This historical fiction novel set in 1960s New England follows two families whose paths cross alongside a dirt road and are then forever entwined. Joe and his family are Mi’kmaq, they travel down from Nova Scotia every year to work the berry fields of Maine. His day begins as any other but when he fails to keep an eye on his four year old sister Ruthie, he will spend the rest of his life trying to atone for her disappearance. Norma has grown up in a sheltered and isolated suburban home with a mother that always seems afraid to let her out of her sight. She doesn’t remember much of her early childhood, but her parent’s distress when she asks about it or mentions her imaginary friend Ruthie has taught her to keep questions to herself. As she grows up her assumption that she’s adopted, and her parents never wanted to tell her will be shaken by a more awful truth. The Berry Pickers follows the aftermath of one family’s tragedy and another’s sins as both try to move forward after the loss of a child. Peter’s weaves these two dramatically different family stories together, exploring themes of family, guilt, and identity. It was the winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and the 2024 selection for One Book One Lincoln by Lincoln City Libraries.
Peters, Amanda. The Berry Pickers: A Novel. Catapult. 2023.
“[A] meticulously detailed work about Catherine and her world. . . . Massie makes Catherine’s story as gripping as that of any novel. His book does full justice to a complex and fascinating woman and to the age in which she lived.”
— Historical Novels Review
Libraries participating in the Nebraska OverDrive Libraries Group currently have access to a shared and growing collection of digital downloadable audiobooks and eBooks. 194 libraries across the state share the Nebraska OverDrive collection of 26,898 audiobooks, 36,794 ebooks, and 5,133 magazines. As an added bonus it includes 130 podcasts that are always available with simultaneous use (SU), as well as SU ebooks and audiobook titles that publishers have made available for a limited time. If you’re a part of it, let your users know about this great title, and if you’re not a member yet, find more information about participating in Nebraska Overdrive Libraries!
“Son of the Gamblin’ Man: The Youth of an Artist” by Nebraska author Mari Sandoz is now available on cartridge and for download on BARD, the Braille and Audio Reading Download service. BARD is a service offered by the Nebraska Library Commission Talking Book and Braille Service and the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled at the Library of Congress.
A work of historical fiction, the story tells of a gambler who founded Cozad, Nebraska. It also focuses on his family, especially his younger son, who became the world-famous artist and teacher known as “Robert Henri.”
TBBS borrowers can request “Son of the Gamblin’ Man: The Youth of an Artist” DBC02039 or download it from the National Library Service BARD (Braille and Audio Reading Download) website. If you have high-speed internet access, you can download books to your smartphone or tablet, or onto a flash drive for use with your player. You may also contact your reader’s advisor to have the book mailed to you on cartridge.
Don’t forget to complete the conference Evaluation! We’re looking for input from people who attended the live conference and watched the archived recordings.
And mark your calendars now – Big Talk From Small Libraries will be back in 2026! Next year’s conference will be on Friday, February 27, 2026!
Everything is adding up! This week’s #BookFace, “Very Bad at Math” by New York Times bestselling and Eisner Award–winning author Hope Larson (HarperAlley, 2025) is a colorful middle grade graphic novel. Verity “Very” Nelson can do it all, except math! All seems lost until a teacher helps her discover the truth: Verity has dyscalculia, a learning disability that causes her to mix up numbers.
“Graphic novelist Larson has aimed her latest story at middle-grade readers who…will make a lot of readers feel seen. A solid addition.”
—Booklist
The Nebraska Library Commission receives a large number of children’s and young adult books sent to us as review copies from book publishers. When our Children and Young Adult Library Services Coordinator, Sally Snyder, is done with them, the review copies are available for the Library System Directors to distribute to school and public libraries in their systems. You can see some of her favorites of the past year in the recent NCompass Live webinar episodes: Best Teen Reads of 2024 and Best Children’s Books of 2024.
