@ Your Library
Summer is well underway and it is time to renew efforts to read on a daily basis. Spending just fifteen minutes a day reading provides lots of benefits to everyone. So grab a book or magazine and start reading.
I love reading new books and we have had several come in for kids and teens that are just awesome. Wordless books are so much fun to share and Field Trip to the Moon by John Hare is delightful and is great to share with any child who loves to draw.
Continuing with the theme of differences is Bim, Bam, Bop…and Oona by Jacqueline Briggs Martin. This picture book is about four birds, three who get along just fine and one who isn’t like the others. Sometimes Oona is okay with that but sometimes doesn’t want to be last. So Oona sets out to create gizmos that will enable her to get to the pond first.
Have you ever been to the ‘Lost Forty’? Do you even know what it is? Phyllis Root with illustrations by Betsy Bowen have created a wonderful book all about The Lost Forest of northern Minnesota. Learn all about the surveyors who mapped a forest as a lake that then stayed that way for more than seventy-five years. Consider making a day trip this summer to explore the 144 acres of old growth forest as a family.
Beastly Puzzles by Rachel Poliquin and Byron Eggenschwiler is ‘a brain-boggling animal guessing game’ book of delight. What kind of animal could you make with dinosaur feet, feather dusters, three billiard balls, a hose, a lion-killing kick and the speed of a greyhound? This is just one of the impossibly tricky puzzles in this book about amazing animals.
Summer is a time for tornadoes and my favorite book series “Scientists in the Field” just released The Tornado Scientist: Seeing Inside Severe Storms by Mary Kay Carson with photographs by Tom Uhlman. Meet Robin Tanamachi, a Minnesotan born and raised who has been captivated by tornadoes and other extreme weather her entire life. She and her husband are research meteorologists who hope their research will help people who live in areas hardest hit by tornadoes.
Upper elementary and middle school students will find Our Castle By the Sea by Lucy Strange or Just South of Home by Karen Strong possible reads. Lucy Strange has written a ‘haunting wartime tale’ woven together with an unforgettable legend. While Karen Strong has created a tale with a haunted church and a community in need of healing.
Teens and adults that enjoy science fiction might want to take a look at either Aurora Rising by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff which is set in the year 2380 and a squad of losers, misfits and discipline cases that just might be the last hope for the galaxy, or Sky Without Stars by Jessica Brody and Joanne Rendell which is a sweeping reimagining of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, set in space.