Celebrate Children’s Book Week Nov. 6-12

Children's Book Week 2023 logo, courtesy of Every Child a Reader

For Children’s Book Week, we are sharing some of our favorite kid’s books!

Children's Book Week logo courtesy of Every Child a Reader.
Children’s Book Week logo courtesy of Every Child a Reader.

Lori writes, “The book that made me a reader was A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle, read to our class by my 5th grade teacher, Mrs. Kennedy.  She wasn’t reading fast enough for me so I ran to the library for the book so I could find out sooner what would happen.  I am rarely without a book or two in progress since then!”

A new favorite is Julian is a Mermaid by Jessica Love.

Gina still loves Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls.

Emily loves and has kept her copy of Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst (Illustrated by Ray Cruz).

Sara writes, “My favorite book growing up was Matilda by Roald Dahl. I was a very active young reader, always with a book in my hand and I felt a connection with Matilda’s love for reading and the simplicity of what she wanted. I was very excited when they made that into a movie.”

Robin loves Unseen Magic by Emily Lloyd-Jones, which she calls a “charming mystery with Scooby-Doo vibes.” Read her full review.

Drop by the store and chat with us about kids books. We love the remember the stories that made us readers and help you pick books for the kids in your lives that will encourage them to become readers!

The Woman In Me by Britney Spears

“In Britney Spears’s memoir, she’s stronger than ever.” —The New York Times

The Woman in Me is a brave and astonishingly moving story about freedom, fame, motherhood, survival, faith, and hope.

In June 2021, the whole world was listening as Britney Spears spoke in open court. The impact of sharing her voice—her truth—was undeniable, and it changed the course of her life and the lives of countless others. The Woman in Me reveals for the first time her incredible journey—and the strength at the core of one of the greatest performers in pop music history.

Written with remarkable candor and humor, Spears’s groundbreaking book illuminates the enduring power of music and love—and the importance of a woman telling her own story, on her own terms, at last.

Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward

From Jesmyn Ward—the two-time National Book Award winner, youngest winner of the Library of Congress Prize for Fiction, and MacArthur Fellow—comes a haunting masterpiece, sure to be an instant classic, about an enslaved girl in the years before the Civil War.

“‘Let us descend,’ the poet now began, ‘and enter this blind world.’” —Inferno, Dante Alighieri

Let Us Descend is a reimagining of American slavery, as beautifully rendered as it is heart-wrenching. Searching, harrowing, replete with transcendent love, the novel is a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation.

Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, is the reader’s guide through this hellscape. As she struggles through the miles-long march, Annis turns inward, seeking comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother. Throughout, she opens herself to a world beyond this world, one teeming with spirits: of earth and water, of myth and history; spirits who nurture and give, and those who manipulate and take. While Ward leads readers through the descent, this, her fourth novel, is ultimately a story of rebirth and reclamation.

From one of the most singularly brilliant and beloved writers of her generation, this miracle of a novel inscribes Black American grief and joy into the very land—the rich but unforgiving forests, swamps, and rivers of the American South. Let Us Descend is Jesmyn Ward’s most magnificent novel yet, a masterwork for the ages.

The Comfort of Crows by Margaret Renkl

From the beloved New York Times opinion writer and bestselling author of Late Migrations comes a “howling love letter to the world” (Ann Patchett): a luminous book that traces the passing of seasons, personal and natural.

In The Comfort of Crows, Margaret Renkl presents a literary devotional: fifty-two chapters that follow the creatures and plants in her backyard over the course of a year. As we move through the seasons–from a crow spied on New Year’s Day, its resourcefulness and sense of community setting a theme for the year, to the lingering bluebirds of December, revisiting the nest box they used in spring–what develops is a portrait of joy and grief: joy in the ongoing pleasures of the natural world, and grief over winters that end too soon and songbirds that grow fewer and fewer.Along the way, we also glimpse the changing rhythms of a human life.

Grown children, unexpectedly home during the pandemic, prepare to depart once more. Birdsong and night-blooming flowers evoke generations past. The city and the country where Renkl raised her family transform a little more with each passing day. And the natural world, now in visible flux, requires every ounce of hope and commitment from the author–and from us. For, as Renkl writes, “radiant things are bursting forth in the darkest places, in the smallest nooks and deepest cracks of the hidden world.”

With fifty-two original color artworks by the author’s brother, Billy Renkl, The Comfort of Crows is a lovely and deeply moving book from a cherished observer of the natural world.

America Fantastica by Tim O’Brien

“Tim O’Brien is the one American author whose works I look forward to the most. His new novel’s ironic depiction of a post-Iraq war, mid-COVID, and mid-Trump world is piercing and razor-sharp.” HARUKI MURAKAMI

An American Master returns: the author of The Things They Carried delivers his first new novel in two decades, a brilliant and rollicking odyssey, in which a bank robbery sparks “a satirical romp through a country plagued by deceit” (Kirkus, starred review)

Named one of Fall 2023’s most anticipated books: New York Times, Associated Press, Esquire, Kirkus, Goodreads, LitHub, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and more

At 11:34 a.m. one Saturday in August 2019, Boyd Halverson strode into Community National Bank in Northern California.

“How much is on hand, would you say?” he asked the teller. “I’ll want it all.”

“You’re robbing me?”

He revealed a Temptation .38 Special.

