Tell the wolves I'm home - Carol Rifka Brunt

Tell the wolves I'm home - Brunt, Carol Rifka

Summary: It is 1987, and only one person has ever truly understood fourteen-year-old June Elbus -- her uncle, the renowned painter Finn Weiss. Shy at school and distant from her older sister, June can only be herself in Finn's company; he is her godfather, confidant, and best friend.


Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Brunt's transcendent debut is an exploration of an unlikely friendship that blossoms in the wake of a terrible loss. It's 1987, and 14-year-old June Elbus is reeling from the death of her beloved uncle Finn, a famous painter who has succumbed to AIDS. Shy and introspective, June preferred spending time with Finn, even as she tried to hide, from herself as much as others, her secret crush on him. Finn's death leaves a gaping hole in June's life, and she's shocked when Toby, her uncle's lover and the man her mother holds responsible for his death, makes a bid to fill that emptiness by contacting June secretly. Toby simply wants to get to know her and give her several gifts Finn left for her, and June starts to thaw toward him after she finds a note in a book from Finn imploring her to look after Toby. June's burgeoning but covert friendship with Toby gives her new insight into Finn's life but strains the already tenuous bond between her and her older sister, Greta. Peopled by characters who will live in readers' imaginations long after the final page is turned, Brunt's novel is a beautifully bittersweet mix of heartbreak and hope. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.

Check Availability

The cuckoo's calling - Robert Galbraith

The cuckoo's calling - Galbraith, Robert

Summary: "After losing his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike is barely scraping by as a private investigator. Strike is down to one client, and creditors are calling. He has also just broken up with his longtime girlfriend and is living in his office. Then John Bristow walks through his door with an amazing story: His sister, thelegendary supermodel Lula Landry, known to her friends as the Cuckoo, famously fell to her death a few months earlier. The police ruled it a suicide, but John refuses to believe that. The case plunges Strike into the world of multimillionaire beauties, rock-star boyfriends, and desperate designers, and it introduces him to every variety of pleasure, enticement, seduction, and delusion known to man."--Dust jacket.

Booklist Reviews
London PI Cormoran Strike's final feud with his arguably insane fiancée leaves him camping in his office, wondering how his last two clients will keep him afloat and pay for his new secretary, Robin. When a childhood acquaintance asks him to investigate his supermodel sister's apparent suicide, Strike finds a distraction from his problems that's happily attached to a check. Lula Landry was surrounded by rabid paparazzi, a drug-addled social circle, a dysfunctional adopted family, and a shifty, newly found birth mother, making suicidal despair hard to dismiss. But with Robin's surprisingly adept assistance, Strike dismantles witness statements, applying masterful deductive skills to find evidence of murder. This debut is instantly absorbing, featuring a detective facing crumbling circumstances with resolve instead of clichéd self-destruction and a lovable sidekick with contagious enthusiasm for detection. Galbraith nimbly sidesteps celebrity superficiality, instead exploring the ugly truths in Lula's six degrees of separation. Strike bears little resemblance to Jackson Brodie, but Kate Atkinson's fans will appreciate his reliance on deduction and observation along with Galbraith's skilled storytelling. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.

Check Availability

Mr. Wuffles - David Wiesner

Mr. Wuffles - Wiesner, David

"Mr. Wuffles ignores all his cat toys but one, which turns out to be a spaceship piloted by small green aliens. When Mr. Wuffles plays rough with the little ship, the aliens must venture into the cat's territory to make emergency repairs"-- Provided by publisher.

Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Once again Wiesner dips into his irrepressible imagination to deliver a mostly wordless conceptual picture book where the mundane and the magical collide. Mr. Wuffles, an aloof, perspicacious black cat, takes no interest in his playthings, save one peculiar toy that looks something like a hobnail tea strainer. Closer inspection, like only Wiesner can provide, reveals that it is a miniature alien spacecraft experiencing mechanical trouble. Its little green passengers evade Mr. Wuffles and retreat to a hole beneath the radiator, where they discover a series of "cave paintings" immortalizing battles between the cat and troops of ants and ladybugs. The aliens and the bugs join forces and, speaking in rectangular pictographic word balloons (that some readers will thrill to decipher), hatch a plan to repair the spaceship, foil the feline, and return home. The drama plays out across long, low panels full of kinetic energy and comic detail, all captured in the artist's careful watercolor renderings. In the end, the mission is successful and the aliens escape, but not without leaving behind a few reminders of their visit and an updated record of the epic conflict on the inner wall. Wiesner's many fans will delight at poring over the detailed account of this master plan, again and again, discovering something new with each successive reading. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Wiesner is a three-time Caldecott winner. Three. Fans will be ready to pounce. Copyright 2013 Booklist Reviews.

