Piku (2015)

Landline (2017)

Franny's Father is a Feminist - Rhonda Leet

My Brother's Husband ​- Gengoroh Tagame

Life on Mars Poems - Tracy K. Smith

The Eyre Affair - Jasper Fforde

The Fatherless Daughter Project - Denna Babul

The Tuscan Child - Rhys Bowen

An Artist in the Floating World - Kazuo Ishiguro

The twelve lives of Samuel Hawley - Hannah Tinti

The blind astronomer's daughter - John Pipkin

Prospero's daughter - Elizabeth Nunez

Summary: Exiled from England for performing dangerous experiments on his patients, Peter Gardner flees to the Caribbean with his beautiful young daughter, Virginia, raising her in isolation except for the a few natives, including Carlos, a young boy of mixed race with whom Virginia develops a forbidden friendship that blooms into love. 12,000 first printing. - (Baker & Taylor)

Booklist Reviews

Through one family's unique circumstances, the always-eloquent Nunez invokes larger themes of race, class, and colonialism. In the late 1950s, mad scientist Peter Gardner flees England to escape charges that he experimented on his patients. He and his young daughter, Virginia, settle on an isolated leper colony off the coast of Trinidad. They soon take over the house of a mixed-race orphan, Carlos, who was left in the care of a dying housekeeper. Gardner imposes a strict regimen on the household; trumpets the superiority of the white race; alternately treats Carlos as a slave and as an experiment by educating him about music, literature, and science; and devotes extraordinary amounts of time to cultivating hybrid flowers. His daughter, Virginia, responds to Carlos'great kindness and patience, and their abiding friendship, carried out in secret, blossoms into a love affair that threatens Gardner's worldview and puts the couple in danger. Although the enthralling story line loses some power in the final section, Nunez has crafted a beautiful, layered novel that echoes both The Tempest and Heart of Darkness. ((Reviewed November 15, 2005)) Copyright 2005 Booklist Reviews.

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My abandonment - Peter Rock

Summary: Living with her father in a nature preserve in Portland, Oregon, thirteen-year-old Caroline only merges with the civilized world once a week when they go into the city, but an encounter with a backcountry jogger derails their entire existence. - (Baker & Taylor)

Booklist Reviews

Rock s previous novels and stories have been imbued with a sense of unease and uncertainty (The Unsettling, 2006). So it is with this deeply unsettling and finely wrought tale. It s narrated matter-of-factly by 13-year-old Caroline, who lives furtively in Forest Park, a large nature reserve on the edge of Portland, Oregon, with her father, who has turned his back on society. Their lives revolve around remaining invisible to the larger world. Homeschooled in the woods and at a public library, Caroline appears fully at home with minimal possessions and without much human contact. At first the lives of father and daughter seem nearly idyllic, but Rock deftly ratchets up the uncertainties, and the idyllic edges past the unusual toward the unthinkable and the tragic. Based on a true story (think Krakauer s Into the Wild), My Abandonment is a haunting novel, masterfully told. Copyright 2009 Booklist Reviews.

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Hanna (DVD)

Hanna (DVD)

Summary: A 16-year-old who was raised by her father to be the perfect assassin is dispatched on a mission across Europe, tracked by a ruthless intelligence agent and her operatives.

Video Librarian Reviews
"Father knows best" takes on new meaning when a wily teenage warrior—played by ethereal-looking Saoirse Ronan—ventures out into the cold, cruel world. Spending her isolated childhood in a cabin located in the forests of northern Finland, Hanna has been trained as an assassin/spy by her rogue-CIA-agent father Erik (Eric Bana). Now 16, Hanna has strength, stamina, and determination, so father and daughter part ways, planning to meet up later in Germany. Both, however, are sought by ruthlessly malevolent CIA operative Marissa (Cate Blanchett), leading to Hanna's capture and interrogation in a bunker beneath the Moroccan desert. "Did she turn out as you'd hoped?" inquires one of Marissa's henchmen. "Better," she replies. Outwitting her abductors, Hanna escapes, joining a British hippie family on vacation while cleverly eluding all pursuers. In the meantime, much is revealed about Hanna's mysterious origin and lineage, culminating in an action-packed chase through a decaying Grimm Brothers–themed amusement park and a violent confrontation with menacing Marissa. Directed by Joe Wright, this is a humorless—albeit often gripping—pursuit thriller, backed by a striking score from the Chemical Brothers. Recommended, overall.

