2023

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Spanning three continents and eight generations, Yaa Gyasi’s critically acclaimed, debut novel Homegoing begins with two Ghanaian sisters in the 18th century who lead parallel, yet divergent lives: one stays in Ghana and becomes a wealthy slave trader’s wife; one is sold into slavery and sent to America. The novel follows the lives of their descendants—from Ghana’s beaches to the plantations of Mississippi, the American Civil War to Jazz Age Harlem—offering an essential examination of power and privilege, memory and legacy.

New Kid by Jerry Craft

Seventh grader Jordan Banks loves nothing more than drawing cartoons about his life. But instead of sending him to the art school of his dreams, his parents enroll him in a prestigious private school known for its academics, where Jordan is one of the few kids of color in his entire grade. As he makes the daily trip from his Washington Heights apartment to the upscale Riverdale Academy Day School, Jordan soon finds himself torn between two worlds—and not really fitting into either one. Can Jordan learn to navigate his new school culture while keeping his neighborhood friends and staying true to himself?

The Door of No Return by Kwame Alexander

In his village in Upper Kwanta, 11-year-old Kofi loves his family, playing oware with his grandfather and swimming in the river Offin. He’s warned though, to never go to the river at night.  His brother tells him ”There are things about the water you do not know. “Like what? Kofi asks. “The beasts.” His brother answers. One fateful night, the unthinkable happens and in a flash, Kofi’s world turns upside down. Kofi soon ends up in a fight for his life and what happens next will send him on a harrowing journey across land and sea, and away from everything he loves.

Change Sings by Amanda Gorman

In this stirring, much-anticipated picture book by presidential inaugural poet and activist Amanda Gorman, anything is possible when our voices join together. As a young girl leads a cast of characters on a musical journey, they learn that they have the power to make changes—big or small—in the world, in their communities, and in most importantly, in themselves.

The More We Get Together by Celeste Cortwright (Mini Read)

Set to the familiar tune of “The More We Get Together,” this new addition to Barefoot Books’ bestselling singalong collection features a diverse group of children who work together to make their urban neighborhood cleaner, friendlier, and safer for everyone. Sing along as the community bicycles and recycles together, volunteers at an assisted living home, participates in a letter-writing campaign and finally gathers around a potluck meal. End matter includes an age-appropriate introduction to recycling, activism, community gardens, teamwork and more, as well as actionable ways for children to get involved in their own neighborhoods.

Things we’re excited about for 2023 are…

• Continuing 2022’s theme of multiple Middle Read selections
• Launching a Mini Read Lakeshore for our youngest readers
• Author visits
• & MORE!

2022

Circe by Madeline Miller

With unforgettably vivid characters, mesmerizing language and page-turning suspense, Circe is a triumph of storytelling, an intoxicating epic of family rivalry, palace intrigue, love and loss, as well as a celebration of indomitable female strength in a man’s world.

Our Middle Read focused on a variety of selections which we used to learn more about The Hero’s Journey. Read more here!

Last Stop on Market Street by Matt de la Peña

This award-winning modern classic—a must-have for every child’s home library—is an inclusive ode to kindness, empathy, gratitude, and finding joy in unexpected places, and celebrates the special bond between a curious young boy and his loving grandmother.

2022 memories include…

• Virtual author visit with Madeline Miller
• Kickoff event with Dr Stephen Maiullo
• Little Read author event with Matt de la Pena

2021

An American Sunrise by Joy Harjo

Writer, musician, and current Poet Laureate of the United States Joy Harjo was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and is a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. An American Sunrise—her eighth collection of poems—revisits the homeland from which her ancestors were uprooted in 1830 as a result of the Indian Removal Act.

Fry Bread by Kevin Noble Maillard

Told in lively and powerful verse by debut author Kevin Noble Maillard, Fry Bread is an evocative depiction of a modern Native American family, vibrantly illustrated by Pura Belpre Award winner and Caldecott Honoree Juana Martinez-Neal.

