e-Librarianship

My first attempt at electronic booktalks, soon to appear on http://www.oremlibrary.org:


Noisy Outlaws, Unfriendly Blobs, and Some Other Things That Aren't as Scary, Maybe, Depending on How You Feel About Lost Lands, Stray Cellphones, Creatures from the Sky, Parents Who Disappear in Peru, a Man Named Lars Farf, and One Other Story We Couldn't Quite Finish, So Maybe You Could Help Us Out by Nick Hornby, Neil Gaiman, Jon Scieszka, Jonathan Safran Foer, and more, with an introduction & almost half a story by Lemony Snicket.

Warning: this book does not contain tedious stories. And just what are tedious stories, you ask? In his introduction to Noisy Outlaws, Lemony Snicket explains that tedious stories are "something you may have to read in school." The stories in this collection, on the other hand, are wacky, hilarious, adventurous, and above all, loads of fun. If you liked The Series of Unfortunate Events, Coraline, or The Stinky Cheese Man, this book is for you.


Inexcusable by Chris Lynch.

"The way it looks is not the way it is." Keir, a straight-A high school graduate on his way to college on a football scholarship, has been accused of something horrible: raping the girl he loves, Gigi Boudakian. In Inexcusable, Keir recounts the months leading up to this devastating moment in hopes of convincing you--and himself--that he is innocent. Chris Lynch writes a fascinating first-person narrative in this twist on the all-too-familiar story of teenage date rape.

Dark Sons by Nikki Grimes.

Am I replaceable? In Dark Sons, Nikki Grimes tells the parallel stories of Sam, whose father has married a white woman and started a new family with her, and Ishmael, who watches painfully as his half-brother Isaac replaces him in the eyes and heart of their father, Abraham. Grimes's poetic verse breathes life into the Biblical story of Ishmael as well as the modern story of Sam, as both boys struggle to find their new places in their families and with God.