Noble Bookworms-April 2017

Our Youth Services staff at Noble have been having a blast choosing and reviewing books for our monthly book club. In April, we enjoyed nonfiction titles. If you haven’t read any recent nonfiction for young people, please browse our shelves or ask for a suggestion. There are some really engaging and well-presented informational books being published. We all ended up choosing teen nonfiction this month but can definitely also lead children to a book they find both educational and interesting. Summer break would be a great time to see what is offered about a topic you love or don’t know enough about!

This Land Is Our Land: A History of American Immigration by Linda Barrett Osborne

This book explores the way government policy and popular responses to immigrant groups evolved throughout U.S. history, particularly between 1800 and 1965. The book concludes with a summary of events up to contemporary times, as immigration again becomes a hot-button issue. Includes an author’s note, bibliography, and index.

Here We Are: Feminism for the Real World edited by Kelly Jensen

Here We Are is a scrapbook-style teen guide to understanding what it really means to be a feminist. It’s packed with essays, lists, poems, comics, and illustrations from a diverse range of voices, including TV, film, and pop-culture celebrities and public figures such as ballet dancer Michaela DePrince and her sister Mia, politician Wendy Davis, as well as popular YA authors like Nova Ren Suma, Malinda Lo, Brandy Colbert, Courtney Summers, and many more. Altogether, the book features more than forty-four pieces, with an eight-page insert of full-color illustrations.

The Nazi Hunters: How a Team of Spies and Survivors Captured the World’s Most Notorious Nazi by Neal Bascomb

In 1945, at the end of World War II, Adolf Eichmann, the head of operations for the Nazis’ Final Solution, walked into the mountains of Germany and vanished from view. Sixteen years later, an elite team of spies captured him at a bus stop in Argentina and smuggled him to Israel, resulting in one of the century’s most important trials — one that cemented the Holocaust in the public imagination.

Feminism: Reinventing the F-Word by Nadia Abushanab Higgins

While most people say they believe in equal rights, the word feminism America’s new F-word makes people uncomfortable. Explore the history of US feminism through pioneers such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Betty Friedan, Shirley Chisholm, and Gloria Steinem. Meet modern leaders such as Rebecca Walker and Julie Zeilinger, who are striving to empower women at work, in government, at home and in cultural and personal arenas. Learn from interviews with movement leaders, scholars, pop stars, and average women, what it means to be a feminist or to reject it altogether. After reading this book, readers will be able to respond to “Am I a feminist?” with a confident, informed voice.

Blood, Bullets, and Bones: The Story of Forensic Science from Sherlock Holmes to DNA by Bridget Heos
In this book, acclaimed author Bridget Heos uses real-life cases to tell the fascinating history of modern forensic science, from the first test for arsenic poisoning to fingerprinting, firearm and blood spatter analysis, DNA evidence, and all the important milestones in between. By turns captivating and shocking, Blood, Bullets, and Bones demonstrates the essential role forensic science has played in our criminal justice system.

 Tomboy by Liz Prince

Growing up, Liz Prince wasn’t a girly girl, dressing in pink tutus or playing pretty princess like the other girls in her neighborhood. But she wasn’t exactly one of the guys, either. She was somewhere in between. But with the forces of middle school, high school, parents, friendship, and romance pulling her this way and that, “the middle” wasn’t exactly an easy place to be.

Tomboy follows award-winning author and artist Liz Prince through her early years and explores–with humor, honesty, and poignancy–what it means to “be a girl.”

In the Shadow of Liberty: The Hidden History of Slavery, Four Presidents, and Five Black Lives by Kenneth C. Davis

Through the powerful stories of five enslaved people who were “owned” by four of our greatest presidents, this book helps set the record straight about the role slavery played in the founding of America. From Billy Lee, valet to George Washington, to Alfred Jackson, faithful servant of Andrew Jackson, these dramatic narratives explore our country’s great tragedy—that a nation “conceived in liberty” was also born in shackles.

These stories help us know the real people who were essential to the birth of this nation but traditionally have been left out of the history books. Their stories are true—and they should be heard.