Knife Music, by David Carnoy

The suicide of a teen is always a tragedy, and often leads to soul-searching by those around them. Sometimes the survivors try to pin blame on outside influences, but without the first-person testimony of the suicide, it is impossible to know why a young person might take his or her own life. David Carnoy’s novel Knife Music [...]

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Cloudsplitter, by Russell Banks

A mountain overlooks the valley of North Elba, NY, one of those massifs that split oncoming storms into two distinct patterns.  The Native American name translates to Cloudsplitter. Like the mountain, John Brown was a Cloudsplitter. From his home in North Elba, he took his visionary crusade against slavery into battle. His extreme actions forced Americans to [...]

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The Watery Part of the World, by Michael Parker

In 1813, Theodosia Burr Alston disappeared, along with the crew of the Patriot, the ship that was carrying her from South Carolina to New York. Why should anyone have paid attention? Well, Theodosia was the daughter of Aaron Burr, and the wife of South Carolina Governor Joseph Alston.  Theodosia was well-known in her own right as [...]

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Lies My Teacher Told Me, by James W. Loewen

I love history.  One of the reasons I was attracted to Williamsburg (other than the opportunity to work at a fantastic library), was that I’d be surrounded by the early history of what would become the United States.  But the way history is taught to kids dissatisfied me, although I couldn’t articulate it until I [...]

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Gristle, co-edited by Moby and Miyun Park

“University of Arizona researchers found more fecal bacteria in the kitchen—on sponges, dish towels, and the sink drain—than they found swabbing the toilet” (p. 11). The researchers, by the way, had first washed everything with bleach. Twice. Unless you’re a strict vegan, you’d be better off licking your toilet than your kitchen counter. If you [...]

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Pride of Baghdad, by Brian K. Vaughan

During an American bombing raid in 2003, four lions escaped from the Baghdad Zoo. This true story is the inspiration behind Pride of Baghdad, a magnificent graphic novel by Eisner Award-winner Brian K. Vaughan, best known for his two series Y: The Last Man and Ex Machina. As the story opens, our four heroes are [...]

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Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat, by Hal Herzog

“Like most people, I am conflicted about our ethical obligations to animals,” writes psychologist Hal Herzog. “I oppose testing the toxicity of oven cleaner and eye shadow on animals, but I would sacrifice a lot of mice to find a cure for cancer.” Herzog is an anthrozoologist—one who studies human/animal interactions—but though he devotes his [...]

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Elmer, by Gerry Alanguilan

On February 3, 1979, the chickens of the world became human. Only months later did the United Nations officially recognize the change, and by then there was no denying it: chickens everywhere had instantaneously developed the same intelligence and capability of speech as homo sapiens. This posed something of an ethical quandary for poultry farmers. [...]

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The Bond: Our Kinship with Animals, Our Call to Defend Them, by Wayne Pacelle

This week we’ll be looking at five books about animals, but not in that warm-tingly Charlotte’s Web kind of way. These books aren’t supposed to make you sentimental. They’re supposed to make you hopping mad. “Michael Vick loves animals. At least, that’s what he told me when we met at Fort Leavenworth Penitentiary. And he [...]

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Feed, by M.T. Anderson

“We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck.” To really get into the spirit of this hopeless, funny, angry, sarcastic book, I would need to get multi-media. While you read this post, you would be seeing banner ads for other hopeless, funny, angry sarcastic books, banner ads [...]

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The Akata Witch, by Nnedi Okorafor

Twelve-year-old Sunny Nwazue feels like an outsider several times over. She was born in America but is living in Nigeria, where her parents and brothers were born. Because she’s an albino, she has to carry an umbrella to shield her skin from the sun, and she thinks her eyes look “like God ran out of [...]

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Zoo City, by Lauren Beukes

Johannesburg, South Africa, is the setting for this dark urban fantasy, which was recently awarded the U.K.’s Arthur C. Clarke award for the year’s best sci-fi novel. In this version of Johannesburg, you can pick out the criminals by their animal familiars. If you commit a violent crime, an animal manifests, a mashavi spirit that [...]

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The Dragon’s Path, by Daniel Abraham

I think I owe Daniel Abraham a favor. Whether it’s entirely due to his novel, the first in a new fantasy series, or whether I read it at precisely the right time, it’s ended a long dry spell in which I’ve been burnt out on big, pseudo-medieval-Europe epic fantasies. All of the familiar building blocks [...]

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The Quantum Thief, by Hannu Rajaniemi

Jean le Flambeur is a thief, no, an artist among thieves. He’ll lift your watch; he’s stolen minor planets. At the opening of this mind-bending sci-fi adventure, he is broken out of prison by someone who has a job for him: travel to Mars, to the walking city of the Oubliette, to steal back… who [...]

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The Line, by Teri Hall

Dystopian fiction seems to be all the rage these days, ever since The Hunger Games started a trend. The Line’s version of the future is grim as well, but suitable for younger readers. This story tells of a potential future for the U.S.—only those initials stand for the Unified States. In what was perhaps inspired [...]

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The Candymakers, by Wendy Mass

The Candymakers is a bit like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory if it had been told from the perspectives of the other contestants as well as Charlie, and if Willy Wonka had not been so eccentric. The Confectionary Association is looking for the next great kid candy creator and his or her new candy craze. [...]

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Nothing, by Janne Teller

How certain are you that the things you do in life matter? A heavy question, I know, but then this is a heavy book. One day, Pierre Anthon announces to the rest of his 7th grade classmates that nothing matters. The students take his comments, in a word, badly. His announcement flies in direct opposition [...]

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Beatle Meets Destiny, by Gabrielle Williams

Beatle’s real name is John Lennon. For obvious reasons, everyone calls him Beatle. As the title suggests, Beatle meets a girl named Destiny. For a guy who describes himself as superstitious that would be reason enough to take notice, but her last name is McCartney— as in Paul. Beatle and Destiny keep running into each [...]

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