the library journal book reviews

Built on more than a century of quality journalism and reviews, Library Journal provides groundbreaking features and analytical news reports covering technology, management, policy and other professional concerns to public, academic and institutional libraries. Our hefty reviews sections evaluate 8000+ reviews annually of books, ebooks, audiobooks, videos/DVDs, databases, systems and websites. Our team of library and literary experts communicate with our audience through print, digital and live content and continuously strive to stay on the cutting edge of the ever-evolving world of libraries.

Lj  readers include library professionals from public, academic, research, and institutional libraries from the united states, and around the world, as well as publishers and vendors with an interest in serving libraries and their patrons. they rely on our publications, events, and research to help navigate the challenges facing their respective institutions, and provide relevant materials and services their communities need., estimated print readers, library journal magazine, average monthly pageviews.

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Areas of Editorial Focus

Libraries are the ultimate shared resource, with excellent ROI, and serve as accelerators of learning throughout patron’s lives. At LJ , we’re committed to helping make the case for libraries with coverage that helps illustrate the value of libraries, models to point to for funding support, and tools for everyone’s advocacy kit.

Buildings & Design

While libraries are more than buildings, great spaces serve as a platform for next level service, enabling the new—from maker spaces and business services to kitchens and reading nooks. A symbol of the library’s importance to the community, a fresh start, a haven—library as place is on the rise. LJ’s in depth design coverage and professional development initiatives provide insight into the full range of possibilities and build the know-how to hire the right experts and get deep feedback, and buy-in, from stakeholders and communities.

Collection Development/Readers Advisory/Publishing

There’s no doubting the resilience of reading, and LJ is here with a virtual toolkit on collection development strategies—with more than 7,000 reviews published each year, comprehensive coverage of readers’ advisory tips, guidance on coming trends in everything from genres to the print to ebook continuum, and news on impactful changes in the publishing arena—as well as library initiatives on summer reading, early literacy, and community engagement around books and authors.  Beyond books, look to LJ for guidance on audio, films, databases, and professional reading.

Responding to digital and social disruption, libraries are innovating faster and harder than ever before. LJ profiles top innovators in the field via its extensive awards program, especially Movers & Shakers; it also provides case studies of innovative services and models at libraries of all kind to be replicated, iterated, and adapted, as well as exploring process innovations such as human centered design that can drive further innovation laser-targeted to each community’s distinct needs.

In libraries, leadership comes from every level of the organization. As community and campus leaders, library heads are often guides on civic or school-wide direction and set the tone for peers across their stakeholder groups. LJ surfaces that strategic thinking from the upper levels as well as the many in the trenches with ongoing coverage of the people who make libraries effective—via awards coverage, profiles of change makers, interviews and opinion pieces from thought leaders within and beyond the profession, and in-depth reporting on new initiatives designed to accelerate leadership skills.

Library Education/Careers

At every step in a library career—from first deciding to apply to library school to preparing to become a manager or director to taking leadership—professional development and training is more crucial than ever. The rapid pace of change means that library roles are evolving, with many librarian specialties emerging that didn’t even exist ten years ago. LJ ’s education and careers coverage spans breaking news, concrete advice from librarians in the trenches, and opinion on the hot topics of our day; plus our own unique live and virtual professional development events help librarians stay abreast or retrain on topics too focused for a post graduate certificate and too detailed for a single session but required to thrive in the vibrant library field.

Managing libraries has never before been this challenging, or this dynamic. LJ brings forward the creative minds and savvy strategies developing as a new management mindset turns outward. Look for more integration of external input, creativity behind strategic collaborations, embrace of data-informed decision making, and more. Organizational reinvention draws on tools such as design thinking and UX principles to maximize internal capacity and drive external impact and outcomes, all on mission. Long-term thinking takes relevance a step further to shape truly sustainable institutions.

Top notch marketing, from first question about service community to last social media touch on a program, is now required from libraries of all sizes to help shape library strategy, communicate with the community and stakeholders, and articulate the real library story. LJ’s ongoing coverage of marketing initiatives, top strategists, and smart campaigns surfaces best practices, geared to raise the bar on this high touch skill set for librarians in every setting.

National Conference Coverage

When leaders from across the profession gather to share best practices, brainstorm new approaches to challenges, and build their networks within and beyond libraries, LJ is there. Via preview, on site, and wrap-up coverage, LJ surfaces the conference news, new voices, and more you need to know from major convenings of the American Library Association (ALA), Public Library Association (PLA), Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL), Association of Research Libraries (ARL), Charleston Conference, Electronic Resources & Libraries (ER&L), BookExpo America (BEA), and more.

Programming/Services

Answering the question “do we still need libraries in the age of the Internet” with a resounding YES, library programming delivers targeted service to strengthen their communities and transform the lives of their users. LJ ’s curated coverage of innovative library offerings from around the country (and even the globe), amplifies their impact and helps library leaders learn how to replicate best practices and illustrate relevance—and develop, implement, test, and improve their own.

Everything digital enables libraries to do more, and creates both new demand and new opportunities for access. As tech gets ever-more infused into much of the work in libraries, LJ is dedicated to helping our readers get up to speed on how it is transforming services, enabling access, building library capacity, and both reshaping what patrons demand and how libraries deliver. Ongoing editorial coverage complements a dedicated full-day virtual event, The Digital Shift, which draws thousands of live attendees.