The New Yorker magazine celebrates its 100th anniversary this year. At Wit’s End is perfectly timed to showcase cartoonists and cartoons that have been a consistent part of the magazine since its inception. Wit’s End is a truly fun book and one that diverts from books many of us typically read. The New Yorker has provided readers with hundreds of thousands of cartoons from over 700 cartoonists that delight, capture, and depict the happenings of the time. Whether pop culture, politics, or other, The New Yorker cartoonists drill into topics of the day with skilled artwork and clever captions. With or without captions, cartoonists tell stories within the art of a single-frame cartoon.
It might be that I’ve been a decades long subscriber to The New Yorker magazine for its cartoons and covers. And that may be why I had to get a copy of At Wit’s End after reading a review. Every once in a while, it is fun to spend time with a book that amuses and fascinates. I found that in this book.
In At Wit’s End, Michael Maslin, a cartoonist himself, profiles 50 some of TheNew Yorker cartoonists selected from the hundreds whose cartoons have been published in the magazine over the past century. Some of the cartoonists have been contributors over many decades and some are newer and more recent magazine cartoon contributors. Ed Koren, for one, is among just a couple of dozen who have sold more than two thousand drawings. A typical reader likely knows little about the cartoonist but will readily recognize their style. That’s why it is a joy to learn about the cartoonist behind the cartoon aptly profiled by Maslin. The cartoonists are uniquely creative with atypical personalities, even eccentric perhaps.
The cartoonist profiles are complemented with Alen MacWeeney’s photographs and a sampling of single-panel cartoons depicting the cartoonist’s style. The New Yorker readers no doubt have their favorite cartoonists. Mine include George Booth, Charles Addams, William Steig, David Sipress, James Thurber, and Robert Mankoff (The New Yorker cartoon editor for over two decades), and there are many more. For the record, mentionable are a couple of well-known cartoon captions – Peter Steiner’s “On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog” and Bob Mankoff’s “No, Thursday’s out. How about never – is never good for you?”
From 1997-2012 The New Yorker published an annual Cartoon issue. The magazine’s Cartoon Caption Contest began in the 1998 Cartoon issue and has continued as a weekly feature since 2005. The feature, near the back pages of the issue, includes the new contest cartoon, three finalists, and the winning caption.
Cartoonist Michael Maslin is a notable writer as well and whose Ink Spill Blog is “The go-to chronicle of all things New Yorker cartoon.” Photographer Alen MacWeeney is an internationally celebrated photographer whose photographs accompany cartoonist profiles in At Wit’s End.
MacWeeney, Alen, and Maslin, Michael, Alen. At Wit’s End: Cartoonists of The New Yorker. Clarkson Potter, 2024.
Today’s Book Club Spotlightis a beautiful and heart-wrenching story of two nations whose fates are intertwined for better and worse. Of Chinese and Japanese descent, Gail Tsukiyama’s 1994 novel The Samurai’s Garden meditates on the treacherous history between her two cultures and finds humanity in the smallest of places. Traditional Japanese gardens, like those featured in the story, are said to be founded on ancient Chinese gardening techniques. And their unique artistry and storytelling through landscape make them renowned locations of peace and tranquility. This is not unlike the change and peace our Chinese protagonist finds during his time living in rural Japan during the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Nanjing (Nanking) Massacre. The recipient of numerous literary awards, Tsukiyama is the current Executive Director of the non-profit WaterBridge Outreach, which provides developing countries with literary material and access to clean water and sanitation.
All the young and able men are off fighting in China for the Japanese Empire, with each loss and success clouding those they have left at home. But despite the war, life goes on in the peaceful seaside village of Tarumi. And nestled on the outskirts of town is Chinese student Stephen, who has come to his family’s summer home to recuperate from tuberculosis. There, he finds a quiet spirituality in Japan that he never had in his busy Hong Kong home, watching as the diligent and quiet groundskeeper Matsu tends tirelessly to the expansive landscape garden. Over the course of a year, amongst the peaceful moss and trees, the story of Matsu and the people of the village come into focus as the pain of the past is superimposed on the pain of the present. Love is forged and lost, while Stephen’s heart is torn by the brutalities his people are facing at the hands of the very country in which he is finding peace.
