As an avid reader, a librarian and a parent, I get asked relatively often for book recommendations either from what I’ve been reading lately, or for books for children. So I’ve decided to start a book newsletter!
Right now my plan is to send out a letter every six or seven weeks (for a total of eight times a year). I intend to include recent publications as well as some older titles.
I will recommend books for adults, both fiction and non-fiction, books for young adults and books for young readers (including middle grade, chapter books, picture books and baby/board books).
If there’s anything you’d like to see me include in the newsletter, let me know! It’s a work in progress and I expect it will continue changing as I go.
Books Recommendations for Young ‘uns
Each newsletter I plan to share some board books and picture books I love, and — from time to time — chapter books and middle grade (I don’t read these quite as often). For four years I served on an American Library Association book selection committee, Rise (formerly the Amelia Bloomer Project) which chose the best feminist books for ages 0-18. This means I’ve read some amazing books for babies to teens over recent years, and I’ll often be recommending books that are feminist. I will try to highlight new books you might not have heard of yet, as well as older classics that I think are still wonderful.
I care a great deal about quality books for babies, children, tweens and teens and I’m excited to share some of my favorites!
Board Books
All About Clive and All About Rosa books by Jessica Spanyol
Clive and His Babies
Clive is a Librarian
Rosa Love Cars
Rosa Loves Dinosaurs
From the publisher: Gentle, affectionate books, celebrating diversity and challenging gender stereotypes
My take: I love these sweet books. In these board books (for ages 1-3) Rosa and Clive are shown engaging in play stereotypically reserved for the “opposite” gender. Rosa, a girl, and her friends — who have a variety of names, skin tones, hair types, and physical ability — play with dinosaurs and cars. Rosa crashes cars, makes noise, stomps, digs and yells. Clive, a boy, and the same group of diverse friends take care of baby dolls, feeding them, taking them for rides in a stroller, and tucking them into bed. Clive also pretends to be a librarian (in other book he pretends to be a teacher and a nurse), lending books to his friends and recommending books to Moshi cat.
There is so much to love about these books. They normalize all toys (dolls, trucks, dinosaurs) and all kinds of play as being for all children, regardless of gender. I love the diversity of children shown — not only do the children have skin tones and names that suggest various backgrounds, there are children with glasses and a child who uses a wheelchair. But none of this is heavy handed. The story isn’t about diversity or differences, or even gender. They are just lovely, accessible stories showing children playing.
We read these books a lot in our house and they are consistent favorites. I highly recommend them.
Picture Books
In the next newsletter I hope to discuss some of the most recent (2020) award winning books, but for this issue I’ll focus on a past winner that we’ve really enjoyed recently.
They All Saw A Cat by Brendan Wenzel
From the Publisher: In this glorious celebration of observation, curiosity, and imagination, Brendan Wenzel shows us the many lives of one cat, and how perspective shapes what we see. When you see a cat, what do you see?
My take: Amazing illustrations are the heart of this book, best for ages 3-6. Each spread of two pages shows a rendering of a cat from a different animal’s perspective (e.g. a dog sees the cat as lean and fast, while a fox sees the cat as round and slow. A mouse sees the cat in scary shades of red and black with sharp claws and teeth). The various illustrations are a great starting point for discussions with young children about why the cat looks different to different animals, as well as science-based questions about how different animals “see” (the spreads on how a bat, a worm and a snake see the cat are all great for this), and for broader discussions about how we all see the world differently, in our own unique way.
Book Recommendations for Grown Ups
Parents usually want their children to become readers or at least understand the importance of reading for young children. As a librarian the advice I’ve seen again and again -- and that I wholeheartedly agree with -- is that children are more likely to become readers themselves if they see their parents reading.
It makes sense, doesn’t it? You can’t simply tell your child to read, or that reading is important. Children are smart and if they see that you don’t read, they will soon decide that reading isn’t all that important after all.
Therefore, the unofficial motto of this section will be: if you want to raise a reader, be a reader!
This advice comes from the New York Times article How to Raise a Reader. The first step, the article suggests, is to:
Reacquaint yourself with Reading: If you’ve let reading slide to the margins of your life, now is the time to bring it back. Make the space, and time, for books you read for yourself, and books you read with your child.
This is one reason I’ll recommend adult books that I’ve read and enjoyed — I really think it’s important for those of us who have children to have those children see us read.
To be clear, even though I plan to recommend children’s books, and discuss parenting and reading, I envision this newsletter as being for everyone. The main reason I’ll recommend adult titles is because I want to encourage everyone to find something they like to read! I certainly read a lot more children’s books since I became a parent, but I was an avid reader well before that. I definitely don’t only think you should read if you have children! Reading is for everyone! I am an equal-opportunity book-pusher!
I hope you’ll learn about a title or two that sparks your interest. I’ll start with a few of my favorite books from 2020.
Fiction
The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd
From the publisher: Ana, raised in a wealthy family with ties to the ruler of Galilee, is rebellious and ambitious, with a brilliant mind and a daring spirit. She engages in furtive scholarly pursuits and writes narratives about neglected and silenced women. An encounter with eighteen-year-old Jesus changes everything.
Their marriage evolves with love and conflict, humor and pathos in Nazareth. Ana determines her fate during a stunning convergence of events considered among the most impactful in human history.
Grounded in meticulous research and written with a reverential approach to Jesus's life that focuses on his humanity, The Book of Longings is an inspiring, unforgettable account of one woman's bold struggle to realize the passion and potential inside her, while living in a time, place and culture devised to silence her.
