Here are 81 books that That Book Woman fans have personally recommended if you like
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I like Harold and the Purple Crayon as much as the next guy, but what I look for most in a picture book—or really any work of fiction—is whether it touches my heart. I write most often about history, and in those books, I aim to be as rational as possible, but as a reader, I deeply appreciate honest sentimentality—the kind that an author earns through authenticity rather than contrivance. It’s what I struggled to achieve myself when Habitat for Humanity asked me to collaborate with them on a picture book that evoked the spirit of the organization.
I particularly enjoy the deadpan humor of this book, in which a lion wanders into a library for its children’s story hour. Once the last story is read, the lion roars his disapproval that the story hour has ended. This brings him into confrontation with the no-nonsense librarian, Miss Merriweather, who informs the lion that if he cannot be quiet, he will have to leave.
The charm of this story lies in the gentle way in which the lion adapts to library rules and becomes Miss Merriweather’s helpmate. As one might expect, Mr. McBee, the tattletale circulation clerk, finds an excuse to have the lion banned from the library for breaking a rule, but the plot resolves with great sweetness as even Mr. McBee comes to value the lion’s presence.
A wonderful addition to any child's library, this is the multiple award-winning and bestselling picture book about what happens when a lion visits a library.
In this international and award-winning bestseller about the joys of discovering the library and making new friends, a lion visits the library for the very first time. The head librarian, Miss Merriweather, is very particular about rules in the library. But when the lion visits, she isn't sure what to do - there aren't any rules about lions in the library! As it turns out, this lion seems very well suited to library visiting. His…
The Victorian mansion, Evenmere, is the mechanism that runs the universe.
The lamps must be lit, or the stars die. The clocks must be wound, or Time ceases. The Balance between Order and Chaos must be preserved, or Existence crumbles.
Appointed the Steward of Evenmere, Carter Anderson must learn the…
I have been a reader and a writer for as long as I can remember, so books about reading, writing, and storytelling have always interested me. As a school library media specialist for over 30 years, I have read thousands of picture books and placed wonderful books in the hands of thousands of young people. Several of these books were mentor texts when I wrote my picture book biography. I want young people to be inspired to read and write, and I hope these books will do that for the adults who select them and the children who read them.
I have always been fascinated by storytelling, and this book about a librarian pleases me so! What I especially love about this book is the metaphoric writing device of planting story seeds and how Pura Belpré, storyteller, puppeteer, and New York City’s first Puerto Rican librarian, shared her tales from her homeland along her journey.
The lyrical writing captures the magic of Belpré’s stories, inspiring readers to read and write.
FOLLOW LA VIDA Y EL LEGADO OF PURA BELPRE, THE FIRST PUERTO RICAN LIBRARIAN IN NEW YORK CITY
When she came to America in 1921, Pura carried the cuentos folkloricos of her Puerto Rican homeland. Finding a new home at the New York Public Library as a bilingual assistant, she turned her popular retellings into libros and spread story seeds across the land. Today, these seeds have grown into a lush landscape as generations of children and storytellers continue to share her tales and celebrate Pura's legacy.
This portrait of the influential librarian, author, and puppeteer reminds us of the…
I feel passionate about spreading the word about all the fantastic children’s literature set in South America. As an author and a multilingual mom whose son enjoys learning about his Latin American heritage, I’ve always brought home stacks of picture books—in Spanish and English—that celebrate Latin American cultures and settings. I’ve loved traveling to the Andes mountains and the Amazon rain forest as part of my children’s book collaborations with Indigenous women in those regions. Most of all, I love transporting young readers to these inspiring places through story.
Here we have another inspiring book based on the true story of a passionate librarian in Colombia, only this one takes place in remote villages.
Ana is an imaginative girl who treasures her only book, and feels enchanted when she meets Luis Soriano Bohórquez with his burros, bringing books to the countryside. The books she borrows transport her and inspire her to write a tale about the librarian and his burros.
The ending comes full circle when the librarian packs Ana’s book onto the burro and brings it to another village to inspire another child. This reminds us of the magic and power of books!
Ana loves stories. She often makes them up to help her little brother fall asleep. But in her small village there are only a few books and she has read them all. One morning, Ana wakes up to the clip-clop of hooves, and there before her, is the most wonderful sight: a traveling library resting on the backs of two burros‑all the books a little girl could dream of, with enough stories to encourage her to create one of her own.
Inspired by the heroic efforts of real-life librarian Luis Soriano, award-winning picture book creators Monica Brown and John Parra…
The Guardian of the Palace is the first novel in a modern fantasy series set in a New York City where magic is real—but hidden, suppressed, and dangerous when exposed.
