Our Wildwood, Volume 47

BOOK SHELF by Michelle Simon, Head Librarian Middle and Upper School

THE FUTURE SEEMS BRIGHT FOR LIBRARIES, WHICH CONSTANTLY CHANGE AND GROW WITH THE TIMES. During the pandemic, libraries rapidly responded to the needs of their communities and built new pathways to accessibility and services beyond their walls, with many of those services slated to remain. The social inequities that have become widely transparent also play a large role in the library frameworks of the future. With the rise of book banning, librarians will continue to play a role in advocating for the freedom to read and the democratic heart of library institutions.

MAUS by Art Spiegelman

OUT OF MY MIND by Sharon Draper Reviewed by Dot P. 6th Grader

AMERICAN BORN CHINESE by Gene Luen Yang Reviewed by Greg Sung Parent of Quinn and Jasper

Reviewed by Allison Rotstein Upper School Humanities teacher

Out of my Mind is a beautifully written book about an eleven year-old girl named Melody Brooks who was born with Cerebral Palsy.

American Born Chinese came out 16 years ago. But I wish I’d read it 25 years ago. The math doesn’t work, I know! America is

In 1991, author and cartoonist Art Spiegelman wrote a letter to the New York Times requesting it move Maus II , the second

volume of his two-part graphic novel series, from its fiction to nonfiction list. For decades, Spiegelman’s Maus has existed across and between genres, playing an important role in Holocaust studies. Its exploration of Holocaust history, memory, and transgenerational trauma—as told through characters drawn as animals —presents a unique approach to capturing a man’s attempt to better understand and document his father’s Holocaust experience. The New York Times did move Maus II to the nonfiction list, but recent calls to remove the Maus series from school curricula speak to the dangers of erasing the history of Jewish oppression that the graphic novels chronicle, making the call to read and champion texts like Maus more important than ever.

For Melody, her Cerebral Palsy makes her not able to talk, walk, and control her body in the way most people can. Melody feels like she’s trapped inside her mind, which is full of words that she cannot speak until she gets a device that gives her the ability to talk, but in a different kind of way. This heart-wrenching, but at the same time beautiful, and heartwarming book shares what it is like inside of Melody’s head.

full of immigrant stories and this is mine… except it’s not mine… but I feel like it’s mine. The world we live in today, where representation matters, isn’t the world I grew up in. Because once upon a time, trying to fit in was what mattered and as an Asian American, it was how you lived. Don’t make a scene. Just fit in. And that’s why this book is so important to me, because it reminds me that trying to fit in for the sake of fitting in has a price. Go read it. It’s worth every minute.

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OWW SPRING 2022