Comments for On My Wishlist: March 19, 2011

Farlander by Col Buchanan (recommended by SQT)

The Heart of the World is a land in strife. For fifty years the Holy Empire of Mann, an empire and religion born from a nihilistic urban cult, has been conquering nation after nation. Their leader, Holy Matriarch Sasheen, ruthlessly maintains control through her Diplomats, priests trained as subtle predators.

Ash is a member of an elite group of assassins, the Roshun, who offer protection through the threat of vendetta. Forced by his ailing health to take on an apprentice, he chooses Nico, a young man living in the besieged city of Bar-Khos. At the time, Nico is hungry, desperate, and alone in a city that finds itself teetering on the brink.

When the Holy Matriarch’s son deliberately murders a woman under the protection of the Roshun; he forces the sect to seek his life in retribution. As Ash and his young apprentice set out to fulfill the Roshun orders, their journey takes them into the heart of the conflict between the Empire and the Free Ports…into bloodshed and death.

I Must Have Bobo! by Eileen Rosenthal and Marc Rosenthal (Recommended by Kiss the Book)

When Willy woke up there was trouble. Where was Bobo? Willy needs Bobo. But, Earl the cat likes Bobo, too. A favorite toy is hard to share…even when it’s a sock monkey. With sparse text and a modern-nostalgic vibe, this retro-fun book about friends (sock monkeys) and frenemies (devious cats) is an ode to favorite toys everywhere. Oh, Earl! Leave Bobo alone.

The Busy Little Squirrel by Nancy Tafuri (Recommended by Kiss the Book)

The leaves have started to fall. The air is cold. Squirrel needs to get ready for winter. He cannot nibble with the mice. He does not have time to hop with the frogs or run with the dogs. Will this busy little squirrel ever slow down?

Focusing on all the charming features of the fall season, this sweetly illustrated story features country animals, pumpkins, leaves, apples and other signs of autumn. Now available as a sturdy board book, the newly redesigned Classic Board Book logo calls out this title's seasonal theme on the front cover.

The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Prisoner's Dilemma by Trenton Lee Stewart

Join the Mysterious Benedict Society as Reynie, Kate, Sticky, and Constance embark on a daring new adventure that threatens to force them apart from their families, friends, and even each other. When an unexplained blackout engulfs Stonetown, the foursome must unravel clues relating to a nefarious new plot, while their search for answers brings them closer to danger than ever before.

Boom by Mark Haddon (Recommended by Your Neighborhood Librarian)

In explosive, highly charged, and hilarious middle-grade adventure from Mark Haddon, acclaimed author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. From the moment that Jim and his best friend, Charlie, bug the staff room and overhear two of their teachers speaking to each other in a secret language, they know there's an adventure on its way.

But what does "spudvetch" actually mean, and why do Mr. Kidd's eyes flicker with fluorescent blue light when Charlie says it to him? Perhaps Kidd and Pearce are bank robbers talking in code. Perhaps they're spies. Perhaps they are aliens. Whatever it is, Jimbo and Charlie are determined to find out.

There really is an adventure on its way. A nuclear-powered, one-hundred-ton adventure with reclining seats and a buffet car. And as it gathers speed and begins to spin out of control, it can only end one way . . . with a BOOM!

Soup Day by Melissa Iwai (Recommended by Great Kid's Books)

On a cold, snowy day, a young girl and her mother shop to buy ingredients for vegetable soup. At home, they work together—step by step—to prepare the meal. While the soup is cooking, they spend the time playing games and reading. Before long, Daddy's home and the family sits down to enjoy a home made dinner. This book celebrates the importance of making a nutritious meal and sharing in the process.

Rescue by Anita Shreve (Recommended by As Usual I Need More Books)

A rookie paramedic pulls a young woman alive from her totaled car, a first rescue that begins a lifelong tangle of love and wreckage. Sheila Arsenault is a gorgeous enigma — streetwise and tough-talking, with haunted eyes, fierce desires, and a never-look-back determination. Peter Webster, as straight an arrow as they come, falls for her instantly and entirely. Soon Sheila and Peter are embroiled in an intense love affair, married, and parents to a baby daughter. Like the crash that brought them together, it all happened so fast.

Can you ever really save another person? Eighteen years later, Sheila is long gone and Peter is raising their daughter, Rowan, alone. But Rowan is veering dangerously off track, and for the first time in their ordered existence together, Webster fears for her future. His work shows him daily every danger the world contains, how wrong everything can go in a second. All the love a father can give a daughter is suddenly not enough.

Sheila's sudden return may be a godsend — or it may be exactly the wrong moment for a lifetime of questions and anger and longing to surface anew. What tore a young family apart? Is there even worse damage ahead? The questions lifted up in Anita Shreve's utterly enthralling new novel are deep and lasting, and this is a novel that could only have been written by a master of the human heart.

Hogwash by Arthur Geisert (Recommended by Scope Notes)

It’s bath time! All the little piggies have had lots of fun playing, and now they’re dirty, muddy, and covered in paint. But their mamas aren’t worried—they have just the machine to turn this Herculean task into an adventure. Anyone who has ever been captivated by the swaying brushes and spinning jets of soap and water at the car wash will be in hog heaven as Arthur Geisert’s intricate etchings reveal the inner workings of an enormous contraption that can lather and scrub a whole farm full of dirty little piglets in no time at all—and that’s not just a bunch of hogwash!

My Theodosia by Anya Seton

The short life of Theodosia Burr (1783–1813) is hauntingly realized in this bestselling historical novel about the daughter of Aaron Burr, Thomas Jefferson’s vice president. A central figure in her father’s political fate, Theodosia was immortalized in her father’s famous letter that began, “To my dearest Theodosia.” From the unsettling calm surrounding Burr before his duel with Alexander Hamilton to Theodosia’s passionate relationship with a young soldier, the delicate relationship between one father and daughter is poignantly captured.

Rumi: The Big Red Book by Coleman Barks (Recommended by Krista the Krazy Kataloguer Hartman)

Considered one of the masterpieces of world literature, The Big Red Book is perhaps the greatest work of Rumi, the medieval Sufi mystic who also happens to be the bestselling poet in America.

Rumi was born in 1207 to a long line of Islamic theologians and lawyers on the eastern edge of the Persian Empire in what is now Afghanistan. In order to escape the invading Mongol armies of Genghis Khan, his family moved west to a town now found in Turkey, where he eventually became the leader of a school of whirling dervishes. It was a fateful day in 1244 when he met Shams Tabriz, a wild mystic with rare gifts and insight. The renowned scholar Rumi had found a soul mate and friend who would become his spiritual mentor and literary muse. "What I had thought of before as God," Rumi said, "I met today in a human being."

Out of their friendship, Rumi wrote thousands of lyric poems and short quatrains in honor of his friend Shams Tabriz. They are poems of divine epiphany, spiritual awakening, friendship, and love. For centuries, Rumi's collection of these verses has traditionally been bound in a red cover, hence the title of this inspired classic of spiritual literature.