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Glory O'Brien's history of the future - King, A.S.

Glory O'Brien's history of the future - King, A.S.

Summary: As her high school graduation draws near, Glory O'Brien begins having powerful and terrifying visions of the future as she struggles with her long-buried grief over her mother's suicide.

Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Glory and her best friend, Ellie, drink a bat. They mix its desiccated remains with some warm beer on an impulsive night, and now they see visions of the past and future for everyone they encounter. But Glory's not sure she has a future. She graduated high school with no plans for college, and she's worried that she's doomed to be just like her mom, a talented photographer who killed herself when Glory was only four. The future she sees for others, however, is plagued by misogynistic violence, and when she doesn't see herself or her descendants in any of the visions, she starts rooting around in her mother's darkroom and journals for clues that will help her free herself from a futureless fate. King performs an impressive balancing act here, juggling the magic realism of Glory's visions with her starkly realistic struggle to face her grief, feel engaged with her own life, and learn anything that she can about her mother. Imbuing Glory's narrative with a graceful, sometimes dissonant combination of anger, ambivalence, and hopefulness that resists tidy resolution, award-winning King presents another powerful, moving, and compellingly complex coming-of-age story. Copyright 2014 Booklist Reviews.

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Half a Chance - Cynthia Lord

Half a Chance - Lord, Cynthia

Summary: Lucy, with her mother and her photographer father, has just moved to a small rural community in New Hampshire, and with her new friend Nate she plans to spend the summer taking photos for a contest, but pictures sometimes reveal more than people are willing to see.



Horn Book Guide Reviews
When twelve-year-old Lucy enters a photography contest, she must decide whether to submit a picture of her new friend Nate's grandmother, whose life has become punctuated with moments of dementia and confusion. Nate is horrified by his grandmother's panicked expression, but Lucy knows it's an amazing picture. The story is moving, and readers will find themselves caught up in sensitive Lucy's honest and thoughtful narration.

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Year of the jungle - Suzanne Collins

Year of the jungle - Collins, Suzanne

Summary: Suzy spends her year in first grade waiting for her father, who is serving in Vietnam, and when the postcards stop coming she worries that he will never make it home.

Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Collins mines her own experience to tell a tender personal story of war seen through a child's eyes. First-grader Suzy's father is deployed to Vietnam. At first, though she misses him, she dreams of the exotic jungle. But as the year goes on, marked by Christmas trees and candy hearts, things get harder. His postcards arrive less and less frequently, while news of the war, and its real dangers, comes more and more often. In the end, Suzy's father returns, and while some things are different, some things are the same. Collins' unflinching first-person account details the fears and disappointments of the situation as a child would experience them. And where more realistic illustrations would feel overwrought and sentimental, Proimos' flat, cartoony drawings, with their heavy lines and blocky shapes, are sturdy and sweet, reflecting a child's clear-eyed innocence. While small personal details and specific references to Vietnam fix the story in one child's individual experience, it is these very particularities that establish the kind of indelible and heartfelt resonance that is universally understood. Indeed, children missing parents in all kinds of circumstances will find comfort here. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Heard of a little series called The Hunger Games? Yes, well, this is by the very same author. Copyright 2013 Booklist Reviews.

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Fangirl - Rainbow Rowell

Fangirl - Rowell, Rainbow

Summary: Cath struggles to survive on her own in her first year of college while avoiding a surly roommate, bonding with a handsome classmate who only wants to talk about words, and worrying about her fragile father.



Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Much of the literary fandoms we see are dominated by bookish girls writing and posting online fan fiction, often romantic in nature and frequently featuring gay, nontraditional relationships. But this is Cath's world. Her fandom is the Simon Snow series. Simon is a Harry Potter–like figure who battles vampires and the Humdrum, a creature bent on ridding the world of magic. Devotees by the thousands read Cath's two-year-long opus "Carry On," a piece she's determined to complete before the release of the final installment of the series. However, life has intervened: she's starting college with her twin sister, Wren, who has demanded separate dorm rooms so they could both "meet new people." An awakening unfolds, as Cath battles loneliness, her father's mental illness, a new writing class, and feelings for her dorm mate's friendly part-time boyfriend. This is an epic writ small; the magic here is cast not with wands but with Rowell's incredible ability to build complex, vivid, troubling, and triumphant relationships. The internal lives of the characters are so well developed that it is almost surprising to remember that Rowell is writing in third person. Fans of Eleanor & Park (2013) and other novels about, nerdy types will thrill at finding such a fantastic and lasting depiction of one of their own. Copyright 2013 Booklist Reviews.

