For Book Lovers
Library users are passionate readers and we’ve got resources for all varieties of booklovers.
Recommended Books
Librarians are experts at connecting you with the information you need, whether it's a complex research project or the next good book on your reading list. This list of award-winning books is a good place to start. Read more about recommended books for adults, teens, and children.
Starting a Book Club
Book clubs provide a wonderful forum for readers to talk about books and the reading experience and libraries contain many helpful resources for book groups. If you're looking for a book club to join, check with your library. Libraries often provide meeting space for book clubs and many administer their own book discussion groups. Thinking of starting your own book club? Learn how to get started.
Well Read
The American Library Association has teamed up with Well Read, the popular weekly public television program for those who love books and lively, engaging conversations with the authors. Read more.
Youth Media Awards
Recognized worldwide for the high quality they represent, the American Library Association Youth Media Awards—including the prestigious Newbery, Caldecott, Printz, and Coretta Scott King Book Awards—guide parents, educators, librarians, and others in selecting the best materials for youth. Learn more about the Youth Media Awards.
Authors
Authors are natural allies of libraries. Especially in these challenging times, authors understand the key role that libraries and library staff play in the economic, social and educational fabric of our nation. Read more about how authors can passionately speak out in support for libraries. Learn how authors can get involved.
Booklist Reader
Lynn: Even in this digital age some things remain constant, like the fun of having a tea party and the warm comforting love between a grandparent and a young child. Some things, however, are different! Barney Saltzberg captures both elements in his charming picture book, Tea with Grandpa (2014).
A little girl narrates the sweet story of a daily ritual in rhyming verse.
Every day at half past three…
Me and Grandpa.
Time for tea.
...
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Kiana Davenport’s Shark Dialogues (1994) is a powerful look into the brutal, fraught history of the Hawaiian Islands through seven generations of one Hawaiian family. Focusing on a polarizing matriarch, Pono, the novel flashes backward and forward in time to tell the story of Pono’s ancestors, her life’s true love, and her daughters and granddaughters.
Written in lush prose that creates a visceral feel for the joys and horrors of life, Shark Dialogues is rich with descriptions of the Hawaiian islands and the...
Today’s Webcomics Wednesday requires a little backstory. When I was newly graduated from my MA program and deeply exhausted by a year’s worth of intensive reading, I couldn’t sit through another book if someone paid me. (Someone does now! Mission accomplished!) Except for comics, that is, and that’s when I first read Jeff Smith’s Bone, the comic that made me truly love comics. At Midwinter, when I met Jeff Smith for the first time, I told him that story—albeit much less coherently and with a lot more breathless gushing—and he graciously autographed my copy.
Smith excels at...
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Review of the Day
Slevin, Peter (author).
Apr. 2015. 432p. Knopf, hardcover, $27.95 ( 9780307958822). 973.932092.
REVIEW. First published February 15, 2015 (Booklist).
A descendant of slaves, Michelle Obama has a lineage and a life history most unlikely for a First Lady. Born and raised on the South Side of Chicago in a working-class black family, she has lived her life against the backdrop of major developments in black America. When she became First Lady in 2008, she changed the trajectory of American history. Journalist Slevin explores Michelle’s family history and struggle to rise above racial limitations, her marriage, and her close friendships. He details the unerringly strong, well-balanced sense of self she has taken with her from...
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Authors on Libraries
Well, growing up in Richmond, Virginia, we would go to the library every weekend. And I was able to check out far more than the limit because I had deals the librarians. You know, they knew which kids read books and which ones didn't. And I would go home with a stack and read them during the course of the week and take them back and you know, check another stack.
And I was able to see the world, in many respects, without ever leaving my hometown. And had a profound effect on me because if you make a reader earlier, I think you make a reader for life. That certainly was the case with me.
You walk into a room filled with books and to this day whenever I go into someone's home and they hava a bookcase, I walk over. You can learn...
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