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Kern County Library Staff Suggests...: March 2011


Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Look What's New for Kids!

Danica Patrick: Racing’s Trailblazer by Karen Sirvaitis - Danica was a fierce competitor even before she was making headlines. She has handled on-track adversity and the media spotlight with the support of her family. Find out the story behind Danica's first victory in 2008, her decision to branch out into NASCAR, and more.

Look What's New for Teens!

New Spring: The Graphic Novel by Robert Jordan - A newborn child, prophesied to change the world, must be found before the forces of the Shadow have a chance to kill him.

March Recommendations for Kids

Fiction

Don’t Read This Book! by Jill Lewis - The King is ready to star in a brand new, exciting story, but oh no, the story has disappeared! So, the King threatens to throw you in the dungeon if you keep reading! The King frantically gallops through Storyland to put the story together, and then only has a couple of pages to tell the entire story! A fun bedtime read!


Nonfiction

You Can Cook
by Annabel Karmel - Hungry? Want some tasty recipes you and your child can concoct? Sticky chicken drumsticks, fish bites (think fish nuggets!), cupcakes, pancakes, smoothies, muffins, chocolate orange brownies, classy sandwiches, and much more with mouth watering photos!

Trick of the Eye: Art and Illusion by Silke Vry - How do artists play with our perception? Can you make some illusions? Tricks with perspectives, color, optical illusions, and hidden images from famous works of art.

Screaming With Laughter: Jokes About Ghosts, Ghouls, Zombies, Dinosaurs, Bugs, and Other Scary Creatures by Michael Dahl - What do you get when you cross a ghost with a firecracker? Bamboo. Where does a Triceratops sit? On its Tricerabottom! Lots more riddles await you in this fun book!

Ace Your Sports Science Project: Great Science Fair Ideas by Madeline Goodstein - Looking for a fun and interesting science project? Explore project ideas and experiments dealing with the physics of sports, from baseball speed, basketball shooting positions, aerobic and anaerobic exercise, or the flight of a tennis ball. This title is just one of the newly acquired titles in the Ace your Physics Science Project series, or the related Ace your Biology Science Project series.

Lizards by Nic Bishop - Geckos, chameleons, iguanas, monitors, skinks- lizards of all shapes, colors, and sizes. Lizards which fly, lizards which swim, lizards as small as one’s thumbnail, and other lizards which are 10 feet long. Filled with amazing pictures such as a gecko grabbing a cricket, a thorny devil from Australia, and a basilisk running on top the water!

Ripley’s Believe It or Not: Enter if You Dare by Geoff Tibballs - Not for the squeamish! There is a new species of rat from Papua New Guinea as big as a cat and is longer than 32” and weighs 3 lbs! Have you ever seen a cat which weighs over 22 lbs, or a giant African snail that is 10” long? Would you like to be like Shen Wang from China who grew his pinky fingernail for 15 years until it was 18” long? Did you know Ashton Kutcher has webbed toes? Ever heard of the World Gravy Wrestling Championships? A calf with 3 nostrils? Or Li and Yan who married in China covered with an entire swarm of bees! All this and more with pictures!

March Recommendations for Teens

Fiction

Wintergirls
by Laurie Halse Anderson - Lia and Cassie were best friends until their eating disorders put them in the hospital. Since then, Cassie hasn’t had anything to do with Lia, which is why Lia didn’t answer her phone that day. It rang 33 times. And then Cassie died.

Lia still struggles with anorexia, and now she is a better liar. She knows what they want her to say so they don’t feel like they have to send her back to the treatment center where the "fat cows" prod her and tell she has to eat. She knows how to tamper with the scales so that the number doesn’t change when they weigh her. At 95 pounds she still feels fat. Not only does she have to listen to her own voice obsessing about every calorie of food she consumes; now she has to deal with Cassie making her ghostly appearances. Can Lia find the strength to overcome her guilt over Cassie’s death and her own personal demons before it is too late?

