Summer continues to simmer as we fall into Autumn. Our students, teachers, parents and caregivers prepare for another new and unusual year of learning, returning to a school schedule into a new grade – all while still navigating the pandemic. This year brings us a mixture of school anxiety and excitement as we build relationships and grow as we learn together. We wanted to share some books from our Monarch system, as well as local and national online resources to assist in making the transition to this new year a little easier with enjoyable, engaging tools sprinkled in. The books listed below are available for request through the Monarch library catalog. (Descriptions provided are taken from the book publishers.) Be sure to take a look at the additional resources we included as well. We hope everyone has a safe and enjoyable school year!
There will be times when you walk into a room and no one there is quite like you.
There are many reasons to feel different. Maybe it’s how you look or talk, or where you’re from; maybe it’s what you eat, or something just as random. It’s not easy to take those first steps into a place where nobody really knows you yet, but somehow you do it.
Jacqueline Woodson’s lyrical text and Rafael López’s dazzling art reminds us that we all feel like outsiders sometimes-and how brave it is that we go forth anyway. And that sometimes, when we reach out and begin to share our stories, others will be happy to meet us halfway.
Below, I’ll share some books pulled together by my coworker, Erica, that would be perfect for this challenge. There are separate sections for adult books and teen books; descriptions have been taken from our catalog or the publisher. If you’re looking for children’s books, check out this previous blog post by Bree, Love Your Mother Earth!
Featuring 144 short and fascinating nature essays grouped by season, this beautifully illustrated volume serves as a trailside companion year-round. Find out about black bears and blackbirds, walleyes and woodchucks, snow geese and snow fleas, all in your own backyard. Nature lovers of all ages will appreciate Buchholz’s breezy style and wealth of outdoor knowledge.
Summer is winding down, and now is the perfect time to mark off another square on your Bookish Bingo card! Whether you’re looking for a title to carry to the beach or a page-turner to carry you away while on a staycation, these books are sure to take you on an adventure. From the Midwest to Mongolia, from caves deep beneath the sea to flights 30,000 feet in the air, these authors have seen it all—and lived to write the tale.
Starting close to home, Melanie Radzicki McManus’s Thousand-Miler: Adventures of Hiking the Ice Age Trail details her experience walking 1,100 miles of ancient trails throughout the state of Wisconsin. McManus is not on a leisurely stroll; she is endeavoring to set the record for a female thru-hiker on this trail. With humor and compassion, she shares stories of her fellow thru-hikers, describes communities near the trail, and digs into the history of the trail. You’ll see our state through a different lens and might be inspired to walk a mile or two on the Ice Age Trail.
Our community was settled largely by immigrants from Germany, so it seems fitting that our next stop is that country. Schadenfreude, a love story: me, the Germans, and 20 years of attempted transformations, unfortunate miscommunications, and humiliating situations that only they have words for is perhaps the longest book title in our catalogue. Rebecca Shuman is a typical Jewish American teen when she encounters her first love—a teenaged boy with a volume of Franz Kafka in his backpack—which leads to the discovery of her real love: all things German. For the next twenty years, Schuman visits and lives in Germany, trying in both a literal and metaphorical way to make herself understood and to understand. It’s a bildungsroman told with great wit and humor, a snapshot of a young woman discovering herself in a country that’s piecing itself back together after the end of the Cold War.
There’s a trite but rather true impression that most little girls go through a horse-mania phase. Mine was mostly expressed by repeated readings of Black Beauty. Author Lara Prior-Palmer, however, decided to sign up for a 1,000-kilometer (621 mile) horse race. In Mongolia. On a whim. As detailed in Rough Magic: Riding the World’s Loneliest Horse Race, Prior-Palmer is nineteen and all at loose ends when she sees an ad for the Mongolian Derby—a race that recreates Genghis Khan’s horse messenger system. She impulsively decides that riding a series of 25 wild ponies across the steppe is the next logical step in her life-long love of horses and riding. The teenager is woefully underprepared for this race, bringing along scant equipment and unable to work the GPS. Her win is a testament to her grit, determination, and competitive spirit. And yet, because of Prior-Palmer’s frank avowal of her foolhardiness (and her spite towards another competitor), manages to save this memoir from the all-too-familiar narrative of the gritty underdog making good.
Photograph: Kristen Radtke/Pantheon
If you want to mark two squares with one book for the Bookish Bingo Challenge, Imagine Wanting Only This is the one for you. Kristen Radtke spins her tale in the form of a graphic memoir, relating scenes and circumstances with a combination of lyrical prose and black-and-white art. Loss of a beloved uncle combined with the unwitting desecration of a photographer’s memorial lead the author into a fascination with ruins. Traveling from Cambodia to Colorado, Radtke’s pursuit of these places reveals an existential restlessness, a fear that settling down and settling in means eventual decay into a ruin herself. If you have never thought of a comic book as an art form capable of moving and challenging its readers, Imagine Wanting Only This will shift your perspective.
