How can you be a successful villain, with no experience and no one to train you? You just have to depend on your talking spy cats and unionized dolphins to help you learn the ropes. And trust that they aren’t planning to stab you in the back. It’s all in a day’s work for a Starter Villain.
After being laid off from his job as a reporter at a Chicago newspaper, Charlie moved back into his childhood home to care for his ailing father, and lives there now after his father’s death.
He is trying to secure a bank loan to purchase a local pub when his plans are derailed by his billionaire Uncle Jake passing away and leaving Charlie his business, the third-largest chain of parking structures in North America. Good news, right? With this windfall, Charlie can finally realize his dream of owning the pub.
But, things aren’t what them seem. It turns out the parking garages are actually a front for his uncle’s real business. He is a supervillain, complete with James Bond-style over the top enemies and a volcano island lair. Charlie must learn to navigate this new-to-him underworld, surviving elaborate plots to take him out and steal his uncle’s empire. It’s a wild, imaginative ride with great characters and clever world-building, full of sarcastic humor and insightful storytelling.
Starter Villain is another fun novel by one of my favorite authors, John Scalzi. Like one of his previous books, The Kaiju Preservation Society, it was written during the height of COVID-19 pandemic, when we all needed something to get us through the days. Escapist fiction at its finest.
“In this clever, fast-paced thriller, Hugo Award winner subverts classic supervillain tropes with equal measures of tongue-in-cheek humor and common sense… The result is a breezy and highly entertaining genre send-up.”
Looking for ways to go beyond traditional storytime? Check out ‘Play, Explore, Learn: Building Early Literacy Through Station-Based Programs’ on next week’s NCompass Live webinar on Wednesday, May 13 at 10am CT.
Discover how to create an interactive, play-based early literacy program built around themed learning stations that encourage exploration and engagement. This session shares how one library developed a successful station-based model that promotes early learning through activities tied to the five early literacy practices: Read, Write, Talk, Sing, and Play.
Using simple materials and creative themes, the program provides families with a flexible, hands-on experience that supports key developmental skills such as language, fine motor coordination, and social-emotional growth. Attendees will learn practical tips for setup, rotating themes, and caregiver involvement. Walk away with ideas and inspiration to make early literacy come alive in your library – one playful station at a time!
May 20 – Engaging New Voices in Advocacy: Youth, Trustees, and Everyday Patrons
May 27 – Pretty Sweet Tech: Preparing Tech Ready Librarians: A Statewide Initiative
June 3 – Libraries and Friends of the Library: How to Stay Friends
June 10 – Law for Librarians
June 24 – Pretty Sweet Tech
July 8 – Connected America 2026
July 15 – Community Literacy Treasure Hunt: The Fun Way to Increase Literacy!
To register for an NCompass Live show, or to listen to recordings of past shows, go to the NCompass Live webpage.
NCompass Live is broadcast live every Wednesday from 10am – 11am Central Time. Convert to your time zone on the Official U.S. Time website.
The show is presented online using the GoTo Webinar online meeting service. Before you attend a session, please see the NLC Online Sessions webpage for detailed information about GoTo Webinar, including system requirements, firewall permissions, and equipment requirements for computer speakers and microphones.
You don’t have to go looking for this #BookFaceFriday! We’re celebrating Mother’s Day like we do every holiday, with a good book. In this case one of the Spanish language titles in our Book Club Kit Collection, “¿Eres tú mi mamá?” by P.D. Eastman ( Random House Books for Young Readers, 2016). Browse all available titles using the keyword “Spanish” in the keyword search field. For kits that were already available in English, the title will be shown in English; for titles only available in Spanish, the Spanish title will be shown. For both types of kits, the number of Spanish copies is listed at the bottom of the title’s record. At the present time, most of our new Spanish-language kits are geared towards younger readers, but we hope to expand this selection in the future.
Un pajarito que va en busca de su mamá es el argumento de esta divertida adaptación del clásico de P. D. Eastman, ahora en un nuevo formato de libro cartón más grande, perfecto para bebés y niños pequeños.
A baby bird goes in search of his mother in this hilarious Board Book adaptation of P.D. Eastman’s classic story, perfect for babies and toddlers.
– Back cover
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
My father was born on May 1st, now just 100 years ago. He passed in 1999 and is still missed. One of many things he introduced me to was the writings of Jim Corbett.
First published in 1944, this is one of the memoirs of the India-born Englishman, Jim Corbett. He loved nature and the jungle, spending all the time he could there. He would listen to different animal calls – monkeys, deer, and others – and calculate where a predator was by these calls and their locations. He loved all animals and over time became concerned about the possible extinction of tigers, advocating for the first reserve for them.
There are ten stories in this title, one each about his efforts to find and kill a tiger or leopard who had turned to killing people. Often this was due to an injury that made hunting its regular prey nearly impossible.
There have been criticisms of Corbett’s writing, such as the fact that he wrote about these exploits years later, and we all know memory can be misleading. Others, that he always seemed to have only four bullets and usually used the last one to kill the beast. Doesn’t that make for a more exciting story? I do not know the answer to these criticisms, but no one disputes the fact that he went into the jungle (most often on foot), alone, with his rifle, and killed the mankillers.
