Comic Book Cool Cats

It’s kitten season (April-October) and cats are absolutely everywhere right meow, including in just about every type of comic book or manga story you could imagine.

In Cat Massage Therapy by Haru Hisakawa, world weary workers find relief from the most unexpected of feline massage professionals.

Catboy by Benji Nate sees Olive’s wish to hang out with her cat Henry “like a person” come very precisely true, when her best cat friend becomes her best cat-person friend. Adulting and style abound in this hilarious and beautiful collection of the weekly webcomic.

A Man and His Cat by Umi Sakurai is really all in the title. An older gentleman adopts a seemingly unwanted cat from a local pet store. Does each have what the other is looking for? Read on and find out in this purrfect slice-of-life manga!

In the expansive world of steampunk, magic, and animal human hybrids of Monstress by Marjorie Liu, Sana Takeda, and Rus Wooten, cats play a powerful and central role: as both historian poets as well as secret guardians of order and peace.

Saga by Brian K. Vaughn and Fiona Staples is perhaps the most popular non-superhero adult audience comic book in the last decade: a dramatic, gorgeous space adventure, full of action, heartbreak, and treachery. Lying Cat, however, cuts through all of the chaos and the spin, and will notify you, in fact, if you are “lying.”

Check out these feline tales and more in this booklist

~ posted by Mychal L.

Adult Summer Reading Book Bingo NW 2022 Starts TODAY!

Today is the day–Wednesday, May 18th is the start of our 8th Year of Summer Book Bingo with our amazing partner Seattle Arts & Lectures!

The bingo card artwork by local artist Jorge Villavicencio highlights the Library’s Year of Wonder theme with vibrant, whimsical balloons, kites, and reading aliens from outer space to help set the tone of your reading adventure!

Between now and Tuesday, September 6th, you can keep track of your summer reading with the goals of either getting a line of Bingo (a line across, down, or diagonal) or Blackout (filling every square on the board) and submit your entry by September 6th to be entered into a drawing for a gift certificate to a local independent book store, provided by a generous donation from the Friends of The Seattle Public Library, or to enter into the Blackout drawing for a chance to win a subscription to the 2022/2023 SAL series of your choice!

Whether you enter for a chance to win or just love a chance to read more widely, Summer Book Bingo is a great way to explore your summer reading with more intentionality while reading for pleasure, joy, and wonder!

Every year, we share three categories early to pique your interest and to help you plan your reading.

This year, we did a sneak peek of the categories A book about books, Healthcare or health care workers, and LGBTQ+ love story.

You will find this year’s bingo sheet, together with more book lists, articles, and ideas on our Book Bingo page!

While staff across the system contribute to book lists with ideas in most categories and create some fantastic displays, we are always eager to help you with reading ideas. Let staff know if you are looking for Book Bingo inspiration and take advantage of our Your Next 5 Books personalized reading list service.

Summer Book Bingo is also available in Spanish, so feel free to try both!

As a reminder, here is how you enter the drawing:

When you’ve filled the front and back of your bingo card for either bingo (one line) or blackout (filling out all 25 squares), you can submit the card to enter drawings for prizes in the following ways:

1. Drop off your card (or a copy) at any branch of The Seattle Public Library.

2. Email an image of the front and back of your card to bookbingo@spl.org.

3. Post a photo of the front of your card to Twitter (@SeaArtsLectures, @SPLBuzz) or Instagram (@seattleartsandlectures, @SeattlePublicLibrary). Be sure to tag #BookBingoNW2022.

Entries must be received by 6 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2022. This contest is for readers ages 18 and up, and you are only allowed to enter once. Blackout card entrants will be entered in the drawing for one of three grand prizes, including a subscription to the 2022/23 SAL series of your choice. Both blackout card and bingo entrants will be entered to win a gift card from one of Seattle’s independent bookstores. You must be able to pick up your prize in person at a library location.

We always love to hear from you about your Book Bingo category ideas and creative approaches! Do you challenge your friends, family, or co-workers to do Book Bingo with you? Do you share your reading discoveries with others? Let us know! Tag us in posts with #BookBingoNW2022 so we know what you are up to or can help you along the way.

Happy reading!

~ posted by Misha S.

 

The year in Asian American & Pacific Islander fiction

Each May, in recognition of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, we take a look at the past year’s novels and short stories from AAPI authors. You’ll find the full list of recent AAPI fiction here. To get you started, here are some highlights from this year’s list:

The Family Chao, by Lan Samantha Chang. When Big Leo – founder of Fine Chao, the best Chinese food in Haven, Wisconsin – dies under mysterious circumstances, suspicion falls on his three variosly assimilated sons, James, Ming and Dagou, in a perceptive and poignant Chinese-American rendition of Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov.

