The Sisters Club

The Sisters Club by Megan McDonald
Youth Cd Books - Lower Level - McDonald

The Sisters Club by Megan McDonald is a very humorous and sweet tale. It tells the story of three sisters: the oldest Alex, the middle child Stevie, and the youngest Joey. All of the sisters are very different. Alex is almost 13 and loves acting. Stevie is 10-years-old and is "the glue" of the family. She always tries to make things better. Finally there is 8-year-old Joey. Sweet yet mischievous Joey loves homework, writing in her journal, and pioneers.

The three sisters engage in typical fights about parental affection, missing items, and crushes. Yet they also share sweet and tender times where they play the "remembering game" and have Sister's Club meetings with a sock monkey puppet. The sibling relationships are absolutely believable and hilarious. While their parents are included in the story, the real stars of the novel are the sisters.

The Sisters Club is the first book in a series. The other titles include The Rule of Three and Cloudy with a Chance of Boys. I listened to the title on Cd, and the narrators were absolutely wonderful in capturing the different personalities of each sister. It is an absolutely fantastic listen for parents and children alike. I guarantee that you will be laughing and smiling the whole time!

Collected Stories by Amy Hempel

Collected Stories by Amy Hempel

Adult Fiction Shelves
HEMPEL

In Collected Stories by Amy Hempel, one is reminded what words can do when written by a capable hand. The collection features Hempel’s previously published work starting with her first, “Reasons to Live” first published in 1985 and follows her publications to her most recent, “The Dog of the Marriage” published in 2005. Hempel writes of longing and the desire to connect to others; she writes of grief and of happiness, of the observations of characters who notice what others may not. Hempel’s stories range from just a few pages to longer pieces but they all offer up to the reader stories that, though short, will stay with the reader long into the following days. In one story Hempel writes, “The other day I was playing Scrabble. I saw that I could close the space in D-E- -Y. I had an N and an F. Which do you think I chose? What was the word I made?” Hempel’s language and superb ability to tell a story with a small economy of words has left a lasting impression on this reader.

Other Short Story Collections I would suggest:

We Others: new and selected stories by Steve Milhauser
We Others recently won the Story Prize.

The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories by Don Delillo
The Angel Esmeralda was a finalist for the Story Prize.

Binocular Vision: new and selected stories by Edith Pearlman
Binocular Vision was a finalist for the Story Prize, National Book Award, and was the Winner for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction 2012.

Evolution, Me, and Other Freaks of Nature

Evolution, Me, and Other Freaks of Nature by Robin Brande
Teen Zone Fiction-Main Level - Brande

Mena Reese has a rough start to high school. Her old friends hate her. Even her parents won't talk to her. The worst part, though, is that she believes she did the right thing. It's just that her church disagrees. Church is the most important thing to Mena's friends and family, and to be kicked out hurts her deeply. (You'll have to read the book to find out what she did!)

Enter Casey Connor, who has been assigned by biology teacher Ms. Shepherd to be Mena's lab partner. He is a super-smart science geek, and Mena quickly learns to trust him. His family is warm and friendly, and she loves hanging out with them. She has to lie to her parents, who won't allow her to socialize with a boy, but she thinks it's worth it. One of the lessons Mena learns throughout the story is that lying is never a good idea. As Ms. Shepherd says, "Lying is for the weak-minded. If you can’t think of a truthful way to solve your problems, you’re not thinking hard enough.”

When Ms. Shepherd starts teaching a unit on evolution, Mena's ex-church friends revolt. Mena begins to see things a little differently, influenced by the Connors. Things she never would have questioned in the past are now not so clear to her. How can she hold on to her beliefs without the support system of her church, but also accept the science that now seems so obvious to her? Can she have both?

While religion is a major theme in this book, the lessons Mena learns about respect and tolerance are universal. Anyone of any belief (or non-belief) affiliation can appreciate this story.

Women's Health Big Book of 15 Minute Workouts

The Women’s Health Big Book of 15 Minute Workouts by Selene Yeager.
New Book Shelves – Upper Level – 613.7 Y

I waited several months for this book, as I was not the only person in the library who thought that 15 minute workouts were a fabulous idea. For your benefit, dear reader, as well as my own, once I got my hands on the book, I decided to follow their program for the full three weeks that I was allowed the book (there is still a wait list on it, so I couldn’t keep it longer) and then report on it. Their program is to do their workouts every other day for a total of three days in the week, alternating with light aerobic activity and/or stretching on days 2 and 4. Day 6 is high intensity aerobics from the book – I did jump roping, as it was the only one I could do from home with equipment I already had. I developed a love-hate relationship with this book:

