A Royal Affair

A Royal Affair

New DVD Shelves – Main Level

Foreign ROY

Looking for a historical costume drama with an intelligent and intriguing plot to back up the beautiful sets? If so, A Royal Affair is just the movie for you. This 2012 Danish language film is the true story of a king (who is slightly mad), his queen (who is more than slightly unhappy), and the doctor who would change not only their lives, but their country as well. Set during the 18^th century when the Age of Enlightenment is sweeping Europe, Denmark is still stuck in the dark past with the aristocracy controlling all the wealth while the ordinary citizens work as peasants with hardly any rights. To make matters worse, the king is incompetent and basically a puppet for the wealthy men of his court. All that changes when an ordinary doctor, not of the aristocracy, becomes the king’s personal physician and closest confidant. He encourages the king to regain control and mass social changes begin to take place in Denmark. Additionally, the doctor’s passion sparks the interest of the long suffering and ignored queen. To find out what happens, check out this Academy Award nominee (Best Foreign Language Film) today!

You definitely will not regret watching this film; it really has it all and it completely enthralled me from beginning to end. There is gorgeous costume design, political intrigue, romance, history, and superb acting from the entire cast. Mads Mikkelsen, perhaps the most recognizable Danish actor to American audiences (he played the villain Le Chiffre opposite Daniel Craig’s James Bond in Casino Royale and currently stars in Hannibal on TV), plays the doctor. Mikkel Folsgaard and Alicia Vikander are also excellent at portraying the king and queen and their complicated relationship. Overall, A Royal Affair successfully tells the very personal story of three people and how that story affected and changed a nation.

Saffy's Angel

Saffy’s Angel by Hilary McKay.
Youth Fiction - Lower Level - McKay

Saffy’s Angel hearkens back to the old-fashioned heart-warming large family story, but with a quirky, modern sensibility. Eve and Bill Casson are both artists, which is why she named all of her children after paint colors. The children are Cadmium, Saffron, Indigo, and Permanent Rose. As the story opens, Saffy is about six, and learns for the first time that she is adopted – Eve is actually her mother’s sister. This revelation rocks her world. But we quickly fast-forward several years, to when Saffy is 13, ten years after her mother’s death. Their beloved grandfather dies, leaving behind a cryptic will. Bill, the father, is the most odious father I’ve ever seen in a cozy family drama. He decided some years before that a real artist couldn’t work with so many children around, so he rents a flat and a separate studio in London and only visits on weekends. So when Saffy wants to know what the angel she was willed was and where it is, Bill just tells her it either never existed or was lost and she should forget it. But Saffy can’t. Her friend down the street, a rebellious rich girl in a wheelchair named Sarah, concocts a plan to take Saffy to Saffy’s first home in Italy to do research, while her siblings make their own plans.

But this is a whole family drama, and all of the family members have their own stories going on, too. Eve, the mother, while perfectly affectionate, is a classic absent-minded artist, so the children alternately take care of things themselves and direct her. Caddy, the oldest daughter, is stretching out her driving lessons as long as possible because of her strong attraction to her teacher, Michael. Indigo is trying hard to cure his fear of heights by hanging out of an upper-story window, so he can be a polar explorer. I found myself caring intensely about the family and all its members (with the exception of Bill, who never really belongs), despite the neglectful parents and the high level of mostly-happy chaos that they live with. I've been quickly working my way through the whole series.  Here it is:

Saffy's Angel
Indigo's Star
Permanent Rose
Caddy Ever After
Forever Rose
Caddy's World

Grow Plants in Pots

Grow Plants in Pots

By Martyn Cox

New Book Shelves-Upper Level

GARDEN 635.986 C

It's gardening season!  Anyone can grow a container garden, regardless of how much space they have. Put a few pots on your apartment balcony or a pot of mixed herbs on a windowsill.  

If the thought of hoeing and weeding turns you off, containers are the way to go.  Just water and prune if necessary and you'll have a nice little harvest with a lot less work than a traditional row garden.

