 Hello, I'm Miss Pam from the Billie Jean King Main Library and I want to welcome you to chapter chat. And I'm Jeanine from the Mark Twain Library. So this is our monthly conversation highlighting new books from our elementary and middle school collections, airing the second Wednesday of every month, but this month will actually be airing on the 21st, I believe, so Wednesday with the Wednesday after. And we will each talk about four new books that have arrived on our shelves within the last six months. So let's begin and we will start with you Pam. All right. The first book is Kenny and the Book of Beasts by Tony D'Tolizzi. And this is the story of Kenny the rabbit right there, the guy, and Graham the dragon they are best friends. Here George who's a badger who owns the borough bookstore. He gets a request from the king to come work with him on a road project and he invites Kenny and Graham to come along with him for big feast and recognition. So Kenny has worked on his Model T to restore that and so they drive over and fly over to the castle. But there's an unwelcome guest at the castle, her name is Eldridge Nesbitt, and she's a little small witch who flies around on a magic book full of creatures that she has trapped within. One of those is a manticore and this is the manticore here. He accidentally lets him out of the book, but what he doesn't know is that Dante is a good friend of Graham. And so he kind of goes through almost a middle school or kind of thing where he is jealous of their friendship and he makes a deal with it to make things go back the way they think they used to be when they spent all their time together. And so things don't go well as a result of that it but it all it leads to a magical battle full of heroes like unicorns. And it just seems like all the hurt feelings the emotions the actions are the same for humans and animals, and even mythical animals. This is a sequel to Kenny and the dragon where he first met Graham. And it's just a really nice fantasy with magic and good fun characters. Is that a scorpion tail too? It's a spiked tail. And so that's he can just whip that thing around and knock people out. He has very sharp teeth too, but you can't see those, but they're on their way to battle. Pretty cool. Yeah. Kind of reminds me of like Narnia for some reason. I don't know. It could be. It could be. It's he, I think Eldridge Nesbitt is kind of a tribute to E Nesbitt who wrote about a long time ago about beasts, magical beasts. Yeah, because Kenny and the Book of Beasts is a tribute to Sir George and the dragon. Very cool. Very cool. Yeah. All righty. So my first book is called Scritch Scratch that I know by Lindsay Currie. And this book came to our came to our branch in December. And we can find it. Well, for us, we put it in the scary stories section. And I'm sure you can kind of tell the cover does look a bit creepy and very, very mysterious and dark. So this one is also like if it's not in the scary story section, it would be in children's fiction. This book is about Claire. And Claire absolutely hates anything that is paranormal. This might be partly because her father's career is centered around paranormal activity with his published books about ghosts or ghost sightings and encounters. And also, he has a ghost themed bus tour that he tours all he like takes tour groups throughout the city of Chicago. And Claire is a middle schooler who thinks like a scientist and sticks to the facts and data when it comes to life or, you know, so there's really no room for paranormal in her mind. And it's like, Oh, it doesn't exist. You know, I'm all about science and science is fact. But things start to change when she's forced to help her dad on one of his nightly ghost tours. And of course, you know, what's going to happen. She spots an oddly dressed boy on the bus. He looks so pale with dark circles around his eyes, dressed in old fashioned clothes and is drenched from head to toe. On top of that, he, he's on top of that everybody on the tour, obviously does not see him. Only she sees him. He's a little odd everybody just passes by him on the bus and they don't even notice him. And he's a little creepy because he just stares at Claire, and just looks like she just, he's just whispering something under his breath, but he's staring at her just like moving his lips, as if he's trying to communicate or something. Well, he didn't just stay on the bus tour on the bus that night. As she tries to forget about the boy, she realizes that this boy might not be a regular living boy at all. She starts to notice strange things happening around her like scratch scratch sounds, just like the title, coming towards her when she's in her bedroom. There are watery footprints that happen to appear on her bedroom floor, her bedroom doorknob shaking as if someone is unsuccessfully trying to get in and angrily whispered words saying, where are they. Basically screaming whispers are being thrown at all these instances are, she's encountering them everywhere she goes. This side of her finally realizes that the ghostly boy didn't just show himself to Claire on the bus tour but has to has started to haunt her wherever she goes this boy wants or need something and if Claire doesn't find out what it is. Who knows what's going to happen. If you're a fan of mystery ghost stories, I highly recommend this novel. It's really good. I liked it. Yeah. Okay, so I will read that sometime, but yeah, I know. Well, most everybody knows the magic tree house books, but this is the latest one and I wanted to share this one because it's set in California. It's