National Milk Day falls on January 11 to observe the very first time milk was delivered to homes inside sterilized glass bottles. It took until 1878 before anybody thought to fill bottles with milk and seal them with waxed paper. Before that, conditions for storing milk (let alone delivering it) were unsanitary at best and downright hazardous at worst. But now that we have the technology to pasteurize and deliver fresh milk to homes, stores, and processing facilities across the country, this most basic type of dairy is more accessible than ever before. By today’s standards, milk with its nine essential nutrients is considered a staple food, technically able to support human life without the addition of any other food groups to balance it out. (Other life-supporting foods include sourdough bread, chicken eggs, red beans, and surprisingly, beer!) Of course, most of us aren’t on a milk-only diet, but milk is our very first food as babies and often remains a common source of nutrition throughout our adult lives. For National Milk Day, we invite you to join us in celebrating the oldest and arguably the most natural food for all the mammals of the world — milk.

Let’s visit a dairy farm / by Alyse Sweeney.  A dairy farm is explored with information about milking cows, putting the milk in jars, chilling the milk, and sending the milk to the factory.

The milk makers / by Gail Gibbons.  In The Milk Makers, Gail Gibbons begins with the cow, describing its four-stomach method of producing milk, how it is milked on a modern dairy farm, and then how milk is transported to a dairy plant, processed, and loaded onto refrigerated trucks — with other dairy products — for delivery to stores. Step by step, Gail Gibbons’s clear, carefully researched text and crisply colorful pictures tell the wonderful story of milk.

Don’t spill the milk! / Stephen Davies, Christopher Corr.  After carrying a bowl of milk on her head across dunes and the River Niger, and even up a mountain, without spilling a drop despite many distractions, Penda gets a surprise when she arrives at the grasslands to give her father his lunch.

The farm that feeds us / Nancy Castaldo ; illustrated by Ginnie Hsu.  Where does our food come from? What role do farms play? What’s it like to be a farmer? In this charmingly illustrated book, follow a farm throughout the year to discover how the farmer grows fresh and tasty food for us to eat in a sustainable and natural way. Explore the workings of a small-scale, organic family farm and experience the rhythm of farm life. In the spring, visit the chicken coop, till the fields, and tour the farm machinery. When summer comes, plant corn, meet the pollinators, and head to the county fair. In the fall, make pies and preserves, harvest pumpkins, and put the fields to sleep. Winter activities include trimming and pruning the orchard, seed shopping, and baking bread. To conclude your year on the farm, learn what you can do to support the farmers who pick our carrots and raise the cows for our milk. A glossary defines key sustainable farming terms. Through this colorful and intimate look at life on a small-scale farm, children will learn not only how the farm feeds us, but how the farmer must feed and care for the farm.

The milk lady of Bangalore : an unexpected adventure / by Shoba Narayan.  In this true story about two women and the animal they share, readers are treated to an insider’s view of India, as well as a window into our universal connection to food and its sources.

The small scale dairy : the complete guide to milk production for the home and market / Gianaclis Caldwell.  Caldwell offers readers a balanced perspective on the current regulatory environment in which raw-milk lovers find themselves. Keepers of cows, goats, or sheep will benefit from information on designing a well-functioning small dairy, choosing equipment, and understanding myriad processes, including details about the business of making milk; managing the farm to create superior milk; understanding the microbiology of milk; and risk-reduction plans to have in place prior to selling raw milk.

Milk! : a 10,000-year food fracas / Mark Kurlansky.  According to the Greek creation myth, we are so much spilt milk; a splatter of the goddess Hera’s breast milk became our galaxy, the Milky Way. But while mother’s milk may be the essence of nourishment, it is the milk of other mammals that humans have cultivated ever since the domestication of animals more than 10,000 years ago.  Profoundly intertwined with human civilization, milk has a compelling and a surprisingly global story to tell, and historian Mark Kurlansky is the perfect person to tell it. Tracing the liquid’s diverse history from antiquity to the present, he details its curious and crucial role in cultural evolution, religion, nutrition, politics, and economics.