Check Availability

Square Pegs Complete Series (DVD)

Square Pegs Complete Series (DVD)

Summary: Patty and Lauren are two freshman girls desperate to fit in at Weemawee High School. Befriended by oddball characters Marshall, a budding comedian, and Johnny Slash, a wacky new-waver, Patty and Lauren still hope to impress the popular kids: valley girl Jennifer, her tough boyfriend Vinnie, and their sassy friend LaDonna and Muffy, the ever-peppy preppie.


Video Librarian Reviews
Square Pegs was in a class by itself, but much like the main characters--brainy, bespectacled Patty (Sarah Jessica Parker) and pushy, overweight Lauren (Amy Linker)--popularity eluded this late, lamented TV sitcom, which was expelled from primetime after one season (1982-83). Rarely seen in syndication, its cult cachet has only increased over time (enhanced by Parker's extreme makeover into Sex and the City's trendsetting Carrie Bradshaw). As peppy, preppy Muffy Tepperman (a spirited Jami Gertz in her own career-launching role) might say, it "behooves" us to report that the series lives up to its rep as a smart and hip alternative to what the show's creator Anne Beatts (in the bonus interviews of cast and crew spread across the set) calls "processed cheese television." Anticipating Sixteen Candles and Freaks and Geeks, Square Pegs viewed high school from the perspective of the bottom of the social food chain. As freshmen at Weemawee High School, if Patty and Lauren can click with the right clique, they will at last have "a social life that's worthy of us." Alas, it's not to be. The girls instantly run afoul of the school's reigning Mean Girl, Jennifer (Tracy Nelson), her bad boy boyfriend Vinnie (Jon Caliri), and her sassy best friend LaDonna (Claudette Welles). Each of the 19 episodes compiled here brings some new hell for Patty and Lauren, but also some hope that their stock will rise—until then, cup size may trump IQ, but friendship will always trump everything. Recommended. (D. Liebenson) Copyright Video Librarian Reviews 2008.

Check Availability

Call the Midwife - Jennifer Worth

Call the Midwife - Worth, Jennifer

Summary: Jennifer Worth was just 22 years old when she volunteered to spend her early years of midwifery training in London's East End in the 1950s. These stories encompass the whole spectrum of human emotions, and candidly reveal the shocking truth of childbirth conditions just 50 years ago.


Kirkus Reviews
Emulating James Herriot—except with fewer cows and more cockneys—Worth sketches a warm, amiable portrait of hands-on medical practice.The author became a midwife at age 22, learning her trade in the 1950s from the nun midwives at the convent of St. Raymund Nonnatus and working among impoverished women in the slums of the London Docklands. Her frank, sometimes graphic memoir describes scores of births, from near-catastrophes to Christmas miracles, and details her burgeoning understanding of the world and the people in it. It's stocked with charming characters: loopy Sister Monica Joan, the convent's near-mystic cake-gobbler and mischief-maker; Father Joseph Williamson, focused on delivering prostitutes rather than babies; handyman/poultry salesman/drain cleaner/toffee-apple pusher Frank; and posh Camilla Fortescue-Cholmeley-Browne ("Chummy"), an outrageously warm-hearted debutante who devoted her life to midwifery and missionary work. Worth depicts the rich variety of life in the slums, where loving, doting mothers of nine rubbed elbows with neglectful, broken young women turning tricks to support their husbands' night life. She draws back the veil usually placed over the process of birth, described here as both tribulation and triumph. In birth after birth, as women and midwives labored to bring babies into the world through hours of pain and occasional danger, Worth marveled at the mothers' almost-uniform embrace of their babies. "There must be an inbuilt system of total forgetfulness in a woman," she writes. "Some chemical or hormone that immediately enters the memory part of the brain after delivery, so that there is absolutely no recall of the agony that has gone before. If this were not so, no woman would ever have a second baby."A charming tale of deliveries and deliverance.Agent: Eugenie Furniss/William Morris Agency Copyright Kirkus 2009 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved.

