Current Interest

Description: "The true story behind the writing of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech."--Provided by publisher.

Description: SoHo, 1981. Twelve-year-old Olympia is an artist -- and in her neighborhood, that's normal. Her dad and his business partner Apollo bring antique paintings back to life, while her mother makes intricate sculptures in a corner of their loft, leaving Ollie to roam the streets of New York with her best friends Richard and Alex, drawing everything that catches her eye. Then everything falls apart. Ollie's dad disappears in the middle of the night, leaving her only a cryptic note and instructions to destroy it. Her mom has gone to bed, and she's not getting up. Apollo is hiding something, Alex is acting strange, and Richard has questions about the mysterious stranger he saw outside. And someone keeps calling, looking for a missing piece of art.... Olympia knows her dad is the key -- but first, she has to find him, and time is running out.-- Publisher's description.

Description: "A young girl and her cat take an imaginative journey into another world"-- Provided by publisher.

Description: James Poniewozik traces the history of television and mass media from the early 1980s to today, and demonstrates how a "volcanic, camera- hogging antihero" merged with America's most powerful medium to become our forty-fifth president. Audience of One weaves together two compelling stories. The first charts the seismic evolution of television from a monolithic mass medium, with three mainstream networks, into today's fractious confederation of "spite-and-insult" media subcultures. The second examines Donald Trump himself, who took advantage of these historic changes to constantly reinvent himself: from boastful cartoon zillionaire; to 1990s self-parodic sitcom fixture; to The Apprentice-reality-TV star; and, finally, to Twitter-mad, culture-warring demagogue. An eye-opening history of American media and a sobering reflection of the raucous culture we've now become.-- From statement provided by publisher.

Description: Ayesha Shamsi has a lot going on. Her dreams of being a poet have been set aside for a teaching job so she can pay off her debts to her wealthy uncle. She lives with her boisterous Muslim family and is always being reminded that her flighty younger cousin, Hafsa, is close to rejecting her one hundredth marriage proposal. Though Ayesha is lonely, she doesn't want an arranged marriage. Then she meets Khalid who is just as smart and handsome as he is conservative and judgmental. She is irritatingly attracted to someone who looks down on her choices and dresses like he belongs in the seventh century. When his engagement to Hafsa is announced, Ayesha must deal with the truth about Khalid, her family... and herself.

Description: England, 1879. Annabelle Archer, the brilliant but destitute daughter of a country vicar, has earned herself a place among the first cohort of female students at the renowned University of Oxford. In return for her scholarship, she must support the rising women's suffrage movement. Her charge: recruit men of influence to champion their cause. Her target: Sebastian Devereux, the cold and calculating Duke of Montgomery who steers Britain's politics at the Queen's command. Her challenge: not to give in to the powerful attraction she can't deny for the man who opposes everything she stands for.

Description: A breathtaking thriller about a wealthy housewife who successfully conceals her dark past until a true-crime podcast and a photo posted on social media send her running across Europe, with a faded rock star by her side and extremely dangerous enemies on her trail. Anna McLean loves to revel in life's unsavory details. When she's keeping up appearances as an upper-class Edinburgh housewife, there's no better escape than other people's sordid stories retold in true-crime podcasts. Until the day it all falls apart.

Description: When his neighbors give a variety of answers to the question "What is a good day?" Daniel writes a poem about the everyday activities that give them joy.

Description: Eleven-year-old aspiring writer Louisa considers traveling the world with her globetrotting parents, but friendship with George helps her to see her grandparents' farm on Deer Island in a new light.

Description: "Peeling apples for tartes tatin, an Ohio mother wonders how to exist in a world of distraction and fake facts, besieged by a tweet-happy president and trigger-happy neighbors, all of them oblivious to what Dupont has dumped into the rivers and what's happening at the factory farm down the interstate--not to mention what was done to the land's first inhabitants. A torrent of consciousness, narrated in a single sentence by a woman whose wandering thoughts are as comfortably familiar as they are heartrendingly honest, Ducks, Newburyport is a fearless indictment of our contemporary moment."-- Provided by publisher.

