by Robin Wall Kimmerer, illus. by John Burgoyne
Taking a leaf from her beloved book Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer gleans life lessons from the humble serviceberry tree: embrace "the gift economy" and give as generously as the tree shares its fruits. Known by more than seven names, the serviceberry is beloved in indigenous cultures for its benefits of beauty and sustenance for humans and other creatures. Confronting the dire effects of human overconsumption, Kimmerer nevertheless offers hope that people might live harmoniously with the Earth.
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by Emily Mester
American consumers have been a subject of public scorn, political courtship, market analysis, and journalistic investigation. As a faceless demographic, their habits have seemed to mystify, and even disgust, those who study their preferences, their predictability, their pathology. But in American Bulk: Essays on Excess, Emily Mester takes a more compassionate route through the labyrinth of brand-name overabundance and the pantheon of casual dining chains.
Throughout these 10 inquisitive and deeply observed
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by Josh Silver
Josh Silver's thrilling YA debut, HappyHead, follows a teenager with an anxiety disorder as he takes part in an experimental mental health program that offers participants "the opportunity to find enduring happiness."
Seventeen-year-old Sebastian (Seb) Seaton's mum thinks he has "always had a bit of a sensitive nature." Seb, an anxious, queer kid from a religious family, thinks he is misunderstood by most everyone in his life. When he receives an invitation to take part in the HappyHead Project, his parents
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by Sarah Clegg
The dark, playful, and sometimes tragic roots of Christmas traditions old and new come to light in The Dead of Winter: Beware the Krampus and Other Wicked Christmas Creatures, an entertaining and captivating investigation of the evolution of Christmas celebrations and folkloreby British historian Sarah Clegg (Women's Lore).
Clegg opens with an atmospheric recounting of going out late on a "howling, windswept night" in the British countryside for a Year Walk, a Swedish tradition in which a walk before dawn
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by Christine Mari
Halfway There is an emotional, inspiring graphic memoir by comic artist Christina Mari (Diary of a Tokyo Teen) about her own experience with depression while attending college in Tokyo.
Christine was born in Tokyo to a Japanese mother and an American father and was called "all kinds of different things" growing up: "mixed/ half/ wasian/ halfie/ hapa/ hafu." At five, she moved to the States; at 19, she returned to Tokyo to attend college. But Christine continues to struggle with her identity--she feels "too
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by Youngmi Mayer
Comedian Youngmi Mayer opens her memoir, I'm Laughing Because I'm Crying--equal parts rollicking and heartbreaking--with a confessional epigraph: "To Mom and Dad (Don't be mad at me)." She quickly warns, "I am comfortable saying shit that I truly should not be saying in any situation." Woven through her unfiltered memories of growing up biracial--her mother is Korean, her father white--in a dysfunctional family are crucial, smack-in-the-face observations about selfhood, inherited Korean and Irish generational
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