“Even if you walk the same road a hundred times, you’ll find something different each time.”
– Gail Tsukiyama
In The Samurai’s Garden, our main character is sent away from his home to recover from Tuberculosis, far from all he knows. And he is not the only one there who is struggling with the isolation of illness. In a nearby leprosy village, Stephen sees first-hand the repercussions of the historical ostracization of these outcast people, if they even made it that far to begin with. Book Club Groups from teens and above will appreciate the thoughtful discussion on personal survival, honor, and humanity while learning about the different meanings of Japanese gardens which bring the story to life. Tsukiyama explores that while living in turbulent and painful times, we can find peace and beauty in nature and each other, how we can choose kindness and acceptance, even if the world is telling us to turn to hate.
If you’re interested in requesting The Samurai’s Garden for your book club, you can find the Request Form here. There are 8 copies. (A librarian must request items)
Tsukiyama, Gail. The Samurai’s Garden. St. Martin’s Press. 1994.
This #BookFaceFriday is a dream come true! At the beginning of “The Dream Lover” by Elizabeth Berg (Ballantine Books; Reprint edition; 2016), Aurore Duplin is leaving her estranged husband and life behind to move to Paris and pursue her dream of becoming a writer under the new name of George Sand.
“Fantastic . . . a provocative and dazzling portrait . . . Berg tells a terrific story, while simultaneously exploring sexuality, art, and the difficult personal choices women artists in particular made—then and now—in order to succeed. . . . The book, imagistic and perfectly paced, full of dialogue that clips along, is a reader’s dream.”
— The Boston Globe
Book Club Kits Rules for Use
These kits can be checked out by the librarians of Nebraska libraries and media centers.
Circulation times are flexible and will be based upon availability. There is no standard check-out time for book club kits.
Please search the collection to select items you wish to borrow and use the REQUEST THIS KIT icon to borrow items.
Contact the Information Desk at the Library Commission if you have any questions: by phone: 800/307-2665, or by email: Information Services Team
Libraries participating in the Nebraska OverDrive Libraries Group currently have access to a shared and growing collection of digital downloadable audiobooks and eBooks. 194 libraries across the state share the Nebraska OverDrive collection of 26,898 audiobooks, 36,794 ebooks, and 5,133 magazines. As an added bonus it includes 130 podcasts that are always available with simultaneous use (SU), as well as SU ebooks and audiobook titles that publishers have made available for a limited time. If you’re a part of it, let your users know about this great title, and if you’re not a member yet, find more information about participating in Nebraska Overdrive Libraries!
When Ann Mah moved to Paris in 2008, she envisioned three glorious years of exploring the French cuisine. Living in Paris was a dream come true for Ann, a freelance food writer, and she had always imagined exploring it with her “favorite person,” her husband. The couple was accustomed to moving frequently, but after only a month in Paris, her husband, a foreign diplomat, was called to serve in Baghdad for a year. Ann is suddenly forced to change her expectations and explore France on her own.
Mastering the Art of French Eating: From Paris Bistros to Farmhouse Kitchens, Lessons in Food and Love focuses on Ann Mah’s first year in Paris. Each chapter is devoted to a different French dish like steak frites, crepes, soupe au pistou, and cassoulet. She also explores the history of each dish and connects with those who make them today. Recipes are included if you want to make them at home.
Her need for crepes reminded me of my Chinese mother, who can’t go more than a day without a bowl of rice, or my Italian friend Gianfranco, who requires regular infusions of pasta, or even Didier, who once told me that he missed cheese so much on a trip to South Africa that he ate an entire wheel of Camembert on the airplane home. Crepes, I realized, were a Breton’s comfort food.