Description: "A French teacher on the verge of retirement is invited to a glittering opening that showcases the artwork of his former student, who has since become a celebrated painter. This unexpected encounter leads to the older man posing for his portrait. Possibly in the nude. Such personal exposure at close range entails a strange and troubling pact between artist and sitter that prompts both to reevaluate their lives"--Publisher description.

Description: When Bob Lee Swagger is approached by a woman who lost a son to war and has spent the years since risking all that she has to find the sniper who pulled the trigger, he knows right away he'll do everything in his power to help her. But what begins as a favor becomes an obsession, and soon Swagger is back in the action, teaming up with the Mossad, the FBI, and local American law enforcement, as he tracks a sniper who is his own equal...and attempts to decipher that assassin's ultimate target before it's too late.

Description: In the wake of the 2016 election, Lenz watched as her country and her marriage were torn apart by the competing forces of faith and politics. She was bewildered by the pain and loss around her and questioned: What was happening to faith in the heartland? Lenz set out to discover the changing forces of faith and tradition in God's country. In examining the effects of faith and religion on our lives, our relationships, and our country, Lenz asks whether our divides can ever be bridged-- and if America can ever come together. -- adapted from back cover

Description: A girl is found hiding in a secret room in a house being renovated after a terrible crime. She won't tell anyone her name, her age, or where she came from. Six years later, still unidentified, the same girl is living in a secure children's home with a new name, Evie Cormac, when she initiates a court case demanding the right to be released as an adult. Psychologist Cyrus Haven is sent to interview Evie, but she's unlike anyone he's ever met. Soon he is embroiled in her unique and dangerous world, his life in utmost peril.

Description: Grand Union explores a wide range of subjects, from first loves to cultural despair, as well as the desire to be the subject of your own experience. In captivating prose, she contends with race, class, relationships, and gender roles in a world that feels increasingly divided.

Description: "Hot Comb offers a poignant glimpse into black women's lives and coming of age stories as seen across a crowded, ammonia-scented hair salon while ladies gossip and bond over the burn. The titular story 'Hot Comb' is about a young girl's first perm--a doomed ploy to look cool and to stop seeming 'too white' in the all-black neighborhood her family has just moved to. In 'Virgin Hair', taunts of 'tender-headed' sting as much as the perm itself. It's a scenario that repeats fifteen years later as an adult when, tired of the maintenance, Flowers shaves her head only to be hurled new put-downs. Realizations about race, class, and the imperfections of identity swirl through Flowers' stories and ads, which are by turns sweet, insightful, and heartbreaking."-- Provided by publisher.

Description: Daniel Immerwahr tells the fascinating story of the United States outside the United States. He reveals forgotten episodes that cast American history in a new light. We travel to the Guano Islands, where prospectors collected one of the nineteenth century's most valuable commodities, and the Philippines, site of the most destructive event on U.S. soil. In Puerto Rico, Immerwahr shows how U.S. doctors conducted grisly experiments they would never have conducted on the mainland and charts the emergence of independence fighters who would shoot up the U.S. Congress. In the years after World War II, Immerwahr notes, the United States moved away from colonialism. Instead, it put innovations in electronics, transportation, and culture to use, devising a new sort of influence that did not require the control of colonies.--From statement provided by publisher.

Description: "A timely, stirring, and confident examination of mixed-race identity, violence, and history skillfully rendered through the lens of motherhood. In Hybrida, Tina Chang confronts the complexities of raising a mixed-race child during an era of political upheaval in the United States. She ruminates on the relationship between her son's blackness and his safety, exploring the dangers of childhood in a post-Trayvon Martin era by invoking racialized roles in fairy tales. Meditating on the lives of Michael Brown, Leiby Kletzky, and Noemi Álvarez Quillay--lost at the hands of individuals entrusted to protect them--Chang creates hybrid poetic forms that mirror her investigation of racial tensions. Hybrida is a twenty-first-century tale that is equal parts a mother's love and her fury, an ambitious and revelatory exploration of identity"-- Provided by publisher.