called camp time in California. And this is when Jack and Annie are sent to Yosemite in the year 1903. And they aren't really told much about what they're supposed to do except that they are to save the wilderness. And the only thing that they have when they arrive is our sketchbooks and pencils. So they, when they arrive they see these giant trees and they just start sketching the trees that would turn out to be sequoias and butterflies and squirrels and everything that they see around them and then they meet up with these two men. One is named Teddy and he's kind of a big guy. And then the other one's name is John and he's a tall skinny guy and they're on a camping trip. So they get to know each other. They camp out together and they're very impressed with Jack and Annie's drawings. And after a day or so they go back to the town and they can't figure out why all these people are gathered around the hotel and it seems they're waiting for someone. Well, of course they're waiting for Teddy because Teddy is president Teddy Roosevelt. And John is John Muir who's been trying to talk the president into making all of Yosemite a national park and he thought the best way to do it would be on a camping trip. This is a great adventure for Jack and Annie, even though you might know what happens, it's always worth reading. I always learn something when I read these books. So it's a great, great new adventure. And also just wanted to share this book, which is a kind of a goes along with it called the camping trip that changed America. And you can see President Roosevelt there very excited to be out in the wilderness and on the back there's John Muir and inside there's all sorts of exuberant photos or drawings and just makes it great. You can see how big the trees are. Yeah. So and if you ever get to Yosemite, there is actually a library there, and the librarian used to work for Long Beach. So people up there you can chat with Virginia Sanchez who's always ready to take you on a library adventure. That's so cool. Oh, I have a librarian friend. He loves the wilderness. I think that would be his dream job. Yeah. Cool. That's so cool. Okay, so my my next one. This one is called the retake by Jen Kalanita. This one actually came on our shelves came into came onto our shelves in March. You can find this in the middle school section. Let me look at this. So the reason why it's called the retake is because I can give you a hint that it's kind of like Groundhogs Day. Yeah, so it's interesting. But so, let me go ahead and explain if you had an app on your phone that magically downloaded onto your phone and allowed you to travel back in time, would you use it. Zoe feels the urge to utilize this app. She and her best friend Laura used to do everything together, as if they were joined at the hip. They used to join the same after school clubs, take a bunch of random silly selfies together constantly, throw surprise parties for each other. But during the summer before seventh grade, Zoe started to notice that Laura has been hanging out with they call the drama Queens, the theater group that Laura recently joined. Zoe was has also started noticing that Laura has been texting a lot, texting her less and less throughout the summer. And after tirelessly working on Laura's surprise birthday party at the beach reality started to hit Zoe hard when Laura sent her text canceling on her, only to later see Laura at that same beach with the drama club, or with the theater group. So Zoe is devastated by the whole scene, especially since her older sister, mother and Laura's mother witnessed all that was going on. It's quite embarrassing when you see your friend canceling on you and you see her right in front of you. Yeah, she cannot believe that her best friend of six plus years had canceled on on her for friends that she's only known for a few weeks. She cannot believe how much has changed between the two of them, and all she wants is for things to go back to normal and start seventh grade year right so hopefully the first day of school will be fine. But it's not turns into so much so many problems and everything like that she forgets her bus pass to go to school like in order to get to school and then she gets her phone taken away because she just happened to pull it out hoping to find her school schedule and that was another thing she left her school schedule at home as well. And so she just found trouble no matter what and one of the bad things was like she wore white pants, and everybody that she passed by or walked behind her notice that she had a stain. She was around, but she was working on like a science project and stuff so I was like, oh no. It's so sad it's just the worst and yeah, even like sees Laura at school but it seems like as if like she doesn't exist so it seems like so he doesn't even exist in her life anymore because Laura's with her, her drama friends now. So, you know, things just don't go right at all. So, then it seems like her prayers have been answered when a magical app has mysteriously downloaded onto her phone that allows her travel travel time travel to any given time. This is her chance to make things better right. I don't know. So usually you got to kind of leave things as it is and see what happens. Unfortunately, sometimes second chances, second chances do not go according to plan. Will Zoe be able to bring things back to the way they were, or will this second chance make things worse. You never know. You got to pick it up and read it yourself. And it kind of makes me wonder how many times she try time travels. Yeah, that's a