The strengths of this memoir are in the exploration of French cuisine and its history, but it is also about navigating loneliness and independence, and exploring identity. Although Ann has a lot of experience traveling and living abroad, she is not comfortable doing those things alone. Her experience has always been with a parent or partner. At times I wanted to reach into the book and shake her as she wastes a lot of time wallowing in loneliness. She struggles to find her own joy, but by connecting with others, she also learns about herself.
How does a cross-cultural seesaw affect a person’s identity? Perhaps if I learned more about Alsace and its cuisine, I could better understand what might happen to me, an American of Chinese ethnicity who changed countries every three to four years.
If you want to explore more of Ann Mah’s writing, you can also check out two of her novels inspired by France in Nebraska Overdrive.
Mah, Ann. Mastering the Art of French Eating: From Paris Bistros to Farmhouse Kitchens, Lessons in Food and Love. Penguin Books, 2013.
“Nebraska, Where Dreams Grow” by Nebraska author Dorothy Weyer Creigh is now available on cartridge and for download on BARD, the Braille and Audio Reading Download service. BARD is a service offered by the Nebraska Library Commission Talking Book and Braille Service and the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled at the Library of Congress.
Fifty-one vignettes present Nebraska history from the point of view of those who lived their lives on the Great Plains. Topics include ice harvesting, Chautauqua, mail-order brides, World War II, television, and Big Red.
TBBS borrowers can request “Nebraska, Where Dreams Grow” DBC02044 or download it from the National Library Service BARD (Braille and Audio Reading Download) website. If you have high-speed internet access, you can download books to your smartphone or tablet, or onto a flash drive for use with your player. You may also contact your reader’s advisor to have the book mailed to you on cartridge.
Here are the UNP books the Clearinghouse received in January and February, 2025:
The Complete Letters of Henry James, 1888-1891, Volume 1, by Henry James, edited by Michael Anesko, et al. Series: The Complete Letters of Henry James
This first volume in The Complete Letters of Henry James, 1888–1891 contains 171 letters, of which 119 are published for the first time, written from late November 1888 to April 20, 1890. These letters continue to mark Henry James’s ongoing efforts to care for his sister, develop his work, strengthen his professional status, build friendships, engage with timely political and economic issues, and maximize his income, which included hiring an agent. James details his work on The Tragic Muse, “Mrs. Temperly,” “An Animated Conversation,” “The Solution,” and other fiction. This volume opens with James in France and concludes with James on the Continent. Dee MacCormack introduces the volume, paying close attention to James’s increasing interest in the theater.
Men of God : Medicant Orders in Colonial Mexico, by Asunción Lavrin. Series: Confluencias
A broadly researched cultural history, Men of God offers a path to understanding the concept of religious masculinity through an intimate approach to the study of friars and lay brothers in colonial Mexico. Though other scholars have focused on the missionary work of the Augustinian, Franciscan, and Dominican friars, few have addressed their everyday lives and how the internal discipline of their orders shaped them. In Men of God Asunción Lavrin offers a sweeping yet intimate history of the mendicant friars in New Spain from the late sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries.
Focusing on these individuals’ lives from childhood through death, Lavrin explores contemporaneous ideas, from how to raise a boy to the friars’ training as novices, and the similarities and differences in the life experiences of lay brothers and ordained members. She discusses their sexuality to reveal the challenges and failures of religious manhood, as well as the drive behind their missionary duties, especially in the late seventeenth through the eighteenth centuries. Men of God also explores the concepts and realities of martyrdom and death, significant elements in the spirituality of the mendicant friars of colonial Mexico.
Of Corn and Catholicism : a History of Religion and Power in Pueblo Indian Patron Saint Feast Days
In Of Corn and Catholicism Andrea Maria McComb Sanchez examines the development of the patron saint feast days among Eastern Pueblo Indians of New Mexico from the seventeenth century to the late nineteenth century. Focusing on the ways Pueblo religion intertwined with Spanish Catholicism, McComb Sanchez explores feast days as sites of religious resistance, accommodation, and appropriation. McComb Sanchez introduces the term “bounded incorporation” to conceptualize how Eastern Pueblo people kept boundaries flexible: as they incorporated aspects of Catholicism, they changed Catholicism as well, making it part of their traditional religious lifeway.