ALA/Library of the year

Issue Date: April, 2020 Ad Space Close: April 20, 2020 Ad Materials Due: May 4, 2020

Fall Book Announcements / Editor’s Picks

Issue Date:  August, 2020 Ad Space Close:  June 22, 2020 Ad Materials Due:  July 6, 2020

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Fasting and Feasting: 6 Picture Books About Ramadan

This selection of picture books features various traditions and ways to celebrate the holy month, showing young readers the diversity within the Muslim community while celebrating the shared principles.

3 Nostalgic Middle Grade Reads | SLJ Spotlight

Dan Bova on His Middle Grade Nonfiction Book 'This Day in History For Kids'

All reviews+ coverage.

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I Heart Skullcrusher #2 | Exclusive Preview

Take Five: Middle Grade Fantasy

12 Books to Celebrate Transgender Day of Visibility

From elementary books to young adult titles—across various genres and formats—these 12 recent releases elevate voices and showcase the multifaceted experiences within the trans and nonbinary community.

Review of the Day: Black Girl You Are Atlas by Renée Watson, ill. Ekua Holmes

Recent Graphic Novel Deals, Early March 2024 | News

Eating Disorders Don’t Discriminate: A Review of John Schu’s Louder Than Hunger, by guest blogger Linda Williams Jackson

Books on Film: Watch the HAROLD AND THE PURPLE CRAYON Trailer?!

Noodles from Noodles from Noodles: A Q&A with Kyo Maclear and Gracey Zhang About Noodles on a Bicycle Interview

Interview with Frederick L. Jones of Saturday AM

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The Library is the journal of the Bibliographical Society. For more than a hundred years it has been the pre-eminent UK scholarly journal for the study of bibliography and of the role of the book in history …

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The Top Library Journals and Magazines That Publish Quality Book Reviews

What Journals Publish Credible Book Reviews?

There are several library review journals and magazines that accept books for review. These publications play a crucial role in helping librarians and readers discover new titles. Keep in mind that submission guidelines and preferences may vary, so it’s essential to check each publication’s specific requirements. Here are some well-known library review journals and magazines:

• Website:  Booklist Online
• Published by the American Library Association (ALA), Booklist provides reviews of a wide range of books, audiobooks, and media.

School Library Journal (SLJ):

• Website:  School Library Journal
• Focused on books for children and young adults, SLJ is an important resource for librarians working in schools and public libraries.

The Children’s Book Review:

• Website: The Children’s Book Review
• An online platform that reviews children’s books, making it a valuable addition to your list of review submission targets.

Kirkus Reviews:

• Website:  Kirkus Reviews
• Kirkus Reviews is known for its comprehensive book reviews, covering a broad spectrum of genres.

Publishers Weekly (PW):

• Website:  Publishers Weekly
• While not exclusively a library review journal, Publishers Weekly includes book reviews and is widely read by librarians, booksellers, and industry professionals.

VOYA (Voice of Youth Advocates):

• Website:  VOYA
• VOYA focuses on books for young adults and is a valuable resource for librarians working with teen readers.

Horn Book Magazine:

• Website:  The Horn Book
• The Horn Book Magazine reviews children’s and young adult literature and is respected for its insightful critiques.

Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries:

• Website:  Choice Reviews
• Choice provides reviews for academic libraries, covering a wide range of disciplines and subjects.

Approach the pursuit of book reviews with resilience, understanding that each review, whether praise or critique, is a step toward greater visibility and growth as an author.

When submitting books for review, it’s important to follow each publication’s submission guidelines, including format preferences, contact information, and any specific requirements they may have. Additionally, be aware that the landscape of review journals and magazines may evolve, so it’s a good practice to verify the latest information and guidelines .

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Bianca Schulze is the founder of The Children’s Book Review. She is a reader, reviewer, mother and children’s book lover. She also has a decade’s worth of experience working with children in the great outdoors. Combined with her love of books and experience as a children’s specialist bookseller, the goal is to share her passion for children’s literature to grow readers. Born and raised in Sydney, Australia, she now lives with her husband and three children near Boulder, Colorado.

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Book Reviews

It's not quite dark enough in 'the midnight library'.

Jason Sheehan

Nora Seed wants to die.

This is where we begin, in Matt Haig's new novel, The Midnight Library : with a young woman on the verge of making a terrible choice. She's lost her job, her best friend, her brother. Her relationships are in shambles and her cat is dead. More importantly, she is just deeply, seemingly irretrievably, sad. She can't imagine a day that is better with her in it. Living has become nothing but a chore.

So she ends it. Overdose. Antidepressants. The world goes black.

And then Nora wakes up. Not in heaven (dull) or hell (overdone) or purgatory (insert Lost joke), but in a library. The Midnight Library, which is the place people go when they find themselves hanging precariously between life and death and not entirely sure about which way to go.

The library is immense. Perhaps endless. And it is filled with nothing but books, shelves and, curiously, Nora's school librarian, Mrs. Elm. "Every life contains many millions of decisions," says Mrs. Elm.

Some big, some small. But every time one decision is taken over another, the outcomes differ. An irreversible variation occurs, which in turn leads to further variations. These books are portals to all the lives you could be living.

