Tag Archives: books

Ukrainian Authors to Discover and Enjoy

We’re sharing some Ukrainian stories and authors in order to better appreciate and understand their culture and the challenges they have faced and continue to encounter today💙💛

Young Readers:

Thunder Cake by Patricia Polacco
“A loud clap of thunder booms, and rattles the windows of Grandma’s old farmhouse. “This is Thunder Cake baking weather,” calls Grandma, as she and her granddaughter hurry to gather the ingredients around the farm. A real Thunder Cake must reach the oven before the storm arrives. But the list of ingredients is long and not easy to find . . . and the storm is coming closer all the time! Reaching once again into her rich childhood experience, Patricia Polacco tells the memorable story of how her grandma–her Babushka–helped her overcome her fear of thunder when she was a little girl. Ms. Polacco’s vivid memories of her grandmother’s endearing answer to a child’s fear, accompanied by her bright folk-art illustrations, turn a frightening thunderstorm into an adventure and ultimately . . . a celebration!”

Memories of Babi by Aranka Siegal
“Piri is a city girl, but every year she goes to visit her grandmother Babi on her farm in the Ukrainian village of Komjaty. There is a lot that Piri finds strange, even scary, in Komjaty, such as the ghost in the form of a rooster who supposedly haunts the cemetery! But Piri loves country life: making corn bread, eating plums right off the tree, venturing out with her grandmother in the early morning to hunt for mushrooms. And during her time with Babi, Piri learns lessons that will stay with her all of her life, about the importance of honest hard work, of caring for the less fortunate, and of having the courage to stand up for those who cannot stand up for themselves. In these nine stories, Aranka Siegal paints a tender portrait of the love between a grandmother and granddaughter, inspired by her own experiences with her grandmother.”

Adults:

The Museum of Abandoned Secrets by Oksana Zabuzhko, translated by Nina Shevchuk-Murray
“Spanning sixty tumultuous years of Ukrainian history, this multigenerational saga weaves a dramatic and intricate web of love, sex, friendship, and death. At its center: three women linked by the abandoned secrets of the past—secrets that refuse to remain hidden. While researching a story, journalist Daryna unearths a worn photograph of Olena Dovgan, a member of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army killed in 1947 by Stalin’s secret police. Intrigued, Daryna sets out to make a documentary about the extraordinary woman—and unwittingly opens a door to the past that will change the course of the future. For even as she delves into the secrets of Olena’s life, Daryna grapples with the suspicious death of a painter who just may be the latest victim of a corrupt political power play. From the dim days of World War II to the eve of Orange Revolution, The Museum of Abandoned Secrets is an “epic of enlightening force” that explores the enduring power of the dead over the living.”

Grey Bees by Andrey Kurkov, translated by Boris Dralyuk
“With a warm yet political humor, Ukraine’s most famous novelist presents a balanced and illuminating portrait of modern conflict. Little Starhorodivka, a village of three streets, lies in Ukraine’s Grey Zone, the no-man’s-land between loyalist and separatist forces. Thanks to the lukewarm war of sporadic violence and constant propaganda that has been dragging on for years, only two residents remain: retired safety inspector turned beekeeper Sergey Sergeyich and Pashka, a rival from his schooldays. With little food and no electricity, under constant threat of bombardment, Sergeyich’s one remaining pleasure is his bees. As spring approaches, he knows he must take them far from the Grey Zone so they can collect their pollen in peace. This simple mission on their behalf introduces him to combatants and civilians on both sides of the battle lines: loyalists, separatists, Russian occupiers and Crimean Tatars. Wherever he goes, Sergeyich’s childlike simplicity and strong moral compass disarm everyone he meets. But could these qualities be manipulated to serve an unworthy cause, spelling disaster for him, his bees and his country?”