McComb Sanchez uses archival and published primary sources, anthropological records, and her qualitative fieldwork to discuss how Pueblo religion was kept secret and safe during the violence of seventeenth-century Spanish colonialism in New Mexico; how Eastern Pueblos developed strategies of resistance and accommodation, in addition to secrecy, to deal with missionaries and Catholicism in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; how patron saint feast days emerged as a way of incorporating a foreign religion on the Pueblos’ own terms; and how, by the later nineteenth century, these feast days played a significant role in both Pueblo and Hispano communities through the Pueblos’ own initiative.
Unsettling Cather, by Marilee Lindemann and Ann Romines. Series: Cather Studies, Volume 14
American author Willa Cather was born and spent her first nine years in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Here, as an observant daughter of a privileged white family, Cather first encountered differences and dislocations that remained lively, productive, and sometimes deeply troubling sites of tension and energy throughout her writing life.
The essays in Cather Studies, Volume 14 seek to unsettle prevailing assumptions about Cather’s work as she moved from Virginia to Nebraska to Pittsburgh to New York City to New Mexico and farther west, and to Grand Manan Island. The essays range from examinations of how race shapes and misshapes Cather’s final novel, Sapphira and the Slave Girl, to challenges to criticisms of her 1935 novel, Lucy Gayheart. Contributors also frame fresh discussions of Cather’s literary influences and cultural engagements in the first decade of her career as a novelist through the lens of sex and gender and examine Cather’s engagements with region as a geopolitical, sociolinguistic, and literary site. Together, the essays offer compelling ways of seeing and situating Cather’s texts—both unsettling and advancing Cather scholarship.
New state agency publications have been received at the Nebraska Library Commission for January and February, 2025. Included are reports from the Nebraska Auditor of Public Accounts, the Nebraska’s Coordinating Commission for Postsecondary Education, the Nebraska Department of Environment and Energy, various Nebraska Legislative Committees, and titles from University of Nebraska Press, to name a few.
With the exception of the University of Nebraska Press titles, items are available for immediate viewing and printing by clicking directly in the .pdf below. The University of Nebraska Press titles can be checked out by librarians for their patrons here: Online Catalog.
The Nebraska Legislature created the Nebraska Publications Clearinghouse in 1972 as a service of the Nebraska Library Commission. Its purpose is to collect, preserve, and provide access to all public information published by Nebraska state agencies. By law (State Statutes 51-411 to 51-413) all Nebraska state agencies are required to submit their published documents to the Clearinghouse. For more information, visit the Nebraska Publications Clearinghouse page, contact Aimee Owen, Government Information Services Librarian; or contact Bonnie Henzel, State Documents Staff Assistant.
The sun is shining and the birds are flying! If the springtime weather has you in the mood for romance then this #BookFace has you covered! “Birding with Benefits”, Sarah T. Dubb’s debut novel (Gallery Books, 2024), follows divorcee Celeste on her “year of yes” which leads her to John, the shy but sensitive birdwatcher.
“The slowly simmering romance that blossoms between plucky heroine and heart-of-gold hero results in some love scenes that are as hot as the desert sun in July.”
— Booklist (starred review)
Libraries participating in the Nebraska OverDrive Libraries Group currently have access to a shared and growing collection of digital downloadable audiobooks and eBooks. 194 libraries across the state share the Nebraska OverDrive collection of 26,898 audiobooks, 36,794 ebooks, and 5,133 magazines. As an added bonus it includes 130 podcasts that are always available with simultaneous use (SU), as well as SU ebooks and audiobook titles that publishers have made available for a limited time. If you’re a part of it, let your users know about this great title, and if you’re not a member yet, find more information about participating in Nebraska Overdrive Libraries!
