The Proudest Blue: A Story of Hijab and Family by Ibtihaj Muhammad
Kirkus A young girl admires her older sister's "first-day hijab" in this team effort by hijabi Olympian Muhammad (Proud, 2018) and YA novelist Ali (Love From A to Z, 2019).Mama takes Asiyah and Faizah to the hijab shop so that Asiyah can pick out her "first-day hijab." Mama likes pink, but Asiyah picks out "the brightest blue." Faizah has a new backpack and light-up shoes for the first day of school, but when Asiyah walks...More
Publishers Weekly Two-time Caldecott winner Wiesner (Tuesday; The Three Pigs) crafts another wordless mystery, this one set on an ordinary beach and under an enchanted sea. A saucerlike fish's eye stares from the exact center of the dust jacket, and the fish's scarlet skin provides a knockout background color. First-timers might not notice what's reflected in its eye, but return visitors will: it's a boxy camera, drifting underwater ...More
Publishers Weekly Once again, Woodson (If You Come Softly; From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun) reveals a keen understanding of the adolescent psyche via the narration of a winning seventh-grader. Lafayette, whose mother has recently died, is worried that some day he will be separated from his two older brothers: high-school-graduate Ty'ree, who gave up a scholarship to MIT to take care of his younger siblings; and Charlie, the rebellious middle boy, wh...More
Book list Shadow, a strong, silent, Steven Seagal type, has kept his head down while doing time for creaming the guys who ran off with his share of a heist. He is about to be released, ticket home in hand, thanks to his lovely wife; then his departure is pushed up a few days--unhappily, so that he can attend her funeral. Weather forces his flight down in St. Louis, and he winds up on a short hop seated next to a mysterious Mr. Wednesday, who inform...More
Library Journal "But when yr eyes shoot sparks & you say/ "Choose between me & it." "It" has always gone." Di Prima (Revolutionary Letters) sealed the deal with poetry at age 14. Collected here are poems that span four decades and speak to the poet's allegiance to her city and her community; lives lost to the 1990s AIDS epidemic; politics; love; motherhood; "a state of mind." In 1968, the Beat performer, human r...More
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond
Library Journal Desmond's (sociology, Harvard Univ.) eye-opening and revelatory book clearly conveys that one will never truly understand poverty without grappling with the crisis of precarious housing. The narrative follows the lives of several families and individuals living in some of the poorest neighborhoods of Milwaukee and tracks their harrowing searches for affordable shelter. This nearly futile pursuit of home is made worse by an uncaring bur...More
The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes
Book list As a researcher of British science during the Romantic period of English literature, Holmes suitably emphasizes the individual facing nature, so characteristic of the Romantic sensibility. Alighting on astronomer William Herschel (1738-1822) and chemist Humphrey Davy (1778-1829), both of whom were artistic (music and poetry, respectively), Holmes connects them via botanist Joseph Banks. In a precursor to a modern pattern, Banks moved from his yo...More
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