January is book awards time for the publishing world. One children’s and young adult book author who is consistently in the awards conversation is Steve Sheinkin, who also happens to be one of my favorite authors. Early on his career, he wrote text books, and he tried to incorporate interesting facts and stories not normally covered in textbooks. But the interesting stories were too numerous to try to fit into the textbooks, and he instead set off on his own to write exciting, well-researched nonfiction books for children and young adults. He also uses his background in screenplay writing to create perfectly paced books that you don’t want to put down. You can’t go wrong with any of his books, but here are my favorites.

Each year teens around Milwaukee County vote for their favorite book from a list of 15 nominees, the winner wins the Milwaukee County Teen Book Award. The MCTBA was created to promote teen reading and literature by highlighting books published for teens of both quality and appeal.

Recently I have been reviewing the Whitefish Bay Public Library’s picture book collection focusing on books by and about Native Americans/First Nations. Unfortunately, many of the books reinforced stereotypes of Native Americans and many more told native stories inaccurately and disrespectfully. So, I would like to share this list of picture books written by Native American writers that we have in our collection.

As winter settles in we are looking more and more for good “escapes” in the comfort of our homes. Here are some of my favorite movies of 2017 that you can find on our library shelves.