What's New

If you grow summer vegetables or are a lucky recipient of garden produce, then definitely stop by Smiley Library and check out our latest crop of cookbooks for new recipes and meal ideas. Here is a sampling of what’s in store.

Chef, gardener, blogger, and author Luay Ghafari shares his passion for growing seasonal produce and creating tasty vegetable-forward recipes in his new book, “Seed to Table.” Chapter 3 is where you can find Luay’s recipes for Tomato Tart, Peach Panzanella-Style Salad, Pasta alla Norma, and several cocktails such as Paloma Picante. Chef Ghafari also includes tips and techniques for preserving your harvest to enjoy all year, like herb-infused salts, refrigerator pickles, and fermented hot sauces. Many of his recipes include a QR code so you can access further content from his website with your smart phone.

There’s nothing like the sweet, juicy flavor of a home-grown tomato. Summer is the peak season for harvesting, sharing, and enjoying this edible gem. “Simply Tomato” by Martha Holmberg features 100 tomato-centric recipes that can be savored all year long. Familiar dishes like caprese salad, classic tomato soup, and fried green tomatoes are joined by Ravioli in Brown-Butter Tomato Sauce, Pasta with No-Cook Tomato Sauce with Feta, Mint, and Parsley, Roasted Green Tomato Salsa, and Braised Beef Short Ribs with Tomato, Dried Porcini, and Red Wine.

In the third volume of “Magnolia Table,” Joanna Gaines encourages home cooks and bakers to slow down, savor, and enjoy the process of food preparation. Just like many restaurants, Joanna begins her book with bread. Warm from the oven varieties include Truffle Butter Rolls, French Bread, Garlic-Cilantro Naan, and Beer Bread. Fancy and casual main dishes like Seafood Paella, Beef Tenderloin with Mushroom Tarragon Sauce, and Chicken Cordon Bleu, as well as Smash Burgers, Chili Pie with a Golden Cornbread Crust, and Cheesy Baked Ziti can fulfill most all of your dinner plans. Other notable dishes to try are Bananas Foster Pancakes, Chunky Blackberry Applesauce, Bacon Butternut Squash, and Peach Pie Trifles.

If one homemade cookie is good, then two must be better! Especially when they have buttercream frosting, ice cream, or chocolatey ganache in the middle. “Stuffed: The Sandwich Cookie Book” by Heather Mubarak gives us 65 delectable mix and match and filling recipes with color photos to tempt and delight dessert fans of all ages. A few of Heather’s swoon-worthy pairings include Candy Cane Shortbread with Peppermint Buttercream and White Chocolate Drizzle, Chocolate Truffle Cookies with Whipped Nutella Ganache, Brown Butter Toffee Walnut Cookies with Bourbon Ice Cream, and Gingerbread Cookies with Pumpkin Spice Buttercream.

Walking through the Redlands Bowl amphitheater today I read the inscription engraved over the stage, “Without vision, a people perish.” I pondered the meaning of the biblical verse. Does it mean that failing to examine ourselves, our culture, and the possibilities of our future, will lead to our downfall? Hm, too bad we can’t ‘phone a friend’ from ancient Rome…

Oh, I thought, in a sense, we can do just that—by crossing the street to Smiley Library. We can probably find some ancient Roman writings, or some historical analyses of ancient Rome right inside that building. If we study with these tools, we can learn from our ancient friends. Libraries are tool shops of critical-thinking implements for the self-examination that we need to survive. “Critical thinking” is defined as “disciplined thinking that is clear, rational, open-minded, and informed by evidence.” With such discipline, we can teach ourselves and create that needed “vision.”

Of course, our society relies heavily on professional teachers who take on that burden of creating critical thinkers of us. As most are preparing now or have already begun teaching school for the 2023-24 year, we really must honor them, (thank you, teachers!) for it is an unenviable task, and a gift, to be able to pull out of each of us individuals our own unique vision and voice.

To gain some insight into what these heroes go through, we return to the library for a tool of learning. New to Smiley Library is, The Teachers: A Year Inside America’s Most Vulnerable, Important Profession, a new bestseller by investigative journalist and substitute teacher Alexandra Robbins. She provides detailed accounts of the lives of three teachers working in various regions of the country over a period of a school year. Robbins describes everything from the challenges they encounter in their work to how that work encroaches on their personal lives (as well as busting the myth that teachers laze around all summer). She sprinkles in interviews with additional teachers nationwide who share their challenges and wins. Robbins also provides essays on many of the big issues facing the profession today, everything from “school violence to outrageous parent behavior to inadequate support, staffing, and resources.”

