Arts & Entertainment

Patch Picks: Best Books for National Read Across America Day

Librarians offer suggestions for adults, children and teens

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This week, Cuyahoga County Public Library Mayfield Branch employees Aaron Schlesinger, public services supervisor, and Deborah Todd, public services supervisor/youth, offer suggestions on what to read today for National Read Across America Day.

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For adults:

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother – Amy Chua

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From Publishers Weekly – Chua (Day of Empire) imparts the secret behind the stereotypical Asian child's phenomenal success: the Chinese mother. Chua promotes what has traditionally worked very well in raising children: strict, Old World, uncompromising values – and the parents don't have to be Chinese. What they are, however, are different from what she sees as indulgent and permissive Western parents: stressing academic performance above all, never accepting a mediocre grade, insisting on drilling and practice, and instilling respect for authority.

Paris Wife – Paul McLain

From Booklist – History is sadly neglectful of the supporting players in the lives of great artists. Fortunately, fiction provides ample opportunity to bring these often fascinating personalities out into the limelight. Paula McLain brings Hadley Richardson Hemingway out from the formidable shadow cast by her famous husband. Though doomed, the Hemingway marriage had its giddy high points, including a whirlwind courtship and a few fast and furious years of the expatriate lifestyle in 1920s Paris. Hadley and Ernest traveled in heady company during this gin-soaked and jazz-infused time, and readers are treated to intimate glimpses of many of the literary giants of the era, including Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Room – Emma Donoghue

From Publishers Weekly – Five-year-old Jack and his Ma live and eat and play and sleep in one room – an 11-foot-by-11-foot space that is their prison – captives of the terrifying man Jack calls Old Nick. But as Jack grows older and more curious, it becomes clear that the room will not be able to hold him and Ma forever.

Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks – Rebecca Skloot

From Publishers Weekly – Science journalist Skloot makes a remarkable debut with this multilayered story about faith, science, journalism, and grace. It is also a tale of medical wonders and medical arrogance, racism, poverty and the bond that grows, sometimes painfully, between two very different women — Skloot and Deborah Lacks — sharing an obsession to learn about Deborah's mother, Henrietta, and her magical, immortal cells. Henrietta Lacks was a 31-year-old black mother of five in Baltimore when she died of cervical cancer in 1951. Without her knowledge, doctors treating her at Johns Hopkins took tissue samples from her cervix for research. They spawned the first viable, indeed miraculously productive, cell line — known as HeLa. These cells have aided in medical discoveries from the polio vaccine to AIDS treatments. What Skloot so poignantly portrays is the devastating impact Henrietta's death and the eventual importance of her cells had on her husband and children.

Skippy Dies – Paul Murray

From Booklist – It’s no spoiler to acknowledge that Skippy, the main character in Murray’s second novel, does indeed die, since the boy is a goner by page 5 of the prologue. In this darkly comic novel of adolescence (in some cases arrested), we also learn about the unexpected consequences of Skippy’s death, something of contemporary Irish life, and a great deal about the intersections of science and metaphysics and the ineluctable interconnectedness of the past and the present.

For children:

Dr. Seuss – anything by him is great

Llama Llama Red Pajama by Anna Dewdney or other Llama Llama titles

Fancy Nancy by Jane O’Conner or others in the series

Tarra and Bella: The Elephant and Dog who became Best Friends by Carol Buckley

Skippyjon Jones by Judith Byron Schachner  or other Skippyjon Jones titles

Chapter Books:

And then There were Gnomes by Colleen AF Venable

We the Children by Andrew Clements

The “Extraordinary” Mark Twain (according to Suzy)  by Barbara Kerley

Griff Carver, Hallway Patrol by Jim Krieg

My Life as a Book by Janet Tashjian

For teens:

As Easy as Falling Off the Face of the Earth by Lynne Rae Perkins

Outlaw: the Legend of Robin Hood: a Graphic Novel by Tony Lee

Three Black Swans by Caroline Cooney

Dear George Clooney, Please Marry My Mom by Susan Nielsen

Time Rider by Alex Scarrow


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