Books and More

We at Becker Library would like to extend a sincere “thank you” to all our fantastic Book Fair volunteers, who helped the entire school “Rev Up for Reading.” In keeping with our race car theme, students, parents, and faculty were treated to a display of two classic Porsches and plenty of checkered flags and car images! The rainy, drizzly weather proved to be a boon to business, as many customers spent lots of time browsing and visiting. We are also grateful to Topher Bradfield of BookPeople for his enthusiastic classroom book talks. We applaud the great efforts of Chair Chas Studor and Chair-Elect Amanda Schmidt, along with all the great committee members. Take a victory lap!

Some of our best-selling books at the fair were (in no particular order):

Adult Fiction and Nonfiction

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
The Paris Wife by Paula McLain
State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne
Hotel at the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

Young Adult Fiction

Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi
The Apothecary by Maile Meloy and Ian Schoenherr
This Dark Endeavor by Kenneth Oppel
Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly

The Vespertine by Saundra Mitchell is a confection of a Victorian Gothic romance which contains lots of swoon-worthy elements: a late-19th Century Baltimore backdrop, young ladies of a slightly daring nature, lovely balls in society mansions, supernatural surprises, and…deathly visions.

Miss Amelia van den Broek of Maine travels to Maryland to spend a summer with her well-heeled relatives in order to improve her marriage prospects. She becomes especially close to her cousin, Zora, and their friendship blossoms with shared intrigue and social adventure. They quickly become confidantes as romantic prospects begin to appear around them.

Upon her arrival in Baltimore, Amelia meets and becomes enamored of a magnetic and quite ineligible bachelor artist. By society’s standards, this is a completely unacceptable and forbidden attraction, which doubles its enticement for her. Amelia also finds that she has a strange ability: she can access clear and accurate visions of others’ futures. What begins as a simple “parlor trick” quickly becomes much, much more complicated, as she realizes that her visions, some of which are ruinous and dark, are sought by those in the community wishing to know their fates. Reputations, lives, and the course of true love hang in the balance.

The Vespertine contains voluptuous prose and enough breathless (yet chaste) romance to satisfy anyone looking for a period love story. But there’s more than that: a shadowy and rebellious mood colors the novel and gives it bit more “bite” than one might expect! The Vespertine will be one of my highlighted selections at our upcoming Holiday Book Fair, scheduled for December 1st and 2nd in the Helm Lobby.

Cover image courtesy of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

I’ve just finished immersing myself in the world of Chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding, and I’m reluctant to move on. Set primarily on the campus of a small Wisconsin college on the shore of Lake Michigan, this novel is about baseball–but really about so much more. Henry Skrimshander comes to Westish College as an insecure but talented shortstop from small-town South Dakota; he’s brought there through the forceful confidence of his team captain, the bulky Mike Schwartz. Henry’s gay roommate is the gentle and loveable Owen Dunne, another surprisingly skilled member of the baseball team. The college president is the enigmatic Guert Affenlight, a Melville scholar who was a Westish undergraduate many years earlier; Guert’s daughter Pella returns to Westish after a long absence and becomes entangled with them all. The narrative brings the reader along on a compelling ride, in which we deduce more and more about both baseball and life.

The Herman Melville references have brought me to take another look at Moby-Dick. Ahhh, the joys of thought-provoking literature!

This novel is just one of the many books recommended by faculty members that will be available for sale at the Holiday Book Fair, Dec. 1 & 2 from 8 a.m. till 5 p.m. in the Helm Lobby!

Book cover courtesy of Little, Brown and Company.

With over 2,000 attendees this year, the 2011 Austin Teen Book Festival was the biggest and best ever! Keynote speaker and author Scott Westerfeld was featured prominently this year; his Leviathan trilogy inspired the theme of the day: Steampunk! Here’s the day in a nutshell: 28 authors presented and moderated panels, book sales were extremely brisk, costumed performers and teens rubbed shoulders. Kids of all ages donned hats, goggles, and retro accessories and posed in front of a “green screen” to be photoshopped into some fearsome steampunk scenes. Authors signed books for eager readers for over an hour. Original music was performed for excited book-buyers. Zombies did the “Thriller” dance to the delight of at least 800 onlookers. Sound like fun? IT WAS! Plan to make it next year! For more details on all the authors who attended, see: www.austinteenbookfestival.com

St. Stephen’s students act as special hosts for visiting authors

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Author Heather Brewer shows off a specially decorated book-cookie!

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Author Scott Westerfeld greets some creative types!

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Librarian Nita Shuffler and St. Stephen’s students enjoy the Festival

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Librarian Cynthia Bartek and volunteer coordinator: ATBF is totally volunteer-run!

