Shelf Talk April 18
Here are some reading recommendations from the Dripping Springs Community Library for the month of April, chatted up by Century News columnist Alice Adam.
CHILDREN’S DEPARTMENT
Breathe Like a Bear:30 mindful moments for kids to feel calm and focused, anytime, anywhere by Kira Willey. Breathe Like a Bear is a beautifully-illustrated collection of mindfulness exercises designed to teach kids techniques for managing their bodies, breath, and emotions. Best of all, these 30 simple, short breathing practices and movements can be performed anytime, anywhere: in the car to the grocery store, during heavy homework nights at home, or even at a child’s desk at school. (Mindfulness training has been added to the curricula of many public school districts around the country with significant results in behavior and classroom performance.)
Based on Kira Willey’s Parents’ Choice GOLD Award-winning CD, Mindful Moments for Kids, this one-of-a-kind book is sure to help kids find calm, gain focus, and feel energized during the day, and it encourage families to establish a fun, consistent mindfulness practice, at home or on the go.
YOUNG ADULT DEPARTMENT
The Stars Below: (Vega Jane, Book 4) by David Baldacci.From the beginning, the fight was coming. Vega Jane fought her way out of the village where she was born, crossed a wilderness filled with vicious creatures, and raised a ragtag army behind her. But each triumph earned through grit and pain only brought her closer to him.
Necro. A sorcerer whose unspeakable evil is matched only by his magical power.
Vega and Necro are on a collision course. The clash between his awesome power and her iron will is going to shake the stars down. Their fight will seal their fates . . . and determine the future of their world.
The battle rages in The Stars Below, the furious conclusion to legendary storyteller David Baldacci's #1 global bestselling Vega Jane series.
ADULT DEPARTMENT
Bowlaway: A Novel by Elizabeth McCracken.From the day she is discovered unconscious in a New England cemetery at the turn of the twentieth century—nothing but a bowling ball, a candlepin, and fifteen pounds of gold on her person—Bertha Truitt is an enigma to everyone in Salford, Massachusetts. She has no past to speak of, or at least none she is willing to reveal, and her mysterious origin scandalizes and intrigues the townspeople, as does her choice to marry and start a family with Leviticus Sprague, the doctor who revived her. But Bertha is plucky, tenacious, and entrepreneurial, and the bowling alley she opens quickly becomes Salford’s most defining landmark—with Bertha its most notable resident.
When Bertha dies in a freak accident, her past resurfaces in the form of a heretofore-unheard-of son, who arrives in Salford claiming he is heir apparent to Truitt Alleys. Soon it becomes clear that, even in her death, Bertha’s defining spirit and the implications of her obfuscations live on, infecting and affecting future generations through inheritance battles, murky paternities, and hidden wills.
In a voice laced with insight and her signature sharp humor, Elizabeth McCracken has written an epic family saga set against the backdrop of twentieth-century America. Bowlaway is both a stunning feat of language and a brilliant unraveling of a family’s myths and secrets, its passions and betrayals, and the ties that bind and the rifts that divide.