The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine by Serhii Plokhy
“As Ukraine is embroiled in an ongoing struggle with Russia to preserve its territorial integrity and political independence, celebrated historian Serhii Plokhy explains that today’s crisis is a case of history repeating itself: the Ukrainian conflict is only the latest in a long history of turmoil over Ukraine’s sovereignty. Situated between Central Europe, Russia, and the Middle East, Ukraine has been shaped by empires that exploited the nation as a strategic gateway between East and West—from the Romans and Ottomans to the Third Reich and the Soviet Union. In The Gates of Europe, Plokhy examines Ukraine’s search for its identity through the lives of major Ukrainian historical figures, from its heroes to its conquerors. This revised edition includes new material that brings this definitive history up to the present. As Ukraine once again finds itself at the center of global attention, Plokhy brings its history to vivid life as he connects the nation’s past with its present and future.”

Olympics: Day Five

gray olympics concrete block
Photo by Anthony on Pexels.com

The Olympics continue! And with this huge, international gathering of incredibly talented people comes the opportunity for libraries to connect books and other cool information sources to your community members.

Whether or not you are watching the Olympics, or care about sports, or even know about all the different sports in the Olympics – there are people in your community who care a lot. Especially when you are dealing with reluctant readers of any age, or people who may not connect their interests with books, this is a great opportunity to show how relevant your collection is to the community!

So, what is happening today?

  • archery
  • badminton
  • baseball
  • basketball
  • beach volleyball
  • boxing
  • canoe/kayaking
  • cycling
  • diving
  • equestrian
  • fencing
  • field hockey
  • gymnastics
  • handball
  • judo
  • rowing
  • rugby
  • sailing
  • soccer
  • surfing
  • swimming
  • table tennis
  • tennis
  • volleyball
  • water polo
  • weight lifting

Wow – what a list! I just love looking at this, and thinking about all the people who have devoted their lives, as athletes, coaches, or viewers, working to build skills and excellence in these sports. It’s wonderful!

Browse through this list to see how you can incorporate these sporting ideas into your library’s collection and programming. This doesn’t have to happen just during the Olympics – sports are interesting all the time. And even a quick glance will show that some of your patrons are doing these sports regularly. With all of Minnesota’s wonderful lakes, it is likely you know people who are canoeing and kayaking or sailing. Weight lifting, volleyball, baseball, basketball – all of these are things your community members are watching or participating in regularly.

So, what books could you recommend? We have a few suggestions for displays and your collection:

Book Bouquet: Fictional Diseases

Each week we assemble a collection – a bouquet, if you will – of books you can read for yourself, or use to build into a display in your library. As always, the books we link to have info from Amazon.com. If you click a link and then buy anything at all from Amazon, we get a small percent of their profits from your sale. Yay!!! Thanks!!! We really appreciate the assistance! 💕😊

We’re looking forward to the next season of our podcast Reading With Libraries (catch up on all the past seasons here!!) and one of the genres we’re exploring again is horror! So on a slightly related note, this week our Book Bouquet is going to be about fictional (and generally horrifying) diseases. Enjoy!

Clay’s Ark by Octavia Butler
“An innocent family, carjacked on a desolate highway, is abducted to a bizarre new world. A world being born in the Californian desert. They discover Earth has been invaded by an alien microorganism. The deadly entity attacks like a virus, but survivors of the disease genetically bond with it, developing amazing powers, near-immortality, unnatural desires – and a need to spread the contagion and create a secret colony of the transformed. Now the meaning of “survival” changes. For the babies born in the colony are clearly, undeniably, not human… “

Zone One by Colson Whitehead
“In this wry take on the post-apocalyptic horror novel, a pandemic has devastated the planet. The plague has sorted humanity into two types: the uninfected and the infected, the living and the living dead. Now the plague is receding, and Americans are busy rebuild­ing civilization under orders from the provisional govern­ment based in Buffalo. Their top mission: the resettlement of Manhattan. Armed forces have successfully reclaimed the island south of Canal Street—aka Zone One—but pockets of plague-ridden squatters remain. While the army has eliminated the most dangerous of the infected, teams of civilian volunteers are tasked with clearing out a more innocuous variety—the “malfunctioning” stragglers, who exist in a catatonic state, transfixed by their former lives.”

