Reading Challenge: 1000 Books Before Kindergarten
“1000 Books Before Kindergarten” is a challenge for little ones and their caregivers with a simple concept and priceless rewards. Families can participate through Beanstack, a website that allows users to track their reading, share reviews, and collect badges—then collect prizes! Visit the library or our website to sign up.

The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois | Honorée Fanonne Jeffers | Brittany's Pick

The 2020 NAACP Image Award-winning poet makes her fiction debut with this National Book Award-longlisted, magisterial epic—an intimate yet sweeping novel with all the luminescence and force of Homegoing; Sing, Unburied, Sing; and The Water Dancer—that chronicles the journey of one American family, from the centuries of the colonial slave trade through the Civil War to our own tumultuous era. 

Black Girls Must Die Exhausted | Jayne Allen | Brittany's Pick

The first novel in a captivating three-book series about modern womanhood, in which a young Black woman must rely on courage, laughter, and love—and the support of her two longtime friends—to overcome an unexpected setback that threatens the most precious thing she’s ever wanted.

When We Cease to Understand the World | Benjamín Labatut | Mairead's Pick

A book about the complicated links between discovery, madness, and destruction. Haber, Grothendieck, Heisenberg, Schrödinger—these are some of luminaries into whose troubled lives Benjamín Labatut thrusts the reader, showing us how they grappled with the most profound questions of existence. Labatut uses the imaginative resources of fiction to tell the stories of the scientists and mathematicians who expanded our notions of the possible.

The High House | Jessie Greengrass | Mairead's Pick

Shortlisted for the 2021 Costa Novel Award, this powerful, highly acclaimed novel from an award-winning author is about four people attempting to make a home in the midst of environmental disaster. A searing novel that takes on parenthood, sacrifice, love, and survival under the threat of extinction, The High House is a stunning, emotionally precise novel about what can be salvaged at the end of the world.

The Year of Magical Thinking | Joan Didion | Kelly's Pick

A modern classic by the late, great Joan Didion, this memoir is an intensely personal, brilliantly and movingly reported account of one death—her husband’s—and two near-deaths—those of their daughter—leaving her alone to navigate her grief, her memories, and her daughter’s recovery.

Lost & Found | Kathryn Schulz | Mairead's Pick

Eighteen months before Kathryn Schulz’s beloved father died, she met the woman she would marry. In Lost & Found, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer for The New Yorker weaves the stories of those relationships into a brilliant exploration of how all our lives are shaped by loss and discovery—from the maddening disappearance of everyday objects to the sweeping devastations of war, pandemic, and natural disaster; from finding new planets to falling in love.

Profit and Punishment | Tony Messenger | Brittany's Pick

A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist exposes the tragedy of modern-day debtors prisons, and how they destroy the lives of poor Americans swept up in a system designed to penalize the most impoverished. In the tradition of Evicted and The New Jim Crow, Tony Messenger exposes injustice that is agonizing and infuriating in its mundane cruelty, as he champions the rights and dignity of some of the most vulnerable Americans.

Wild Tongues Can't Be Tamed | edited by Saraciea J. Fennell | Brittany's Pick

Bestselling and award-winning authors as well as up-and-coming voices interrogate the different myths and stereotypes about the Latinx diaspora. These fifteen original pieces delve into everything from ghost stories and superheroes, to memories in the kitchen and travels around the world, to addiction and grief, to identity and anti-Blackness, to finding love and speaking your truth. Full of both sorrow and joy, Wild Tongues Can't Be Tamed is an essential celebration of this rich and diverse community.

We Shall Overcome | Bryan Collier

"We Shall Overcome" is a civil rights gospel anthem that has been beautifully brought to life by Caldecott Honor winner Bryan Collier.
 

We Listen to Our Bodies | Lydia Bowers

A great book to use to talk to kids about touch and helping them to establish personal boundaries with which they're comfortable.
 

Maybe Maybe Marisol Rainey | Erin Entrada Kelly

This sweet realistic fictional tale is about Marisol, a girl trying to navigate friendships, family relationships, and her fears of climbing the tree in her backyard, which she has lovingly named Peppina.

Wings of Fire: The Graphic Novel, The Brightest Night | Tui T. Sutherland

Come grab the latest edition of this beloved children's series in graphic novel format!

Maker Comics: Conduct a Science Experiment! | Der-shing Helmer

This fun graphic novel encourages kids to be inquisitive about the world around them, and shows them how to employ the scientific method and do research.

All of Us Villains | Amanda Foody and Christine Lynn Herman

At the coming of the Blood Moon, each of the seven families names a champion to compete in a secret tournament to the death. The prize? Total control over a secret wellspring of high magick.

Poisoned Water Candy J. Cooper

This book depicts not only what transpired in 2014 when the Flint water crisis came to light, but also "the history of racism and segregation that led up to it, the beliefs and attitudes that fueled it, and how the people of Flint fought—and are still fighting—for clean water and healthy lives."