me incredibly angry to see America left to rot like this.

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W ho Discovered America? by Gavin Menzies. Ever read a book that makes you feel like you woke up on an alien world, that everything you were ever told about history was wrong? This book takes Thor Heyerdahl to a whole new level, pointing out overwhelming scientific evidence that Asian, African, and European peoples were routinely coming to America long before Columbus was born. Utterly fascinating. Even if Menzies is only 10% right, it still changes everything we know about history. Easy to read, and you won’t be able to put it down.

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Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in Northern Korea, by Barbara Demick. This book is so touching and so sad, you cannot help but be moved by people who have so little control over their lives that even their food and clothing is doled out by the government, and if they say you will starve, then you starve, because they will not give you more. People risking death to swim to China, or pay for an underground railroad to South Korea, where they have extreme culture shock that defies the propaganda they have been fed for generations. Hate the leader, but love the people. I love Gavin Menzies, but I think this gets my vote for Best Book of the Year.

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I Can Hear You Whisper: An Intimate Journey Through the Science of Sound and Language, by Lydia Denworth. Denworth’s youngest son is born profoundly deaf; this is her story not only of trying to decide how to educate him (as a lip-reader, a signer, or hearing w/ a cochlear implant). Interspersed with her journey is the science behind hearing and language, and the history of deafness, and it is utterly fascinating how much hearing and learning are interconnected, and why many deaf people never read beyond a fourth-grade level.

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Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, by John LeCarré. I needed to read a couple of spy novels as research for a book I was writing. Every list I looked at said this was the best. I have no doubt they are right. A spy novel that will keep you guessing until the very end, it makes James Bond look like a pampered fool. Very British, but very, very good.

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Worst book I read this year? There were a couple of stinkers, but I think the worst I read was The Boy Detective: A New York Childhood, by Roger Rosenblatt. I don’t care how many awards he’s gotten. I almost never abandon a book half-way through, but I just couldn’t finish this. It has a boy, and he’s in New York, but the rest is just a single run-on sentence of chapterless rambling. You know how your brain wanders foggy from topic to topic when you’re lying in bed half asleep? That’s this book. I read some clunkers, but I made it to the end of them. This one I couldn’t get past 50 pages. No, thank you.

What did you like/dislike this year?

Sharon Reads: The Case of the Vanishing Little Brown Bats by Sandra Markle

January 22, 2015January 22, 2015 / Sharon Tyler / Leave a comment

The Case of the Vanishing Little Brown Bats is a non fiction book for children by Sandra Markle. This book explores the brown bats remarkable decline in population, including the likely causes and the effect that this decline can have on our lives.

Are you among those that think of bats and shudder, or do you think they are cute or useful? Well The Case of the Vanishing Little Brown Bats can show those that are not overly fond of bats why they might want to help them stick around. Bats eat a large number of bugs, limiting the amount of bugs that can spread diseases, and the amount of damage insects can to to crops and our food supply. Sadly large populations of little brown bats have been dying off each winter. Scientists have been hard at work to figure out if a virus killing them, if climate change or pesticides be the cause, or if it something else? This book follows a team of dedicated scientists working to save the little brown bats in this real-life science mystery. Thankfully, unlike the continuing death of bee colonies, there are now answers about what is hurting our bats and there are steps being taken to help them. There are suggestions for further research and ideas for families to help the cause.

I love bats, and the fact that they can decimate the mosquito population in no time flat. The Case of the Vanishing Little Brown Bats is a well researched and organized book that presents the facts of the investigation along with extra pieces of information that could be of great interest to middle grade readers. It is not sensationalized, but instead shows the steps of a scientific investigation and all of the possible causations and solutions, including those that turned out to be dis-proven. I think animal lovers will get something great out of this book, it could help some creeped out by the bat understand them a bit more, and will act as a credible resources for research. I gave this book four stars on Sharon the Librarian and Goodreads.

If this sort of animal mystery appeals to you, you might want to check out: The Case of the Vanishing Honey Bees, and The Case of the Vanishing Golden Frogs by the same author.