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Tag: staff pick

--Staff Picks

Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Chalice of the Gods

After defeating Kronos, sending Gaea back to sleep, and surviving the mess that was Apollo’s stint as a mortal, Percy is back facing his hardest challenge yet: College Applications. Finding out that he needs three godly recommendation letters in order to get in to New Rome University, even the Savior of Olympus has hit his […]

--Staff Picks General

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer

If you’re looking for a book to captivate and change your view of the world, look no further. Robin Wall Kimmerer, a botanist and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, seamlessly blends scientific knowledge and indigenous teachings together. She embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these […]

--Staff Picks General

To Shape a Dragon’s Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose

Set in an alternate 1840s New England, Anequs, is an indigenous teen from the island of Masquapaug, known in English as Martha’s Vineyard. She and her people are mostly unbothered by the Anglish colonizers. When she discovers she is a Nampeshiweisit, a person who can bond with dragons, she becomes an honored member of her […]

--Staff Picks

“Art of Crime” TV Show on Hoopla

Captain Verlay is a police detective who knows nothing about art, Florence is an art expert whose phobia is easier to deal with when he’s close by.  Despite a vast personality difference, these two discover that they make a great team as they solve art crimes in Paris, France.  This show has all the hallmarks […]

--Staff Picks General

“Design For Living” by Ernst Lubitsch

As a person who watches a fair number of Hollywood movies from the 1940s (which tend to be fairly tame or suggestive at most), watching pre-Hays Code movies from the 1920s and ’30s is always a bit shocking. They knew about the birds and the bees back then??  Apparently so—t​he birds and the bees are […]

--Staff Picks Teens

“The Last Girls Standing” by Jennifer Dugan

In The Last Girls Standing by Jennifer Dugan, teens Sloane and Cherry are the only survivors of a summer camp massacre. Sloane has very few memories from that night and desperate to get answers about what happened and why they were the only two to make it out alive. Cherry has filled her in as […]

--Staff Picks General

Hogfather by Terry Pratchett

This classic of holiday fantasy by the one and only Sir Terry Pratchett, like most of the Discworld novels, turns the tropes and events of our world just a little sideways–often with the effect that we can see it all a bit more clearly. And he does it, of course, with his trademark wit and […]

--Staff Picks General

Sketchtasy by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

Sketchtasy follows narrator Alexa and her friends through life in mid-1990s Boston. They party, go to clubs, dance, meet people, and try to experience the pleasures of life, while, as queer people, also facing homophobia and living through the height of the AIDS crisis. Sycamore’s writing is gripping: while reading, I felt as if I […]