Hunger by Jackie Morse Kessler - Lisabeth Lewis has a host of problems: 1.) She’s anorexic 2.) She’s contemplating suicide 3.) Death just knocked on her door, literally. Surely she was hallucinating that last one, right? Nope. Death just made her the one of the Four Riders of the Apocalypse – Famine, to be exact. Maybe she can ignore that fact and it will go away, along with the beautiful, black warhorse grazing in the front yard.

It’s not long before Lisabeth must face what she has become and rides out into the world as Famine. She sees gluttony where food is wasted and witnesses the swollen stomachs of children struggling with true starvation. She finds that she has the power to turn food into ash, but also to nourish those who are in need. However, if she wants to help she must find the balance within herself as well. She can help, but will she do so when it requires her to eat?

Heist Society by Ally Carter - Her life of crime began at age five by helping her parents case the Louvre, now at age fifteen, Kat scams her way into a prestigious New England boarding school, determined to leave the family business behind. Kat’s resolve melts when she is framed, then kicked out of her school and her father is wrongly accused by a notorious mobster. With a gang of teens, she attempts to steal the paintings back, clear her father and regain the Nazi war spoils. A fast paced romp across Europe with a dash of romance makes this a quick, fun read.

Night Star by Alyson Noel - Seventeen, beautiful, and immortal, yet there is still high school drama and tragedy. After centuries of frustration and obstacles, Ever and Damen continue to strive to be together. Haven blames Ever for the death of her boyfriend, and she is determined to wreck vengeance on Ever, even if it means destroying Damen and Jude. Can Ever doom Haven to an eternity of darkness in the Shadowland?

The Water Seeker by Kimberly Willis Holt - Amos is born with a gift; will he use it, or be ashamed or feel trapped as his father did? His mother died in childbirth, and Amos is raised by his Aunt and Uncle, until his father, a trapper and wanderer comes to claim him with his new wife, an Otoe Indian. Encompassing 20 years and 2,000 miles, this is a sweeping story of Amos’s trek to Oregon, manhood, and his quest for family.

Beastly by Alex Flinn - Kyle is the best looking most popular student at Tuttle High, but his outward beauty covers his arrogant, rude, selfish, cruel, and beastly behavior. When he humiliates a teen at the school dance, she turns him into a beast in an attempt to teach him a lesson. Will he find true love in New York City, or remain a beast forever?


Nonfiction

Zumba: Ditch the Workout, Join the Party! by Beto Perez - Wondering what the Zumba craze is? Zumba is the high energy, popular Latin-inspired dance fitness program. It incorporates basic principles of resistance, aerobic, and interval training to burn fat, and tones your body. Complete with diet suggestions, illustrated moves, and a cd! Get movin’ now!

March Recommendations for Adults

Fiction

A Red Herring Without Mustard by Alan Bradley - Award-winning author Alan Bradley returns with another beguiling novel starring the insidiously clever and unflappable eleven-year-old sleuth Flavia de Luce. The precocious chemist with a passion for poisons uncovers a fresh slew of misdeeds in the hamlet of Bishop’s Lacey. Flavia had asked the old Gypsy woman to tell her fortune, but never expected to stumble across the poor soul, bludgeoned in the wee hours in her own caravan. Was this an act of retribution by those convinced that the soothsayer had abducted a local child years ago? Certainly Flavia understands the bliss of settling scores; revenge is a delightful pastime when one has two odious older sisters. But how could this crime be connected to the missing baby? Had it something to do with the weird sect who met at the river to practice their secret rites? While still pondering the possibilities, Flavia stumbles upon another corpse—that of a notorious layabout who had been caught prowling about the de Luce’s drawing room. Pedaling Gladys, her faithful bicycle, across the countryside in search of clues to both crimes, Flavia uncovers some odd new twists. Most intriguing is her introduction to an elegant artist with a very special object in her possession—a portrait that sheds light on the biggest mystery of all: Who is Flavia? As the red herrings pile up, Flavia must sort through clues fishy and foul to untangle dark deeds and dangerous secrets.