Goat song : a seasonal life, a short history of herding, and the art of making cheese / Brad Kessler.  Acclaimed novelist Brad Kessler lived in New York City but longed for a life on the land where he could grow his own food. After years of searching for a home, he and his wife, photographer Dona Ann McAdams, found a mountain farmhouse on a dead-end road, with seventy-five acres of land. One day, when Dona returned home with fresh goat milk from a neighbor’s farm, Kessler made a fresh chèvre, and their life changed forever. They decided to raise dairy goats and make cheese. Goat Song tells about what it’s like to live intimately with animals who directly feed you.   In the tradition of Thoreau’s Walden and Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Goat Song is both a spiritual quest and a compelling and beautiful chronicle of living by nature’s rules

No use dying over spilled milk : a Pennsylvania Dutch mystery with recipes / Tamar Myers. Pennsylvania Dutch inn owner/amateur sleuth Magdalena Yoder finds out that her second cousin twice removed is truly lactose intolerant when he’s discovered dead in a tank of milk. But when she heads to Ohio for the funeral, she lands smack in the middle of a war between powerful cheesemakers–not to mention gallons of trouble and murder!

First cow / producers, Neil Kopp, Vincent Savino, Anish Savjani ; screenplay, Jon Raymond, Kelly Reichardt ; directed by Kelly Reichardt.  Set in the 1820s Pacific Northwest, a cook and a Chinese immigrant come up with a scheme to strike it rich involving a wealthy businessman’s prized dairy cow.

Did you know that the very first Garfield comic strip was published on June 19, 1978? That makes Garfield 44 years old! Feel free to celebrate with a lasagna dinner and read your fill of comics. (Thank goodness it isn’t Monday.)

     Garfield at 25: In Dog Years I’d Be Dead

This has been checked out more than another other Garfield book at Lititz Library—over 100 times!

     Garfield Hits the Big Time

…and this is the second most checked-out Garfield book we have in our collection.

     Age Happens: Garfield Hits the Big 4-0

Celebrate the big day with a collection of Garfield’s best birthday-themed comics!

     Garfield: Livin’ the Sweet Life : His 72^nd Book

This is the latest—the 72^nd collection of Garfield comics. He’s been one busy cat over the years! Have you read all of them yet?

     Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties

You could even kick back and watch a movie about Garfield’s case of mistaken identity with a high-class cat in London.

Tap dance is a type of dance in which a rhythm is formed by the noise of the dancer’s shoes on the floor – Cambridge Dictionary

Tap dance was born in the United States in the early 19^th century through a blending of African and Irish American dance forms and early tap shoes Early tap shoes had wooden soles, sometimes with pennies attached to the heel and toe.

Head over to the Lititz Public Library to learn more about tap dance with these resources and more!

Children’s Books

 Don’t tap-dance on your teacher / Katherine Applegate ; illustrated by Brian Biggs.  Roscoe cannot wait to tap dance in the school talent show until some older boys make fun of him and say that tap dancing is just for girls.

 Tap-dance fever / by Pat Brisson ; illustrated by Nancy Cote.  Annabelle Applegate will not stop tap-dancing no matter what the frustrated citizens of Fiddlers Creek do to make her quit.

Dinosaur dance! / by Sandra Boynton.   Colorful dinosaurs get in the spirit of the dance, performing everything from tap to cha-cha.

Rhinoceros tap / lyrics and drawings by Sandra Boynton ; music by Michael Ford & Sandra Boynton.  Rhinoceros Tap returns in an all-new package to mirror Philadelphia Chickens, with a spiffy audio CD. Written and illustrated by Sandra Boynton and with music by Boynton and Michael Ford, the same team that created Philadelphia Chickens, it’s a read-along, sing-along, dance-along, oink-along collection of truly delightful children’s music.

Children’s Movies

Dance to the rescue  Put on your dancing shoes! Dora and Boots need you to dance, spin, shake, wiggle, jump, and toe-tap along as they set off on an epic dance adventure!

