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Pirate Queen: A Story of Zheng Yi Sao

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Pirate Queen: A Story of Zheng Yi Sao by Helaine Becker and Liz Wong
Format: Book
Who’s it for: Kids

Pirate Queen: A Story of Zheng Yi Sao by Helaine Becker (illustrated by Liz Wong) is about a young woman who would become the most powerful pirate in history.

When pirates raid her city, Zheng Yi Sao boldly makes the pirate captain an offer: she will marry him only if she gets an equal share in his enterprise. He agrees. Years later, her husband has died, and at thirty-two years old Zheng Yi Sao has 70,000 men and 1,800 ships under her command. Her power would eventually come to rival the emperor himself.

In Pirate Queen, Becker takes what little is known about Zheng Yi Sao and weaves together an exciting and intriguing story of her accomplishments and what her life may have been. Wong’s illustrations are simple and muted, yet effective in highlighting Zheng Yi Sao’s cleverness, bravery, and ferocity. I would recommend Pirate Queen for children ages 6-12, or for any adult with an interest in pirate queens.

Find Pirate Queen in the catalog here!

All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, A Black Family Keepsake

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All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, A Black Family Keepsake
Format:  Book, Digital Audiobook, Ebook
Who It’s for:  Adults

In the year 1850, a slave named Rose gave her nine-year-old daughter Ashley this sack the evening before they were separated by auction.  The two never saw one another again. The sack was found in 2007 at a flea market by a woman who purchased it to sell on eBay.  The woman noticed the embroidered inscription on the sack that read:

My great grandmother Rose
 mother of Ashley gave her this sack when
she was sold at age 9 in South Carolina
it held a tattered dress 3 handfulls of
pecans a braid of Roses hair. Told her
It be filled with my Love always
She never saw her again
Ashley is my grandmother
Ruth Middleton 1921.

Rather than sell the sack, the woman donated it to Middleton Place Plantation Museum, where it currently resides.   In 2015, author Tiya Miles heard about the sack and began her research for All That She Carried, which describes the journey the sack followed between three generations of enslaved Black women.

By researching their customs, crafts, and culture, Miles reveals not only the journey that the sack took but more importantly the experiences of the Black women who passed this object down through four generations.  Very little can be found about these enslaved women in written archives other than their names on plantation property lists.  But through intense research, Miles has succeeded in piecing their stories together and sharing them with us in her book.

If you love history, you will appreciate all that Tiya Miles shares in her book about the experience of slaves, the talents and skills that they passed on to their children, the importance of the “things” they held onto, and most all, the love for their families that they never let anyone take away from them. All That She Carried is a must-read.

Find All That She Carried in our catalog.

In the Footsteps of Crazy Horse

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Get ready for a road trip!
Jimmy and his grandpa, both Lakota Native Americans, travel together one summer through what is now South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, and Montana to walk in the footsteps of their famous ancestor, Tasunke Witko, who is better known to us as Crazy Horse.
The pair drive, hike, and camp to explore the full life of a boy who grows into a leader as the grandpa teaches Jimmy about the man behind the legend.
Walk along with them through Crazy Horse’s boyhood home, the hunting plains, Army forts, and battle sites as they uncover this story of life, love, war, hope, and heartbreak.
Joseph Marshall III, historian and storyteller, has written several nonfiction books for adults and now offers this children’s book to engage young readers in the rich history of indigenous people. Note: This book includes details of battles and forceful displacement.

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The Forgotten Garden

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The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton
Format: Book
Who’s it For: Adults

A four year girl is found with a suitcase and a fairy-tale book on the wharf in Australia in 1913. She can’t remember her name. A wharf worker tries unsuccessfully to find out where she’s from. Eventually he takes her home where he and his wife raise her as their own.

At Nell O’Connor’s 21st birthday her father confides the truth about her origins. It devastates Nell and she feels a sense of loss and abandonment.

When Nell’s father dies in 1975 he bequeaths her the little white suitcase with the mysterious book of fairy-tales by Eliza Makepeace. Nell decides to trace her parents through Eliza whom is referred to as the “Authoress”. The search takes her to Cornwall where she finds Eliza’s home Cliff Cottage. There memories are triggered and Nell discovers she is the daughter of American artist Nathaniel Walker and aristocrat Rose Mountrachet, who were killed in a train crash in 1913. On impulse Nell buys the cottage. But upon her return to Australia, Nell’s young granddaughter Cassandra comes to live with her.

