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The American Library Association just announced the top youth books and media of 2021, including the Robert F. Siebert Informational Book Medal. This award goes to the most distinguished Non-fiction titles  for children each year.

To find past award winners in our catalog or to check availability, do a title search for Robert F. Siebert. For more information about this award and its current and past recipients, check the ALA website.

Help us recognize these honorees and winners by checking one out today.

2021 Medal Winner

Boys and girls holding hands encircling a small world with braille at bottom describing image

Schneider Family Book Awards honor an author or illustrator for a book that embodies an artistic expression of the disability experience for child and adolescent audiences.
Click here for the Schneider Family Book Award Manual (PDF)
Bibliography of Children's Books about the Disability Experience (pdf)

Younger Children Winner

Social Media from Pixabay

Since 2004, social media has played a big role in our culture. But when the pandemic began last year, almost overnight it took on a whole new life of its own. Just like that we had to use Zoom to get together with our family or friends instead of meeting in-person. We logged onto our computers or laptops to work remotely from home. Our kids logged onto Zoom for school sessions. Did you know that your library presents virtual programming!!? Video conferencing services like Zoom, Facebook Live and Youtube has become the world's most popular social network. Whenever the pandemic is over, will things go back to normal or we will prefer to continue remotely? Who knows? Need help navigating through the avalanche of the social media landscape? Check out these resources!

Feeling overwhelmed by an avalanche of online content? Anxious about identity theft? Unsettled by the proliferation of fake news? Welcome to the digital revolution. Wait-wasn't the digital revolution supposed to make our lives better? It was going to be fun and put the world at our fingertips. What happened? Keep Calm and Log On is a survival handbook that will help you achieve online mindfulness and overcome online helplessness-the feeling that tech is out of your control-with tips for handling cybersecurity, creepy ads, untrustworthy information, and much more.
Taking a cue from the famous World War II morale-boosting slogan ("Keep Calm and Carry On"), Gus Andrews shows us how to adapt the techniques our ancestors used to survive hard times, so we can live our best lives online. She explains why media and technology stress us out, and offers empowering tools for coping. Mindfulness practices can help us stay calm and conserve our attention purposefully. Andrews shares the secret of understanding our own opinions'' "family trees" in order to identify misleading "fake news." She provides tools for unplugging occasionally, overcoming feelings that we are "bad at technology," and taking charge of our security and privacy. Andrews explains how social media algorithms keep us from information we need and why "creepy ads" seem to follow us online. Most importantly, she urges us to work to rebuild the trust in our communities that the internet has broken.

Favorite books of 2020 according to CPL librarians.

Fiction

A modern retelling of the Bigfoot legend is presented as a gripping journal by a woman from a high-tech Pacific Northwest community who becomes cut off from civilization by a volcanic eruption before witnessing the flight of starving humanoid beings.

If you enjoy John Sanford, Vince Flynn, Lee Child, or David Rosenfelt try one of these suggestions of gripping mysteries with great characters. Many are part of ongoing series.

American spy : a novel by Lauren Wilkinson
Also available in: e-book | e-audiobook

It's 1986, the heart of the Cold War, and Marie Mitchell is an intelligence officer with the FBI. She's brilliant, but she's also a young black woman working in an old boys' club. Her career has stalled and her days are filled with monotonous paperwork. So when she's given the opportunity to join a shadowy task force aimed at undermining Thomas Sankara, the charismatic revolutionary president of Burkina Faso whose Communist ideology has made him a target for American intervention, she says yes.

Bad monkey by Carl Hiaasen
Also available in: e-book | audiobook

Andrew Yancy--late of the Miami Police and soon-to-be-late of the Monroe County sheriff's office--has a human arm in his freezer. There's a logical explanation for that, but not for how and why it parted from its shadowy owner. For more Andrew Yancy, check out Razor Girl.

In 1963, Apted was a 22-year-old Cambridge law student from southeast England who aspired to be a filmmaker. He found a job as a researcher for a TV documentary called Seven Up! ...The documentary evolved into a pioneering social experiment. Every seven years, the filmmakers checked in with the children as they aged. Over nine episodes, the subjects — originally 14 of them — found careers, experienced heartbreak and success, got married and divorced and in some cases, died. - NPR

You can find all episodes of Apted's "UP" series at the library as well as his other critically-acclaimed films.

Also available in: e-video

The latest installment of ITV's landmark documentary series returns to visit the people whose lives have been followed since they were just seven-years-old. The original '7 Up' was broadcast in 1964 as a one-off World in Action Special featuring children chosen from different backgrounds to talk about their hopes and dreams for the future...Director Michael Apted, who has since moved to Hollywood to direct films including 'The World Is Not Enough' and 'Gorillas in the Mist', has returned every seven years to chart the children's progress through life.

The life of the "Queen of Country Music" from her backwoods Appalachia home to the Grand Ole Opry and super stardom.