Perhaps no other author on my list exemplifies the female adventurer as well as Jill Heinerth. She led teams that discovered long-submerged ruins of Mayan civilization, and she is the first person in history to dive deep into an Antarctic iceberg. Her memoir Into The Planet: My Life as a Cave Diver detail her transformation from office drone to renowned cave diver. Her prose is crisp yet conversational, alternately thrilling with its description of danger and charming with its depictions of underwater marvels. From the opening sentence to the final paragraph, Heinerth sets the adrenaline rushing and the imagination free.
TV comedy writer Kristin Newman spent her 20s and 30s watching her friends get married and start families. Unwilling to either settle down or become the sad single girl, Newman instead spent months each year travelling around the globe. She details her adventures with an easy, infectious humor and delves with equal aplomb into self-reflection. Why is it, exactly, that every obstacle sends her on a transatlantic flight?
Author Kate Harris dreamed of being an explorer when she was a young girl. Unfortunately, the world had already been discovered and mapped long before she grew up in a small Ontario town. In between studying at Oxford and MIT, Harris and her childhood friend decided to travel the Silk Road by bicycle. Cycling through miles of remote countryside, Harris begins to wonder about the definition of “explorer.” It is someone who discovers something, or is it someone who lives life outside of boundaries, discovering themselves?
It is 2011, and all universities in North Korea have been shut down for an entire year, the students sent to construction fields– except for the 270 students at the all-male Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST), a walled compound where portraits of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il look on impassively from the walls of every room. Suki Kim offers a moving and incalculably rare glimpse of life in the world’s most unknowable country, and at the privileged young men she calls “soldiers and slaves.”
In 1993, the New York Times debuted a new feature, the Frugal Traveler, in its pages. Susan Spano was the first columnist, and she took her readers on fascinating trips around the globe. French Ghosts, Russian Nights, and American Outlaws is a collection of some her most beloved pieces. Join Spano as she journeys from the Artic Circle to Java, from China to the Andes Mountains. Through her tales, Spano lives her philosophy of life and travel: Go forth and find meaning. And return home with a tan, whenever possible.
Mary Morris was supposed to be going on sabbatical. Instead, an accident left her in a wheelchair for three months while she endured two surgeries, extensive rehabilitation, and doubts about her ability to ever walk again. While reading Death In Venice, she was captivated by the lines, “He would go on a journey. Not far. Not all the way to the tigers.” Morris decided then and there that she would travel all the way to the tigers. She spent weeks over a three-year period in India, searching for the world’s most elusive predator, learning about and finding a deep connection to the wild cat. Told in over a hundred short chapters, Morris weaves a multi-layered tale of determination, family, travel, and growth.
Book descriptions are courtesy of Monarch Catalog, except Schadenfreude, a love story: me, the Germans, and 20 years of attempted transformations, unfortunate miscommunications, and humiliating situations that only they have words for—provided by Amazon.
Now that the 2021 (2020?) Tokyo Summer Olympic Games have ended we all have additional time to work on our Mead Bookish Bingo Challenge. Below, I assembled several titles that will let you cross off the square for “Books set in a country that has NEVER hosted the Olympics”.
For instance, did you know that despite having over 50 countries registered with the International Olympic Committee, there has never been a modern Olympic games hosted by any country in the entire continent of Africa? This is largely due to the extreme cost attached to hosting an Olympics. Beijing reportedly spent $40 billion to host the 2008 Summer Olympics. If that big ol’ price tag is a deterrent for wealthy nations, imagine the strain this would have on a developing country. While there is talk of the games coming to Senegal far down the road, we must make due in the meantime.
The titles listed above represent the tiniest sliver of literature produced in un-Olympic-ed nations. From travelogues to groovy science fiction, there is a pantheon of literature to choose from to get this bingo square crossed off.
Do you still need a Mead Bookish Bingo card? It’s not too late to complete a row. Pick up a copy at the first or second floor desk at Mead or print your own out HERE. Would you like a little more community while you work on our bingo card? Consider joining our Goodreads group HERE.
If none of the titles listed appeal, contact us for additional recommendations. Please do not hesitate to reach out for help requesting materials, troubleshooting our ebook platforms, or anything else, really.
So you might not be aware, but not too long ago, Mead added a new thing to our collection: what we call a Movie Geek Box! What is that, you ask? Well, it’s a movie, of course – and then it’s additional related stuff to go along with it, like related movies, the soundtrack, a board game based on the movie, the book the movie is based on… let me give you just a few examples!
I should also add – in addition to looking in the catalog (you can search for “Movie Geek Box” and they should come up), their current location is on the first floor of the library next to the DVDs.