Other titles by the author:
The Man-eating Leopard of Rudraprayag, 1948 Jungle Lore, 1953 The Temple Tiger and more Man-eaters of Kumaon, 1954 Tree Tops, 1955
In 1908, The United States was at war with itself. The standardization of American English was torn between the language you’re reading now, and the Roosevelt/Carnegie-backed Simplified Spelling Board. The Spelling Board fought hard to “simplify” the written word, while the rest of the country scratched their heads at this new “fonetic” spelling. Then, from the depths of battle came the first ever National Spelling Bee Competition, and its use of standard English spelling began the death knell of simplified English. Burgeoning out of our cultural emphasis on a unified language, spelling, education system, and its opportunity as a class equalizer, spelling bees provide a unique look into Americana. Myla Goldberg’s 2000 debut novel Bee Season, uses this seemingly-squeaky clean All-American pastime to look at a modern family whose obsession to rise above banality ends up tearing them apart
Eleven years old and unimpressive by all accounts, Eliza feels dull compared to her gifted and successful family. Until she hits a stroke of luck and surprisingly wins her school’s spelling bee, and then the district spelling bee after that. What follows is the portrait of a Pennsylvanian family at the turn of the century as they encourage Eliza in her spelling pursuits while facing internal inadequacies and jealousies through religiosity, obsessiveness, and the pressures they put on themselves and each other. Eliza finds herself stuck in a dizzying world of ritualism, reaching out for her family who are lost in the realm of greater ascendancy.
“Eliza begins to look at life in alphabetical terms. School is consonantal in its unchanging status. God, full of possibility, is a vowel. Death: the ultimate consonant.”
Myla Goldberg
Perfection! Perfectimundo! Enlightenment! The “True Self”! Tikkun Olam. Each member of Eliza’s family is seeking some sort of divine wholeness through ritualistic obsession. They forgo their familial connections in search of this supernatural belonging, ostracizing and distancing themselves from each other in the process. While reading this book for Jewish Heritage Month, I was surprised at the depths of religious mysticism discussed in Bee Season. Eliza’s father, Saul, studies Kabbalah, and believes that through Eliza’s new gift for spelling, she can heal the world, placing the broken shards back together to make everything whole and Divine. Eliza’s brother and mother in turn, are also caught up in their own searching for this Divine. Aaron, chasing after the strong otherworldly presence he felt during his Bar Mitzvah, finds it in the intense Hare Krishna Movement. And Miriam obsessively surrounds herself with (stolen) perfect objects to reach a sense of wholeness, while risking herself. Each family member quietly leading to their own destruction. For Adult Book Club Groups, Bee Season will surprise readers with the lengths the Naumann family goes to achieve satisfaction and maintain family order. Discussions around literary foils, perfectionism, self-doubt, and our own search for that completed wholeness can be paired with a viewing of the 2005 movie adaptation starring Richard Gere and Juliette Binoche.
If you’re interested in requesting Bee Season for your book club, you can find the Request Form here. There are 11 copies. (A librarian must request items)
Here are the UNP books the Clearinghouse received in March and April, 2026:
Agents of Survivance: Indigenous Women Teachers in the Boarding School Era, by Anne Ruggles Gere. Series: Indigenous Education.
In Agents of Survivance Anne Ruggles Gere complicates and enriches established accounts of the Indian boarding school era and what preceded it by looking closely at the largely ignored Indigenous women teachers in these schools. Focusing on Sarah Winnemucca, S. Alice Callahan, Angel DeCora, and Ella Deloria, Gere shows how these and many other Indian women teachers subversively resisted assimilation with tribal presence, relationality, connection to land, rejection of victimhood, and maintenance of cultural traditions, art, and languages. Their vulnerable positions in schools directed by Euro-Americans necessitated that their contributions be subversive, nearly invisible. Despite this, they developed policies and practices that were passed to Indian students who in turn became teachers of the next generation of Indian students, and many of their innovations inform contemporary movements toward sovereignty for Indian education.
The Missouri River is one of the most dangerous rivers in the United States—and one of the most economically important. Even as prolonged drought in the Midwest has imperiled urban drinking water and agricultural water supplies, parched regions in the basin far from the river have proposed piping water from the Missouri to alleviate their own water shortages.
Indispensable for future research, Agents of Survivance includes two appendixes drawn from Bureau of Indian Affairs records documenting dozens of Native women teachers, as well as Native women who worked in boarding schools doing laundry, kitchen work, dormitory cleaning, and sewing.
Around the Bend: Floating Down the Missouri River, by Lisa G. Dill. Series: Bison Books.
In an attempt to better understand the river and its place in the American imagination, Lisa G. Dill set out with four of her mother’s cousins on a forty-year-old pontoon boat on a modern voyage of discovery. The hope was to sail nearly 750 river miles from Sioux City, Iowa, to St. Louis, Missouri, a goal whose success was by no means assured, given the rickety state of the family vessel. From departure—a day late, because the motor wouldn’t start—until she got off the boat, Dill bears witness to the river, its flora and fauna, the efforts to control it, and its history, along with the misadventures of a crew of “relative strangers” and the boat’s tenuous viability on one of the world’s most powerful rivers.
In Around the Bend Dill teases out the cultural and environmental history of the Missouri and urges readers to change the way they think about America’s rivers and the landscapes through which they flow.
Confronting Water Insecurity: Global Institutions and the Transformation of Water Science, Policy, and Practice, by Roberto L. Lenton.
Confronting Water Insecurity provides an account of the role of multilateral cooperation and global institutions in transforming science, policy, and practice for water security from 1945 to 2024, a period characterized by significant disparities in water security between low- and high-income countries, ever-rising water use, and growing concerns about the harms of climate change and other disturbances on the global water cycle.