Years later Cassandra is suffering from a tragedy in her life when Nell passes away and she inherits the cottage she didn’t know anything about. Cassandra regards the mystery of Nell’s past to be her true inheritance and sets off to Cornwall to find out why Cliff Cottage mattered so much to her grandmother.

The novel spans more than a century between 1900 and 2005 and enfolds in a narrative not in chronological order between the three main character. Nell O’Connor 1913-2005, Eliza Makepeace 1900-1913 and Cassandra O’Conner 1975-2005.

This novel pays homage to the book, The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett and the story explores and examines family secrets, loss, survival, what home truly means, and love.

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The Wright Brothers

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The Wright Brothers by David McCullough
Format: Eaudiobook
Who it’s for: Adults

If you think that you already know everything there is to know about the Wright Brothers and their contributions to the Age of Flight, you should read The Wright Brothers by David McCullough. McCullough does an excellent job of sharing with the world, not only the brothers’ first attempts at flying at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, but also the years of research, correspondence and events leading up to their first sustained flight on December 17, 1903.

David McCullough gives a detailed account of the brothers’ young lives in Dayton, Ohio, their strong family background and values, their education, the accident that kept Wilbur from attending college, and their bicycle shop where they raised the money to allow them pursue their dream of flying. McCullough describes life on the Outer Banks during the late 19th century (it was fairly treacherous at times) and what Wilbur and Orville had to go through just to travel there.

What is intriguing about this book is the amount of research the author presents about the lack of interest that the U.S. Government had in their work until the Wright brothers demonstrated the success of their flying invention in France. McCullough also brings to light the stories of the other people who were trying to create flying machines during that period of our history and thus competing with the brothers for notoriety and patent ownership.  By going through family scrapbooks, notebooks, correspondence, and diaries, McCullough has created in his book a living picture of what the lives of the Wright brothers was really like.

Take some time to read this book, or listen to it in Eaudiobook or audiobook CD form. You will learn much more about the lives of the Wright family, their work, and their days on the sandy dunes of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina in 1903.

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The Captain and the Glory: An Entertainment

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The Captain and the Glory: An Entertainment
Format: Book
Who’s it for: Adult

The Glory was a massive and beautiful ship that housed people from all over the world.  Led by a brave, noble captain it welcomed any displaced people found at sea with open arms, knowing that in their diversity they would find the strength needed to continue on course.  The Glory stood for something greater than a ship.  It stood for opportunity and understanding and was a beacon of hope to the rest of the ships of the ocean.  It inspired whole generations to be good people and to respect their fellow human beings.

Then one day, after the brave and noble captain died, it became time to choose another captain.  When the ship’s scholars were busy debating how to choose the next captain a man with a yellow feather in his hair stepped forward and shouted: “Make me captain!”

“Should we pick someone who has extensive nautical knowledge?” asked an older man.

The man with the yellow feather in his hair had no experience running a ship of any kind, no nautical knowledge whatsoever.  Still, he yelled: “Make me captain!”

“Should the next captain be someone that served in the military, someone who risked their life to protect our ship against raids led by the Pirate King?” another scholar suggested.

The man with the yellow feather had never served in the military.  In fact, during the last great pirate raid, he hid in the boiler room thumbing through adult magazines.  Yet he continued to shout: “Make me captain!”

“Maybe our next captain should be chosen by how much they extoll the virtues of our mighty ship?  By how much they know and respect our many laws and ideals?” a small girl recommended.

The man with the yellow feather had seemingly no knowledge whatsoever of what the Glory stood for.  In fact, he had spent much of his life arguing against many of the most revered ideals of the Glory, often directly besmirching the character of almost every captain that had served before. He even spent months loudly arguing that the previous captain hadn’t been born on the ship.  Although there was no sane reason to take the man with the yellow feather in his hair seriously, he still shouted: “Make me captain!”

“Oh! We should pick the next captain based on how well they treat their fellow human beings!” a woman offered.

The only people the man with the yellow feather ever treated with an ounce of respect were mass murderers, liars, and thieves.  It was common knowledge that he and his close group of friends, the “Upskirt Boys”, were known throughout the ship for hanging out under the stairs leading to the women’s room with cameras in hand.  Yet he still yelled: “Make me the captain! MAKE ME THE CAPTAIN! MAKE ME THE CAPTAIN!”

This is the story of how the man with the yellow feather became the next captain of the Glory, and what it did to its people and the ideals that the Glory stood for.

The Captain and the Glory: An Entertainment, by Dave Eggers, is an excellent book about life at sea and any similarities the reader finds with the man with the yellow feather in his hair and the current American president are purely coincidental.

Find it in the catalog.