I grow a variety of herbs and vegetables in containers on my deck, and this book has inspired me to try growing things I hadn't previously considered.  For example, strawberries make a beautiful hanging basket and rainbow chard makes a colorful display in a big tin bucket.  I hadn't considered growing sprawling vines like zucchini in a pot, but this book shows that it's definitely possible.

Filled with lots of glossy, color photos, this small book goes plant by plant through a myriad of container plant options.

I Dare You Not to Yawn

I Dare You Not to Yawn 

By Helene Boudreau

Illustrated by Serge Bloch

Youth New Book Shelves-Lower Level - BOU

First you yawn, and before you know it you've been tucked into bed.  But what if you're not ready to go to bed?  There's more playing to do! Well, then you better not yawn.  This book gives all kinds of tips to hold those yawns inside!  For example, look away if someone else yawns.  Stay away from snuggly things like stuffed animals. Yawns are sneaky, though, so you'll have to be extra careful to avoid them.   

This is an adorable bedtime picture book for children!

The Noticer by Andy Andrews

If you’re in the mood to read something that just plain makes you feel good, then The Noticer is the book for you. It’s part autobiography, part allegory, and all inspiring.

The Noticer is based on best-selling author Andy Andrews’ own story as a directionless, homeless teen living under a pier on the Alabama Gulf Coast. In the book, Andy is visited by Jones – no “Mr.” – a mysterious, wise, old drifter who seems somehow to know all about Andy’s life and problems. Jones has a gift – he notices things that other people miss. He gives Andy sage advice and begins leaving library books under the pier that help Andy gain perspective and turn his life around.

The story has Jones disappearing and then crossing paths with other townspeople who are experiencing their own moments of crisis, among them a couple on the verge of divorce, a businessman whose business is failing, and an elderly woman despairing that her life no longer has meaning.

The common theme amongst all these stories is finding hope in the face of adversity. The book teaches readers that “sometimes, all a person needs is a little perspective.”

Will Sparrow's Road

Will Sparrow’s Road by Karen Cushman. Read by Katherine Kellgren.
Youth CD Books – Lower Level - CUSHMAN

I was excited to listen to this book with my son on two counts – a main character I thought he would easily identify with from historical fiction favorite Cushman, paired with narration by our favorite Katherine Kellgren. We were not disappointed. Young Will’s mother ran away when he was very young, and his alcoholic father has since sold him to the innkeeper for beer. When the innkeeper says he’s selling him as a chimney sweep, Will runs for his life. Life isn’t easy for a homeless and penniless boy in Elizabethan England. After quite a while of trying to make it on his own, having his few possessions stolen and living in turn mostly off of stolen green apples, Will discovers the Fair. Not only do the food booths there provide easier targets, but the many performers there offer a means of earning actual money. He’s gotten a job passing the hat for a juggler and met a kind man with a trained pig named Duchess when the juggler unexpectedly leaves, sending him to a Master Trumball, owner of the Oddities and Commodities stall. Master Trumball travels from fair to fair with his combination mini-museum and freak show, which includes a baby mermaid in a jar, a girl with a furry face like a cat’s, and a foul-tempered and ugly dwarf named Lancelot FitzHugh. Will travels England, getting to know the colorful regional fairs, which is quite a lot of fun. But as he gets to know the people he’s traveling with, he also learns a lot about himself, about prejudice and that a person’s nature isn’t necessarily matched to his or her appearance. He goes – slowly, with some painful lurching - from viewing the cat girl as a mostly cat monster, to seeing her as a friend and helping her in her quest for a human name (she decides to go from Graymalkin to Grace Wise) and a life apart from being an Oddity, for example, and has similar revelations about his other companions. Although some of the character revelations came sooner to me than to my son, we were both waiting anxiously to find out what would happen to Will Sparrow and Grace Wise. It’s told in energetic language that strikes a graceful balance between being easy-to-understand and having the flavor of Elizabethan language. Real Elizabethan songs, mostly of the tavern variety, appear frequently, of course sung beautifully and accurately by Kellgren. I also noticed my son being more appreciative of always having enough to eat, as Will is always hungry, and lovingly describes every good thing to eat that comes his way. Cushman concludes with an author’s note about English fairs and provides historical background for the people and acts at her fairs. Will Sparrow’s Road is a tempting mix of an exciting historical setting and plot with strong, likeable characters and a not-medicinal dose of thoughtfulness.