Roberto L. Lenton tells how the scientific and policy response to these new challenges has become more global and integrated, and describes the role of global institutions in addressing fundamental global water issues with long-term implications for sustainability. Following the quest for water security as it transformed from an issue driven primarily by local or national interests into one of global concern, Lenton offers lessons from the successes and failures from 1945 to 2024 that will help us imagine the new approaches we need to ensure that the world can meet the next generation of water challenges. Beyond the world of water, he provides insights into how we can better address the global challenges that arise from humanity’s complex relationships with the natural world.
Northern Slave, Black Dakota: The Life and Times of Joseph Godfrey, by Walt Bachman. Series: Bison Books.
Born into slavery in free territory, Joseph Godfrey died widely reviled for his controversial role in the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862. Separated from his mother at age five when his enslaver sold her, Godfrey sought refuge in his teens among the Dakota people he had befriended as a child. Godfrey married a Dakota woman and was living with his family on the Lower Sioux Reservation in 1862, when the U.S.-Dakota War broke out. Pressured to join Dakota warriors in the war’s opening days, when the six-week conflict ended, he became the first of hundreds of men tried by a military court created by Commander Henry Sibley. Sibley, who was one of Godfrey’s former enslavers, approved death sentences for Godfrey and 302 other Dakota soldiers.
In this riveting biography, Walt Bachman untangles the thorny questions that haunt Godfrey’s story: How was he enslaved in a free state? Did he murder the frontier settlers for which the Dakota dubbed him Otakle (“Many Kills”)? Did he turn traitor to save his own life? Did Godfrey’s testimony send thirty-eight Dakota men, including his father-in-law, to the gallows? In this carefully researched book, Bachman argues that the 1862 war trials, which ended with the largest mass execution in U.S. history, were both more just and more unfair than we have ever understood.
Ravelings: Essays on Love, Loss, and Wonder, by Lisa Knopp. Series: American Lives.
In Ravelings, Lisa Knopp takes up an older, opposing meaning of the verb “ravel”—“to entangle”—as she explores the deaths and departures of loved ones and the rituals by which we mourn and honor them, while contemplating her relationships with writing, spirituality, sense of home, aging, desire, and the relationship between body and mind. Entangled in these losses and changes, Knopp experiences wonder, joy, connectivity, and wholeness.
In these nimble and companionable essays, Knopp considers hunger and fullness through ethical, disordered, and mindful eating; awakens to common magic through two chance encounters with a magician; and finds humility and empowerment as an unpartnered sixty-year-old woman in a ballroom dance class filled with young couples. Knopp comprehends her experiences with nuance, revealing time and again that the same ravel of text can encompass the blending in a single moment of the exotic and mundane, of fullness and want, of love and abhorrence, of desire and contentment, of freedom and bondage, of severance and connection, and of the creative act as both an evocation and an imposition.
Theodore Roosevelt and the Tennis Cabinet, by Michael Patrick Cullinane. Imprint: Potomac Books.
In his final days in office in 1909, Theodore Roosevelt invited dozens of friends to the White House for lunch. They had never met as a group, but they had one thing in common: Each played tennis with the president and advised on policy matters. Roosevelt half-joked that the public would never know how much these tennis partners did to make his administration a success. Journalists dismissively called them the “Tennis Cabinet,” making light of their contribution, but Roosevelt knew otherwise.
This inner circle led the administration’s campaigns against corporate greed, investigated public health violations, and formulated consumer protections. They founded environmental conservation policies, prosecuted civil rights violations, and implemented bureaucratic efficiencies that saved the government billions. Roosevelt’s tennis mates shaped the nation’s diplomacy, ending wars and promoting American interests abroad.
Never had a more eclectic group advised a U.S. president. The Tennis Cabinet included legendary frontier lawman Seth Bullock and the starched-shirt corporate lawyer Henry Stimson, who served in five presidential administrations. Texas wolf wrangler Jack Abernathy played with stuffy bureaucrats like Labor Commissioner Charles Patrick Neill and social activist James Bronson Reynolds. The French ambassador Jean Jules Jusserand spun yarns with football hero George Washington Woodruff and Roosevelt’s college friend and banker Robert Bacon. James Garfield, namesake son of a martyred president, sipped mint juleps with Supreme Court Justice William Henry Moody. And J. P. Morgan’s silver-spooned son-in-law Herbert Satterlee kept company with rugged soldier Luther “Yellowstone” Kelly.
For all their differences, these men shared a desire to help the president transform the nation from a parochial nineteenth-century republic into an imperial and industrial global power. They have escaped the attention of reporters and historians only because of Roosevelt’s towering celebrity. Turning away from Roosevelt as the singular force behind his administration, it is possible to see how the contributions of his Tennis Cabinet quietly sowed the seeds of the American Century.
What do all of these #BookFace picks have in common? They’ve all received a Nebraska Book Award! You could join this excellent group of authors, publishers, and illustrators, but you have to submit your book for consideration. You’ll have to act fast because the deadline for entries is May 31, 2026. The Nebraska Book Awards recognize and honor books that are written by Nebraska authors and illustrators, published by Nebraska publishers, set in Nebraska, or relate to Nebraska. Books published in 2025, as indicated by the copyright date, are eligible for nomination. They must be professionally published, have an International Standard Book Number (ISBN), and be bound. Books may be entered in one or more of the following categories: Nonfiction, Fiction, Children/Young Adult, Cover/Design/Illustration, and Poetry. The entry fee is $40 per book and per category entered.