The teller, a diminutive redhead named Angie Bing, collected eighty-one thousand dollars.

Boyd stuffed the cash into a paper grocery bag.

“I’m sorry about this,” he said, “but I’ll have to ask you to take a ride with me.”

So begins the adventure of Boyd Halverson—star journalist turned notorious online disinformation troll turned JCPenney manager—and his irrepressible hostage, Angie Bing. Haunted by his past and weary of his present, Boyd has one goal before the authorities catch up with him: settle a score with the man who destroyed his life. By Monday the pair reach Mexico; by winter, they are in a lakefront mansion in Minnesota. On their trail are hitmen, jealous lovers, ex-cons, an heiress, a billionaire shipping tycoon, a three-tour veteran of Iraq, and the ghosts of Boyd’s past. Everyone, it seems, except the police.

In the tradition of Jonathan Swift and Mark Twain, America Fantastica delivers a biting, witty, and entertaining story about the causes and costs of outlandish fantasy, while also marking the triumphant return of an essential voice in American letters. And at the heart of the novel, amid a teeming cast of characters, readers will delight in the tug-of-war between two memorable and iconic human beings—the exuberant savior-of-souls Angie Bing and the penitent but compulsive liar Boyd Halverson. Just as Tim O’Brien’s modern classic, The Things They Carried, so brilliantly reflected the unromantic truth of war, America Fantastica puts a mirror to a nation and a time that has become dangerously unmoored from truth and greedy for delusion.

I Must Be Dreaming by Roz Chast

#1 New York Times bestselling, award-winning New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast’s new graphic narrative, exploring the surreal nighttime world inside her mind-and untangling one of our most enduring human mysteries: dreams.

Ancient Greeks, modern seers, Freud, Jung, neurologists, poets, artists, shamans-humanity has never ceased trying to decipher one of the strangest unexplained phenomena we all experience: dreaming. Now, in her new book, Roz Chast illustrates her own dream world, a place that is sometimes creepy but always hilarious, accompanied by an illustrated tour through “Dream-Theory Land” guided by insights from poets, philosophers, and psychoanalysts alike. Illuminating, surprising, funny, and often profound, I Must Be Dreaming explores Roz Chast’s newest subject of fascination-and promises to make it yours, too.

The Secret: A Jack Reacher Novel by Lee Child and Andrew Child

A string of mysterious deaths. A long-classified mission. A young MP with nothing to lose.

1992. All across the United States respectable, upstanding citizens are showing up dead. These deaths could be accidents, and they don’t appear to be connected—until a fatal fall from a high-floor window attracts some unexpected attention.

That attention comes from the secretary of defense. All of a sudden he wants an interagency task force to investigate. And he wants Jack Reacher as the army’s representative. If Reacher gets a result, great. If not, he’s a convenient fall guy.

But office politics isn’t Reacher’s thing. Three questions quickly emerge: Who’s with him, who’s against him, and will the justice he dispenses be the official kind . . . or his own kind?

And the Winners Are…

Congratulations to the winners of our 7th Annual Art Contest!

Online Winners –
“Ernie on the Porch” by Mollie Patrinec
“Flamingo” by Jaelynn Estevez

Tied for Most In-Person Vote Winner –
“Messi-Goat-#10” by Ronan Partrick
“seRENity” by Angelica Hodek

And, our Grand Prize Winner with the most combined votes is…
“Still Here” by Danielle Snyder

Danielle’s work will stay on display at the store through the end of the year, and you’ll see all five designs on limited-edition store bookmarks in the near future!

Thank you to everyone who submitted art and everyone who voted.

See Past Winners:
2022
2021
2020
2019
2018
2017

2022 Summer Art Contest Winners

Congratulations to the winners of our 6th Annual Art Contest!

Online Winners –
“I Had a Dalamation Once” by Kevin Assam
“Under the Poinciana” by Katrina Arnhold

In-Person Vote Winner –
“Chill” by Sherry White

And, our Grand Prize Winner with the most combined votes is…
“Beyond the Surface” by Jaelyn Estevez

Jaelyn’s work will stay on display at the store through the end of the year, and you’ll see all four designs on limited-edition store bookmarks in the near future!

Thank you to everyone who submitted art and everyone who voted.

Bitch: On the Female of Species – Lucy Cooke

“Do you love weird animal facts? Do you love academia? Do you love sticking it to the patriarchy? This book boasts all three with panache and grace.” – Riona (Staff)

CLICK HERE TO READ RIONA’S FULL REVIEW FROM OUR OCTOBER 2022 NEWSLETTER

A “playful, enlightening,” and “effervescent exposé” (Scientific American) on the queens of the animal kingdom 

Studying zoology made Lucy Cooke feel like a sad freak. Not because she loved spiders or would root around in animal feces: all her friends shared the same curious kinks. The problem was her sex. Being female meant she was, by nature, a loser. 

Since Charles Darwin, evolutionary biologists have been convinced that the males of the animal kingdom are the interesting ones—dominating and promiscuous, while females are dull, passive, and devoted. 

In Bitch, Cooke tells a new story. Whether investigating same-sex female albatross couples that raise chicks, murderous mother meerkats, or the titanic battle of the sexes waged by ducks, Cooke shows us a new evolutionary biology, one where females can be as dynamic as any male. This isn‘t your grandfather’s evolutionary biology. It’s more inclusive, truer to life, and, simply, more fun.