Happy feet / Kingdom Feature Productions ; Animal Logic ; Kennedy Miller Productions ; directed by George Miller.  Emperor Penguins from Antarctica each express their true love with a special heartsong of their own that expresses their very being. However, the misfit Mumble cannot sing. Instead he has an extraordinary talent to tap dance with almost magical energy and expression. Nevertheless, the leadership of the colony fearfully blames the young penguin’s unorthodox ways for the lean fishing that threatens them all. Defiant in the face of unjust rejection, Mumble and his true friends set out to find the true cause of the famine. Through the friends trials and perils, Mumble learns many things about his frozen world, not the least of which being that his toe tapping talent may be what he needs to save his people.

Molly : an American girl on the home front / Revolution Television ; Red Om Films ; Warner Bros. Television ; produced by Terry Gould ; teleplay by Anna Sandor ; directed by Joyce Chopra.  World War II turns Molly’s family upside down. While her father is away, war breaks out on the McIntires’ home front.

Shirley Temple : little darling collection / Twentieth Century-Fox presents.  Originally released as motion pictures between 1934 and 1940.  Includes colorized versions and restored black and white versions.

Adult Movies

Cats / directed by Tom Hooper ; in association with Perfect World Pictures ; a Working Title and Amblin Entertainment production.  Oscar-winning director Tom Hooper transforms Andrew Lloyd Webber’s record-shattering stage musical into a breakthrough cinematic event. The film reimagines the musical for a new generation with spectacular production design, state-of-the-art technology, and dance styles ranging from classical ballet to contemporary, hip-hop to jazz, street dance to tap. One of the longest-running shows in West End and Broadway history, it won seven Tony Awards, including Best Musical, and ran for eighteen years.

Billy Elliot / Universal Focus ; Studio Canal ; Working Title Films and BBC Films, in association with the Arts Council of England, present a Tiger Aspect Pictures production in association with WT2.  Eleven-year-old miner’s son Billy Elliot is on his way to boxing lessons when he stumbles upon a ballet class. Billy secretly joins the class, knowing that his blue-collar family would never understand.

Fred Astaire : [triple feature movie marathon].  Second chorus : Two rival trumpet players vie for the attention of a girl who works for Artie Shaw. — Royal wedding : A brother and sister act perform in London and find true love — The over the hill gang rides again : retired Texas rangers are made deputies of Waco and must fight crime.

Swing time / RKO Radio Pictures presents ; directed by George Stevens ; screen play by Howard Lindsay and Allen Scott ; a Pandro S. Berman production.  Fred Astaire plays a gambler intent on raising $25,000 in New York in order to marry his fiance back home. Romantic complications occur when he meets dancing teacher, Ginger Rogers. Memorable songs include “The Way you look tonight” which won an Academy Award. Swing time, the fifth in the series of Astaire-Rogers musicals, is one of the best, due to the Jerome Kern score, the dramatic dance sequences and beautiful art direction.

Yankee Doodle Dandy / Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc. ; screenplay, Robert Buckner and Edmund Joseph ; directed by Michael Curtiz.  A rousing musical depicting the life of George M. Cohan–playwright, entertainer, and composer.

Check out these websites for more information on tap dance:

https://www.britannica.com/art/tap-dance

https://ums.org/2019/06/21/from-margins-to-mainstream-tap-dance-history/

And consider doing a web search to find out if there are any tap dance classes offered near you!

It’s National Notebook Day—so scribble away, get creative, and organize your thoughts! If the blank page intimidates you, why not check out some books that celebrate notebooks, diaries, and journals, instead?

   Cover to cover : creative techniques for making beautiful books, journals & albums by Shereen LaPlantz 

“Even a beginner can start right out producing uniquely charming and elegant journals, albums, scrapbooks, and more. Envision handmade books to hold your writings, poems, photos, and keepsakes. More than 170 photos to inspire, and hundreds of illustrations to guide readers through the basics of an almost infinite variety of imaginative styles.”

   Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

Piranesi lives in a mysterious oceanic labyrinth and cannot remember life beyond it. He has always been a meticulous notetaker, however, and his old journals offer clues to a completely different past existence.

   The Book of Secrets by Elizabeth Joy Arnold

“After more than twenty years of marriage, Chloe Sinclair comes home one night to find that her husband, Nate, is gone. All he has left behind is a cryptic note explaining that he’s returned to their childhood town, a place Chloe never wants to see again. While trying to reach Nate, Chloe stumbles upon a notebook tucked inside his antique copy of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Written in code, the pages contain long-buried secrets from their past, and clues to why he went home after all these years.”