Winners of the 2026 Nebraska Book Awards will be featured at the Nebraska Celebration of Books (NCOB) Literary Festival. Held on Saturday, November 14th, from 10:00am-5:30pm, this literary event will be on the second floor of the UNL City Campus Union and Jackie Gaughan Multicultural Center in downtown Lincoln. For more information about the Nebraska Book Awards visit centerforthebook.nebraska.gov/awards/nebookawards.html .
Earlier this month, Dermot Kennedy (a new-to-me artist whose music I’ve been enjoying) released an album called The Weight of the Woods. I’ve had the titular song and its reprise on repeat quite a few times since then.
If I should fall down / under stars I can’t call out / get me back to my homeground / let me add to the weight of the woods // Tether my bones tight / in view of that coastline / and bury this soul of mine / give it back to the weight of the woods.
An ever-increasing amount of years ago, like all good English Literature students, I was assigned to read Walden; or, a Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau as part of my American Literature studies. Something in those pages caught to the quick of me. And it wasn’t just the cabin he built for 28 (19th century) dollars. Home ownership! Imagine! (Though he did not own the land).
Anyways, “The Weight of the Woods” reminded me of Walden, as did the advent of spring, as did the itch of having no dirt under my fingernails. “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,” indeed.
I would imagine (or would like to believe, or even hope) that nearly every educated person recognizes the name Walden and understands, at least in broad strokes, the themes associated with it: nature, simplicity, contemplation, and living deliberately. Most ought to recognize the iconic, oft-quoted line, oft-plastered-on-outdoor-outlet-store-walls, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived” (Chapter 2: Where I Lived, and What I Lived For).
Walden is, however, to my reading, more than a rote lesson. In fact, I think Thoreau himself would be remiss if his work was used as blueprint or gospel;
I would not have any one adopt my mode of living on any account; for, beside that before he has fairly learned it I may have found out another for myself, I desire that there may be as many different person in the world as possible; but I would have each one be very careful to find out and pursue his own way, and not his father’s or his mother’s or his neighbor’s instead (Chapter 1: Economy).
I suspect that it is not purely an interest in diversity of life and observation that guides Thoreau to this conclusion, but rather a self-preserved reflex of we surely cannot all live in the woods and crowd that space — he remarks in Chapter 6, Visitors, that “These are the folks that worry the man / That lives in the house that I built. I did not fear the hen-harriers, for I kept no chickens; but I feared the men-harriers rather.” The use of the word “worry” in this instance refers to its meaning of “irritate.” This vexation is primarily caused by the “self-styled reformers, the greatest bores of all” and not the “honest pilgrims, who came out to the woods for freedom’s sake.”
But the cut of what Thoreau cautions against is living a life uncontemplated, of following in another’s path just because the way already-tread is always easier than the uncharted path. Life is about simplicity, not ease; though Walden argues that simplicity eases the toils required to live. Don’t go off to live in the woods because you can’t think of anything else you’d rather do – go off to live in the woods because you think that there is nothing else that you can do, no other way that you can live. It’s true that Thoreau’s Walden experience only lasted a little over two years. It’s true that he was not the first or only to live in those Walden woods. But he did it, didn’t he?
During my first reading of Walden — more than a decade ago now — my favorite chapter was Chapter 9: The Ponds. I was struck by Thoreau’s description of the pond. How could one not fall in love with such a place? It seems perfection; it seems ideal; it seems heavenly – ah, but Thoreau chides, “Talk of heaven! ye disgrace earth.”
During this reading, it was Chapter 7: The Bean-Field that was dearest to me. There is something worthwhile and necessary in the soil, something worthwhile and necessary in the work of one’s hands, something necessary and worthwhile in birdsong and the woodchuck and the weeds. And how true it still rings today that, “ancient poetry and mythology suggest, at least, that husbandry was once a sacred art; but it is pursued with irreverent haste and heedlessness by us, our object being to have large farms and large crops merely.”
Anyways, let me add to the weight of the woods and the beanfield – let me add some measure of my soul back to the work that I do, deliberately, turning the good earth in my hands wherever I can.
Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. Tantor Media Inc, 2008. Narrated by Mel Foster.
Thoreau, Henry David. Walden: A Fluid-Text Edition. Digital Thoreau. https://digitalthoreau.org/fluid-text-toc. Accessed 2026-04-30.
It’s every Nebraskan’s favorite holiday, Arbor Day! Celebrating the trees shouldn’t just be for one day out of the year. Here at the library, you can explore Arbor Day any time with a wide variety of great books! Like “Now is the Time for Trees” written by the Arbor Day Foundation’s Dan Lambe and Lorene Edwards Forkner (Timber Press, 2022). From advice on choosing the right size and type of tree to tried-and-true tips for planting success, this book will help you plant a tree today and leave your own legacy of hope. You can find this title as and eBook on Nebraska OverDrive Libraries, it has a huge collection of nonfiction, fiction, and children’s books, including biographies and autobiographies, memoirs, self-help books, study-aids and workbooks, reference titles, travel books, and so much more.
“Celebrates the power of trees to oxygenate the planet, purify water and air, lower city temperatures, provide habitat, nurture the soul, and provide essential food sources.”
— Booklist
Find this title and many more through Nebraska OverDrive! Libraries participating in the Nebraska OverDrive Libraries Group currently have access to a shared and growing collection of digital downloadable audiobooks and eBooks. 188 libraries across the state share the Nebraska OverDrive collection of 21,696 audiobooks, 35,200 eBooks, and 3,964 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!
