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I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the meaning of home. I recall a line from the journal of fictional character John-boy Walton, “Home, an island, a refuge, a haven of love.”

Our homes, and by extension, our communities, are supposed to be our refuge. We know and love others in our communities; we have comfort in the customs and language of our people. So, what is it like to be forced to flee our homes, especially by the threat of violence in a time of war — when our neighbors are dying and our familiar is being demolished — and become refugees? Several critically acclaimed new books at A.K. Smiley Public Library address the refugee’s plight.

I began contemplating this topic while reading I Will Die in a Foreign Land, a debut novel by Kalani Pickhart. An award-winning historical fiction, it is set during the 2013-14 Ukrainian revolution, when then-President Yanukovych chose to forge an alliance with Russian President Putin, and thousands of Ukrainian citizens chose independence by peacefully protesting. Their protests were met with violence by military police, killing over one hundred civilians.

Pickhart weaves into the novel the fictional stories of protestors whose paths cross, while deftly filling out a tapestry with historical and cultural threads. Though she does not address the plight of the refugee who has fled, she does connect us with characters in upheaval, those who remain in order to fight for the home in which they are no longer comfortable, the democratic home they want to save.

Two other award-winner titles deal with the harrowing true accounts of recent refugees.

The Naked Don’t Fear the Water: An Underground Journey with Afghan Refugees was written by Canadian war reporter Matthieu Aikins. In 2016, Aikins chose to join his friend, Omar, a young Afghan driver, translator, and former interpreter for the American military, in his dangerous journey on the smuggler’s road to Europe, one of millions of refugees who left their homes that year. Omar was raised in exile in Iran and Pakistan, returning to Kabul as a teenager in 2002, only to have the Taliban return to power in 2015. Aikins describes their journey as “mostly waiting punctuated by moments of terror.”

Those We Throw Away Are Diamonds: A Refugee’s Search for Home is chronicled by refugee Mondiant Dogon, with journalist Jenna Krajeski. Dogon was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo to a Tutsi family. At age three, he and his family fled his home village; the Rwandan genocide against Tutsis had spread into Congo. In the Rwandan refugee camp where they stayed, food was scarce. Later, desperate for a better life, Dogon returned to Congo, only to be imprisoned there, and forced into becoming a child soldier. As an adult, he has earned an MA in international education from New York University, and has become a human rights activist and refugee ambassador. The book’s title comes from one of his poems.

One other new contribution, Learning America: One Woman’s Fight for Educational Justice for Refugee Children, recounts the efforts of a former refugee who wishes to share her good experience in America after arriving from Jordan. She is author Luma Mufleh who designs productive learning environments for refugee children. Mufleh believes in healing their traumas to help foster belonging, ultimately aiding the success of their education, and creating that “haven of love.” She is the founder of Fugees Family, with schools now in Georgia and Ohio and an expanding footprint bringing educational equity to refugee resettlement communities across America.

For easy access to these titles in the Library’s catalog, find this article on Smiley Blog on our website, www.akspl.org, or directly at www.blog.akspl.org. Using your library card, you may reserve a book through our catalog, at no charge, by clicking on “Place Hold.”

For more reading recommendations on Ukraine, find Toward Understanding the War in Ukraine, a Reading List, published in February on Smiley Blog.

If you have an A.K. Smiley Public Library card, you can do so much more than check out books. Your library membership gives you instant access to eBooks, downloadable audiobooks, popular magazines, streaming movies, databases, and much more. Check it out for yourself at www.akspl.org/elibrary.

An exciting new addition to our eResources is the database Hispanic Life in America, offered free through NewsBank. This resource covers the experience and impact of Hispanic Americans as recorded by the global news media from 1704 to today. Updated daily using over 17,000 sources, Hispanic Life in America provides full-text searching as well as access to content by topic, event, and eras in Hispanic American history. This is a useful resource for students and anyone interested in learning more about the nuances of Hispanic American history.

Flipster offers instant access to several popular magazines including People, Consumer Reports, National Geographic, the Advocate, and Rolling Stone. You can read the latest issues of these magazines on your computer, phone, or other device any time, any place.

Do you plan to travel to distant lands this summer? Then check out Pronunciator to brush up on your language skills. Pronunciator is an online platform that can help you learn any of 173 world languages, from Icelandic to Tagalog. Specific courses are available for travelers, health care workers, and those seeking in-depth studies.

All this and more is free with your A.K. Smiley membership. Log on and have an adventure!

Summer is fully upon us, making leaving the air-conditioned comfort of the indoors harder to extricate ourselves from. But what to do with all that time indoors while the sun cooks everything in sight to a crisp? Books of course! Here are some new poetry books to help you while away the bright summer months.

Award winning author Jennifer Huang’s debut work “Return Flight” connects the past to the present through an examination of the self. Generational trauma and the concepts of home are interspersed throughout, working to understand their impact on the human psyche. Through their work, Huang uses images of intimacy to aid in the defining of a person. All these memories are not just seen with sadness, there is joy as well. Huang shows us that both sorrow and joy can exist in the same realm.

Nicky Beer explores the joy of artifice in her latest work “Real Phonies and Genuine Fakes.” Beer explores the concepts of imitation and what it means when the fake is more real than the original. She shows how imitation is an art form in its own right such as through the art of drag. She references many other pop culture representations of illusion as well, such as Marlene Dietrich and Batman, to get at the heart of the question, what is truth? Beer’s poetry uses redaction and the concept of stereoscopes to invite the reader to see that the truth can look very different depending on which way you are looking at it.