Black Bottom saints : a novel by 1959- Alice Randall
Also available in: e-book | audiobook

An enthralling literary tour-de-force that pays tribute to Detroit's legendary neighborhood, a mecca for jazz, sports, and politics, Black Bottom Saints is a powerful blend of fact and imagination reminiscent of E.L. Doctorow's classic novel Ragtime and Marlon James' Man Booker Award-winning masterpiece, A Brief History of Seven Killings. From the Great Depression through the post-World War II years, Joseph "Ziggy" Johnson, has been the pulse of Detroit's famous Black Bottom. A celebrated gossip columnist for the city's African-American newspaper, the Michigan Chronicle, he is also the emcee of one of the hottest night clubs, where he's rubbed elbows with the legendary black artists of the era, including Ethel Waters, Billy Eckstein, and Count Basie. Ziggy is also the founder and dean of the Ziggy Johnson School of Theater. But now the doyen of Black Bottom is ready to hang up his many dapper hats. As he lays dying in the black-owned-and-operated Kirkwood Hospital, Ziggy reflects on his life, the community that was the center of his world, and the remarkable people who helped shape it. Inspired by the Catholic Saints Day Books, Ziggy curates his own list of Black Bottom's venerable "52 Saints." Among them are a vulnerable Dinah Washington, a defiant Joe  Louis, and a raucous Bricktop. Randall balances the stories of these larger-than-life "Saints" with local heroes who became household names, enthralling men and women whose unstoppable ambition, love of style, and faith in community made this black Midwestern neighborhood the rival of New York City's Harlem. Accompanying these "tributes" are thoughtfully paired cocktails--special drinks that capture the essence of each of Ziggy's saints--libations as strong and satisfying as Alice Randall's wholly original view of a place and time unlike any other.

Also available in: e-book

From Ty Cobb and Hank Greenberg to the Bad Boys, from Joe Louis and Gordie Howe to the Malice at the Palace, City of Champions explores the history of Detroit through the stories of its most gifted athletes and most celebrated teams, linking iconic events in the history of Motown sports to the city's shifting fortunes. . Driven by the conviction that sports not only mirror society but also have a special power to create both community and enduring narratives that help define a city s sense of self, City of Champions is a unique history of the most American of cities. 

Also available in: e-book

Les Payne, the renowned Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, embarked in 1990 on a nearly thirty-year-long quest to interview anyone he could find who had actually known Malcolm X--all living siblings of the Malcolm Little family, classmates, street friends, cellmates, Nation of Islam figures, FBI moles and cops, and political leaders around the world. His goal was ambitious: to transform what would become over a hundred hours of interviews into an unprecedented portrait of Malcolm X, one that would separate fact from fiction. The result is this historic biography that conjures a never-before-seen world of its protagonist, a work whose title is inspired by a phrase Malcolm X used when he saw his Hartford followers stir with purpose, as if the dead were truly arising, to overcome the obstacles of racism. Setting Malcolm's life not only within the Nation of Islam but against the larger backdrop of American history, the book traces the life of one of the twentieth century's most politically relevant figures "from street criminal to devoted moralist and revolutionary. "In tracing Malcolm X's life from his Nebraska birth in 1925 to his Harlem assassination in 1965, Payne provides searing vignettes culled from Malcolm's Depression-era youth, describing the influence of his Garveyite parents: his father, Earl, a circuit-riding preacher who was run over by a street car in Lansing, Michigan, in 1929, and his mother, Louise, who continued to instill black pride in her children after Earl's death. Filling each chapter with resonant drama, Payne follows Malcolm's exploits as a petty criminal in Boston and Harlem in the 1930s and early 1940s to his religious awakening and conversion to the Nation of Islam in a Massachusetts penitentiary. With a biographer's unwavering determination, Payne corrects the historical record and delivers extraordinary revelations--from the unmasking of the mysterious NOI founder "Fard Muhammad," who preceded Elijah Muhammad; to a hair-rising scene, conveyed in cinematic detail, of Malcolm and Minister Jeremiah X Shabazz's 1961 clandestine meeting with the KKK; to a minute-by-minute account of Malcolm X's murder at the Audubon Ballroom. Introduced by Payne's daughter and primary researcher, Tamara Payne, who, following her father's death, heroically completed the biography, The Dead Are Arising is a penetrating and riveting work that affirms the centrality of Malcolm X to the African American freedom struggle.

In 1998, Congress extended the date of copyright expiration for works published between 1923 and 1977 to 95 years. So as of this year, many great works originally published in 1925 are now part of the public domain, accessible to free legal use. Check out some of these 96 yr old titles and find out why they're still on reading lists and influencing popular culture.

Books

The Great Gatsby : the graphic novel by 1985- adaptor Fred Fordham
Also available in: print | audiobook | video | e-music

Jay Gatsby had once loved beautiful, spoiled Daisy Buchanan, then lost her to a rich boy. Now, mysteriously wealthy, he is ready to risk everything to woo her back.

Reader Wearing a Medical Mask - Photo by Mat Reding on Unsplash

 

 

 

During this pandemic year, some of our book club members found that they had extra time to do extra reading, while others found themselves suffering from a lack of focus. Some discovered new formats and found books to help them on new journeys, while others turned to old favorites. Regardless of the reading challenges of 2020, here are the recommendations from the Lunch and a Book Club of some of the best books they read this year.

 

 

Masked Reader - Photo by Mat Reding on Unsplash

Fiction

What better way to enjoy the chilly, snowy days to come than curled up with a good book? These nonfiction picks are great for winter evenings full of quiet contemplation.

Books for living by Will Schwalbe

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