The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown - Three sisters, a scholarly father who breaks into iambic pentameter, and an absentminded but loving mother who brought the girls up in rural Ohio may sound like an idyllic family; however, when Rosalind, Bianca, and Cordelia return home—ostensibly to help their parents through their mother’s cancer treatment—readers begin to see a whole different family. A prologue introduces characters and hints of the dramas to come, while the omniscient narrator, seemingly the combined consciousness of the sisters, chronicles in the first-person plural events that occur during the heavy Ohio summer and end in the epilogue, which describes an (overly?) hopeful resolution. Brown writes with authority and affection both for her characters and the family hometown of Barnwell, a place that almost becomes another character in the story. A skillful use of flashback shows the characters developing and evolving as well as establishing the origins of family myth and specific personality traits. There are no false steps in this debut novel: the humor, lyricism, and realism characterizing this lovely book will appeal to fans of good modern fiction as well as stories of family and of the Midwest. (reviewed by Ellen Loughran, Booklist.)

What You See in the Dark by Manuel Muñoz - Bakersfield, California, in the late 1950s is a dusty, quiet town too far from Los Angeles to share that city’s energy yet close enough to Hollywood to fill its citizens with the kinds of dreams they discover in the darkness of the movie theater. For Teresa, a young, aspiring singer who works at a shoe store, dreams lie in the music her mother shared with her, plaintive songs of love and longing. In Dan Watson, the most desirable young man in Bakersfield, she believes she has found someone to help her realize those dreams. When a famous actress arrives from Hollywood with a great and already legendary director, local gossip about Teresa and Dan gives way to speculation about the celebrated visitors, there to work on what will become an iconic, groundbreaking film of madness and murder at a roadside motel. No one anticipates how the ill-fated love affair between Dan and Teresa will soon rival anything the director could ever put on the screen.

You Know When the Men Are Gone by Siobhan Fallon - In Fort Hood housing, like all army housing, you get used to hearing through the walls... You learn too much. And you learn to move quietly through your own small domain. You also know when the men are gone. No more boots stomping above, no more football games turned up too high, and, best of all, no more front doors slamming before dawn as they trudge out for their early formation, sneakers on metal stairs, cars starting, shouts to the windows above to throw them down their gloves on cold desert mornings. Babies still cry, telephones ring, Saturday morning cartoons screech, but without the men, there is a sense of muted silence, a sense of muted life.

There is an army of women waiting for their men to return in Fort Hood, Texas. Through a series of loosely interconnected stories, Siobhan Fallon takes readers onto the base, inside the homes, into the marriages and families-intimate places not seen in newspaper articles or politicians' speeches. When you leave Fort Hood, the sign above the gate warns, You've Survived the War, Now Survive the Homecoming. It is eerily prescient.


Nonfiction

American Uprising: The Untold Story of America’s Largest Slave Revolt by Daniel Rasmussen - In January 1811, five hundred slaves, dressed in military uniforms and armed with guns, cane knives, and axes, rose up from the plantations around New Orleans and set out to conquer the city. Ethnically diverse, politically astute, and highly organized, this self-made army challenged not only the economic system of plantation agriculture but also American expansion. Their march represented the largest act of armed resistance against slavery in the history of the United States. Through groundbreaking original research, Daniel Rasmussen offers a window into the young, expansionist country, illuminating the early history of New Orleans and providing new insight into the path to the Civil War and the slave revolutionaries who fought and died for justice and the hope of freedom.

American Uprising is the riveting and long-neglected story of this elaborate plot, the rebel army's dramatic march on the city, and its shocking conclusion. No North American slave uprising—not Gabriel Prosser's, not Denmark Vesey's, not Nat Turner's—has rivaled the scale of this rebellion either in terms of the number of the slaves involved or the number who were killed. More than one hundred slaves were slaughtered by federal troops and French planters, who then sought to write the event out of history and prevent the spread of the slaves' revolutionary philosophy. With the Haitian revolution a recent memory and the War of 1812 looming on the horizon, the revolt had epic consequences for America.