I’ve read fantasy from Tolkien to Jim Butcher. But lately I’ve been reading romantasy and cozy fantasy, and Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries, isn’t either really. It combines some of the “usual tropes” in some very different ways. This curmudgeonly scholar, in an unfamiliar setting, is female. The gorgeous love interest is male, and not entirely what he seems, although totally taken with the scholar. Its set in historical time period roughly early 1900s. The Fae, low and high, are both more dangerous, exotic, earthy, than usually portrayed. Definitely with agendas that don’t remotely line up with human agendas or logic. Not to mention, the setting. Its set on an island far north of England, in winter with Scandinavian type inhabitants.
Emily Wilde researches the Fae, both the folklore, and the actual, dangerous entities. She’s a Cambridge professor of Dryodology—The Fae/Faery. She’s introverted, and by a guess, Neurodivergent, far more comfortable with reading books, interacting with her dog, Shadow, and the dangerous Fae she has met, than with human beings, no matter where she meets them. Her hair is dark, always escaping whatever confinement it is put into. She cares nothing about her clothes, as long as she is covered.
Wendell Bambleby is a colleague of hers who has gotten into some scholarly hot water in his last expedition. And is smitten with Emily. So, he follows Emily to Hrafnsvik, Ljosland, to see if he can, um, aid with her research for the encyclopedia. He is tall, gorgeous, charismatic, Dressed to perfection even in the North, every hair in place, with a faint Irish accent. He’s Emily’s friend, and her only friend, although she thinks of him as a rival.
The journal entries do help give a sense of place, not only of the village, her cottage, but the terrain, which is steep, rocky, mountainous, with wetlands. It also gives a clear insight into how her mind works, which is methodical. And it would have remained dry, and descriptive, except that she has to interact with the villagers. Not only are they human, they have a few stressing things going on, and are trying to understand her. Unfortunately, they don’t. Things get difficult for city born Emily—sheep are let into the cottage and destroy provisions while she’s out. At the same time Wendell arrives, with his two graduate students. They set about tidying up the cabin, eventually working out the difficulties with villagers. Emily and Wendell learn that children and young people have been kidnapped from the local villages very regularly, and returned mindless or dead, or not at all, by the local High Fae. They learn this may be because the former High King of Winter has been imprisoned in a tree, and his queen murdered, and his vengeful ex-wife has taken the throne.
While Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Faeries is a fun read, and generated a lot of snickering, both over Emily’s asides, and the banter between Emily and Wendell. I enjoyed it, especially after having gone through several cozy fantasy books, this was worth reading twice. The Booklist review stated: “The full cast of characters, well-developed faerie lore, and pervasive sense of cold add depth to the delightful proceedings, which include scholarship, yes, but also danger and a hint of romance.”—Booklist (starred review).
Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries, by Heather Fawcett, 2023, Del Rey, 9780593724729, Trade paperback. Rest of the series, Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands, and Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales.
We are celebrating both Earth Day and Arbor Day this week! It’s a time to encourage stewardship of the land as we look forward to a future of a cleaner, healthier Earth. Arbor Day, a Nebraska-born holiday, specifically celebrates the partnership and history we share with our arboreal comrades that goes back beyond human memory. For today’s Book Club Spotlight, we will be exploring our connection with trees and nature through Mildred D. Taylor’s first book, The Song of the Trees. This novella features illustrations by the legendary Jerry Pinkney, winner of the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award and five Coretta Scott King Awards for illustration. Both Taylor and Pinkney have also received the Coretta Scott-King-Virginia Hamilton award, which is named after a recent Book Club Spotlight Alumnus. Together, they brought Taylor’s family’s stories to life with both beautiful language and artwork.
Cassie Logan and her brothers race through forest. Their laughter and jokes fill the air, high up into the lush canopies above as their house fades into the distance of the early morning light. Cassie pauses, the cool earth beneath her feet… something is wrong. The trees, always stoic but welcoming, are quiet, as if they are frightened. That’s when she hears them. There are lumbermen in the forest- their forest! With her father away for work, only her mother, her grandmother, and siblings are left to stand against Mr. Anderson and his lumbermen forcing their way onto Big Ma’s land. The Logans must stand up for themselves and what is theirs, even if it frightens them.
“Around shaggy-bark hickories and sharp-needled pines, past blue-gray beeches and sturdy black walnuts I sailed while my laughter resounded through the ancient forest, filling every chink.“
– Mildred D. Taylor
While it was the first published, The Song of the Trees is chronologically the third book in the “Logan Family” series, followed by her Newbery Medal Award winning novel Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. This novella can be used as a teaching tool and a stepping stone to introduce readers to the Logan family, their love for their land, family pride, and the time period the series takes place in. Based on her family stories about growing up African American in the deep south, Taylor’s writing is accessible for ages 9 and up. The novellas short pages are filled with beautiful prose and insight that will brighten your heart and leave you wanting more. While her characters face obstacles, the story reaffirms the necessity to have pride in oneself, in your dignity, and to stand up for what’s right, even when it’s hard.
“Throughout my childhood he [my father] impressed upon my sister and me that we were somebody, that we were important and could do anything we set our minds to do or be. He was not the kind of father who demanded A’s on report cards. He was more concerned about how we carried ourselves, how we respected ourselves and others, and how we pursued the principles upon which he hoped we would build our lives. He was constantly reminding us that how we saw ourselves was far more important than how others saw us”
– Mildred T. Taylor’s Newbery Award Acceptance Speech (1977)
If you’re interested in requesting Song of the Trees for your book club, you can find the Request Form here. There are 15 copies. (A librarian must request items)
Taylor, Mildred D. Song of the Trees. Dial Press. 1975.