Nuclear Family, by Joseph Han. What – or who – possessed Korean Hawaiian Jacob Cho to attempt to cross over into North Korea? Back home at their Honolulu plate lunch restaurant, rumors fly that he must be a spy – a suspicion that seems all too true when on January 13, 2018, sirens suddenly blare, (falsely) alerting the island to a rain of incoming ballistic missiles.

Circa, by Devi S. Laskar.  Coming of age in Raleigh, North Carolina, Bengali-American teenager Heera Sanyal feels the American Dream slip from her grasp when her best friend is killed by a drunk driver, leaving her both trapped and solaced by the clasp of her family’s traditions.

Auē, by Becky Manawatu. It is a cry of dismay, or distress, and for Taukiri, “auē” is almost a kind of music, telling of his traumatic upbringing, and calling out towards a hope that things might someday get better. This award-winning new novel sings with raw, lyrical power of the contemporary Maori experience.

Under Lock & Skeleton Key: A Secret Staircase Mystery, by Gigi Pandian. In this delightfully quirky locked-room mystery series debut, out-of-work Las Vegas magician Tempest Raj stumbles over the corpse of her stage double, and it seems the only answer lies in a family curse that claimed her own mother’s life – or did it?

The Verifiers, by Jane Pek. Claudia Lin’s detective work is confined to checking up on the veracity of online dating profiles, until one of her clients suddenly turns out to be an imposter, and then turns up dead, and the mystery buff can’t resist jumping in with both feet.

The Immortal King Rao, by Vari Vauhini. Did Athena’s billionaire father escape from his doomed existence as Dalit, on the lowest run of India’s caste system, only to perpetuate and perfect those same social inequities when he struck it rich in Seattle’s heady tech scene? A thought provoking dystopian thriller.

Siren Queen, by Nghi Vo. When budding starlet Luli Wei discovers that the Hollywood studio system is an predatory gothic nightmare, there is only one solution: she must become the biggest monster of them all.

To Paradise, by Hanya Yanagihara. Spanning three centuries from 1893 to 1993 and 2093, this ambitious epic explores our quest for love and fulfillment against a steadily darkening backdrop of isolation, xenophobia and ecological decline.

We’ve just scratched the surface here, so check out our full list of recent AAPI fiction here.

     ~ Posted by David W.

“We Hereby Refuse” – Sharing the History of Japanese American Resistance, 80 Years Ago

Just over 80 years ago, on March 30, 1942, more than 200 Bainbridge Island residents were expelled from their homes and forcibly relocated and incarcerated in American concentration camps. They were among the first of the 120,000 Japanese Americans – according to a recent story in the Seattle Times – who were incarcerated during World War II solely on the basis of race.

In May 2021, a groundbreaking graphic novel was published that shared a lesser-known story of that mass injustice: resistance. Published by the Wing Luke Museum and Chin Music Press, “We Hereby Refuse: Japanese American Resistance to Wartime Incarceration,” authored by Frank Abe and Tamiko Nimura and illustrated by Ross Ishikawa and Matt Sasaki, wove together an epic narrative of three Japanese Americans who refused to submit to imprisonment in American concentration camps without a fight.

Want to learn about this remarkable graphic novel and the story behind it? Watch the YouTube recording of the Library event that celebrated its publication, hosted in partnership with the Wing Luke Museum, Densho and Elliott Bay Book Company.

Moderated by Tom Ikeda, Executive Director of Densho: The Japanese American Legacy Project, this must-see event gathered panelists including “We Hereby Refuse” authors Frank Abe and Tamiko Nimura, and artist Ross Ishikawa, as well as Wing Luke Museum board member Diane Sugimura.

Gardening with Toddlers

We made a small garden space for my kiddo to play in to get him involved in the growing of things. It’s still mostly dirt play and mud making, which is a delight, but by planting that seed I hope his love for gardening grows as he gets older. Here are a few books in our collection that we’ve added to storytime at home to get him thinking and reading about the garden.

Dig In! by Cynthia L. Jenson-Elliott, illustrated by Mary Peterson
What kid doesn’t LOVE dirt?! This book is all about your child getting their hands dirty and what they will find as they play in the garden.

Green Green: a Community Gardening Story by Marie and Baldev Lamba, illustrated by Sonia Sanchez
Highlights the growth of community and reclaiming green spaces. Told through quick rhymes and colorful pictures.