Love Anthony

Love Anthony
by Lisa Genova
CD Shelves - Main Level - GENOVA

(Also available in print.)

I love everything that Lisa Genova writes.  She is a
Harvard-educated neuroscientist, and her novels all have neuroscience connections. Her first novel, Still Alice was about Alzheimers disease and her second novel, Left Neglected was about a neurological condition known as left neglect.

Love Anthony is about autism.  There are a few overlapping story lines, but the main characters are Olivia, who is the mother of a recently-deceased autistic boy named Anthony, Anthony himself, and Beth.  Beth is writing a novel about an autistic boy...named Anthony.  Beth does not know anything about the real Anthony, but the story she writes is uncanny.  The manuscript falls into Olivia's hands when Beth asks her to edit it.  (Olivia was a book editor in the past.)  Olivia swears it is her Anthony, telling his story through Beth.  Beth's own family consists of three healthy, beautiful daughters and a husband from whom she is separated.  Her life forms a side story that is very subtly tied to Olivia's.  Olivia is also separated from her husband.

Genova does a great job of describing autism.  No one can know exactly what it's like to be a person with autism, but the character of Anthony is very believable.  Genova describes what outsiders see when they look at him, but even more touchingly describes what Anthony thinks of the world around him and how he copes with its disorder and noise.

This is a great choice for book clubs.  It is also recommended as a read alike to authors like Jodi Picoult, Elin Hilderbrand, and Amy Hatvany.  Anyone with ties to autism, as well as anyone who wants to know more about autism, will find great satisfaction in this novel.

People Love You by Jeb Blount

 

The subtitle of this book is “The Real Secret to Delivering Legendary Customer Experiences.”  Well, it turns out that it’s not a secret at all.   But it’s also not what so many of the other business books try to teach you.  Where most other books focus on the mechanics of customer service, this one focuses on the underlying emotional elements inherent in all human relationships.  Research indicates that over 50 percent of a customer experience is about emotions.  You need to get them to love you. 

“Love” is not a term that is often associated with business relationships but it is a term that is used over and over again by customers in describing how they feel about a favorite place/employee.  People value personal and unique experiences.  They want you to listen.  They want you to respond in a genuine, helpful manner.  They don’t want to feel manipulated.   

It is human nature to recognize people who go the extra mile for us.  We forget about our expectations and instead focus on how good we feel.  So although you will do everything in your power to give them what they want, even if you can’t satisfy your customers specific needs at that time, they leave with a good feeling about their experience with you.  And that experience with you reflects on your company.  Common sense?  Maybe.  But common experience?  Not so much. 

This book was written for account managers and customer service professionals but has applications for anyone who deals with other people on the job.  After all, as human beings, aren’t we all in some sort of “customer service?” 

It appears that poet Maya Angelou was right when she said “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” 

Read this book and learn more about how to make that feeling a good one. 

Etiquette & Espionage

Etiquette & Espionage. Finishing School Book the First. by Gail Carriger.
Teen Zone New Fiction – Main Level – CARRIGER