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua - Chua promotes what has traditionally worked very well in raising children: strict, Old World, uncompromising values--and the parents don't have to be Chinese. What they are, however, are different from what she sees as indulgent and permissive Western parents: stressing academic performance above all, never accepting a mediocre grade, insisting on drilling and practice, and instilling respect for authority. Chua and her Jewish husband (both are professors at Yale Law) raised two girls, and her account of their formative years achieving amazing success in school and music performance proves both a model and a cautionary tale. Sophia, the eldest, was dutiful and diligent, leapfrogging over her peers in academics and as a Suzuki piano student; Lulu was also gifted, but defiant, who excelled at the violin but eventually balked at her mother's pushing. Chua's efforts "not to raise a soft, entitled child" will strike American readers as a little scary--removing her children from school for extra practice, public shaming and insults, equating Western parenting with failure--but the results, she claims somewhat glibly in this frank, unapologetic report card, "were hard to quarrel with." (~ Publisher’s Weekly, Jan. 2011)

Super Rich: A Guide to Having It All by Russell Simmons - Russell Simmons knows firsthand that wealth is rooted in much more than the stock market. True wealth has more to do with what's in your heart than what's in your wallet. Using this knowledge, Simmons became one of America's shrewdest entrepreneurs, achieving a level of success that most investors only dream about. No matter how much material gain he accumulated, he never stopped lending a hand to those less fortunate. In Super Rich, Simmons uses his rare blend of spiritual savvy and street-smart wisdom to offer a new definition of wealth-and share timeless principles for developing an unshakable sense of self that can weather any financial storm. As Simmons says, "Happy can make you money, but money can't make you happy."

In straight-talking inspiring chapters, Simmons provides unforgettable true stories from his own road to riches, delving into the principles and practices that have kept him energized and focused. Whether we're in the boardroom or on a yoga mat, Simmons says, we have to be able to listen to our inner voices. Finding our unique potential, we can make the right moves, ruled not by money but by the joy of conscientious living and giving. With these philosophies and more, Simmons brings us a stimulus package of consciousness that will never run dry, backed by the power of the higher self.

Toward the Setting Sun: John Ross, the Cherokees, and the Trail of Tears by Brian Hicks - In 1838, the Cherokees were the last of the "Five Civilized Tribes" to be forcibly removed from their tribal lands. Brian Hicks’s Toward the Setting Sun chronicles one of the most significant but least explored periods in American history, recounting the little known story of the first white man to champion the voiceless Native American cause. The son of a Scottish trader and a quarter-Cherokee woman, Ross was educated in white schools and was only one-eighth Indian by blood. It was not until he was twenty-two, when he fought alongside "his people" against the Creek Indians, a neighboring rebel tribe, that he knew the Cherokees’ fate would be his. As Cherokee chief for four decades in the early- to mid-nineteenth century, he would guide the tribe through its most turbulent period, at once civilizing it for a new era and furiously defending it from white encroachment. The Cherokees’ plight lay at the epicenter of nearly all the key issues facing a young America: western expansion, states’ rights, judicial power, and racial discrimination. Clashes between Ross and President Andrew Jackson raged over decades, from battlefields and meeting houses to the White House and Supreme Court. But Jackson began to methodically evacuate each of the other "Civilized Tribes" to land beyond the Mississippi River and felt no shame in ignoring decades of U.S.-Indian treaties. As increasing numbers of whites settled illegally on the Nation’s native land, including Ross’s beloved home at Head of Coosa, the chief remained steadfast in his refusal to sign a treaty agreeing to removal. Only when a group of renegade Cherokees betrayed their chief and negotiated an agreement with Jackson’s men behind Ross’s back was he forced to give way and begin his journey west. In one of America’s great tragedies, thousands of Cherokees died during the tribe’s migration on the Trail of Tears, and the survivors who made it to Oklahoma were left to build a new life. Toward the Setting Sun retells the story of our nation’s expansionist aspirations from the native perspective, and takes a critical look at the well-rehearsed story of American progress.
 
   
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