2021 memories include…

• Virtual author event with Joy Harjo
• Virtual event with Dr. Debbie Reese
• Virtual Little Read author event with Kevin Noble Maillard

2020

In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick

Winner of the National Book Award for Nonfiction and on the New York Times bestseller list for 40 weeks, this “spellbinding” (Time) “page turner” (New York Times) tells the true story of the 19th-century whaleship Essex out of Nantucket that got rammed by one of the largest whales anyone had ever seen, the whale that inspired Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. But the story doesn’t end there. The ship sank, sending the crewmembers adrift for months as they faced storms, starvation, and disease. Award-winning author of more than ten books, Philbrick “has created an eerie thriller from a centuries old tale… Scrupulously researched and eloquently written, In the Heart of the Sea is a masterpiece of maritime history,” writes the New York Times. “It gets into your bones.”

Our Middle Read selection was In the Heart of the Sea (Young Reader’s Edition), learn more here.

Galapagos Girl/Galapagueña by Marsha Diane Arnold and illustrated by Angela Dominguez

For Valentina, living on the Galápagos islands means spending her days outside, observing the natural world around her. She greets sea lions splashing on the shore, scampers over lava rocks with Sally-lightfoot crabs, and swims with manta rays. She is a Galápagos girl, and there is no other place she’d rather be! But this wondrous world is fragile, and when Valentina learns her wild companions are under threat, she vows to help protect them and the islands.

2020 memories include…

• Our shift to hybrid programming and the launch of this website!
• Virtual author event with Nathaniel Philbrick
• Virtual Little Read author event with Marsha Diane Arnold

2019

In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez

It is November 25, 1960, and three beautiful sisters have been found near their wrecked Jeep at the bottom of a 150-foot cliff on the north coast of the Dominican Republic. The official state newspaper reports their deaths as accidental. It does not mention that a fourth sister lives. Nor does it explain that the sisters were among the leading opponents of Gen. Rafael Leonidas Trujillo’s dictatorship. It doesn’t have to. Everybody knows of Las Mariposas—“The Butterflies.” In this novel, the voices of all four sisters—Minerva, Patria, María Teresa, and the survivor, Dedé—speak across the decades to tell their own stories, from hair ribbons to prison torture, and to describe the everyday horrors of life under Trujillo’s rule. Through the art and magic of Julia Alvarez’s imagination, the martyred Butterflies live again in this novel of courage and love, and the human cost of political oppression.

Before We Were Free by Julia Alvarez

Anita de la Torre never questioned her freedom living in the Dominican Republic. But by her twelfth birthday in 1960, most of her relatives have immigrated to the United States, her Tío Toni has disappeared without a trace, and the government’s secret police terrorize her remaining family because of their suspected opposition to Trujillo’s iron-fisted rule. Using the strength and courage of her family, Anita must overcome her fears and fly to freedom, leaving all that she once knew behind.

The Rooster Who Would Not Be Quiet by Carmen Agra Deedy

La Paz is a happy, but noisy village. A little peace and quiet would make it just right. So the villagers elect the bossy Don Pepe as their mayor. Before long, singing of any kind is outlawed. Even the teakettle is afraid to whistle! But there is one noisy rooster who doesn’t give two mangos about this mayor’s silly rules. Instead, he does what roosters were born to do. He sings: “Kee-kee-ree-KEE!”

2019 memories include…

• Author event with Julia Alverez
• Little Read author event with Carmen Agra Deedy

2018

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Set in the Great Lakes region 20 years after a flu pandemic wiped out 99 percent of the world’s population, “Station Eleven” centers on a traveling troupe that performs Shakespeare’s plays to the communities that have arisen in North America in the event’s aftermath. The narrative visits both the story’s post-apocalyptic present and the world before the pandemic, not only exploring the collapse of society and its aftermath but emphasizing the connections between people and the efforts of those seeking to do more than merely exist.

The Giver by Lois Lowry

This 1994 Newbery Medal winner, has become one of the most influential novels of our time. The haunting story centers on twelve-year-old Jonas, who lives in a seemingly ideal, if colorless, world of conformity and contentment. Not until he is given his life assignment as the Receiver of Memory does he begin to understand the dark, complex secrets behind his fragile community.

Blackout by John Rocco

One hot summer night in the city, all the power goes out. The TV shuts off and a boy wails, “Mommm!” His sister can no longer use the phone, Mom can’t work on her computer, and Dad can’t finish cooking dinner. What’s a family to do? Using a combination of panels and full bleed illustrations that move from color to black-and-white and back to color, John Rocco shows that if we are willing to put our cares aside for a while, there is party potential in a summer blackout.

