Publishers Weekly Readers join a brown-skinned girl with a polka-dotted backpack as she asks questions about the stars and visits a space museum, where she watches exoplanets careen overhead in a planetarium. In sweeping, inky art, Lanan captures the child's dawning awareness of the vastness of the universe. Manley's writing swings gracefully between factual descriptions ("Earth orbits in our solar system's 'habitable zone''&q...More

Kirkus A little girl shares a joy-filled rainy day with Mama. Mother-daughter pairings of swimsuits, flower bouquets, and bicycles are presented in small, bright vignettes on the endpapers of Cabrera’s cozy tale, serving as appetizers for the visual feast within. Impressively detailed scenes, from the first spread, which shows the child coming downstairs, to her mama’s artfully designed workspace to a later scene of the little girl drifting of...More

School Library Journal Gr 5-8-Reynolds makes his middle grade debut with a multigenerational story featuring two Brooklyn brothers sent to stay temporarily with grandparents in rural Virginia. While their parents take some time to salvage their fraying relationship, 11-year-old Genie and his almost 14-year-old brother, Ernie, are expected to spend a month obeying their strict grandmother, surviving without cellular service or the Internet, and helping wit...More

Library Journal World Fantasy Award winner Walton (Tooth and Claw) spins an enchanting tale filled with libraries and magic through the pages of a young woman's diary. Morwenna and her twin, Morganna, spent their childhood sur-rounded by Welsh ruins and fairies. Torn from her sister and hiding from her crazy mother, Morwenna finds herself in the care of her estranged father and his eerily controlling sisters. Surrounded by things strange and un...More

Book list *Starred Review* Pynchon's debut novel, V., appeared 50 years ago, and ever since he's been tracking dubious covert actions and the arc and consequences of technology in novels of labyrinthine complexity, impish wit, and open-armed compassion. Of late, his inquiry has taken the form of rambunctious and penetrating crime novels. Inherent Vice (2009), currently being adapted for film, is set in 1960s Los Angeles and features a pothead PI a...More

Library Journal While other fast food companies make appearances, the primary focus of this book by Chatelain (history, African American Studies, Georgetown Univ.; South Side Girls) is the role of McDonald's in African American communities. The author describes the black businessmen and women who ran early franchisees and looks at their relationships with the company. The roles of fast food restaurants as employers, nutritional battlegrounds, sites of...More

Book list The Bloomington Community Orchard must have spread its roots into Ross Gay, an Indiana University English professor, as the organic poems in his third collection bear fruit, line by line, with each fresh word or phrase. These are accessible, alive poems that give one the sense of sitting and talking in the poet's kitchen. Often vulnerable and self-conscious in tone, they dig deep in the dirt of memory and unearth powerful images. In Burial, ...More