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Ain't Burned All The Bright

Jason Reynolds and Jason Griffin

Prepare yourself for something unlike anything: A smash-up of art and text for teens that viscerally captures what it is to be Black. In America. Right Now. Written by #1 New York Times bestselling and award-winning author Jason Reynolds.

Jason Reynolds and his best bud, Jason Griffin had a mind-meld. And they decided to tackle it, in one fell swoop, in about ten sentences, and 300 pages of art, this piece, this contemplation-manifesto-fierce-vulnerable-gorgeous-terrifying-WhatIsWrongWithHumans-hope-filled-hopeful-searing-Eye-Poppingly-Illustrated-tender-heartbreaking-how-The-HECK-did-They-Come-UP-with-This project about oxygen. And all of the symbolism attached to that word, especially NOW.

And so for anyone who didn’t really know what it means to not be able to breathe, REALLY breathe, for generations, now you know. And those who already do, you’ll be nodding yep yep, that is exactly how it is.

Booked Solid Podcast

SHOW CONTRIBUTORS: Samantha Connell | Kathleen Crouse

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Crafts

Creativebug Login | Login Instructions | The "Altered Books" Project

Experience the joy of making with thousands of award-winning video classes taught by top designers and artists. Keep your hands active and your mind engaged with inspiration, ideas, and daily practice exercises all accessed from home with your library card barcode! Enjoy unlimited access to thousands of online art and craft classes. Watch classes anytime, anywhere. Since classes never expire, you can start and stop projects at your own pace on an easy-to-use, personalized platform.

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Gender Queer

Maia Kobabe

In 2014, Maia Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, thought that a comic of reading statistics would be the last autobiographical comic e would ever write. At the time, it was the only thing e felt comfortable with strangers knowing about em. Now, Gender Queer is here. Maia’s intensely cathartic autobiography charts eir journey of self-identity, which includes the mortification and confusion of adolescent crushes, grappling with how to come out to family and society, bonding with friends over erotic gay fanfiction, and facing the trauma and fundamental violation of pap smears.

Started as a way to explain to eir family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual, Gender Queer is more than a personal story: it is a useful and touching guide on gender identity—what it means and how to think about it—for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere.

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SHOW CONTRIBUTORS: Samantha Connell | Kathleen Crouse

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The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

V.E. Schwab

With her signature wit and deliciously wicked imagination, V. E. Schwab is one author we just can’t get enough of. In The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, prepare to be mesmerized by Addie — our unflappable heroine, cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets after agreeing to a Faustian bargain, and left to answer the question: “What is a person, if not the marks they leave behind?” What follows is a story as creative and unforgettable as Addie herself.

Booked Solid Podcast

SHOW CONTRIBUTORS: Samantha Connell | Kathleen Crouse

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Genuine Fraud

E. Lockhart

Imogen lives at the Playa Grande Resort in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. She spends her days working out in the hotel gym and telling other guests how she was forced out of Stanford.

But Imogen isn't really Imogen. She's Jule. And she's on the run from something. Or someone. Which means . . . where is the real Imogen?

Rewind: Jule and Imogen are the closest of friends. Obsessed with each other, even. Imogen is an orphan, an heiress; she and Jule spend a summer together in a house on Martha's Vineyard, sharing secrets they'd never reveal to another soul.

But that was months ago. Where is Immie now? And why is Jule using her name?

Booked Solid Podcast

SHOW CONTRIBUTORS: Samantha Connell | Kathleen Crouse

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The Midnight Library

Matt Haig

In The Midnight Library, Matt Haig's enchanting blockbuster novel, Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision. Faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist; she must search within herself as she travels through the Midnight Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place.

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SHOW CONTRIBUTORS: Samantha Connell | Kathleen Crouse

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The House in the Cerulean Sea

T.J. Klune

A thoroughly enchanting novel that follows lovable Arthur, the caretaker of magical misfit orphans from around the world. Full of whimsy, romance, and a touch of intrigue, The House in the Cerulean Sea will make you smile from the first word to the very last.

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SHOW CONTRIBUTORS
Michelle Luhtala | New Canaan High School Library Department Chair (Special Guest)
Samantha Connell
Kathleen Crouse

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Another Brooklyn

Jacqueline Woodson

Running into a long-ago friend sets memory from the 1970s in motion for August, transporting her to a time and a place where friendship was everything—until it wasn’t. For August and her girls, sharing confidences as they ambled through neighborhood streets, Brooklyn was a place where they believed that they were beautiful, talented, brilliant—a part of a future that belonged to them.

But beneath the hopeful veneer, there was Another Brooklyn, a dangerous place where grown men reached for innocent girls in dark hallways, where ghosts haunted the night, where mothers disappeared. A world where madness was just a sunset away and fathers found hope in religion.

Jacqueline Woodson’s Another Brooklyn heartbreakingly illuminates the formative time when childhood gives way to adulthood—the promise and peril of growing up—and exquisitely renders a powerful, indelible, and fleeting friendship that united four young lives.

