advice

Nasreddine

Loosely based on the Middle Eastern folk hero Nasreddine Hodja, in this retelling young Nasreddine learns that, instead of always listening to the advice of others, it is better for one to “decide if what you are hearing is wise, or if it’s only silly and hurtful.” Humorous, earth-toned watercolor illustrations effectively use line, white space, and pacing to offer an authentic Middle Eastern setting.

Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can’t Avoid

Lemony Snicket’s work is filled with bitter truths, like: ‘It is always cruel to laugh at people, of course, although sometimes if they are wearing an ugly hat it is hard to control yourself.’ Or: ‘It is very easy to say that the important thing is to try your best, but if you are in real trouble the most important thing is not trying your best, but getting to safety.’ For all of life’s ups and downs, its celebrations and its sorrows, here is a book to commemorate it all – especially for those not fully soothed by chicken soup. Witty and irreverent, Horseradish is a book with universal appeal, a delightful vehicle to introduce Snicket’s uproariously unhappy observations to a crowd not yet familiar with the Baudelaires’ misadventures.

It Could Always Be Worse: A Yiddish Folk Tale

Once upon a time a poor unfortunate man lived with his mother, his wife, and his six children in a one-room hut. Because they were so crowded, the children often fought and the man and his wife argued. When the poor man was unable to stand it any longer, he ran to the Rabbi for help. As he follows the Rabbi’s unlikely advice, the poor man’s life goes from bad to worse, with increasingly uproarious results. In his little hut, silly calamity follows foolish catastrophe, all memorably depicted in full-color illustrations that are both funnier and lovelier than any this distinguished artist has done in the past.

Johnny Swanson

The secret to instant height?  Stand on a box. Want to make your money go further? Roll it down a hill. The answer to smelly feet? Wear a clothes pin on your nose. Eleven-year-old Johnny Swanson is in business. He’s raking in the money with his advertising scams and his advice columnist persona, who offers advice on absolutely anything in return for a shilling. But his money-making schemes are getting him in too deep with the wrong kinds of people. Everything is spiralling out of control, and now his own mother is in mortal danger. There’s only one thing to be done: Johnny must assume another role as undercover detective! In the spirit of Roald Dahl, this is a funny and delightful story with a satisfying mystery, a wonderful cast of characters, and an unlikely but completely likeable hero.

Ask Amy Green: Summer Secrets

Amy is trapped in family vacation hell, until she and Clover, her teenage aunt, get a chance to interview a hot U.S. movie star with a secret. Thirteen-year-old Amy’s dreamy boyfriend, Seth, is off to Rome, while she gets to spend two weeks on a tiny Irish island with a nagging mom and a neurotic aunt locked in a feud, not to mention a crazy stepdad and a surly cousin. Good thing Clover, teen advice columnist supreme, is there to keep Amy from going completely nuts! It doesn’t help Amy’s changeable mood that Seth keeps mentioning some girl in his e-mails, or that Amy feels an electric attraction to the mysterious young gardener next door. So when The Goss magazine unexpectedly sends Clover to glitzy Miami to write a revealing piece on a hot young actor (with Amy as her sidekick, of course) it couldn’t come at a better time.

Martina Una Cucarachita Muy Linda / Martina the Beautiful Cockroach: Un Cuento Cubano / A Cuban Folktale

Carmen Agra Deedy delivers this retelling of the Cuban folkltale. Martina the beautiful cockroach doesn’t know coffee beans about love and marriage. That’s where her Cuban family comes in. While some of the Cucarachas offer her gifts to make her more attractive, only Abuela, her grandmother, gives her really useful advice.

Matilda Bone

In her long-awaited new novel, Newbery medalist Karen Cushman assembles a cast of unforgettable characters in a fascinating and pungent setting: the medical quarter of a medieval English village. To Blood and Bone Alley, home of leech, barber-surgeon, and apothecary, comes Matilda, raised by a priest to be pious and learned, and now destined to assist Red Peg the Bonesetter. To Matilda’s dismay, her work will not involve Latin or writing, but lighting the fire, going to market, mixing plasters and poultices, and helping Peg treat patients. Matilda is appalled by the worldliness of her new surroundings and yearns for the days at the manor when all she did was study and pray. Lonely and misunderstood, she seems destined for a fate as tragic as that of any of the sharp-tongued saints she turns to for advice.Filled with the witty dialogue and richly authentic detail that Karen Cushman’s work is known for, Matilda Bone is a compelling comic novel about a girl who learns to see herself and others clearly, to laugh, and to live contentedly in this world.

Cushman’s second book, The Midwife’s Apprentice, was awarded the Newbery Medal.

Tibili: The Little Boy Who Didn’t Want to Go to School

After Tibili, a young African boy, follows Crope the spider’s suggestion as to how he can avoid starting school, he discovers he wants to go after all.