Yes, it really is that simple. And yes, it really is presented that plainly. As a place, the Midnight Library isn't really a library (of course), but is instead a 101-level lecture in parallel universe theory, philosophy and quantum indeterminacy. Really, it's a therapist simulator, minus the couch. A place of regret and possibility. Because who, in their darkest moments — or maybe just on a Tuesday — hasn't wondered what life would be like if only...

Arts & Life

Immortality, sadness and drinking with shakespeare in 'how to stop time'.

Nora certainly has. She is wracked with regret. What would've happened if she'd married her fiance rather than walking out two days before the wedding? What would've happened if she'd stuck with the band she and her brother and their friend Ravi had started rather than bailing just when they were about to get big? What would've happened if she'd stuck with competitive swimming, been a better cat owner, been nicer to her parents, followed her best friend to Australia or become a glaciologist?

Again, yes. The questions are that simple. And again, yes, they're presented that plainly.

The Midnight Library is the place where Nora gets to find out. Where, for an hour, a day or a month, she gets to dip into and sample lives where she made different choices, with the ultimate goal of erasing those regrets and finding a life she's comfortable in.

But here's the problem. Haig presents all of this as a straight line. The Midnight Library is unusual in that it follows a plot with no twists, no turns that don't feel like a gentle glide. Inside the library itself, Mrs. Elm's job is to present everything to Nora very clearly and to lay out the stakes very directly. Infinite options, yes, but maybe not an infinite amount of time in which to choose. Infinite possibility, sure, but only one shot at each of them. When Nora loses hope, the library starts to collapse. When she finds herself excited again about living, things calm down.

And there's a deliberateness to it all. A simplicity to the narrative that has to be taken as a choice on Haig's part, not an accident. After meeting another "slider" (as those who can bounce around between multiverse possibilities are called), and discussing the pop-science implications of a multi-dimensional existence, Nora muses on her situation:

[She] had read about multiverses and knew a bit about Gestalt psychology. About how human brains take complex information about the world and simplify it, so that when a human looks at a tree it translates the intricately complex mass of leaves and branches into this thing called 'tree'. To be human was to continualy dumb down the world into an understandable story that keeps things simple. She knew that everything humans see is a simplification. A human sees the world in three dimensions. That is a simplification. Humans are fundamentally limited, generalizing creatures, living on auto-pilot, who straighten out curved streets in their minds, which explains why they get lost all the time.

Haig lives by that here. He takes what could've been (what has been in so many other books) a dark or sad or curvy or weird spin through the logical and philosophical possibilities of regret crossed with multiverse theory and ... straightens it out. There is tragedy, but it feels muted by the existence of infinite chances. There is sadness and pointlessness, soft meditations on the cost of fame and the dignity of smaller lives, lots of quotes from philosophers (because that's what Nora studied in school), and quiet thoughts about the weight of meaning in a universe where everything that can happen, does.

But what sucks a measure of the color and life from The Midnight Library is that Nora, as a character, doesn't really want anything. Or maybe she does, but the arc of the plot hinges on her trying to figure out what exactly it is. And a character who doesn't actively want something — even when it is something so basic as to keep on living — is a hard character to identify with.

Ultimately, Haig gives Nora (and those of us following along with her) a straightforward path from suicide to closure, from regret to acceptance. He gives her a tree, and though there are many branches, it is still just a tree. The story, then, forms solely around the lives she passes briefly through, the choices and their consequences. Nora lives a hundred lives. A thousand. Enough of a theoretical portion of an infinity that she feels as though she has seen them all by the time we're closing on the final pages.

The only question left hanging over all of it is which one she'll finally choose. And in a multiverse of infinite choice and infinite possibility, I'm just not sure that the answer matters enough.

Jason Sheehan knows stuff about food, video games, books and Starblazers . He is currently the restaurant critic at Philadelphia magazine, but when no one is looking, he spends his time writing books about giant robots and ray guns. Tales From the Radiation Age is his latest book.

Marketing to Libraries: Reviews as a Selection Tool

• Reviews as a Selection Tool
• The Library Market in General
• Marketing Resources
• Self-Publishing
• Standards and Tools

ALA Reviews

Booklist /Booklist Online reviews adult books (fiction and nonfiction), books for youth (children and young adults), and reference books and also newly released videos, DVDs, audiobooks, spoken word audios, and children's music CDs.

Booklist is a book-review magazine that has been published by the American Library Association since 1905, and is widely viewed as offering the most reliable reviews to help libraries decide what to buy and to help library patrons and students decide what to read, view, or listen to. It comprises two print magazines, an extensive website and database, e-newsletters, webinars, and other resources that support librarians in collection development and readers' advisory.

Booklist Online is the web version of the Booklist print magazine. The full  Booklist Online  database contains more than 170,000 reviews and thousands of features dating back to 1992 and 8,000 new reviews and related features every year.

A quarterly supplement to Booklist free to Booklist subscribers, Book Links magazine helps teachers, youth librarians, school library media specialists, reading specialists, curriculum coordinators, and others connect children with high-quality literature-based resources.

• Getting Reviewed by Booklist Specific guidelines for submitting materials in various formats and types of materials for review consideration in Booklist or Booklist Online.
• Getting Reviewed by CHOICE Specific guidelines for submitting materials for review consideration in Choice, the premier review journal of new academic titles.