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SHOW CONTRIBUTORS
Laura Cavers (Special Guest)
Samantha Connell
Kathleen Crouse

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Dread Nation

Justina Ireland

Jane McKeene was born two days before the dead began to walk the battlefields of Gettysburg and Chancellorsville—derailing the War Between the States and changing America forever. In this new nation, safety for all depends on the work of a few, and laws like the Native and Negro Reeducation Act require certain children attend combat schools to learn to put down the dead. But there are also opportunities—and Jane is studying to become an Attendant, trained in both weaponry and etiquette to protect the well-to-do. It’s a chance for a better life for Negro girls like Jane. After all, not even being the daughter of a wealthy white Southern woman could save her from society’s expectations.

But that’s not a life Jane wants. Almost finished with her education at Miss Preston’s School of Combat in Baltimore, Jane is set on returning to her Kentucky home and doesn’t pay much mind to the politics of the eastern cities, with their talk of returning America to the glory of its days before the dead rose. But when families around Baltimore County begin to go missing, Jane is caught in the middle of a conspiracy, one that finds her in a desperate fight for her life against some powerful enemies. And the restless dead, it would seem, are the least of her problems.

At once provocative, terrifying, and darkly subversive, Dread Nation is Justina Ireland’s stunning vision of an America both foreign and familiar—a country on the brink, at the explosive crossroads where race, humanity, and survival meet.

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SHOW CONTRIBUTORS
Kymberlee Powe from the Connecticut State Library (Special Guest)
Samantha Connell
Kathleen Crouse

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Beartown

Fredrik Backman

By the lake in Beartown is an old ice rink, and in that ice rink Kevin, Amat, Benji, and the rest of the town’s junior ice hockey team are about to compete in the national semi-finals—and they actually have a shot at winning. All the hopes and dreams of this place now rest on the shoulders of a handful of teenage boys.

Under that heavy burden, the match becomes the catalyst for a violent act that will leave a young girl traumatized and a town in turmoil. Accusations are made and, like ripples on a pond, they travel through all of Beartown.

This is a story about a town and a game, but even more about loyalty, commitment, and the responsibilities of friendship; the people we disappoint even though we love them; and the decisions we make every day that come to define us. In this story of a small forest town, Fredrik Backman has found the entire world.

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Booked Solid Podcast

SHOW CONTRIBUTORS
NCHS VarsityHockey Coach Rich Bulan (Special Guest)
Samantha Connell
Kathleen Crouse

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The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

Suzanne Collins

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes will revisit the world of Panem sixty-four years before the events of The Hunger Games, starting on the morning of the reaping of the Tenth Hunger Games.

It is the morning of the reaping that will kick off the tenth annual Hunger Games. In the Capitol, eighteen-year-old Coriolanus Snow is preparing for his one shot at glory as a mentor in the Games. The once-mighty house of Snow has fallen on hard times, its fate hanging on the slender chance that Coriolanus will be able to outcharm, outwit, and outmaneuver his fellow students to mentor the winning tribute.

The odds are against him. He’s been given the humiliating assignment of mentoring the female tribute from District 12, the lowest of the low. Their fates are now completely intertwined—every choice Coriolanus makes could lead to favor or failure, triumph or ruin. Inside the arena, it will be a fight to the death. Outside the arena, Coriolanus starts to feel for his doomed tribute—and must weigh his need to follow the rules against his desire to survive no matter what it takes.

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"Don't believe the hype, it's a prequel." Kathleen and Sam revisit Panem during the pandemic. How did the Hunger Games prequel hold up? Did we grow up too much to go back? Kathleen shares some great read-alikes and villain origin titles and Stand-alone Sam rages against prequels, sequels, and same-plot-different-story approaches.

Our special guest is Library Secretary MEGAN MABEE from New Canaan High school, who discusses her article from Book Riot, "How the Hunger Games Prequel Helped Me Realize I've Changed."

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SHOW CONTRIBUTORS
Samantha Connell
Kathleen Crouse
Megan Mabee (special guest)

Magic Lessons : The Prequel to Practical Magic

Alice Hoffman

In an unforgettable novel that traces a centuries-old curse to its source, beloved author Alice Hoffman unveils the story of Maria Owens, accused of witchcraft in Salem, and matriarch of a line of the amazing Owens women and men featured in Practical Magic and The Rules of Magic.

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Listen in as we discuss Alice Hoffman's latest installment--a prequel in the Owen's family of powerful witches. Let's get excited for Lit Lunch while Kathleen drops a bomb on us.

SHOW CONTRIBUTORS
Samantha Connell
Kathleen Crouse
Ellen Crovatto (special guest)

With The Fire On High

Elizabeth Acevedo

From the New York Times bestselling author of the National Book Award-winning title The Poet X comes a dazzling novel in prose about a girl with talent, pride, and a drive to feed the soul that keeps her fire burning bright. Ever since she got pregnant freshman year, Emoni Santiago’s life has been about making the tough decisions—doing what has to be done for her daughter and her abuela.