My take: I adore books that take a well-known time in history, or a particular story and re-write as though…women existed! And mattered! And had thoughts and lives of their own! Having been raised in the Christian tradition (and as a nerd who read the Bible straight through — twice! — in my teens) I was fascinated to read this retelling of New Testament Middle East from the perspective of a woman. Moreover, Ana is an incredible woman (and main character). She is smart, thoughtful and clever — which she needs to be to have any chance at forging her own path. I highly recommend this book if you enjoy historical fiction, kick-ass women and especially if you have a familiarity with the New Testament but wish it had more women in it. (Note: I think even if you aren’t super familiar with New Testament Jesus you would be able to enjoy this book).
Fun fact: even though I know it’s pronounced Pilate (as in “pilot”) every time I read the name in this book, my head pronounced it as “Pilates” (like the workout…)
If you enjoyed The Red Tent you’ll enjoy The Book of Longings
Daisy Jones and the Six: A Novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid
From the Publisher: Daisy is a girl coming of age in L.A. in the late sixties. The sex and drugs are thrilling, but it’s the rock ’n’ roll she loves most. By the time she’s twenty, her voice is getting noticed, and she has the kind of heedless beauty that makes people do crazy things.
Also getting noticed is The Six, a band led by the brooding Billy Dunne who goes a little wild on the road. Daisy and Billy cross paths when a producer realizes that the key to supercharged success is to put the two together. What happens next will become the stuff of legend chronicled in this riveting and unforgettable novel, written as an oral history of one of the biggest bands of the seventies.
My take: I picked this up based on the author, as I really enjoyed her previous book (The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo). She’s a gifted storyteller and I’m always her for female-centric books. While I’m not the most knowledgable music fan (and there’s a lot I don’t know about that world) I do usually enjoy oral histories and this book pulled me right in. The “everyone has a different take on what happened”/oral-history style of this book could have been annoying, but instead was artfully done. All of the characters are incredibly well-written and have distinctive voices and as the story unfolds you come to care about them all. A really fun, enjoyable book.
If you enjoyed The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo: A Novel you’ll enjoy Daisy Jones and the Six
Ten Other Fiction Books I Enjoyed in 2020, In No Particular Order
Dominicana by Angie Cruz
Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab
The Library of Legends: A Novel by Janie Chang
Red, White and Royal Blue: A Novel by Casey McQuiston
Pull of the Stars by Emma Donaghue
The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes
The Grammarians by Cathleen Schine
A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik
Saint X by Alexis Schaitkin
Non-Fiction
Wintering: the Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May (November 2020)
From the Publisher: A revelatory book exploring the ways we can care for and repair ourselves when life knocks us down. A moving personal narrative shot through with lessons from literature, mythology, and the natural world, May's story offers instruction on the transformative power of rest and retreat.
Ultimately Wintering invites us to change how we relate to our own fallow times. May models an active acceptance of sadness and finds nourishment in deep retreat, joy in the hushed beauty of winter, and encouragement in understanding life as cyclical, not linear.
My Take: Published in November 2020, during the pandemic, this book could not have been more timely. I read it slowly, no more than a chapter a night, so I could savor each chapter. May explores those difficult, but inevitable, times that occur in life when something (death, job loss, sickness (a pandemic that requires you to quarantine, ::ahem::)) knocks normal life off course. Her thoughts on these difficult “wintering” times are beautiful and hopeful. I definitely recommend taking your time with this lovely, introspective book.
If you enjoyed When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times by Pema Chodron you’ll enjoy Wintering: the Power or Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times
Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation by Anne Helen Peterson (September 2020)
From the Publisher: An incendiary examination of burnout in millennials—the cultural shifts that got us here, the pressures that sustain it, and the need for drastic change.
While burnout may seem like the default setting for the modern era, in Can’t Even, BuzzFeed culture writer and former academic Anne Helen Petersen argues that burnout is a definitional condition for the millennial generation, born out of distrust in the institutions that have failed us, the unrealistic expectations of the modern workplace, and a sharp uptick in anxiety and hopelessness exacerbated by the constant pressure to “perform” our lives online.
Petersen examines how millennials have arrived at this point of burnout (think: unchecked capitalism and changing labor laws) and examines the phenomenon through a variety of lenses—including how burnout affects the way we work, parent, and socialize—describing its resonance in alarming familiarity.
My Take: I am a really big fan of AHP’s writing and I pre-ordered this book and then I zoomed through it (which is unusual for me for non-fiction books). AHP is a smart, thoughtful writer and this book is well-researched and compellingly written. I don’t always identify as a millennial (if anything, I guess I’m an elder millennial, or Xennial) but still, so much of this book resonated with me. The only chapter I was disappointed in was the one on parenting (AHP acknowledges that she is not a parent and therefore may have not fully covered the reality of burnout + parenting). Still, overall I very much recommend this book for Millennials (and I think it’d could lead to interesting conversations if our parents read it. I think older generations would gain a lot of insight into how much the world has changed — or how generational views have changed — since they were in their 20s/30s).
Four Other Non-Fiction Books I Enjoyed in 2020, In No Particular Order
The Library Book by Susan Orlean
Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor
Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women that A Movement Forgot by Mikki Kendall
My Time Among the Whites by Jennine Capo Crucet
Thanks for reading my first newsletter! I hope you found a title or two in here that has piqued your interest.
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Happy reading!
I just checked the ebook of The Book of Longings out of the library. Thanks for the recommendation!