This week, there are some exciting new books highlighted, one by renowned historical-fiction author Ruta Sepetys who will be visiting the
Book Stall in Winnetka for a booksigning and reading, February 8 at 7:00pm. Other books are on the
Read For A Lifetime 2015-16 list. Remember to keep reading those RFL books and finish at least 4 and submit your comment cards in the LRC by April 1.
In addition, a clip from a new PBS documentary about migrant workers in Salinas, CA, and a new feature from the New York Public Library's digital collection on life in the Jim Crow South.
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YouTube Pick of the Week
Oscar Ramos, 3rd grader in Salinas, California, and Jose Ansaldo, his teacher and the son of a migrant worker, are the center of a new PBS documentary that highlights the plights of migrant families in the United States.
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Books
Between Shades of Gray (2011) by Ruta Sepetys
Location: FIC Sepetys
Lina is just like any other fifteen-year-old Lithuanian girl in 1941. She paints, she draws, she gets crushes on boys. Until one night when Soviet officers barge into her home, tearing her family from the comfortable life they've known. Separated from her father, forced onto a crowded and dirty train car, Lina, her mother, and her young brother slowly make their way north, crossing the Arctic Circle, to a work camp in the coldest reaches of Siberia. Here they are forced, under Stalin's orders, to dig for beets and fight for their lives under the cruelest of conditions.
Lina finds solace in her art, meticulously--and at great risk--documenting events by drawing, hoping these messages will make their way to her father's prison camp to let him know they are still alive. It is a long and harrowing journey, spanning years and covering 6,500 miles, but it is through incredible strength, love, and hope that Lina ultimately survives. Between Shades of Gray is a novel that will steal your breath and capture your heart. --
Goodreads
Egg & Spoon (2014) by Gregory Maguire
Call Number:
FIC Maguire
A fantasy set in Tsarist Russia.
Elena Rudina lives in the impoverished Russian countryside. Her father has been dead for years. One of her brothers has been conscripted into the Tsar's army, the other taken as a servant in the house of the local landowner. Her mother is dying, slowly, in their tiny cabin. And there is no food. But then a train arrives in the village, a train carrying untold wealth, a cornucopia of food, and a noble family destined to visit the Tsar in Saint Petersburg - a family that includes Ekaterina, a girl of Elena's age. When the two girls' lives collide, an adventure is set in motion, an escapade that includes mistaken identity, a monk locked in a tower, a prince traveling incognito, and - in a starring role only Gregory Maguire could have conjured - Baba Yaga, witch of Russian folklore, in her ambulatory house perched on chicken legs.
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Goodreads
I'll Give You the Sun
(2014) by
Jandy Nelson
Call Number:
FIC Nelson
A brilliant, luminous story of first love, family, loss, and betrayal for fans of John Green, David Levithan, and Rainbow Rowell
Jude and her twin brother, Noah, are incredibly close. At thirteen, isolated Noah draws constantly and is falling in love with the charismatic boy next door, while daredevil Jude cliff-dives and wears red-red lipstick and does the talking for both of them. But three years later, Jude and Noah are barely speaking. Something has happened to wreck the twins in different and dramatic ways . . . until Jude meets a cocky, broken, beautiful boy, as well as someone else-an even more unpredictable new force in her life. The early years are Noah's story to tell. The later years are Jude's. What the twins don't realize is that they each have only half the story, and if they could just find their way back to one another, they'd have a chance to remake their world.
This radiant novel from the acclaimed, award-winning author ofThe Sky Is Everywhere will leave you breathless and teary and laughing-often all at once.
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Goodreads
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The Green Book
This month, the New York Public Library recently released into public domain (in other words, they made freely accessible to all) massive amounts of digital items from their collection. One of those noted collections is the Green Book--a travel guide published from 1933-1963 that showed restaurants, hotels, gas stations, etc. where black travelers would be welcome. This fascinating time piece from the days of Jim Crow has been digitized and made interactive through NYPL and is worth an exploration.
Click
here to view the Green Book at NYPL.org
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