The one place she can let all that go is in the kitchen, where she adds a little something magical to everything she cooks, turning her food into straight-up goodness. Even though she dreams of working as a chef after she graduates, Emoni knows that it’s not worth her time to pursue the impossible. Yet despite the rules she thinks she has to play by, once Emoni starts cooking, her only choice is to let her talent break free.

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Kathleen and Sam are back to talk about Elizabeth Acevedo's recent book. Quiet YA and "This is why we can't read nice things."

SHOW CONTRIBUTORS
Samantha Connell
Kathleen Crouse

Nothing

Janne Teller

When Pierre-Anthon realizes there is no meaning to life, the seventh-grader leaves his classroom, climbs a tree, and stays there. His classmates cannot make him come down, not even by pelting him with rocks. So to prove to Pierre-Anthon that life has meaning, the children decide to give up things of importance. The pile starts with the superficial—a fishing rod, a new pair of shoes. But as the sacrifices become more extreme, the students grow increasingly desperate to get Pierre-Anthon down, to justify their belief in meaning. Sure to prompt intense thought and discussion, Nothing—already a treasured work overseas—is not to be missed.

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Booked Solid Podcast

Existentialism. Measured trauma and violence. One-ups-manship. We will burn the tape and keep the ashes.

SHOW CONTRIBUTORS
Samantha Connell
Kathleen Crouse

Sadie

Courtney Summers

A deeply dark and uncomfortable read, this book will haunt you long after you've finished. Sadie is fueled solely by her need for revenge against the man who killed her sister and disappears on a journey to do just that. Chapters alternate between her perspective and that of the podcast host following her trail across the country to try to uncover her whereabouts. A must-read for fans of true crime and crime fiction.

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Murder. Trauma. Souffle. Abandoning Democracy. Join teen librarians Kathleen & Sam as they discuss Courney Summer's Sadie.

SHOW CONTRIBUTORS
Samantha Connell
Kathleen Crouse

The Hazel Wood (Hazel Wood Series #1)

Melissa Albert

Seventeen-year-old Alice and her mother have spent most of Alice’s life on the road, always a step ahead of the uncanny bad luck biting at their heels. But when Alice’s grandmother, the reclusive author of a cult-classic book of pitch-dark fairy tales, dies alone on her estate, the Hazel Wood, Alice learns how bad her luck can really get: Her mother is stolen away—by a figure who claims to come from the Hinterland, the cruel supernatural world where her grandmother's stories are set. Alice's only lead is the message her mother left behind: “Stay away from the Hazel Wood.”

Alice has long steered clear of her grandmother’s cultish fans. But now she has no choice but to ally with classmate Ellery Finch, a Hinterland superfan who may have his own reasons for wanting to help her. To retrieve her mother, Alice must venture first to the Hazel Wood, then into the world where her grandmother's tales began—and where she might find out how her own story went so wrong.

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Booked Solid Podcast

Join teen librarians Kathleen & Sam as they discuss Melissa Albert's The Hazel Wood.

SHOW CONTRIBUTORS
Samantha Connell
Kathleen Crouse

Munmun

Jesse Andrews

In an alternate reality a lot like our world, every person’s physical size is directly proportional to their wealth. The poorest of the poor are the size of rats, and billionaires are the size of skyscrapers.

Warner and his sister Prayer are destitute—and tiny. Their size is not just demeaning, but dangerous: day and night they face mortal dangers that bigger richer people don’t ever have to think about, from being mauled by cats to their house getting stepped on. There are no cars or phones built small enough for them, or schools or hospitals, for that matter—there’s no point, when no one that little has any purchasing power, and when salaried doctors and teachers would never fit in buildings so small. Warner and Prayer know their only hope is to scale up, but how can two littlepoors survive in a world built against them?

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Booked Solid Podcast

Join teen librarians Kathleen & Sam as they discuss Jesse Andrews's Munmun.

SHOW CONTRIBUTORS
Samantha Connell
Kathleen Crouse

Blood Water Paint

Joy McCullough

Her mother died when she was twelve, and suddenly Artemisia Gentileschi had a stark choice: a life as a nun in a convent or a life grinding pigment for her father's paint.

She chose paint.

By the time she was seventeen, Artemisia did more than grind pigment. She was one of Rome's most talented painters, even if no one knew her name. But Rome in 1610 was a city where men took what they wanted from women, and in the aftermath of rape Artemisia faced another terrible choice: a life of silence or a life of truth, no matter the cost.

He will not consume
my every thought.
I am a painter.
I will paint.

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Booked Solid Podcast

Renaissance Paintings. Books in verse. Embrace Trauma. Be Judith.

SHOW CONTRIBUTORS
Samantha Connell
Kathleen Crouse