Lists
by Kim Tano and Madeline Shier, July 9, 2021 10:27 AM
Disability Pride Month isn’t yet nationally recognized, but a number of cities across the country hold annual Disability Pride parades in July, the month in which the Americans with Disabilities Act was first signed into law in 1990. That same year Boston hosted the first Disability Pride Day.
For Disability Pride Month 2021, we have put together a collection of children’s and teen books that honor people of various abilities. For more titles for young people that honor the disability experience in literature, we recommend books from the Schneider Family Book Awards list presented by the American Library Association Youth Media Awards...
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Q&As
by Elias Rodriques, June 29, 2021 3:57 PM
Photo credit: Jourdan Christopher
What led you to write this book?
I began writing this book just after a good friend of mine from high school passed away in the fall of 2015. I had not been in touch with the friend in years at the time of her passing, and I didn’t expect her death to devastate me; after all, we hadn’t really been friends, not in the sense that friends are people who talk, in a long time. But the day I heard the news, my mood dropped. Over the next while, I didn’t want to talk to anyone or go outside or go to work. I just wanted to stay in my room and watch TV, which I didn’t even like doing. Whenever I went outside, I fantasized about sneaking away without telling anyone, about hopping on a local bus to 30th Street Station and then a long-distance bus to some city where I didn’t know anyone...
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Ask Aunt Paige
by Aunt Paige, June 24, 2021 10:29 AM
Summer vacation started about a week ago, and if your life is anything like that of the parents I know, it's become a montage to the tune of "I'm bored. I want a snack. I'm booorrred. Can I have a popsicle? I'm boooorrreeed." Beautiful and soothing though this tune is, you need a respite (if not a margarita) and Aunt Paige is here for you.
Summertime is the ideal time to invest in a hammock and a stack of books. But kids' books and getting kids reading aren't challenge-free subjects. Here are some of the most common questions I get asked about what children should read and when...
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Interviews
by Rhianna Walton, June 23, 2021 10:04 AM
It’s hard to introduce award-winning novelist Rivka Galchen’s latest work, Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch, without eclipsing some aspect of its value and achievement. It’s hilarious, in a way I didn’t think possible when the subject is the real-life persecution of astronomer Johannes Kepler’s elderly mother. It’s relatable, in a way I didn’t think possible when the setting is 17th-century Germany on the cusp of the Thirty Years’ War. And it’s poignant and philosophical, an examination of motherhood, neighborhood, science, magic, and culpability that I knew possible only because I’ve read Galchen before and was prepared for her singular ability to breathe life, logic, and beauty into the absurd. To quote Karen Russell, "I need no witchcraft to predict it will astonish, beguile, and transform you." It's very exciting to present Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch as Volume 92 of Indiespensable...
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Lists
by Jeremy Garber, June 22, 2021 11:46 AM
Seaside or poolside, hiking or biking, on the road or off from work, June brings not only the start of summer (for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere), but, ideally, more leisure time to indulge the season’s easy livin’ — which, of course, is always better with a book. Among this month’s bounty of literature in translation, we have a brilliant, diaristic Mexican novel, a Bosnian generational epic, Flemish historical fiction, early 20th-century Hindi short stories, Patti Smith-approved Argentine lit, Tolstoy-inspired tales from Brazil, a Norwegian existential novel, Cuban detective fiction, an utterly sublime work from post-Arab Spring Egypt, and more...
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Lists
by Powell's Staff, June 15, 2021 8:59 AM
As a collective, our reading runs the gamut from YA romance to music theory to fiction in translation, so it's no surprise that the 21 books in our annual midyear roundup are eclectic and unexpected. Discover a fantasy reimagining of The Great Gatsby, a ribald picaresque, an exploration of Ojibwe culture, and even some karma in the list below.
Firekeeper's Daughter (March 2021)
by Angeline Boulley
Wow, this debut novel is so well crafted, I cannot recommend it enough! After Daunis loses her uncle, she is approached by an undercover agent to investigate a drug ring in her community. On top of the mystery, there is romance, exploration of family, community, and the Ojibwe culture...
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Lists
by Kim Tano and Madeline Shier, June 11, 2021 8:57 AM
2019 marked the 50th anniversary of the Stonewell uprising, demonstrations against the 1969 police raid on the Stonewall Inn gay bar. That uprising was a watershed moment in LGBTQ+ history, and led to annual Pride celebrations in the month of June. As cities around the U.S. and the world tentatively reopen for Pride celebrations this year, we wanted to take a moment to celebrate the visible growth in LGBTQ+ titles available for kids and teens.
Where in the past we've had to make due with a few old faithful standards ( Heather Has Two Mommies continues to be a nostalgic classic), we're thrilled that in recent years, and this year in particular, we had a difficult time narrowing our list of recommended LGBTQ+ kids’ and teen titles. We're especially thrilled to see more and more unique identities, intersectional identities, and Own Voices narratives represented on these shelves...
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Original Essays
by Aiden Thomas, June 7, 2021 9:01 AM
My debut novel, Cemetery Boys, is the first fiction book about a trans character written by a trans author to ever hit the New York Times bestseller list. It’s taken far too long for that to happen, and it’s certainly not going to be the last.
A common question I got asked when I entered publishing was, “When was the first time you saw yourself in a book?” There was always a moment of panic where I’d race to think of a book that had one aspect of my identity that I could use as an answer.
The sad truth is that according to media, people like me (Latinx, transgender, and queer) didn’t exist. When I was growing up, I thought there wasn’t a place for me in publishing. I never saw Latinx characters in books, let alone ones that were queer, and certainly not trans. While there’s still a huge need for more diverse stories in the world, finally having books that reflected parts of my identity ( Labyrinth Lost by Zoraida Córdova being a huge one) is what made me think I could finally write a book like Cemetery Boys, and people would want to read it...
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Lists
by Keith Mosman, June 1, 2021 8:47 AM
Happy Pride!
When offered the chance to write a post highlighting some LGBTQ+ titles, I knew I wanted to show how broadly our stories are disbursed throughout the bookstore, often in categories you might not expect. Because, to borrow a title from Leighton Brown’s and Matthew Riemer’s beautiful history of queer liberation: We Are Everywhere.
I’ve focused on recently published nonfiction, because, well, there’s been a lot going on and these books didn’t get the attention they deserved. I feel a real kinship with these titles because, like me, they came out at a difficult time...
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Lists
by Michelle Carroll, May 26, 2021 9:32 AM
Way back in April of 2020, I attended a virtual panel called The Asian American Experience. Cathy Park Hong, Kevin Nguyen, and Mira Jacob were phenomenal, and I’d highly recommend watching the recording of the event. Because it was the early days of all-virtual-everything, there were some technical difficulties as the event was kicking off, and a magical thing happened: the attendees started enthusiastically recommending books to each other.
This list is inspired by that excited energy, but a little more homegrown. These are the titles that keep popping up in my group chats, and that make my phone overheat because everyone wants to talk about them...
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