This week’s FR is a twofer, but they are interconnected and the only other way to do this in a non-twofer fashion would be to post about the first book today, then the second one next time I’m up (which is June 27). Forget that. First up, at 656 pages, And the Band Played On takes some commitment, but is a relatively easy read. Author (San Francisco Chronicle reporter) Randy Shilts died from AIDS related complications (Kaposi’s sarcoma and Pneumocystis pneumonia) at the age of 42 (in 1992). This book skips between the media coverage (and non-coverage) of the epidemic, the medical community’s research and response, the political response/non-response, and individual stories of those that suffered and succumbed to the horrible disease (or had friends or family that succumbed). Shilts spends time covering the discovery of what was known in the early days as “gay cancer”, the likely proliferation and spread through bathhouses, the scientific research (many ego clashes at public health institutions), community activists, and the push/pull with government research and funding. The essential discovery by French researchers was plagiarized by American scientists, taking credit for the discoveries of the French. After reading the book, which abruptly ends without much time spent on repurposed drugs and the development of new ones, I found myself disappointed in the public health system yet again, but optimistic about the rogue frontline doctors and community activists who fought the large bureaucracies. I asked, what happened next? What about the FDA, the buyer’s clubs, and what about AZT? None of that was covered much by Shilts in depth, so I reached out and found the rest of the story in Good Intentions: How Big Business and the Medical Establishment Are Corrupting the Fight Against AIDS, by Bruce Nussbaum. I had to order it on ILL and pay the $3.50 fee. It was worth it, but every library should carry these two works for narratives about the AIDS epidemic.
Nussbaum’s work is an informative continuation of the story, but no less depressing. Many of the same actors from the work of Shilts appear, but instead of the push/pull between doctors jockeying for credit to discover things in the lab, the push/pull largely takes place between federal health agencies, pharmaceutical manufacturers, frontline doctors, and community organizations (notably ACT-Up). This clash of egos and scientific ineptitude led to many more needless deaths and suffering. One of the main villains is the NIAID, headed by Tony Fauci, who quickly proved his agency was in way over their head. NIAID took over from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), because AIDS is obviously an infectious disease, and it was hard for the NCI to argue that point. The problem was that NIAID had never been involved with drug development, and it took the agency years to figure things out. NIAID got a brief reprieve when Fauci poached more experienced oncologist Daniel Hoth from the NCI. NIAID spent copious amounts of tax dollars, placing its chips solely on AZT, like some drunk playing Big Red at the craps table. Those taking AZT in the early days (large doses) needed blood transfusions to stay alive, because it caused anemia and toxicity to bone marrow.
Community doctors became effective at treating the symptoms of AIDS, by utilizing off-label drugs, and in some cases patients cooking up their own DIY style. Many of these doctors treated specific AIDS related ailments, such as Kaposi Sarcoma (KS), a rare cancer, or PCP (pneumocystis pneumonia). The problem with some of the therapies (notably AL-721) was the fact that they often weren’t made to specifications when manufactured at home, so their efficacy was difficult to determine. And, because there was little money to be made from their sale (AL-721 is a lipid mixture extracted from egg yolks), this ensured there were no clinical trials or widespread commercial development. The FDA was often blamed for holding up the development and approval of new drugs, although there was plenty of blame to go around.At a Congressional hearing, when asked by Rep. Nanci Pelosi (representing San Francisco), what he would do if he was an AIDS patient, waiting for the Federal Bureaucracy to approve treatments, Fauci (who’s agency had been allocated over $374 million by then to develop treatments) responded:
“I probably would go with what would be available to me, be it available in the street or what have you.”