When an ancient magic begins to leak into the world, a small group of unlikely allies is forced to act…
I’m someone who feels everything deeply and longs for a kinder, healthier world for everyone. A humane educator and diverse books advocate, I’m drawn to true stories that inspire compassion, inclusivity, and taking action in our own unique ways to make a difference. My nonfiction picture books—including Winged Wonders, Cougar Crossing, Ocean Soup, Make Way for Animals!, So Much More To Helen, and more— focus on “solutionaries” who help people, animals, and the planet. They’ve won Golden Kite and Eureka! Nonfiction Honor Awards, starred reviews, and spots on best books lists.
This is one of the first “solutionary stories” I fell in love with as a humane educator and mom. A classic and beautiful true story of an Iraqi librarian in war-torn Basra who, with the help of her neighbors, hides and saves the books in her city’s library, this one never fails to touch my heart. Jeanette Winter has a simple, powerful way of evoking emotions in her books—in this one, about war, and about one woman’s mission amidst it. This story speaks to the power of books, the power of community, and the power of one person’s passion to save something precious when everything else may be lost.
In this incredible true story of a war-stricken country where civilians seem powerless in the face of battle, this feminist and inspirational tale about a librarian's struggle to save her community's priceless collection of books reminds us how, throughout the world, the love of literature can unite us all.
I’m a full-time writer, part-time editor, and avid reader of romances between queer women. I’ve just published my twenty-third novel, and I’m still amazed and humbled at getting to live my dream: writing sapphic romances for a living. Discovering sapphic books was a life-saver for me since I grew up in a tiny little village, with no openly LGBT+ people around, and I love knowing that my books are now doing the same for my readers.
This book is the epitome of a slow-burn romance, so as a reader, you get to know both main characters—small-town doctor Maddie and new-in-town librarian Syd—really well and fall in love with them as you watch them slowly fall in love with each other. The author has a unique sense of humor, and the witty banter between Maddie and Syd made me laugh out loud several times.
Librarian Syd Murphy flees the carnage of a failed marriage by accepting an eighteen-month position in Jericho, a small town in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia. Her plans to hide out and heal her wounds fall by the wayside as she gets drawn into the daily lives of the quirky locals. When Syd gets a flat tire and is rescued by the town physician, Maddie Stevenson, the two women form a fast friendship—but almost immediately begin struggling with a mutual attraction. And, if that’s not enough, Syd is straight and going through a divorce—and Maddie somehow forgets to mention her…
A Chicago writer, I've always been drawn to quirky books. My first novel, The Prospect of My Arrival, was a finalist in Amazon's novel contest and centers on a human embryo that is allowed to preview the world. My current work-in-progress is nonfiction. The Invention of Fireflies is a memoir of the magical and monstrous moments of my life. Varied day jobs have included being a professional cuddler, web designer, and caregiver. Affirmative Entertainment represents me for possible movie/TV projects. My work was selected for inclusion in the HBO New Writers Project, The Norton Introduction to Literature, many textbooks, and anthologies.
Murakami's world is magic realist by default. It's often infused with American pop culture, jazz, secret passageways, and curious cats. The Strange Library is a perfect introduction to the author's world and it makes a nice gift. The book is adorned with pop illustrations and highly saturated colors. In this short novel a lonely boy, a mysterious girl, and a tormented sheep/man plot their escape from a nightmarish library. I have read the author's 1Q84 opus of 1,000 pages but it is his short works -- his short stories and novellas -- that have stayed with me the most.
Fully illustrated and beautifully designed, this is a unique and wonderfully creepy tale that is sure to delight Murakami fans.
'All I did was go to the library to borrow some books'.
On his way home from school, the young narrator of The Strange Library finds himself wondering how taxes were collected in the Ottoman Empire. He pops into the local library to see if it has a book on the subject. This is his first mistake.
Led to a special 'reading room' in a maze under the library by a strange old man, he finds himself imprisoned with only…
Aury and Scott travel to the Finger Lakes in New York’s wine country to get to the bottom of the mysterious happenings at the Songscape Winery. Disturbed furniture and curious noises are one thing, but when a customer winds up dead, it’s time to dig into the details and see…
One of my favourite sounds is teens interacting—especially when they are throwing shade. I spent twenty-five years as a junior and senior high teacher, and I miss rocking and rolling during class discussions with my students. As a writer of contemporary fiction (actually in anything I write), I work hard at using dialogue as an engine to drive each scene. Each line needs to be refined to ensure that it’s snappy, engaging, and real. I’m a writer from southeast Saskatchewan, Canada, where there’s no shortage of great one-liners to use. I hope you enjoy the dialogue in these five recommendations as much as I did.
It might seem strange for me to recommend the Amber Fang series seeing as how the main character is a librarian/vampire/assassin. But remember, I am recommending teen books with snappy dialogue. Amber’s repartee with her victims—folks who generally deserve to be turned into Amber’s next meal—is witty and laced with librarianisms, like, “You’re so 900.” Arthur also knows how to walk that fine line between being gory enough for young horror fans and sedate enough for—you guessed it—high school librarians.