   The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks

“In a Southern nursing home, an 80-year-old man reads from his diary to his wife, suffering from Alzheimer’s. It’s the story of their teenage romance, followed by years of separation because he was from the wrong class, followed by her decision, on his return from World War II, to be her own woman and marry him.”

   The Diary by Eileen Goudge   

“When the two grown daughters of Elizabeth Marshall discover an old diary of their mother’s in her attic, it comes as a shock to learn that the true love of Elizabeth’s life was not their father.”

   Rywka’s diary : the writings of a Jewish girl from the Lodz Ghetto, found at Auschwitz in 1945 and published seventy years later

“After more than seventy years in obscurity, the diary of a teenage girl during the Holocaust has been revealed for the first time. Rywka’s Diary is at once an astonishing historical document and a moving tribute to the many ordinary people whose lives were forever altered by the Holocaust. At its heart, it is the diary of a girl named Rywka Lipszyc who detailed the brutal conditions that Jews in the Lodz ghetto, the second largest in Poland, endured under the Nazis: poverty, hunger and malnutrition, religious oppression, and, in Rywka’s case, the death of her parents and siblings. Handwritten in a school notebook between October 1943 and April 1944, the diary ends literally in mid-sentence. What became of Rywka is a mystery.”

   The country diary of an Edwardian lady, 1906 : a facsimile reproduction of a naturalist’s diary by Edith Holden

“In January of 1906, Edith Holden made the first entry in a diary which was to record the countryside through the changing seasons. There are beautiful paintings on every page of birds, butterflies, bees, and flowers reflect her deep love nature. She allowed no one to see this for seventy years.”

   Bridget Jones’s Diary

“In her mid-thirties, still single and still being set up with dates by her mom, Bridget decides she needs to make a change in her life. She falls for her boss who uses her and then dumps her. In the meantime, Bridget keeps running into the divorced guy her mom tried to set her up with, and he happens to be ex-friends with her boss. She uses her diary as a confessional and she begins to wonder if she will ever find true love.”

   Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl

“Discovered in the attic in which she spent the last years of her life, Anne Frank’s remarkable diary has since become a world classic—a powerful reminder of the horrors of war and an eloquent testament to the human spirit.”

   The Rise of the Balloon Goons by Troy Cummings (Book #1 in Notebook of Doom)

Alexander has just moved into Stermont, but the elementary school is being torn down, his new classroom is located in the hospital morgue, a notebook he finds is full of information about monsters—and everywhere he turns there are spooky balloon men determined to attack him.

   Voyage on the Great Titanic: The Diary of Margaret Ann Brady by Ellen Emerson White

“In her diary in 1912, thirteen-year-old Margaret Ann describes how she leaves her lonely life in a London orphanage to become a companion to a wealthy American woman, sails on the Titanic, and experiences its sinking.”

   Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Greg Heffley’s Journal by Jeff Kinney

“Being a kid can really stink. And no one knows this better than Greg Heffley. It’s a new school year, and Greg finds himself thrust into middle school, where undersized weaklings share the hallways with kids who are taller, meaner, and already shaving. The hazards of growing up before you’re ready are uniquely revealed through words and drawings as Greg records them in his diary.”

   Diary of a Wombat by Jackie French

“In his diary, a wombat describes his life of eating, sleeping, and getting to know some new human neighbors.”

   Writing Radar: Using Your Journal to Snoop Out and Craft Great Stories by Jack Gantos

“Bursting with practical tips and tricks, such as creating actual story-finding maps of your neighborhood, this book will help you build confidence and establish good writing habits as you learn to use a journal to snoop out plots full of action and emotion… As Jack shows you how to shape your rough ideas, organize plots, and polish drafts to shiny perfection, he also shares his own missteps—and ultimate success—as a would-be writer in middle school.”

“Librarians are tour-guides for all of knowledge” – Patrick Ness

Did you know that the first library was founded in the 7^th century B.C.”? And that the profession of librarianship has existed for over 2,000 year?  Come learn about librarians at the Lititz Public Library and celebrate National Librarian Day with your favorite library staff!

