Welcome to Check Your Shelf! This is your guide to help librarians like you up your game when it comes to doing your job (& rocking it).
“Check Your Shelf” is sponsored by Wednesday Books.
From one of the most followed BookTubers today, Christine Riccio, comes a story about second chances, discovering yourself, and being brave enough to try again. Colleen Hoover calls Again, but Better “is a fantastic debut novel! Entertaining, clever, and impossible to put down.” What would you do with a second chance?
Libraries & Librarians
News Updates
- Check out the winners for the IMLS National Medal for Museum & Library Services!
- A recent analysis shows that Georgia prison libraries are extremely short on books for inmates.
- (TW: racism): After a thirteen-year-old’s arrest in a branch of the Austin Public Library, black advocates demand that library policies create safe spaces for all.
- Ohio voters approve all five public library levies on the ballot for their May 7th election.
- A public library event for the author of P is for Palestine sparks concern and pushback from the Jewish community in Highland Park, New Jersey.
- Clearing out a library with the world’s smelliest fruit. Best of all, this is the SECOND time in a year that a university library has had to evacuate because of a durian!
- Jeopardy super-winner James Holzhauer has won $1.69 million so far, and donated $10,000 to the Las Vegas-Clark County Library, among other area organizations. Rock on!
- Evanston (IL) Public Library fans are on falcon watch, as its avian residents are currently sitting on four eggs. The library has a live camera feed on its YouTube channel!
Cool Library Updates
- Try out these book bentos for your library’s social media accounts.
- Academic libraries are fighting campus food insecurity with onsite pantries.
- Chicago Public Library launches a new community cinema program.
- Huntsville-Madison (AL) County Public Library creates parts in its maker space for an international space station project!
- Oakland Art Library loans out its works to patrons, but patrons need to pay a $20 monthly fee in order to check out works of art. Thoughts?
- There’s now a crowdsourced Google Doc called “How Cold is that Library?”, which is meant to help visitors at research and academic libraries. Slightly absurd? Yes. Useful? Absolutely!
- What do you do when insects destroy the trees in your community? Turn them into Little Free Libraries, of course!
- Opioid crisis resources for libraries, plus an in-depth look at measures many libraries are already taking to combat opioid dependency in their communities.
Worth Reading
- Measuring diversity in your library’s collection.
- Should a public library be responsible for publishing local news? That’s the debate going on in Longmont, Colorado.
- Be an ally for accessibility.
Book Adaptations in the News
- There’s already a TV series in the works for the upcoming book, Accepted, about the ongoing college admissions scandal.
- Hold onto your butts, people. It’s the trailer for It: Chapter 2 and HOLY BANANAPANTS, it’s scary!! (I totally can’t wait to see this movie, but yes, the trailer is terrifying.)
- New trailer for Big Little Lies, season 2.
- The Passage has been canceled after only one season.
- Evan Rachel Wood is starring in One Thousand Paper Cranes, which is based on the book Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes. What I can’t figure out is why the movie is centering the story around the author of the book, and not Sadako Sasaki, who was, you know, the entire point of the story.
- The Power of the Dog by Thomas Savage is getting an adaptation starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Elizabeth Moss.
- Casting updates for Looking for Alaska.
- Rainbow Rowell is working on a film adaptation for Eleanor & Park.
- New Rebecca adaptation headed to Netflix.
- NBC picks up Lincoln, based on the Lincoln Rhyme series by Jeffrey Deaver.
- R.L. Stine & Marc Brown signed a deal to create animated content.
- Sandra Cisneros is collaborating on an operatic adaptation of The House on Mango Street.
- Another Christmas Carol adaptation, with Guy Pearce as Scrooge.
- Scott Wolf replaces Freddie Prinze Jr. in the CW Nancy Drew series.
Collection Development Corner
New & Upcoming Titles
- Publisher’s Weekly pulled together a list of adult and children’s galleys to look for at BEA. Can’t make it to BEA this year? Consider this a head start on your purchasing for the next few months! Also, the EarlyWord May Galley Chat has been posted.
- A preview of Noah Hawley’s book Fargo: This is a True Story.
- Karamo Brown, Queer Eye’s barrier-breaking life therapist, has written a picture book with his son called I Am Perfectly Designed. If you need me, I’ll be out buying a copy of this for all of the tiny children in my life.
- Memoir updates: Liz Phair announces a memoir in October and FSG is publishing Chelsea Manning’s memoir. Also, Obama’s memoir may be published in 2020, in the midst of the presidential election.
- Marie Lu brings readers back to Legend with her upcoming book, Rebel.
- Caroline Kepnes is planning a third and fourth book in the You series.
- Bookmarks: Best reviewed books of the week.
- LA Times: new sci-fi releases.
- Vulture: 8 new books you should read this May.
- Paste: Best YA novels of May.
- CrimeReads: Best true crime and thrillers of May.