Every so often a book just makes me hoppy. That was the case when I serendipitously passed “Frog day : a story of 24 hours and 24 amphibian lives” by Marty Crump on a book display at the library by my house.
The slightly surprised frog on the cover with the adorably large webbed feet caught my eye immediately. He looked like I caught him doing something harmlessly nefarious. Like swapping his brother’s pond water out for blue jello so he would bounce off when trying to take a swim.
It brought me back to when I was a kid and used to write short stories from the perspective of my pet frog. I would let my frogs hop through my two-story Barbie dream house and imagine what their excavation was like. Then try to imagine the day my brother and I caught him in the park.
In hindsight I imagine it was quite jarring. Being able to hop and swim freely one day, then running into a glass wall the next. I never tried to catch another frog again after I wrote that story. My bad.
Long story short, it was nice to know that I wasn’t the only one anthropomorphizing out amphibian friends all these years. This small volume represents flippers everywhere.
The stories dig into the daily life of our webbed friends and explore the increasingly fragile state of nature and our changing climate. It sucks to be an indicator species, absorbing every toxin through your skin. When a frog is hurting, the world is hurting.
If you have time for a quick read and want to see the world from the ground up, give this little book a gander. I hope it makes you happy too.
“A large book collection is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of”… Okay, so the quote is actually “A large income,” not book collection, but for us, that pretty much means the same thing. Our Book Club Kit collection has 2,491 titles, and is bolstered by generous donations from book clubs and libraries across Nebraska. This week’s pick is “Mansfield Park” by Jane Austen, it’s available, along with five other Austen titles in our Book Club Kit collection. “Mansfield Park” is also available as an eBook and Audiobook in Nebraska OverDrive Libraries.
In Mansfield Park, first published in 1814, when the author had reached her full maturity as a novelist, Jane Austen paints some of most witty and perceptive studies of character. Against a genteel country landscape of formal parks and stately homes, the gossipy Mrs Norris becomes a masterful comic creation; the fickle young suitor Henry Crawford provides an unequaled portrait of an unscrupulous young man; and the complexly drawn Fanny Price emerges as one of Jane Austen’s finest achievements–the poor cousin who comes to stay with her wealthy relatives at Mansfield Park and learns how the game of love can too easily turn to folly. More intricately plotted and wider in scope than Austen’s earlier works, Mansfield Park continues to enchant and delight us as a superb example of a great author’s craft.
— book jacket
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. 196 libraries across the state share the Nebraska OverDrive collection of 30,262 audiobooks, 46,663 ebooks, and 6,506 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!
Wouldn’t it be great if kids all over Nebraska were talking about books? Hear about the Nebraska Library Commission & the Regional Library Systems’ program where kids can all read and discuss the same book on next week’s NCompass Live webinar on Wednesday, April 15 at 10am CT.
Join Sally Snyder, the NLC’s Coordinator of Children and Young Adult Library Services; and Bailee Juroshek, Office Specialist, to learn all about the One Book for Nebraska Kids and Teens program.
Our 2026 titles are: One Book For Nebraska Kids – Lucky Scramble by Peter Raymundo, and One Book For Nebraska Teens – Not Nothing by Gayle Forman.
Upcoming NCompass Live shows:
April 22 – Emergency Management in Libraries
April 29 – Pretty Sweet Tech: Computers in Libraries 2026 Highlights & Trends
May 6 – The 2026 Public Library Accreditation Process
May 13 – Play, Explore, Learn: Building Early Literacy Through Station-Based Programs
May 20 – Engaging New Voices in Advocacy: Youth, Trustees, and Everyday Patrons
May 27 – Pretty Sweet Tech
June 3 – Libraries and Friends of the Library: How to Stay Friends
June 10 – Law for Librarians
To register for an NCompass Live show, or to listen to recordings of past shows, go to the NCompass Live webpage.
NCompass Live is broadcast live every Wednesday from 10am – 11am Central Time. Convert to your time zone on the Official U.S. Time website.
The show is presented online using the GoTo Webinar online meeting service. Before you attend a session, please see the NLC Online Sessions webpage for detailed information about GoTo Webinar, including system requirements, firewall permissions, and equipment requirements for computer speakers and microphones.
Charles Yu’s Interior Chinatown is a pretty amazing book, and it is narratively different than anything I’ve read before. Frequently described as satire or metafiction, much of it is formatted to resemble a screenplay, with scene headings, character cues, and dialogue blocks. Additional narration, which expands beyond what would typically be included in a screenplay, is presented from the rarely-used second person point of view (think “you” pronouns).
Interior Chinatown’s main character, Willis Wu, is a young Chinese-American man who lives in Chinatown. He works as an extra (Background Oriental Male) in various movies and TV shows filmed on location, and he occasionally gets small speaking parts (Generic Asian Man). His aspiration, however, is to work his way up to the top slot in the hierarch: Kung Fu Guy.
Because of how this book is written, it’s often hard to tell whether actions are taking place on set or in real life. Willis and his neighbors, who are also cast in bit parts, share whispered commentary in the midst of scripted dialogue. And more significantly, dialogue between Willis and the stars of Black and White—the TV cop show they are currently filming—sometimes devolves into overt sniping about roles, stereotypes, and complicity with the system.
Text, subtext, and action blur. But the confusion serves a purpose. It opens up space for readers to interrogate the ways cultural tropes affect individuals—limiting how others see them as well as how they see themselves. It reminds us that everything is real life—even cliched cop shows.