You know, whether we are studying for ourselves in the library, or presiding over a classroom of students, we, each of us, is a teacher. Not all may be cut out to be a professional one, but all of us are teachers. It may be as simple as your new co-worker asking you how to complete a task, or a tourist on the street asking if you know how to get to the best sandwich place in town. You think on your feet, put yourself in their place, and try to lay out the path for them.

One group who does this type of teaching, as well as a more formal kind, are parents, and others in the village who help raise our children. We have a book for them too, Raising Critical Thinkers: A Parent’s Guide to Growing Wise Kids in the Digital Age. Curriculum developer and longtime homeschooling parent Julie Bogart provides methods in this guide for “objectively evaluating data, learning investigative skills by making room for dissenting points of view, examining one’s own prejudices and biases, and understanding how bias plays into opinion making.” And she makes it fun with stories and activities for students of all ages.

Finally, Lessons Learned and Cherished: The Teacher Who Changed my Life is a feel-good and inspiring little book by ABC News journalist Deborah Roberts who curates a collection of essays and musings from celebrity friends and colleagues that share “how teachers changed them, imparted life lessons, and helped them get to where they are today.” Roberts has made a donation to DonorsChoose.org, a non-profit that encourages people to empower public school teachers by funding their classroom resources.

Summer continues to swelter on, sending us all scampering inside to savor the sweet sensation of … air conditioning. I couldn’t think of another s word. Either way, while you are waiting for cooler weather, here are some new poetry books to help you pass the time.  

Buffalo Girl by Jessica Q. Stark, starts with a warning. Stark aligns being a woman with being Little Red Riding Hood, and society as the Wolf waiting to devour her. But Little Red has much more agency than is realized and holds some dangers of her own. Exploring her mother’s immigration to the U.S. from Vietnam, Stark shows the racism faced by a family just trying to exist, the worst coming from the ones who should have been the most understanding. Oscillating between the past and the present, Stark explores her own upbringing as a part Vietnamese woman, and feeling alienated from it. Both women deal with a world that treats women’s bodies as a commodity and find ways to navigate that world. Stark uses her mother’s photography to create collages in the work to create an almost storybook-like effect, and shows that finding a way out may mean having to find a way in.  

Auto/Body by Vickie Vertiz is an examination of how the expectations on the bodies we inhabit, the lives we live, and the society around us, can sometimes use a tune-up. Growing up surrounded by car culture, Vertiz seeks to understand the inner workings of her youth. Vertiz explores the mechanisms of colonialism and racial violence perpetuated by society, and how even now colonies do not benefit from colonialism. Vertiz seeks to show how in womanhood, there is a lack of ownership of their own bodies afforded to women. But she also finds joys and pleasure in the body and finds community within the queer culture. Society often tells us what is wrong with our identities and our bodies, but what if we were our own mechanics, would we find the same diagnosis? 

Skeletons by Deborah Landau is a fun delve into what hides beneath the flesh. Starting at the beginning of the pandemic, Landau seeks to understand not just the bodies we inhabit, but how they connect to others. She remains impressively upbeat even in the wake of political turmoil and unprecedented public health crisis. Showing the isolation through the lockdown, Landau also shows the inherit loneliness that comes with being alive throughout her series of poems entitled “Skeletons.” Interspersing her “Skeletons” poems, the “Flesh” poems seek to uncover an understanding into our desires and the intimacy we find with others. Diving deep into what defines us, Landau seemingly finds what sustains us when the outside world ceases to make sense.  

Enjoy these books and more at A.K. Smiley Public Library, and let’s hope for some cooler weather soon. 

Teens, on a scale of comforting to ultra-freaky, how disturbing do you like your reading materials? Are you more likely to pick up a book with cotton-candy on the cover, or say, a pool of blood? If your tastes fall closer to the crime scene end of the spectrum, you’re in luck…one of the following YA titles may have your name—and your future fingerprints—on it.

“Murder Among Friends: How Leopold and Loeb Tried to Commit the Perfect Crime” by Candace Fleming is nonfiction; this book is about a real murder, and the wealthy teenagers who plotted it. The year was 1924 and Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb looked like they had it all. They were both born into millionaire families, they were both supernaturally smart, and by many accounts, they both appeared to be charming, attractive, and well-mannered—if not slightly quirky—intellectuals.

