NOTE: Washington Square Branch Library will be CLOSED June 21-24 for repair. Normal open hours at all other locations.

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Staff Picks: Books

Shade, the Changing Girl

 Have you ever felt like you don’t fit in? Like everyone else is doing a great job at life, and you’re just trying to make sure you don’t look like a fish out of water? Well amplify that feeling by a thousand, and you’ll understand what it’s like for Loma Shade. Bored with her life on the planet Meta, Loma steals the “madness coat” that belonged to her hero and poet Rac Shade and uses it to take over the body of a high school mean girl and experience life on earth.

 

But they don’t call it the madness coat for nothing. Loma’s struggling to get a grip on her new life, all of the feelings that come with the teenage experience, and reality itself. Each frame bursts off the page in psychedelic whimsy while the story itself stays grounded with award winning YA author Cecil Castellucci’s sardonic wit.  

Shade the Changing Girl is wonderfully weird, and available to check out today.  


A Walk with Me

Let Gwen Frostic take you on a walk with her amazing original block-prints of elements of the nature.

A walk with Me was illustrated and written by the famous Michigan block printing artist Gwen Frostic back in 1958. Sixty years have passed by, but I can still feel and relate to her love towards the nature through her delicate poems and block-prints – the birds, the moon, the sea - my heart was so full as I was turning the pages. I don’t think anyone can describe and capture the nature better than she did.

This book is not JUST another book. It is an art. The paper, the colorful block-prints on each page ...Oh! It is a pleasure just to look at this book. I admire the time and effort she spent on creating these marvelous art books.


Hot Pink!

New York Fashion Week has come to a close, but London Fashion Week is just starting up! That’s right, we are right in the middle of the first Fashion Month of 2018, a time I personally refer to as The Highlight of my Instagram Feed.

 

While it is always a delight to see the latest trends sashay down the runway, a true fashionista knows that you can’t really understand where fashion is going until you know where it’s been.  Many are familiar with the revolutionary influence of Coco Chanel, but few know about her contemporary, the avant garde visionary Elsa Schiaparelli.

A mastermind ahead of her time, Elsa Schiaparelli set in motion all of the fashion paradigms we take for granted today. Make sure to check out this book to read about the inventor of runway shows, ready to wear collections, bolero jackets, culottes and most importantly—hot pink!

Also, click here to see some of her most famous works


A new republic

Classic European portraiture gets a new face in the work of artist Kehinde Wiley, whose striking paintings portray modern African American subjects in poses that mimic European masters in the book Kehinde Wiley : a new republic, which is part of the KPL social justice collection. Wiley's work shines a light on the lack of African American faces in historical and cultural contexts. There is also a documentary about Kehinde, available on DVD or through Hoopla.


Turner, Monet and Twombly

Culled together from an exhibit at the Tate Modern Museum in 2012, Turner, Monet, Twombly: Later Paintings is a handsome examination of the influences of nature, light and atmosphere upon the works of these three legendary painters. The book illustrates both the similarities and the differences between the three painters, traces the impact of light and natural landscapes on their particular vision, and how each brought into being their masterpieces, that today, routinely fetch millions at the auction houses.


Studio: creative spaces for creative people

Studio: creative spaces for creative people by Sally Coulthard takes you into the studios of dozens of artists and makers. Providing the reader with inspiration and motivation for creating a productive studio space of their own, Studio is full of photographs of the beautiful and interesting workspaces of visual artists, woodworkers, textile artists and more. If you dream of carving out a creative space to explore your artistic thoughts completely and need inspiration, or wish to improve your current studio space to better suit your needs, or just like to look at visually interesting productive spaces – this book is for you. This book would also make a great holiday gift for any creative person on your list.


More Alive and Less Lonely: On Books and Writers

Novelist Jonathan Lethem’s new book of short essays, reviews, introductions, and a hilarious, imagined interview between the filmmaker Spike Jonze and one of Lethem’s fictional characters, More Alive and Less Lonely: On Books and Writers will appeal to those who enjoy Lethem’s spirited, polygonal criticism and literary ephemera. Lethem’s enthusiasm for delving into the essence of the books and writers that have moved him over the years is infectious from the first essay onward and will inspire readers to seek out the authors and books discussed. His reflexive, stylistic musings, collected over the course of a decade, engage with both the canon (Kafka, Melville, Dickens) and the lesser known (Steven Millhauser, Vivian Gornick, Thomas Berger), the long ago, dead authors (Bernard Malamud and Philip K. Dick) and those still working and alive (Philip Roth, Lorrie Moore, Kazuo Ishiguro).


Owls: Our Most Charming Bird

Because they are such a rare sight, it is easy to forget how magnificent owls are. Every feature that makes us stop and stare actually serves a very useful purpose. Those large piercing eyes ensure that they’ll never lose sight of their prey. And those round moony faces actually serve as satellite dishes to capture all sound and direct it towards their ears. All the better to hear their next snack.

Matt Sewell has captured the charm, and majesty of 47 different owls in his pleasing watercolor illustrations. Check this book out today, and discover your new favorite owl! My personal fave? The Greater Sooty Owl. They have little speckles that look like stars in a night sky.  


You Say To Brick

Anyone who has seen the moving documentary, My Architect, will know of the complicated brilliance of the architect Louis Kahn. A new biography, You Say To Brick: The Life of Louis Kahn by Wendy Lesser, fills in the detail and the greater context that aren’t possible to cover in a documentary film format. Kahn was an enigma of a man, with facial scarring from a childhood accident and often appearing disheveled from all-night drafting sessions, he was a self-described terrible businessman (his buildings were all completed late and over budget) but possessed an irresistible charisma and an almost mystical approach to architecture that left an indelible mark in his field and on the world.


Cute Story

Rose is written by local Kalamazoo author, Jessica Aguilera. It’s a cute story and Jessica did the illustrations herself by using cutouts that she layered together and then photographed.

Rose was self-published.
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