The Last One by Alexandra Oliva
“It begins with a reality TV show. Twelve contestants are sent into the woods to face challenges that will test the limits of their endurance. While they are out there, something terrible happens—but how widespread is the destruction, and has it occurred naturally or is it human-made? Cut off from society, the contestants know nothing of it. When one of them—a young woman the show’s producers call Zoo—stumbles across the devastation, she can imagine only that it is part of the game. Alone and disoriented, Zoo is heavy with doubt regarding the life—and husband—she left behind, but she refuses to quit. Staggering countless miles across unfamiliar territory, Zoo must summon all her survival skills—and learn new ones as she goes. But as her emotional and physical reserves dwindle, she grasps that the real world might have been altered in terrifying ways—and her ability to parse the charade will be either her triumph or her undoing.”

Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado
“A wife refuses her husband’s entreaties to remove the green ribbon from around her neck. A woman recounts her sexual encounters as a plague slowly consumes humanity. A salesclerk in a mall makes a horrifying discovery within the seams of the store’s prom dresses. One woman’s surgery-induced weight loss results in an unwanted houseguest. And in the bravura novella Especially Heinous, Machado reimagines every episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, a show we naively assumed had shown it all, generating a phantasmagoric police procedural full of doppelgangers, ghosts, and girls with bells for eyes.”

Feed by Mira Grant
“The year was 2014. We had cured cancer. We had beaten the common cold. But in doing so we created something new, something terrible that no one could stop. The infection spread, virus blocks taking over bodies and minds with one, unstoppable command: FEED. Now, twenty years after the Rising, bloggers Georgia and Shaun Mason are on the trail of the biggest story of their lives—the dark conspiracy behind the infected. The truth will get out, even if it kills them.”

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
“Set in the days of civilization’s collapse, Station Eleven tells the story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity. One snowy night a famous Hollywood actor slumps over and dies onstage during a production of King Lear. Hours later, the world as we know it begins to dissolve. Moving back and forth in time—from the actor’s early days as a film star to fifteen years in the future, when a theater troupe known as the Traveling Symphony roams the wasteland of what remains—this suspenseful, elegiac, spellbinding novel charts the strange twists of fate that connect five people: the actor, the man who tried to save him, the actor’s first wife, his oldest friend, and a young actress with the Traveling Symphony, caught in the crosshairs of a dangerous self-proclaimed prophet.”

Book Bites: How to Change Your Mind

Book Bites are quick looks at a book from our Guest Host readers. Try a new book this week!

And this week our Guest Host is admiring the book How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence, by Michael Pollan.

“A unique and elegant blend of science, memoir, travel writing, history, and medicine, How to Change Your Mind is a triumph of participatory journalism. By turns dazzling and edifying, it is the gripping account of a journey to an exciting and unexpected new frontier in our understanding of the mind, the self, and our place in the world. The true subject of Pollan’s “mental travelogue” is not just psychedelic drugs but also the eternal puzzle of human consciousness and how, in a world that offers us both suffering and joy, we can do our best to be fully present and find meaning in our lives.”

This is our last Book Bite for a while. Starting next Tuesday we will be doing a new quickie book suggestions podcast: Browsing Books!

In this podcast we will be giving book suggestions for our Goodreads challenge/game group: Armchair Travel to Minnesota State Parks. We provide a book prompt for each state park in Minnesota, so you can explore all kinds of new books. And in Browsing Books, we will give you a few suggestions to meet each prompt, and discuss some fun books along the way.

Subscribe to our newsletter, our social media, and our podcasts to stay up to date on all kinds of great stuff! We serve 300+ libraries of all types, and are always ready to talk about libraries and books.

Alexandria School District: Books Removed from Class

Censorship

This is a hard topic to discuss, because usually everyone believes they are doing the right thing and have the best interests of kids at heart.