Check Availability

The last banquet - Jon Courtenay Grimwood

The last banquet - Grimwood, Jon Courtenay

Summary: Follows an adventurous man, once a penniless orphan, through French society during the Enlightenment as he searches for the perfect taste, befriends Benjamin Franklin, becomes pen pals with the Marquis de Sade and Voltaire, and improves contraceptive methods.



Kirkus Reviews
Jean-Marie d'Aumout is a liberal, democratic Frenchman obsessed with flavor whose life, narrated in an elegant debut, lays bare the extreme contrasts of pre-Revolutionary France. First encountered at age 5, eating beetles from a dung heap, his parents dead in their run-down chateau, the boy who will become the Marquis d'Aumout never grows out of his fascination with how things taste. Rescued by the Duc d'Orléans, who gives him his first, divine taste of Roquefort cheese, d'Aumout is sent to school and then military academy, where the friends he makes will shape his life. Charlot, heir to the wildly wealthy Saulx estate, will introduce him to one of his sisters, Virginie, whose life d'Aumout will save twice. Grimwood's sensuous, intelligent, occasionally drifting account of the marquis's progress is constantly informed by French politics, notably the immense gulf between the nobility and the peasants whom d'Aumout at least treats with fairness. Scenes at Versailles underline the decadence which will lead to social collapse. Through it all, d'Aumout is driven by a hunger to taste everything--rat, wolf, cat, etc.--and an erotic appetite that is explicitly filled. Ben Franklin puts in a late appearance before the revolution begins, and d'Aumout prepares for a final, extraordinary meal. Studded with bizarre recipes, this vividly entertaining account of a life lived during groundbreaking times is a curious, piquant pleasure. Copyright Kirkus 2013 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved.

Check Availability

Journey - Aaron Becker

Journey - Becker, Aaron

Summary: Using a red marker, a young girl draws a door on her bedroom wall and through it enters another world where she experiences many adventures, including being captured by an evil emperor.


Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* First-time author Becker sweeps readers away on the very best kind of journey, allowing a complex color scheme, intricate fantasy environments, and a stirring sense of adventure to tell the story without a single word. Worn out by an urban world of washed-out colors and too-busy adults, a young girl makes her escape through a slightly foreboding mystical forest and floats into a city-sized castle, where she spies a magnificent bird that is captured and caged. Without hesitation, she takes on an army of Samurai-like air-warlords and saves the bird, who ushers her back into her own world, where friendship and great new adventure await. Becker's background in movie animation is apparent in his sense of pace, motion, and action; his extraordinary detail work; and his sharp visual cues: objects of imagination and escape, for example, are all colored in blazing red. But through elements that reverberate with the power of Crockett Johnson's Harold and the Purple Crayon (1955), Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are (1963), and Barbara Lehman's The Red Book (2004), he clearly has a deep understanding of his literary antecedents, too. Laudable for its adventuresome female protagonist, scope, and sense of fun, this title will draw girls and boys back to it again and again. Copyright 2013 Booklist Reviews.

Check Availability

Battling boy - Paul Pope

Battling boy - Pope, Paul

Summary: As monsters roam Acropolis and swallow children into their shadowy underworld, twelve-year-old superhero Battling Boy steps in to save the city in the absence of genius vigilante Haggard West.


Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Comics' sci-fi rock-god Pope synthesizes the mythologies of Superman, Batman, and Hercules and sends them crashing into a monster-infested dystopia in this rollicking blast of adventure, the first part of a larger tale. When Acropolis' protector, Haggard West, dies in a battle with child-snatching ghouls, Battling Boy is sent down from the Olympian lightning cloud for his trial of manhood. His apparent defeat of a rampaging monstrosity gets him caught up in local politics, puts him in the sights of the hideous ghouls, and gains him the ire of Haggard West's daughter, who is looking to establish her own heroic credentials. Pope offers a latter-day superhero mythology that is also a glorious homage to shojo and, in fact, to heroism throughout history. This is a sophisticated tale for younger readers, but Pope manages to both grant full-scale wish fulfillment and acknowledge the limitations of young boys with equal aplomb. His art, meanwhile, looks like nothing else in comics, with ropy, sinewy figures, dynamic action, and gritty urban design all captured in panels that have the rough, subversive tone of classic punk album covers. Indeed, Pope's visuals might demand a larger canvas than the elegantly compact format First Second has afforded it. Copyright 2013 Booklist Reviews.

Check Availability

Bunny drop - Yumi Unita

Bunny drop - Unita, Yumi

Summary: Returning to his family's estate for his grandfather's funeral, thirty-something bachelor Daikichi is floored to discover that the old man had an illegitimate child with a much younger lover! Needless to say, the rest of the family is shocked and embarrassed by this turn of events, and not one of them wants anything to do with the little girl, who refuses to say a word. In a fit of angry spontaneity, Daikichi decides to adopt her! But is living with an overgrown teenager who can barely take care of himself the key to making Rin come out of her shell?

Booklist Reviews
Thirty-year-old Daikichi wasn't expecting to be a father. After his grandfather dies, he learns he has a six-year-old aunt, the daughter of his recently deceased grandfather and an unknown woman. The family quibbles on who will take care of Rin, and when it becomes clear that no one wants her, Daikichi offers himself. Some think that Rin's a slow girl because she's shy and doesn't talk much, but Daikichi senses something deeper. While at first quite lost on the matter of child rearing, he finds his way with the help of research and Rin herself as the two gradually become a family. The arrival of Rin's biological mother may change this, but for now aunt and nephew show how a unique family can make it work if love is involved. This sweet-natured manga shows the joys, frustrations, and quirks of family life; and while it is aimed at teens, it would also be more than welcome in the hands of adult readers. Copyright 2010 Booklist Reviews.

Check Availability

Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's library - Chris Grabenstein

Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's library - Grabenstein, Chris

Summary:
"Twelve-year-old Kyle gets to stay overnight in the new town library, designed by his hero (the famous gamemaker Luigi Lemoncello), with other students but finds that come morning he must work with friends to solve puzzles in order to escape"-- Provided by publisher.

Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Here's an instantly engaging and wildly creative mystery that is sure to have readers looking at their humble local library in a new light. Mr. Lemoncello is an eccentric game designer who has just funded a very special new library in his hometown. In honor of the grand opening, Lemoncello has selected a dozen 12-year-olds to participate in an overnight lock-in event at the library. But when the kids wake up, they discover a new and unexpected game is afoot: whoever can find a way out of Mr. Lemoncello's library will win the grand prize. Avid readers will get a kick out of the references to classic and current children's literature as the kids solve clues to escape and win the game. Main character Kyle Keeley works hard to beat his nemesis, the conniving bully Charles Chilington, who constantly reminds everyone that he is always successful. As Lemoncello says, knowledge not shared remains unknown, and the group learns that working together just might be the key to solving the mystery. An ode to libraries and literature that is a worthy successor to the original madman riddle master himself, Willy Wonka. Copyright 2013 Booklist Reviews.

Check Availability

One big happy family - Lisa Rogak

One big happy family - Rogak, Lisa

Summary: "Inspiring, true tales of interspecies adoption, One Big Happy Family tells the heartwarming stories of animals who have reached out to save the lives of babies from other species and raise them as their own. Whether it's the border collie and his piglets, the cat and her ducklings, the orangutan and his lion cubs, or even the Labrador and her baby hippo, these are poignant, charming tales of animals who have felt the parental instinct and cared for little ones of every stripe. Filled with adorable photos of these baby animals and their foster moms and dads, Lisa Rogak's One Big Happy Family celebrates the intimacy and emotional connections of parenthood and the amazing miracle of interspecies adoption"-- Provided by publisher.