This chaos is especially evident in the penultimate chapter: “Act VI: The Case of the Missing Asian.” Written as a courtroom scene, Willis is the defendant accused of “an internalized sense of inferiority.” According to testimony provided by Miles Turner, the Black detective from Black and White, “[Willis] thinks he can’t participate in this race dialogue, because Asians haven’t been persecuted as much as Black people.”
The trial is a wild ride. It provides Willis’s lawyer, Older Brother, whose recent absence from Chinatown is treated as a suspicious plot point in the latest Black and White episode but in reality is a function of his leaving to attend law school, an opportunity to share real case law pertaining to the historical treatment of minorities in the United States. It leads to Willis finally understanding that Kung Fu Guy is just another form of Generic Asian Man. And ironically, despite the main character’s epiphany, it ends in a giant Kung Fu battle—Wu and Older Brother vs. waves of cops—culminating in the freeing death of Kung Fu Guy
While Interior Chinatown’s plot is often bitingly funny, it never treats its subject matter lightly. That’s the brilliance of Yu’s work. It doesn’t offers easy answers, but it provides a crystal clear depiction of the dilemma confronting all of us: how to break free of the limiting roles and racial characterizations we’re steeped in.
Interior Chinatown was awarded the National Book Award in Fiction in 2020. It’s also been turned into a 10-episode miniseries available to stream on Hulu.
Yu, Charles. Interior Chinatown: A Novel. New York: Vintage Books, 2020.
Libraries participating in the Nebraska OverDrive Libraries Group currently have access to a shared and growing collection of digital downloadable audiobooks and eBooks. 196 libraries across the state share the Nebraska OverDrive collection of 30,262 audiobooks, 46,663 ebooks, and 6,506 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!
“Photography throughout this coffee-table-sized book is stunning, and you can’t help but get lost in the images of flowers in the field and in the vase. If you are thinking about a cutting garden for next year, or just want to create arrangements for your home, A Year in Flowers is a helpful guide.”
When Pierce Brown signed on for the three-book deal with Random House, he was 23, living above his former political science professor’s garage. Propelled by the ancient play Antigone and inspired by the sight of the planet Mars, Brown, a down-on-his-luck aspiring writer, wrote a novel that would change his life, Red Rising. The first of the main trilogy whose world includes a four-part follow-up saga, a number of comic books, and even a board game set in the same world, Red Rising is one of those novels that, despite being marketed as “YA”, find their stride in engaging the adult audience far beyond the last page.
All Darrow knows is the mines. Ever since humans came to Mars his people, the Reds, are a part of the dangerous, and often fatal, mining helium-3 which will help in preparing the world for habitation by the rest of humanity. It’s just them down below, watched over by the supervisory colors, sacrificing their short lives for the sake of a better future. While the Reds are a proud people, an undercurrent of discontent runs through small factions and rumors of their subjugation heighten around Darrow until he is forced to face the unthinkable. Mars is already inhabited. Generations of Reds have died long before their time in the hope of humanity’s prosperous future, when all along, the surface is thriving on the corpses of their ancestors. The young, fearless miner is enlisted by a resistance group to become the next step in their plan to overturn the corrupt rule of the Golds. And to do that, Darrow must become one himself.
“Man cannot be freed by the same injustice that enslaved it.”
Pierce Brown
In Red Rising, the reader explores a violent world and its caste system in which our protagonist must claw his way through the ranks to gain power and justice for his people. Though our hero, Darrow, goes through an incredible and harrowing Captain America-like transformation to become an elite “gold”, he still must do the internal and emotional work it takes to become the leader his people need him to be. While in an elite training institute which turns out to be a front for a deadly war simulator, Darrow meets and must gain the trust of his classmates and “fellow” Golds. Despite everything in him wanting to get revenge as quickly and ruthlessly as possible, he must grapple with his growing bonds between his classmates and their humanity amidst the bloodshed. Red Rising is great for older YA readers and Adult Book Club Groups, and has all the hallmarks of a great Dystopia novel. A close reading of the text is a good way to introduce themes like castes and class divide, gender equality in fantasy, societal instance on conformity, and the weight of responsibility into your group discussions.
If you’re interested in requesting Red Rising for your book club, you can find the Request Form here. There are 8 copies. (A librarian must request items)
We hope everyone had a good April Fool’s Day, unless you’re the indomitable Dolly Parton, who ain’t nobody’s fool. “Ain’t Nobody’s Fool: The Life and Times of Dolly Parton” by Martha Ackmann (St. Martin’s Press, 2025) is available as an eBook and audiobook in Nebraska OverDrive Libraries. Ackmann is a journalist who writes about women who have changed America. Find this title and many more through Nebraska OverDrive. Libraries participating in the Nebraska OverDrive Libraries Group currently have access to a shared and growing collection of digital downloadable audiobooks and eBooks. 196 libraries across the state share the Nebraska OverDrive collection of 30,262 audiobooks, 46,663 ebooks, and 6,506 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 smart, sparkly, and fun biography is as irresistible as Parton herself.”
Much of contemporary science fiction examines how humans will react to emerging technologies, explore the solar system, and establish colonies on new planets. Think The Martian by Andy Weir or Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey. I enjoy reading about the political battles, technological advances, and ethical issues that might arise in the near future. But one of my favorite branches of the genre looks much farther ahead—to futures where Earth has faded into myth and science has advanced so far that it is indistinguishable from magic. This vision of humanity’s distant future is what compelled me to read Black Sun Rising by C. S. Friedman, the first novel in her Coldfire Trilogy.