2018 memories include…

• Author event with Emily St. John Mandel
• Little Read author event with John Rocco
• Middle Read begins with The Giver by Lois Lowry

2017

When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka

When the Emperor Was Divine follows one Japanese family uprooted from its Berkeley home after the start of World War II. After being delivered to a racetrack in Utah, they are forcibly relocated to an internment camp. They spend two harrowing years there before returning to a home far less welcoming than it was before the war. Using five distinct but intertwined perspectives, Otsuka’s graceful prose evokes the family’s range of responses to internment. Culminating in a final brief and bitter chapter, Otsuka’s novel serves as a requiem for moral and civic decency in times of strife and fragmentation.

A Place Where Sunflowers Grow by Emily Lee-Tai

Under the harsh summer sun, Mari’s art class has begun. But it’s hard to think of anything to draw in a place where nothing beautiful grows — especially a place like Topaz, the internment camp where Mari’s family and thousands of other Japanese Americans have been sent to live during World War II. Somehow, glimmers of hope begin to surface — in the eyes of a kindly art teacher, in the tender words of Mari’s parents, and in the smile of a new friend. Amy Lee-Tai’s sensitive prose and Felicia Hoshino’s stunning mixed-media images show that hope can survive alongside even the harshest injustice.

2017 memories include…

• Little Read author event with Amy Tan

2016

Brother, I’m Dying by Edwidge Danticat

From the age of four, award-winning writer Edwidge Danticat came to think of her uncle Joseph as her “second father,” when she was placed in his care after her parents left Haiti for America. And so she was both elated and saddened when, at twelve, she joined her parents and youngest brothers in New York City. As Edwidge made a life in a new country, adjusting to being far away from so many who she loved, she and her family continued to fear for the safety of those still in Haiti as the political situation deteriorated. In 2004, they entered into a terrifying tale of good people caught up in events beyond their control. Brother I’m Dying is an astonishing true-life epic, told on an intimate scale by one of our finest writers.

I’m New Here by Anne Sibley O’Brien

Three students are immigrants from Guatemala, Korea, and Somalia and have trouble speaking, writing, and sharing ideas in English in their new American elementary school. Through self-determination and with encouragement from their peers and teachers, the students learn to feel confident and comfortable in their new school without losing a sense of their home country, language, and identity.

2016 memories include…

• Author visit with Edwidge Danticat
• Kickoff event with Dr. Jonathan Hagood, Dr. Natalie Dykstra, Dr.Dr. Pauline Remy
• Little Read author event with Anne Sibley O’Brien
• The official start of the Little Read program!

2015

The Things We Carried by Tim O’Brien

A classic work of American literature that has not stopped changing minds and lives since it burst onto the literary scene, The Things They Carried is a ground-breaking meditation on war, memory, imagination, and the redemptive power of storytelling.   The Things They Carried depicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and the character Tim O’Brien, who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three.

Tuesday Tucks Me In by Luis Carols Montalván and Brett Witter

As narrated by Tuesday, Tuesday Tucks Me In is a day in the life of this service dog extraordinaire and tail-wagging ambassador for all things positive and uplifting in the world. The book takes us through a typical day of adventures, starting with Tuesday waking Luis in the morning and greeting him with dog breath in the face, and then ending with Tuesday cuddling up to Luis on their bed, the last moment they spend together before sleep.

2015 memories include…

• Author visit with Tim O’Brien
• Screening of the documentary film Naneek 
• Vietnamese Music Event at St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church
• Little Read author event with Luis Carlos Montalván

2014 – Our 1st Program!

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

The unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy Southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it, To Kill A Mockingbird became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made into an Academy Award-winning film, also a classic.

Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, To Kill A Mockingbird takes readers to the roots of human behavior – to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos. Now with over 18 million copies in print and translated into forty languages, this regional story by a young Alabama woman claims universal appeal. Harper Lee always considered her book to be a simple love story. Today it is regarded as a masterpiece of American literature.

2015 memories include…

• Visit from friend of Harper Lee, Mary Marshall Tucker
• Screening of the documentary film Our Mockingbird at Herrick District Library
• Mockingbird Music at Third Reformed Church featuring music from the time period
• Presentation on race and class by friend of Harper Lee and professor emeritus of history at Auburn University, Dr. Wayne Flynt