Zebra Forest by Adina Rishe Gewirtz Eleven-year-old Annie and her younger brother, Rew, live with their grandma in a run-down house at the edge of the forest. Gran tells them that their mother didn’t want them, and their father died in a fight with an angry man. Annie and Rew get the most joy reading [...]
Rachel Carson and Her Book that Changed the World by Laurie Lawlor This beautiful new picture book tells the story of Rachel Carson’s life, from her nature-loving childhood through her 1962 publication of Silent Spring, the book that launched modern environmentalism. Carson was a biologist by training at a time when few women entered scientific [...]
One Gorilla by Anthony Browne In this oversized counting book, Anthony Browne presents one of the most lusciously beautiful picture books that I’ve seen in a long time. The brightly colored, richly saturated portraits of chimpanzees, mandrills, baboons, macaques, and other members of the primate family fill each page, compelling the reader to pause and [...]
Now that Women’s History Month is nearly history, I would like to add my two cents to March’s month-long celebration of women and girls. It’s my contention that protagonists in fiction are no less influential than the real people in biographies. While growing up during the 1960s, my heroes were Louisa May Alcott’s Meg, Lewis [...]
In thinking about Women’s History Month, I have been contemplating some of the great women writers–selfishly focusing on the ones who are most meaningful to me. Because I have been in a fever of reading adult poetry, I’ve been thinking about adult authors in the Children’s Room. Particularly Emily Dickinson. She’s a great poet to [...]
January–when the holidays are done and it still months until spring–can be a dreary, cold month. As readers we have so many ways to combat the winter blahs, here are a few of my favorites: Bury yourself deep in a snowdrift: The Long Winter, part of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie series, [...]
It’s time. We’ve given you the best books of 2012 from the NY Times, the Washington Post, Book Riot, and many more. Now the staff of the Mill Valley Public Library are ready to announce their favorite books published in 2012 for your reading delight. MVPL Staff Favorites of 2012 Fiction: San Miguel by T.C. [...]
Book Riot is a stylishly hip website dedicated to reviewing and discussing books and all things connected to books. Their tagline, “always books. Never boring” sums up the general tone of the website–a mixture of humor, a bit of boisterous swagger, and a love for all things literary. Each week, they feature an article aptly [...]
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