This book starts a new series, set in the same world as Carriger’s popular Parasol Protectorate series, but some years earlier. Sophronia Angelina Temminnick, aged 14 or 15, spends most of her time in the stables or taking household machinery apart. She’s horrified when her mother decides to send her to finishing school, packing her off within an hour of hearing of Mademoiselle Geraldine’s Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality. In the carriage, she meets Dimity Ann Plumleigh-Teignmott, also headed to Mademoiselle Geraldine’s, and her younger brother Pillover, who is going to Bunson and Lacroix’s Boys’ Polytechnique. She soon learns that Mademoiselle Geraldine’s is no ordinary finishing school – as is obvious the moment she discovers it’s a school floating above the moors. She will indeed be taught how to curtsey and dance along with the best, but also how to include poison in her budget and discreetly do off with only some of her dinner guests. Right at the beginning, she learns of a missing prototype – an older classmate, Monique, has mislaid it, and both the teachers and some sky pirates are after it. Sophronia sets out to solve the mystery herself with assistance from Dimity, a coal shoveler named Soap with a winning smile and African dark skin under the coal dust, and Vieve, the young cross-dressing daughter of one of the teachers. Those familiar with the earlier series will recognize Sidheag and brief mentions of the Westminster Hive and Connal. There is adventure, humor, and the beginnings of a sweet cross-class interracial romance. Sophronia may be willing to bend societal expectations as far as associating with people of different classes, but Victorian propriety keeps any budding romance at a level appropriate for much younger than today’s teens, and certainly at a level where the romance doesn’t overwhelm the rest of the story. (There’s plenty here to entertain boys, despite the girly cover.) All in all, Carriger does not disappoint. Fans and those wishing to introduce teens or older middle-grade students to the pleasures of steampunk would do well to look into it, as would fans of Ally Carter’s Gallagher Girls series.

Sarah's Key

Sarah's Key 
By Tatiana De Rosnay
CD Book Shelves - Main Level - De Rosnay

What a touching story this is!  In 1942, Jewish families were rounded up in Paris and sent to Auschwitz.  This is the story of Sarah Starzynski, a ten year old girl who escaped alone from the Vel' d'Hiv' roundup.  She had locked her little brother in a cabinet at home as they were ushered out by the police to hide him, thinking they would be back in a few hours, not understanding what was happening. When she escaped, she tried to get back to Paris to let her brother out of the cabinet.  The reader knows what that little girl doesn't, and it is absolutely heartbreaking.

Sarah's story is uncovered by a journalist, Julia Jarmond, fifty years later in 2002.  Julia finds that her family has a connection to Sarah's.  Julia's own story is also told in alternating chapters.   Her marriage is rocky, and she has to decide between her unborn baby and her husband - also heartbreaking and dramatic!

The audio book is read by Polly Stone.  She does a good job of differentiating characters by different voices (from small children to senior adults), and delivers an authentic French accent. I was glad to hear this book rather than read it because I know that her pronunciations were much better than my own would have been.

Highly recommended in all formats!

A Small Death in the Great Glen

A Small Death in the Great Glen
by A.D. Scott
Adult Mysteries - SCOTT

One of the joys of reading is being transported to another place and experiencing other people's lives, and A.D. Scott's mystery takes the reader to a small town in Scotland during the 1950s. In the aftermath of World War II, the town's residents are busy getting on with daily life and coping with the changes that the war has brought to their corner of Scotland.

The local newspaper recently imported a new editor with modern ideas. One of those modern ideas includes hiring a female reporter, Joann Ross. Joann was hired to cover the garden club, the school play and other cultural events, but when her daughters' classmate is found dead in the river, Joann and her family become involved in a murder investigation. Joann discovers that she's stronger than she knows as she and her fellow journalists at the Highland Gazette uncover the hidden lives in their small town.

Readers who like Ruth Rendel, Peter Robinson, R.D. Wingfield, P.J. Parrish, or Edna Buchanan will enjoy mysteries by A.D. Scott. The story of Joann Ross and her fellow journalists at the Highland Gazette continues in A Double Death on the Black Isle.


The Raven Boys

The Raven Boys. Book 1 of the Raven Cycle. Read by Will Patton. by Maggie Stiefvater
Teen Zone CD Books – Main Level – STIEFVATER
Teen Zone New Fiction – Main Level - STIEFVATER

I loved Steifvater’s Wolves of Mercy Fall series, and couldn’t wait to read this one, higher on the adventure and so far a bit lower on the romance than that series.

