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Recommended reads for juniors, poetry and favourite authors - all on the New Books list

Maybe you just need a good book. Take a look here

 Poetry
Call us What we Carry by Amanda Gorman. The luminous poetry collection by presidential inaugural poet Amanda Gorman captures a shipwrecked moment in time and transforms it into a lyric of hope and healing. In Call Us What We Carry, Gorman explores history, language, identity, and erasure through an imaginative and intimate collage. Harnessing the collective grief of a global pandemic, this beautifully designed volume features poems in many inventive styles and structures and shines a light on a moment of reckoning. Call Us What We Carry reveals that Gorman has become our messenger from the past, our voice for the future.

Memoir
Life in the City of Dirty Water: A Memoir of Healing by Clayton Thomas-Müller. There have been many Claytons: The child who played with toy planes as an escape from domestic and sexual abuse; the angry youngster who defended himself with fists and sharp wit against racism and violence; the tough teenager who managed a drug house run by his family, and slipped in and out of juvie, operating in a world of violence and pain. But behind them all, there was another Clayton: the one who remained immersed in Cree spirituality and who reconnected with the land during summer visits to his great-grandparents' trapline in his home territory of Pukatawagan in northern Manitoba. And it's this version of Clayton that ultimately triumphed, finding healing by directly facing the trauma that he shares with Indigenous peoples around the world.

Junior Fiction
Firefly by Philippa Dowding. Firefly lived in the park across from her mother's home. It was safer there. But after the bad night happens, and her baseball-bat-wielding mother is taken away, Social Services sends Firefly to live with her Aunt Gayle. She hardly knows Gayle but discovers that she owns a costume shop. Yes, Firefly might be suffering from PTSD, but she can get used to taking baths, sleeping on a bed again, and wearing as many costumes as she can to school. But where is "home"? What is "family"? Who is Firefly, for that matter ... and which costume is the real one?

Junior Easy
I’m Trying to Love Garbage written and illustrated by Bethany Barton. Do you ever wonder where we put all our garbage, who gets rid of it, or how our planet isn't a big pile of mess? I'm Trying to Love Garbage has all the answers! From scavengers to detritivore to decomposers, nature's garbage collectors are everywhere. But humans play an important role too. With Bethany Barton's trademark balance of informative and hilarious, readers will finish this picture book with a better awareness of the garbage they create and where it all ends up.
 

More New Books
The Becoming by Nora Roberts
Never by Ken Follett
The Stranger in the Lifeboat by Mitch Albom
Autopsy by Patricia Cornwell
Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone by Diana Gabaldon
The Midnight Lock by Jeffery Deaver
The Jam and Jelly Nook by Amy Clipston
Better Off Dead by Lee Child and Andrew Child
Klawde Evil Alien Emperor Cat: Revenge of the Kitten Queen by Johnny Marciano and Emily Chenoweth
Thunder and Cluck: The Brave Friend Leads the Way by Jill Esbaum, illustrated by Miles Thompson
The Last Kids on Earth and the Doomsday Race by Max Brallier, illustrated by Douglas Holgate
Change Sings: A Children’s Anthem by Amanda Gorman, pictures by Loren Long


 

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