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The Arrival, the newest book by Shaun Tan, tells the the familiar story of an immigrant in an intriguing new way.  Conveyed entirely in detailed drawings which look like sepia-toned, worn photographs, this book feels like paging through an old photo album without the aid of captions or notes.  We follow the immigrant as he packs a small bag, says a heartbreaking goodbye to his wife and small daughter, and boards a steamer ship along with hundreds of others to reach a new land.  The new city is at once recognizable and surreal and recalls the halls and images of Ellis Island and New York City.Read More →

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The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is Sherman Alexie’s first novel for young adults.  It’s based in part on his own experiences growing up poor on the Spokane Indian Reservation.  It tells the story of Junior (known as Arnold to the white people in the world he inhabits on a part-time basis), an Indian teenager coming into adulthood.  When he decides to leave the run-down, dead-end reservation school to attend a rich, white farm town school, his mom tells him “you’ll be the first one to ever leave the rez this way.  The Indians around here are going to be angry with you.”Read More →

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Eclipse, Stephenie Meyer’s much-anticipated follow up to her highly successful novels Twilight and New Moon, continues the saga rich with vampires, werewolves, and Bella Swan, the girl who loves them both. Picking up right where New Moon left off, Eclipse is filled with danger, intrigue, fighting and plenty of suspense. While the plot is riveting and the book is a page-turner that is almost impossible to set down, Eclipse differs from the first two books in the amount of background and character development Meyer provides. Not only does Meyer delve more deeply into the mythology of the werewolves and vampires, she also picks out individualRead More →

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In the Name of God by Paula Jolin is a moving and eye-opening depiction of the struggle to find one’s self and what one believes in. Nadia, the narrator of Jolin’s tale, is a seventeen-year-old girl in modern Damascus who is trying to figure out how to be the best Muslim she can be. Her quest is interrupted when her cousin Fowzi is arrested for speaking out against the government. As she watches her family and their varying degrees of faith deal with her cousin’s arrest, Nadia must figure out what she believes. Jolin’s compelling book provides a far-reaching look into a complex and controversialRead More →