"There are only two reasons a non-seer would see a spirit on St. Mark's Eve," Neeve said. "Either you're his true love . . . or you killed him."

Sixteen-year-old Blue Sargent has grown up the only non-psychic in a family of psychic women, but with the unique ability to strengthen other people’s psychic powers. The “family” includes an assortment of aunts by blood and friendship, including Blue’s newly-arrived half-aunt Neeve. Every psychic Blue has ever met has told Blue that if she ever kisses her true love, he will die. So Blue has made rules for herself: stay away from boys, because boys are trouble. Even more, stay away from Aglionby Academy boys, because they are even worse. But this year, things start to change. At the Death Watch in a ruined church on St. Mark’s Eve, there just to help Neeve see the spirits of the future dead as they walk by, Blue sees the shadowy spirit of a boy, whom she can tell by the raven on his sweater is an Aglionby boy, and who says his name is Gansey. Soon, they meet in person, and Blue is integrated into the small team of his friends, despite her distrust of his family money, good looks, and charisma. (Go Blue! Way to not be instantly swept off your feet by money with a handsome face!) Instead, she’s drawn to one of Gansey’s other friends, Adam, a quiet boy whose accent in unguarded moments reveals him to be a local (poor) boy, unlike the usual wealthy Raven Boys. The other two boys in the group include the angry, shaved-head Ronan (featured on the cover of the second book) and shy and “smudgy” Noah. They are all bound together by Gansey’s passionate quest to find the ley line he believes runs through Henrietta, which he believes will lead him to the sleeping Welsh king Glendower.

There are all sorts of mystical elements in this book: ley lines, magic rituals, tarot cards, trees that speak Latin, old cars (ok, those are less mystical for me), which delighted me. But there’s also a whole lot of real truth, as well, in the power of love in Blue’s family and the sturdy bonds of friendship, forged quickly in the intensity of their quest. All of the major characters – with the notable and clearly purposeful exception of Neeve – have clearly relatable back-stories and non-magical issues. I couldn’t help loving both Adam and Gansey; the brutally honest Ronan, as my love says, we respect without liking. I loved the male friendships, the late nights helping a friend in trouble as often or more as the late nights over gelato or pizza. While this is only the beginning of the story, and Blue is still very tentative about any romance, the love triangle of Blue and Adam or Gansey is clear from the very beginning, and it’s the best love triangle I’ve read in a very long time. It’s not angsty or forced, but just a group of friends with excellent potential, either one of whom could be very good with Blue.

Will Patton, the narrator, has a gravelly Southern voice which at first struck me as odd, considering that our first-introduced character is a teen girl. However, he proved himself excellently versatile, giving convincing voices to the wide array of male and female characters spanning a range of ages in the story. I’m far from an expert in Virginia accents, but people were described as having a variety of them in the book, and they were there to hear. That is one of my favorite aspects of audio books, as I’m liable to think any character in my own accent unless I concentrate on it or it’s mentioned – hearing the individual voices makes the characters come that much more alive. This audio book also includes Maggie Stiefvater’s original theme music for the book, played at the beginning and end, and performed by herself and her friends. It is haunting and atmospheric and makes me wish I could get a whole soundtrack for the book to listen to. Altogether, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and am anxiously waiting for book two, the Dream Thieves, due out in September.

The Runaway Princess

The Runaway Princess by Hester Browne
Adult Paperback New Book Shelves – Main Level - BROWNE

This is one of my top 3 "Beach Reads" of all time.  A glorious little vacation in paperback!

Follow Amy Waite through the streets of London where she meets and falls in love with her own real-life prince.  Of course the path to true love is fraught with trials and tribulations.  Can Amy measure up to the expectations of dating a prince?  Will skeletons be brought out of her family closet and into the national newspaper?  Will she know what to do with all of the forks at her place setting during palace dinners?

It's a quick, easy read.  A super fun visit to Europe and a glimpse into the exciting lives of fictional royalty. 

