Explore Manga!

We have added several Manga titles to our library collection.  What is Manga?  Manga is a Japanese style of graphic novel, many of which are geared for adult readers.

Here are some of the titles we currently have available :

 Ceres : Celestial Legend by Yuu Watase

The protagonist of this story is sixteen-year-old high school girl Aya Mikage, who discovers on her birthday that she is the reincarnation of a celestial maiden named Ceres.








DearS by Peach-Pit

The unlikely protagonist of the series is a temperamental seventeen-year-old Japanese student, named Takeya Ikuhara, with a strong prejudice against the DearS, who are humanoid aliens that were naturalized into Japanese society after their spacecraft crash landed into Tokyo Bay while en route to their home planet of Thanatos,  Takeya's life becomes complicated when finds a young female DearS he calls Ren.

 Othello by Satomi Ikezawa

Titled after the board game rather than the Shakespeare play, this is the story of a shy, naive Japanese teenager with a split personality.  One personality, Yaya, is innocent, timid, and because of her personality, is constantly attacked and ridiculed by people who claim to be her friends. Her second personality, Nana, is tough, cunning, sarcastic, and bold - coming out whenever Yaya needs help because of her inability to stand up for herself.

Ultra Maniac by Wataru Yoshizumi

This series follows 7th grader Ayu Tateishi, a tennis club member, and her transfer student friend, Nina Sakura, who is actually a trainee witch from the magical kingdom.  

Ayu is the president of the girls' tennis club, one of the most popular girls in the school, and she works hard on keeping up her "cool, calm and collected" reputation.  Nina is a magic girl, and a failure who came to Earth as her last chance to prove that she can get things right.

Non-Fiction Titles for Your Enjoyment

With all of the turmoil raging in the Middle East and around the globe, I thought that the following selections would offer some glimmer of hope. They each feature stories of hope and survival despite the evils that persist in this world.

 The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu (and Their Race to Save the World’s Most Precious Manuscripts) is a book by Joshua Hammer. The lands in and around the Sahara Desert have long been in a state of turmoil. Dictators and despots abound. A young adventurer and collector for the government library in Mali, Abdel Kader Haidara, journeyed across the Sahara and along the Niger River in the 1980s searching for and salvaging tens of thousands of ancient Islamic and secular manuscripts he found crumbling in the trunks of desert farmers. His lofty goal was to preserve these precious pieces of ancestry for future generations. Unfortunately, Al Qaeda showed up and things began to look very grim. Haidara emerged from his role as a mild-mannered archivist and historian to become one of the world’s most brazen smugglers by saving these rare texts from certain destruction. More than 350,000 volumes were smuggled out of Timbuktu and spirited away to southern Mali. It was this group of ordinary citizens who answered a higher calling and allowed themselves to be forever changed by the experience.   

City of Thorns: Nine Lives in the World’s Largest Refugee Camp is by Ben Rawlence. Situated in a grueling desert in northern Kenya where thorn bushes are the only things that grow, Dadaab is a city like no other. Its buildings are made from mud, sticks, and plastic; its entire economy is suspect; and its half million residents survive on rations and a whole lot of luck. Rawlence, who has witnessed this strange and desperate place firsthand, tells the stories of some of the people who have come here seeking sanctuary. Guled is a former child soldier who lives for football (soccer). Nisho manages to scrape out an existence pushing a wheelbarrow while dreaming of riches. There is also Tawane, an unassailable youth leader, and Kheyro, whose future hangs upon her education at the school. The author also tries to explain the wider political forces that are keeping these refugees trapped in Dadaab.

A Different Kind of Daughter: the Girl Who Hid from the Taliban in Plain Sight is a memoir by Maria Toorpakai with Katharine Holstein. From a very young age, Maria Toorpakai knew that she wanted to play squash. Unfortunately, she hails from Pakistan’s violently oppressive northwest tribal region. The idea of women playing sports is forbidden and girls rarely leave their homes. She first tried dressing and living as a boy, but she eventually became Pakistan’s number one female squash player. For Maria it was both salvation and a death sentence. Her achievements put her and her family in the national spotlight and directly in the crosshairs of the Taliban. She soon realized that her only chance for survival would be to flee the country. Jonathon Power, the first North American to earn the title of top squash player in the world, was the only person to answer Maria’s plea for help. Jonathon recognized her tenacity and talent and invited her to train and compete internationally in Canada. Even though she had spent years living on the run from the Taliban, Maria was sad to pack up and leave the only place she had ever known and move halfway across the world to pursue her dream. Now, Maria is well on her way to becoming a world champion as well as becoming a voice for oppressed women all over the world.

