Patch Picks: Books for Kids and Adults

The National Education Association (NEA) in 1998 started National Read Across America Day, which was yesterday, as a way of encouraging kids to crack open a book, and it’s been embraced by educators and parents alike.

For those of you looking for something new for you or your kids to read, we checked in to get recommendations from libraries in South Jersey.

Children
The Popularity Papers: Research for the Social Improvement and General Betterment of Lydia Goldblatt & Julie Graham-Chang—by Amy Ignatow
Best friends Lydia and Julie keep a secret notebook where they try to decipher the secrets of being popular.

The Librarian of Basra: A True Story from Iraq—by Jeanette Winter
When war comes to Basra, chief librarian Alia Muhammad Baker asks government officials for help in relocating its collection. They refuse, but Alia is determined to protect the books, "which are more precious to her than mountains of gold."

The Memory Bank—by Carolyn Coman; illustrated by Rob Shepperson
Hope Scroggins dreams about her abandoned sister, raising the ire of the World Wide Memory Bank, where the government collects both memories and dreams.

The Fabled Fifth Graders of Aesop Elementary School—by Candace Fleming
The sequel to The Fabled Fourth Graders of Aesop Elementary School, this one continues to document the exploits of the class no one wanted to teach.

Ruby Lu, Brave and True—by Lenore Look; illustrated by Anne Wilsdorf
Ruby Lu is nearly 8 years old; she loves her family and neighborhood, but things are changing, and she struggles to cope with a baby brother who’s learning to talk and a mother who wants her go to Chinese school on the weekend.

Adults
The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine—by Michael Lewis
Detailing the collapse of the housing market, Lewis finds some of the few who predicted the crash, and explores the actions companies took to make it possible.

Your Republic Is Calling You—by Young-ha Kim
A North Korean spy working undercover in South Korea sees his life–and his family’s–unravel in the course of a single day.

The Road—by Cormac McCarthy
Grim may be an understatement when it comes to this postapocalyptic novel, which is unflinching in its portrayal of a man and his son trying to reach safety through a bleak landscape that offers almost none at all.

The World Without Us—by Alan Weisman
Continuing in the postapocalyptic vein, ever wonder how long skyscrapers would remain standing, or what traces of humanity would last through the centuries? Alan Weisman examines what would happen if humanity disappeared tomorrow.

Consider the Lobster—David Foster Wallace
Not nearly as intimidating as Wallace’s monster Infinite Jest, this is a collection of essays on topics that run the gamut from the English language to lobsters, and many more bizarre things in between.