Books and Movies for Adults

                                                     

The personal librarian / Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray. The remarkable, little-known story of Belle da Costa Greene, J. P. Morgan’s personal librarian-who became one of the most powerful women in New York despite the dangerous secret she kept in order to make her dreams come true, from New York Times bestselling author Marie Benedict and acclaimed author Victoria Christopher Murray.

The librarian of Boone’s hollow : a novel / Kim Vogel Sawyer. Traveling librarian ventures into the mining towns of Kentucky on horseback and rediscovers her passions in this powerful novel from the best-selling author of A Silken Thread

A delayed life : the true story of the Librarian of Auschwitz / Dita Kraus.  Dita Kraus grew up in Prague in an intellectual, middle-class Jewish family. She went to school, played with her friends, and never thought of herself as being different–until the advent of the Holocaust. Torn from her home, Dita was sent to Auschwitz with her family. From her time in the children’s block of Auschwitz to her liberation from the camps and on into her adulthood, Dita’s powerful memoir sheds light on an incredible life–one that is delayed no longer.

The library book / Susan Orlean.  Susan Orlean re-opens the unsolved mystery of the most catastrophic library fire in American history, and delivers a dazzling love letter to the beloved institution of libraries.

The Paris library : a novel / Janet Skeslien Charles.  Paris, 1939. Young, ambitious, and tempestuous, Odile Souchet has it all: Paul, her handsome police officer beau; Margaret, her best friend from England; her adored twin brother Remy; and a dream job at the American Library in Paris, working alongside the library’s legendary director, Dorothy Reeder. But when World War II breaks out, Odile stands to lose everything she holds dear–including her beloved library … Montana, 1983. Odile’s solitary existence in gossipy small-town Montana is unexpectedly interrupted by Lily, her neighbor, a lonely teenager longing for adventure. As Lily uncovers more about Odile’s mysterious past, they find they share a love of language, the same longings, the same lethal jealousy.

Books for Young Readers

Dear Librarian / Lydia M. Sigwarth ; Romina Galotta.  In this story based on the author’s life, a young homeless girl finds a different kind of home in the library.

My librarian is a camel : how books are brought to children around the world  / Margriet Ruurs.  Describes unusual mobile libraries found around the world.

Librarian on the roof! : a true story / M.G. King ; illustrated by Stephen Gilpin.  The story of RoseAleta Laurell who arrived in Lockheart, Texas to be the head of the Dr. Eugene Clark Library. The library was outdated so she spent a week on the library roof to raise money and interest in the library.

Carlo and the really nice librarian / Jessica Spanyol.  When Carlo the giraffe and Crackers the cat visit the new library, they meet Mrs. Chinca, a very friendly and helpful librarian.

Clive is a librarian / Jessica Spanyol.  Clive pretends to be a librarian for a day.

Books for Youth & Young Adults

Mr. Lemoncello’s great library race / Chris Grabenstein.  Mr. Lemoncello holds a contest for his young friends where they must race to bring interesting facts back to his library.

The library card / Jerry Spinelli.  The lives of four young people in different circumstances are changed by their encounters with books.

Summer hours at the Robbers Library : a novel / Sue Halpern.  When fifteen-year-old, home-schooled Sunny gets arrested for shoplifting a dictionary at the local library, the judge assigns her to do community service at the library for the summer. Bright, curious, and eager to connect with someone other than her off-the-grid hippie parents, Sunny coaxes librarian Kit out of her self-imposed isolation. They’re joined by Rusty, a Wall Street high-flyer suddenly crashed to earth. As they come to terms with how their lives have unraveled, they also discover how they might knit them together again and finally reclaim their stories. Print run 20,000.

The last chance library / Freya Sampson.  June Jones emerges from her shell to fight for her beloved local library, and through the efforts and support of an eclectic group of library patrons, she discovers life-changing friendships along the way. Lonely librarian June Jones has never left the sleepy English village where she grew up. But when her library is threatened with closure, June is forced to emerge from behind the shelves to save the heart of her community

April 2nd is World Autism Awareness Day and April is Autism Awareness Month.   One of the best things we can do to help others is first to try to understand them.  With that in mind we would like to highlight some of the resources here at the Lititz Public Library.  Nonfiction books give you perspectives on the autism spectrum from experts, parents, and individuals who are autistic.  We also have fiction books for adults, teens, and children and movies to see how individuals with autism may experience the world and what it is like for friends and family members who have loved ones on the autism spectrum.