Have a New Kid by Friday

Have a New Kid by Friday

By Dr. Kevin Leman
Parenting Shelves - Lower Level - 649.64 L

Dealing with a strong willed child?  This book is a treasure trove of information, methods and reassurance.  An index of problem behaviors and discipline methods to correct these problems makes up the bulk of the book.  
This is a pretty solid parenting book.  Dr. Leman asks parents to look at their own behavior before attempting to change the behavior of their children with tips like "Say it once and walk away." Some of the advice is repetitive and I can't say that I am a huge fan of the author's sense of humor (I wouldn't call my children ankle biters.) but the techniques worked at my house and for that I am grateful! 

 

Matterhorn

By Karl Marlantes

Adult Fiction Shelves-Main Level – MARLANTES

Having never been in combat, nor even visited Vietnam as a tourist, it will always be trite to claim that I feel as though I understand what it was like to be in the jungles of South Vietnam with the men of Bravo Company and second lieutenant Mellas – but that is precisely how good Karl Marlantes’s novel, Matterhorn truly is.  The poignancy and gripping realism of Marlantes’s first novel is informed and enlightened by his background as a combat-decorated veteran of the Marine Corps (awarded the Navy Cross for his heroism in Vietnam) as well as a Rhodes Scholar and Yale graduate.  “Pager-turner” clichés are much too worn for a novel as well-executed and absorbing as Matterhorn.  Every Vietnam War archetype is present here without ever feeling tired or forced.  Politics, class, and race all play a vital role in the novel, just as they did during the war and still do to this day.  If you haven’t yet, please do yourself the favor of reading what has quickly become the novel of the Vietnam War.  It is enriching, engrossing, and utterly moving – you will be well-rewarded for your efforts here.



Listening for Madeleine

Listening for Madeleine is a pointillist portrait of the Newbury Award-winning author, whose work for both children and adults is among my very favorite. It starts off with a short biography by the editor, but is mostly composed of lots and lots of thoughts by individuals who knew her, gained from letters and interviews. They are divided up by how people knew her: from childhood, as a writer, matriarch, mentor, friend or icon. They include friends from childhood, editors and publishers, writers like T.A. Barron and Mary Pope Osborne, her daughter, granddaughters, and former son-in-law, and lots of people whom she was friends with or mentored over the years. Many people referred to an unflattering profile of L’Engle that was published in the New Yorker in 2004, which I hadn’t read, but which I was able to pull up on Gale’s Biography in Context without any difficulty. (“The Storyteller”, by Cynthia Zarin.) Family members acknowledged the frustration of living with a writer whose published version of their life together – the writer’s perspective, warts airbrushed out – became the version that readers everywhere believed was true; the fictional works inspired by family life felt more true to reality than those published as nonfiction. Outside the family, people were generally horrified that family members were willing to air as much dirty laundry as they did while L’Engle was still alive. But the fact that these discussions are in the book give me the comforting feeling that this isn’t a hagiography, even though most of the people contributing to the anthology cared about her. For all the painful things voiced by her relatives, they were still there caring for her in her increasingly dependent old age. Balancing that were the many, many tales of her writing from the publisher’s side and of her support for young and aspiring writers especially.

The most negative profiles came in the Icons section. These, dealing with L’Engle’s writing, were perhaps ironically tougher for me to read, as a devoted fan of her writing who never met her in person. Jane Yolen, a writer whose work I also love, wrote about her horror at L’Engle’s spoken belief that there is magic in the world, as opposed to Yolen’s use of magic as metaphor in her books. Library professor and lesbian Christine A. Jenkins wrote about how she had to discourage her students from writing about L’Engle because L’Engle fans were almost universally unable to look at her work with anything but uncritical adoration. (Probably guilty as charged, I’m afraid.) She also had understandable problems with L’Engle’s attitudes about homosexuality – which were liberal, I’ve always thought, for someone born in 1918. There was also a final word from Cynthia Zarin, the author of the infamous New Yorker profile, talking about her experience writing the piece, coming at is as a fan but ending up with a piece that many fans found offensive. In any case, fans of L’Engle’s works, critical or uncritical, should enjoy this broad and varied look at her from so many perspectives.

