Russell, Rachel, and Rachael chat with our guest Susanne Bell, Senior Program Officer at Danville Regional Foundation, about setting realistic reading goals, recommending the right book, and a horrifying movie adaptation of one of our favorite childhood classics.
Susanne created a wonderful reference for the books she shared with us.

Childhood reads:

• “Make Way for Ducklings” by author and illustrator Robert McCloskey
• “Three Little Kittens” by Eliza Lee Cabot Follen
• “Anne of Green Gables” or anything by Lucy Maud Montgomery
• “Ozma of Oz” by L. Frank Baum

Novels:

• “Excellent Women” by Barbara Pym
• “A Spool of Blue Thread” by Anne Tyler
• “When Breath Becomes Air” by Paul Kalanithi
• “Should We Stay or Should We Go” by Lionel Shriver

Short Story Collections:

• “Light Action in the Caribbean” by Barry Lopez (especially “Construction of the Rachel”)
• “The Thing Around Your Neck” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• “Fidelity” by Wendell Berry (especially “Pray Without Ceasing”)

Other titles we discuss:

• “The Buffalo Hunter Hunter” by Stephen Graham Jones
• "Commonwealth” by Anne Tyler
• “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce
• “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven” by Sherman Alexie

Russell, Rachel, and Rachael discuss our April challenge, childhood favorites, with one of our favorite childhood experts here in the library, Jess McAllister. We discuss how children's literature shaped us, opened our worlds, and continues to delight us to this day!

Books we discuss include:

• “The Borrowers” by Mary Norton
• “The BFG” by Roald Dahl
• “Dear Mr. Henshaw” and “Strider” by Beverly Cleary
• “Freckle Juice” by Judy Blume
• “The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise” by Dan Gemeinhart
• “The Outsiders” by S.E. Hinton
• “Amos Fortune: Free Man” by Elizabeth Yates
• “The Secret Garden” by Frances Hodgson Burnett
• “Grandpa’s Mountain” by Carolyn Reeder
• Wayside School” series by Louis Sachar
• “My Teacher Is an Alien” by Bruce Coville
• “Dog Man” series by Dav Pilkey
• “My Weird School” series by Dan Gutman
• “Frog and Toad Are Doing Their Best” by Jennie Egerdie
• “The World of Beatrix Potter” series by Beatrix Potter
• “The Wind in the Willows” by Kenneth Grahame
• “Artemis Fowl” by Eoin Colfer
• Everything by Alan Gratz
• “The Complete Brambly Hedge” by Jill Barklem
• “The Mysterious Benedict Society” by Trenton Lee Stuart

Russell and solo Rachel chat with our guest, Scott Longerbeam, city GIS coordinator, about almost every Stephen King book, filming locations, and the love of a good librarian.

Books we discuss include:

• “Foucault's Pendulum” by Umberto Eco
• “Pet Sematary” by Stephen King
• “Fourth Wing” by Rebecca Yarros
• “The Demon of Unrest” by Erik Larson
• “The Pillars of the Earth” by Ken Follett
• “The Empusium” by Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
• “The Bear and the Nightingale” by Katherine Arden
• “A Libertarian Walks into a Bear” by Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling
• “Extinction” by Douglas Preston
• “Pirate Latitudes” by Michael Crichton
• “The Indian Lake Trilogy” by Stephen Graham Jones
• “Cycle of the Werewolf” by Stephen King
• “Faithful: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season” by Stewart O’Nan and Stephen King
• “Horns” by Joe Hill
• “Locke & Key” by Joe Hill, illustrated by Gabriel Rodriguez
• “Full Throttle” short stories by Joe Hill, including “By the Silver Water of Lake Champlain”
• “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” by Alvin Schwartz, illustrated by Stephen Gammell
• “Scary Stories for Young Foxes” by Christian McKay Heidicker, illustrated by Junyi Wu
• “Wolfsong” by T.J. Klune
• “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” by Doulgas Adams