The Princess Bride is a classic (I’ve had a friend call it the ultimate date movie, give that a shot!), but with this you could throw a whole Princess Bride party! In addition to the movie itself, you also get the soundtrack, a party game called The Princess Bride: Prepare To Die!, the original book by S. Morgenstern, a cookbook called The Princess Dessert Book, and a behind-the-scenes book titled As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales From the Making of The Princess Bride.
Shark Week may be over for the year, but that doesn’t mean you can go back in the water quite yet. You might know the more famous shark movies, like Jaws or Deep Blue Sea. Today’s blog post is a school of more unusual shark movies. Below each title, you’ll find a summary of the movie from our catalog. Let’s dive in.
“Strange things are happening in Druid Hills, Kentucky. People are saying there are “large Great White sharks swimming in the corn stalks!” Meanwhile, serial killer Teddy Bo Lucas is arrested for killing dozens of people using shark jaws and teeth as weapons. Chief Vera Scheider is caught in the middle, trying to figure out if her missing twin sister Lorna might be one of them.”
I often receive requests from young patrons wanting to find Junie B. Jones books. Young readers seem to really enjoy reading her series. She has a spunky personality that kids find hilarious. Not all grown-ups seem to love her though (she is pretty sassy)! I have some alternative series recommendations from our children’s library for Junie B. Jones fans (or for those needing a break from her) that will appeal to new readers just starting to read chapter books. These are all shorter chapter books with illustrations and relatable characters that are appealing to kids building up their reading stamina. Whether you share the love for the popular Junie B. or not, we have many options your new readers will enjoy.
Second graders, Ivy and Bean, are a likeable pair of best friends. They have very different personalities and at first, didn’t even want to be friends with each other! They discover that their differences actually complement each other to make them a dynamic duo. You will enjoy their creative problem solving and humorous adventures, which don’t always go as planned – despite their good intentions. The large font, short chapters, and humorous illustrations will appeal to early readers of this series.
With a whopping 200 holds on its various formats, The Four Winds has topped hundreds of people’s summer reading lists. Kristin Hannah’s tale of a woman’s struggle to keep her farm, family, and marriage alive through the Dust Bowl has hooked readers with deft writing and details of the gritty reality of 1930s rural life. But what to do if you’re still waiting for your copy to turn up?
Below are 5 titles to tide you over while you wait.
Today, after seeing that Where the Crawdads Sing was still showing up on various trending/bestseller lists, I began to wonder – what had been Mead’s most popular titles so far in 2021? So I looked at which books had been checked out the most times so far this year. Below, you can find the top five – if you like talking about books with other people, you’re likely to find a lot of people in Sheboygan who have read these! (Descriptions taken from catalog/publishers.)
Texas, 1934. Millions are out of work and a drought has broken the Great Plains. Farmers are fighting to keep their land and their livelihoods as the crops are failing, the water is drying up, and dust threatens to bury them all. One of the darkest periods of the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl era, has arrived with a vengeance.
In this uncertain and dangerous time, Elsa Martinelli—like so many of her neighbors—must make an agonizing choice: fight for the land she loves or go west, to California, in search of a better life. The Four Winds is an indelible portrait of America and the American Dream, as seen through the eyes of one indomitable woman whose courage and sacrifice will come to define a generation.
Are you looking for books for your middle grade reader to spice up their summer reading list? Consider including some survival stories! Survival stories keep readers on the edge of their seat with their dramatic twists and turns. Readers vicariously experience obstacles and witness the strength of the human spirit through the perspective of the characters involved in their struggle to survive. I have some recommendations from our children’s library below that will keep readers in suspense and anxious to find out what happens next.
You will not be able to put this book down! The chapters in this book alternate between characters: 9 year old Brandon on September 11, 2001, and 11 year old Reshmina in 2019. Brandon is supposed to spend the day with his father while he works on the top floor of the north tower of the World Trade Center. Brandon winds up on a different floor of the tower from his father when the tower is hit by a plane, and he doesn’t initially understand what is happening. The full scope of what happened unfolds as Brandon tries to make his way through the building in an effort to get back to his father, but then realizes he must make his way out of the building in order to survive. Readers are introduced to Reshmina as she tries to convince her twin brother he shouldn’t join the Taliban, while living in their small village in Afghanistan. Events unfold that lead to Reshmina risking the safety of everyone in her village by taking in a wounded American soldier. Both Brandon and Reshmina experience extreme danger and witness horrific events, all in one day. Their stories, while absolutely riveting, seem to be unconnected at first. As the story progresses, readers uncover how connected they actually are. These are fictional characters, but their stories are based on true events. There is an author’s note at the end of the book that provides further information on the history of the WTC, details on the attacks occurring on that day, the terrorists involved, the war in Afghanistan, and the way life has changed in America as well.
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