Love
- The workouts are designed to be done in 15 minutes. This is a stretch with my schedule, but it seems to be mostly possible.
- They make a very good case for 15 minutes of their routines being better for you than hours of less intense routines.
- The workouts have clear color photos with easy-to-follow written instructions under the photo of each step.
- The focus is on strength training with large muscle groups doubled up, making it hard enough work to count as cardio as well.
- There is a good variety of workouts – 85, grouped into the categories of lower body, upper body, core, fat-burning, by body type, anywhere, special gear, better sex, healing, sports, stretch and strengthen. You will not get bored, you’ll develop broader strength, and if you don’t like one workout on a topic, you can pick from several others.
- The models are a variety of different ethnicities.

Hate
-The models are all extremely fit, naturally small twenty-somethings.
- The workouts assume a pretty high fitness level – for example, assuming that you not only can do a full push-up, but that you’d like to make it even harder. And that you can assume a fairly challenging pose and hold it while lifting weights. They have few to no notes on adapting the exercises to a lower fitness level. If I can’t hold a full plank pose while lifting weights up to shoulder level.
- They use a lot of equipment, even within a workout, from free weights, therabands, and an exercise/birth ball, which I have, to medicine balls, aerobic steps of different heights, weight benches, a bosu, and even a cable pull-down station for the Michelle Obama Arms workout. Though the equipment list at the beginning says you don’t need all of this, it isn’t prioritized in any way, and they seem to assume that money and space are no object, and that most people have easy access to an already stocked gym. However, I was able to do almost everything using what I have, substituting a large squash for the medicine ball (until we ate it) and my son’s spooner board for the bosu in some exercises. Still, I would really have appreciated a “get started for under $100” list, and instruction on adapting the exercises for less equipment.
-Though Yeager’s bio says she’s a mother, she seems never to have heard of a diastasis recti, the separation of the vertical abdominal muscles that most mothers get. Crunches, especially cross-crunches & bicycles, double leg-lifts, and the Pilates V all make a diastasis worse and the tummy more rather than less poochy. These exercises appear in almost every workout.

I was able to stick with the program, which is in itself amazing, and am already noticing benefits in my increased strength and fitness. Even though I was frustrated with some of the aspects of the book, I found I enjoyed the challenge of doing lots of new things that I wasn’t able to master right away. You might enjoy it if you want a book with a good choice of challenging and intense but short work-outs with clear instructions. If you are a mother, I’d recommend looking at Julie Tupler’s Lose Your Mummy Tummy either instead or for alternative ab exercises that do take the diastasis into account.

A men’s version of this book, The Men’s Health Big Book of 15 Minute Workouts, by the same author, is also available.

Fracture

Fracture by Megan Miranda
Teen Zone New Fiction - MainLevel - MIRANDA

17-year-old Delaney Maxwell was pulled from an icy lake, dead. Somehow, they revived her and she was in a coma for a week. When she awoke, her brain scans showed irreparable damage...and yet, she seemed perfectly fine. She could walk, talk, and understand everything just as she did before the accident. Repeated brain scans showed the same thing: a brain in a basically vegetative state.

Even stranger, though, is the "itching" and "pulling" that Delaney feels sometimes. She finds herself drawn to certain places: places with dying people. She begins to think she's either predicting those deaths or causing them. Then she meets Troy Varga, who emerged from a coma with the same ability. Delaney is relieved to have a kindred spirit to figure this all out with.

Is it a gift? A miracle? Or maybe it's more of a curse...

The Night Tourist

The Night Tourist by Katherine Marsh
Youth Fiction-Lower Level MARSH


The hallmark of an excellent mythology is the ability to be retold in various ways. The stories from classic Greek mythology endure because of their timeless characters and themes. With The Night Tourist,author Katherine Marsh tells a tale inspired by the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. While Orpheus traveled to the underworld to rescue his beloved Eurydice, Marsh’s main character Jack journeys into the spirit underworld of New York City to find his deceased mother. He meets a young ghost named Euri who acts as his guide while trying to avoid being caught by the underworld authorities and their dog Cerberus.

Youths looking for a supernatural tale will find much to offer with this novel. There are naturally many references and parallels to the Orpheus legend but readers will also learn about some of New York City’s famous locations, history, geography, and people. Marsh clearly has a love for the city. Young readers do not need to already be aware of the Orpheus myth as the characters do bring up the story and how their situation mirrors it. I was surprised that the ending followed through on the myth from which it was based but the characters still manage to mostly find a happy state of mind in the end. Readers who enjoy this story might also want to check out the sequel entitled The Twilight Prisoner.