Black Sun Rising takes place on the mysterious planet Erna, colonized centuries ago by settlers from an advanced Earth civilization. But on Erna, things are not quite what they seem. The planet is governed by the Fae, a powerful force that adepts can wield to bend reality to their will. Throughout the novel, the reader is never quite sure what is real, what is imagined, or even what constitutes reality on Erna.
Civilization on Erna has developed into a feudal society ruled by religious sects. The story follows Damien Vryce, a priest and warrior of the Church of Human Unification, who is on a mission to understand the Fae and learn how to control it. Is the Fae magic, or a natural force that can ultimately be explained by science? This question lies at the heart of the political and philosophical tension on Erna.
During his travels, Damien meets Ciani, an adept who has been brutally attacked by mysterious beings that used the Fae to strip her of her memories. Determined to help her recover them, Damien follows rumors that lead him to a dark forest, home to a powerful sorcerer known as the Hunter. After a perilous journey, Damien discovers that the sorcerer is Gerald Tarrant—a revered saint of his own religion who has become something far darker, sustaining himself on the life force of Erna’s inhabitants.
Faced with a threat more powerful than he can confront alone, Damien reluctantly enlists Tarrant’s help. Tarrant’s motives remain unclear, and his very existence is an affront to everything Damien believes in. Where Damien is guided by faith and moral conviction, Tarrant has sacrificed his humanity for power and survives only in darkness. Yet for Ciani’s sake, Damien forms a fragile and uneasy alliance.
Friedman offers few concrete explanations of the Fae or Erna’s underlying nature. Instead, the reader is immersed in a dreamlike world where the boundaries between belief and reality blur. One of the most striking scenes occurs when Damien, Tarrant, and Ciani discover an ancient Earth telescope in a region where the Fae has no influence. Looking through it, they are astonished to find a reality untouched by will or belief. On Earth, science was grounded in observation; on Erna, it is shaped by perception, emotion, and intent.
While the landscapes of Erna are vivid and compelling, it is the characters who make the novel truly stand out. The dynamic between Damien and Tarrant—light and dark, idealism and pragmatism, hero and anti-hero—drives the narrative forward, with several surprising revelations along the way.
This is a challenging yet deeply fascinating read—unlike anything I’ve encountered before. For readers willing to venture into the strange and unsettling world of Erna, and to grapple with the complex characters of Damien and Tarrant, Black Sun Rising is well worth the journey.
Friedman, C. S. Black Sun Rising. DAW Books, 1991.
When I wandered into the bookstore, I really didn’t know anything about John Green or anything he had written; after all, his target audience as a novelist has been geared toward young adults (think The Fault in Our Stars), and I am certainly not one of those. But this book is not a novel. It is a work of nonfiction, and I’ve always been fascinated by epidemiology and how it affects human history.
Author John Green learned about the western African struggle with tuberculosis when he spent time in Sierra Leone as a volunteer with Partners in Health, an international nonprofit public health organization. We are introduced to young Henry Reider; he has tuberculosis, and he is severely ill. Green met him as a patient in 2019 at Lakka Government Hospital in the west African country, and his story forms the book’s human core. Appearing much younger due to his emaciated frame, the 17-year-old Henry greets Green with infectious energy, a big goofy smile, and enthusiasm despite years of undiagnosed or mismanaged symptoms starting in childhood. Fatigue, weight loss, and night sweats had led to misdiagnoses and delayed treatment. Unfortunately, his is not a rare story. His condition had deteriorated over time into drug-resistant TB, worsened by treatment interruptions, poverty, malnutrition, and limited access to effective drugs in an under-resourced setting.
The book tracks Henry’s severe decline as doctors sought to secure harder-to-obtain medications. Through advocacy and Green’s involvement, Henry ultimately survived, recovered, and returned home healthier, displaying resilience as TB persists due to systemic inequities in healthcare access and global priorities. Henry’s story serves to humanize the statistics of a curable yet deadly disease.
Green integrates Henry’s experiences with a vivid and enlightening examination of one of humanity’s oldest and most persistent diseases. The author frames tuberculosis not merely as a medical condition but as a historical force that has shaped societies, economies, and cultures across centuries. This perspective immediately sets the tone for a book that is as much about human resilience and vulnerability as it is about science. Green suggests that “The problem is not that people with tuberculosis are poor. The problem is that people are poor, and that poverty makes them vulnerable to tuberculosis.”
Green’s book is rich in detail, and his writing is balanced by accessible language and vivid examples that make complex concepts understandable as he traces TB’s influence from ancient civilizations to the industrial revolution. Living conditions, poverty, and social structures contributed to its spread, underscoring the interconnectedness of health and society, and reminding readers that disease is never just a biological phenomenon—it is deeply tied to human economic and societal conditions.
Green’s narrative does not shy away from contemporary challenges, as it addresses the resurgence of TB in certain regions, the rise of drug-resistant strains, and current global efforts to eradicate the disease. These discussions are sobering, emphasizing that TB is far from a relic of the past. Instead, it remains a pressing issue that demands sustained attention and innovation. As Green writes, “the cure is where the disease is not, and the disease is where the cure is not.”
Overall, Everything is Tuberculosis is an insightful and thought-provoking work that blends science, history, and culture into a cohesive narrative. It is a reminder that understanding TB is not just about curing an illness—it is about confronting the conditions that allow it to flourish.
Green, John. Everything is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of our Deadliest Infection. Crash Course Books. 2025.