Description: From flawless social media feeds to airbrushed celebrities who are seemingly perfect, society constantly tells people that they're falling short in countless ways and they feel terrible about it. But with this this funny, frank, and witty book, Karen explains the many positive results of sucking at something. Inspired by her personal story, and drawing from the teachings of great philosophers, leading psychologists, and bestselling authors, Rinaldi explains how sucking at something can help listeners learn to live in the moment, confront and shed doubt, develop deeper self-love, and so much more.

Description: "In 1966, Baltimore is a city of secrets that everyone seems to know--everyone, that is, except Madeline "Maddie" Schwartz. Last year, she was a happy, even pampered housewife. This year, she's bolted from her marriage of almost twenty years, determined to make good on her youthful ambitions to live a passionate, meaningful life. Maddie wants to matter, to leave her mark on a swiftly changing world. Drawing on her own secrets, she helps Baltimore police find a murdered girl--assistance that leads to a job at the city's afternoon newspaper, the Star. Working at the newspaper offers Maddie the opportunity to make her name, and she has found just the story to do it: a missing woman whose body was discovered in the fountain of a city park lake. Cleo Sherwood was a young African-American woman who liked to have a good time. No one seems to know or care why she was killed except Maddie--and the dead woman herself. Maddie's going to find the truth about Cleo's life and death. Cleo's ghost, privy to Maddie's poking and prying, wants to be left alone. Maddie's investigation brings her into contact with people that used to be on the periphery of her life--a jewelery store clerk, a waitress, a rising star on the Baltimore Orioles, a patrol cop, a hardened female reporter, a lonely man in a movie theater. But for all her ambition and drive, Maddie often fails to see the people right in front of her. Her inability to look beyond her own needs will lead to tragedy and turmoil for all sorts of people--including the man who shares her bed, a black police officer who cares for Maddie more than she knows"-- Provided by publisher.

Description: "A collection of ten short stories that all take place in the same day about kids walking home from school"-- Provided by publisher.

Description: By profiling 30 creatives, the author explores how making by hand is the key to discovering one's passion--whether that means spinning natural fibers, carving a wooden bowl, or creating elaborate papercuts.

Description: Jane Alison writes an insightful and appealing book about the craft of writing. For centuries there's been one path through fiction we're most likely to travel--the dramatic arc: a situation arises, grows tense, reaches a peak, subsides. So many other patterns run through nature, tracing other deep motions in life. Why not draw on them, too? W. G. Sebald's Emigrants was the first novel to show Alison how forward momentum can be created by way of pattern, rather than the traditional arc-- or, in nature, wave. Other writers of nonlinear prose include Nicholson Baker, Anne Carson, Marguerite Duras, Gabriel García Márquez, Jamaica Kincaid, Clarice Lispector, Susan Minot, David Mitchell, Caryl Phillips, and Mary Robison. Jane Alison offers a liberating manifesto that says, Let's leave the outdated modes behind and, in thinking of new modes, bring feeling back to experimentation. -- From statement provided by publisher.

Description: Provides descriptions of the migratory behavior of a variety of animals around the world, including caribou, monarch butterflies, the barn swallow, hummingbirds, Christmas Island red crabs, and the great white shark.

Description: The school year is over, and it is summer in Atlanta. The sky is blue, the sun is blazing, and the days brim with possibility. But Leah feels lost. She has been this way since one terrible afternoon a year ago when everything changed. Since that day, her parents have become distant, her friends have fallen away, and Leah's been adrift and alone. Then she meets Jasper, a girl unlike anyone she has ever known. There's something mysterious about Jasper, almost magical. And Jasper, Leah discovers, is also lost. Together, the two girls carve out a place for themselves, a hideaway in the overgrown spaces of Atlanta, away from their parents and their hardships, somewhere only they can find. But as the days of this magical June start to draw to a close, and the darker realities of their lives intrude once more, Leah and Jasper have to decide how real their friendship is, and whether it can be enough to save them both.-- Publisher's description.

