Did you know that we have two parent/child book clubs every month at the Provo City Library? They are for children ages 9-12 and a caregiver. This month, they will meet virtually on Zoom on March 23 (girls) and March 25 (guys). Pre-register under the Kids Corner/Program Registration tab on the library website and then pick up a copy of the book and a packet with a take home craft at the Children's Desk. We have two great books to discuss this month:
After her father and her autistic brother Ben are killed in an accident, twelve-year-old Cedar Lee moves to a small Utah town called Iron Creek for the summer as she, her mother, and her younger brother Miles regroup and cope with their grief. Not long after arriving, Cedar meets Leo, a boy obsessed with theater, the town's summertime Shakespeare festival, and the mysterious disappearance of a famous local actress named Lisette Chamberlain. Together, Leo and Cedar work at the Summerlost Shakespeare festival and run unauthorized Lisette Chamberlain tours in their free time. This is a story about loss, grief, and friendship set against a background of quirky theater folks, the story is rounded out by the mystery of what happened to Lisette Chamberlain. That this novel is written by Utah author Ally Condie is just the cherry on top.
All Jordan Banks wants to do is draw cartoons in his sketchbook and go to a special arts school. But when he finds out that he is smart enough to get into the prestigious Riverdale Academy Day School, his parents insist that he goes. For Jordan, that means riding a bus from his apartment in Washington Heights all the way to R.A.D., a place where his classmates wear salmon colored shorts and have butlers and drivers and his homeroom teacher keeps calling the black students by the wrong name because she can't tell them apart. Jordan's new school, where he is one of only a handful of Black students, is filled with microaggressions and sometimes overt racism but also by a new group of friends. This an engaging graphic novel with a good dose of humor that is sure to open doors to more discussion. New Kid is the first graphic novel to win the Newbery medal, come to Guys Read to find out why.
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