Check this out, at the library this week
Virtual Summer Reading Program- ‘Imagine Your Story' is open for registration, visit our website and click on the section “Summer Reading June 1-Aug. 5,” register your child by completing a registration online, downloading a paper copy or at the library.
Howard County Library is also excited to share that we are partnering with Usborne Books & More for our very own FREE Kids Camp series! Your kids will enjoy story time, hear from experts, and do hands-on experiments and art projects, after which you will be able to shop for books from the comfort of your home and 50% of each purchase will earn free books for Howard County Library! Parents/guardians will be able to print their camp guide packets or pick up at the library. Every week activity kits will be available for pickup at the library Mondays at 10 a.m.
Join us Tuesdays at 10 a.m. for Storyland and virtual performances on Wednesdays at 10 a.m. which can be watched on our Facebook page or Youtube channel. Sign up your child for a Code Club account and join us online on Thursdays, at 10 a.m., visit our website for sign up instructions. Fridays at 10 a.m. join us for Kids Camp. Information for stories, performances and updates on summer reading program will be posted on our websites, Facebook page, and our Youtube Channel “Howard County Library-big Spring TX,” under the playlist Imagine Your Story Summer Reading Program.
This week's reviews are fiction titles.
Nuri is a Beekeeper and Afra, his wife, is an artist in “The Beekeeper Of Alepo” (F LEE C) By Christy Lefteri. Mornings, Nuri rises early to hear the call to prayer before driving to his hives in the countryside. On weekends, Afra sells her colorful landscape paintings at the open air market. They live a simple life, rich in family and friends, in the hills of the beautiful Syrian city of Aleppo until the unthinkable happens. When all they love is destroyed by war, Nuri knows they have no choice except to leave their home. But escaping Syria will be no easy task: Afra has lost her sight, leaving Nuri to navigate her grief as well as a perilous journey through Turkey and Greece toward an uncertain future in Britain. Nuri is sustained only by the knowledge that waiting for them is his cousin Mustafa, who has started an apiary in Yorkshire and is teaching fellow refugee's beekeeping. As Nuri and Afra travel through a broken world, they must confront not only the pain of their own unspeakable loss but dangers that would overwhelm even the bravest souls. Above all, they must make the difficult journey back to each other a path once so familiar yet rendered foreign by the heartache of displacement.
Alix Chamberlain is a woman who gets what she wants and has made a living, with her confidence-driven brand, showing other women how to do the same in “Such A Fun Age” (F REI K) By Kiley Reid. So she is shocked when her babysitter, Emira Tucker, is confronted while watching the Chamberlains' toddler one night, walking the aisles of their local high-end supermarket. The store's security guard, seeing a young black woman out late with a white child, accuses Emira of kidnapping two-year-old Briar. A small crowd gathers, a bystander films everything, and Emira is furious and humiliated. Alix resolves to make things right. But Emira herself is aimless, broke, and wary of Alix's desire to help. At twenty-five, she is about to lose her health insurance and has no idea what to do with her life. When the video of Emira unearths someone from Alix's past, both women find themselves on a crash course that will upend everything they think they know about themselves, and each other. With empathy and piercing social commentary, Such a Fun Age explores the stickiness of transactional relationships, what it means to make someone "family," and the complicated reality of being a grown up.
Eli Bell's life is complicated in “Boy Swallows Universe” (F DAL T) By Trent Dalton. His father is lost, his mother is in jail, and his stepdad is a heroin dealer. The most steadfast adult in Eli's life is Slim a notorious felon and national record holder for successful prison escapes who watches over Eli and August, Eli's silent genius of an older brother. They are exiled far from the rest of the world in Darra, a neglected suburb of Brisbane, Australia. This twelve year old boy with an old soul and an adult mind is just trying to follow his heart, learn what it takes to be a good man, and train for a glamorous career in journalism. Life, however insists on throwing obstacles in Eli's path most notably Tytus Broz, Queensland's legendary drug dealer. But the real trouble lies ahead. Eli is about to fall in love, face off against truly bad guys, and fight to save his mother from certain doom all before starting high school.
The folks of Troublesome Creek have to scrap for everything except for books, in “The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek” (F RIC K) By Kim Michele Richardson. Thanks to Roosevelt's Kentucky Pack Horse Library Project, Troublesome's got its very own traveling librarian, Cussy Mary Carter. Cussy's not only a book woman, however; she's also the last of her kind, her skin a shade of blue unlike most anyone else. Not everyone is keen on Cussy's family or the government's new book program, and along her treacherous route, Cussy faces doubters at every turn. If Cussy wants to bring joy of books to the complex and hardscrabble Kentuckians, she's going to have to confront dangers and prejudice as old as the Appalachias, and suspicion. Inspired by the true blue skinned people of Kentucky and the brave and dedicated Kentucky Pack Horse Library service of the 1930s, and one woman's belief that books can carry us anywhere even back home.
“Let us remember: One book, one pen, one child, and one teacher can change the world.” – Malala Yousafzai
Howard County Library is open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, for Grab & Go access to the library. Customers have 30 minutes to browse the shelves, checkout items, make copies and send a fax, an appointment is still required to use a computer. Please visit our website at http:// howard-county.ploud.net and our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/howardcolibrary for more information. You may reach us at 432-264-2260 and our fax number is 432-264-2263.