Nonfiction Books

An outsider’s guide to humans : what science taught me about what we do and who we are / Camilla Pang, PHD  Diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder at the age of eight, Camilla Pang struggled to understand the world around her. Desperate for a solution, she asked her mother if there was an instruction manual for humans that she could consult. With no blueprint to life, Pang began to create her own, using the language she understands best: science.

Fall down 7 times get up 8 : a young man’s voice from the silence of autism / Naoki Higashida ; translated by K A Yoshida and David Mitchell ; introduction by David Mitchell.  “Naoki Higashida wrote The Reason I Jump as a 13-year-old boy. Now, he shares his thoughts and experiences as a 24-year old young man with severe autism. In short, powerful chapters, he explores education, identity, family, society and personal growth. He also allows readers to experience profound moments we take for granted.

Neurotribes : the legacy of autism and the future of neurodiversity / Steve Silberman.  What is autism? A devastating developmental disorder, a lifelong disability, or a naturally occurring form of cognitive difference akin to certain forms of genius? In truth, it is all of these things and more — and the future of our society depends on our understanding it. WIRED reporter Steve Silberman unearths the secret history of autism, long suppressed by the same clinicians who became famous for discovering it, and finds surprising answers to the crucial question of why the number of diagnoses has soared in recent years.

Love that boy : what two presidents, eight road trips, and my son taught me about a parent’s expectations / Ron Fournier.   LOVE THAT BOY is a uniquely personal story about the causes and costs of outsized parental expectations. What we want for our children–popularity, normalcy, achievement, genius–and what they truly need–grit, empathy, character–are explored by National Journal’s Ron Fournier, who weaves his extraordinary journey to acceptance around the latest research on childhood development and stories of other loving-but-struggling parents”

10 things you can do right now to help your child with autism / Jonathan Levy.  What You Can Do Right Now to Help Your Child with Autism gives you the best techniques you can do – right now – to work with your child and draw him or her back into our interactive world. The ten techniques in the book are not just explained in detail, they are also illustrated by true stories of Mr. Levy’s work with children with autism (and their parents).

Parenting bright kids with autism : helping twice-exceptional children with Asperger’s and high-functioning autism / Claire E. Hughes-Lynch.  “Parenting Bright Kids With Autism discusses the frustrations, the diagnoses, the challenges, and the joys as parents help their gifted children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) thrive in school and at home. This book: Helps families navigate twice-exceptional life by translating best practice into helpful advice. Guides parents who are trying to reach out, find information, and develop their child’s talents. Helps parents acknowledge and get help for, but not focus on, areas of challenge. Is written by a professor of special education who is also a mother of a gifted child with high-functioning autism.

Ten things every child with autism wishes you knew / Ellen Notbohm.  “Ellen’s personal experiences as a parent of children with autism and ADHD, a celebrated autism author, and a contributor to numerous publications, classrooms, conferences, and websites around the world coalesce to create a guide for all who come in contact with a child on the autism spectrum. This updated edition delves into expanded thought and deeper discussion of communication issues, social processing skills, and the critical roles adult perspectives play in guiding the child with autism to a meaningful, self-sufficient, productive life.”

Books for children and teens

It was supposed to be sunny / by Samantha Cotterill.  “Laila’s birthday party, perfectly planned with her autism in mind, goes awry due to a change in weather and an accident with her cake, but with the help of her mom and her service dog, Laila knows she can handle this”– Provided by publisher.

Isaac and his amazing Asperger superpowers! / Melanie Walsh.  A little boy with Asperger’s syndrome celebrates his differences while explaining how he often has more energy than other kids, has very acute senses, and says things that may be blunt but are never intended to be mean.