Additional Review Publications

Librarians selecting materials for their collections scan many sources, including local publications and newspapers and consumer publications.  This list, arranged alphabetically, includes the major general sites and publications, with special aspects, such as "indie friendliness" indicated.

• AudioFile AudioFile reviews unabridged and abridged audiobooks, original audio programs, commentary, and dramatizations in the spoken-word format.
• Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books is a book review journal for librarians, teachers, parents, and others interested in new children's books. The Bulletin is a selective journal, reviewing approximately 900 of the over 5000 trade books published for children and young adults annually. Books reviewed include both recommended and not-recommended titles. Submissions from small and alternative publishers encouraged.
• Foreword Reviews Foreword Reviews accepts pre-published or new indie books for review. more... less... Two services are offered: Foreword Reviews publishes about 150 objective reviews in a quarterly magazine; Clarion Reviews is fee-for-review service publishing 450-word reviews, with start ratings.
• The Horn Book The Horn Book Guide and The Horn Book Magazine both review children's and young adult books that are published in the United States. The Horn Book Magazine also reviews audiobooks. Books produced by publishers that are not listed in Literary Market Place are not considered.
• Kirkus Reviews Kirkus Reviews reviews adult fiction and nonfiction, titles for children and teens, and iPad Book Apps.
• Kirkus Indie A review service designed for small and independent publishers.
• Library Journal Library Journal reviews books, novel-length romance ebooks, graphic novels, zines, audio, video, and e-reviews (online databases) that have the potential to interest a broad spectrum of libraries.
• New York Times Book Review The New York Times Book Review reviews books published in the United States and available through general-interest bookstores
• Publishers Weekly Adult books reviewed in these categories: Nonfiction, Fiction, Mystery/Thriller, Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror, Romance/Erotica, Poetry, Comics, and Lifestyles (cooking, gardening & home, health & fitness, or parenting). Children's books reviewed in each issue.
• Booklife, by Publishers Weekly BookLife is a website from Publishers Weekly dedicated to indie authors. The site provides a free and easy way to submit self-published books to Publishers Weekly for review.
• School Library Journal School Library Journal reviews new children's and young adult general trade books, original paperbacks, and reference books from established publishers, as well as DVDs & audio recordings, reference products, and online resources.
• Science Books & Films (SB&F) Science Books & Films, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, reviews current science-based books, videos, software, and websites for all age groups (K-College, Teachers, and General Audience)
• SELF-e SELF-e is a discovery platform designed to expose indie ebook(s) to more readers via the public library, locally or nationwide. It is a collaboration between Library Journal and BiblioBoard®
• Video Librarian Video Librarian reviews both theatrical and non-theatrical DVDs, including Blu-ray, that are new to the marketplace for public, school, university, and special libraries.
• Voice of Youth Advocates (VOYA) VOYA reviews books for and about teenagers, aged 12 through 18. Independent, experienced reviewers who work with teens throughout the nation, write the reviews.
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• Last Updated: Apr 12, 2023 11:49 AM
• URL: https://libguides.ala.org/marketing-to-libraries

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30 New Books Critics Think You Should Read Right Now

Nbcc board members review this year’s nbcc award finalists.

Every year, in the weeks leading up to the National Book Critics Circle Awards, the NBCC board members take the time to  review and appreciate  the  thirty finalists , recognized in Autobiography, Biography, Criticism, Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry. Needless to say, these thirty books make a pretty good reading list.

This year’s National Book Critics Circle Awards will be held at the New School in New York City on March 21. In the meantime, see what the NBCC’s board members have to say about all of the finalists below:

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Susan Kiyo Ito, I Would Meet You Anywhere: A Memoir (Mad Creek Books, an imprint of The Ohio State University Press)

Susan Ito’s heart-rending and courageous memoir holds a secret at its core. At nineteen, as a transracial adoptee raised by nisei parents, she sleuths out the identity of her Japanese-American birth mother, defying laws that keep adoption records sealed. Their fraught first meeting is the beginning of decades of emotional ebbs and flows, as Ito’s biological mother cuts off contact with her repeatedly to maintain anonymity and avoid naming the man who fathered her. What sustains Ito: Marriage, motherhood, advocating for adoptees, and writing her own story. I Would Meet You Anywhere illuminates the complexities of identity, family, and belonging.

David Masumoto, with artwork by Patricia Wakida, Secret Harvest: A Hidden Story of Separation and the Resilience of a Family Farm (Red Hen Press)

Secret Harvests limns the compounded tragedy of the Japanese internment for one family, when a cognitively disabled member, herself disabled via the racism of inadequate medical care–was separated and “lost” to the family during World War II. David Mas Masumoto uncovers the smallest thread of the story and achieves the seemingly impossible feat of reconnecting the lost family member whose story had been lost to racism but also family shame. In stark, stunning prose combined with Patricia Wakida’s evocative woodcut prints, Secret Harvests manages to take absence and turn it into presence, illuminating the hard-won resilience and joys as well as the darker corners of the author’s family history—and that of our nation as well.