What’s largely disappointing is that the process for testing, approval, and bringing drugs to market hasn’t changed much. Nussbaum summarizes this in his Epilogue:
“In the case of the disease AIDS, and probably in cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, and others, a very small number of PIs [Principal Investigators – top scientists at medical schools and hospitals who ran research trials on drugs, and were critical of anyone else doing research outside of that framework], a dozen or two, have enormous power that they misuse. … nowhere is there accountability. The NIH extramural programs, especially NIAID’s AIDS Program, may well become known as the HUD of the nineties, in which billions of taxpayer dollars have disappeared into the private projects of a handful of scientists who insist they know what is best for the health of the country. It is simply not true; they don’t.”
Shilts, Randy. And the Band Played On. St. Martin’s Griffin, Revised Ed. 2007.
Nussbaum, Bruce. Good Intentions: How Big Business and the Medical Establishment Are Corrupting the Fight Against AIDS. Atlantic Monthly Press. 1990.
Join us tomorrow for the 2025 Big Talk From Small Libraries online conference. Registration is still open, so head over to the Registration page and sign up!
We have a full agenda for the day, with speakers from academic, K-12, and public libraries presenting on a wide variety of topics: reader’s advisory, interactive library displays, school/public library partnerships, marketing, sustainability, a Library of Things, Sensory Gardens, and much more.
And, Nebraska library staff and board members can earn 1 hour of CE Credit for each hour of the conference you attend! A special Big Talk From Small Libraries CE Report form has been made available for you to submit your C.E. credits.
This event is a great opportunity to learn about the innovative things your colleagues are doing in their small libraries. So, come join us for a day of big ideas from small libraries!
This year’s theme for Black History Month, chosen by the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, is “African Americans and Labor”. Today’s Book Club Spotlight by author Gary Paulsen takes a well-deserving look at a Black man who not only served his community faithfully through his work but excelled far above his station. ALA Notable Book and One Book for Nebraska Teens 2017, The Legend of Bass Reeves, is at once a historical fiction novel and historical fact. Known for his outdoor adventure novels, Paulsen writes vignettes based on the life of Bass Reeves, interspersing them with historical background, making the case for Reeves to be the one true hero of the West.
An illiterate runaway slave, Bass Reeves was the true, unknown icon of the Western Frontier. Despite facing down the barrel of a gun countless times, he was never injured, and he never shot first. Having daringly escaped slavery at 17, Bass lived free in the lawless land of Indian Territory- run by gangs and thieves. After saving one of their own from wolves, he finds companionship and family with the Muscogee Creek people for over 20 years. Never one to slow or turn down a challenge, at the age of 51, Reeves took up the badge and became the most successful and feared Deputy Federal Marshal of the West, his life story rivaled only by the fictional Lone Ranger.
“They could kill him, but they’d never own him again.”
-Gary Paulsen
For readers 10 and up, The Legend of Bass Reeves is a mostly fictional account of the real man. Unfortunately, as an illiterate former slave, Reeves did not keep any journals, and not much was written about him while he was alive. Paulsen sets out to right some of this wrong, pulling Reeves from obscurity. For his young audience, Paulsen wanted to give the unstoppable and honorable Bass Reeves his due instead of the outlaws like Billy the Kid and Butch Cassidy. The Legend of Bass Reeves, while about the heroic man, also delves into the lawless West, from the makeup of the land, the communities, and the treatment of Black and Native peoples in an accessible way for young readers to understand and any Book Club Group to discuss the finer points of.
If you’re interested in requesting The Legend of Bass Reeves for your book club, you can find the Request Form here. There are 11 copies. (A librarian must request items)
Paulsen, Gary. The Legend of Bass Reeves. Random House. 2006.
We Need Diverse Books (WNDB) is accepting applications for its Books Save Lives Grants, providing funding for school libraries, public libraries, and educational institutions in the United States to purchase diverse titles.
Each Books Save Lives Grant will provide up to $5,000 per recipient. Recipients will provide a list of requested titles to WNDB. WNDB will then vet the list and ship the approved books directly to the address provided.
Applications are due by March 14, 2025.
Applicants must work full-time at a school library, public library, or educational organization within the United States to receive a Books Save Lives Grant.