Description: Seventh grader Jordan Banks loves nothing more than drawing cartoons about his life. But instead of sending him to the art school of his dreams, his parents enroll him in a prestigious private school known for its academics, where Jordan is one of the few kids of color in his entire grade. As he makes the daily trip from his Washington Heights apartment to the upscale Riverdale Academy Day School, Jordan soon finds himself torn between two worlds-- and not really fitting into either one. Can Jordan learn to navigate his new school culture while keeping his neighborhood friends and staying true to himself?

Description: The narrator of Optic Nerve is an Argentinian woman whose obsession is art. The story of her life is the story of the paintings, and painters, who matter to her. Her intimate, digressive voice guides us through a gallery of moments that have touched her. In these pages, El Greco visits the Sistine Chapel and is appalled by Michelangelo's bodies. The mystery of Rothko's refusal to finish murals for the Seagram Building in New York is blended with the story of a hospital in which a prostitute walks the halls while the narrator's husband receives chemotherapy. Episodes in art history interact with the narrator's life in Buenos Aires - her family and work; her loves and losses; her infatuations and disappointments.

Description: "National Book Award-winning biographer Deirdre Bair explores her fifteen remarkable years in Paris with Samuel Beckett and Simone de Beauvoir, painting intimate new portraits of two literary giants and revealing secrets of the biographical art. In 1971Deirdre Bair was a journalist and recently minted Ph.D. who managed to secure access to Nobel Prize-winning author Samuel Beckett. He agreed that she could write his biography despite never having written--or even read--a biography herself. The next sevenyears of intimate conversations, intercontinental research, and peculiar cat-and-mouse games resulted in Samuel Beckett: A Biography, which went on to win the National Book Award and propel Deirdre to her next subject: Simone de Beauvoir. The catch? De Beauvoir and Beckett despised each other--and lived essentially on the same street. While quite literally dodging one subject or the other, and sometimes hiding out in the backrooms of the great cafes of Paris, Bair learned that what works in terms of process for one biography rarely applies to the next. Her seven-year relationship with the domineering and difficult de Beauvoir required a radical change in approach, yielding another groundbreaking literary profile. Drawing on Bair's extensive notes from the period, including never-before-told anecdotes and details that were considered impossible to publish at the time, Parisian Lives is full of personality and warmth and give us an entirely new window on the all-too-human side of these legendary thinkers"-- Provided by publisher."A memoir of the author's experience writing biographies of Samuel Beckett and Simone de Beauvoir"-- Provided by publisher.

Description: A desperate Kremlin takes advantage of a military crisis in Asia to simultaneously strike into Western Europe and invade east Africa in a bid to occupy three Rare Earth mineral mines that will give Russia unprecedented control for generations over the world's hi-tech sector. Pitted against the Russians are a Marine lieutenant colonel pulled out of a cushy job at the Pentagon and thrown into the fray in Africa, a French Special Forces captain and his intelligence operative father, a young Polish female partisan fighter, an A-10 Warthog pilot, and the commander of an American tank platoon who, along with his German counterpart, fight from behind enemy lines in Germany all the way into Russia. From a daring MiG attack on American satellites, through land and air battles in all theaters, naval battles in the Arabian sea, and small unit fighting down to the hand-to-hand level in the jungle, Russia's forces battle to either take the mines or detonate a nuclear device to prevent the West from exploiting them.