What Your Patrons Are Hearing About
- The Farm – Joanne Ramos (NPR, New York Times, Shondaland, USA Today)
- Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee – Casey Cep (NPR, Time, Washington Post)
- Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the Making of an American Imagination – Brian Jay Jones (NPR, New York Times, Washington Post)
- Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century – George Packer (NPR, New York Times)
- No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us – Rachel Louise Snyder (NPR, New York Times)
- Howard Stern Comes Again – Howard Stern (Entertainment Weekly, New York Times, Washington Post)
- Fire On High – Elizabeth Acevedo (Entertainment Weekly, New York Times)
RA & Genre Resources
- NoveList gives you some Pokemon-related RA tips.
- Why are we living in a golden age of historical fiction?
- A conversation about queer crime fiction.
- Anti-diet books are the new diet books.
Books & Authors in the News
- People are talking about Danielle Steel’s ridiculous 22 hour work days. Forget feasibility…is it even humanly possible??
- Nnedi Okorafor has been selected as the ALA President’s Program Speaker for the Annual Conference in June!
- George R.R. Martin says, no, he has not secretly finished books 6 and 7 in the Song of Fire & Ice series, and wonders why people would say such silly things.
Numbers & Trends
- By the Numbers: Library School.
- Nearly half of all parents are unaware of the term “summer slide,” and other trends from the Scholastic Kids and Family Reading Report.
Award News
- Winners for the Bram Stoker Awards and the Aurealis Award.
- Aida Edemariam’s The Wife’s Tale wins the RSL Ondaatje Prize and Normal People by Sally Rooney wins the top prize at the British Book Awards.
- Poet Hannah Ensor and journalist Robert Fieseler win the Judith A. Markowitz Award for Emerging LGBTQ Writers.
- Simon Armitage is the new poet laureate for the UK.
- Naomi Shihab Nye becomes the first Arab American author to be named as the Young People’s Poet Laureate.
- Longlists for the CWA Dagger Award and the 2019 Orwell Prizes.
- Shortlists for the Locus Awards and the Arthur C. Clarke Award.
Pop Cultured
- The world mourns the deaths of Doris Day and Tim Conway.
- Entertainment Weekly features 15 of its favorite pop culture bookstores.
- The pop culture importance of Hannibal Lecter.
All Things Comics
- Portland-based Oni Press joins forces with Lion Forge Comics.
- Teaser trailer for Watchmen on HBO.
- Fiction podcasts for superhero fans.
- Classic children’s books as graphic novels, and why this is a good thing. And on a related note, The Witches and the Babysitter’s Little Sister series are each getting a graphic novel adaptation! I’m super excited for both of these!
- 8 awesome middle grade comics.
- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as a super hero? Heck yeah!
Audiophilia
- 10 new titles you need to listen to on audio ASAP.
- Youth mystery titles on audio that will appeal to anyone.
- Audible and Reese Witherspoon have partnered to co-produce three Audible-exclusive memoirs by women.
- 21 must-read mystery and thriller audiobooks available RIGHT NOW on Hoopla!
Book Lists, Book Lists, Book Lists
Children/Teens
- 9 exciting mystery novels for kids.
- 50 must-read books set in schools. (There’s a mix of children’s, YA, and adult titles here.)
- YA/middle grade readalikes for Game of Thrones.
- Awesome royals in YA fantasy.
- Asian-inspired YA fantasy.
- 17 YA books to read during Mental Health Awareness Month.
- 8 YA novels in translation.
Adults
- 15 must-read translated books from the last 5 years.
- A reading list for the new royal parents.
- 16 mother-daughter book pairings for Mother’s Day.
- 15 true crime stories about con artists.
- 8 books set in isolated locations.
- 10 noir SFF protagonists even weirder than Detective Pikachu.
- 9 books that tackle sexual assault head on. (Trigger warnings for these books.)
- Book suggestions for fans of Killing Eve.
- Nonfiction books about female spies.
- Memoirs by Muslim women to read this Ramadan.
Bookish Curiosities & Miscellaneous
- Check out these 15 independent black-owned bookstores that are reclaiming their shelves and their communities.
- Another day, another protest against a Drag Queen Story Time. Seriously…the protests are getting really old, people.
- Pediatrician offices are partnering with the Reach Out and Read Program to give books away to patients 5 and under! This beats doctor’s office lollipops by a LONG shot!
- The Indian Novels Collective plans to translate 100 novels from 13 Indian languages into English.
- Why own voices reviews are important.
- The Charles Dickens novel that accompanied Captain Scott’s doomed expedition to Antarctica will be on display in London. The book apparently still smells faintly of smoke and fish.
- Learning to enjoy annotating.
- A book nerd’s guide to the Met Gala.
Level Up (Library Reads)
Do you take part in LibraryReads, the monthly list of best books selected by librarians only? We’ve made it easy for you to find eligible diverse titles to nominate. Kelly Jensen created a database of upcoming diverse books that anyone can edit, and Nora Rawlins of Early Word is doing the same, as well as including information about series, vendors, and publisher buzz.
Thanks for hanging out and I’ll see you again next week!
–Katie McLain Horner, @kt_librarylady on Twitter. Currently reading Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid.