Glenda's Staff Picks

Such a beautiful book!  Maurice Sendak, author of the children’s book Where the Wild Things Are, wrote his last book, My Brother’s Book, as a tribute to his brother.  It is truly a beautifully illustrated, poetic story of grief and love!

In the book, The Sandcastle Girls, Elizabeth Endicott, a recent college graduate travels to Syria to bring relief aid to the refugees of the Armenian Genocide.  It is 1915 in Aleppo Syria.  This book is a history lesson, it is a family genealogy, it is a love story.

Creating Room to Read is the story of a former Microsoft executive’s quest to build libraries around the world and share the love of books.  I was especially intrigued by the way the author John Wood strived to bring the lessons of the corporate world to the nonprofit sector.  His business model requires a community’s commitment and involvement in partnering with Room to Read to bring libraries, school and books to impoverished areas.  Truly inspirational!

If you have ever dreamed of traveling around the world, then Eighty Days is book you should read!  In the Victorian era, to travel around the world would have been considered an amazing feat, yet that’s exactly what reporters Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Brisland decided to do.  Both left NY on the November 14, 1889, both intent on circling the globe in 80 days, both determined to break the record of Jules Verne’s fictional character in Around the World in Eighty Days. A true and fascinating adventure, this non-fiction book reads like fiction.