This is a United States-based grant. Nominated schools, libraries, and organizations must be located within a U.S. state.
Applicants must be located in areas impacted by book challenges and censorship efforts, whether on a local or state level.
The grant must be used to purchase diverse books. Recipients will provide WNDB with a requested list of titles. WNDB will then vet the list and ship the books directly to the recipient.
Recipients must complete two evaluation surveys after the books have been circulated.
Brrr!!! I don’t know about you, but this weather makes me want to stay indoors and curl up with a good book, like this week’s #BookFaceFriday, “The Cold Cold Ground” by Adrian McKinty (Blackstone Publishing, 2019). It’s the first book in the Detective Sean Duffy mystery series.
“A fascinating look at everyday life in Northern Ireland during ‘the Troubles.’ The protagonist is clever and funny, the interaction of the police and various factions is eye-opening, and the mystery is intriguing, with an unexpected twist at the end.”
— RT Book Reviews
Libraries participating in the Nebraska OverDrive Libraries Group currently have access to a shared and growing collection of digital downloadable audiobooks and eBooks. 194 libraries across the state share the Nebraska OverDrive collection of 26,898 audiobooks, 36,794 ebooks, and 5,133 magazines. As an added bonus it includes 130 podcasts that are always available with simultaneous use (SU), as well as SU ebooks and audiobook titles that publishers have made available for a limited time. If you’re a part of it, let your users know about this great title, and if you’re not a member yet, find more information about participating in Nebraska Overdrive Libraries!
Everyone has their thing they completely nerd out over. For me, that’s ecosystem building. Ecosystems are how people come together to solve problems and drive change in the world. I’ve dug into problem-solving ecosystems, innovation ecosystems, tech ecosystems, startup ecosystems, and how each of these ecosystems overlap and work together in different ways.
Today’s Friday Reads is all about how businesses, universities, colleges, nonprofits, government agencies, and libraries come together to cultivate and support entrepreneurs along a difficult journey. The fun fact is that libraries are not featured very heavily in the book, but we do play a role. Makerspaces, innovation spaces, entrepreneurial resource referrals, guest speakers, workshops, meeting spaces, and so many other ways.
This book helped me better understand how the ecosystem works overall. It could help you too. When libraries understand the process aspiring entrepreneurs take to launch a startup business, and can identify partner organizations within the entrepreneurial ecosystem, it’s easier to identify unmet needs where the library can help. This increases the value of the library to the business community, and adds new grant and funding opportunities.
I read this book many moons ago, but I still revisit it to refresh myself and spark new ideas. If you’re looking for new ways to engage with your community, especially in the world of workforce development, give Startup Communities a read. Let me know if you want to nerd out with me about ecosystems when you’re done. I have some stuff for you.
P.S. I try not to inflict my niche interests on the wider world too much, but this week, I let my nerd flag fly! Join me.
He was inaugurated on February 6th and the 2023-2024 National Ambassador, Meg Medina, attended.
As quoted in the article, Barnett said, “It’s a profound honor to serve as ambassador. When I got the news, I was speechless, which is unusual for me.” He has chosen to “celebrate the children’s picture book” and the way they “blend words and illustrations to create a uniquely powerful reading experience.”
Congratulations to Mac Barnett! Certainly a popular author with children and he has a lineup of over 60 books he has written. What is a favorite title with the children in your community?
I have read a lot, but not all of his books, one of my favorites is Sam and Dave Dig a Hole from 2014, illustrated by Jon Klassen and named a Caldecott Honor Book. Readers will be delighted by all things the diggers missed.
Another favorite of mine is Mac Undercover from 2018, the first book in his series titled “Mac B., Kid Spy” a novel for grades 3-6. Mac secretly helps the Queen of England – who is disgusted by his attire and “bad” English, but does appreciate his help. Silly and clever, Mac ends up in unexpected situations wondering how he will escape and solve the mystery.
I hope the young readers in your community will love the idea of Mac Barnett as the 2025-26 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature!