Booklist Reviews
This book sells itself. It gathers 50 stories of animals of one species mothering (or, in several cases, fathering) babies from an entirely foreign species. The instinct to nurture young is almost universal, and, as these stories demonstrate, that instinct can sometimes trump the instinct to stay within one's own kind. We see a mother cat who warms a nest of baby chicks with her own kittens, and the hen who adopts a nestful of ducklings—assisted by a goose. Even male cats get into the act when a ginger tomcat takes over the cuddling duties for a hand-reared lion cub. An owl mothers a gosling, and a cow takes over nursing duty for two lambs rejected by their mother. More than half of the stories feature dogs as the surrogate parent. Even wild animals enter the picture, as a lioness treats an antelope calf like a cub and a baboon cuddles an infant bush baby. Illustrated with irresistible color photos, this one is a charmer. Copyright 2013 Booklist Reviews.

Check Availability

How to catch a bogle - Catherine Jinks

How to catch a bogle - Jinks, Catherine

Summary: In 1870s London, a young orphan girl becomes the apprentice to a man who traps monsters for a living.



Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Ten-year-old Birdie considers herself fortunate not to be begging, stealing, or living in the workhouse. As an apprentice to Alfred the Bogler, she receives food and shelter in exchange for helping him trap and destroy the hungry, monstrous bogles (goblins) that lurk in houses, where they snatch and eat the occasional child. Her role in the business? Birdie is the bait. Standing with her back to the bogle's hideout, she sings sweetly until he shows himself and Alfred dispatches him. Despite her dangerous occupation, Birdie balks when Miss Eames, a lady with a scientific interest in bogle hunting, offers to raise her above her station. Suspense mounts when human enemies begin to surpass the supernatural ones in malevolence, destruction, and sheer terror. Birdie proves her mettle time and time again in this richly atmospheric tale set in London around 1870. In the pitch-perfect narrative, the bogles seem as normal a part of the city's life as the costers, griddlers, mudlarks, and toffs (a glossary is appended). The first volume of a planned trilogy from the author of the Evil Genius series and the Pagan series, this intense historical thriller is rewarding on its own, but A Plague of Bogles is scheduled to arrive next fall. Copyright 2013 Booklist Reviews.

Check Availability

The cats' house - Bob Walker

The cats' house - Walker, Bob

Summary: Describes cat-friendly home improvements, offers plans and suggestions for enlivening housecats' environments, and relates how a room-divider project transformed the author's home into a cats' playground - (Baker & Taylor)

Library Journal Reviews
What began as a simple floor-to-ceiling scratching post to prevent Walker's nine cats from sharpening their claws on the furniture is now a whole set of ramps, stairs, and cat walks throughout his house. The playfulness of this house, which has been painted in over 40 bright colors and contains Walker and his wife's collection of Dian de los Meurtos figurines and toys, comes across in the numerous photographs. Instructions are included for building ramps, cat walks, and mouse holes through which the cats pass from room to room. This fun book is recommended for large interior design collections. Copyright 1996 Cahners Business Information.

Check Availability

Batman dark knight - Paul Jenkins

Batman dark knight - Jenkins, Paul

Summary: Delving into the more supernatural and esoteric areas of Gotham City, the six-part storyline explores the horrific murder of one of Bruce Wayne's childhood friends . . . and the terrible ramifications the brutal crime has on Batman's life.



LJ Express Reviews
Gotham's villains have a new power, a kind of fear serum that turns already formidable foes into deadly, rampaging monsters. As more clues about the serum are uncovered, red herrings and serum-infused criminals from Batman's past abound. Fans of the artwork in Ultimate X-Men and Moon Knight will not be disappointed; the fight scenes tumble and claw their way through most of the book. Unfortunately, the plot doesn't pack the same punch and mainly serves to bridge one fight scene to another. A few random sequences are plain baffling: Batman jumping into his jet with an ice cream cone? Some exceptions are the glimpses we're given of Commissioner Gordon's personal struggle and the two supplemental stories, Joe Harris's "The Madness" and Judd Winnick's compelling "I Can No Longer Be Broken." Verdict Aside from a new villain being lightly introduced, there's not a lot happening here. At best, this is a secondary purchase for older teens and adults. For a better balance of action and character development, refer fans to Batman's other current titles.—Marlan Brinkley, Atlanta-Fulton P.L.(c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Check Availability

Beauty is embarrassing (DVD)

Beauty is embarrassing: the Wayne White story (DVD)

Summary: For more than 30 years, Wayne White has made an indelible mark on the creative world. As a designer, painter, puppeteer, sculptor and musician, White created images and ideas that are an integral, yet sometimes subconscious, part of the pop-culture lexicon. Part biography, part live performance; tell the irreverent and inspiring story of this one-of-a-kind visual artist and raconteur.

