Welcome back! I hope my intro post to this year's RAD Reading Challenge has you all excited and ready to dive in! I'm starting out my challenge with the first prompt — read a graphic novel. I think this is a great way to start off the year because graphic novels are fun, visiually satisfying, and tend to be shorter than a traditional novel so there's a high chance of success for completing this prompt. For my graphic novel I chose Almost American Girl by Robin Ha. This book has been on my radar since last year when it was nominated for...

For me, the new year always brings a new reading challenge. In 2020 I completed and wrote about the Read Harder Reading Challenge. And last year I created my very own — The 2021 RPL Teen Reading Challenge. Each year I would say I have moderate success with these. I've discovered some new authors, genres, and books that I may not have otherwise. But I've also read some duds. So why do I return to these challenges year after year, you might ask? The answer, simply, is that they get me out of my reading comfort zone. As a librarian, this is...

So, we’ve come through well over a year of quarantine. It has become clear that physical health, including astrong immune system, is very important. This is a good time to revisit, or modify, many traditional foods and ways of preparing them. We can’t help but be distracted or influenced by the whole foods plant-based eating lifestyle that is being promoted by naturalists, athletes, chefs, and even medical doctors. Plant-based diets are everywhere--on television, social media, and the internet. Often we find ourselves inundated by...

Wow! It has been quite a year for YA books. Would you agree? I've enjoyed some great new YA titles this year including A Complicated Love Story Set in Space by Shaun David Hutchinson, Everyone Dies Famous in a Small Town by Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock, and An Emotion of Great Delight by Tahereh Mafi, just to name a few. Well, if you thought 2021 was a great YA reading year, you're going to be even more excited about 2022. From stories of survival, to historical novels in verse, from magical traveling hotels, to a Romeo and Juliet retelling based on...