Making a Friend by Alison McGhee and Marc Rosenthal

This is a sweet, touching story that is so much more than a winter holiday book. It starts with a boy thinking of all the joys of a snowy day. He makes a snowman who becomes a good friend while the weather stays cold. When the winter ends, the snowman begins to melt until one day he’s gone. The boy looks for him and discovers that the snowman is in the water and the rain and everything around him. I loved the simple, compelling illustrations and spare, thoughtful text. This book has a beautiful message for anyone who is missing a loved one – What you love will always be with you.

I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen

This is a simple, silly picture book with wonderful illustrations. It follows a bear who has lost his hat. He asks the various animals he encounters if they’ve seen his hat, but they say they haven’t. He’s not the most observant bear. This book is almost a combination of Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus and Are You My Mother. I know, that’s hard to imagine, but it is fantastic fun. We’ve carried greeting cards by the author/illustrator, and they’re so sweet and compelling we have a hard time keeping them in stock.
Also, did the bear eat that rabbit? Oh my.

The Man in the Moon by William Joyce

William Joyce is one of my favorite illustrators and this is one of the most beautiful children's picture books that I’ve seen. The imagery is so rich and unique that I found myself just staring at the pages – imagine what a kid will do! The story is sweet and compelling as well. As a baby, The Man in the Moon (called MiM for short) is hidden away so that the King of Nightmares can’t find him. He grows up watching over the dreams of the child on Earth and eventually becomes the first of The Guardians of Childhood. That’s also the name of the series this book launches. All of the books involve classic fairytale figures – from the man in the moon to Santa and the Easter Bunny. There will also be a string of chapter books beginning with St. Nicholas of the North (coming out in November) and a movie next year. I’m not a fan of big movie tie-in stuff that’s just trying to sell, sell, sell, but this book is really exceptional. I’m excited to see the rest.

Among the Wonderful by Stacy Carlson

In 1842 New York City, P.T. Barnum opened his American Museum. It was part zoo, part freak show, part natural history museum, part theater, part restaurant, part… you get the picture. Among the Wonderful imagines the lives of two of its employees – Ana Swift, Giantess, and Emile Guillaudeu, Taxidermist. They are very different people, holding very different places in the Museum, but both are searching for their place in the world. I was impressed that that search never becomes a cliché and that the Museum never turns into a catalog of freaks.
I loved this book. I was completely captivated by the two main characters, the Museum, and all the strange and wonderful people involved in it. The only thing I wished for at the end was a companion book full of the real details about the Museum so that I would have known right away how well-researched the story was. Not surprisingly, the truth is even stranger than this great historical fiction.

The Call by Yannick Murphy

I loved Yannick Murphy’s novel, Signed Mata Hari, so much that I picked up The Call without any idea what it was about. It’s very different, but equally wonderful. The “narrator” is a rural veterinarian going through life’s trials with his wife and three kids. He ponders life, his son is injured, his own health is questionable, his wife is a little frustrated, and there are lights in the sky above his house. But his story is not told in traditional paragraphs, rather as a sort of list of prompts and answers (alternate title could have been An Ode to the Colon). Here’s the opening as an example:
     “Call: A cow with her dead calf half-born.
     Action: Put on boots and pulled dead calf out while standing in a field of mud.”
Call, Action, What the Wife Made for Dinner, and What the Children Say, are repeated often, but there’s also What the Spaceman Said and What the House Says at Night, among many others. Murphy is a strange and different writer in the best possible way. It’s amazing that she manages to tell such a complete and fascinating story in this strange style. I loved this book. It will be on my top ten for the year. Take a risk – it’s in softcover!

Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman

Normally I don’t read books with kid main characters (unless it’s a kids’ book), but I read a glowing review of Pigeon English that said it’s for anyone who loved Roddy Doyle’s Paddy Clark Ha Ha Ha. OK, that’s me. So I started it on my lunch break and immediately couldn’t put it down. Like Paddy Clark, this is a novel told so closely from the point of view of the main character that I absolutely felt like I was seeing the world through his eyes, living inside his thoughts.
Twelve-year-old Harrison Opuku has recently moved from Ghana to a large housing estate (that’s British for the projects) in London and he’s trying to understand his new world and his place in it. His narration is a funny, endearing, wonderfully confusing mixture of British and Ghanaian slang. I’m still not 100% sure what hutious means. When a boy in Harri’s class is killed, possibly by the menacing Dell Farm Crew, Harri and a friend decide to use their detective skills to find out what happened. This isn’t really a mystery though. This is Harri’s story. He is so in love with the world and so fascinated with his surroundings that he could have become ridiculous at any moment, but Kelman manages to keep him filled with joy and real at the same time. This would make a fantastic book club selection – was Harri real for you, what do you think about the ending, what about the sections from the point of view of Harri’s pigeon? It’s on the short list for the Booker Prize and I wouldn’t be surprised at all if it wins.

Before I Go to Sleep by S.J. Watson

Christine loses most of her memory every night when she goes to sleep. Sometimes she wakes thinking she’s in her twenties, sometimes even younger. She doesn't know where she is, or what has happened to her in the past several of decades. With the help of a psychologist and her journal, she begins to reconstruct her life and discovers just how vulnerable she really is.
Serious, strange amnesia in fiction is almost always a little too convenient. It's one of those things that happens all the time in books and almost never in real life (like the revelation that your father is not really your father). I picked up this suspense novel because of the compelling cover, but thought - boring, another amnesia story. Then I started reading and I could not put it down. It is definitely one of  my recent top recommendations for beach/vacation reading.