Amber Fang enjoys life's simple pleasures. A perfect evening for her includes a good book, a glass of wine and, of course, a great meal, preferably straight from the jugular.
Raised to eat ethically, Amber dines only on delicious cold-blooded killers. But confirming that her chosen victims deserve to die takes time. And patience. So it's a good thing Amber is studying to be a librarian. Her extraordinary research skills help her hunt down her prey, seek out other vampires and stay on the trail of her mother, who has been missing for over two years now. But one day…
When I was ten, my mom gave me an entire day to do anything I wanted. I chose to spend the day at the library. To me, the library was a place of refuge, of adventure, of possibility. As an adult, I lived abroad, often in countries without free public libraries. I missed libraries! Today I’m a library trustee for my county library system, working to make our public library accessible to everyone. It was a joy to write about Pura Belpré, a librarian who was working 100 years ago to make sure libraries belonged to the entire community.
All those numbers on the spines of library books? This book tells the story of the man who invented the first widely-used library cataloguing system: Melvil Dewey. Sometimes biographies gloss over difficult personalities, but this one doesn’t pretend Dewey was always admirable. Instead, it suggests that his bull-headedness might have been part of the reason his decimal cataloguing system was ultimately adopted. And Fotheringham manages to make a book about books lively and fun in the illustrations.
Bank Street College of Education Best Book of the Year
Who was Melvil Dewey? Learn how Dewey's love of organization and words drove him to develop and implement his Dewey Decimal system, leaving a significant and lasting impact in libraries across the country.
When Melvil Dewey realized every library organized their books differently, he wondered if he could invent a system all libraries could use to organize them efficiently. A rat-a-tat speaker, Melvil was a persistent (and noisy) advocate for free public libraries. And while he made enemies along the way as he pushed for changes-like his battle to establish…
Two facts about me as a reader: I like books that deal with difficult issues, and I like reading a lot of them. There’s something about watching teens, for whom everything feels new, deal with the toughest stuff imaginable and come out the other side. I love a protagonist who has been through the wringer. Some people call these stories dark or morbid. I prefer to think of them as hopeful. My own writing history is as diverse as my reading habits. I’ve published in poetry, romance, and criticism, but these days I’m all about YA, like the politically-charged thriller I’m querying or my queer New Orleans ghost story, The Women of Dauphine.
Epic fantasy can be a hard sell for me, but Laini Taylor’s intricate worldbuilding sweeps me off my feet. There’s a love story at the center of this duology, characters from different and equally tragic worlds, but there’s also lots of magic: moths who carry dreams, orphaned half-gods, and floating palaces of magic metal. Oh, and there’s a robust cast of ghosts. Need I say more?
The magical Sunday Times bestseller by Laini Taylor, author of the Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy
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The dream chooses the dreamer.
Since he was five years old, Lazlo Strange has been obsessed with the mythic lost city of Weep, but it would take someone bolder than he to go in search of it. Then a stunning opportunity presents itself - in the person of a hero called the Godslayer and a band of legendary warriors, and he has to seize his chance or lose his dream forever.
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
Like Thomas Jefferson, I cannot live without books. And, while I read in a variety of genres, from early childhood on, my favorite stories were the ones that began with “once upon a time.” My fascination with historicals started with one of my father’s few books from his childhood, The Cave Twins, which introduced me to a world far different from suburban America. For me, the appeal of historicals is the opportunity to learn about another era and to escape from the modern world. And so, if you want to escape from what seems like an endless pandemic, I invite you to explore the worlds six talented authors have created.
One of the things I admire most about Ann Gabhart is that her stories are predictable – predictably wonderful, that is. There’s no predictability about her characters and plots. When I pick up one of her books, I know I’ll be transported to a different time and place and that while I’m immersed in her story, I’ll forget reality. In Along a Storied Trail she took me to rural Kentucky and a little-known (at least to me) part of history as she told the story of a packhorse librarian during the Great Depression. Her descriptions are so vivid and the dialogue so realistic that I felt as if I were there along with Tansy and Perdita. This is a story to savor, Gabhart’s best one yet.
"Gabhart's skillful use of period details and the Appalachian landscape lend plenty of atmosphere to accompany the lessons of hope, compassion, and fortitude amid hardship. This is her best historical inspirational yet."--Publishers Weekly starred review
"Gabhart crafts an absorbing story that deeply explores the rich tradition of storytelling."--Booklist
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Kentucky packhorse librarian Tansy Calhoun doesn't mind the rough trails and long hours as she serves her Appalachian mountain community during the Great Depression. Yet she longs to find love like the heroines in her books. When a charming writer comes to town, she thinks she might have found it--or is…