Everyone, mark those calendars!
Austin Teen Book Festival
Saturday, October 1st
Palmer Events Center
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

INFO HERE: http://austinteenbookfestival.com
(See the “Authors” tab for the lineup of writers and book images)

This event is free and open to the public! Our keynote speaker this year is Scott Westerfeld, author of Pretties, Uglies, Leviathan, and other works. This is your chance to hear 29 young adult authors speak on panels, meet authors, purchase books and get them signed!

SEE YOU THERE!

It’s that time of year again! YALSA, the Young Adult division of the American Library Association, is calling all teen readers to vote for their TOP TEN favorites from a list of the standouts of 2011.

Teens can vote now through September 15th at this link: http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/yalsa/teenreading/teenstopten/teenstopten.cfm

Winners will be announced during Teen Read Week, October 16-22.

Even if you don’t want to vote, this is a GREAT place to go for fresh reading ideas!

Perhaps my favorite summer read this year is Ann Patchett’s State of Wonder. Through the eyes of scientist/physician Marina Singh, this novel brings us from Marina’s research lab in Minnesota all the way into Brazil’s deepest and darkest Amazon, as Marina is assigned to discover what happened to her beloved colleague who has died there. Patchett has done a marvelous job of combining sympathetic characters with strong plot and fascinating setting. I still find myself dreaming of snakes and arrows and impenetrable vegetation, along with wacky and loveable characters and heartbreaking decisions that are made along the way.

Geraldine Brooks has written another fine work of historical fiction, Caleb’s Crossing. The focus of this one, set primarily on Martha’s Vineyard and also in Boston, is the clash of cultures in the 17th Century between the native people and the English Puritans. Bethia Mayfield is the daughter of a minister who has come to the island to convert the natives. As a young and curious girl, the intrepid Bethia secretly befriends a young boy, son of a chief of the Wopanaak tribe. Through this story, the author has woven the known facts about the first Native American graduate of Harvard College, Caleb Cheeshahteaumauk. Brooks’s painstaking historical research and compelling storytelling give the reader an engaging insight into the lives and customs of the native people and of the settlers, and a strong picture of 1600’s Martha’s Vineyard (then known as Noepe) and Boston.

Sandwiched among my luxurious summer mysteries and memoirs, I found time to read a couple of wonderful new YA works of fiction–perfect for middle schoolers, and for many of the rest of us.

In Gary D. Schmidt’s Okay for Now, we follow the next year in the life of Doug Sweiteck–also the main character of Schmidt’s The Wednesday Wars. The year is 1968 and Doug’s insecure and unpredictable father has abruptly moved the family to Marysville, New York. Doug has many reasons to hate this move to the home he calls The Dump–and he must meanwhile manage life with his rebellious brother, his violent father, his sadness for his mother, the knowledge that his elder brother is fighting in Vietnam–and a devastating secret he wants to keep to himself. Lo and behold, a librarian finds a way to reach Doug–through the discovery of John James Audubon’s Birds of America. The local library’s copy of this masterpiece is missing several plates. Doug wants to bring the missing plates back; if he does, he just may find a way to put together the missing pieces of his own life.

In Stuck on Earth, by David Klass, the alien creature Ketchvar III is sent to earth to observe the planet and determine whether the human species should be eliminated in favor of superior beings whose planet will soon be destroyed. And guess what–he is instructed to inhabit the brain of a random 14-year-old boy. This boy happens to be the bullied teenager Tom Filber. An unlikely scenario, you say? That’s exactly what Tom thought, too. And when Ketchvar III began his project, he felt sure that humans were in fact not fit to live. Tom’s life was filled with teenaged tormenters, unhappy parents, a despised older sister, and a painful longing for his neighbor Michelle–not to mention a suspicion of what is causing the pollution of the nearby river. Tom is beginning to speak in ways that his family and peers hardly recognize, though some suspect he’s hiding from his fears in a fantasy alien world. Which is it? Read and decide for yourself.

Book covers courtesy Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and Farrar Straus Giroux

Sorry for the bad pun - but since summer is here, what better time to engulf yourself in a terrific nonfiction read? (Okay, I’ll stop now)!

Susan Casey’s The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks, and Giants of the Ocean has topped “best nonfiction” lists since its publication last year, and rightly so. It is a hugely entertaining book of vast scope, attempting to address all aspects of the giant waves that were not believed to exist even a few decades ago.

The author gives readers a close-up examination of the most famous and deadly breaks in Hawaii, Tahiti, off the coast of Baja California, and in Northern California. These massive office building-size waves, the tallest of which stand over 100 feet, are well known to a few intrepid world class surfers. In the course of her research for the book, Ms. Casey actually donned a wetsuit, rode in boats and on jetskis, and interviewed elite surfers, particularly Laird Hamilton, in an effort to capture the fearsomeness, beauty, and vicious power of these behemoths of the ocean. Readers will come away with a great appreciation for the level of daring and competence it takes for these surfers to be towed into the faces of waves which, if negotiated badly, could result in gruesome death.

