Patch Picks: Summer Reads

The kicks off its summer reading program, "Your Passport to the World!" Saturday, June 4. Sign up for programs, get your reading folders to earn prizes, play games, taste treats and sample some of the "awesome cultures and amazing places" the library will visit this summer.

The program lasts for nine weeks (June 20 - Aug. 19), concluding with a special "Souvenir Shop."

Here are some personal summer reading suggestions.

Kristen Bair O’Keefe’s "Thirsty: A Novel" explores the life of a Croatian emigrant, Klara, living in Thirsty, a hapless community on a vertical slope above the Pittsburgh, not unlike Clairton, Pa. Set in the late 19th century, Bair O’Keefe’s novel explores oppression and poverty. Although, fraught with grim images of brutality and cruelty, there are moments of exquisite joy, artfully rendered by a superb storyteller. The book is a deeply personal account of hard-scrabbled lives of Pittsburgh’s immigrant communities; penniless foreigners who hoped for a brighter future for their children, our own foremothers.

On the lighter side, there’s Tina Fey’s “Bossypants,” a hilarious narrative of the comedienne’s life. "Bossypants" is told in brief essays-posing-as-chapters such as the self-effacing “All Girls Must Be Everything,” where she challenges America’s modern standards of beauty by listing all of her alleged faults, “Straight Greek eyebrows…heart-shaped ass…droopy brown eyes… [and] wide-set knockers.” Though the author sees herself as a wreck, she is beautiful enough to grace the cover of Vanity Fair. Ignore the disturbing cover where Fey poses with “man-hands." The  insides are gut-busting.

Speaking of guts, everything is coming to an end in young adult literature. The book shelves are riddled with post-apocalyptic alternate futures. In Jonathan Maberry’s “Rot & Ruin,” 15-year-old Benny Imura is living in an eponymous post-apocalyptic world where zombie hunting is a profitable business, especially for Benny’s older brother Tom. Teen fans of the supernatural will find "Rot & Ruin" a surprisingly intelligent story with a thick undercoat of emotional depth, beneath all the rotting corpses. As any real zombie fan knows, "go for the brains;" Maberry (Marvel Comics "Black Panther") serves up a brainy YA Novel.

Fans of the graphic novel genre may be interested in “Pride of Baghdad.” Author Brian K. Vaughan (a writer from television’s "Lost" and an accomplished comic book writer much like Maberry) and illustrator Niko Henrichon follow a pride of lions who have escaped from the Baghdad zoo during America’s war with Iraq. Though the story is about a small family of anthropomorphized lions, this is not a funny talking-animal comic. It is a treatise on freedom. Vaughan, in an interview with Comic Book Resources, said, "'Pride of Baghdad' is a parable, but it's not a preachy polemic where I try to shove my half-baked beliefs down readers' throats. I wrote this story not because I have all the answers, but because I wanted to ask myself hard questions about the Iraq War, the nature of occupation and the price of freedom."

For little kids or aspiring artists, there is “Chalk” by Bill Thomson, a lavishly-illustrated wordless picture book for all ages. In it, a group of children find a pack of colored chalk in the park. The kids let their imaginations run wild, drawing all sorts of beautiful pictures. “Chalk” is a visual feast and it may inspire your kids to take a pack of chalk out to the park or to the driveway and create their own contemprary and temporary masterpieces.

Sign up for the library's reading program this Saturday. If you have any questions, email the young adult librarian and/or children's librarian.