Rules / Cynthia Lord. Twelve-year-old Catherine just wants a normal life. Which is near impossible when you have a brother with autism and a family that revolves around his disability. She’s spent years trying to teach David the rules from “a peach is not a funny-looking apple” to “keep your pants on in public” — in order to head off David’s embarrassing behaviors. But the summer Catherine meets Jason, a surprising, new sort-of friend, and Kristi, the next-door friend she’s always wished for, it’s her own shocking behavior that turns everything upside down and forces her to ask: What is normal?

The space we’re in / Katya Balen.  Frank loves soccer, codes, riding his bike, and playing with his friends. His brother Max is five. Max only eats foods that are beige or white, hates baths, and if he has to wear a t-shirt that isn’t gray with yellow stripes he melts down down down. Frank longs for the brother he was promised by his parents before Max was born  But when tragedy strikes, Frank finds a way to try and repair their fractured family and in doing so learns to love Max for who he is.

A boy called Bat / written by Elana K. Arnold with pictures by Charles Santoso.  When his veterinarian mom brings home a stray baby skunk that needs rehabilitation before it can be placed in a wild animal shelter, Bat, who has autism, resolves to prove that he’s up to the challenge of caring for the skunk permanently.

Things I should have known : a novel / Claire LaZebnik.  An unforgettable story about autism, sisterhood, and first love that’s perfect for fans of Jenny Han, Sophie Kinsella, and Sarah Dessen. New York Times bestselling author of Tell Me Three Things Julie Buxbaum raved: “I couldn’t put it down.

The love letters of Abelard and Lily / by Laura Creedle.  When Lily Michaels-Ryan ditches her ADHD meds and lands in detention with Abelard, she’s intrigued–he seems thirty seconds behind, while she feels thirty seconds ahead. It doesn’t hurt that he’s brilliant and beautiful.     When Abelard posts a quote from The Letters of Abelard and Heloise online, their mutual affinity for ancient love letters connects them. The two fall for each other. Hard. But is it enough to bridge their differences in person?

Books and Movies for Adults

Harmony : a novel / Carolyn Parkhurst.  How far will a mother go to save her family? The Hammond family is living in DC, where everything seems to be going just fine, until it becomes clear that the oldest daughter, Tilly, is developing abnormally-a mix of off-the-charts genius and social incompetence. Once Tilly-whose condition is deemed undiagnosable-is kicked out of the last school in the area, her mother Alexandra is out of ideas.

The curious incident of the dog in the night-time / Mark Haddon.  Despite his overwhelming fear of interacting with people, Christopher, a mathematically-gifted, autistic, fifteen-year-old boy, decides to investigate the murder of a neighbor’s dog and uncovers secret information about his mother.

The bride test / Helen Hoang.  Khai Diep has no feelings. Well, he feels irritation when people move his things or contentment when ledgers balance down to the penny, but not big, important emotions–like grief. And love. He thinks he’s defective. His family knows better–that his autism means he just processes emotions differently. When he steadfastly avoids relationships, his mother takes matters into her own hands and returns to Vietnam to find him the perfect bride.

The Rosie project / Graeme Simsion.  Don Tillman, a professor of genetics, sets up a project designed to find him the perfect wife, starting with a questionnaire that has to be adjusted a little as he goes along. Then he meets Rosie, who is everything he’s not looking for in a wife, but she ends up his friend as he helps her try and find her biological father.

Mozart and the whale / Millennium Films presents ; a Robert Lawrence production.  Donald and Isabelle have a form of autism called Asperger’s Syndrome. Donald, a good-natured but hapless cab driver has a knack for numbers. He falls head over heals in love with the beautiful but complex Isabelle when she joins the autism support group he leads.–From container.

Salmon fishing in The Yemen / CBS Films presents in association with BBC Films.  A London fisheries expert is approached by a consultant to help realize a sheik’s vision of bringing the sport of fly-fishing to the desert and embarks on an upstream journey of faith and fish to prove the impossible possible.

Adam / Fox Searchlight Pictures presents an Olympus Pictures production in association with Serenade Films, Deer Path Productions and Vox3 Films.  Adam is a handsome but intriguing young man who has Asperger’s syndrome and has led a sheltered existence. Then he meets his new neighbor, Beth. She is a beautiful, cosmopolitan young woman who pulls him into the outside world,