March Madness at MPL!

Passionate about books, or just like a good competition?   Well we have just the thing for you—MPL March Madness!  16 books duke it out against each other.  There can be only one winner.  Here’s how it works:

Stop by the library anytime from now until March 16 and pick up a book bracket.  Then select which books you think should advance.  Submit your entry and wait until March 17, when we will start eliminating books.  Participants who choose the correct book at the end, or those closest to it, will be in a drawing to win great prizes including best-selling books, and gift cards to Fro-Yo and Regal Cinema!  We’ll try to highlight some of the books in Mentor’s Reader, but don’t worry, you don’t have to read them all—choose which books you eliminate based on cover or author—just have fun! 

It’s MPL Madness, only happening at Mentor Public Library! 

Coming of Age in a Slowing World

A book that’s heading off in our March Madness event is Age of Miracles, by Karen Thompson Walker.  It’s a beautiful book about the end of days and a young girl trying to make sense of it all.  I guess that sums it up.  But here’s a little more.  The narrator, Julia, is writing from some future time about when the world started spinning slower.  She was a young teen at the time.  Days and nights start lengthening, birds start falling out of the sky, and her best friend moves away with her family to Utah.  The book goes like that: here are the things that are happening to the world, and here are the things the narrator must deal with in her life.  What a great metaphor for growing up—as the world is literally falling apart around her, Julia must cope with the day to day troubles of crushes and crumbling relationships.  It’s a unique way to write a coming of age story.  And I loved the perspective.  Writing from some future time gives Julia the ability to say things like, “that was the last time I was in that house.”  It may seem small, but having that perspective throughout the book gave the story a certain weight of nostalgia.  And nothing can be more beautiful and painful than nostalgia.
 
If you liked this book, I would also recommend The Dog Stars by Peter Heller.  This is another beautifully written book about the end of the world and one man trying to live. 

I would also mention Tell the Wolves I’m Home by Carol Rifka Brunt.  This one is more of a coming of age story about a girl dealing with the death of her confidant and best friend, her uncle.  

~Amanda D.