The Alexandria School District removed two books from the eighth grade curriculum. (I think? It’s a little unclear what actually happened.) Four other, unnamed books, will be reviewed. And there is now a committee of two teachers, two members of the Curriculum Advisory Council, four community members and Sansted (the Assistant Superintendent) who will review books in the future.

Who is missing on this team of reviewers? Librarians. People with professional skill in books, choosing books, coming up with book alternatives, and talking about books.

(Just an FYI: Hello!! I’m not in your school district at all, but I’d be happy to come to be part of this group and give a professional perspective!!! You would be better off with a school librarian, but if you can’t find one who wants to be there – email me! admin @ cmle.org!)

So, what are these scary books?

Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, by Becky Albertalli

“Sixteen-year-old and not-so-openly gay Simon Spier prefers to save his drama for the school musical. But when an email falls into the wrong hands, his secret is at risk of being thrust into the spotlight. Now change-averse Simon has to find a way to step out of his comfort zone before he’s pushed out—without alienating his friends, compromising himself, or fumbling a shot at happiness with the most confusing, adorable guy he’s never met.

Incredibly funny and poignant, this twenty-first-century coming-of-age, coming out story—wrapped in a geek romance—is a knockout of a debut novel by Becky Albertalli.”

You might recognize this also as the movie Love, Simon that came out last summer.

This book won the William C. Morris award from the American Library Association in 2016, ” which honors a book written for young adults by a previously unpublished author.” Other awards it has been nominated for include:

Commons Sense Media website looks at books (and other media) for kids and young adults. I do not always agree with all of their work, but of course – that’s the point. They give information about the book, talk about strategies for parents to discuss topics with their kids, and post reviews from parents, adults, and kids for different books.

” Since 2003, Common Sense has been the leading source of entertainment and technology recommendations for families and schools. Every day, millions of parents and educators trust Common Sense reviews and advice to help them navigate the digital world with their kids. Together with policymakers, industry leaders, and global media partners, we’re building a digital world that works better for all kids, their families, and their communities.”

There is information on these categories:

  • A lot or a little? The parents’ guide to what’s in this book.
  • What parents need to know
  • User Reviews
  • What’s the story?
  • Is it any good?
  • Talk to your kids about …
  • Book details

The Common Sense media rates books on a five star scale (along with a lot of other information). “Our ratings are based on child development best practices. We display the minimum age for which content is developmentally appropriate. The star rating reflects overall quality and learning potential.”

They give this book four of five stars. The six parents who rated it gave it five of five stars. The 31 kids who reviewed the book gave it five of five stars.

This is even more startling: Sold, by Patricia McCormick. This book is a National Book Award finalist!

“Lakshmi is a thirteen-year-old girl who lives with her family in a small hut on a mountain in Nepal. Though she is desperately poor, her life is full of simple pleasures, like playing hopscotch with her best friend from school, and having her mother brush her hair by the light of an oil lamp. But when the harsh Himalayan monsoons wash away all that remains of the family’s crops, Lakshmi’s stepfather says she must leave home and take a job to support her family.

He introduces her to a glamorous stranger who tells her she will find her a job as a maid in the city. Glad to be able to help, Lakshmi journeys to India and arrives at “Happiness House” full of hope.  But she soon learns the unthinkable truth:  she has been sold into prostitution.

An old woman named Mumtaz rules the brothel with cruelty and cunning.  She tells Lakshmi that she is trapped there until she can pay off her family’s debt—then cheats Lakshmi of her meager earnings so that she can never leave.

Lakshmi’s life becomes a nightmare from which she cannot escape.  Still, she lives by her mother’s words—Simply to endure is to triumph—and gradually, she forms friendships with the other girls that enable her to survive in this terrifying new world.  Then the day comes when she must make a decision—will she risk everything for a chance to reclaim her life? 

Written in spare and evocative vignettes, this powerful novel renders a world that is as unimaginable as it is real, and a girl who not only survives but triumphs. “

What does Commons Sense Media have to say about this book? They give it five of five stars. Four parents combined to give it a three of five stars; five kids combined to give it a four of five stars.