lot. A lot of pretty crazy. Yeah. All right, well this is the mouse watch by JJ Gilbert he's a new author. And this is the story of Bernadette Bernie, right there's Dan Persky. She only wants one thing out of life and that is to be part of the mouse watch, which are just what it sounds like their group of mice who watch over the world and they're actually saving the world more times that anyone will ever know. And the leader of the mouse watch is gadget hack rich. She's just this amazing inventor of all sorts of creations and she kind of puts Q James bonds Q to shame with what she has come up with. She has created pop up motorcycles and parachutes that fit over your shoes. Now Bernie, she's an excellent puzzle solver, but she's fearless. And that's what brings her to gadgets attention and so she is recruited from mouse watch. But she's very upset that her partner for the first time in mouse watch history is a rat. And he's very brilliant, but he's a rat. And it's a rat who killed her brother. She has a hard time working with Jarvis, even though he's a very sweet. He's still a rat. And he realized that there's a bigger enemy, and his name is Dr thorn pop, and he is the survivor of several scientific experiments. But each time he's lost a limb or other body part. He's replaced it with a metal creation. And now he's just this creepy scary guy who wants to seek revenge on all the humans who caused him such pain. And it's up to Jarvis and Bernie, working with mouse watch to save the world once again. And she's a very heroic. She is small but mighty. And the author JJ Gilbert, he was an animator for Disney, you can kind of see, well it is a Disney book, but you can see the Disney type illustrations. This is the first in a series, and I think it would be great animated TV series or one time little movie. They're just wonderful characters. They're, they're, they are fearless. They, there's evil. There's all sorts of adventures. There seems to be like quite a few themes to like, you know, he's a rat, you know, like prejudice type feelings. Yeah, yeah. And she's looked down on because she's so small. Everyone is bigger than she is. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. That seems like a good one. I might want to put that on my list. Yeah, yeah. There's another one coming, but I don't know when. Very cool, very cool. So this one, this one is called friend me, but you can find this on the middle in the middle school section, this came to us in March. I find it funny because like, I picked two books that have cell phones on their cover. Really into the digital age, I guess you could say. So this book, it's, this one was a really good one. I actually got like, it was like, I was surprising how much of a thriller this actually was. And judging by the cover, you don't really expect that, but especially like, like a middle school girl type drama type of book. So I was like, okay. So this book is about Roshin, and she actually moved to the US from Ireland, because her mother has been contracted to work with the, with MIT, the university to improve her latest smart voice assistant project, which is called Jeeves, kind of like ask Jeeves. And this is similar to Siri if you have an iPhone or Alexa, if you, you know, are part of the Amazon Prime, and you have those devices so it's interesting. Unfortunately though, Roshin's having a very tough time adjusting to middle school life. Of course, middle school is hard. It's hard. It's even harder in America, compared to her home country. Once Roshin started school, she immediately started getting bullied by Zara, who not only bullies her in person but also on social media. So, not just like, you know, upfront bullying, but also cyber bullying. Roshin decides to start using an app called UChat. And it's kind of like, if anything like Facebook Messenger. So if you, if you can also like share photos, you can see posts and everything like that, and you can also start messaging everybody. But when she uses UChat, she meets this girl named Haley online, who supposedly has firsthand experiences of being bullied like Roshin has and then later becomes Roshin's first real friend after moving to this country. You know, because she finally connects with somebody. Well, because Haley has experienced the same things that Roshin's been experiencing, they've been sending messages to each other about Zara and how the world would be a better place if she were gone. That's something that you really want to, you know, anybody to read about, but so Haley becomes the person that she's been meeting all along since moving to America. Zara gets into a horrible accident on a class field trip that Roshin actually witnessed. She, Roshin is worried that she will be investigated by the police. Nobody knows did she possibly push Zara, or did Zara really go through it was a really an accident. The police have to find out. And so, because of that Roshin is worried that she will be investigated, who will then search and the police will then search through her messages on social media, revealing that what her and Haley have been saying about Zara. She must find a way to tell Haley in person to delete all the Zara hating messages in their conversations before the police start, you know, tapping into their devices or wanting to investigate them. But Haley cannot be found anywhere. She doesn't reply back to her messages on you chat. Even when Haley is able to go out and travel and like stay and like one of her family friends like cabins in the same town as Haley Haley claims to be. She still cannot be found, even though you know