The Lovers: Afghanistan’s Romeo and Juliet is by Rod Norland. Growing up on adjacent potato farms in the remote mountain area of Bamiyan, Afghanistan, Zakia and Ali became close friends. The two were separated according to the laws and customs of the area when they reached puberty. Zakia, a beautiful and strongly opinionated young woman, and Ali, a soft-spoken, handsome young man still managed to fall in love and court one another, remotely at first, then, in Zakia's garden. In order to be with Ali, Zakia defied her family and Islamic law by leaving home to be with him, but she ended up in a women's shelter pursued by her father and other family members who were set to kill her to preserve the family "honor." The shelter saved her life, but she was unable to see Ali there, so the couple eloped and went into hiding. When Norland wrote about the couple for an article in the New York Times, he unwittingly exposed them and thus felt obligated to help them get to safety. With help from Norland as well as foreign donations, the couple made a disastrous attempt to flee to Tajikistan, however, they were forced to return to Kabul where they were closely tracked by Zakia's family. Ali and Zakia's story is used to illustrate the common cultural practices such as stoning, child marriage, and legalized rape that serve to strip women like Zakia of their basic human rights.

Help Childhood Literacy - Read a Book to a Child

Anna Dewdney, the author of the best-selling children's picture book series, 'Llama Llama', passed away on September 3, 2016 at the age of 50.  Through her publisher, Penguin Group, she requested that in lieu of a funeral service that people read to a child instead.

The following are her books that are in our collection.

The Book Or The Movie?

While movies and television allow the beloved characters from literature to come alive and flourish if put into the hands of the right actors, writers, directors, and producers; the opposite is true if the wrong sort of people get their hands on our favorite stories. Ever since the advent of motion pictures, there has been a heated debate. Is the book or the movie better? The following books have been made into motion pictures that are currently available in theaters. I'll let you decide which is better, but you'll have to read the books to make your choice.

"Middle School: the Worst Years of My Life" is a series of juvenile books by the ever-popular James Patterson (Alex Cross novels). Rafe Katchadorian has enough problems at home without having to worry about the oppressive rules laid down by the principal of his middle school. With the help and encouragement of his best friend, Leonardo the Silent, Rafe has decided it will be his mission to break as many of the school rules as he can. The two have even made a game of it: Chewing gum in class, 5,000 points! Running in the hallway, 10,000 points! Pull the fire alarm, 50,000 points! When all of this rule-breaking begins to catch up with him, Rafe must decide whether or not he can face up to the rules, the bullies, and what is really bothering him.

"Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children" is the first book in a Young Adult series by Ransom Riggs. Haunting photographs help tell the story of sixteen-year-old Jacob who has suffered a terrible tragedy. His beloved grandfather was attacked and Jacob finds him barely alive. With his dying breath, his grandfather compels him to seek out the orphanage where he spent his childhood. Jacob manages to convince his parents to let him go, but what he finds there he doesn't fully understand. As he explores the rooms and hallways, Jacob comes to believe that these children may have been quarantined on this island because of their peculiar abilities; and even, perhaps, because they were dangerous. Local history says that the children were killed when the Nazis dropped a bomb on the house, but what Jacob finds leads him to think otherwise. Are the peculiars still alive? You'll have to read it to find out!

Finally, for the adults, we have "The Girl on the Train" by Paula Hawkins. Rachel's life now is full of monotony. She takes the same train everyday with the same people who have the same conversations. Her only bit of respite is the young couple she sees having breakfast every morning--she calls them Jess and Jason. They remind her of how her life used to be before her divorce. One morning however, she witnesses something shocking. It is only a split second before the train moves on. Rachel doesn't know what to do, but she goes to the authorities anyway. Soon, the authorities begin to question her sanity as well as her motives while Rachel becomes more and more entangled in the lives of those involved. Has she done more harm than good? You decide.