Here's what is happening in the world of Boswell for the week of March 7.Monday, March 7, 6:30 pm, at the Oak Creek Library:
Kathi Appelt and Alison McGhee, authors of Maybe a Fox.
Boswell's first event at the new Oak Creek Library is a collaboration between Newbery and National Book Award finalist Kathi Appelt and Pulizer nominee and bestselling writer Alison McGhee, the story of two sisters in rural Vermont who are still grieving for their mother, and what happens when one of the sisters disappears. You know McGhee from Someday, Firefly Hollow, and the Bink and Gollie books (written with Kate DiCamillo) and Appelt is the author of both The Underneath and The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp.
Kirkus Reviews writes: "Magical elements—a legend about brothers who chanced the Slip for a girl’s love; an elusive grotto; spirit animals sent to complete a task unfinished for a human—all confer transcendent dimensions on the story. Appelt and McGhee’s rich, polished narrative invites the reader to experience the world both as Jules and as the fox."
The Oak Creek Library is now located at 8040 S Sixth St, just west of Howell Ave in Drexel Town Center.
Tuesday, March 8, 7 pm, at the Riverside Park Urban Ecology Center:Lucie Amundsen, author of Locally Laid: How We Built a Plucky, Industry-Changing Egg Farm-From Scratch.
Join us for an evening with Lucie Amundsen, co-owner of Locally Laid Egg Company, a farm that provides pasture-raised eggs in Minnesota, Iowa, and Indiana. Locally Laid grew out of a very popular blog that chronicled her family adventures.
My recommendation for Locally Laid: "Lucie and her husband Jason originally meant just to have a chicken coop out back in the chick-friendly town of Duluth, but one thing led to another and the next thing they knew, they were setting up shop specializing in pasture-raised eggs. Amundsen genially tells their story, including all her anxiety and regrets about the whole business, and how their marketing and advertising team (just Lucie really) outmaneuvered much bigger operations to be an Intel finalist for their small business competition. Two convention trips, one to a corporate gathering and the other for sustainable agriculture, ares an amusing study in contrasts. Amundsen also explains the ins and outs of regulations, why local is often more important than organic, and why America would be better off if we stopped focusing on tenderness so much when it comes to chicken. Stew hens were once a staple of soups but nowadays, we all pretty much want are tender baby chicks in our broth, leaving few options for hens who've outlived their golden laying years. An informative and entertaining read!" (Daniel Goldin)
The Riverside Park Urban Ecology Center is located at 1500 E. Park Place, just west of Oakland Avenue. Suggested admission to this event on Tuesday, March 8, 7 pm, is $10, $5 for UEC members.
Wednesday, March 9, 7 pm, at Boswell:Brittany Cavallaro, author of A Study in Charlotte.
Last year Brittany Cavallaro visited Boswell for her first book of poetry. Now she's at the bookstore for her first young-adult novel, the first book in a witty, suspenseful new trilogy about a brilliant new crime-solving duo: the teen descendants of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson.
Here's the recommendation from Boswellian Todd Wellman: "It is difficult to establish compelling, believable characters that follow in the footsteps of another well-known cast, but Cavallaro has succeeded with James Watson and Charlotte Holmes. Offering the right amount of hints and red herrings, Charlotte follows descendant Watson about his prep school as he meets his generation's Holmes, gets framed for murder, and fails at writing evocative poetry. The book smartly removes easy Bruce Wayne-style funding from the immediate players for most of the book -- Watson and Holmes are distanced from their families just enough -- leaving the characters to rely on cunning and poker games to finance their detective work. Drugs, sexual violence, bullying, and rage shadow Watson and Holmes, and the two new friends have to struggle with their own demons as they try to identify the ones hunting them down."
From Kirkus's starred review: "These sleuths may still be in school—and working out of a supply closet with smartphones—but Cavallaro’s crackling dialogue, well-drawn characters, and complicated relationships make this feel like a seamless and sharp renewal of Doyle’s series."
Wednesday, March 9, 7 pm, at the UWM Golda Meir Library fourth-floor conference center:Samuel Kassow, editor of In Those Nightmarish Days: The Ghetto Reportage of Peretz Opoczynski and Josef Zelkowicz.
Samuel Kassow, based at Trinity Uniersity, will present a talk based on In Those Nightmarish Days. This book sheds light on two brilliant but lesser known ghetto journalists: Josef Zelkowicz and Peretz Opoczynski. An ordained rabbi, Zelkowicz became a key member of the archive in the Lodz ghetto. Opoczynski was a journalist and mailman who contributed to the Warsaw ghetto s secret Oyneg Shabes archive. While otherghetto writers sought to create an objective record of their circumstances, Zelkowicz and Opoczynski chronicled daily life and Jewish responses to ghettoization by the Nazis with powerful immediacy. Expertly translated by David Suchoff, these profound writings are at last accessible to contemporary readers."
Born in a displaced persons' camp in Stuttgart, Samuel Kassow's mother survived because a classmate hid her and her sister in a dug-out underneath the barn on his family's farm, while his father was arrested by Russians and spent the duration of the war in a Soviet prison camp.This event is presented by the Sam and Helen Stahl Center for Jewish Studies. Golda Meir Library is located at 2311 E Hartford Ave.
Thursday, March 10, 6:30 pm, at the Greenfield Public Library:Lauren Tarshis, author of I Survived the Hindenburg Disaster, 1937.
