Gabrielle's Staff Picks
See what Doylestown bookseller Gabrielle is reading...
Jacqueline Woodson's Brown Girl Dreaming, a memoir in poetry, is an intimate look at life as a young black woman in the 1960s. Woodson chronicles the struggles of the young artist, and the pressures the world places upon black youth. Full of hope and grief, successes and trials, Brown Girl Dreaming is an essential story of our past and present that illuminates who we are, and inspires who we could be.
Tomi Adeyemi's Children of Blood and Bone is one of the best YA fantasy novels to come out in recent years-- and it's for a reason. Readers coming to the rich land of Orisha cannot help but stay, immersed in the complex characters and driven, intense questlines. Told in multiple perspectives, Children of Blood and Bone is a story of liberation, discrimination, revenge, and change; although a high fantasy novels, thematically, Children of Blood and Bone rings true in our world as well.
For Everyone, Jason Reynold's message in verse, is truly for everyone. Written before Reynolds "made it," he discusses what it is to be bursting with dreams of all kinds, and what it is to then live for a dream, even when the payoff is not obvious. A quick read, For Everyone encourages us to light our inner spark, and keep it burning.
Oyinkan Braithwaite's My Sister, the Serial Killer is a must-read novel. Both a mystery and character study, it explores the complexity of our loyalties and whether or not blood is thicker than water. Intense and thrilling, Braithwaite illuminates the polished veneer covering darker subject matter, and weaves a story of beauty, danger, and intrigue.