Reviews

Vulgar, hilarious, and filled with nostalgia…a truly entertaining examination of the power of art. --Aint It Cool News

A laugh-out-loud portrait of the wild & wacky Wayne White --IndieWire

Frantic, sentimental, surreal and very funny. --Wired

Check Availability

The paladin - Brian Garfield

The paladin: a novel based on fact - Garfield, Brian

Summary: In 1940, Winston Churchill recruits a fifteen-year-old schoolboy to serve as a secret agent--code name Christopher Robin - (Baker & Taylor)



Kirkus Review
/* Starred Review */ A remarkable adventure novel ostensibly based on fact and written in collaboration with its real-life hero, "Christopher Creighton." While a ten-year-old schoolboy, Creighton accidentally knocked over a fresh brick wall being put up by his fat, cigar-smoking country neighbor, Winston Churchill, who then took a liking to the lad. Over the next five years they became quite friendly, and when Winston was made Prime Minister, he called the boy for a secret visit and asked him to be a spy for England--by visiting schoolfriend Prince Paul in Belgium and discovering the dispositions of the Belgian army. (Winston will then be able to figure out whether Hitler plans to invade France through Belgium.) Christopher is magnificently successful, meets Von Ribbentrop, overhears and reports back the vital information that Belgium will capitulate to Hitler without a shot. . . and so the British decide to retreat to Dunkirk and evacuate rather than stay and fight a hopeless cause. Soon Christopher is Winston's personal secret agent, his teenage paladin: he goes through horrid training exercises in which he actually kills German prisoners; he is himself beaten nearly to death for training purposes; and he is later sent to implant time bombs in a Dutch submarine's torpedoes and destroy the sub with all aboard (all allies?). Why? Because the Admiralty does not want Roosevelt to receive Dutch intelligence about the planned attack on Pearl Harbor, intelligence that might be used to keep the U.S. out of the war. And after three more assassinations of innocent soldiers, Christopher's last job is to pass himself off as a double agent and give the Germans false information about the Normandy landing--but only after unendurable torture and an attempt at suicide using a hollow cyanide tooth. . . . How much of this is true, how much fiction? One has to assume that if all or most of it were verifiable, this would have been non-fiction, not a novel. Still, veteran Garfield punches it all out with assured panache: larger-than-life Churchill, exploit after exploit, horror upon horror. So, believe it or not, this is a ripping good yarn--with food for all sorts of WW II-history speculation. (Kirkus Reviews, April 1, 1980)

Check Availability

The 34-ton bat - Steve Rushin

The 34-ton bat: the story of baseball as told through bobbleheads, cracker jacks, jockstraps, eye black, and 375 other strange and unforgettable objects - Rushin, Steve

Summary: "In The 34-Ton Bat, Sports Illustrated writer Steve Rushin tells the real, unvarnished story of baseball through the lens of all the things that make it the game that it is. Rushin weaves these rich stories--from ballpark pipe organs played by malevolent organists to backed up toilets at Ebbets Field--together in their order of importance (from most to least) for an entertaining and compulsive read, glowing with a deep passion for America's Pastime."--www.Amazon.com.

Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Jimmy and Ralph "Buzz" Boyle are author Rushin's grandfather and great uncle, respectively. Buzz played three seasons with the Brooklyn Dodgers, while Jimmy got into one game for one inning for the New York Giants. When Rushin, the 2005 National Sportswriter of the Year, inherited Jimmy's glove, a passionate and eclectic exploration of baseball ephemera was launched. Rushin approaches his passion with a mischievous gleam in his eye, a point of view captured perfectly in this anecdote-filled account of the sport's odd corners. He covers the evolution of the baseball glove, from a less-than-manly novelty in the game's earliest days to its current status as standard equipment. We also learn that the first protective baseball headgear was inflatable. The prototype was dismissed more on the basis of vanity than utility: it looked stupid. Male readers will grimace their way through the development of the "cup." Lots of painful injuries, especially to catchers, preceded the initial research by a catcher known as Foulproof Taylor. There's a chapter on the rowdy reintroduction of beer to ballparks after Prohibition, and organ music to serenade patrons on their way out of the park after games. Of course, the organ music has given way to prerecorded rock music; reliever Trevor Hoffman began the tradition by having AC/DC's "Hells Bells" played when he entered a game. In an era of sports literature when societal significance and statistical algorithms aren't always as fun as we'd hoped, Rushin has reintroduced readers to silliness. Read it with a smile. Copyright 2013 Booklist Reviews.

Check Availability

Honeymoon in Tehran - Azadeh Moaveni

Honeymoon in Tehran: two years of love and danger in Iran - Moaveni, Azadeh

Summary: The Iranian-American author describes her return to Iran as a reporter for "Time" magazine, her marriage to an Iranian man, the repressive Iranian society and its impact, and her family's decision to leave Iran.



Booklist Reviews
In this intimate look at the modern Iranian middle class, Moaveni, a journalist and the author of Lipstick Jihad (2005), blends her own experiences in Iran with her primary reporting subject: the dubious Tehran reaction to the ascendance of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. An Iranian American living in Lebanon, Moaveni unexpectedly fell in love when she returned to her homeland on assignment. This opened her eyes to a whole new aspect of Iranian life, that of young couples. She writes extensively about how the country s troubled economic situation forces twenty-somethings to postpone marriage and independence from their families. Iran s "brain drain" is well documented, but the reasons professionals grudgingly leave Iran have rarely been discussed by Western media, which instead focuses on Ahmadinejad s rantings. Moaveni tracks the country s increased social conservatism, and reveals both expensive marriage traditions and governmental manipulation. This perfect blend of political commentary and social observation is an excellent choice for readers interested in going beyond the headlines to gain an in-depth understanding of twenty-first-century Iran. Copyright 2008 Booklist Reviews.

Check Availability

Lipstick jihad - Azadeh Moaveni

Lipstick jihad: a memoir of growing Iranian in America and American in Iran - Moaveni, Azadeh

Summary: The story of the Iranian-American author's search for identity between two cultures torn apart by a violent history paints a portrait of Iran's next generation.



Booklist Reviews
After growing up in suburban California, where she never felt fully comfortable, Moaveni moved in 2000 to Iran, the land her parents had fled. Although she spent her childhood aching to live in Tehran, the place she discovers is nothing like she imagined--and, indeed, not what most of us imagine, either. She describes a sprawling city choked by smog and traffic; people "preoccupied by sex in the manner of dieters constantly thinking about food"; and, of course, the volunteer Morality Police, whose brazen cruelty has to be read about to be believed. Moaveni has captured Tehran's youth, the "student demonstrators" often in the news, in both their worldliness and their ignorance. And although much of the writing tells more than it shows, Moaveni is riveting when she works her way into a scene--capturing, for instance, the horror of a girl who must not react when the Morality Police beat her boyfriend lest they find out she is breaking shariah by dating. Not quite Persepolis without the pictures, but good stuff all the same. ((Reviewed February 15, 2005)) Copyright 2005 Booklist Reviews.

Check Availability

Grumpy cat: a grumpy book - Grumpy Cat

Grumpy cat: a grumpy book - Grumpy Cat

Summary: "Internet sensation Grumpy Cat's epic feline frown has inspired legions of devoted fans. Celebrating the grouch in everyone, the Grumpy Cat book teaches the fine art of grumpiness and includes enough bad attitude to cast a dark cloud over the whole world. Featuring brand new as well as classic photos, and including grump-inspiring activities and games, Grumpy Cat delivers unmatched, hilarious grumpiness that puts any bad mood in perspective"-- Provided by publisher.

Check Availability