It was a “National Book Award finalist, a Quill Award winner, and an American Library Association Top Ten Best Book for Young Adults. It was adapted for a film starring Gillian Anderson and David Arquette, released in the United States in 2016. “

Strangely, these books were not even required for students to read. “The six books were among 18 students could choose from.” So, instead of leaving this up to individual parents to choose for their child to read the books and to have discussions with them about the content – the school has eliminated these books for all students.

“Among the objections cited for the half-dozen books were passages of a sexual or violent nature, foul language and references to drinking and drugs.” And while we all would like to think kids are untouched by cable TV, the Internet, and observing adults in their lives – I’ll be surprised if there aren’t a couple of eight graders who have heard foul language and seen drinking or drugs consumed. Maybe discussing how and why this might be poor choices would be better strategies than pretending they don’t exist as options.

“”We are not saying that hard issues that eighth graders face shouldn’t come up in the classrooms,” Wegner [spokesperson for the parents with complaints] said. However, the group believes content addressing social issues should be done through non-fiction, fact-based, evidence-based materials.

“It’s one thing to check out these fictional books from a library for your own personal reading,” he said. “It’s another thing as part of an education curriculum for 13- and 14-year-olds.”

The parents believe these six books are contradictory to values they try to live up to, and also do not meet the school’s code of conduct.

Calling the school’s reaction Monday night a great step in the right direction, Wegner told the board that if objections are raised about another book, they are asking that it be immediately pulled and not reintroduced without an extensive review process.

He also wondered if the people who ordered these books for the eighth graders would be the same ones who will be vetting books in the future.”

This, if what he actually said, is a pretty stunning misunderstanding of books, of reading, of learning, and of the use of fiction. It’s great to have ideas, and great to have them in your home or for your own family. But it is terrible to inflict your ideas of “nice books” on everyone else.

Libraries are all about encouraging people to make their own choices. And it sounds like that was the case in this school. Kids had a variety of choices. If their parents were interested, or concerned, they could guide their child to a book they regarded as tame enough for the teenager to read.

It is certainly a complete misunderstanding of any sort of good procedure to consider books in schools. If the idea would now be “Hey! I’m one single person, and this book makes me feel squicky. NO ONE SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO READ IT Take it off the shelves now!!!” that’s….terrible. (I’m trying to think of a more diplomatic word than “terrible” but I’m completely failing.)

This did not happen in the library – I don’t know what the situation is in the library with these books at this school – but it’s a sharp reminder: You Need A Collection Development Policy AND A Materials Review Policy!!

You! I’m pointing directly at you!!

We just talked about how policies like this will save you in times of trouble, on a recent Linking Our Libraries podcast episode. Karen Pundsack, director at the Great River Regional Library System, talked with us about creating good policies and procedures. And Amy Schrank, from the same library, talked with us about Collection Development.

Your policies do not need to be perfect, but they need to be present.

Why?? What good will they do??

Possibly nothing. But at the very, very least – having a professionally written policy on Collection Development means you can show that you thought about the books on your shelf. You can demonstrate you looked at awards the books have won, thoughts from other school library people about the books, and recommendations from around the profession.

Having a challenge policy means you are setting out a way for people to express concerns about a book being available to everyone in the community. As a profession, libraries take this opportunity very seriously. Not every book is right for every population, and it’s important to give people a chance to voice that idea.

Regardless of the outcome of a challenge policy, this is a good opportunity to let people know about the work you do to provide good materials for everyone. Talk about review, about awards, about holdings in other schools.

CMLE members: PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE! Call us! We would be happy to help you create a quick policy you can use in your library. We will help you discuss ideas with your stakeholders, to be sure the materials in your collection are meeting the needs of your students. We are a professional voice you can lean on to help you to be successful in your library.

We are here all summer, or we are happy to chat when you come back in the fall. It won’t take long, and knocking out some quick work and some thought now can make smaller problems that may crop up down the road.