Shane McCrae, in his latest work, “Cain Named the Animal” explores the idea of what it means to exist. Having undergone an unusual and traumatic upbringing, he questions how different circumstances might have led to a different existence. McCrae turns back time, and postulates how an imperfect god might result in a flawed world. He also uses the idea of cyclical time to explore the ability to look inwards. By creating a world that circles back on itself, McCrae shows how such a thing would allow for reflection and new revelations.

Enjoy these books and try to stay cool this summer!

Teens, it’s not that I hate summer. Some parts of it are very nice, like pools, fireworks, and socially acceptable inertia. But when temperatures top 100 degrees for more than two days in a row, I immediately demote it to my least favorite season.

But this summer is different…even triple digit temps will not get me down. Why, you ask? Because the 2022 Summer Reading Program is kicking off at A.K. Smiley Public Library, and it promises to be awesome.

Our 2022 theme —“Read Beyond the Beaten Path”—has an outdoorsy, summer camp feel (another great thing about summer), which is cool for obvious reasons, but the sentiment is exciting too. What could help you survive these long, hot days better than reading something out of the ordinary, something that backpacks you out of your sweat-filled life and expands your perspectives in unexpected ways?

If you’re looking for more than mind-opening reading, we’ve also got free events up our sleeves for teens, including “The Hunger Gang,” a cooking workshop with local chef extraordinaire Lee Burton (which, fingers crossed, unlike “The Hunger Games,” everyone will come out of alive), and an anime drawing workshop with professional artist Carlos Nieto III. On top of that, there’s an amazing line-up of teen reading challenge prizes on the line, like a day pass for you and a friend to scale the walls at Flowstone Climbing here in Redlands, a pint of gelato from Happy Camper Creamery, and many more.

I must mention one last element of our summer reading program: the competition. This summer, it’s the literary version of “Capture the Flag,” with kids and teens taking on adults to see who can read the most pages. Of course this is a friendly competition, but it would be very fun to amicably dominate the adults. We can’t do this without you, teen reader.

Alright, alright, I’m reconsidering my position on summer, as there is another big thing summer has going for it: the glorious month of June…Pride Month! Teens, if you are looking for books that feature LGBTQIA+ characters and experiences, we’ve got them. In fact, we have a whole blog post dedicated to helping you find them if you’re interested. You can check that out at www.akspl.org/teens, and of course, this article would not be complete without at least one YA book recommendation (and our library community would not be complete without you).

Erik J. Brown’s “All That’s Left in the World” requires nerves of steel from its readers. The setting? The U.S. after a deadly pathogen has swept through the country, annihilating most of the population. For some, this plot will hit a little too close to home, but if you can stomach it, here’s the set-up: teenagers Jamie and Andrew somehow survive the pandemic, but are barely scraping by in its aftermath. Each is alone, facing dangers both from the raw, natural world and other desperate survivors.

Their paths cross and they team up to take on this new and treacherous reality, where threats, including the secrets they are keeping from each other, lurk around every corner. It’s the kind of post-apocalyptic/survival/friendship/love story that makes you wonder how you might redefine yourself if everything you knew to be real and important was suddenly erased.

Teens, we’d love for you to come read beyond the beaten path with us this summer. We’ll be having so many good times, with so many good books and events, that maybe, just maybe, we won’t even notice those triple digit temps…

The “Read Beyond the Beaten Path” Summer Reading Program isn’t just for teens! Toddlers, kids, and yes, okay, even adults are encouraged to join in on the fun. Visit A.K. Smiley Public Library for all the details.

Geology, wilderness, wildlife, seasonal weather, and vivid memories may come to mind when thinking about the Sierra Nevada mountain range. There are plenty of opportunities for outdoor enthusiasts to explore the mountains and surrounding regions. Our new book section can expand your knowledge and appreciation for the geology of these areas.

A passionate fan of the Sierras is science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson. He shares history, science, and his adventures in “The High Sierra: A Love Story.” Having made multiple treks into the heart of these mountains, and being a capable storyteller, his knowledge and enthusiasm for the Range of Light shines through in vivid detail. Color photographs enhance the reader’s experience for areas in the high country that few of us will ever see.

The drive up Highway 395 along the Sierra range is noteworthy for the evidence of volcanic activity in the region. Ancient cinder cones, old lava flows, craters, earthquake faults, and Mammoth Mountain are just a few of the geologic wonders of the area. Volcanologist and science journalist Robin George Andrews goes back in history, underground, above ground, and undersea in “Super Volcanoes: What They Reveal about Earth and the Worlds Beyond.” Andrews brings the reader up close and personal to all things volcano, including Hawaii’s Kilauea eruptions, the supervolcano Yellowstone region, the ocean floor, Krakatoa, and the volcanism on Mars, Venus, and the Moon. This is truly an educational adventure through time and space by a very capable guide.

Since we are already in rocky territory, if you will pardon the pun, our new book section can also take you from the enormity of mountains and volcanoes down to the basic and infinitesimal building blocks of geology. “Rocks & Minerals” by Chris and Helen Pellant educates the reader on basic rock and mineral composition, formation, hardness, origin, texture, classification, and more. Detailed color photographs assist with accurate identification of over 500 rocks and minerals. There are also suggestions for equipment and tips for collecting and organizing a collection.

A.K. Smiley Public Library rocks!