So what made them carefully plan and carry out the murder of an innocent 14-year-old neighbor? Teens, I’m not going to tell you. Read the book yourself. From now on, just give me cotton candy! If bingeing true crime podcasts and documentaries is your idea of a good time, this real-life thriller—featuring a possible psychopath, an ice-cold homicide, and an explosive court trial—is for you.

Now that we’re traumatized by reading about a real crime, let’s learn how to solve them with Bridget Heos’ “Blood, Bullets, and Bones: The Story of Forensic Science from Sherlock Holmes to DNA.” You’re probably already a crime scene analysis expert from all the episodes of “CSI,” “Criminal Minds,” “Cold Case,”  “NCIS”, “CSI: Miami,” “CSI: New York,” AND “CSI: Cyber,” you’ve watched, but maybe this book will offer something extra.

“Blood, Bullets, and Bones” explores the long history of crime scene investigation, dating back an astonishing two thousand years (CSI: Ancient China?) to today, and sheds light on the modern crime-solving techniques that have perpetrators shaking in their microscopic bad guy fibers. Although this nonfiction work will once again immerse you in real-life criminal activity, this time you’ll be empowered with your new-found knowledge of blood spatter analysis and forensic anthropology.

Teens, these and more chilling true-crime tales await you in Teen Underground at A.K. Smiley Public Library. Come check them out…no need to cover your tracks. And it’s not too late to get in on our Teen “All Together Now” Summer Reading Program…we’d love to have you join us for our free Teen Makers Open Hours event Wednesday, July 26, from 3-5 p.m. in the Assembly Room at A.K. Smiley Public Library. The event features a teen-led discussion on representation in YA Lit, bracelet-making, button-making, other-stuff-making, and more. Visit www.akspl.org/teens for more details and drop in if you’re interested!

Kristina Naftzger is a Youth Services Librarian at A.K. Smiley Public Library, where her book selections often give her uncomfortable pits in her stomach, leading to a longing for a literary future filled with cotton candy instead of crime scenes.

I confess that I have a preference for reading non-fiction books. I like real stories, and I like to learn something and experience adventures undertaken by others, especially in natural surroundings. So here are a few of our new books you might like if you have the same reading preferences.

“Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon,” is authored by science journalist Melissa Sevigny. She recounts how Lois Jotter and Elzada Clover stood up to the misogyny of the times to become botanists. They underwent great risks running the Colorado River to be the first to survey and catalog the plants in the Grand Canyon. The women were truly trailblazers in their determination during the summer of 1938 to take on the dangerous 600 mile, 43-day boat expedition through the Grand Canyon, collecting and preserving 500 plant specimens. A map and photographs enhance this intriguing selection.

“The Last Ride of the Pony Express: My 2,000-Mile Horseback Journey into the Old West,” is a chronicle of Will Grant’s modern-day ride retracing the old pony express route. Readers who like American history, horses, and westerns will enjoy being an armchair adventurer in this narrative. Grant spends five months on his ride retracing the mail route from Missouri to California, as opposed to the grueling 10 days that the Express riders endured. His partners on the trail were two horses that he thoughtfully and carefully chose, Chicken Fry and Badger. He vividly describes the landscape, people, and animals he meets, and juxtaposes old West with the modern-day, including the hazards then and now.

If you read and enjoyed Lawrence Anthony’s “The Elephant Whisperer,” and Francoise Malby-Anthony’s bestseller, “An Elephant in My Kitchen,” then you will want to check out, “The Elephants of Thula Thula.” Francoise and her late husband founded the Thula Thula game reserve in 1998 in South Africa. She continues to run and expand the reserve and wildlife rehabilitation center and consequently has more stories of happiness and heartbreak to share about the elephant herd and other animal inhabitants and their caretakers.

“Empress of the Nile: The Daredevil Archaeologist Who Saved Egypt’s Ancient Temples from Destruction,” chronicles the life and accomplishments of a little-known French archaeologist. Lynne Olson brings Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt out of the shadows of history for her courageous efforts that saved many of Egypt’s ancient monuments from ending up underwater when the Aswan High Dam was built. Her childhood fascination with Egyptology culminated in a distinguished career of preserving and keeping many Egyptian treasures from leaving the country. Most notably, she led the international campaign that financed and accomplished the difficult task of dismantling many fragile temples and moving them up the Nile to be rebuilt on higher ground.