she even talks to she even Haley even describes like oh yes I'm going to the school dance you should come and hang out. On that day she tries to find her everywhere. Yeah, and where could, where could she be. So anyways, so is Haley really who she really says she is. This book is an intense cyber thriller. It's insane. The more I read this book, the more I was hooked. It was really good I even listened to it, and it was pretty cool to listen to because she's Irish. Yeah, so the narrator was talking in an Irish accent and I was like oh that's pretty cool. I didn't expect it to be such an edge of your seat type of story. I literally once it got towards the end I couldn't believe how like how intense it got the twists and turns that the author pulls you through makes you want to keep reading. This book actually reminded me of similar to the Avengers movie Age of Ultron, in a way, hopefully that doesn't give away too much, but the minus the superhero action parts I guess you could say, but it's a really good one I highly suggest reading it. I never would have thought like, and I have to put that on my list just for the ending. I know. Oh my gosh, you should listen to it too. Speaking of devices, this is called unplug. This is the new one by Gordon Corman. And this is the story of 12 year old jet. He is the son of one of the richest men in the world, his dad invented. This is a jet company called Fuego, which is just worldwide he's a billionaire. And because of that jet just feels he can do anything he wants, because he doesn't have to pay any consequences dad will always pay someone off or fix whatever was broken but one day he sent a drone across to spy on a pool party, but the flight path is over San Francisco International Airport. And they send fighter planes to shoot the drone down because it's flying over the airport. And so that's something that jet just can't talk his way out of, and his dad says, that's it. I've reached my limit. He sends him to a wholeness camp, meditation yoga in the middle of Arkansas. And he sends along one of his employees named Matt to kind of keep an eye on jet. Well, jet is so angry to be there because not only do they have to turn it all their devices. It's a strictly vegetarian diet. And he's used to eating, you know, whatever he wants hamburgers, whatever, and beets and carrots are just not going to cut it. So, excuse me. He goes through the day being angry at everybody and everything until one day. They discover a baby lizard with very sharp teeth, and jet just becomes totally attached to this creature. And he hides him in a shed. And little by little he starts making friends with some of the other kids because they discover the lizard and together they form team lizard. And then there's jet. And there's Grace, who follows the camp rules to the teeth. She will never break a rule. And then there's Terrell, who is allergic to everything. We read, every time Terrell appears, you end up scratching because he's itchy all the time. There's Brooklyn, who mysteriously knows all kinds of things about the camp. So those three, they've been coming for years with their parents. And they, they actually like the camp even Terrell. But jet is still a curious guy, even though he's amazed to have big friends. He still wonders, because there's some strange things going on with the adults at the camp. And also he has been sneaking into town to buy meat for what they call him needles, the lizard, because he is not a vegetarian. So he's got enough money stashed away he buys hamburger meat and other meat for him. And he wonders about this huge mansion and whose owner drives a Ferrari. And he's like, this is nowhere still, who, who would live here. And nobody knows anything about the owner, they just call the owner snapper, they don't even know male or female, they know nothing about this person. But jet, he is curious. And what he finds out is not only almost unbelievable, but very dangerous. And he wonders if his new friends will believe him before it's too late. This is a really wild climax. I just couldn't put it down when we got to jet discovering the true identity of the owner of the mansion. And so these are middle schoolers. It's just, these are maybe the kids you'd want to meet if you ever get to go to camp, but just a really, really wild time and you get a hint about who needles really is by looking at him closely. That is going to say, you might get bigger. He's not your ordinary lizard. And he has very sharp teeth. Yeah. So this is what he could be. Yeah, yes. But you don't really suspect until you get towards the end. He looks so cute on the cover. He does. He does. And they, and they think that he's very cute until. Yeah. This is unplugged. That's so funny. Oh, how cool. Yeah, Gordon Corman. He's a, he does a lot of, a lot of book, good books. And there's always like, are there a creature or robot or something. Like, yeah, focus. But I, I moved this into the middle school section, just because the kids were very, they were more middle school than. Yeah, I think he has like, half and half, like in children. Yeah. And I think middle schoolers would enjoy this more. Cool. Okay, now my last book is the in between. Yeah, it's a very interesting cover. Very mysterious. This is, I'd say also kind of a mystery type. Not paranormal, well, maybe paranormal a little bit, but it's also fantasy, so mystery fantasy mystery. So this is the in between by Rebecca Ansari. And this came to us in March and it is on our middle school shelves. So the book is about Cooper and his sister Jess Cooper's Cooper's world has been turned