Staff Picks
No one has ever been as excited as Elephant to learn that they have a cold. Hopefully Hammie doesn't make you sneeze!
Look at this! It's beautiful! Alternative history in the deep sea. I'm sold. (This endorsement brought to you by Stacey)
This one has it all—magic, a non-binary love story, and an unconventional mystery. When Maeve accidentally wishes her best friend out of existence using a pack of magic Tarot cards, she must team up with her friend's sibling to find her. But that's not the only mystery. Why are these cards magic in the first place? And why can Maeve suddenly see into people's minds? This is the coziest, weirdest mystery I have ever read, and I wish I could climb inside it with a blanket and a cup of tea.
Bridgerton…but make it fantasy! Beatrice's family is on the brink of financial ruin, and the only way to bring them back is to find a wealthy husband during this year's Bargaining Season. And while someone will surely agree to marry her, Beatrice isn't sure the payday is worth the price—her freedom to practice sorcery. Does she choose herself and her love of the magic within her? Or does she choose her family and their financial well-being? And what happens when she accidentally falls in love and gets a demon involved? For lovers of atmosphere, this one's got it in spades.
Respectable, upstanding people on the surface; a tangle of complicated desires and messy choices underneath. From the biting “Instructions for Married Christian Husbands” to the epistolary “Dear Sister” – a letter from four sisters to a possible fifth after their father’s death – Deesha Philyaw has a knack for creating characters who feel like sisters and cousins, and zeroing in on their intimate truths in just a few pages.
There's a song stuck in Little Worm's head, and he's trying to find out who put it there! But all his friends have OTHER songs stuck in their heads. What's a worm to do? Great for reading, singing, and dancing along to.
While animal compendiums are often fantastic, sometimes you just want to dive into one particular creature. Behold, the magestic horse! As presented by the fun "A Day in the Life" series. Recommended reading buddy: Pony Boy! Cuddly and dashing with his little kerchief, but hilariously cute with his oversized head.
A playful picture book about the value of a good story. Join bookseller Leopold as he tries to find the perfect read that will tempt a goat into reading a book instead of eating it! Perfect for a cozy bedtime book.
Tin Man is a sparse and sort of lonely book, but it is filled to the brim with those quiet moments that over a lifetime add up to something quite big. Your heart will ache, but in a good way.
Betye Saar's body of work is just mindblowing. Her visual story-tellling and artistic talents are revolutionary, and I feel like she should receive much more recognition for her work. This particular collection, with its themes of the African Diaspora and the night sky, really just left me floored.
Please open to any page of this picture book. Have you done it? Good, then that should be all I need to convince you this book is amazing. If that hasn't done it, how about this: The Nine Color Deer is a beautiful retelling of a classic Chinese tale emphasizing generosity, gratitude, keeping promises, and conservation.
Actually, this book is really F’ing great. It is funny as hell, smart, poignant, painful and relatable. There is nothing romantic about divorce, and Monica Heisey captures the messy search for meaning (and joy?) with hilarity and tenderness. Too bad this book wasn’t around years ago because some of us would have clutched it to their chest as they cried in a heap in their closet over their failed marriage (or any failure for that matter) and thanked God Monica came into their life and was now their BFF. But don’t you worry - even if you are one of those happy, well-adjusted, non-single people (goodie for you) you will still ADORE this book and not be able to put it down!
In this breathtaking combination of photography and poetry Robin Coste Lewis again asks, what can we do with our history? Our past is the material for our future but only if we engage with it critically & creatively. Coste Lewis is doing powerful things with history, art, and poetry.