Ahmed Naji, translated by Katharine Halls, Rotten Evidence: Reading and Writing in an Egyptian Prison (McSweeney’s)

Ahmed Naji’s eloquent, and at times searingly funny, memoir of his time spent in an Egyptian prison, Rotten Evidence , reveals the importance of literature as a form of self-liberation. Naji was convicted of “violating public modesty” after an excerpt from his novel Using Life was published in a journal in Egypt. Naji recounts his experiences in detail, from the mundane daily indignities of incarceration to the camaraderie that develops between prisoners. The memoir is also an erudite literary text as Naji expounds on works of Egyptian literature, the Arabic language itself, and the limits imposed by successions of authoritarian governments. Katharine Halls’s lively translation captures Naji’s distinctive voice, by turns intellectual, enraged, sardonic; Naji comes across as someone who remarkably can always crack wise about his bully jailers and the ignorance of his government’s censors.

Safiya Sinclair, How to Say Babylon: A Memoir (Simon & Schuster)

How to Say Babylon , Safiya Sinclair’s lyric memoir, is intimate, unforgettable and a shining example of why poets should write prose. The Eden of Sinclair’s Jamaican childhood is irrevocably altered under her father’s strict Rastafarian upbringing which first constrains, and then threatens, her life. Her poetic soul is matched by her resilience and perseverance and is the foundation of her courageous expressions of individuality and agency. Sinclair expertly weaves moments both harrowing and idyllic in a way that is candid, yet still generous to even those who have harmed her, which speaks both of her sensitivity and strength, and makes this memoir singular, universal and transporting.

Matthew Zapruder, Story of a Poem: A Memoir (Unnamed Press)

Matthew Zapruder’s Story of a Poem pursues two questions simultaneously: what makes a poem work, and what makes a life matter. If those questions seem to belong to different realms of meaning, it is the quiet brilliance of this book to convince you of their interdependence. The story is of the creation and revision of several poems—messy, developing drafts included—and the equally messy process of understanding a child whose autism diagnosis wrenches the author’s first draft of parenthood into a new shape—all while the air outside darkens with wildfire smoke. It is rare to see the competing calls to creativity and care explored so literally, and with such urgency and tenderness, as they are here.

Jonathan Eig, King: A Life (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

In his sweeping biography of Martin Luther King Jr. Jonathan Eig recovers the civil rights leader from “the gray mist of hagiography.” Eig traces the arc of “Little Mike,” son of a Georgia sharecropper, to national prominence as an eloquent advocate for Black rights, as well as a crusader against the Vietnam War and poverty, all the way to Memphis and the Lorraine Motel balcony. Building on more than 200 interviews and recently released FBI files, Eig recently made national news by debunking a famous quotation about Malcolm X attributed to King, tracking fissures in the civil rights movement, and revealing King’s womanizing. With the velocity of a thriller, Eig evokes King in all his complexity, an imperfect but extraordinary man.

Gregg Hecimovich, The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of the Bondwoman’s Narrative (Ecco)

The Bondwoman’s Narrative , written in the mid-nineteenth century and believed to be the first novel by a Black woman, caused a sensation when it was authenticated and published by Henry Louis Gates Jr. in 2002. Until now, however, the author’s identity remained  a mystery. In this compelling new biography, Hecimovich combs through public records, handwritten diaries, almanacs, wills, and slave inventories and invites readers into his search, even the dead ends,  to reveal Crafts as the former Hannah Bond, a child traumatically separated from her enslaved mother, who learned to read and write before escaping to the North and completing the book. Hecimovich convincingly demonstrates that Crafts’ writing was influenced by popular literature, in particular Dickens’ Bleak House , yet stands, sui generis , as what he calls “one of the most powerful imaginative records we have of slavery.”

Yunte Huang, Daughter of the Dragon: Anna May Wong’s Rendezvous with American History (Liveright)

Daughter of the Dragon provides a riveting glimpse into the life of the beguiling actress Anna May Wong, one of Old Hollywood’s most recognizable faces. The book is the triumphant capstone to an ambitious trilogy: here, as in previous installments on Charlie Chan and the original Siamese twins (both NBCC finalists), Huang shines his spotlight upon a single, iconic figure in order to reveal a bigger picture. This dramatic account of Wong’s ascent to silver screen stardom—and subsequent descent into alcoholism and oblivion—thoughtfully illuminates the crucial role played by Asian Americans in the spectacle of modern culture.

Rachel Shteir, Betty Friedan (Yale University Press)

In Betty Friedan , Rachel Shteir investigates the life, work and complex legacy of the trailblazing feminist. While Friedan remains respected for her contributions to early second wave feminism, her resistance to intersectional feminist work leaves her out of sync with contemporary feminist activism. The first biography of Friedan in a generation, drawing on extensive research and interviews with Friedan’s contemporaries, Shteir examines the ways in which Friedan’s early years growing up Jewish in the midwest and living in the shadow of her mother’s thwarted education, shaped her ambition, career trajectory and personal life. The determination that led Friedan to become a forceful national leader also closed her off from compromise and evolution. In this timely, important biography, Shtier makes the case that her impact remained crucial to social change in 20th century America.

Jonny Steinberg, Winnie & Nelson: A Portrait of a Marriage (Knopf)

Jonny Steinberg’s deeply insightful, painstakingly researched Winnie and Nelson: A Portrait of a Marriage unmasks the Mandelas, sliding past their public mythos, and the simpler romantic narrative they told each other, to reveal the emotional labyrinth beneath. Steadily, through newly recovered material about the couple’s conversations – gathered by eavesdropping Afrikaner prison guards – Steinberg reveals how incarceration, torture, infidelity, and time itself, changed both husband and wife and their political stances. We’re left with a strong sense of the horrors they endured during apartheid, and the tenderness that remained between them at the end, even after they had inflictied pain on one another, and enduried so much cruelty and torture. With its exploration of two radically different approaches to apartheid, this beautiful biography speaks movingly to present-day struggles for racial justice.

