Symposium's Picks: What's Hot at the Bookstore this Week

Every week, Anne Marie Keohane of Symposium Books in East Greenwich and Providence, offers up some reading selections for children, young adults and adult fiction and nonfiction.

Here’s your April 1 edition:

Children’s:
Happy Easter, Mouse, Laura Numeroff.
Join Mouse from If You Give a Mouse a Cookie as he tries to figure out who’s leaving Easter eggs all over his house!

Giraffes Can’t Dance, Giles Andreae.
Giraffes Can’t Dance is a touching tale of Gerald the giraffe, who wants nothing more than to dance. With crooked knees and thin legs, it’s harder for a giraffe than you would think. Gerald is finally able to dance to his own tune when he gets some encouraging words from an unlikely friend. With light-footed rhymes and high-stepping illustrations, this tale is gentle inspiration for every child with dreams of greatness.

Young Adult:
The Knife of Never Letting Go: Chaos Walking, Book One, Patrick Ness.
Chased by a madman preacher and possibly the rest of his townsfolk as well, young Todd Hewitt flees his settlement on a planet where war with the natives has killed all the women and infected the men with a germ that broadcasts their thoughts aloud for all to hear. This cacophanous thought-cloud is known as Noise and is rendered with startling effectiveness on the page.

The Crossover, Kwame Alexander.
The Bell twins are stars on the basketball court and comrades in life. While there are some differences—Josh shaves his head and Jordan loves his locks—both twins adhere to the Bell basketball rules: In this game of life, your family is the court, and the ball is your heart.

Fiction:
The Boston Girl, Anita Diamant.
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Red Tent and Day After Night, comes an unforgettable novel about family ties and values, friendship and feminism told through the eyes of a young Jewish woman growing up in Boston in the early twentieth century.

The Edge of Eternity (Book Three of the Century Trilogy), Ken Follett.
Ken Follett’s Century Trilogy follows the fortunes of five intertwined families—American, German, Russian, English, and Welsh—as they make their way through the twentieth century. It has been called “potent, engrossing” (Publishers Weekly) and “truly epic” (Huffington Post). USA Today said, “You actually feel like you’re there.”

Non-Fiction:
New York Review Books (NYRB):
We are showcasing a large selection of titles (over 150 titles) from the esteemed publisher, New York Review Books (NYRB). Our New Arrivals table is loaded down with titles from authors such as Euripides, Gregor Von Rezzori, L.P. Hartley, Kingsley Amis, Stefan Zweig, and so many more.

How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Heroic Role From the Fall of Rome, Thomas Cahill.
As Cahill delightfully illustrates, so much of the liveliness we associate with medieval culture has its roots in Ireland. When the seeds of culture were replanted on the European continent, it was from Ireland that they were germinated.

Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle That Set Them Free, Hector Tobar.
For Deep Down Dark, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Héctor Tobar received exclusive access to the miners and their tales. These thirty-three men came to think of the mine, a cavern inflicting constant and thundering aural torment, as a kind of coffin, and as a church where they sought redemption through prayer. Even while still buried, they all agreed that if by some miracle any of them escaped alive, they would share their story only collectively. Héctor Tobar was the person they chose to hear, and now to tell, that story.