The Wave alternates between surfing narrative and more informational pieces involving weather tracking and wave prediction (the lucrative big-wave surfing industry depends on meterological accuracy), and the destructive power of rogue waves which wreak havoc on shipping and oil platform businesses. A fascinating chapter in which a representative of Lloyd’s of London is interviewed addresses the prevalence of inexplicable losses of ships on the high seas, and also recounts stories of storms at sea and freak waves resulting in maritime disaster.

This book will be quite interesting to armchair scientists, as the author has gone to great lengths to interview professionals about not only the physical properties of waves and tsunami surges, but also the idea that the seas are behaving differently than in the recent past - the likely cause being the phenomenon of global warming.

The Wave is a perfect package of science at its most exciting blended with a big dose of surfer culture. Go catch it!

Book cover image courtesy of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Thursday, April 14th was a big day for eleven of our Upper School students, who got to attend the statewide Texas Library Association conference as part of a sponsored event known as TT4L (Texas Teens for Libraries)! Our day started at the Austin Convention Center with a panel of Young Adult authors, including James Dashner, Jordan Sonnenblick, and Cinda Williams Chima. After that, we proceeded en masse to the trade show/exhibit hall and browsed, picked up a few free books, and had a quick lunch.

After that, we headed straight to the Teen VIP Room, where students got to meet a favorite author, David Levithan. Big thrills! We also met a variety of other authors in the Teen Room throughout the afternoon.

We concluded our day with a panel of teens reviewing books (both live and in a digital format), and a quick side trip to get books signed. We had an excellent adventure, and nothing could make this librarian happier than seeing young people immersing themselves in the library world!

Many thanks to the Friends of Becker Library for providing the funds to make this day a reality!

Our library just received a BIG new shipment of books last week! Your librarians are always on the lookout for the best of the newly published works. Here are just a very few…stop by and browse our collection!

City Farmer: Adventures in Urban Food Growing by Lorraine Johnson - “celebrates the new ways that urban dwellers are reimagining cities as places of food production…”

The Art of Immersion by Frank Rose - How the digital generation is remaking Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and the way we tell stories

Swamplandia! by Karen Russell - an inventive, original novel about a declining gator-wrestling dynasty(!)in the Florida Everglades. This book, with its quirky cast of characters, is getting lots of buzz!

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness - a top-selling novel for those who enjoy a blending of magic, history and “fantastical beings.” Otherworldly!

Matched by Ally Condie - This Young Adult novel has been given lots of shining reviews. It’s a story of a controlling society in which “officials” decide all the details…who you love. Where your work. When you die.

Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi - This is the brand-new Printz award-winning Young Adult novel. It’s a “top-notch dystopian thriller” and a “riveting tale of adventure in a broken world.” Can’t wait to read this one!

Are you in the mood for something angsty, tinged with gothic elements, and more than a little Twilight-esque? Also containing lots of references to the works of Edgar Allan Poe? This is the one for you!

Nevermore is an intriguing and classic story of star-crossed lovers…a subdued, elegant goth guy with plenty of shady secrets meets a high-achieving, socially active cheerleader. Yes, that’s right! After being forced into a cooperative English assignment with the distant, yet magnetic Varen Nethers, perky Isobel Lanley is mortified. She doesn’t particularly want to associate with someone from this fringe of the social landscape, and she knows her controlling boyfriend will give her grief about her spending time with Varen. The only problem is…the almost instantaneous bond of attraction she feels for him. The English assignment which brings the unlikely pair together is to be based on the works of a famous author, and predictably enough, Varen chooses to study Edgar Allan Poe.

Readers of Nevermore will be immersed in the lore and psychological landscape of Poe. Author Kelly Creagh has created a believable high school setting, which occasionally takes flights of fancy into an alternate half-waking dream world in which characters can shift in and out of reality, materialize, and disappear. The more connected Isobel is to Varen, the more confused and off-center she begins to feel, not only because of the social fallout, but also because of the sinister paranormal occurrences which are obviously related to her relationship with him.

This book is almost irresistible; I had a hard time putting it down! Readers will enjoy the mysterious elements and the unravelling of realism into something truly fantastic, but even if paying close attention, may be perplexed by all the details. There are certainly a lot of Poe-related references here, too…(Varen, anyone)? (Anagram for: Raven)! And Nethers? Bet you can come up with something about that. Romantic to the core, this book will undoubtedly cause some readers to wait eagerly for a sequel. As the Magic 8 Ball would say, “It is Certain.”

-Cover Image Courtesy of Atheneum Books for Young Readers