Nicholas Dames, The Chapter: A Segmented History from Antiquity to the Twenty-First Century (Princeton University Press)

1.) One of the most thrilling things a book of criticism can do is answer a question that you didn’t know you had. 2.) The question in The Chapter is particularly delicious, because you likely accept chaptering as a matter of course, without asking why books are split up. 3.) Nicholas Dames roams wonderfully from the Gospels to, in a particular highlight, George Eliot. He explores time, transitions, and the literal manufacturing of books. 4.) Dames is also a clear, lucid writer. 5.) The critical cliché in this case is true: after reading The Chapter , you will never quite read anything else the same way.

Myriam Gurba, Creep: Accusations and Confessions (Avid Reader Press)

Creep is the very rare book of essays that could easily read as a single full-length study. Across her works to date ( Mean , Dahlia Season ) Myriam Gurba has developed a control over tone that lets her combine all of Creep’s elements—the creeping presence of Richard Ramirez, the itching fear of lice, anti-Mexican racism everywhere, cold Joan Didion beside the hot Los Angeles strawberries, Gurba teaching her high school students that that rape is about geography, not sex—into a coherent portrait in local sensibility. Creep is a tricky book that reads easy.

Naomi Klein, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Naomi Klein has long challenged readers to look at the way we live from a slightly skewed angle in hopes of ultimately making the world more just. In this masterwork of storytelling, reporting, criticism, and analysis, she uses the idea of the twin, or the fun house version of our own world, to explore how truth works—or doesn’t—in today’s political and cultural climate. “It’s tough to live in a moment when so many truths that had been sold as settled suddenly become wobbly,” she writes. In this time of uncertainty we’re lucky to have her be one of our guiding voices.

Grace E. Lavery, Pleasure and Efficacy: Of Pen Names, Cover Versions, and Other Trans Techniques (Princeton University Press)

Pleasure and Efficacy provides a groundbreaking study of the idea of gender transition in the modern era. Grace E. Lavery, a literary scholar and prominent activist, marshals a kaleidoscopic array of examples—from pseudonyms to psychoanalysis to The Silence of the Lambs —in support of her claim that sex change is possible. By turns playful and polemical, Lavery unpacks complex theoretical texts with an efficacy that is as astonishing to behold as it is pleasurable to read: a bold affirmation of the trans condition.

Tina Post, Deadpan: The Aesthetics of Black Inexpression (NYU Press)

Deeply researched and refreshingly lucid, Tina Post’s Deadpan arrives as one of the most original and affecting aesthetic surveys in recent memory. Long consigned to the realm of play-it-straight humor, the book recontextualizes the act of withholding to taxonimize its origins and uses—specifically the tact it assumes when intersecting with blackness. Refusing to differentiate between “embodied blackness (or blackness as performed by black people) and symbolic blackness (or blackness in the cultural imaginary),”  the author instead maps the many tributaries connecting the one to the other, illuminating how specimenization, perceived threat, gradients, and the tension between excess and absence evolve and get repurposed by black and white artists alike.

Teju Cole, Tremor (Random House)

In Cole’s triumphant return to fiction, the critic, novelist, and photographer finds new possibilities for autofiction. The book is dense with digressions on art and colonialism from Tunde, the Harvard-photography-professor narrator (one chapter takes the form of a lecture implicating an audience of museum patrons in the legacy of cultural appropriation). But it’s more than a vehicle for ideas. Rather, the story is about what these ideas mean for Tunde as he considers his own degrees of privilege and the exploitative nature of photography while reckoning with memories of growing up in Nigeria and of an old friend whose occasional presence adds to Tremor ’s elegiac and haunting quality.

Daniel Mason, North Woods (Random House)

A house surrounded by an apple orchard in Western Massachusetts provides the setting for Daniel Mason’s ghostly masterpiece. Told in vivid overlapping stories, spanning from the Puritan colonial era to the future, the novel lays bare the poisonous American obsession with property and its deleterious effect on ecological succession. Beauty, humor, and violence surface in the lives of the house’s colorful inhabitants over the years: spinster sisters, ambitious farmers, a painter harboring a secret desire, and a troubled young man, among others. The bold accordion-like structure of North Woods (letters, songs, and poetry are mixed with conventional narration) traces an erosion of humanity even as its players yearn for a better future.

Lorrie Moore, I Am Homeless if This Is Not My Home (Knopf)

Lorrie Moore’s I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home is hilarious and beautifully written, which is no surprise coming from Moore, whose short stories and novels have delighted readers since 1985’s Self-Help . The surprise is in the absolute boldness of this novel—a zombie road trip is interspersed with letters from an innkeeper written just after the Civil War. Even more astounding is the beating heart of the work—amid the chaos and contortion of the plot, this is a tender and poignant examination of grief, loss, and memory. It’s a wonderfully elusive book from a master of form, packing multitudes into just under 200 pages.