Shakespeare's Tremor and Orwell's Cough

Shakespeare's Tremor and Orwell's Cough: The Medical Lives of Great Writers by John J. Ross, M.D.
New Book Shelves - Upper Level - 820.9 R

This is a fascinating book! Did you know that Shakespeare's handwriting became shakier and shakier throughout his adulthood? He may have had syphilis, and the treatments in the 17th century were quite barbaric. This book gives all the gory details. John Milton went blind, probably due to a detached retina. The book gives a short day-in-the-life snippet of each author's life, followed by a medical fact about him. Some background on the history of the time, treatments of the time, and the author concludes with a diagnosis of the author's malady, and what probably caused it. Chapters can be read independently, so you can pick your way through your favorites in any order you like. One part medical history, one part literary history, all parts unique and interesting!

The Peculiar

The Peculiar by Stefan Bachmann
Youth New Book Shelves – Lower Level - BACHMANN

This is a Cybils Award finalist in the middle grade science fiction/fantasy department. This is also the book that came from the library with the last 30 pages missing – I had to take it back and wait for it to be reordered before I could finish it! If you were one of the two people to check it out before I got it – we have all the pages now.

Not so very long ago, as our story goes, the Faeries invaded England, and there was war. The humans won, but as the faery stayed in the first place because they couldn’t get back, they now have an uneasy coexistence with iron and church bells used to constrain the faeries. Both sides despise the other and despise worst of all the changelings or peculiars, half-breed children. One of our heroes, Bartholomew, is just such a child. He himself could pass for human at a distance, but his little sister Hettie has pointed ears and branches for hair. Both of them stay hidden, as the hatred of peculiars is so deep that lynchings are common. One day, watching from his attic window in a Bath slum, Bartholomew sees a sinister lady in plum velvet with a tiny, wicked face in the back of her head. As he watches, she draws the little neighbor changeling with thistle hair out of his house, and disappears with him in a flurry of black feathers. When Bartholomew’s good intentions go awry, he knows that he and Hettie are in danger as well. Meanwhile, in London, Mr Jelliby is a wealthy and idle member of the Privy Council, which includes some faery members. His conscience is pricked, however, when he watches the faery Mr Lickerish redirect council interest away from the mysterious string of murdered changeling children. As much as he fears trouble, he is drawn into investigating the murders himself. There are some steampunk aspects to the book as well, with a setting that feels 19th-century and clockwork birds used to communicate, clockwork horses, and a dirigible. This is dark fantasy with a whole lot of creepy mystery that kept me on the edge of my seat, and occasionally made me decide to save this for morning and pick something calmer for bedtime reading. It’s definitely not a world I’d want to live in, but it’s beautifully drawn, with characters and setting having equal importance to the exciting plot. I cared about both Bartholomew and Mr Jelliby. I will note that even with the last 30 pages, it does not end conclusively, so those who like to wait until a series is complete to start reading will want to hold off for a bit. There is a whole lot to like packed neatly and cleverly into this book, and I am very glad that it made it to the second round of Cybils considerations.

Major Taylor: Champion Cyclist

Major Taylor: Champion Cyclist
By Lesa Cline-Ransome
Illustrated by James E. Ransome
jBio—Lower Level—Taylor

In the late 1800s in Indianapolis, Indiana a young cycling phenom began his career. “Major” Marshall Taylor was extraordinary for a number of reasons. By age 13, he was the fastest rider in town. In races, no one came close to keeping pace with him.

At the same time that he swept local bike races, society discriminated against him because of his race. Major Taylor overcame the odds. He competed on cycling’s world stage and was the second African-American athlete to become a world champion.

With exciting text and beautiful illustrations, Major Taylor: Champion Cyclist will delight anyone who knows the feeling of freedom that riding a bicycle can bring.