Description: First Son Alex Claremont-Diaz, with his sister and the Veep's genius granddaughter, are the White House Trio, a beautiful millennial marketing strategy for his mother, President Ellen Claremont. Then photos of a confrontation with his longtime nemesis Prince Henry at a royal wedding leak to the tabloids. The plan for damage control: stage a fake friendship between the First Son and the Prince. Alex soon discovers that beneath Henry's Prince Charming veneer, there's a soft-hearted eccentric with a dry sense of humor and more than one ghost haunting him. As President Claremont kicks off her re-election bid, Alex finds himself hurtling into a relationship with Henry that could derail the campaign and upend two nations. -- adapted from back cover

Description: Dance with a leaf. Jump like a raindrop. Sit in the sun and shine.

Description: From Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, the reporters who broke the news of Harvey Weinstein's sexual harassment and abuse, comes the untold story of their investigation and its consequences for the #MeToo movement.

Description: A little boy offers advice to his cat, which is lost in the city, from taking shortcuts through safe alleys to finding a friend in the park.

Description: Southern food is one of the most beloved and delicious cuisines in America. Sean Brock shares his recipes for key components of the cuisine, from grits and fried chicken to collard greens and corn bread. Recipes can be mixed and matched to make a meal or eaten on their own. Taken together, they make up the essential elements of Southern cuisine, from fried green tomatoes to smoked baby back ribs and from tomato okra stew to biscuits, along with regional differences are highlighted in recipes. Includes key Southern knowledge too: how to fry, how to care for cast iron, and how to cook over a hearth.

Description: "When the Black Death reappears in England in 1361, Oswald de Lacy knows that the safest place for his wife and young son is the island-fortress of Eden, where his eccentrically pious friend Godfrey has invited the family to stay to wait out the plague during the long, dark winter. But Oswald has barely had time to settle in when a brutal murder shocks the household and it soon becomes clear that the castle is not the stronghold of security that they were so desperately looking for. Oswald knows the castle isn't safe, but neither is the plague-infested countryside outside its walls. His only hope is to solve the mystery of the murder before the killer strikes again."-- Provided by publisher.

Description: In 1763, the painter Joshua Reynolds proposed to his friend Samuel Johnson that they invite a few friends to join them every Friday at the Turk's Head Tavern in London to dine, drink, and talk until midnight. Eventually the group came to include among its members Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, Edward Gibbon, and James Boswell. It was known simply as "the Club." Leo Damrosch brings alive a brilliant, competitive, and eccentric cast of characters. With the friendship of the "odd couple" Samuel Johnson and James Boswell at the heart of his narrative, Damrosch conjures up the precarious, exciting, and often brutal world of late eighteenth-century Britain. This is the story of an extraordinary group of people whose ideas helped to shape their age, and our own.

Description: Opening with the journey toward her diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder, Wang discusses the medical community's own disagreement about labels and procedures for diagnosing those with mental illness, and then follows an arc that examines the manifestations of schizophrenia in her life. In essays that range from using fashion to present as high-functioning to the depths of a rare form of psychosis, and from the failures of the higher education system and the dangers of institutionalization to the complexity of compounding factors such as PTSD and Lyme disease, Wang's analytical eye allows her to balance research with personal narrative.-- From publisher's description.

Description: "In her memoir, Power offers an urgent response to the question "What can one person do?"--and a call for a clearer eye, a kinder heart, and a more open and civil hand in our politics and daily lives. The Education of an Idealist traces Power's distinctly American journey from immigrant to war correspondent to presidential Cabinet official." -- From Amazon.com summary.

Description: "In the wake of her mother's death, Shalini, a privileged and restless young woman from Bangalore, sets out for a remote Himalayan village in the troubled northern region of Kashmir. Certain that the loss of her mother is somehow connected to the decade-old disappearance of Bashir Ahmed, a charming Kashmiri salesman who frequented her childhood home, she is determined to confront him. But upon her arrival, Kalyani is brought face to face with Kashmir's politics, as well as the tangled history of the local family that takes her in. And when life in the village turns volatile and old hatreds threaten to erupt into violence, Kalyani finds herself forced to make a series of choices that could hold dangerous repercussions for the very people she has come to love."-- Provided by publisher.