Lauren Tarshis, bestselling author of the I Survived series, is on her first national tour. She'll be discussing her latest, I Survived the Hindenburg Disaster, 1937, in which eleven-year-old Hugo Ballard tells of the journey of he, his parents, and his sister Gertie, as they made the thrilling four-thousand-mile journey across the Atlantic in a zeppelin as big as the Titanic, and what happened when a fateful blast rocked the ship as it was preparing to land.
Kids and teachers alike love the I Survived series for its historical accuracy blended with great storytelling. The series captures the resilience and strength of young people in the midst of unimaginable scenarios. Lauren has brought her signature warmth and exhaustive research to topics such as the September 11 attacks, the destruction of Pompeii, Hurricane Katrina, and the bombing of Pearl Harbor, among others.
The Greenfield Public Library is located 5310 W Layton Ave, just off the 60th St exit of I894.
Thursday, March 10, 7 pm, at Boswell:Sara Baume, author of Spill Simmer Falter Wither.
All the way from Cork, Sara Baume is appearing at Boswell for her award-winning debut, Spill Simmer Falter Wither, a novel that follows, over the course of four seasons, a misfit man who adopts a misfit dog. One can't say enough about this debut, which won the Rooney Irish Fiction Prize and was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. But Boswellian Anne McMahon might have said it all when she noted: "As I was reading this wonderful book by Sara Baume, my eyes kept filling - and it was hard to tell if it was because of the beauty of the language or the pathos of the story. This is a special book, one that has to go in my permanent collection. An unforgettable experience."
Or perhaps you'd rather hear from Joseph O'Connor, who wrote of Baume's debut in The Irish Times: "What elevates the book beyond the category of promising first novel is the author's astonishing power with language. This is a novel bursting with brio, braggadocio and bite. Again and again it wows you with its ambition, its implication, the more forceful for never being italicised, that simple words from our frail and brittle English language, placed quietly in order, with assiduous care, can do almost anything at all. There are no easy tricks, no strainings for effect. This is a gimmick-free novel of truthfulness, uncorrupted by a yearning for praise. At its heart is a touching and inspiriting sense of empathy, that rarest but most human of traits."
Sara Baume has previously been awarded the Davy Byrnes Short Story Award and the Hennessy New Irish Writing Award. The tour is cosponsored by the Irish Arts Center (New York).
Friday, March 11, 6:30 pm, at Milwaukee Public Library's Centennial Hall:Markus Zusak, author of The Book Thief Tenth Anniversary Edition.
Can you believe it's been ten years since The Book Thief touched our hearts? This amazing success story has been read by adults and kids alike since its original publication. Now the Printz Honor winner Markus Zusak is returning to the United States (from Australia) to celebrate the release of The Book Thief Tenth Anniversary Edition. This special edition, available in hardcover and paperback, will include marked-up manuscript pages, original sketches, and pages from the author's writing notebook.
It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will become busier still. Liesel Meminger is a foster girl living outside of Munich, who scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can't resist-books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement.
The Book Thief was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award. It has been translated into over thirty languages and has sold nine million copies around the world. Author Markus Zusak is the recipient of the Margaret A. Edwards Award for significant and lasting contribution to writing for teens.Milwaukee Public Library's Centennial Hall is located at 733 N Eighth St on Friday, March 11, 6:30 pm.
Friday, March 11, 7 pm, at Boswell:Amina Gautier, author of The Loss of All Lost Things.
Amina Gautier previously lived in Milwaukee as a Marquette dissertation fellow. Now she's here for The Loss of All Lost Things, winner of the Elixir Press Prize. The fifteen stories in this collection explore the unpredictable ways in which characters negotiate, experience, and manage various forms of loss. They lose loved ones; they lose their security and self-worth; they lose children; they lose their ability to hide and shield their emotions; they lose their reputations, their careers, their hometowns, and their life savings.
Jennifer Bort Yacovissi wrote in the Washington Independent Review of Books: "Consider all the loss it is possible to endure: lost wages, lost opportunities, lost objects, lost youth, lost hope, lost minds, lost innocence, lost loves, lost loved ones, the loss of a child. Consider all the ways that we endure that loss, or don't endure. That, very simply and eloquently, is what Amina Gautier does in her latest story collection, The Loss of All Lost Things."
All three of Amina Gautier's collections are prize winers. In addition, she has been awarded fellowships at the Breadloaf Writer's Conference and the Sewanee Writer's Conference. Gautier was raised in Brooklyn and educated at Stanford University and the University of Pennsylvania. She currently teaches in the MFA program at the University of Miami.
Sunday, March 13, 3 pm, at Boswell:Storytime and Activities with Miranda Paul, author of Whose Hands are These?: A Community Helper Guessing Book.
If your hands can mix and mash, what job might you have? What if your hands reach, wrench, yank, and crank? The hands in Whose Hands are These - and the people attached to them-do all sorts of helpful work. And together, these helpers make their community a safe and fun place to live. As you read, keep an eye out for community members who make repeat appearances! Can you guess all the jobs based on the actions of these busy hands?
Miranda Paul is an award-winning children's book author. One Plastic Bag was named a Junior Library Guild Selection. This event is not just a storytime - it's also a family-friendly story time with activities, treats (hand stamp cookies), and prizes!.
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