Marie NDiaye, translated by Jordan Stump, Vengeance Is Mine (Knopf)

At the heart of Marie NDiaye’s hypnotic and ingenious literary thriller is a sensational legal case: Maître Susane is hired to represent a wealthy man’s wife, who has been accused of murdering the couple’s three children. Susane, who has never tried a murder case and is of a working-class background, believes she met Principaux, her client’s husband, decades earlier when she was ten years old. NDiaye, who began publishing her slippery and original fictions three decades ago at 17, entwines subtle mysteries with depictions of harrowing violence. Elliptical and lyrical, Vengeance Is Mine amounts to a disquieting exhumation of the past and its tight, invisible hold on the present.

Justin Torres, Blackouts (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Justin Torres radically experiments with the biographical fiction genre to stunning effect. Structured like an exquisite nesting doll of stories, the novel follows the arrival of the young exhausted narrator at the Palace, a convalescent home where he has come to help Juan finish his erasure project involving Sex Variants , a real-life 1941 collection of anonymous interviews with gay and lesbian people. Contributions by queer journalist Jan Gay were uncredited, and Juan and the narrator work together to highlight this unjustly forgotten legacy, as Juan prods the narrator for details of his own clouded past. Blackouts is a tour de force of desire and reclamation.

R oxana Asgarian, We Were Once A Family (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Asgarian draws on her background as a Houston court reporter for her astonishing debut. The book is a meticulous, harrowing, and deeply empathetic investigation of the story behind the deaths of a married white Portland, Ore., lesbian couple and their six Black Texas-born adopted children from a cliffside car crash in Mendocino County, Calif., that was ruled a murder-suicide. Asgarian provides a blistering indictment of the Houston family court, child protection agencies, and adoption agencies that wrest children such as the victims away from their birth families, and of the media’s focus, in looking for answers to explain the crime, on the psychology of the adoptive mothers rather than the structural conditions impacting the children’s birth families.

Kerry Howley, Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs (Knopf)

You might not expect to be moved by a book whose title refers to a conspiracy theory about how Monster Energy Drinks are actually vehicles for Satan. But Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs is a clear-eyed and nuanced accounting of the ways in which our modern security state reduces human beings into little more than unending terabytes of data. Kerry Howley interprets such data in a way that is distinctly human and deeply generous; she distills small, telling details from a larger story about conspiracy theorists and whistleblowers and everyone in between, while still allowing her narrative to meander and digress in surprising and revelatory ways.

Dina Nayeri, Who Gets Believed? (Catapult Books)

In Who Gets Believed? , Dina Nayeri ( The Ungrateful Refugee ) collates data from real situations where the stakes of personal credibility are high and their outcomes apparently arbitrary. She connects a refugee whose story is rejected on absurd grounds to her own skepticism, as a Christian child refugee in the United States, of the thrashing antics of the girls around her in church. Nayeri exploits her heterogenous life experience (a management consultancy interlude is among the book’s oblique surprises) to compose a work something like philosophy, one that forces old conceptual questions back into conversation with their crucial roles in daily life.

Jeff Sharlet, The Undertow (W. W. Norton)

In “The Undertow: Scenes From a Slow Civil War,” journalist and author Jeff Sharlet takes readers on a chillingly urgent tour of Donald Trump’s America. Sharlet gives us much more than soundbites as he immerses himself in Trump rallies, a men’s rights conference and a prosperity Gospel megachurch, and as he talks in depth with conspiracy theorists, white nationalists and acolytes of Ashli Babbitt, the woman shot on Jan. 6, 2021, as she tried to break into the U.S. Capitol, “transformed” after her death, Sharlet writes, into “yet another flag, like a new tarot card in the deck of fascism.”

Christina Sharpe, Ordinary Notes (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

From the glimmering mosaic of Christina Sharpe’s Ordinary Notes emerges a luminous vision of a mind and life, “ordinary” only in the sense that it contains the matter of her daily reckonings, the memories of an extraordinary mother, the “antiblack notes” that have impinged on her and all Americans’ experience of life, and the lovely counter-notes—the lessons, the art, the courageous voicings—that create a new understanding of the world: “All of our renewed power to refuse the concentric senses of the ruinous.”

Saskia Hamilton, All Souls (Graywolf Press)

In the exquisite and profoundly affecting All Souls , completed just before her death, Saskia Hamilton wonders if writing can be “a form of practice or of preparation for death” and answers with a meditation on all the things that mattered deeply to her: family, memory, art, and literature. What she creates is something surpassingly rare, a kind of auto-elegy that is all the more moving for being devoid of sentimentality and self-pity, a vision of a brilliant mind mulling over the shards of what she knows, trying to see into and past death, not to vanquish it but to capture life, “caught in the far gone far alone glance / of mortality.”

Kim Hyesoon, translated by Don Mee Choi, Phantom Pain Wings (New Directions)

With stunning originality and audacity, Kim Hyesoon creates an alternative imaginative universe that reflects a consciousness battered by and overcoming life’s agonies: the aftereffects of war and dictatorship, the oppressions of a patriarchal society, the death of a father. In Don Mee Choi’s powerful translation of Phantom Pain Wings , the presence of the multi-faceted creature called “bird”—nemesis, inner daemon, doppelganger, muse—reverberates outward until, as with all great poetry, it assumes the fragile, mortal proportions of art itself: “I thought about bird flying freely in the ruins / bird that will fall if I don’t keep writing.”

