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TAILS & TALES 

C.H. BOOTH LIBRARY’S SUMMER READING PROGRAM

June 14--August 20


How it Works

  • Register for an account. You can make accounts for yourself and your family.

  • Log in to your account and record your reading. See your age group below for more information regarding logging and prizes.

  • Visit us at the library for reading recommendations, and see our Event Calendar for more summer fun for the whole family. 


Frequently Asked Questions

  • Who can participate?

The whole family! We have a program for children, young adults, and adults. 


  • Can I count books that I read on my computer or e-reader?

Of course!


  • Can I count audiobooks?

You bet! 


  • Can I join the program before or after its official start date?  

Yes! You can register now and start recording your reading on the official start date (June 14th). Log your reading until August 20 for children, young adults, and adults.


  • What should I read?

Stop by the library to ask us for recommendations, view our book lists online, or follow us on social media, where we will post book recommendations all summer long. 


Facebook / Instagram / YA Instagram / Children’s Instagram


KIDS 

Ages 4 to Grade 5

Stop by the children’s department to pick up your summer reading kit. Each kit which includes  tickets for our prize raffle to be held on August 21.  All tickets must be received by August 20 to be eligible.



YOUNG ADULTS

Grades 6 to 12


Log your time spent reading to win points. Each week, participants will have the opportunity to use their reading points for the chance to win gift cards for local businesses and other fun stuff!


The summer’s top readers will have a chance to win a Kindle Fire tablet.


ADULTS


For every book review you submit, you will be entered into the Friday morning gift card raffle as well as the end-of-the-summer raffle of your choice.

All Participants
Points Earned

Book Reviews
Search All Book Reviews
Henry And Mudge And The Sneaky Crackers
by Cynthia Rylant
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book cover


Henry and Mudge were spies and they found a spy kit with a password. After doing a lot of detective work, Henry and Mudge solved the mystery. The code was from another boy with the same spy kit and they all became friends, My favorite part of this book was that they found a new friend.

What Strange Paradise
by Omar El Akkad
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book cover


READ THIS BOOK. One of my absolute favorite books this year, easily. Akkad has created a beautiful and haunting tale that I loved every single moment of reading. Amir is a nine-year-old boy escaping from Syria with his family in search of a better life. His journey takes him first to Egypt, and then onto a boat heading to an island, where his family is sure they will have better chances of survival. With the chapters alternating between what Amir experiences on the boat and what happens after, every moment of this story is just tragically amazing.

The Woman They Could Not Silence
by Kate Moore
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book cover


This is the true story of Elizabeth Packard who's husband had her put in a mental hospital because she dared to have ideas and opinions that were different from his. At the beginning she befriends the head doctor at the hospital but later he turns on her and she has to experience terrible conditions. The story revolves around how she gets released and then goes on to fight for the rights of women wrongly placed in these institutions and improves the conditions of those who have to stay. She also has to fight to regain her family of 6 children. It is very interesting but also incredible that such things were actually considered normal at one time.

Elephant's Story
by Tracey Campbell Pearson
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book cover


What a fun book! I like the alligator character in the book. I also enjoyed how the elephant sneezed out the words-that was funny and creative. The illustrations were perfect and the elephant images turned into letters was really clever. Elephants are one of my fav animals!

Windrush
by Mike Phillips
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book cover


This book tells the story of the generation who came to Britain from the Caribbean after WW2. Powerful story with many first-hand accounts. It helped me gain a sense of the Afro-Caribbean community in Britain decade by decade. Also gives the historical background to the Windrush Scandal that broke in 2018.

Midnight Sea
by Colleen Coble
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book cover


The 4th book in the Aloha Reef Series. Lani is on her aunt's coffee farm, and is shot. She lives but wakes up blind. A good friend Pam has died. Enter into the seen, ex-cop Ben who trains guiding eye dogs. Ben brings Fischer to help Lani adjust to her new blindness. Lani is insists she will get her sight back. In the meantime they have to find out who shot at her and Pam and why. Ben's brother is mixed up in this as well. Secrets from the past come back to haunt Lani's Aunt. Something that happened years and years ago is resurfacing.

Of Women And Salt
by Gabriela Garcia
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book cover


I usually love a good historical fiction read, but this one never caught my attention like others I have read. Took a while to get into this book. It was hard to follow for me. I liked that the theme was very relevant to the times we are living in.

Falling
by T. J. Newman
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book cover


This was fun. I'm sure if I spent more time thinking and analyzing it, I could find reasons to knock the stars down, but I don't really want to. It was tense and exciting and had excellent pacing, and was a book that I could not put down. Bill is a pilot who has just been asked to fill in on a shift. Unfortunately, the shift overlaps with his son's first baseball game, which already makes his wife upset with him. Even worse, after Bill leaves, his family is taken hostage. He's given a choice; his family, or the plane. If Bill wants his wife and two kids to survive, he needs to crash the plane and kill all the passengers on board. Right from the start the book is action-packed, and it never really lets up. I wasn't as thrilled with the FBI agent chapters (I didn't want to leave the plane!), but all in all everything was engaging. Did it have predictable moments? Sure. Do I think it'd make a good movie? Honestly, probably not. But as a quick suspense read, I don't think you'll go wrong here. I look forward to seeing what else Newman comes up with in the future.

Filthy Animals
by Brandon Taylor
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book cover


"It's like when a plane descends, you know? Gradually, down through the clouds, and suddenly you can't see anything? Except, with a plane, eventually you see the city. There was no city for me." Filthy Animals revolves around the lives of three characters - Charles and Sophie, two dancers that are in a questionably open relationship, and Lionel, a man they meet at a dinner party who is dealing with the fallout from a failed suicide attempt. The majority of the stories follow one or all of these characters, with a few outlier stories that deal with other people struggling through life. All of the stories are poignant, as the characters deal with terminal medical diagnosis, the loss of estranged family members, and most of all, the inability to fully achieve what you want in life. I really enjoyed the stories about the main three, but some of the secondary stories dragged a little more. In some ways, the stories all seemed a little too similar. It was a quick read, but in this case that might not have been a good thing.

A Crooked Tree
by Una Mannion
View in Library Catalog
book cover


Told from the perspective of fifteen-year-old Libby during the 1980s, the story starts one night when Libby's younger sister, Ellen, annoys their mom so bad that she kicks Ellen out of the car and tells her to walk home. Ellen decides to hitchhike her way back, only to get into the car of a strange man who doesn't seem willing to let her out, resulting in her having to jump. I was expecting this to be more of a thriller or mystery, following what happened after the car ride and them finding the guy who did it. That's not really the story, though. This is less a mystery/thriller and more a coming of age story about a family who just happened to have a girl who was molested in a car. I found Libby to be really boring as a narrator, and the timeline itself was very confusing - you'd be reading something present tense and all of a sudden, within the same paragraph, they suddenly jump to an event that happened years ago. The premise was interesting, but I found the writing style to be disjointed and the summary didn't really match what the book was.
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