Description: A picture book biography of the children's book author shares insights into her life and enduring literary influence.

Description: In the middle of the night, in a house on a quiet street in suburban Minneapolis, intruders silently murder Luke Ellis's parents and load him into a black SUV. The operation takes less than two minutes. Luke will wake up at The Institute, in a room that looks just like his own, except there's no window. And outside his door are other doors, behind which are other kids with special talents--telekinesis and telepathy--who got to this place the same way Luke did: Kalisha, Nick, George, Iris, and ten-year-old Avery Dixon. They are all in Front Half. Others, Luke learns, graduated to Back Half, "like the roach motel," Kalisha says. "You check in, but you don't check out." In this most sinister of institutions, the director, Mrs. Sigsby, and her staff are ruthlessly dedicated to extracting from these children the force of their extranormal gifts. There are no scruples here. If you go along, you get tokens for the vending machines. If you don't, punishment is brutal. As each new victim disappears to Back Half, Luke becomes more and more desperate to get out and get help. But no one has ever escaped from the Institute.

Description: "'The war has turned us into light. Transforming us into light is the fastest way to travel from one front to another, and there are many fronts, now. I always wanted to be a hero. I always wanted to be on the side of light. It's funny how things work out.' Soldiers in the war against Mars, The Light Brigade, live brief lives, but the veterans are starting to be affected by changes in their bodies and minds, slipping in and out of time, or are they simply going mad?"-- Provided by publisher.

Description: "Today the Quran is used by some to justify war and acts of terrorism, the Torah to deny Palestinians the right to live in the Land of Israel, and the Bible to condemn homosexuality and contraception. The significance of Scripture--the holy texts at the centre of all religious traditions--may not be immediately obvious in our secular world but its misunderstanding is perhaps the root cause of most of today's controversies over religion. In this timely and important book, one of the world's leading commentators on religious affairs examines the meaning of Scripture. Today holy texts are not only used selectively to underwrite sometimes arbitrary and subjective views: they are seen to prescribe ethical norms and codes of behaviour that are divinely ordained--they are believed to contain eternal truths. But as Karen Armstrong shows in this fascinating trawl through millennia of religious history, this peculiar reading of Scripture is a relatively recent, modern phenomenon--and in many ways, a reaction to a hostile secular world. For most of their history, the world's religious traditions have regarded these texts as tools for the individual to connect with the divine, to transcend their physical existence, and to experience a higher level of consciousness that helped them to engage with the world in more meaningful and compassionate ways. Scripture was not a 'truth' that had to be 'believed.' Armstrong argues that only if the world's religious faiths rediscover such an open and spiritual engagement with their holy texts can they curtail the arrogance, intolerance and violence that flows from a narrow reading of Scripture as truth."-- Provided by publisher.

Description: A caver who takes a dangerous job to make enough money to escape her hardscrabble planet begins to doubt her handler's motivations.

Description: When Molly, home alone with her two young children, hears footsteps in the living room, she tries to convince herself it's the sleep deprivation. She's been hearing things these days. Startling at loud noises. Imagining the worst-case scenario. It's what mothers do, she knows. But then the footsteps come again, and she catches a glimpse of movement. Suddenly Molly finds herself face-to-face with an intruder who knows far too much about her and her family. As she attempts to protect those she loves most, Molly must also acknowledge her own frailty. Molly slips down an existential rabbit hole where she must confront the dualities of motherhood: the ecstasy and the dread; the languor and the ferocity; the banality and the transcendence as the book hurtles toward a mind-bending conclusion.

Description: "As the Civil Rights movement begins to reach the black enclave of Frenchtown in segregated Tallahassee, Elwood Curtis takes the words of Dr. Martin Luther King to heart: He is "as good as anyone." Abandoned by his parents, but kept on the straight and narrow by his grandmother, Elwood is about to enroll in the local black college. But for a black boy in the Jim Crow South of the early 1960s, one innocent mistake is enough to destroy the future. Elwood is sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy, whose mission statement says it provides "physical, intellectual and moral training" so the delinquent boys in their charge can become "honorable and honest men." In reality, the Nickel Academy is a grotesque chamber of horrors where the sadistic staff beats and sexually abuses the students, corrupt officials and locals steal food and supplies, and any boy who resists is likely to disappear "out back." Stunned to find himself in such a vicious environment, Elwood tries to hold onto Dr. King's ringing assertion "Throw us in jail and we will still love you." His friend Turner thinks Elwood is worse than naive, that the world is crooked, and that the only way to survive is to scheme and avoid trouble. The tension between Elwood's ideals and Turner's skepticism leads to a decision whose repercussions will echo down the decades. Formed in the crucible of the evils Jim Crow wrought, the boys' fates will be determined by what they endured at the Nickel Academy. Based on the real story of a reform school in Florida that operated for one hundred and eleven years and warped the lives of thousands of children, The Nickel Boys is a devastating, driven narrative that showcases a great American novelist writing at the height of his powers."-- From publisher's description.

Description: Alicia Berenson's life is seemingly perfect. A famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, she lives in a grand house with big windows overlooking a park in one of London's most desirable areas. One evening her husband Gabriel returns home late from a fashion shoot, and Alicia shoots him five times in the face, and then never speaks another word. Alicia's refusal to talk or give any kind of explanation turns a domestic tragedy into something far grander, a mystery that captures the public imagination and casts Alicia into notoriety. The price of her art skyrockets, and she, the silent patient, is hidden away from the spotlight of the tabloids at the Grove, a secure forensic unit in North London. Theo Faber is a criminal psychotherapist who has waited a long time for the opportunity to work with Alicia. His search for the truth leads him down a terrifying path and threatens to consume him.

Description: "Originally performed for ESPN's The Undefeated, this poem is a love letter to black life in the United States. It highlights the unspeakable trauma of slavery, the faith and fire of the civil rights movement, and the grit, passion, and perseverance of some of the world's greatest heroes. The text is also peppered with references to the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, and others, offering deeper insights into the accomplishments of the past, while bringing stark attention to the endurance and spirit of those surviving and thriving in the present. Robust back matter at the end provides valuable historical context and additional detail for those wishing to learn more."-- Provided by publisher.

Description: A graphic memoir recounting actor/author/activist George Takei's childhood imprisoned within American concentration camps during World War II. Experience the forces that shaped an American icon--and America itself--in this tale of courage, country, loyalty, and love. George Takei woke up as a four-year-old boy to find his own birth country at war with his father's -- and their entire family forced from their home into an uncertain future. In 1942, at the order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, every person of Japanese descent on the west coast was rounded up and shipped to one of ten "relocation centers," far from home, where they would be held for years under armed guard. This is Takei's firsthand account of those years behind barbed wire, the joys and terrors of growing up under legalized racism, his mother's hard choices, his father's faith in democracy, and the way those experiences planted the seeds for his future.

Description: In 1982 in a southern city, David and Sarah, two freshmen at a highly competitive performing arts high school, thrive alongside their school peers in a rarified bubble, ambitiously devoting themselves to their studies--to music, to movement, to Shakespeare and, particularly, to classes taught by the magnetic acting teacher Mr. Kingsley. It is here in these halls that David and Sarah fall innocently and powerfully into first love. And also where, as this class of students rises through the ranks of high school, the outside world of family life and economic status, of academic pressure and the future, does not affect them--until it does--in a sudden spiral of events that brings a startling close to the first part of this novel.

Description: Follows a young girl's imaginary journey as she zooms in a race car past fields and forests to faraway lands before returning home to her own safe bed.

Description: When Reuben the bear brings doughnuts to his forest friends, they discover that his pants are wet and he angrily accuses them of the dirty deed.