Romeo Oriogun, The Gathering of Bastards (University of Nebraska Press)

“Perhaps exile is us running through history // I have not to give, even my body is empty of a country.” So begins Romeo Oriogun’s breathtaking The Gathering of Bastards , a multitemporal saga of migration charted against journeys of queerness and subsequent exile. Nigerian-born Oriogun’s poems are rooted between boundaries, engaging with war and dictatorship while employing a lyricism that instills a sense of magical possibility. Despite repeated losses, Oriogun pens an expansive dream of freedom: “Having known that there is no home apart from terror, / I lend my voice to our survival. I demand a wild life.” Through the wild lives of these poems, Oriogun offers readers a profound communion.

Robyn Schiff, Information Desk (Penguin Books)

With a sweep that encompasses the intelligence, eroticism, and callousness of the Western art canon, Robyn Schiff’s Information Desk presents a mundane setting for the epic: the eponymous desk at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where the poet worked in her youth. Yet for all its cataloguing of the indignities of the role, Schiff’s epic poem refuses to stay grounded, taking readers on a whorl through art history, her personal relationships, and the behavior of parasitic wasps. What unites these topics is the symbiotic relationship the subjects have with their muses (or hosts). Like the book itself, these relationships are sometimes beautiful, oftentimes brutal, and alluring in their observation that not all monuments are erected on equal footing.

Charif Shanahan, Trace Evidence (Tin House)

“Dear one: I was trying to enter my own life, I felt outside my own life. I was / Looking, trying to find a door.” In the searching intimacies of Trace Evidence, Charif Shanahan uncovers his own hard-earned definitions of identity amidst the dislocations of a life at the margins–postcolonial, queer, biracial–in order to inhabit life on his own terms. A near-fatal accident in Morocco, the home country of his mother, becomes the focal point for gorgeously frank and delicate lyrics that both query and implore: “Is it possible my function is to hold / All the intricate, interstitial pain / And articulate clarity? / Tie a boat to my wrist, I sprout wings.”

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Book Reviews provide critical appraisals of new books and serials that will assist readers of the Journal of the Medical Library Association ( JMLA ) in selecting works for their own professional use or for addition to their library collections. Authors of Book Reviews are chosen based on their knowledge of and experience in areas relevant to the library and information world.

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Flaherty, Mary Grace. The Library Staff Development Handbook. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield; 2017. 154 p. $43.00. ISBN: 978-1-4422-7036-7.

Developing Librarian Competencies for the Digital Age. Edited by Jeffrey G. Coghill, AHIP, and Roger G. Russell Jr. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, Medical Library Association; 2017. 180 p. $41.00. ISBN: 978-1-4422-6444-1.

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ISSN 1558-9439 (Online)

You have exceeded your limit for simultaneous device logins.

Your current subscription allows you to be actively logged in on up to three (3) devices simultaneously. click on continue below to log out of other sessions and log in on this device., waiting for the crescent moon: 5 books about eid al-fitr.

Eid al-Fitr, the end of Ramadan, is expected to fall around April 9 to April 11 in 2024. These picture books, along with a board book and an early reader, can be shared with young ones while they wait for the first appearance of the crescent moon that marks the end of the long month of fasting.

Eid al-Fitr, the end of Ramadan, is expected to fall around April 9 to April 11 in 2024. As Khan explains in the back matter of Noura's Crescent Moon , "On the twenty-ninth night of Ramadan, Muslims all over the world go to the darkest places and highest hills in the hopes of sighting the new moon. If the moon is sighted, Muslims celebrate Eid ul-Fitr, or the Festival of Breaking the Fast." Here are some picture books, along with a board book and an early reader, to share with young ones while they wait for the crescent moon.

Picture Books 

Looking for the Eid Moon by Sahtinay Abaza. illus. by Sandra Eide. Sleeping Bear. ISBN 9781534113091.  PreS-Gr 2 –Sara and Lulu excitedly wait for the beginning of Eid, when the crescent moon is spotted. The sisters plan to be the first to see the moon and leave their lantern and light decorated home to lay on a blanket under the cloud speckled sky and wait.  VERDICT With softly hued illustrations, this gentle Muslim holiday story will introduce children to Eid celebrations and is a recommended purchase for holiday collections.

Noura’s Crescent Moon by Zainab Khan. illus. by Nabila Adani. Candlewick. ISBN 9781536224740.  PreS-Gr 3 –Noura and her family look for the new moon, which indicates the end of Ramadan and start of Eid ul-Fitr. They find the best spot on the hill, then unpack their dinner and wait to see if the moon makes an appearance. After some time, and finally accepting that the moon may not make an appearance, “the tiniest of tiny smiles” appears in the dark sky.  VERDICT Khan’s writing combined with Adani’s dreamy, colorful illustrations makes this a great addition to library collections.

Early Reader

Rabia’s Eid by Rukhsana Khan. illus. by Debby Rahmalia. Random. ISBN 9780593706824.  PreS-Gr 1 –Rabia, a young girl with tan skin, wants to experience Eid just like the rest of her family, even though her sister says she is “too little” to fast. Khan explains Eid in a child-friendly manner, and grown-ups, too, will learn from her words.  VERDICT A compelling exploration of Eid and the holiday’s cultural implications for young children.

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