upside down since his father had left their family three years ago. It's gotten even worse when Cooper discovered that his father had started a whole new family after the divorce, proving that he completely moved from his original family. He's moved on ever since then Cooper's been very distant to everyone his friends his mother and his sister Jess who has type one diabetes. He's even more distant to their new neighbor across the alley. And this is probably her the silhouette and stuff. And who keeps actually she actually keeps staring at him while sitting on the swing in front yard. Yeah, every time, not saying a word. Though very creepy. Cooper feels that any little thing that that annoys him will make him explode. He's just like a very angry, angry boy right now. I mean he doesn't really express it like violently, but you can tell he's got a lot of pent up anger. He happens to stumble upon a train crash or he happens to stumble upon an article that his sister Jess was researching about a deadly train crash train crash that happened 100 years ago. And among the many lives that were lost that day a young boy was never identified. No one really claimed who he was and nobody claimed his body. Nobody knew his name. Well to ease Cooper's nerves and distract himself from everything that's been going on. He gladly decides to work with his sister on this unsolved mystery. It's a good distraction for him. What helped authorities possibly identify this mysterious boy was an insignia, although symbol on his school uniform like clothes. Well that that one that no one has ever seen before. Unfortunately, Cooper is extremely intrigued by this unsolved mystery because she and Cooper, Justin Cooper, have seen the symbol before. What happens to be the same emblems the same symbol that the staring creepy girl next door happens to wear on her jacket. As they start to dive further into their investigation about this disaster, they start to find out that a similar disaster may be headed their way. To find out more information though about what might happen they must gather the courage to talk to the mysterious girl next door and find out what she's up to. So, but you know how when they tried to go see the girl across the street and I believe this is the house. There's there she sits on the swing. And then she just stares. And when they find out when they finally gain the courage to go across the street, Cooper decides to enter the house and talk to her. But when he enters the house. Everything is very, very different. So, you'll see this, and he always expects this to be like what is in the outside and the inside. But when he goes inside, it's actually basically an abandoned rubble looks like nobody's nobody's there nobody's living there, it's just debris everywhere. Shards of glass everywhere it's literally like, like a condemned to building practically. And so, but when he comes out of the house walks through the door and exiting the house, then looks at the house and it looks just fine. You can look through the windows and it looks like there was furniture. It looks like it was well kept. Looks like they were very wealthy people because they actually had a really nice home with a bunch of stuff inside that was like, you know, very expensive. And so that's a little bit of a mystery too. He doesn't understand why, when he sees the outside. Maybe it's just a facade, maybe a spell or something that he only he can see this type of a house, but everybody else except for just can only see it as this everybody else sees it as a, like a condemned building. It's really, really creepy. And it's dangerous to go in there. Well, how is this girl connected to all this can Cooper and just figure out what the next disaster will have, well, will be, and when will happen. Will they be able to gather the courage to stop what is about to happen, or will they have to accept what lies ahead of them. You'll have to read it to find out. I really liked this one. And this and actually, because of the boy going through the divorce, it's, it was very, it's hard. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Now that we're left with a mystery. Yeah. Well, we've had a, we've had a lot of different types of books this month. So, we hope that people who are watching this will, will pick up one or two or, or all of them. And you can find them on our, in our book catalog on core on our website. You just type in chapter chat. Oh, four to one. And you'll find those books next month will be having will be celebrating Asian American Pacific Islander month. And we'll be talking about some very special authors. I just finished my first book. And I'm not even going to tell you about it. It's going to be a really great month because we'll not only be sharing the books, but we'll be once again telling you a little bit more about the authors. So I hope that you'll join us for that. And yeah, it'll be closing any closing words from you. I believe you practically covered it. So yeah, and then I think I wanted to also add next month, technically they won't be new books that came to the library from the past six months they are probably a little bit more contemporary, maybe within the past five, seven years. So, but yeah, they're still good. There will be lots of other activities so be sure and check on our website because there's lots of things happening next month to celebrate, you'll be making things and eating things and just join the month together. It'll be fun. Yeah. All right. I guess that's all for now so bye for now Janine. Bye Pam. I'll see you next month. I'll see you then.