By Victoria Tirrel, Library Committee

What book has been checked out of the New York Public Library (NYPL) nearly half a million times in the institution's 125-year history? The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats, the first children's picture book with an African American protagonist to win a major literary award (in this case, the Caldecott Medal)!

Read more about The Snowy Day at the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation's website. And to find out what other books made the NYPL's list (or didn't), read the NPR story, which includes an awesome photo of 1950s-era children swarming the NYPL's Bronx Traveling Library (what in my day was called the "Bookmobile").

By Greta Michaels, Library Committee
Originally published in the January 2020 issue of the 1666 Coffman Newsletter

This gracious and subtle narrative is related to a series of letters between an English farmer’s wife, Tina, and Anders, the curator at the Danish museum where there is an Iron Age man found in 1960. The specimen, the Tolland Man, is well preserved with a serene expression on his face.

Tina has written to find out about visiting the museum to see Tolland Man; Anders replies with information and indicates he has recently lost his wife. Both writers are at the time in life when more is behind than ahead. The correspondence continues, but the reader is left to imagine how the complications that have developed will play out.

The author, Anne Youngson, is a seventy-two-year-old who worked in the British auto industry until her retirement. Ms. Youngson, an English major at university, had always intended to write. This novel, her debut, has won wide acclaim.

Now that we've passed Solstice, the days are getting longer, which means we have more light to read by. Check out what's new on the Recent Arrivals shelves!

With the snow falling, it's the perfect day to head down to the Library and check out the Recent Arrivals shelves, where you'll find these books and more!