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Winter's bone - Daniel Woodrell

Winter's bone - Woodrell, Daniel

Summary: Reaching her sixteenth year in the harsh Ozarks while caring for her poverty-stricken family, Ree Dolly learns that they will lose their house unless her bail-skipping father can be found and made to appear at an upcoming court date. 25,000 first printing. - (Baker & Taylor)


Booklist Reviews
/*Starred Review*/ In Give Us a Kiss (1996), Woodrell introduced the Redmonds, marijuana farmers from the Ozarks ("It's a strange, powerful bloodline poetry, I guess, but there's something so potent to us Redmonds about bustin' laws together, as a family"). Now he turns his attention to the Redmonds' archenemies, the Dollys, another family of dirt farmers who thrive on bustin' laws together (crank cocaine being their crop of choice). But this time the Dollys aren't feuding with the Redmonds as much as battling each other. Sixteen-year-old Ree Dolly, who dreams of escaping her family by joining the army ("where you got to travel with a gun and they make everybody help keep things clean") is caught in the crossfire when her daddy jumps bail, leaving her stuck with two younger brothers and the prospect of forfeiting their house if the old man doesn't show up for his court date. To find Daddy, dead or alive, and save the house, Ree must ask questions of her notoriously tight-lipped relatives ("talkin' causes witnesses"). When she keeps pushing for answers, the relatives push back. Like his characters, and especially his teen characters, Woodrell's prose mixes tough and tender so thoroughly yet so delicately that we never taste even a hint of false bravado, on the one hand, or sentimentality, on the other. And Ree is one of those heroines whose courage and vulnerability are both irresistible and completely believable--think of not just Mattie Ross in True Grit but also Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird or even Eliza Naumann in Bee Season. One runs out of superlatives to describe Woodrell's fiction. We called his last novel, The Death of Sweet Mister (2001), "word perfect." If that's true--and it is--this one is word perfecter. ((Reviewed May 1, 2006)) Copyright 2006 Booklist Reviews.

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Galileo's daughter - Dava Sobel

Galileo's daughter: a historical memoir of science, faith, and love - Sobel, Dava

Summary: Presents a biography of the scientist through the surviving letters of his illegitimate daughter Maria Celeste, who wrote him from the Florence convent where she lived from the age of thirteen - (Baker & Taylor)



Booklist Reviews
/*Starred Review*/ As often is the case with religious landmarks in history--in this instance, Galileo's prostration before the Inquisition--a deeper searching reveals more textures than simple science-versus-religion symbolism. But it takes a talented storyteller to bring them forth, and Sobel meets our high expectations with this work, the legacy of her account of the inventor of the seagoing chronometer in Longitude (1995). Sobel is aided by a unique resource: more than 100 letters to Galileo from his eldest daughter that have never before been published in translation. They appear here largely verbatim and have been skillfully integrated into the contextual events of early 1600s Italy--no mean narrative feat, considering that this daughter, who took the veil and the name Maria Celeste, never in her short adult life ventured beyond her order's walls. The letters' somewhat trepidant salutation, "Most Illustrious and Beloved Lord Father," belies what was apparently a profoundly fond relationship on a filial level (a conclusion supported by the surprise Sobel springs at the end), but it was respectful on an intellectual one: there are allusions to Maria Celeste copying over Galileo's Dialogue concerning the Two Chief World Systems, the work that attracted the ire of the inquisitors. Their lives are set in motion against a background that includes family finances, Florentine and papal politics, the bubonic plague, and the Copernican revolution, which Galileo was championing as discreetly as was safe to do. Succinct in describing where, and where not, Galileo was heading in correct scientific direction (he didn't understand tides, for example), Sobel connects the tempests of his world to the cares and anxieties of Maria Celeste's. "A woman of exquisite mind, singular goodness, and most tenderly attached to me," eulogized the father when she suddenly died amidst his persecutions, an aptly allusive summing up of the subject of Sobel's singularly affecting story. ((Reviewed August 1999)) Copyright 2000 Booklist Reviews

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